In doing some Googling about Wordsworth’s other works, I stumbled across “The World is Too Much With Us,” a sonnet about the loss of our communion with nature. The sonnet’s narrator angrily accuses the modern age–specifically the industrial revolution–of having lost its connection with nature and all that is meaningful. The narrator states that we, as a modern society, have become lost in an economic, spiritual, and cultural sense. I find this sonnet particularly interesting because of how relevant it is in the 21st century; in an era ruled by technology and green paper. As a society–particularly, in the United States, as the paragon of capitalism–we dedicate our lives and our livliehoods to furthering the materiality of our society. We are out of touch with nature and the world around us, valuing its destruction to further our material gains. Evidently, Wordsworth values the health of our environment as well as the health of society’s and the individual’s connection with the environment. I’d like to think that if Wordsworth were born about 200 years, he most certainly would’ve been an ecologist or an environmentalist.
