A summary of a classic William Wordsworth poem about London, analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle

William Wordsworth's sonnet 'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802' is ane of his virtually celebrated poems. Hither is the poem, and a few words by manner of analysis:

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Wearisome would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, clothing
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his start splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a at-home and so deep!
The river glideth at his own sugariness volition:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

First, a few words about the poem's title: although it'due south dated 'September 3, 1802', the London morning scene which inspired the poem probably occurred on 31 July of that year, when Wordsworth and his sis Dorothy left London for Dover, earlier heading to French republic. Although the championship announces that it was 'Composed Upon Westminster Span, September iii, 1802', this was probably the date on which Wordsworth completed the poem, a few days after he and Dorothy had returned to London.

But then 'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, July 31, 1802, but Completed Somewhere Else, September 3, 1802' wouldn't be every bit good a championship.

'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge': summary

The poem is a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, arranged into an octave or eight-line section and a sestet or six-line section (although different some Petrarchan sonnets, Wordsworth does not accept a blank line dividing the eighth and ninth line), rhyming abbaabba and cdcdcd (the abba abba rhyme scheme in the first eight lines is the giveaway that this is a Petrarchan sonnet). The first eight lines praise the beauty of London in the early forenoon light, as the poet stands on Westminster Bridge admiring the surrounding buildings.

Earth has not anything to bear witness more off-white:
Deadening would he exist of soul who could pass past
A sight so touching in its majesty:

Wordsworth begins past offer the view from Westminster Bridge the highest possible praise: there is nix fairer in all the earth. And anyone who could see such a sight and only behave on walking by without stopping to appreciate the view would be soulless indeed.

This City now doth, similar a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open up unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

London appears to wear the morning time'south beauty like a slice of wear. The ships, towers, and other buildings that make up the London skyline are silent (the world hasn't begun to stir yet) and 'bare'. Hither in that location is no gaudiness but plain and simple beauty, despite the man-made origins of these structures.

These buildings announced to be submitting to nature: they 'lie / Open' to the fields and the sky, those earthly and ethereal landscapes that sandwich them, every bit if the London buildings are between earthly beauty and the dazzler of the heavens, and be not in contrast to them but as a natural bridge between them. Because the workaday earth hasn't started yet and the wheels of industry are nevertheless, the air is 'smokeless' at the moment: articulate and clean.

Never did lord's day more beautifully steep
In his showtime splendour, valley, stone, or hill;

This is loftier praise indeed from Wordsworth, well-known as a nature poet: the sun never rose amongst annihilation, not even the natural features of valleys, rocks, or hills, more than beautifully than it now scales the outlines of these city buildings.

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm then deep!

Wordsworth ofttimes writes almost the calm that nature provides: see his 'Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey', for example, or his talk of verse equally being 'emotion recollected in repose'. But here, it is non the quiet and calm of the English countryside that Wordsworth connects with only the calm of the land's capital before the concern of the day begins.

The river glideth at his own sweetness will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying yet!

Even the Thames appears to be taking its time, languidly flowing through the city and under Wordsworth'due south very feet. Wordsworth returns to the buildings of the city in his reference to the houses: the inhabitants are indoors asleep, but the bricks and mortar of the houses themselves seem to be existing in a land of soporific calm. The center of London, the people who brand information technology what it is, are all lying asleep, even so and at-home.

'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge': analysis

It may seem odd to find Wordsworth (1770-1850) – a poet who helped to revolutionise Westminster BridgeEnglish poesy in the 1790s and early on 1800s by beingness a leading effigy in Romanticism – praising the beauty of London, a city.

After all, much of Wordsworth's poetry – as with other poetry past Romantic writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge – tends to focus on the rural, the countryside, the world of nature. London, fifty-fifty past the early nineteenth century, was a earth of industrialisation, smog (that is, smoky fog, created by industrial activity), as well as the middle of government and empire, two things that came under heavy scrutiny from the early Romantic poets.

