Summary of literary texts and key concepts of literature

  According to Brooks, Wordsworth’s sonnet, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, is one of the most successful poems of the poet. The true potential of the poem lies in the paradoxical situation designed by the poet, where the mechanical London is not only considered a marvel of man’s creation but also assimilated as an aspect of nature. The spectacle of mechanical urban life elicits the expression of ‘awed surprise’ from the poet. The beauty of the rising sun, the river, the smokeless air, and other objects of nature have been enhanced by the presence of artificial towers, domes, theatres, and temples. It is also interesting to note that the poet has imparted the organic life of nature to the mechanical and inanimate objects of the city when he writes-‘Dear God! The very houses seem asleep.’ Wordsworth had mastered the art of creating a paradoxical situation in his poems, as he himself mentioned in the second edition of his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, that the purpose of a poet is to