Comparative Essay on Romantic Poetry - In London, September 1802 vs.

Comparative Essay on Romantic Poetry - In London, September 1802 vs.

The World Is Too Much With Us Late and Soon - Wordsworth

Wordsworth's poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing feeling,

instinct, and pleasure above formality and mannerism. More than any

poet before him, Wordsworth gave expression to unformed human emotion;

his lyric "Strange fits of passion have I known," in which the speaker

describes an inexplicable fantasy he once had that his lover was dead,

could not have been written by any previous poet.

The message that these poems sent across may be interpreted as being

cynical and nostalgic towards the people, nation and the era in which

the author lives. In The World is Too Much, the speaker angrily

accuses the modern age of having lost its connection to nature and to

everything meaningful: "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!" He says that even when the sea "bares her bosom

to the moon" and the winds howl, humanity is still out of tune, and

looks on uncaringly at the spectacle of the storm. The speaker wishes

that he were a pagan raised according to a different vision of the

world, so that, "standing on this pleasant lea," he might see images

of ancient gods rising from the waves, a sight that would please him

greatly. He imagines "Proteus rising from the sea," and Triton

"blowing his wreathed horn." This poem in a very clear manner shows

the flaws of society and his views against such flaws. In London,

September 1802 Wordsworth's views are not so clear. The use of such

accusations "The Wealthiest Man among us is the best": /"For comfort,

being, as I am, opprest". The foundation of this poem is not

condemning all that is in his life but nature, rather he attempts to

show the shortcomings of society in an effort to go back and reflect

upon the lost ways of the past. This is supported with excerpts like

"We must run glittering like a brook" and "No grandeur now in nature

or a book" show the author's view that there is potential for society

and that is has the ability to change. This is quite contrary to the

pessimistic outlook of The World is Too Much.

The structure of both these poems is that of an Italian sonnet much

like many other famous sonnets Wordsworth wrote in the early 1800s.

Sonnets are fourteen-line poetic inventions written in iambic

pentameter. An Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts,