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William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
18.
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The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
The above poem was first printed in 1807 in Poems, In Two Volumes. Untitled
except for the number 18, it appears in the section of the book entitled
Sonnets, subsection Part the First - Miscellaneous Sonnets. It can be found
for example in:
Wordsworth, William. Poems, In Two Volumes (First Edition, second issue).
London: Wood & Innes, Printers, Poppin's Court, Fleet Street.
Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Patternoster-Row, 1807.
Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems (Second Edition).
New York: Columbia University Press, 1998..
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