Composed upon Westminster Bridge

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.

Top Lessons

• Beauty in unexpected places

  Wordsworth finds in a city the beauty he usually finds in mountains.

• The sonnet's turn

  The octave describes the sight; the sestet deepens it into calm and wonder.

• Stillness and prayer

  The exclamation Dear God! turns description into something like prayer.

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