Poetry Journal

London, William Wordsworth

The speaker addresses the soul of the dead poet John Milton, saying that he should be alive at this moment in history, for England needs him. England, the speaker says, is stagnant and selfish, and Milton could raise her up again. The speaker says that Milton could give England “manners, virtue, freedom, power,” for his soul was like a star, his voice had a sound as pure as the sea, and he moved through the world with “cheerful godliness,” laying upon himself the “lowest duties (Olmstead p. 32-34).”

This poem is one of the many excellent sonnets Wordsworth wrote in the early 1800s. Sonnets are fourteen-line poetic inventions written in iambic pentameter. There are several varieties of sonnets; “The world is too much with us” takes the form of a Petrarchan sonnet, modeled after the work of Petrarch, an Italian poet of the early Renaissance. A Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts, an octave (the first eight lines of the poem) and a sestet (the final six lines). The Petrarchan sonnet can take a number of variable rhyme schemes; in this case, the octave (which typically proposes a question or an idea), follows a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA, and the sestet (which typically answers the question or comments upon the idea) follows a rhyme scheme of BCCDBD (Mohammadi p.32-38).

My Mistress' Eyes

The York and Lancaster rose is red and white streaked, symbolic of the union of the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York. Compare The Taming of the Shrew: "Such war of white and red within her cheeks. Shakespeare mentions the damask rose often in his plays. Sonnet 130 is the poet's pragmatic tribute to his uncomely mistress, commonly referred to as the dark lady because of her dun complexion. The dark lady, who ultimately betrays the poet, appears in sonnets 127 to 154. Sonnet 130 is clearly a parody of the conventional love sonnet, made popular by Petrarch and, in particular, made popular in England by Sidney's use of the Petrarchan form in his epic poem Astrophel and Stella (Hunt p. 35-40).

If you compare the stanzas of Astrophel and Stella to Sonnet 130, you will see exactly what elements of the conventional love sonnet Shakespeare is light-heartedly mocking. In Sonnet 130, there is no use of grandiose metaphor or allusion; he does not compare his love to Venus, there is no evocation to Morpheus, etc. The ordinary beauty and humanity of his lover are important to Shakespeare in this sonnet, and he deliberately uses typical love poetry metaphors against themselves.

Let me not

Tucker explains that the first two lines are a "manifest allusion to the words of the Marriage Service: 'If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony'; cf. Much Ado 4.1.12. 'If either of you know any inward impediment why you should not be conjoined.' Where minds are true - in possessing love in the real sense dwelt upon in ...