0:00:02 > 0:00:06This is the Skirrid on the edge of the Black Mountains in South Wales.
0:00:06 > 0:00:09It's a place that I love.
0:00:09 > 0:00:12I've been coming here nearly all of my life and I will never tire
0:00:12 > 0:00:16of the incredibly dramatic views that you get off this ridge.
0:00:16 > 0:00:19Look at that - absolutely stunning.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22When I first started to write poetry,
0:00:22 > 0:00:24this hill and all of the landscape around here
0:00:24 > 0:00:27found their way into the work that I was writing.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30I think that in Britain our poets have always had
0:00:30 > 0:00:34a very intense relationship with the places that matter to them.
0:00:34 > 0:00:38In this series I'll be looking at six of my favourite poems
0:00:38 > 0:00:41that have come out of this ongoing conversation
0:00:41 > 0:00:45between the British landscape and her poets.
0:00:46 > 0:00:51There are places that speak, telling the stories of us and them.
0:00:51 > 0:00:54A village asleep, loaded with dream.
0:00:54 > 0:00:59An ocean, flicking its pages over the sand.
0:00:59 > 0:01:01Eventually we reply.
0:01:01 > 0:01:04A conversation of place and page over time,
0:01:04 > 0:01:10inscribing the map so that each, In turn, might hold the line.
0:01:19 > 0:01:23The most famous conversation between a poet and the British landscape
0:01:23 > 0:01:26was that between William Wordsworth and the Lake District.
0:01:28 > 0:01:31When you think of Wordsworth, the images
0:01:31 > 0:01:32that probably come to mind
0:01:32 > 0:01:36are lakes, wandering clouds and daffodils.
0:01:36 > 0:01:38And yet, in 1802,
0:01:38 > 0:01:42when Wordsworth wrote in would become one of his best-known poems,
0:01:42 > 0:01:45"Earth hath not anything to show more fair",
0:01:45 > 0:01:47the beautiful view he was writing about
0:01:47 > 0:01:50wasn't a mountain or some flowers he'd stumbled upon
0:01:50 > 0:01:53or anything in his beloved Lake District.
0:01:53 > 0:01:56He was writing instead about this place -
0:01:56 > 0:01:57London.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17Earth has not anything to show more fair:
0:02:17 > 0:02:19Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
0:02:19 > 0:02:21A sight so touching in its majesty:
0:02:23 > 0:02:26This city now doth like a garment wear
0:02:26 > 0:02:28The beauty of the morning;
0:02:28 > 0:02:30silent, bare,
0:02:31 > 0:02:36Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
0:02:36 > 0:02:39Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
0:02:39 > 0:02:43All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
0:02:46 > 0:02:49Never did sun more beautifully steep
0:02:49 > 0:02:52In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
0:02:52 > 0:02:56Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
0:02:58 > 0:03:01The river glideth at his own sweet will:
0:03:01 > 0:03:04Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
0:03:06 > 0:03:09And all that mighty heart is lying still!
0:03:13 > 0:03:18This poem by Wordsworth, a 14-line sonnet about London at dawn,
0:03:18 > 0:03:21is one of the great love songs to this city.
0:03:23 > 0:03:25It's a really fantastic piece of writing
0:03:25 > 0:03:28that I think does all the things that a good poem should,
0:03:28 > 0:03:31in that over an incredibly short space of page,
0:03:31 > 0:03:32it really takes us somewhere.
0:03:32 > 0:03:36It really manages to change the weather in our heads.
0:03:39 > 0:03:41It's also a poem that's very much of its time
0:03:41 > 0:03:44and yet manages to travel remarkably well,
0:03:44 > 0:03:47in that were we to walk across Westminster Bridge now,
0:03:47 > 0:03:49we would still have the same basic experience
0:03:49 > 0:03:51that Wordsworth is talking about.
0:03:51 > 0:03:53There'd still be that moment of stillness
0:03:53 > 0:03:56in between all that activity on the banks.
0:03:57 > 0:04:00You only have to talk to the people who cross it every morning
0:04:00 > 0:04:03on their way to work to get a sense of this.
