The World is Too Much with us by William Wordsworth: Study Guide

Table of Contents Cite This Article × Cite This Article Choose a citation style and copy the reference. MLA 9 APA 7 Chicago Copy Citation Poetry Key Information Central Message: Chasing money and material things has cut people off from nature so completely that even its greatest beauty can no longer move them — and that loss is a kind of spiritual poverty. Speaker: A frustrated, disillusioned voice, closely aligned with Wordsworth himself, mourning a connection to nature he feels slipping away from everyone, including himself. Poetic Form: A Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet — an octave followed by a sestet, fourteen lines total. Themes: Materialism versus nature, spiritual disconnection, longing for an older, more mythic way of seeing the world. Emotions: Anger and grief at first, sliding into wistful, half-serious longing by the poem's close. Time Period: Composed around 1802; first published in 1807. Published Category: Appeared in Wordsworth's collection Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). Literary Mo…