Dramatic situation involves such elements as the events in a poem, the reason for these events, and the relationship of the speaker to his audience. This last element is paramount to Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us," for he writes in a style unlike that of his peers: Wordsworth employs the English of the average Englishman, a laborer who was dissatisfied with the wealthy landowners' living a luxurious life at the expense of the working man beneath them. And, as a Romantic poet, Wordsworth also appeals to the common people in their love of Nature.
Now, this relationship to the average Englishman does relate to the theme, or moral truth, of Wordsworth's poem, as well. since there were many "grass roots 19th century English" who were tied to the Romantic Movement. Concerned with the growing materialism of people, in his sonnet Wordsworth tells people,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our pwers/Little we see in Nature that is ours
contending that people were better off when they were pagans:
Great God! I'd rather be/A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;/So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,/Have glimpses that wuld make me less forlorn
With the insensitivity of 19th century man to the beauty and tranquility of Nature, Wordsworth feels that man may lose his soul in his desire for material acquistion--"We have given our hearts away"--something that even the pagans did not do.
Wordsworth's theme of the need to abandon materialism and embrace the beauty and enjoyment of Nature is one that is, indeed, timely in this 21st century as many are certainly "out of tune."
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