That's the full title of the poem 
we normally know as 'Westminster Bridge'.
Westminster Bridge is 
the bridge in London,
it's the one with the House of Parliament 
just to the side of it,
and in this poem, Wordsworth is 
standing on Westminster Bridge,
gazing presumably in 
the direction of St. Paul's,
and the poem is exactly 
what the title suggests it is:⁄
Lines written on Westminster Bridge, 
September 3, 1802
The poem is usually thought of as 
something of a love poem to London,
and it's often contrasted with 
William Blake's earlier, very famous poem, 'London'.
This can be a very simplistic way 
of reading Wordsworth's 'Westminster Bridge'.
Wordsworth himself was 
one of the Romantic poets.
He is of the first generation of 
Romantic poets of William Blake,
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
his good friend,
the other Romantic poets being 
Byron, and Shelley, and John Keats.
These guys, somewhat loosely 
form a canon we call, 'the Romantic poets'.
And like the Romantic poets, 
he was very interested in transcendent moments,
and particularly interested in nature. 
He's one of England's most famous nature poets.
Most of his poetry is written about 
the Lake District areas of England.
But in this poem here, he addresses London, 
and he addresses the city of London.
So, unusual amongst Wordsworth's work, 
this is a poem addressed to a city.
What he has to say about the city is 
what we will reveal in
the close analysis 
we will do of this poem.
Now, after I have done that analysis, 
I'll look at the poem through
one of the statements that Wordsworth is 
famous for making about the construction of poetry.
He gives us what is often deemed 
to be a definition of poetry.
Wordsworth tells us, 
'poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,'
'and it takes its form 
recollected in tranquillity'.
We'll look at that statement later to see 
how it relates to Westminster Bridge.
So, the first read through of 
William Wordsworth's 'Westminster Bridge'.
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!
Let's do the line-by-line analysis.
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
There's not really anything there 
that should confuse us.
'Fair' just means beautiful.
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
means, there is nothing more beautiful 
on the earth than this.
'Fair' does not mean fair as in light-dark fair, 
it doesn't mean fair as in justice-injustice fair,
this is 'fair', as in beautiful.
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:
Similarly, I don't really see 
any problems in this line for us.
Wordsworth is saying that whoever could 
walk past this sight that he is looking at,
this sight that he describes as 
'so touching in its majesty';
anyone who could walk past that 
without commenting on it, without noticing it;
anyone who could just pass by 
without seeing it would be dull of soul.
'Dull of soul' - 
boring is an easy way to explain it.
To be 'dull of soul' perhaps could mean 
you have no poetic impetus.
It would mean you're not the sort of person 
who would recognize beauty when they see it,
but basically, it means boring.
So, the opening lines of the poem then 
are quite simple for us.
'This is one of the most beautiful sights 
I have ever seen,
and anyone who could pass by it 
without noticing it would be really boring.'
But, what is he looking at?
And Wordsworth tells us.
This City now doth, like a garment, wear 
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
So, he's looking at 
the city of London.
He's looking at the city of London, which he sees as 
wearing the beauty of the morning.
So we know that it is morning, 
and mornings are beautiful,
and the city has morning on, 
as if it is, imagine it as a cloak.
The city is wearing 
the beauty of the morning.
It is silent and bare.
Now, we may note here, 
how can the city be bare
and be wearing a garment 
at the same time?
And, having raised that, 
I think the easiest way to address it
and to deal with it is to just say, 
'yeah, that is a bad line.'
'It has been commented on before, 
and Wordsworth himself'
'towards the end of his life 
was considering changing that line.'
The city cannot wear the morning 
or the beauty of the morning like a garment
and be bare 
at the same time.
I think what Wordsworth gets out of 
using the word 'bare' there
is saying that the city is naked, 
virginal almost, untouched, clean.
If you were to imagine 
a bare sheet of paper even, perhaps,
it's that sort of image that he's looking for. 
Untouched.
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.
So Wordsworth, he tells us what he sees 
as he looks over London.
He gives us a list. 
He says he sees,
'ships, towers, domes, 
theatres, and temples'.
Yeah, these are the sort of things 
we would see in London.
Normal, man-made things.
