The cliché, the more things change; the more they stay the same, applies to two poems, “The World is too Much with Us,” written in the 1800s and “Spirits in the Material World” which was written in 1981. The poems are both in response to the everchanging world. These poems use specific poetic elements to create force behind their arguments. Furthermore, each poem conveys a similar theme that materialism is going to ruin the planet for future generations. The first poem “Spirits in the Material World,” has five stanzas and utilizes many poetic elements such as repetition and rhyme. For example, the first stanza utilizes the same syllable ending of -tion and the second and fourth stanza repeat the line “We are spirits in the material world.”
