William Wordsworth, 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 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.”
The creed doesn’t have to be “outworn”, Bill. Some of us think it’s in pretty good shape for the shape it’s in…
I remember reading this one in middle school. That first line has always stuck with me. It is in a protean and constant way, nearly always true.
Funny. For me it was the last few lines
Little we see in nature that is ours… What does this mean? That we are simply disconnected from nature, or that we should care for it more, shape it to be beautiful?