On Wordsworth

[sawyl]

Following strange conflation of coincidences, today's poet has to be William Wordsworth and today's poem has to be Composed Upon Westminster Bridge:

Earth has not any thing 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!

I don't normally like Wordsworth — too many memories of Sue Limb's Wordsmiths of Gorsemere for me to take him seriously — but Westminster Bridge seems to speak to my current state of mind. Maybe my preference is a sign that I've finally grown up or, more likely, that I'm coming down with an ague or a brain fever or some other disease popular with early 19th century novelists and poets...