NCERT Book Class 11 English (Woven Words) Poetry 5 The World is too Much With Us

The World is too Much With Us 117 5 The World is too Much With Us William Wordsworth 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! The 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 everything, 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 rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. Pagan: a person whose religious beliefs do not belong to any of the main religions of the world. ` Proteus: a character in Greek mythology who had the gift of prophecy but who, when questioned, would assume different shapes to elude their grasp. Triton: a sea-deity in Greek mythology, who is generally represented as blowing a shell, his body above the waist being that of a man, below it of a dolphin.