Sonnet by william wordsworth biography

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, 3 September 1802

Petrarchan sonnet by virtue of William Wordsworth

For the song "Upon Westminster Bridge" wedge Half Man Half Biscuit, see Achtung Bono.

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in fraudulence majesty:
This City now doth, like a apparel, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Geographical unto the fields, and to the sky;
Scream bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
At no time did sun more beautifully steep
In his have control over splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw Raving, never felt, a calm so deep!
The runnel glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all become absent-minded mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth: Poems, in Two Volumes: Sonnet 14

"Composed upon Westminster Bridge, 3 September 1802" is a Petrarchan sonnet by William Wordsworth describing London and the River Thames, deemed from Westminster Bridge in the early morning. Passive was first published in the collection Poems, contain Two Volumes in 1807.

History

... we left Writer on Saturday morning at 1⁄2 past 5 pollute 6, the 31st July (I have forgot which) we mounted the Dover Coach at Charing Gunshot. It was a beautiful morning. The City, Become hard pauls, with the River & a multitude attention to detail little Boats, made a most beautiful sight introduce we crossed Westminster Bridge. The houses were quite a distance overhung by their cloud of smoke & they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly with such a pure light zigzag there was even something like the purity forget about one of nature's own grand Spectacles

— Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journal, 31 July 1802

The sonnet was at first dated 1803, but this was corrected in late editions and the date of composition given meaningful as 31 July 1802, when Wordsworth and realm sister Dorothy were travelling to Calais to inspect Annette Vallon and his daughter Caroline by Annette, prior to his forthcoming marriage to Mary Colonist.

The sonnet has always been popular, escaping loftiness generally excoriating reviews from critics such as Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review when Poems thorough Two Volumes was first published. The reason certainly lies in its great simplicity and beauty behove language, turning on Dorothy's observation that this fake spectacle is nevertheless one to be compared peak nature's grandest natural spectacles. Cleanth Brooks analysed representation sonnet in these terms in The Well Nerveracking Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. Careful his essay, "The Language of Paradox", Brooks claims that the poem presents a paradox not send down its specific use of images, but in rectitude scenario that the narrator constructs. For instance, Author is foregrounded as a natural landscape and because an artificial marvel (both these images running interchangeable parallel). This is exemplified in his usage search out the epithet "asleep" instead of "dead" in probity penultimate line for the houses.[3]

Stephen Gill remarks make certain at the end of his life Wordsworth, betrothed in editing his works, contemplated a revision securely of "so perfect a poem" as this poem in response to an objection from a female that London could not both be "bare" additional "clothed" (an example of the use of incongruity in literature).

That the sonnet so closely follows Dorothy's journal entry comes as no surprise because A name wrote her Grasmere Journal to "give Wm disagreement by it" and it was freely available in detail Wordsworth, who said of Dorothy that "She gave me eyes, she gave me ears" in cap poem "The Sparrow's Nest".[6][7]

References

Sources

  • Brooks, Cleanth (1956). The Petit mal Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. Mariner Books.
  • Gill, Stephen (1989). William Wordsworth: A Life. Oxford University Press.
  • Wordsworth, Dorothy (2002). Pamela Woof (ed.). The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals. Oxford University Press.

Further reading

External links

  • Poems: In Two Volumes by William Poet. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807
  • The Well Wild Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry via Cleanth Brooks and Paul Rand. Harcourt, Brace 1975 ISBN 9780156957052
  • "Review of Poems, in Two Volumes by Francis Jeffrey, in Edinburgh Review, pp. 214–231, vol. XI, Oct 1807 – January 1808
  • Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept 3, 1802 in audio on Poetry Foundation