0:04:03 > 0:04:06It's two hours from house to work. I don't mind a bit.
0:04:06 > 0:04:09I can walk across here and it's just glorious.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13At 8 o'clock, half seven when not many people are around that's the best time.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18The best thing for me about seeing the river in the morning,
0:04:18 > 0:04:22is it's a very small world shared with very few people.
0:04:22 > 0:04:25So very early in the morning when just the sun's coming up,
0:04:25 > 0:04:27it feels like a little town.
0:04:28 > 0:04:31All the beautiful buildings, they kind of stand out.
0:04:31 > 0:04:34- You know, Lambeth Bridge. - You're reminded this is a city
0:04:34 > 0:04:37who's main feature is the lovely river running through it.
0:04:39 > 0:04:42I think these are exactly the feelings that Wordsworth describes.
0:04:42 > 0:04:46This is a beautifully simple poem about the city at dawn.
0:04:46 > 0:04:50So how come it was written by a poet from the Lake District?
0:04:51 > 0:04:55What was Wordsworth doing on Westminster Bridge that morning?
0:04:55 > 0:04:58Where was he going? What was on his mind?
0:04:58 > 0:05:00The story behind the poem
0:05:00 > 0:05:03is the surprising tale of Wordsworth's love life,
0:05:03 > 0:05:08the complex tale of his love for three different women.
0:05:18 > 0:05:20To get to the bottom of this story,
0:05:20 > 0:05:22I headed for more familiar Wordsworth territory,
0:05:22 > 0:05:24the Lake District.
0:05:27 > 0:05:32Lakeland poet William Wordsworth was of course one of the towering figures of English Romanticism,
0:05:32 > 0:05:37alongside Keats, Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth's close friend Coleridge.
0:05:39 > 0:05:43When he started writing at the end of the 18th century he was an idealistic radical.
0:05:43 > 0:05:46By the end of his life in the middle of the 19th,
0:05:46 > 0:05:50he'd become the revered and grand old man of English verse.
0:05:50 > 0:05:54The Lakes is where Wordsworth was born and bred,
0:05:54 > 0:05:55lived much of his life,
0:05:55 > 0:05:59and where his poetry seems indelibly inked on the landscape.
0:06:00 > 0:06:03For Wordsworth as a writer, the landscape of the Lake District
0:06:03 > 0:06:07was so much more than just his poetic canvas.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11It was his teacher, his muse, or as he said himself,
0:06:11 > 0:06:14"The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse
0:06:14 > 0:06:17"The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
0:06:17 > 0:06:19"Of all my moral being."
0:06:23 > 0:06:27Although Wordsworth was raised in the Lakes, at 17 he moved away,
0:06:27 > 0:06:29first to university in Cambridge.
0:06:29 > 0:06:31After that he became something of a nomad,
0:06:31 > 0:06:36spending much much of his time hiking across England and Wales
0:06:36 > 0:06:41and further afield on trips to Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Revolutionary France.
0:06:41 > 0:06:47During those years, he was restlessly searching for a purpose for his life
0:06:47 > 0:06:52and defining his ideas about nature, religion and politics.
0:06:52 > 0:06:58In 1800, at the age of 29, Wordsworth found himself once again
0:06:58 > 0:07:00without a permanent residence
0:07:00 > 0:07:04and with a growing certainty that he was ready to go back home.
0:07:04 > 0:07:06In the autumn of that year
0:07:06 > 0:07:09he returned on a walking tour with Coleridge.
0:07:09 > 0:07:13It was on that walking tour that he discovered this cottage.
0:07:13 > 0:07:16Immediately it seemed like the ideal place
0:07:16 > 0:07:19in which to begin a new chapter of his life.
0:07:29 > 0:07:33At this point in his life, it's fair to say that in the eyes of the world
0:07:33 > 0:07:37at the age of 29 Wordsworth had achieved relatively little.
0:07:37 > 0:07:42But once ensconced in this place, all of that began to change.
0:07:42 > 0:07:45When he moved in here the house was cold,
0:07:45 > 0:07:47apparently one of the chimneys smoked very badly.
0:07:47 > 0:07:49But Wordsworth didn't mind.
