The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting andspending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! (Lines 1 - 4) Materialism,wasteful selfishness, prostitution! These are the images that these linesbring to me! Yet, is it not more true today than in Wordsworths time,that we are a culture of people who simply consume and waste? The thirdline awakens me, and says that I have been raised with the mentality thatI am not a part of nature, and that I do not identify my needs with thoseof natures needs. This mentality may have been quite true in 1807, but itis surely more true in 1996. There is absolute disregard of nature in theacts of well respected western corporations. Would someone who is in-touchwith nature orchestrate the slash and burn of beautiful rain forests ofSouth America, or the life giving jungles of Africa and Asia? Wouldsomeone who is in-touch with nature dump c!hemical waste into waters that are home to billions of plants and animals?These and other abominations have surely increased in the last 189 yearssince this poem was written. What makes the sin even worse is the factthat men who order this destruction are well respected people in ourculture. The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gatherednow like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune;It moves us not. Great God! (Lines 6 - 9) Wordsworth gives life tonature in his words, and displays to us natures agony and pain, howlingat all hours. But, we listen not! For we are out of tune, and much tooimportant to ourselves, that we may not listen to the wind, rain, land orsea. I do not know which is the greater sin: the pillage of the earthsnatural beauty, or mans torturous inhumanity toward his fellow man.London, written in 1794, by William Blake is a poem of civilizationsdecline and also the decline of compassion and humanit!y. I wander thro each charterd street...
