The world is too much with us
William Wordsworth
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 every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So I might, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Disconnection
Sarah Macom
To full this world is getting; too crowed
With objects and ideals. There is no room for the we,
Always I and me. Where is our once beloved?
Nature, oh Nature, come out of hiding;
From the billboards, the dollar signs, the narcissism.
We sold our origins away; the gift
That didn't keep giving. Oceans break upon
The shore, thunder hits the ground with force
And yet we sleep still; a slumber of apathy.
Dear fates, don't cut my thread just yet;
Don't leave me forsaken by this world,
This world too loud to let me hear
The voices in the wind and the callings
Of the grass.
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Loved this Sarah! I thought you did a great job. My favorite part is "There is no room for the we,/Always I and me."
ReplyDeleteI agree with Cait above. The lines "There is no room for the we,/ Always I and me" are wonderful. They do an excellent job of displaying what is at stake in Wordworth's poem, while also reinventing the poem in your own terms. In fact, it always drives me crazy, for example, when motivational speakers say "There's no 'I' in 'team"... b/c there is most certainly a 'me'! In other words, I wonder if "we" has any organic meaning to man beyond a pulling or pushing together of two or more entities. I wonder, that is, if "we" can ever have a more consistent definition--a definition that does away with boundaries and relational logic. Instead, what if "we" were to mean man and nature, where nature is no long in hiding b/c man is no longer falsifying his "disconnection" from it?
ReplyDeleteThe poem has obviously raised some significant questions for me, both for Romanticism and Environmental thought. Nice job!