Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge - form Summary
A Sonnet of Civic Awe
This poem is a sonnet that compresses a single, sustained morning view of London into fourteen lines. Its tight form focuses attention on a calm, smokeless cityscape where urban monuments lie open to sky like natural features. The sonnet’s economy and balance produce a concentrated mood of reverent stillness, elevating an ordinary civic scene into a near-spiritual experience of beauty and tranquility.
Read Complete AnalysesEarth 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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