William Wordsworth

orn 7 April 1770

Wordsworth House, Cockermouth, England

ied 23 April 1850 (aged 80)

Cumberland, England

ccupation Poet

enres Poetry

terary movement Romanticism

otable work(s) Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes, The Excursion

Portrait of William Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon (NPG).

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge Analysis

Earth has 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 the 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!

(William Wordsworth)
 ANALYSIS OF THE POETRY

A. About William Wordsworth (The Author of Composed Upon Westminster Bridge)

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic
poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English
literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a

semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of
times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as
the poem "to Coleridge." Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his
death in 1850.

● Early Life of William Wordsworth

The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William
Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth,
Cumberland—part of the scenic region in northwest England, the Lake District. His sister,
the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the
following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard,
the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in
1805 when the ship of which he was Master, Earl of Abergavenny was wrecked off the
south coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to
be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Their father was a legal representative of James
Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the
small town. Wordsworth, as with his siblings, had little involvement with their father, and
they would be distant with him until his death in 1783.

Wordsworth's father, although rarely present, did teach him poetry, including that of
Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser, in addition to allowing his son to rely on his own father's
library. Along with spending time reading in Cockermouth, Wordsworth would also stay at
his mother's parents house in Penrith, Cumberland. At Penrith, Wordsworth was exposed to
the moors. Wordsworth could not get along with his grandparents and his uncle, and his
hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide.

After the death of their mother, in 1778, John Wordsworth sent William to
Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire and Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire;
she and William would not meet again for another nine years. Although Hawkshead was
Wordsworth's first serious experience with education, he had been taught to read by his
mother and had attended a tiny school of low quality in Cockermouth. After the
Cockermouth school, he was sent to a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class
families and taught by Ann Birkett, a woman who insisted on instilling in her students
traditions that included pursuing both scholarly and local activities, especially the festivals
around Easter, May Day, and Shrove Tuesday. Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and
the Spectator, but little else. It was at the school that Wordsworth was to meet the
Hutchinsons, including Mary, who would be his future wife.

Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The
European Magazine. That same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge, and
received his B.A. degree in 1791. He returned to Hawkshead for his first two summer
holidays, and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the
beauty of their landscape. In 1790, he took a walking tour of Europe, during which he
toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy.

● William Wordsworth Marriage and Children

In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became

enthralled with the Republican movement. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette
Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their child, Caroline. Because of lack of money and
Britain's tensions with France, he returned alone to England the next year. The
circumstances of his return and his subsequent behaviour raise doubts as to his declared
wish to marry Annette, but he supported her and his daughter as best he could in later life.
In 1802, he visited Calais with his sister Dorothy and met Annette and his daughter
Caroline. The purpose of the visit was to pave the way for his forthcoming marriage to
Mary Hutchinson. Afterwards he wrote the poem "It is a beauteous evening, calm and
free," recalling his seaside walk with his daughter, whom he had not seen for ten years. At
the conception of this poem, he had never seen his daughter before. The occurring lines
reveal his deep love for both child and mother. The Reign of Terror estranged him from the
Republican movement, and war between France and Britain prevented him from seeing
Annette and Caroline again for several years. There are strong suggestions that
Wordsworth may have been depressed and emotionally unsettled in the mid-1790s.

With the Peace of Amiens again allowing travel to France, in 1802 Wordsworth and
his sister, Dorothy, visited Annette and Caroline in France and arrived at a mutually
agreeable settlement regarding Wordsworth's obligations.

In 1802, after Wordsworth's return from his trip to France with Dorothy to visit
Annette and Caroline, Lowther's heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, paid the
₤4,000 debt owed to Wordsworth's father incurred through Lowther's failure to pay his
aide. Later that year, Wordsworth married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy
continued to live with the couple and grew close to Mary. The following year, Mary gave
birth to the first of five children, three of whom predeceased William and Mary:

● John Wordsworth (18 June 1803–1875). Married four times:

1. Isabella Curwen (d. 1848) had six children: Jane, Henry, William,
John, Charles and Edward.

2. Helen Ross (d. 1854). No issue.

3. Mary Ann Dolan (d. after 1858) had one daughter Dora (b.1858).

4. Mary Gamble. No issue.

● Dora Wordsworth (16 August 1804 – 9 July 1847). Married Edward Quillinan

● Thomas Wordsworth (15 June 1806 – 1 December 1812).

