Basically, what I think Wordsworth is saying is that the 18th century poetry is too lofty and over the heads of the common people. It’s about subjects that most people really don’t care about; it’s sort of like poetry is used as public-private conversation between poets, and if people like it, well, jolly good for them then! It’s like they want to talk about their dirty laundry out loud to other poets, but they don’t want everyone to know about it. The new poetry p- Wordsworth’s poetry – is supposed to be about things that “common” people get.
Instead of having inter-poem communication like Swift and Montagu in the dressing room poem saga, the words are more about nature and things found in nature. Granted, there are metaphors – like the nest or the nightingale in “The Nightingale’s Nest” – but people can get them. They can get that the nest is like home and safety, and the nightingale is the poet who only wants to be left alone in their nest to write their poems. That people don’t have to go on these epic quests to find things to write poems about; inspiration can be found right outside your own home or door.
To say which one I’d rather have: that would depend completely on my mood.
If I just want to read a good poem, or I don’t really want to have to think long and hard about the metaphysical essence of the woes of premature ejaculation, I’ll pick up something like Blake or Wordsworth. (Granted, I do have my qualms about some of Blake: “The Sick Rose”/ O, Rose, thou art sick – thank-you captain obvious…. It’s a sign o’ the times.) Like in “The world is too much with us”, I can completely grasp that he’s talking about how people don’t respect Mother Earth anymore; how we don’t love nature (lines 3-4). In line 10 – “A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn” – Wordsworth even comes out and says that he’d rather be a pagan because they have more respect for earth and nature. They understand that this is our one earth, and it is beautiful, and we as people who only borrow it should love and respect it, and thank it for letting us use it.
This type of poetry is just easier for me to grasp, and I’m none too bright sometimes (There is too and “i” in “team” – T. I. M. E …. Oh, wait; that’s “time”).
But, on the other hand, if I want to insult or annoy or offend my extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins), I’m all for quoting Pope or Swift or Behn. That kind of lofty language is great because they can sit and say how pretty it is when I quote Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” and not understand a single gosh-dang thing I say. Or they can be completely offended like when I quote my favorite Rochester poem “Signior Dildo” “My Lady Southesk, heaven prosper her for’t,/First clothed him in satin, then brought him to court;/ But his head in the circle he scarcely durst show,/ So modest a youth was Signior Dildo”. So it’s just how much I want to offend people; that dictates what poem I want to quote.
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