0:07:49 > 0:07:53He was just ecstatic to finally have a home.
0:07:53 > 0:07:56The publication of the radical collection
0:07:56 > 0:07:58of his and Coleridge's verse, Lyrical Ballads,
0:07:58 > 0:08:01had started to make his name.
0:08:01 > 0:08:03But with the new-found security of this place,
0:08:03 > 0:08:06over the next three years Wordsworth would go on
0:08:06 > 0:08:09to write some of the best poetry of his life.
0:08:13 > 0:08:15But Wordsworth didn't come to Dove Cottage on his own.
0:08:15 > 0:08:19He moved in with his sister Dorothy.
0:08:19 > 0:08:21William and Dorothy were brought up separately,
0:08:21 > 0:08:25after the death of first their mother and then their father.
0:08:25 > 0:08:28However, they retained a strong emotional bond
0:08:28 > 0:08:29and in their mid-20s,
0:08:29 > 0:08:32out of friendship and convenience, they began living together.
0:08:32 > 0:08:35By the time they moved to Grasmere, five years later,
0:08:35 > 0:08:38they were clearly devoted companions.
0:08:39 > 0:08:42The fascinatingly intimate journal that Dorothy kept
0:08:42 > 0:08:44about their time together here
0:08:44 > 0:08:48is the main source of information about their daily routine.
0:08:48 > 0:08:50It's also clear from the pages of this journal,
0:08:50 > 0:08:54that brother and sister shared and discussed
0:08:54 > 0:08:58many of the experiences that would go on to become Wordsworth's poems.
0:08:59 > 0:09:01There's still a strong echo at Dove Cottage
0:09:01 > 0:09:04of that intense literary and personal relationship
0:09:04 > 0:09:06between brother and sister.
0:09:06 > 0:09:10Although neither these rooms, Dorothy's journal, nor Wordsworth's poems,
0:09:10 > 0:09:16answer the many outstanding questions about their artistic and emotional interaction.
0:09:18 > 0:09:23I was once fortunate enough to be the writer-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust here in Grasmere.
0:09:23 > 0:09:25The man with that job today is Adam O'Riordan.
0:09:25 > 0:09:29I wondered what his response was to living with William and Dorothy.
0:09:29 > 0:09:31There is this sense of the things
0:09:31 > 0:09:33that Dorothy and William and Coleridge
0:09:33 > 0:09:36and everyone else was pushing towards do still live on here in a way.
0:09:36 > 0:09:40I guess the role of the poet-in-residence is to embody that
0:09:40 > 0:09:43and to be that, if that doesn't sound too grand, which it's not.
0:09:43 > 0:09:46You're keeping that going, you're writing the poems.
0:09:46 > 0:09:49There is something so winning and drawing
0:09:49 > 0:09:53about re-imagining the intimacies that existed between the Wordsworths,
0:09:53 > 0:09:58between Dorothy and Mary and William, and what went on in that house.
0:09:58 > 0:10:00It is a great starting point for poems.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03I know other poems have written successfully about them,
0:10:03 > 0:10:06but they're great places to go to fire your imagination.
0:10:09 > 0:10:10A Double Wash Stand.
0:10:10 > 0:10:13Before the age condemned
0:10:13 > 0:10:14such joint ablutions
0:10:14 > 0:10:17You dip your hands in the tepid water
0:10:17 > 0:10:20as geese come in low across the lake
0:10:20 > 0:10:23landing on their shadows,
0:10:23 > 0:10:25their shadows becoming their wake
0:10:25 > 0:10:29breaking apart the imago they seem to chase.
0:10:29 > 0:10:34So you break this tension, shattering your own reflections.
0:10:34 > 0:10:37There's a complicity in getting clean together
0:10:37 > 0:10:40who knows what distances you travelled in your sleep
0:10:40 > 0:10:42back towards one another,
0:10:42 > 0:10:44and the secrets that those distances will keep,
0:10:44 > 0:10:49each movement fluid and practised in the winter air.
0:10:49 > 0:10:54You revel in this intimate act, not quite each other's double.