Yet Wordsworth finds London a glorious sight in the early morn low-cal, because the city has non yet woken up and these industrial processes and governmental activities have non yet begun. Wordsworth, standing on Westminster Bridge, is a stone's throw away from the seat of government. Everything is calm and unspoilt:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, blank,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All brilliant and glittering in the smokeless air.

London is instead 'bright and glittering in the smokeless air', 'silent, blank', and at ane with nature: the human-made buildings lie 'Open up unto the fields, and to the sky.'

Indeed, the lord's day shines every bit beautifully on these structures every bit it does on the natural earth of 'valley, rock, or hill'.

London is described as a 'mighty center' in the final line, which reminds us of its axis as the seat of government, empire, and merchandise, but also presents this centrality by way of a natural metaphor: just as the middle slows while one is asleep, simply to speed up when one wakes, then London seems to lie still, plunged into a calm land that is not different a pleasant sleep.

But what makes the poem more than a uncomplicated 'wait how beautiful nature is' do in Romanticism (which to the untrained eye much Romantic verse can announced to be: a simple glorification of beauty and the natural world) is the sense of something darker lurking behind these words of praise:

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a at-home then deep!
The river glideth at his own sugariness volition:
Beloved God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

The 'river glideth at his own sweet volition' now, simply one time London wakes from its slumber this gentle at-home volition be disrupted by man-made activity. The world of merchandise, of ships and boats coursing forth the Thames, will override the river's own natural pace.

The ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples announced to lie in passive submission to the natural world now ('Open unto the fields, and to the sky'), but this will be overturned when London wakes: in reality, the globe of nature is at the mercy of mankind and the systems of merchandise and industry which rule from the city, just as the heaven will exist polluted by the plumes of smoke from the chimneys of factories.

This analysis of Wordsworth's poem is hardly exhaustive, but we hope it gives a sense of how the verse form fits in with Wordsworth's other Romantic poetry, despite some superficial differences in subject-matter.

Almost William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the leading poets of English Romanticism, and, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, is regarded equally one of the 'Lake Poets': poets so named because of their associations with the Lake Commune in Cumbria in northern England.

Curiously, although Wordsworth was built-in in Cockermouth in Cumbria and would live for many years at Dove Cottage in the Lake District, some of Wordsworth's almost important and influential poems were written in the belatedly 1790s while he was living in southern England and collaborating with Coleridge on their Lyrical Ballads (1798), which would herald a render to older, traditional oral forms of poetry and a privileging of personal sensory experience and individual emotion over the cool rationalism and orderliness of earlier eighteenth-century poesy.

Wordsworth'south themes are nature and the English countryside, the place of the private inside the world, and memory: especially babyhood memory. I of his nearly famous statements is 'the child is begetter of the man', which asserts that our childhood years are and then formative that they determine the developed we become. Wordsworth is often looking back to his babyhood, and nowhere more and then than in his long autobiographical verse form The Prelude (1805; revised 1850).

Lyrical Ballads heralded the arrival of English Romanticism in poesy, and Wordsworth added a famous preface to the collection when information technology was reprinted in 1800. However, he afterwards brutal out with Coleridge, and his poetic inventiveness stale upwardly in his thirties; much of his all-time work was written before 1807. He accepted the office of Poet Laureate in 1843 when his fellow Lake Poet, Robert Southey, died, but he never composed a single line of official poesy during his seven years in the mail service. He died in 1850.

Continue to explore Wordsworth'due south classic poetry with our assay of his famous verse form about daffodils, 'I wandered lonely as a cloud'. For another Wordsworth poem nigh London, bank check out our discussion of his classic sonnet 'London, 1802'; for another sonnet, run across his classic poem 'Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room'. Discover more Romantic poetry with our analysis of Blake'south 'A Poisonous substance Tree'.

The author of this commodity, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, amid others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Neat War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.

Image: Westminster Span and Abbey by William Daniell, 1813; Wikimedia Commons.