Published in 1807, it offers, in just fourteen lines, a miniature ‘manifesto’ for Romanticism, as Wordsworth bemoans the ways that modern life is preventing us from fully appreciating the wonders of the natural world.Ĭat! who hast passed thy grand climacteric,ĭestroyed? How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze
This is perhaps Wordsworth’s finest sonnet. We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. The world is too much with us late and soon, William Wordsworth, ‘ The World Is Too Much with Us’. The poem reflects the blackest moods of depression, with the speaker wishing to join with the night, since they both embody darkness and are natural partners for each other.ĥ. She was the grand-niece of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), who wrote the first long sonnet sequence in English (though as we’ve just seen, not the first ever sequence), and learnt much from him about the art of sonnet-writing, as this poem demonstrates. It’s said that Jonson didn’t like sonnets – yet he liked hers. Not only that, but she was admired by her contemporaries, including the hard-to-please Ben Jonson. Lady Mary Wroth (1587-c.1652) was the first Englishwoman to write a substantial sonnet sequence. Night, welcome art thou to my minde distrest,ĭarke, heauy, sad, yet not more sad then I:įor thine owne humour, then I thus opprest … Lady Mary Wroth, Sonnet 37 from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.
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