0:10:54 > 0:10:57Your easy mime of mannerisms from other lives
0:10:57 > 0:11:00like brother and sister.
0:11:00 > 0:11:02No, I mean man and wife.
0:11:05 > 0:11:10There will always be speculation about William and Dorothy's relationship at Dove Cottage
0:11:10 > 0:11:13but she certainly wasn't the only woman in Wordsworth's life.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16One of his closest friends at the time
0:11:16 > 0:11:19was a Lakeland girl, Mary Hutchinson.
0:11:19 > 0:11:22Wordsworth had actually been in the same school as Mary Hutchinson,
0:11:22 > 0:11:25so he'd known her almost all of his life.
0:11:25 > 0:11:29In the summer of 1787 she joined William and Dorothy on their rambles
0:11:29 > 0:11:32through the woods and hills of Penrith.
0:11:32 > 0:11:36Since their arrival at Dove Cottage, she'd been a regular visitor.
0:11:36 > 0:11:40At some point, we think around the end of 1801,
0:11:40 > 0:11:43William decided to ask her to marry him.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50His marriage to Mary and her settling in at Dove Cottage
0:11:50 > 0:11:54would be the final keystone in the architecture of this newly settled life
0:11:54 > 0:11:57that Wordsworth was building for himself at Grasmere.
0:12:00 > 0:12:04In early 1802, William and Mary were more than ready to get married,
0:12:04 > 0:12:06but there was a problem.
0:12:06 > 0:12:11Several hundred miles away from here in Grasmere there was another woman
0:12:11 > 0:12:15who had been calling herself Mrs Wordsworth for the last ten years.
0:12:18 > 0:12:21Annette Vallon, the third woman in this story, had met Wordsworth
0:12:21 > 0:12:25when as a hot-blooded young graduate he travelled to France
0:12:25 > 0:12:27to take a look at the Revolution in action.
0:12:29 > 0:12:31He met Annette in the city of Orleans.
0:12:31 > 0:12:33One thing led to another
0:12:33 > 0:12:36and a couple of months after they met she was pregnant.
0:12:39 > 0:12:42Wordsworth left France before the baby was born,
0:12:42 > 0:12:45and although he may have planned to return,
0:12:45 > 0:12:49a few weeks after he came back, France declared war on England.
0:12:49 > 0:12:54Return to Annette and his newly-born daughter Caroline became impossible
0:12:54 > 0:13:01and gradually Wordsworth's thoughts of France began to fade.
0:13:01 > 0:13:04In the spring of 1802, Wordsworth realised that
0:13:04 > 0:13:06he just couldn't get married to Mary
0:13:06 > 0:13:10without first going to France to speak with Annette face to face.
0:13:10 > 0:13:13Thanks to a recent peace treaty with the French,
0:13:13 > 0:13:17this was, for the first time in a decade, actually possible.
0:13:17 > 0:13:21On 9th July, William left Grasmere for London on his way to Calais.
0:13:21 > 0:13:24As ever, he wasn't travelling on his own.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27His companion was his sister, Dorothy.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37Wordsworth had both enjoyed and suffered the maelstrom of London
0:13:37 > 0:13:39on a number of occasions before 1802,
0:13:39 > 0:13:43and his poetic responses sum up the sensory overload
0:13:43 > 0:13:47that the capital made on his Lakelander sensibility.
0:13:47 > 0:13:49The quick dance Of colour, lights, and forms;
0:13:49 > 0:13:51the Babel din;
0:13:51 > 0:13:54The endless stream of men and moving things
0:13:54 > 0:13:59The comers and the goers face to face, face after face.
0:14:00 > 0:14:04This was the city in which William and Dorothy found themselves,
0:14:04 > 0:14:07when early on the morning of July 31st, 1802
0:14:07 > 0:14:11they arrived at Charing Cross to catch a stagecoach for Dover.
0:14:11 > 0:14:14The Wordsworths had taken their seats on the top of the carriage,
0:14:14 > 0:14:16quite possibly because they were cheaper.
0:14:16 > 0:14:20This meant they were able to see over the bridge's parapet,
0:14:20 > 0:14:22which was much higher than it is now.
