The World Is Too Much With Us

I present you with a poem by 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.

Wordsworth's poem, composed about 1802, was first published in Poems, in Two Volumes, in Great Britain, 1807

Image above of the Green Man, part of a Byzantine mosaic, 6th-century CE. Great Palace Mosaic Museum, Istanbul; via Wikimedia and in the public domain