The World is Too Much With Us

                             Poems and Poets

               2.The World Is Too Much With Us 



We take off from Shakespeare and land in the arms of William
Wordsworth.
This initiator of the Romantic movement in poetry perceived the Oneness of life and universe. He said:

    " in all things/ I saw one life, and felt that it was joy" and he
"loved fields & woods & mountains with almost a visionary fondness".

How would such a one look at the socio-economic world around us- the artificial atmosphere of our own creation? This is what he feels:

           The World Is Too Much With Us

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 bears 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.

(1807)

The economic whirl has sucked us all in. Earning and spending- earning to spend- has become the chief preoccupation of life. This crass materialism has deprived us all of our sense of connection to the natural world around us. Its beauty and majesty move us not. Materialism has bred alienation from Nature. ( Later on, Marx would say it has, in its capitalist form,alienated man from his own nature; whatever its dialectical merit, its psychological truth has been recognised by  thinkers like Erich Fromm)

Christian England had been overtaken  by the industrial revolution and its consequent all-conquering material culture. Wordsworth  wishes he had  been a pagan so that he could see and maintain contact with the ancient gods ie live in greater daily touch with the forces of nature around us. Greater reliance on Nature is the antidote to this sordid material culture.

Two hundred years after these lines were written, there is even less of Nature to see! In the cities, with all their midnight masquerade, we do not even get to see the twinkling little stars. Mountains are broken down, seas get polluted, lakes disappear, rivers get dry, farms and fields yield place to airports and tolled highways.( like what they used to call 'turnpikes' in 18th Century England. Oh, how faithfully we still imitate the old colonial masters in every little detail !)

What we see here in Bangalore is typical. Greenery has largely disappeared. Indeed, the govt recently decided that the agriculture dept should close down its office in Bangalore because its rural character has disappeared- there are no more farms here!

The problems of material culture have multiplied, but a return to simple Nature is not possible! Wordsworth posed a problem in the first 8 lines of the poem, and gave a solution in the next 6. Now, even that has become another problem, while the first one has intensified!. 

Does it mean all economic endeavour is to be condemned? The problem is one of balance and perspective. As Sri Aurobindo pointed out:

"Commercialism is a modern sociological phenomenon...the whole phenomenon of modern society. The economic part of life is always important to an organised community and even fundamental; but in former times it was simply the first need, it was not that which occupied the thoughts of men, gave the whole tone to the social life, stood at the head and was clearly recognised as standing at the root of social principles."

( The Ideal of Human Unity, Chap XXV. 1917)

We will have more to say on this as we go along. And Nature is not always benevolent or all that glorious as the romantics visualised. After all, the same God who created the lamb created the tiger too!

In the meantime this sonnet of Wordsworth gives plenty for pause and reflection.