Blog #11: Poem #7: Response to _The World Is Too Much With Us_ by William Wordsworth

         After reading the poem, The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth, I'm finding myself reflecting on the awfulness of humanity's increasing materialistic values and decreasing environmental values. I think the author did an effective job manipulating his first person speaker to voice his concerns and outrage at the growing blatant ignorance that humanity has for the value of nature. When reading the details in the second line about "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers," I automatically knew that the speaker was referring to this rise in consumerism where humanity has begun to dwell only on buying and taking physical items in which they place a lot of value in. By stating that "We lay waste our powers" the author is emphasizing that humanity is capable of compassion and respect for the Nature that provides all the resources we use in order to live, but chooses to ignore the fact that humanity is not offering a fair trade. Instead of caring about the environment that sustains us, humanity is deconstructing Nature through drilling, deforestation, polluting, taking advantage of natural resources and etc, destroying the beauty of nature and disrespecting the power it gives us. Wordsworth even personifies the wind stating that the wind was "howling at all hours" in order to convey complaint and fury that Nature has for humanity. It makes a statement that demonstrates that the relationship between humans and Nature should be a balanced give and take relationship, but is currently not. Overall, I found this poem to be extremely realistic to today's society and find it ironic that when I looked up when this poem was written, I found it was written in 1802 which was a really long time ago. It just goes to show how the past is more relevant than we think it is.