Chapter - 8
"The World is Too Much with Us"

- William Wordsworth

Life And Works Of William Wordsworth:

In a Nut-Shell William Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth in Counterland. It is the well-known beautiful lake country of North England. The name of his father was John Wordsworth and his mother was Anne Cookson. His father was an attorney-at-law and his mother was the daughter of a mercer from Penrith. His father died in 1778 when he was only thirteen and his mother died when he was eight years old. He studied at Hawkshead Grammar School from 1778 to 1787 and after that he received his higher education at St. John's College, Cambridge.

After taking his degree at Cambridge University, he went on a walking tour of Europe. He visited France, The Alps and Italy in 1790. After spending some time there, he came back to France and stayed there for some time. He was influenced greatly by the French Revolution. During his stay in France, he fell in love with Annette Valton, daughter of a surgeon. They produced a daughter named Caroline. When he was disillusioned by the Reign of Terror and the execution of Louis XVI, he returned to England in 1793. He passed through a mental and moral crisis from which his sister Dorothy saved him. She led him back to nature. He settled down with her at Recedown Dorset. He met there with S.T. Coleridge who put a great influence on him. At this time, he got a legacy from his friend Raisly Caluert. In 1797, he left Recedown and settled at Alfoxden from where he went to live at Dove Cottage, Loweud, when Coleridge settled down at Keswick.

William Wordsworth visited Calais in August, 1802 with his daughter Caroline and his wife Annette Valton. There he married his cousin Mary Hutchinson in the same year. In 1803, he visited Scotland for the first time and he met there with Sir Walter Scott. Next year, he moved to Allan Bank from Dove Cottage. Finally, he settled down at Rydal Mount, where he lived upon the end of his life. He visited Scotland for the second time in 1814. He visited Europe for fifth and sixth time in 1820 and 1822 respectively. He went to Europe again in 1828 and visited Scotland once more in 1831. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1843. He died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850.

Some of the famous works of William Wordsworth are as under:
1. Lyrical Ballads
2. The Prelude
3. The Excursion
4. Michael
5. The Lucy Poems
6. Ode on Intimations of Morality
7. Tintern Abbey
8. Ode to Duty
9. Resolution and Independence
10. Education of Nature
11. The Solitary Reaper
12. The Table Turned
13. The Leech Gatherer
14. The Rainbow
15. Upon the Westminster Bridge
16. To Milton
17. The World is Too Much with Us.

Attitude of Words Worth Towards Nature

Nature: A Living Personality: Wordsworth is the greatest poet of Nature. As Hallock says, "Wordsworth is world's most loving and thougthful poet of nature". Stoppford Brooke says, "His attitude towards Nature was different from that which upto that time poets had held. Poets, before him, had described flowers and mountains and oceans. But to such poets, Nature served as a background before which the human drama was played. Man was the real thing and Natue was by the way. But Wordsworth reversed the process. To him, Nature is all in all, and man occupies a secondary place. The subject of the poem "Tintern Abbey' is 'Nature'. The poet and his sister Dorothy are the worshippers of Nature.

Other poets had regarded mountains and rivers as dead and separate objects. But Wordsworth treated Nature as a living personality. The rocks, the mountains and the rivers are like the limbs of Nature. Nature is one and living. Nature reserved a place for her own living.

"Three years she grew in sun and shower
The nature said, 'A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown....."

Nature does all this for her volunteerly. Only a living and intelligent being can do all this.

Spiritualises Nature: Wordsworth sees God in Nature. A spirit lives in Nature. Christianity says that the kingdom of heaven can be brought on earth by the worship of God and Christ. Wordsworth says that the worship of Nature is the highest religion. Nature is the religion and Wordsworth is the prophet. Wordsworth said, "I want to be regarded as a teacher or as nothing else." And his greatest teaching is to worship God in Nature.

His Pantheism: Pantheism means that God is all and all is God. Wordsworth believed that God lives in everything and everywhere:

"A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts
And rolls through all things."

Wordsworth is Nature-Mystic Mysticism implies understanding the mystery of the universe. The sages are called mystics, as by the worship of God they can read the meaning and purpose of the universe. Wordsworth is a Nature-mystic. He believes that by the worship of Nature, we rise higher than our physical self and can understand the whole meaning of the world. As he says in "Tintern Abbey':

"We are laid asleep
In body and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy
We see into the life of things".

