Work record

Composed upon Westminster Bridge

William Wordsworth

1802 (published 1807) · 19th Century · Poetry · English

Public domainGreat Poems & Speeches · Poem Read full text Download EPUB Five-minute digest

Abstract

Written: 31 July 1802; published 1807 (dated 1803)
Setting: Dawn, summer 1802, during the Peace of Amiens; Westminster Bridge, London
Author: William Wordsworth
Country: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Language: English
Genre: Sonnet (lyric)
Form: Petrarchan sonnet rhymed abbaabba cdcdcd
Recommended: Grades 6–12 (Petrarchan sonnet; some archaic forms.)

Background. Leaving the capital for France by the early coach, the poet and his sister rode over the Thames as the sun came up. Dorothy's journal describes the same view, and the dates printed with the poem were later corrected.

Content. The speaker insists that nothing on earth is lovelier and that only a soul without feeling could ignore it. Clothed in early light, every vessel, spire and dome is open to the countryside and clear, since no chimneys are yet smoking. No mountain dawn surpasses it, he says; the river flows freely, the houses slumber, and the great city lies motionless.

Form. Fourteen pentameter lines in octave and sestet, turning from description to inner calm.

Themes. The surprising beauty of the city, stillness, wonder and an implicit reverence. Wordsworth, usually the poet of lakes and fells, here discovers in brick and stone the same majesty he found among mountains. The sleeping houses and the river moving at its own will suggest a creation resting before the noise and labour of the day begin.

Reception. Admired from the first, it has become one of the most anthologised sonnets in the language and a favourite model for teaching the form.

For students. Teach in grades 6-8 alongside a Shakespearean sonnet and Psalm 46.

Main characters

The speaker: The poet on the Dover coach
London: The sleeping city

Summary

Composed upon Westminster Bridge is a Petrarchan sonnet that Wordsworth wrote in the summer of 1802 and published in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes, where it is dated September 3, 1803. In fact Dorothy Wordsworth's journal shows that she and William crossed Westminster Bridge on the roof of the Dover coach early on the morning of 31 July 1802, on their way to France during the Peace of Amiens, and she described the city at dawn in words very close to the poem. The sonnet begins with a bold claim: earth has not anything to show more fair, and anyone who could pass by so touching and majestic a sight would be dull of soul. The city, the poet says, wears the beauty of the morning like a garment. Silent and bare, its ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie open to the fields and the sky, all bright and glittering in the smokeless air, because the coal fires of the day have not yet been lit. In the sestet he declares that the sun never shone more beautifully on valley, rock or hill in the countryside than it does now on London, and that he has never seen or felt so deep a calm. The river Thames glides at his own sweet will, the very houses seem asleep, and the poem ends with the exclamation Dear God! and the image of the city's mighty heart lying still. The poem is surprising from a poet usually associated with lakes and mountains: it finds in the greatest city in the world, normally a place of noise and smoke, the same peace and grandeur that he finds in nature. The prayerful exclamation suggests that the stillness is almost sacred, a glimpse of the world as God made it before human busyness begins. It is one of the most frequently taught sonnets in English and a model of the Petrarchan form.

Virtues in this work

Piety: The calm moves him to an exclamation of wonder addressed to God.

Plot or Argument

Lines 1-3: the claim
Nothing on earth is more beautiful; only a dull soul could pass it by.
Lines 4-8: the city at dawn
London wears the morning like a garment, bright in the smokeless air.
Lines 9-12: the comparison
The sun never shone more beautifully on nature; the poet never felt so deep a calm.
Lines 13-14: the stillness
The houses seem asleep and the city's mighty heart lies still.

Characters

The speaker, observer
The poet crossing the bridge at dawn.
London, subject
The city personified as wearing a garment and having a heart.

Lessons

Beauty in unexpected places
Wordsworth finds in a city the beauty he usually finds in mountains.
- Why is this subject surprising for Wordsworth?
- What makes the city beautiful at this hour?
- Where have you seen unexpected beauty?
Related across the library
- The Works of William Harvey, Lesson: The physician at the bedside and the deathbed
  The physician at the bedside and the deathbed. Harvey was a working physician, and the volume shows it: the bled patient who faints, the Montgomery youth whose heart he touched through an old wound in the chest, the warning against midwives who hurry a labour, the autopsy of Thomas Parr. His explanations mix new physiology with older ideas of the non-naturals, air, diet and the passions. Students can study how a great discoverer still reasoned within the medicine of his time.
- Essay on Burns, p. 71
  Three gates of deliverance, it seems to us, were open for Burns: clear poetical activity; madness; or death Having admitted he is not medically informed whether Burns could have lived longer, Carlyle names the possible ends of his crisis at Dumfries.
- I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Lesson: Wealth that lasts
  Wealth that lasts. The poet did not know what wealth the sight had brought until later. True riches may be memories of beauty.
- The Three Musketeers, Chapter XLV, A Conjugal Scene
  It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has done what he has done. The blank pardon Richelieu gave Milady, which Athos takes from her at pistol-point and which later saves d'Artagnan.
- Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Lesson: Singing in one's own words
  Singing in one's own words. Watts believed worship songs should express Christian faith directly and clearly.
The sonnet's turn
The octave describes the sight; the sestet deepens it into calm and wonder.
- Where does the turn come?
- How does the mood change?
- Why end with the image of a heart?
Related across the library
- The Winter's Tale, Full Text
  smutch d thy nose They say it is a copy out of mine Come captain We must be neat not neat but cleanly captain And yet the steer the heifer and the calf Are all call d neat Still virginalling Upon his palm How now you wanton calf Art thou my calf MAMILLIUS Yes if you will my lord LEONTES Thou want st a rough pash and the shoots that I have To be full like me yet they say we are Almost as like as eggs women say so That will say anything But were they false As o er-dy d blacks as wind as waters false As dice are to...
- Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Lesson: Loss and recompense
  Loss and recompense. The speaker admits that the dizzy raptures of his youth are gone and will not come back, but he refuses to mourn: he has gained a sober, thoughtful love that includes the sad music of humanity. The poem is a model of growing older without bitterness.
- Little House in the Big Woods, Lesson: Obedience keeps us safe
  Obedience keeps us safe. Pa's story about the voice in the woods and Charley's false cries for help both show that disobeying or playing tricks can lead to real danger. When Charley truly needs help, no one believes he is in trouble until they see him.
- Popular Scientific Lectures, On Transformation and Adaptation in Scientific Thought
  But the element of wonder never lies in the phenomenon or event observed; its place is in the person observing. Mach explains wonder as the shock to fixed habits of thought that prompts their adaptation.
- Galileo: The Starry Messenger, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, and Two New Sciences (First Day), Lesson: Argument as well as experiment
  Argument as well as experiment. In the First Day Salviati refutes Aristotle on falling bodies first by reasoning: if a heavy stone is tied to a light one, the light one should both slow and speed the pair. Only then does he turn to experience. Galileo shows that a clear thought experiment can expose a contradiction in a long-held view.
Stillness and prayer
The exclamation Dear God! turns description into something like prayer.
- Is Dear God! a prayer or an exclamation?
- Why might stillness lead to worship?
- Compare Psalm 46:10.
Related across the library
- Novum Organon Renovatum, Lesson: Words for new knowledge
  Words for new knowledge. Book IV shows Whewell's conviction that clear thought needs clear terms. He gives rules for coining scientific words and offers 'scientist' as a general name for those who cultivate science, on the analogy of 'artist'.
- De Regno, Lesson: De Regno: formed attention
  De Regno: formed attention. De Regno teaches students to slow down before judgment. twelfth-grade readers can compare Aquinas with Aristotle, modern rights language, and revolutionary political theory
- Summa Theologica, I-II, Q. 2, Art. 5, I answer that
  Hence a captain does not intend as a last end, the preservation of the ship entrusted to him, since a ship is ordained to something else as its end, viz. to navigation. Aquinas argues that man's happiness cannot consist in goods of the body, because a thing ordained to another end does not have its own preservation as its last end. The popular saying "If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever" is a modern paraphrase, not Aquinas's words.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lesson: Words that shape a life
  Words that shape a life. Lord Henry's garden speech and his yellow book change Dorian more than any event, yet Lord Henry himself lives a quiet, conventional life. Wilde shows the power of persuasive talk and the responsibility of those who give it, while leaving Dorian answerable for what he chooses.
- Notes from Underground, Full Text
  Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Contents NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND PART I Underground I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI PART II Propos of the Wet Snow I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND A NOVEL The author of the diary and the diary itself are of course imaginary Nevertheless it is clear that such persons as the writer of these notes not only may but positively must exist in our society when we consider the circumstances in the midst of which our society is formed I have t...

Context

William and Dorothy left London for Calais on 31 July 1802, during the Peace of Amiens, to see Annette Vallon and William's daughter Caroline before his marriage; London was then the largest city in the world, already smoky with coal fires.

Composition

Published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) with the date Sept. 3, 1803; later editions corrected it to 1802.

Reception

One of Wordsworth's most admired sonnets; it is routinely taught as a model Petrarchan sonnet.

Nature / Landscape Technology Modernity Faith / Religion Art / Creation

Comparisons

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Another moment of sudden beauty recalled.
Sonnet 116
A Shakespearean sonnet for comparison of form.
God's Grandeur
Hopkins's sonnet on God's glory in a world of trade and toil.

Quotes

Frequently cited

“Earth has not any thing to shew more fair:”

— William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Line 1 (Gutenberg #8774: Poems in Two Volumes, Volume 1 (1807)).Quote card

Capital, Volume I, Chapter I: Commodities
wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities," The opening sentence of Chapter I, which explains why the analysis begins with the commodity; Marx quotes his own earlier Critique of Political Economy (1859).
No Treason, No. I
sufficient to justify the establishment of their power over the less numerous party it may be answered First That two men have no more natural right to exercise any kind of authority over one than one has to exercise the same authority over two A man s natural rights are his own against the whole world and any infringement of them is equally a crime whether committed by one man or by millions whether committed by one man calling himself a robber or by any other name indicating his true character or by millions c...
Mrs. Dalloway, Opening (morning)
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. The first sentence enters the story in the middle of Clarissa's thoughts on the morning of her party.
The Time Machine, Chapter XIII, The Trap of the White Sphinx
It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. The Traveller's final theory of the decline of both races.
Mrs. Dalloway, Evening, the party (the little room)
Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. Alone after hearing of the suicide of a young man she never met, Clarissa tries to understand what he did and what her own life has preserved or let drop.

Frequently cited

“This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning;”

— William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Lines 4-5 (Gutenberg #8774: Poems in Two Volumes, Volume 1 (1807)).Quote card

Selected Short Stories, Madame Parisse
to skim over the waves I looked upon all this astounded This view was one of those sweet rare delightful things that seem to permeate you and are unforgettable like the memory of a great happiness One sees thinks suffers is moved and loves with the eyes He who can feel with the eye experiences the same keen exquisite and deep pleasure in looking at men and things as the man with the delicate and sensitive ear whose soul music overwhelms I turned to my companion M Martini a pureblooded Southerner This is certainl...
Mrs. Dalloway, Full Text
at the flowers at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising falling standing and looking until Peter Walsh said Musing among the vegetables was that it I prefer men to cauliflowers was that it He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace--Peter Walsh He would be back from India one of these days June or July she forgot which for his letters were awfully dull it was his sayings one remembered his eyes his pocket-knife his smile his grumpiness and when...
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (Second to Fourth Days), Full Text
weights placed in a balance of equal arms will produce equilibrium a principle also assumed by Archimedes and then proving that it is no less true that unequal weights produce equilibrium when the arms of the steelyard have lengths inversely proportional to the weights suspended from them in other words it amounts to the same thing whether one places equal weights at equal distances or unequal weights at distances which bear to each other the inverse ratio of the weights In order to make this matter clear imagin...
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, Full Text
of his house contemplating the morning The locality was Obedstown East Tennessee You would not know that Obedstown stood on the top of a mountain for there was nothing about the landscape to indicate it--but it did a mountain that stretched abroad over whole counties and rose very gradually The district was called the Knobs of East Tennessee and had a reputation like Nazareth as far as turning out any good thing was concerned The Squire's house was a double log cabin in a state of decay two or three gaunt hounds...
The Thousand and One Nights (Lane's translation, Volume I), Full Text
the standard translation of the Thousand and One Nights The secret of Mr Lane's success is to be found partly in the instinctive sympathy for the spirit of the East which enabled him faithfully to reproduce the characteristic tone of the original and partly in the rich store of illustrations of oriental life and thought contained in his Notes In the various cheap versions based upon Galland's French paraphrase the Eastern tone and local colour is wholly wanting and the peculiarities of life and manners which con...

