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.-William Wordsworth
We are too much in the world, and so, the world is too much with us. Alas, there’s no glory, peace or reconciliation in this union, because it is not an union, but an imposition of our human desires into the world. We crowned technique and tamed the world to make it human, to make it safer to our desires. We transformed the world, and now the world is so human, that there’s no place for reverence to be there between man and nature. The world is too much with us because we made it to assimilate us.
But when we stand there, in the night, with the innocent eyes of a pagan, the world seems to be so far from us, a world in the stars, a world in the untamed wind and lighting, so beautiful, powerful and savage that it does transform us and embrace us, in a way that no humanism and safety desire could ever force the entire world to be inside our narrow humanity.
That is wonder, and without wonder the world is all already known.