0:14:22 > 0:14:27As they crossed over Westminster Bridge they were both enraptured by the view,
0:14:27 > 0:14:30which more than likely remained their topic of conversation
0:14:30 > 0:14:33as the coach carried on towards Dover.
0:14:33 > 0:14:37When Dorothy wrote about their trip to France some months later,
0:14:37 > 0:14:39her journal seems to pause for a moment
0:14:39 > 0:14:42to pay special attention to the view from the bridge.
0:14:44 > 0:14:45"It was a beautiful morning.
0:14:45 > 0:14:50"The city, St Paul's, with the river and a multitude of little boats,
0:14:50 > 0:14:53"made a most beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge.
0:14:53 > 0:14:57"The houses were not overhung by their cloud of smoke
0:14:57 > 0:14:59"and they were spread out endlessly,
0:14:59 > 0:15:02"yet the sun shone so brightly with such a pure light
0:15:02 > 0:15:05"that there was even something
0:15:05 > 0:15:10"like the purity of one of nature's own grand spectacles."
0:15:10 > 0:15:13This entry from Dorothy's journal
0:15:13 > 0:15:15clearly shares William's images and words
0:15:15 > 0:15:19and we can only imagine that it was their conversation
0:15:19 > 0:15:22on the bridge that morning which brought the poem to life.
0:15:22 > 0:15:26Earth has not anything to show more fair:
0:15:26 > 0:15:29Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
0:15:29 > 0:15:32A sight so touching in its majesty
0:15:32 > 0:15:35This city now doth, like a garment,
0:15:35 > 0:15:38wear the beauty of the morning; silent, bare
0:15:38 > 0:15:43Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
0:15:43 > 0:15:46Open unto the fields and to the skies
0:15:46 > 0:15:49All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
0:15:49 > 0:15:52Never did sun more beautifully steep
0:15:52 > 0:15:56in his first splendour, valley, rock or hill;
0:15:56 > 0:15:59Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
0:15:59 > 0:16:03The river glideth at his own sweet will:
0:16:03 > 0:16:07Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
0:16:07 > 0:16:10And all that mighty heart is lying still!
0:16:12 > 0:16:15The basic experience that Wordsworth is describing
0:16:15 > 0:16:18and is making us live again in this poem,
0:16:18 > 0:16:21is one that of course all of us experience all the time in cities.
0:16:21 > 0:16:24When you're on one side of the river
0:16:24 > 0:16:26and you're in those very close horizons of the streets
0:16:26 > 0:16:28and you've got buildings all around you,
0:16:28 > 0:16:31you've got a lot of noise and activity.
0:16:31 > 0:16:34Then you step out onto the bridge and you walk across the bridge
0:16:34 > 0:16:37and then suddenly there's this space in the air.
0:16:37 > 0:16:39You haven't got buildings in front of your eyes.
0:16:39 > 0:16:41You've got the river there.
0:16:43 > 0:16:45The movement of the poem is very simple,
0:16:45 > 0:16:48from that opening line of astonished statement
0:16:48 > 0:16:51through to that sense of a very deep calmness.
0:16:51 > 0:16:56But across that movement, the poem is charged crucially by a sense of brevity,
0:16:56 > 0:16:59and you can really get a sense of that brevity of experience
0:16:59 > 0:17:03that Wordsworth was talking about when you see the bridge here.
0:17:03 > 0:17:06Then of course there's the brevity of the form, the sonnet,
0:17:06 > 0:17:10which I think really gives the poem its potency, its power.
0:17:10 > 0:17:12It's within those tight 14 lines
0:17:12 > 0:17:16that Wordsworth has to capture this moment of rare beauty.
0:17:16 > 0:17:19I mean, if you just have a look at that opening line,
0:17:19 > 0:17:21"Earth has not anything to show more fair:"
0:17:21 > 0:17:24The weight on that first syllable is total.
0:17:24 > 0:17:27Imagine how much weaker it would have been if he'd said "the world"
0:17:27 > 0:17:30and we didn't have that weight until the second syllable.
0:17:30 > 0:17:33That continues onto the second line when Wordsworth says,
0:17:33 > 0:17:37"Dull would he be of soul who could pass by".