This is written of course in 1802 
and the city is growing at this point.
And these are the sort of things 
we find in cities.
Wordsworth does not see them 
as in any way ugly, he sees them as,
Open unto the fields, and to the sky; 
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
This does seem very beautiful.
London as this time, we must assume, 
there are still fields and open sky there
that can be seen 
from Westminster bridge.
All of the things Wordsworth mentions here 
are the offshoots of city commerce as well.
And they're all man-made.
And Wordsworth certainly seems like 
he's enjoying what he's looking at.
Well, he is, for he tells us 
at the start of the third stanza,
Never did sun more beautifully steep 
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
'Steep' means to go up.
So, Wordsworth is saying, 
'the sun has never risen over
'a valley, a rock, or a hill 
in quite as beautifully'
'as it is rising over 
what he is looking at at the moment.
So, 'valley, rock, and hill' are there 
to symbolize the country.
So basically, what is saying is, 
'the sunrise over the country'
'has never been more beautiful than this sunrise 
I am looking at now, over the city of London'.
In fact, he concludes this with, 
'never saw I, never felt I a calm so deep.'
In fact he starts with, 
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
He's never seen anything that looks 
this tranquil, serene, this beautiful.
He's never felt this calm.
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
The river, which is of course the Thames, 
is 'gliding at his own sweet will'.
The Thames was often called 'old father Thames', 
so giving the Thames a gender here,
'gliding at his own sweet will', 
you can understand where that comes from.
And I can't help thinking that 
Wordsworth is alluding here to
Blake's poem, 'London', 
which starts off,
'I wander thro' each charter'd street, 
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow'
'Chartered' being owned, worked.
In Blake's poem, it's as if everywhere in London 
has become so commercialized
that the river itself 
has actually been chartered.
All of it is doing something for the 
commercial engine that London is.
But not to Wordsworth. 
When he says,
The river glideth at his own sweet will,
it's as if the river is not chartered, 
it's owned by itself.
The river glideth at his own sweet will: 
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And 'dear God' here is like an expostulation of 
'wow, whew, wow the very houses seem asleep.'
The whole scene that he's looking on 
as the sun rises over the city of London
is so tranquil. It seems as if 
the very houses in London are asleep,
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Well, 'the mighty heart' is obviously 
the mighty, commercial, beating heart
of the city of London. [Beating]
London, up and vibrantly, 
dynamically working, as cities do,
Wordsworth says, 'dear God it seems the very houses 
are asleep, and all that mighty heart is lying still'.
Well, he seems quite happy.
There's no denying that 
he likes what he sees.
But is this a poem which is 
laudatory to the city of London?
Is this a poem that says, 
'what a great place the city of London is'?
Let's look at that last line a bit closer.
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; 
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
First thing, when does a heart, 
mighty or otherwise, lie still?
There's only one time that a heart lies still, 
and that's when you're dead.
When you're dead, your heart stops beating, 
your heart lies still.
So one could paraphrase that last line, 
it's as if, Wordsworth is saying, 'London looks dead'.
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
'And all that mighty heart, that dynamic, pulsating heart 
that keeps London alive, is lying still!'
I might even add to that last line, that 
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Lying could also have the connotation if- 
well, it also means not telling the truth.
'The mighty heart of London 
is not telling the truth.'
Because there's something in that wordage 
which sums up what is going on in this poem.
The poem at first light 
appears to be championing London.
But, this is London seen at first light.
This is London seen at, well, 
when would the sun rise in London at September?
On September the third. 
Let's say 6 o'clock in the morning.
This is a poem written to London 
at 6 o'clock in the morning.
What Wordsworth is looking at is London, 
but it is London at 6 o'clock in the morning.
Now, if you were to write a poem which says 
what a wonderful place the city of London is,
don't write it about London 
at 6 o'clock in the morning.
Write it about London at any other time, 
but not at 6 o'clock in the morning
whereby the impression that you're getting 
of London is completely distorted.
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
What Wordsworth is saying there is, 
'what I am looking at here is not the real London.'
'This is a London that is calm, peaceful, 
and tranquil, and basically, asleep.'
'And even dead. And I like it like that,' 
is what Wordsworth is saying.
