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Kim Cheng & Wordsworth
Kim Cheng & Wordsworth
Kim Cheng & Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon, You should be here. Nature has need of you
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; She has been laid waste. Smothered by the smog,
Little we see in Nature that is ours; the flowers are mute, and the birds are few
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! In a sky slowing like a dying clock,
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, All hopes of Proteus rising from the sea
The winds that will be howling at all hours, have sunk; he is entombed in the waste
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, we dump. Triton’s notes struggle to be free,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune; his famous horns are choked, his eyes are dazed,
It moves us not. – Great God! I’d rather be and Neptune lies helpless as a beached whale,
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; while insatiate man moves in for the kill.
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Poetry and piety have begun to fail,
Have glimpses that would make less forlorn; as Nature’s mighty heart is lying still.
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; O see the wound widening in the sky.
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. God is laboring to utter his last cry.