CONTENTS BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Wordsworth


COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPT. 3, 1802

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 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!

That was a Friday, too. A snapshot of the City of London when it still contained 'fields' and motorcars were undreamed of.

Across from Wordsworth's bridge

A city still dreaming of itself
And wonders born on high
As high from beyond it self was watched
with careful, steadied eye
To see within its recent hills
Its recent, past, just above
the river flow, still a-glistened,
before its sullied, coming, muddied past;
Yes, to God, we have not lost in gears
of smoke and ash and rumbling fear
Thames-place converged with our hopes
And wait for our hesitant wills.
Two centuries' copses can not blot the eyes
Of Williams' measures, formed vision:
Calm imposed across the time exposed
With the breath and breadth of his poem.