Frequently cited

“Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!”

— William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Lines 13-14 (Gutenberg #8774: Poems in Two Volumes, Volume 1 (1807)).Quote card

Sermons and Letter from Birmingham Jail, Lesson: Hope requires institutions and bodies
Hope requires institutions and bodies. King's hope is not mood or optimism. It is built through churches, marches, jail discipline, legal strategy, and bodies willing to face harm.
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
Of something far more deeply interfused Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns And the round ocean and the living air And the blue sky and in the mind of man A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things all objects of all thought And rolls through all things Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods And mountains and of all that we behold From this green earth of all the mighty world Of eye and ear both what they half-create And what perceive well pleased to recognize In nature and...
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, Lesson: Arguing from experience
Arguing from experience. The heart of the speech is an inductive argument: ten years of British conduct, set beside fleets and armies arriving, show what the ministry intends. Henry then eliminates the alternatives one by one (argument, entreaty, petition) so that force appears as the only remaining course.
Inaugural Address (Jimmy Carter), Lesson: "More" is not necessarily "better"
"More" is not necessarily "better". Carter acknowledges that the nation "can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems," and still refuses to "lack boldness." The passage reflects a decade of inflation, energy shortages, and lost confidence in large programs, and it is one of the few inaugural passages to name limits on what government can do.
Troilus and Cressida, Lesson: Order, rank and the sick body politic
Order, rank and the sick body politic. Ulysses argues that degree holds together the heavens, schools, cities and armies, and that without it power becomes will, will becomes appetite, and appetite eats itself. The speech is the most famous Elizabethan statement of hierarchical order, but Shakespeare gives it to the camp's chief manipulator in a play where no one behaves well. Students can study the speech as argument and as a move in a political game.

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The superlative claim of line 1.
The simile of the garment of morning.
The list of buildings in line 6.
The smokeless air of dawn.
The final image of the sleeping heart.

Key terms and names

Petrarchan sonnet: An octave (abbaabba) and a sestet (here cdcdcd) with a turn between.
Octave: The first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.
Sestet: The last six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.
Volta: The turn of thought in a sonnet.
Personification: Giving the city a garment, sleep and a heart.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension When and from where does the speaker see the city?
Comprehension What buildings does he list?
Interpretation Why is the air smokeless?
Interpretation How does the sestet compare the city with nature?
Interpretation What does the image of the mighty heart suggest?
Big Question Can human works be as beautiful as nature?

Faith Connections

Psalm 46:10 (Scripture)
Be still, and know that I am God.
Lamentations 3:22-23 (Scripture)
His mercies are new every morning.
Sabbath rest (Great Conversation)
The sleeping city suggests a world at rest before toil, as in the Sabbath.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: London at dawn is as beautiful as any landscape; its stillness reveals a calm the poet has never felt; and the sight moves him to an exclamation of wonder before God.

Rhetorical device: personification. The city wears a garment, sleeps and has a mighty heart.

Debate: Resolved: that the city in this poem is beautiful only because it is asleep.

Memory Work

Earth has not any thing to shew more fair:
Line 1. The confident opening.

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Lines 13-14. The closing couplet of wonder.

Writing Prompts

Essay: How does the structure of the Petrarchan sonnet shape the poem's movement from sight to stillness?

Comparison with Sonnet 116: Compare the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms.

Creative Prompts

Poetry
Write a sonnet about a familiar place seen at an unusual hour.
Classroom
Compare the poem with Dorothy Wordsworth's journal entry for 31 July 1802.
Essay
How does Wordsworth make a city as beautiful as nature?

Composed upon Westminster Bridge

Abstract

Main characters

Summary

Virtues in this work

Plot or Argument

Characters

Lessons

Beauty in unexpected places

The sonnet's turn

Stillness and prayer

Context

Composition

Reception

Comparisons

Quotes

For Students

Reading Guide

Watch for

Key terms and names

Seminar Questions

Faith Connections

Logic and Rhetoric

Memory Work

Writing Prompts

Creative Prompts

Further Reading