Read the following poem by William Wordsworth carefully before choosing your answer.
The World Is Too Much With Us
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-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 wreathèd horn.
In lines 8–9 ("For this, for everything, we are out of tune; / It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be"), how does the placement of the transition (caesura and enjambment) within line 9 rather than at the line break reinforce the poem's thematic development?
- By ending the octave’s lament ('It moves us not') at the start of line 9 before immediately launching the volta ('Great God!'), the structural disruption mirrors the speaker's urgent, fractured emotional state.Answer
- BBy forcing a strict, literal pause at the line break after 'out of tune,' it ensures that the critique of human behavior and the speaker's emotional response are kept separate.
- CBy maintaining an even, undisturbed rhythm across the line boundary, it reflects the speaker's stagnant and unchanging mood of despair throughout the entire poem.
- DBy dividing the line, it serves as a biographical record of William Wordsworth's personal renunciation of nineteenth-century Christian theology in favor of pagan mythology.
- EBy creating a mid-line break, it functions strictly as a mechanical example of caesura to satisfy the metric requirements of iambic pentameter.