0:17:37 > 0:17:39And who wants to be thought of as being dull of soul?
0:17:39 > 0:17:43None of us. So we stay with the poet and we linger.
0:17:43 > 0:17:47And then again, the close of the poem is broken up
0:17:47 > 0:17:50with this quite surprising apostrophe - "Dear God!"
0:17:50 > 0:17:55- before it falls down to this sense of a very beautiful calmness.
0:17:55 > 0:17:56"he very houses seem asleep:
0:17:56 > 0:17:59"And all that mighty heart is lying still!"
0:18:01 > 0:18:05It's a sublime vision of London, in which the city becomes
0:18:05 > 0:18:08a sleeping, breathing, organic creature.
0:18:10 > 0:18:13The poet Simon Armitage is a fan of Wordsworth,
0:18:13 > 0:18:15who shares my passion for this poem.
0:18:15 > 0:18:20It came as a great shock to me. I look at this poem, with the line,
0:18:20 > 0:18:23"Earth has not anything to show more fair",
0:18:23 > 0:18:28and I think it's going to be about a mountain or a lake or something.
0:18:28 > 0:18:31It turns out to be a poem about London,
0:18:31 > 0:18:36which you would imagine to be Wordsworth's nemesis, really.
0:18:36 > 0:18:40I think I always went on to think about it for a long time afterwards
0:18:40 > 0:18:44as a poem which simply celebrated the city
0:18:44 > 0:18:47and was a kind of anomaly in his work.
0:18:47 > 0:18:50But actually having gone back to the poem a number of times,
0:18:50 > 0:18:52I have a different reading of it now.
0:18:52 > 0:18:57If you look closely at the poem, the city cannot exist as something
0:18:57 > 0:19:02beautiful and miraculous without nature's presence.
0:19:02 > 0:19:06The city is entirely transfigured by the morning sun.
0:19:06 > 0:19:09Not only that, it's framed as well.
0:19:09 > 0:19:10There's a phrase in the poem about
0:19:10 > 0:19:15being open to the fields and the sunlight.
0:19:15 > 0:19:19Every part of the city has a border of nature.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22There's the sky, there's the sun, there's the fields,
0:19:22 > 0:19:23and there is the river.
0:19:28 > 0:19:32After crossing Westminster Bridge, the Wordsworths travelled to Dover
0:19:32 > 0:19:36and then took a boat that evening over to Calais.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39They arrived early the next morning.
0:19:39 > 0:19:44William went on shore and met Annette almost immediately.
0:19:44 > 0:19:49In 1802, Calais was no more glamorous a town than it is today.
0:19:49 > 0:19:53But it must have been a fascinating place to visit
0:19:53 > 0:19:58immediately after ten years of war between England and France.
0:19:58 > 0:20:01Dorothy's journal is quiet detailed about some of their time here.
0:20:01 > 0:20:04She complains about the bad smells in their lodgings
0:20:04 > 0:20:07and she waxes lyrical about the phosphorescence in the sea.
0:20:07 > 0:20:11She is frustratingly quiet on the things we really want to know about.
0:20:11 > 0:20:16What was it like for William and Annette to see one another again?
0:20:16 > 0:20:18Was there still any spark?
0:20:18 > 0:20:21How was it for William to meet his nine-year-old daughter
0:20:21 > 0:20:23for the first time in his life?
0:20:23 > 0:20:26His already imperfect French would have been fairly rusty,
0:20:26 > 0:20:29so how did they even manage to talk to one another?
0:20:31 > 0:20:35What we do know is that they spent a lot of time together on the beach.
0:20:37 > 0:20:39"We walked by the sea shore almost every evening
0:20:39 > 0:20:43"with Annette and Caroline, or William and I alone.
0:20:43 > 0:20:48"I had a bad cold and could not bathe at once, but William did."
0:20:48 > 0:20:51This beach holiday lasted for a whole month,
0:20:51 > 0:20:53and whilst there's no surviving record,
0:20:53 > 0:20:57William and Annette obviously reached some kind of agreement
0:20:57 > 0:21:00which allowed him to marry with a clear conscience.