 ● Catherine Wordsworth (6 September 1808 – 4 June 1812).

● William "Willy" Wordsworth (12 May 1810–1883). Married Fanny Graham and
had four children: Mary Louisa, William, Reginald, Gordon.

● First Publication and Lyrical Ballads

In his "Preface to Lyrical Ballads", which is called the "manifesto" of English

Romantic criticism, Wordsworth calls his poems "experimental." The year 1793 saw
Wordsworth's first published poetry with the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive
Sketches. He received a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795 so that he could
pursue writing poetry. That year, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two
poets quickly developed a close friendship. In 1797, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy
moved to Alfoxton House, Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge's home in
Nether Stowey. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy)
produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement.
The volume gave neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name as author. One of
Wordsworth's most famous poems, "Tintern Abbey", was published in the work, along
with Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The second edition, published in
1800, had only Wordsworth listed as the author, and included a preface to the poems,
which was augmented significantly in the 1802 edition. This Preface to Lyrical Ballads is
considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he
sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the "real language of men" and
which avoids the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth
gives his famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it
takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." A fourth and final edition of
Lyrical Ballads was published in 1805.

● Death

William Wordsworth died by re-aggravating a case of pleurisy on 23 April 1850,

and was buried at St. Oswald's church in Grasmere. His widow Mary published his lengthy
autobiographical "poem to Coleridge" as The Prelude several months after his death.
Though this failed to arouse great interest in 1850, it has since come to be recognized as his
masterpiece.

B. Setting, Themes, Language and Imagery of the Poetry

The setting is London as seen from Westminster Bridge, which connects the south
bank of the Thames River with Westminster on the north bank. Westminster, called an
inner borough, is now part of London.

The dominating theme in the poem is Nature. London is not introduced in its
negative aspect, but it is inserted in natural scenery. The author describes the beauty of the
city as the towers, the cathedrals, the theatres and the temples. Wordsworth personifies the
city along with the earth and the sun. This reiterates his conviction that the city, at this
particular point of day, does not clash with nature but becomes a part of it.

In Wordsworth's view, the air is clean and only the light of the sun illuminates the
city. The poet transmits to the readers the calm and the tranquility described in his poem.
There are neither sounds or noises, there is only silence. In Blake's poem, hearing is the
prevailing sense. In Wordsworth's one, it is the sight that emerges, while the hearing is
absent. On the one hand in Blake's composition, the town is presented through the smoke
that pervades the walls of the Churches. On the other hand, in Wordsworth's poem, London
shows clean air and the sun illuminates the whole city.

In this poem, Wordsworth brings the scenery around him to life (an example of the
Pathetic fallacy). Wordsworth personifies the Earth by giving it a capital letter, and
describing it as having the ability to "show". He also personifies the city, by describing it as
wearing the morning beauty "like a garment". The image of the sun is powerful, as it is
referred to as "he", with actions described by diction such as "steep". This diction creates
the image of sunlight slowly submerging into the Earth's splits. The river is personified
when it is described as having its "own sweet will", and the houses are personified by their
description of being asleep. Lastly, the city itself is personified with the line "and all that
mighty heart is lying still". These personifications again help us to draw the conclusion that
Wordsworth is considering a sleeping city as part of nature. The compact description of
London in lines six and seven emphasize the compactness of the city, and long vowel
sounds such as "glideth" and "silent" emphasize the calm feeling of the occasion.

The description "bright and glittering in the smokeless air" creates a distinct image
of the clarity of the morning. These images combine to create a breathtaking image of the
morning. Despite this excitement created by the vivid descriptions, prevalent in this poem
is a sense of calmness. The poem describes "a calm so deep" that "even the houses seem
asleep".

The poem depicts a vivid scene that is yet another fond memory shared between
Wordsworth and his sister. He uses beautiful language and clever literary devices,
especially imagery, to make the city come alive before the reader's eyes. The passionate
picture that the poem paints is a memory that calms and placates.

