Talk:The World Is Too Much with Us

I do not believe that this poem is written in Iambic pentameter, for the second line is definitely not. I believe that the poem structure is based upon the sonnet, with five feet per line, but without following a actual meter.

That's true, the first four lines do not seem to be in iambic pentameter, a point which I will be sure to note in my final paper, on this very poem. With regard to the sonnet, it is an Italian Petrarchan sonnet, imitative of the work of Francesco Petrarca in the 14th Century. KaneFox (talk) 05:58, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The second line is in iambic pentameter. The first foot is a trochee, which is a common variation; the third foot may be read as a pyrrhus preceding a spondee, also a fairly common variation, or as an iamb, which is regular. If I doubted any line, it would be the fourth, which has an extra syllable even if you contract "given". Regardless, this poem is in iambic pentameter. --65.244.148.222 (talk) 20:48, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Article Summary

The summary of this article contains a lot of questionable analysis and interpretation. It should also be kept in mind that the speaker in the poem remains unidentified and is not necessarily Wordsworth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.155.211.12 (talk) 18:15, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The summary is longer than the sonnet. 71.137.3.99 (talk) 03:24, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

This interpretation and summary require serious revision. There is nothing in the text of the poem to suggest that Mankind is somehow threatening the environment. Nor is nature depicted as "vulnerable" in any way. The statement "winds that will be howling at all hours" do not contain any suggestion of "the destructiveness society has on the environment." Still less does Wordsworth (or the speaker) see himself "at one with the environment." In fact, his point is exactly the opposite. He in fact expresses the wish that he were able to appreciate the majesty and power of nature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnsonkathryngwyn (talk • contribs) 19:18, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Awful

Wow, so Wikipedia cites SparkNotes! That's dandy. That makes this reliable!

The fact that Wordsworth was reading David Hartley and believed that being in nature gave one sympathy that thereby altered the mind and elevated the person is not hard to know. Any treatment of Wordsworth will talk about his philosophy. Shoot, Wordsworth is explicit about it. And, of course, tone deaf readers who are reading the poem for the very first time and going to SparkNotes are probably not noticing the fact that "the world" in the title was intended, for Wordsworth, to be a play on religious writing of the day. The "worldly" versus "spiritual" was a dichotomy that had been in play since William Law (oh, darn, another thing someone would need to know), and here Wordsworth is trying to set up a different contrast, a contrast of the "worldly" with the "natural" -- thereby hinting at a synonymous relationship between "spiritual" and "pastoral."

Oh, but never mind. Just redirect people to SparkNotes, by all means. That's reliable! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.186.127.134 (talk) 15:52, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Original Research

It is precisely the function of poetry, as opposed to prose, to suggest multiple meanings and multiple interpretations. If you want to push a particular interpretation it should be cited and hopefully identified and contrasted with other interpretations. You have only one citation in the entire article. The writing is uneven, to say the least. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cspoleta (talk • contribs) 18:36, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Planning revisions/additions

I am planning to correct some faulty statements in and flesh out this article. I plan to provide the poem's scansion (it is in iambic pentameter, but as with all poems, that meter is not strictly observed in every line and is varied for effect) and expand on the interpretation, providing multiple scholarly views. I may provide a line by line explication as well. Here are a few sources I am looking at:

Boons, Authority, and Imagination: A Reading of The World Is Too Much with Us. - Massachusetts Institute of Technology. https://mit.primo.exlibrisgroup.com. Accessed 12 July 2023.

Fox, Arnold B., and Martin Kallich. “Wordsworth’s Sentimental Naturalism: Theme and Imege in ‘The World Is Too Much With Us.’” The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 8, no. 4, 1977, pp. 327–32.

Kroeber, Karl. “A New Reading of ‘The World Is Too Much with Us.’” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 2, no. 3, 1963, pp. 183–88. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/25599587.

Obeidat, Ishraq. “″The World Is Too Much with Us″: Integration of Form and Content and the Translator′s Responsibility.” British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 20, Aug. 2018, pp. 1–6.

Rose, Phyllis. “Getting and Spending: Nostalgia for the Old Way of Reading Poetry.” The American Scholar, vol. 70, no. 4, 2001, pp. 79–86.

Warsh, Lewis. “Wordsworth, William (1770-1850).” World Poets, edited by Ron Padgett, vol. 3, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2000, pp. 175–85. Gale eBooks, Gale, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX1386400115/GVRL?sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=031bee4a.

WritingMan (talk) 22:03, 12 July 2023 (UTC)