0:21:02 > 0:21:04The month on the beach also afforded William
0:21:04 > 0:21:06plenty of time for writing poetry.
0:21:07 > 0:21:11Wordsworth loved to form his poems while he was walking,
0:21:11 > 0:21:13ideally across uninterrupted ground
0:21:13 > 0:21:17so that his rhythms and thoughts weren't disturbed.
0:21:17 > 0:21:23So the impressive expanse here would have been the perfect place for him to compose,
0:21:23 > 0:21:28especially because the 12 or 13 poems that he wrote over that month
0:21:28 > 0:21:32were all sonnets, 14 lines, tightly packed,
0:21:32 > 0:21:38and easy to hold in the mind as Wordsworth strode along these sands.
0:21:38 > 0:21:41Once again, Dorothy had a crucial hand in this.
0:21:41 > 0:21:42She had been reading
0:21:42 > 0:21:45the sonnets of the great John Milton to her brother.
0:21:45 > 0:21:49It was these that influenced him to experiment with the sonnet himself.
0:21:49 > 0:21:54Including one fantastic poem which I've always read as kind of
0:21:54 > 0:21:57a counterpoint to his sonnet about the dawn in London,
0:21:57 > 0:22:00in which he mentions his daughter Caroline.
0:22:02 > 0:22:04The poem begins with the evocative lines...
0:22:04 > 0:22:08It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
0:22:08 > 0:22:11The holy time is quiet as a Nun
0:22:14 > 0:22:17And concludes with these words for his young daughter...
0:22:17 > 0:22:21Dear Child! dear Girl! That walkest with me here,
0:22:21 > 0:22:24If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
0:22:24 > 0:22:27Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
0:22:43 > 0:22:47It's curious that this brief and unique reference to the poet's daughter,
0:22:47 > 0:22:50although fond, seems strangely detached.
0:22:50 > 0:22:55Especially when compared to the passion that Wordsworth expresses about London.
0:22:59 > 0:23:03That summer of 1802, Wordsworth seems to have focused his energies
0:23:03 > 0:23:05on refining his skills as a sonneteer.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08The sonnets he wrote are all impressive,
0:23:08 > 0:23:11and they provide an important context
0:23:11 > 0:23:13for the sonnet on Westminster Bridge.
0:23:15 > 0:23:16What is really fascinating
0:23:16 > 0:23:19about the story around the writing of this poem,
0:23:19 > 0:23:24is how it touches on so many exciting elements of Wordsworth.
0:23:24 > 0:23:28Nowadays the reputation of Wordsworth is quite often drawn
0:23:28 > 0:23:29from the later part of his life,
0:23:29 > 0:23:32Wordsworth when he was in his establishment phase.
0:23:32 > 0:23:34But the story around this poem
0:23:34 > 0:23:38really reminds us exactly how incredibly radical he was.
0:23:38 > 0:23:41It's worth remembering that as a young man,
0:23:41 > 0:23:44Wordsworth had been an extensive traveller,
0:23:44 > 0:23:46a sympathiser with the French Revolution,
0:23:46 > 0:23:48a father outside of marriage,
0:23:48 > 0:23:51and a poet who chose not to live in literary London,
0:23:51 > 0:23:53but in the Lake District.
0:23:53 > 0:23:57The poem moves between these two places that really formed Wordsworth -
0:23:57 > 0:24:02the Lake District and the radical revolutionary France
0:24:02 > 0:24:04that he had known as a young man.
0:24:05 > 0:24:09And right in the middle, halfway between those two places, is London.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12When you see the poem in this context, it's not surprising
0:24:12 > 0:24:16that what Wordsworth writes is in its own way quite radical.
0:24:18 > 0:24:23There's always been a tendency in, you know,
0:24:23 > 0:24:25traditional forms of literature
0:24:25 > 0:24:30to see the city as places of evil intent.
0:24:30 > 0:24:35You know, filthy, murderous, inhuman places.
0:24:35 > 0:24:40Wordsworth, in this poem, takes the opposite view.
0:24:42 > 0:24:46I think that is quite a watershed moment really, in poetry.
