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!" 'The World is Too Much with Us' is a poem wrriten by William Wordsworth that was composed circa 1802, but not published until its inclusion in 'Poems, in Two Volumes' (1807). The poem offers a criticism of the materialistic world left in the aftermath of the First Industrial Revolution, made patent by its distancing from nature. William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was a major English romantic poet who, alongside Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, 'Lyrical Ballads'. His masterpiece is generally considered to be 'The Prelude' (1850), and Wordsworth was distinguished as England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.