The World is too Much with Us Man and the Natural World Quotes

People have become so obsessed with "getting and spending" that they have lost the ability to see nature as somehow relevant to their humanity. The language of quantity ("little") and possession ("ours") suggests one reason for this breach: our approach to nature has been infected with a consumerist ideology obsessed with getting, spending, measuring, etc.

The speaker suggests a connection between our "hearts" and nature. There is a sense in which people have "given" nature "away" as well because they no longer feel any connection to it, aren't moved by it, etc. To give nature away is to give away an essential part of our humanity.

The speaker describes a sea he is viewing as something that should move us; the sea is compared to a woman bearing her bosom to the moon, almost as if the sea were nursing the moon. The image of nursing comes up again when the poet says he would rather be a "pagan suckled in a creed outworn."

The winds are the second thing that the poet says no longer move us; they are compared to some kind of wild animal ("howling") and to something as quiet and beautiful as a flower. The use of two different images for the wind suggests that the natural world is full of variety.

The speaker compares people to a musical instrument that is not in "tune" with nature; a musical instrument has a correct pitch to which it is supposed to be tuned, and the lines imply that humanity is supposed to be tuned so as to be in harmony with nature, as if that were the way things were supposed to be. The image of music returns in the last line of the poem with Triton's "wreathed horn" (14).

The speaker describes a hypothetical scenario where he would see things in nature that would make him "less forlorn"; one could read the lines as suggesting that the speaker himself sees nothing in nature and would rather be a pagan because then nature would be more "animated," more interesting than it is now.