0:24:46 > 0:24:48Even the though the poem is, to a certain extent,
0:24:48 > 0:24:51sentimental and romantic with a small R,
0:24:51 > 0:24:55I still think it's a brave poem,
0:24:55 > 0:24:58especially for somebody like Wordsworth
0:24:58 > 0:25:01whose philosophies lie elsewhere,
0:25:01 > 0:25:05to stand up and stay at this moment, "This is beauty".
0:25:10 > 0:25:12A Vision.
0:25:12 > 0:25:16The future was a beautiful place, once.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19Remember the full-blown balsa-wood town
0:25:19 > 0:25:22on public display in the Civic Hall?
0:25:22 > 0:25:26Ring-bound sketches, artists' impressions,
0:25:26 > 0:25:31blueprints of smoked glass and tubular steel,
0:25:31 > 0:25:33board-game suburbs,
0:25:33 > 0:25:39modes of transportation like fairground rides or executive toys.
0:25:39 > 0:25:43Cities like dreams, cantilevered by light.
0:25:43 > 0:25:48And people like us, at the bottle bank next to the cycle path,
0:25:48 > 0:25:53or dog-walking over tended strips of Fuzzy-Felt grass,
0:25:53 > 0:25:58or model drivers, motoring home in electric cars.
0:25:58 > 0:26:02Or after the late show strolling the boulevard.
0:26:02 > 0:26:04They were the plans,
0:26:04 > 0:26:08all underwritten in the neat left-hand of architects...
0:26:08 > 0:26:11a true, legible script.
0:26:12 > 0:26:17I pulled that future out of the north wind at the landfill site,
0:26:17 > 0:26:23stamped with today's date, riding the air with other such futures,
0:26:23 > 0:26:27all unlived in and now fully extinct.
0:26:41 > 0:26:43From London, the Wordsworths headed back north
0:26:43 > 0:26:46where William finally got to marry Mary.
0:26:46 > 0:26:48He brought his new bride back to Grasmere
0:26:48 > 0:26:50where they lived for the rest of their lives,
0:26:50 > 0:26:52eventually ending up here
0:26:52 > 0:26:56at this grand Victorian villa in Rydal Mount,
0:26:56 > 0:27:00just 20 minutes' walk away from Dove Cottage.
0:27:00 > 0:27:01And Dorothy?
0:27:01 > 0:27:04Well, she lived with her brother and his wife for the rest of her life
0:27:04 > 0:27:09in what was a fairly unusual but remarkably successful domestic arrangement.
0:27:11 > 0:27:14And what about the third woman from that summer of 1802,
0:27:14 > 0:27:16Annette and her daughter Caroline?
0:27:16 > 0:27:21As far as we know, Wordsworth only ever met them one more time
0:27:21 > 0:27:25while on a holiday with his family in Paris 20 years later.
0:27:25 > 0:27:29By which point he and Mary had three teenage children of their own.
0:27:31 > 0:27:34In the end, we have no idea how Wordsworth
0:27:34 > 0:27:38responded to the complex situation he found himself in that summer,
0:27:38 > 0:27:42meeting his mistress and a daughter for the first time
0:27:42 > 0:27:45on the eve of his marriage to Mary.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48But what we do know is that as a result of that journey,
0:27:48 > 0:27:52Wordsworth, our great poet of nature,
0:27:52 > 0:27:54wrote one of the most euphoric poems about a city
0:27:54 > 0:27:56in the English language.
0:27:58 > 0:28:00What really fascinates me though
0:28:00 > 0:28:05is how the resonance of the poem has actually strengthened over time.
0:28:05 > 0:28:07What I mean by that is as the city of London
0:28:07 > 0:28:09becomes increasingly built-up,
0:28:09 > 0:28:12as it becomes increasingly more hectic around us,
0:28:12 > 0:28:14the experience that the poem describes
0:28:14 > 0:28:19of that great sense of relief that we get as we cross over the Thames,
0:28:19 > 0:28:24has over the years actually become not less but more powerful.
0:28:40 > 0:28:43Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:28:43 > 0:28:46Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk