Form and Meter
"The World is too Much with Us" is a sonnet written (mostly) in iambic pentameter. A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, the origins of which are attributed to the great Italian poet Petrarch. There ar...
Speaker
The speaker in "The World is too Much with Us" resembles a really smart, environmental activist guy you'd meet at some remote beach that very few people know about. Somehow, you and your friends ha...
Setting
"The World is too Much with Us" takes place near the ocean somewhere; in fact, it seems a lot like a little speech somebody would give while sitting around a campfire on a remote beach. It's quiet,...
Sound Check
"The World is too Much with Us" sounds like a short snippet from a speech given by an environmental activist on a college campus. Just imagine a guy with dreads, a Greenpeace t-shirt, and Birkensto...
What's Up With the Title?
The title "The World is too Much with Us" sounds funny – we usually say "The world is too much for me." Funny-sounding things can often be interpreted in several ways, and this one is no exce...
Calling Card
A lot of Wordsworth's poetry is nostalgic about something; usually it's childhood, but in this poem it's a certain relationship to nature. The poem complains that people aren't moved by nature, and...
Tough-O-Meter
Despite a few confusing phrases that can be interpreted in several ways, especially the title and "little we see in Nature that is ours" (3), Wordsworth's sonnet is relatively straightforward. Ther...
Brain Snacks
Sex Rating
There isn't really anything sexual about this poem. There is only one speaker, and he doesn't encounter anybody in the course of the poem. While the sea does "bare her bosom" (5) to the moon, it re...
Shout Outs
The Industrial Revolution (2)