A Poetry Reading of "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"

I am posting a YouTube video of Wordsworth's poem, so that you can actually visualize, as well as hear, William, himself, reading it to you.


YouTube "Upon Westminster Bridge" by William Wordsworth. (poetry reading)  By SpokenVerse. Aug. 25, 2009. 19 July 2011. Web.


The poem is a sonnet, containing fourteen lines.  To place it into context, Wordsworth "was [on] a trip to France, made possible by a brief truce in the war; [His] conflicted feelings about this return to France, where he had once supported the Revolution and [his love for] Annette Vallon, inform a number of personal and political sonnets that he wrote in 1802" ("Footnote 1").  He "became a fervent supporter of the revolution . . . and fell in love with Annette Vallon, the daughter of a French surgeon at Blois" ("Introduction" 243). The couple had religious, as well as political differences ("Annette belonged to an old Catholic family whose sympathies were Royalist"); however,  after the birth of their daughter, Caroline, Wordsworth was "forced to return to England" ("Introduction" 243).  He could not feasibly "rejoin Annette and Caroline" therefore, his "guilt over this abandonment, his divided loyalties between England and France, and his gradual disillusion with the course of the revolution brought him . . . to the verge of an emotional breakdown" ("Introduction" 243).  Also according to the introduction, "[l]ate in 1799 William and [his sister] Dorothy moved back permanently to . . . Grasmere" ("Introduction" 244).  Finally, "[i]n 1802 Wordsworth finally came into his father's inheritance and, after an amicable settlement with Annette Vallon, married Mary Hutchinson, whom he had known since childhood" ("Introduction" 244).


The move back to Grasmere with his sister Dorothy, perhaps, explains why Wordsworth was with his sister when he composed the poem, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge . . ." ("Introduction 244"). This only begins to expand upon the context of the poem; however, it all leads up to a clearer picture of William Wordsworth stopping to compose such a beautiful poem.  He seems to have put his life back together after Annette Vallon.  The French Revolution had reached a brief truce; therefore, he could embark upon a trip to England ("Introduction").


"Footnote 1." Wordsworth, William. "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. D: The Romantic Period. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, M.H. Abrams, Jack Stillinger, Deidre Shauna Lynch. New York: Norton, 2006. 317. Print.


"Introduction." Wordsworth, William. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. D: The Romantic Period. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, M. H. Abrams, Jack Stillinger, Deidre Shauna Lynch. New York: Norton, 2006. 243-45. Print.