William Wordsworth’s celebrated sonnet, composed on Westminster Bridge in 1802, has acquired a tragic new significance after the recent appalling events there.

Alan MacGillivray offers this update on Wordsworth’s classic text, which is also given below.

SONNET: ON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, 2017

Earth held not anywhere a fairer scene

Touching the tourists’ souls as they passed by

To view a symbol of democracy

And capture it upon a smartphone’s screen,

Until, Dear God, a garment of obscene

And indiscriminate atrocity

Falls over all – the maimed and dying lie

In multi-national agony between

The traffic and the river’s calm extent.

Ne’er may we in the future quite forget,

After the flowers, the plaque, the silent throng,

How one more place became less innocent,

Less sweet, less glittering, more unsure, though yet

That mighty London heart beats still as strong,

                                                                        24/3/2017               

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 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!