Composed upon Westminster Bridge
by William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (english poet), helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature. The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth. Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of his early years which the poet revised and expanded a number of times.
Westminster Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge over the River Thames between Westminster, Middlesex bank, and Lambeth, Surrey bank in what is now Greater London, England.
The content of the poem describes how the persona of the poem contemplates the beauty of the morning of London from the Westminster Brigde. He describes how everything at sunrise looks splended. Wordsworth uses a sonnet to decalre his love for the city of London.
In this poem, Wordsworth brings the scenery around him to life. He does so by personifying the objects around him: he uses “Earth” as not a thing, but its own entity. Earth is personified in the first line as a being that has possessions that he can show off, for example, its cities. He even makes it appear as capable of forming actions, saying “Earth has not anything to show more fair”. The image of the sun is made especially powerful, as it is referred to as “he”, with actions described by diction such as “steep”. This diction creates the image of sunlight slowly submerging into the earths crevices. The description “bright and glittering in the smokeless air” creates a distinct image of the clarity of the morning. These images combine to create a breathtaking image of the morning. Despite this excitement created by the vivid descriptions, prevalent in this poem is a sense of calamity. The poem describes “a calm so deep” that “even the houses seem asleep”. The sixth line contains the breathtaking imagery of a primitive...