The spondaic substitution or successive accented syllables lends emphasis to the

emotional feeling that strikes the poet. Here is a romantic who spends most of his time in
the Lake District, in fields of daffodils, exulting in an urban morning cityscape,
unconcerned with the getting and spending, buying and lending that he decries elsewhere.

The poem, written in the Petrarchan sonnet form, describes the beauty of London in
the early morning just when the sun rises. We perceive the beauty of the city not so much
through the description of what can be seen as through a sense of the admiration of the
speaker. It is as if he is looking at a wonder, at something that cannot be but is still there.
This sense of admiration is communicated through the development of a strange paradox,
which states the impossible unity of two contradictory things: the industrial city and the
organic beauty of nature (cf. Cleanth Brooks' analysis of this poem in his essay "The
Language of Paradox"). This paradox is introduced through the image of dress, which the
rhymes of the octave highlight: the city is fair (beautiful) because it wears "like a garment"
the natural beauty of the morning; but wearing the beauty of the morning in fact means that
the city is bare (naked): what it wears is just "the smokeless air".

The paradox is carried over and developed further in the sestet. The connection with
the dress metaphor is established through the image of the city being steeped in the light of
the sun and then the paradox is extended to the strange union of being dead (or asleep) and
being alive. The city is now more beautiful and more alive than nature itself, but this is
only so because it is steeped in the light of the sun and is thus deep asleep. The rhyming
words steep – deep – asleep highlight these connections. As opposed to the city, which is
"lying still", the natural parts of the landscape, the sunlight, the "valley, rock, or hill" as
well as the river are now active, they dominate over the sleeping city, as is emphasized by
the rhyming words hill – at their will – lying still. The city, represented in the last line by
the metaphor of the heart, is thus alive because it is dead, because it is inactive and is
dominated by its natural environment.
 The thematic development of the poem is seconded by the rhythms. The
enjambments (and the eye rhyme) in the octave express the boundless admiration for this
beautiful sight, the overflowing emotion of the speaker. This is further emphasized by the
fact that although the lines of the Petrarchan sonnet in English should be iambic
pentameters, none of these lines are exactly iambic. Even where the rhythm gets very close
to this (lines 3, 4, 5, and 12); the sentence structure or a caesura disrupts the smooth iambic
rhythm. This is true of all the lines except the very last one where the rhythms smoothes
out and a perfect iambic pentameter ends the poem: "And all that mighty heart is lying
still!"

One function of this metrical development is clearly to mark the end of the poem.
Apart from this, however, the clear iambic rhythm also functions here on another level. By
the sound effect it creates it contradicts the explicit verbal meaning of the line in which it
appears. While the line says that the "mighty heart" of the city "is lying still", the iambic
rhythm gives us a strong sense of the beating of a heart. Thus the paradox that is developed
all through the poem reaches its final statement in this line. The city now is "lying still", it
is dead, it is not itself, it is dominated by its natural environment; and it is precisely
because of this that it can come to life: the mighty heart begins to beat only when it is lying
still.

● Inspiration

.......Wordsworth's inspiration for the poem was the view he beheld from Westminster
Bridge on the morning of July 31, 1802, when most of the residents were still in bed and
the factories had not yet stoked their fires and 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.

● Rhyme Scheme and Meter

The rhyme scheme of "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" and other Petrarchan
sonnets is as follows: (1) first stanza (octave): abba, abba; (2) second stanza (sestet): cd, cd,
cd (or another combination, such as cde, cde; cdc, cdc; or cde, dce.

