“Earth hath not anything to show more fair…” The first line of a poem by the English romantic poet William Wordsworth… And what was he referring to? A beautiful seascape… A range of majestic mountains… The tree-clad, rolling hills of Cumbria… A rainbow in a leaden sky… No… As many of you will know from your schooldays (although Wordsworth probably isn’t taught in school these days), it’s from a poem entitled “Composed upon Westminster Bridge” and refers to the city of London in the light of dawn… the great heart of Victorian Britain… Now I like London… My thoughts were drawn to this poem because I’m flying over to London today for a meeting in Westminster Central Hall tomorrow… And next month my wife and I have booked a long weekend there to do some galleries and shows… But I’ve never quite understood Wordsworth’s sense of rapture when looking at London from that bridge… especially since in his day it would have been cloaked in smoke and the river flowing sluggishly beneath his feet wo
Dialogues, monologues, sketches, poems, rants, theological and liturgical bits and bobs and miscellaneous other verbal doodles...