The Beauty of The Morning

The approach to Waterloo Station 12 June 2018

My hastily snapped photo doesn’t do this  wonderful view of the City of London   justice, does it? I was travelling in on a beautiful summer’s morning, and as always, was reduced to a quiet wonder by the breathtaking sight of the skyline.

Strangely, I’m not contemporary architecture’s Number One fan.. But there is something about the line, the sheer scale and sense of space that speaks to me. Though tempered now by the memory of the sad events of March 2017, as the train makes the slow approach into Waterloo, Wordsworth’s work Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, always comes to my  mind. The  view he gazed upon would have been so different to what we see now. Yet over 200 years later, there’s a timeless beauty that speaks across the centuries.

 

Earth has not anything 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!