The meter of the poem is iambic pentameter, with ten syllables (five iambic feet)
per line. (An iambic foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.)
The first two lines of the poem demonstrate the metric pattern:

.......1...... . ..2......... ....3................4..................5

Earth HAS..|..not AN..|..y THING..|..to SHOW..|..more FAIR:
........1....... . ..2......... ....3.................4.................5
Dull WOULD..|..he BE..|..of SOUL | who COULD..|..pass BY

a...Earth has not anything to show more fair:

b...Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
b...A sight so touching in its majesty:
a...This City now doth like a garment wear
a...The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
b...Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
b...Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
a...All bright and glittering in the smokeless air 8
c...Never did sun more beautifully steep
d...In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
c...Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
d...The river glideth at his own sweet will:
c...Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
 d...And all that mighty heart is lying still! 14

C. Images of Composed Upon Westminster Bridge

In this poem the speaker stands ”upon” Westminster Bridge and describes the view
he sees with a sense of amazement and admiration. It is morning when there is nobody on
the streets and the factories have not started working yet. From the description later on we
can see that he talks about London in the eighteenth-nineteenth century not about the one
we know now. This made him able to demonstrate how nature and man lived together at
that time since London was ”open unto the fields” and was not so expanded as it is today.
The poet enjoys standing on the bridge (which is a symbol of connection which supports
the idea of unity between nature and man) and makes his amazement felt with plenty of
devices.
 In the poem Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Wordsworth, the speaker, tells us
in simple, beautiful language about his view of the city. Wordsworth’s imagery presents a
mood of calmness and tranquillity. He personifies the world around him by saying such
things as “The river has a will and the city wears clothes.”

The first line of the poem says that the Earth has something to show us. Like a
child with a new toy the Earth wants to show us something neat. This image suggests that
the world is alive and beautiful. The object the earth has to show is magnificent and if you
don’t like this calm city then you’re dull according to the speaker.

The image of the garment shows us that the city is alive and has changing moods or
has phases of beauty. At the time the poem was written the city was calm. The city was
wearing a “silent garment.”

According to the speaker the ships and towers “lie” there and even the “houses
seem asleep.” Nothing is moving. He gets personal with the city because he knows that
sleep is motionless and quiet. We know sleep is very good and understand how
rejuvenating it is.

Another image is the river gliding at “his own sweet will.” Now some people might
read into this image but I believe it just means that the river was flowing slowly and
quietly. For example, someone driving slowly to observe the view and take in the sun, not
going fast just to make everyone else happy.

The speaker often uses words that describe the lighting of the landscape. In line
eight he says “bright and glittering” was the sky. He also explains that it was very sunny
on that particular morning.

These images in Composed upon Westminster Bridge create a quiet, tranquil mood.
The images touch us and calm us because we can relate to them.

Wordsworth continues to surprise his reader by saying that the sun has never shone
more beautifully, even on natural things. He then personifies the scene, giving life to the
sun, the river, the houses, and finally to the whole city, which has a symbolic heart. The
reader imagines that the city's heart beats rapidly during the day, while everything and
everyone in it is bustling about, but now, in the early morning hours, the city's heart is
"lying still." By using personification in his poem, Wordsworth brings a kind of spirit to the
city, which is usually seen as a simple construction of rock and metal.

D. Summary

Composed Upon Westminister Bridge is a poetry composed by William

Wordsworth, a main character whom the story of the poetry is narrated. In this narrative-
styled poetry, Wordsworth is standing on the Westminister Bridge early in the morning and
describing the beauty of London through his emotions regarding nature. Wordsworth is
admiring the calmness and peacefulness of the morning.

In, Composed Upon Westminister Bridge, the city of London is portrayed as "a
garment wear in the very early morning setting." This detail points out the resting calmness
of the city during that time. Also, the city of London looks very calm since everything is at
rest. It seems as though the whole city is asleep. "The beauty of the morning; silent, bare.
Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie open unto fields, and to the sky." The river
flows quietly as well. "The river glideth at his own sweet will." Lastly, the calmness and
quiet make sun rays shine deep into every corner of the valley. "Never did sun more
beautifully sleep in his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;" Wordsworth is feeling strong
emotions toward nature of this Quiet. He is quoted as saying, "Ne'er saw I, never felt a
calm so deep!.” The poetry creates the imagery of a peaceful city with a beautifully
glittering sun and a quietly flowing river in the early morning.
The calm tone of the poem appreciates the beauty of nature and is the main
theme of this work. In Composed Upon Westminister Bridge, Wordsworth shows his
sensibility and passion toward nature which makes a metropolitan city like London appear
exceptionally beautiful.