Journal of the Plague Year 15

Wordsworth’s sonnet “The World is Too Much With Us; Late and Soon” has been too much on my mind. The world, indeed, has been too much with me. I read the news today, oh boy! By “the world” Wordsworth refers to the “getting and spending” which consumes our time and that “lays waste our powers.” It is the consumerist society that Wordsworth bemoans, that total immersion in isolated, physical lives that keeps us at our workplaces wherever they might be earning the monies necessary to purchase not only those things that minimally maintain our physical existence but also those things whose presence in our lives serve only to keep us from a spiritual engagement in Nature, a Nature that offers to Wordsworth peace and tranquility. Today that might simply mean a place of contemplative quiet. The poet cries that he would give up the present world if he might stand alone on some “pleasant lea” and glimpse that which would make him less forlorn. But, of course, ironically, the poet cannot give up the world that is too much with us. Else why find it necessary to write the poem? I think he had already read the news today. Oh boy!

I recall that Thoreau insisted that in our personal quest for our Selves we might supply our travel vessels with cans of preserved meat and then pile the empty cans up to the sky! Thoreau didn’t despair of the world; he knew it could make our discoveries possible even as he preferred to engage with the Nature for which Wordsworth longed. 
     Now Wordsworth’s ‘late’ could mean ‘not on time,’ as in the White Rabbit’s urgent plaint, “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.” In this context ‘late’ might suggest that things are “in a rush” and there exists little time to slow down and rest. There would then be no place for peace. Or “late” might here mean “in the present moments,” but again there would be no time for respite or contemplation: the world is too immediately here!  Maybe “late” here might refer to a time designation, as in “I am up late” and there would be again no rest and relief from the world. Now “soon” suggests that the presence of that world that is too much with us is impending and we should be aware and beware. Soon here becomes late: there would be no escape from the crushing presence of the world.  In either situation, late and soon, we remain trapped by those worldly things that keep us from the relief and peace offered by nature. 
     Every day in the newspaper I confront the world and it is too much with me late and soon. I refer here only to the presence of plague, to the onset two years past of COVID-19 and the subsequent variants that continue to mutate and infect the planet. On the front page daily statistics such as these regularly appear: 

 

	Avg. on Dec. 12	14-day change
New cases	119,301	+43%
New deaths	1298	+32%

 

On the inside pages of the paper there are pages of printed maps and charts showing where outbreaks of plague appear; where the omicron variant has been detected; statistics describing how many hospital beds are occupied and how many are actually needed; how many more ventilators are required for the seriously ill patients. Pages internal offer stories concerning all aspects of the visitation of the plague and print photos of the pain. There is no escape from the world . . . I think at times that the plague is the world.

            And I cannot begin to describe the oppressiveness I experience from the political sewage that floods the airwaves, airways and streets of these communities. From it there is no escape; it is there late and soon. Of course, with death it will end, and then the world will no longer be with me late and soon, but I am not nearly ready.