Were that final line the only example of this, 
I could be seen to be misinterpreting the poem.
But it isn't.
Let's look at that line I mentioned earlier 
where Wordsworth says,
This City now doth, like a garment, wear 
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
The city of London is wearing 
the beauty of the morning like a garment,
and pretty soon, 
the garment is going to come off.
And when the garment comes off, 
the city of London is going to reveal itself
in all its majestic, dynamic, 
mighty, beating heart glory.
Which Wordsworth doesn't seem to like.
What Wordsworth sees is the 
houses which are all bright and
glittering in the smokeless air.
This is beautiful, 
none of us are going to deny this.
They are bright and glittering presumably because 
it's still dark, the sun hasn't risen yet
and they're being lit by candles.
They're bright and glittering 
in the smokeless air.
The reality of London during the rest of the day 
when the smoke has started
is that it is not smokeless.
The river does not glide 
at its own sweet will.
It is basically the busiest river in the world, 
or was the busiest river in the world then.
So rather than this being a poem to 
the city of London about
how beautiful the city of London is, 
which is how it is often put across,
this is more a poem about 
how beautiful the morning is.
How beautiful the sunrise is.
All of the attributes that Wordsworth 
champions in this poem about London,
everything he says pleasant 
about what he sees,
or everything that he recounts pleasantly 
about what he sees
are attributes of the morning, 
not attributes of the city.
One could even argue that this poem 
is as much a poem about
the beauty of the morning sunrise, 
as opposed to a poem about the beauty of the city.
If one were to write a poem about the city, 
you'd struggle to say,
'the city is a wonderful place' 
without mentioning one of the main attributes
of the city proper, 
which is people.
The fact that there are no people in this poem 
is a conspicuous omission.
So, what I submit to you here 
is that this is not a poem saying
what a wonderful place London is.
In fact, the way I imagine 
this poem being constructed is
Wordsworth is walking along Westminster Bridge 
at 6 o'clock in the morning,
and he stops and 
he looks over London and he says,
'wow, that is really beautiful. 
Absolutely stunningly beautiful place.'
'I might even try to 
write a poem about that.'
And he thinks, 
'I better actually do it pretty quick,'
'because that is beautiful in the morning, 
but in a minute,'
'the beauty of the morning 
which is being worn like a garment'
'by London at the moment 
is going to come off, it's going to look horrible.'
'That river is going to be 
owned and chartered by the people there,'
'the place is going to be smoke-filled 
and filled with people'
'and it's going to be really loud. 
All those nice quiet sleepy houses'
'are going to be thump, thump, thumping away, 
and everybody's going to be'
'shouting and screaming and trying to make money. 
God I can't stand this city.'
'But, while it's still not sunrise yet, 
I must admit even this is really beautiful.'
And from that, he writes his poem.
I sound very flippant 
when I relate it to you like that but,
that's not far removed from 
what probably happened.
What I want to address here, 
and then I'll relate to this poem,
is Wordsworth's definition of poetry.
Wordsworth defines poetry as,
'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: 
'it takes its form recollected in tranquillity'.
Ok, that sounds great, 
until you look at it a bit closer,
and then you realize 
it's not even a definition of poetry at all.
Let me explain why it's not.
'Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions'.
Ok, so when we get or 
when we see
a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions, 
that's poetry.
So let me use a comical example, 
when Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear off,
that was poetry, was it?
That looked like a 
'fairly spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions' to me.
He didn't look like he was planning to do it, 
and he looked pretty angry.
That looked like a powerful emotion.
I don't think we're going to call 
Mike Tyson biting Evander Holyfield's ear off,
a poem.
Of course, Wordsworth doesn't really mean 
'poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions'.
He means, 
'poetry is the spontaneous overflow of positive emotions'.
And you think, 
'ok, fair enough'.
Poetry is- well, is it?
Don't you actually have to say something 
or write it down for it to be poetry?
I mean I know in a sort of 
metaphorical way you can say,
'the way the woman walked 
was a poem in itself'.
But let's be rather boring about this bit 
and say that you do actually
have to write it down, or say it, 
or at least think it for it to be a poem.
