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.
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.
In the early nineteenth century, Wordsworth wrote several sonnets lambasting what he perceived as "the decadent material cynicism of the time".
In the sestet, the poet imagines believing in gods like Proteus and Triton rather than being Christian, despite seeing paganism as "a creed outworn", because he thinks that life would be more meaningful that way.