THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US / 319
London, 18026
Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
5
Have forfeited their ancient English dower0 endowment, gift
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
10 Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay. Sept. 1802 1807
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!7
5 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
10 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 Triton8 blow his wreathed horn. 1802-04 1807
6. One of a series 'written immediately after my 1843]. return from France to London, when I could not 7. Gift. It is the act of giving the heart away that
but be struck, as here described, with the vanity is sordid.
and parade of our own country .. . as contrasted 8. A sea deity, usually represented as blowing on
with the quiet, and I may say the desolation, that a conch shell. Proteus was an old man of the sea
the revolution had produced in France. This must who (in the Odyssey) could assume a variety of
be borne in mind, or else the reader may think that shapes. The description of Proteus echoes Paradise
in this and the succeeding sonnets 1 have exagger-Lost 3.603?04, and that of Triton echoes Edmund
ated the mischief engendered and fostered among Spenser's Colin Clotits Come Home Againe, lines
us by undisturbed wealth' [Wordsworth's note, 244-45.
.
320 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Surprised by joy9
Surprised by joy?impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport?Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
5 Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind?