Had Mike Tyson after biting 
Evander Holyfield's ear off -
and if you haven't seen this, 
watch it on Google, it is hilarious -
after doing this, Mike Tyson goes home and, 
in tranquillity, he forms some thoughts about it,
he thinks about it, 
is that a poem?
If Mike Tyson writes down what he thought 
about the experience, would that be a poem?
Well, I don't know Mike Tyson's 
poetic capabilities but maybe it would.
I would like to believe that 
the thing that we call a poem
would be written by someone with a certain degree 
of verbal dexterity and poetic acumen,
but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be done 
by somebody who doesn't have those things.
But I don't think it's too much for us to ask that 
the thing which we call a poem
is written down or 
spoken by someone.
But my first problem with 
Wordsworth's statement here.
'Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions'.
No, it's not.
Poetry is generated by the 
spontaneous overflow of what I call
positive, life-enhancing emotions, 
which I then go away and
in tranquillity think about 
and then write down.
But even that's not completely true, 
because not all poetry
is generated in that way.
The poetry Wordsworth writes and likes 
and champions is written in that way,
but not all of it.
So, if I was to change Wordsworth's statement 
into one that I think makes perfect sense,
I would have to amend it and- 
I'm not doing this facetiously, incidentally,
because the statement is very well known, 
and you see what he's talking about
enacted in this poem.
But the statement which the world knows 
doesn't really make a lot of sense.
But if you amend it, 
it does.
So you amend Wordsworth's 
original statement of,
'poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, 
and it takes its form recollected in tranquillity',
you amend it to, 
'the type of poetry I like and write'
'is generated by the spontaneous overflow 
of powerful, positive, life-affirming feelings,'
'which I then go away and 
recollect in tranquillity and form a poem from'
'due to my intellectual acumen 
and poetic dexterity.'
But that statement that I've given you 
does make perfect sense
about the way Wordsworth 
seems to construct his poetry.
We can imagine it 
happening with this poem.
The spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion 
that he gets is looking at London
first thing in the morning, 
walking along the bridge,
stopping because he's not dull of soul 
and he will not pass by a sight
so touching in majesty.
He looks over the sunrise, 
'wow, that is really beautiful',
and presumably after seeing it, 
he goes away and, in tranquillity,
he recollects what he's just seen-
I mean, he could sit down 10 minutes later 
and recollect what he saw 10 minutes before,
or he could go away for a year and then
recollect what he's just seen and get it down.
But as I say, I don't think it's beyond 
the talents of someone like William Wordsworth
to sit down five minutes later 
and write this poem.
He sees the beautiful sunrise, 
he has the spontaneous moment of
overwhelming feeling about it, and in tranquillity, 
he writes, Earth has not anything to show more fair:
So let me just mention something 
on the form of the poem
because it is a classic Sonnet 
in the Petrarchan form.
It has the ABBA ABBA opening four-rhymes 
of every Petrarchan sonnet,
and after that it goes CD CD CD.
Now, it being a Sonnet, 
Petrarchan or otherwise,
these are traditionally the way 
love poems are written,
so I suppose we could claim here 
that this is a love poem
to the city of London in the morning, 
or just the morning,
in the same way that for example, 
Rupert Brookes' 'The Soldier'
is a love poem to England.
That's worth commenting on, 
but I think one of the more relevant attributes
of this poem being a sonnet 
is the actual ABBA ABBA rhyme scheme
that Wordsworth imposes on himself.
Means that he has to rhyme words with 
'fair', 'wear', and 'air'.
I'm mentioning this only to give 
Wordsworth a get-out clause for that,
This City now doth, like a garment, wear 
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
In using 'bare' he has to 
rhyme the word with 'fair', 'wear', and 'air',
so, presumably he put a word in that rhymed 
and then worked backwards from it.
So, it is a Petrarchan sonnet. 
It is, in some ways
a love poem to the morning, 
or the city of London in the morning,
but I wouldn't attempt to get too much 
out of the relevance of this as a sonnet.
Ok. I'll read the poem through 
for you one more time.
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!
Thank you.
That was the Mycroft Online Lecture 
on William Wordsworth's
'Composed on a Westminster Bridge, 
September 3, 1802.
I am Dr. Andrew Barker.
Thank you.
