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!
 This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
 The winds that will be howling at all hours
 And are up-gather'd 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 wreathèd horn.

I was reading Edna St Vincent Millay’s Sonnets on Minstrels (lovely) and remembered this famous one.

Wordsworth laboured his poems, but just one phrase makes this one worthwhile for me - a picture of the quiet winds over the ocean on a moonlit night.

I studied in a Convent, and some of us giggled when the line “this Sea that bares her bosom to the moon” was read in class. Our English teacher - a nun - admonished us “You silly girls, don’t you know a woman’s bosom is one of the most beautiful of God’s creations!”

Beauty is Truth, and Truth is Beauty! I’m forever indebted to Sister Catherine.

— Mallika Chellappa

Martin adds

Like Mallika, I find this poem a trifle laboured, but the first line has an indefinable something to it. It stuck in my memory long after the rest of the poem had faded. The transition from the octet to the sestet is very well handled, too - not always the case in a sonnet, but noticeable when it does happen.

— Martin