Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
The poems
What you need to know
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth (1802): London at sunrise, silent and still, seen with a Romantic poet's wonder, and how Wordsworth uses the sonnet and its turn.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the collection it compares well with, and on which themes.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: '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', 'Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie', 'All bright and glittering in the smokeless air', '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!'.
Form and structure: a Petrarchan sonnet, an octave describing the view and a sestet of the speaker's feeling, turning at 'Never did sun more beautifully steep', with exclamations that build to the last line.
Language: the city personified (wearing the morning like a garment, its houses asleep and its heart still), a list of buildings, superlatives, and the paradox of a man-made city praised like a natural wonder.
Context: Wordsworth as a Romantic poet of nature, whose Lyrical Ballads (1798) with Coleridge began the Romantic movement; his sister Dorothy's journal of crossing Westminster Bridge on the Dover coach in July 1802, on their way to France to see Annette Vallon and his daughter Caroline; and the sonnet's publication in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807).
Compares well with: London (the same city seen with awe or anger), Adlestrop (a moment of stillness and silence), In Romney Marsh (light and colour at one time of day) and Nothing's Changed (a place that stirs strong feeling).