He reads the Hidden Meaning of Nature: He is not a painter-poet like Keats. As Hales says, "In the mere description of Nature, many writers have surpassed Wordsworth". The water of the stream is flowing. To Wordsworth its murmur is the crying of men and its water is the tears of humanity. In the murmur of the brook, he hears;

"The still sand music of humanity."

In the Immortality Ode, he describes the sun-set clouds. A sensuous poet like Keats would have described the clouds as red, blue or yellow. But Wordsworth does not stop at the outward beauty of the clouds. He reads hidden meaning in them. The sun-set clouds show that today's day is over, new day will dawn tomorrow. Thus, the sun-set clouds mean to him rise and fall of the nations and the empires.

Education of Nature: Wordsworth regards the education of nature as superior to bookish learning. He got this idea from the French writer Rousseau:

"Fields his study, Nature was his book."

He found tongues in trees, books in running brooks and sermons in stones. To him, a whiff of jungle breeze brings greater knowledge than the study of all the books taken together.

Happy Nature: Wordsworth regarded Nature as the treasure of happiness. In Tintern Abbey, he tells us that the remembrance of lovely scenes of Nature brought joy to him in the city. When he lived in the city, and the unprofitable stir and fever of the world hung upon the beatings of his heart he turned his thoughts to the natural scenery and got comfort.

Wordsworth did not, like Tennyson, describe blood-thirsty or destructive Nature, "Nature red in tooth and claw." Nature leads her worshipper from joy to joy.

Calm Nature Wordsworth did not describe stormy Nature of tempestuous ocean like Byron. He gives descriptions of calm and quiet Nature.

Three Stages of his Nature Philosophy: In boyhood, he felt animal € joy in the company of Nature. He ran races in the jungle like a deer, as if he were trying to run away from Nature and not, as the fact was, as if Nature were his beloved.

In the second stage, namely, youth, Nature to him was all in all. He had no philosophy. He loved only the Nature that he saw with his eyes and ears.

But in the third stage, he left these dizzy aching pleasures. He read the hidden meaning of Nature.

The World Is Too Much With Us
(Substance of the Poem)

In this sonnet, the poet condemns the fast growing materialistic attitude. Now-a-days, man has become too materialistic. He has lost touch with Nature. He has no time to admire peaceful and sublime beauties of Nature. The materialistic approach has made everybody blind and indifferent to the beauties of Nature. He is deaf to sweet sounds. He has bartered his soul for materialistic objects. His soul is not in harmony with the aspects of Nature. He has gone completely out of tune. The poet wishes to be a Pagan so that he may worship objects of Nature and see sea-gods like Porteus rising form the sea or hear Triton blowing on his horn.

कविता का हिन्दी सारांश

इस कविता में कवि तेजी से बढ़ते हुए भौतिकवादी दृष्टिकोण की निन्दा करता है। आजकल, व्यक्ति अत्यन्त भौतिकवादी हो गया है। उसका प्रकृति के साथ सम्पर्क समाप्त हो गया है उसके पास सुन्दर एवं सुखद, शान्तिपूर्ण प्राकृतिक दृश्यों की प्रशंसा करने के लिए समय नहीं है। भौतिकवादी दृष्टिकोण ने प्रकृति की सु न्दरता के प्रति प्रत्येक व्यक्ति को अन्धा एवं उदासीन बना दिया है। वह मधुर ध्वनियों के प्रति बहरा है। उसनेतु छ चीजों के लिए अपनी आत्मा का आदान-प्रदान कर दिया है। मनुष्य की आत्मा का प्राकृतिक आयामों के प्रति कोई लगाव नहीं है वह पूरी तरह से उदासीन हो चुका है। ऐसी स्थिति में कवि एक पैगन बन जाता है क वह प्राकृतिक वस्तुओं की पूजा कर सके तथा समुद्र से निकलते हुए समुद्र देवता पोरटेस को देख सके या ट्रिटान का अपना बिगुल बजाते हुए सुन सके।

POINTS TO PONDER (About the Poem)

Man has become too materialistic. He has lost touch with Nature.
He fails to admire peaceful and sublime beauties of Nature.
The materialistic pursuit has made him blind and indifferent to the beauties of Nature.
When there is no spiritual life, religion is show.
He has bartered his heart for money.
The poet desires to become Pagan like the Greek and derive peace from the beauties of Nature.

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