Wordsworth's Birthday

It's Poetry Month, and if you enjoy poetry, send a blank email to sub_knopfpoetry@info.randomhouse.com and sign up for a poem a day from Knopf. Good stuff.

Because it's poetry month, and Wordsworth's birthday, I'm sharing one of my favorite poems, written 201 years ago, and it still describes the world as I see it some days when I'm in my car boxed away from a beatiful morning.

"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US; LATE AND SOON"

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!
The 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.--Great God! 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 wreathed horn.