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!
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