Upon Westminster Bridge
(WILLIAM WORDSWORTH)
The English Lake District figures largely in Wordsworth's life and poetry. He was born there, at Hawkshead, attended the local grammer school, and studied at Cambridge. He was in France following the Revolution, and was inspired by what he saw there. He fathered a child by a French girl, and thereafter guilt affected his attitude towards France. He, and his poet friend, S.T. Coleridge, published a joint collection of the Romantic movement in English literature but the collection was not well recieved. Wordsworth added to it in defiance of criticism, and went on to produce poems that achieved widespread popularity : 'Michael', 'The Old Cumberland Beggar', 'I wandered lonely as a Cloud', and the poem reproduced below. Another , longer authbiographical poem The Prelude was begun in 1798, but this was not published until after his death.
The poet settled in Grasmere, Cumberland, in 1799 and but for journeys abroad in the 1820s, he remained there until his death. He married a local girl (in 1802), completed work on The Prelude in 1805, and published many of his finest poems in a collection published in 1807. His later work was less distinguished, though he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1843, seven years before his death.
In the poem the poet stops on Westminster Bridge(London) , early in the morning to admire the early sun on the great buildings of the capital. He is so moved by the beauty of the sight that he cannot imagine that the same sun on his beloved Lake District hills could be more wonderful. All is quiet and calm before the city is fully awake.
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