Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

The list of images that the speaker notes in his description of the city is significant for several reasons. Notably absent in this list are other large buildings that usually fill a city, such as factories, poor houses, or alehouses, all of which were certainly present in London at the time. By choosing to focus on the “Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples […]” (Line 6), the speaker is intentionally drawing the reader’s attention to those creations which demonstrate man’s higher thinking abilities, his ability to strive for something that is the “paragon of animals” (2.2.13), to quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But there is more to it than that. Ships show humankind’s ability to traverse oceans, to connect with those in other locations, to learn from others, and to connect with the sea. Towers in the medieval period were used to adorn churches because they drew the intention upward. The architectural significance of a tower is that it points toward heaven and is therefore a reminder to think about God. Domes became more popular in the Renaissance and represented humankind’s growing architectural prowess. They also exemplified a changing consciousness, which was more concerned with Earth than with heaven, with nature than with divinity.