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Composed Upon Westminster Bridge Sept 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Earth has not any thing to shew 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 splendor 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 mightly heart is lying still!
The phrase 'smokeless air' may not ring true for many 21st Century Londoners.
The Lime-tree Bower my Prison
[Addressed to Charles Lamb, of the India House, London]
1Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
2This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
3Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
4Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
5Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,
6Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
7On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,
8Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
9To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
10The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,
11And only speckled by the mid-day sun;
12Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
13Flings arching like a bridge;--that branchless ash,
14Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
15Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
16Fann'd by the water-fall! and there my friends
17Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,
18That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
19Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
20Of the blue clay-stone...