Wordsworth Westminster Bridge

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a poet profoundly affected by nature. He was not only struck by its beauty, but also felt a deep, spiritual presence permeating trees, hills, valleys and rivers which one’s imagination could possess and later experience as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility.” For him, nature was a divine teacher through which human beings could attain a deep moral communion as he demonstrates in these lines from his poem Tintern Abbey.

                                 These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: — feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: — that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, —
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
                                                    (23-49)

Living on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, Wordsworth saw the incipient damage and dislocation the Revolution was having on society. London was becoming intensely urbanized as the population exploded and factories expanded across the city. From Tintern Abbey, one might sense that he clearly would prefer to live beyond the “din” of city life and reside in the quiet rural countryside surrounded by nature. He reinforces this notion in the opening of his epic, autobiographical poem The Prelude (1805), when he greets nature’s “gentle breeze” as he escapes the confines of the city:

Book First Introduction:
Childhood and School-time

OH, there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
That blows from the green fields and from the clouds
And from the sky; it beats against my cheek,
And seems half conscious of the joy it gives.
O welcome messenger! O welcome friend!
A captive greets thee, coming from a house
Of bondage, from yon city’s walls set free,
A prison where he hath been long immured.
Now I am free, enfranchised and at large,
May fix my habitation where I will.
What dwelling shall receive me, in what vale
Shall be my harbour, underneath what grove
Shall I take up my home, and what sweet stream
Shall with its murmurs lull me to my rest?
The earth is all before me—with a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about, and should the guide I chuse
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again—
Trances of thought and mountings of the mind
Come fast upon me. It is shaken off,
As by miraculous gift ’tis shaken off,
That burthen of my own unnatural self,
The heavy weight of many a weary day
Not mine, and such as were not made for me.
Long months of peace—if such bold word accord
With any promises of human life—
Long months of ease and undisturbed delight
Are mine in prospect. Whither shall I turn,
By road or pathway, or through open field,
Or shall a twig or any floating thing
Upon the river point me out my course?
                                                                 (1. 1-30)

On another occasion, Wordsworth saw a very different London, one dressed in beauty and “majesty.” This London appears in his Petrarchan sonnet Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802.

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, 
September 3, 1802

Earth has not any thing 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!

In this poem Wordsworth is able to transform the ills of the city by comparing it to nature. The “City” is personified, clothed in the “The beauty of the morning.” Its “Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples, lie / Open unto the fields, and to the sky.” The city, illuminated in the morning sunlight, fills Wordsworth with a “calm so deep!”— a serenity akin to what he experiences in nature. Wordsworth transforms the city into a sublime vision not unlike what the reader encounters in the language of Tintern Abbey.

This poem illustrates what is essential for readers to fully appreciate Wordsworth’s poetry. If one thinks Wordsworth is just a “poet of nature,” and that the phrase “poet of nature” defines his work, one would be only partially right. Clearly, Wordsworth believed nature could be a spiritual guide that could teach morality and humility and connect humans with the Divine. Westminster Bridge demonstrates how the power of poetic imagination also can shape one’s perception of the world, enabling one to see transcendent beauty.