1. Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
By William Wordsworth

2. Context
Wordsworth's inspiration for the poem seems to come from the view he saw from Westminster Bridge in London on the morning of July 31, 1802, although he didn’t write the poem until September the same year. The people of the city were still in bed and the factories had not yet polluted the air with smoke. He and his sister, Dorothy, were crossing the bridge in a coach taking them to a boat for a trip across the English Channel to France. In her diary, Dorothy wrote:
‘We mounted the Dover Coach at Charing Cross. It was a beautiful morning. The City, St. Paul's, with the River and a Multitude of little boats, made a most beautiful sight.... The houses were not overhung with their cloud of smoke and they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly with such pure light that there was even something like a purity of Nature's own grand spectacles.’
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3. Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
Earth hath not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear 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 first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! A B C D
These first eight lines rhyme; this is known as an octave.
These eight lines rhyme alternatively; this is the sestet.
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4. The View….?
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5. Why is this poem surprising?
The surprising thing about this poem is that it is a view of the city that Wordsworth declares to be the most beautiful sight he has ever seen; in fact, he declares that the view is the most beautiful in the whole world. As Wordsworth, who famously wrote ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, considered nature to be a source of deep inspiration it is unusual he declared a city to be the most amazing sight the world has ever known.
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6. Form
The poem is written in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet. A Petrarchan sonnet has fourteen lines, has a particular rhyming scheme (see slide 3) and is split into an octave and a sestet. The octave describes the view of the city the persona can see and the sestet compares the beauty of the city with that of nature.
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7. Tone
The tone of the poem is almost a hushed, breathless amazement and admiration; the poet is astonished to see such a perfect vision as he crosses the bridge early one summer’s morning. He becomes emotional when considering the beauty of the city, such as in line 11. There is a prevailing atmosphere of silent serenity, an inspiring calmness and tranquillity that pervades the whole of the poem.
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8. Line by Line Analysis…..
The poem opens with a confident pronouncement:
‘Earth has not anything to show more fair:’
The end-stop, which almost looks like he is about to set out a list, suggests this line is important and the supreme quality of this beauty outclasses anything else the world can offer. The other word for Earth, soil, prepares us for the comparison in the final sestet.
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9. Line by line….
By inverting the normal word order, ‘Dull’ is really striking; anyone with any intelligence, any bit of soul would have to stop and admire the view. The enjambment also emphasises the words ‘A sight so touching’. The use of sibilance in lines 2 and 3 creates a breathless sense of admiration and the final word of line 3 ‘majesty’, emphasised by the rhyme with line 2, conveys the regal powerfulness which overwhelms the poet here.
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10. Line by line….
Line 4 introduces London and the word ‘City’, with a capital, gives it significance. By using a simile the city is seen as a vision of beauty; a beauty that rests ‘like a garment’ over it all. Why not dress? Or something more specific? ‘Garment’ would suggest a comfortable, easy fit, but the word is grander than ‘clothes’ and has connotations of fine materials.
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11. Line by line….
Wordsworth lists the various aspects of the city that amaze him, preceding the nouns with two fairly simple adjectives: ‘silent, bare’. All of these things such as towers and domes are emphasised by the one-syllable perfect rhyme of ‘lie’ and ‘sky’. The list of things found in the city are not poetic but the compound effect is that it’s a wonderfully varied picture which one can wonder at for a long period of time.
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12. Line by line….
The final line of the octave closes with another pronounced, one-line end-stopped statement: ‘All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.’ The positive diction of bright, glittering, smokeless makes it sound beautiful, full of light, shiny, like a jewel. Smokeless is particularly important as London was often smoky and polluted (such as described in Dicken’s Hard Times). The clean, unpolluted view of the city is profound. The final rhyme of the octave, ‘bare/air’, gives a light, carefree feeling to the tone.
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13. Line by line….
The sestet begins emphatically with the negative ‘Never’. The poet will compare the beauty of what he can see before him with that he was witnessed in nature. Again, the sentence structure is inverted and emphasis is placed on ‘more beautifully’: ‘Never did sun more beautifully steep’. ‘Steep’ has a powerfulness about it and the enjambment places stress on ‘In his first splendour’. There is a real sense of hyperbole here, that this is the most beautiful morning since the beginning of creation.
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14. Line by line….
There is a list in the octave of all the aspects of the city the poet can see; here it is now balanced with ‘valley, rock or hill’ – all aspects of nature the poet can see from the bridge.
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15. Line by line….
Wordsworth continues with the use of emphatic negatives, repeating ‘Ne’er’ and ‘never’. ‘Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!’ The repetition of the double never, the caesuras which make us stress each part of this line and the exclamation mark placing extreme emphasis on this line. The words ‘calm’ and ‘deep’ are stressed in this line.
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16. Line by line….
With all of the lines being end-stopped, these final four lines are separate statements of wonder, building to an emphatic climax. The rich, full use of the perfect rhymes, ‘steep’, ‘deep’, ‘asleep’, create a fullness of wonder. ‘Glideth’, although old-fashioned for glides, has a peaceful fluidity, a calmness which describes the river moving at ‘his own sweet will’. The liberated, unrestrained river is as free as his emotions; the elongated vowels in ‘own sweet will’, followed by the subtle use of personification (the sun and river are seen as his) suggest a living force beneath the whole of the scene.
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17. Line by line….
‘Dear God!’ - what’s the tone here? Intense shock? Amazement? Gratitude that such beauty exists at all? Even a form of prayer? It’s juxtaposed with the calmness but similar intensity of feeling in ‘the very houses seem asleep’; there’s an intensifier of ‘very’, the use of sibilance to create gentleness of the river and personification of the entire City seeming to be asleep which conveys an overwhelming calmness; a gentleness surprising in one of the world’s biggest cities at the time.
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18. Line by line….
The final line leaves us with the impression of silence and stillness: ‘And all that mighty heart is lying still.’ The silence and stillness seems to have surprised the poet the most; the city is normally loud. Therefore, the poem ends in a similar way to the opening – an emphatic, one-line statement which is stated in a tone of incredulity and wonder.
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19. Web Links
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