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 …
When I think of Westminster Bridge, I always think of these lines by Wordsworth. But whenever I turn on the news this week, the thought of them makes my chest seize. Other images come to mind instead.
On Wednesday 22nd March, the bridge turned into a death trap. An assailant driving a rented car drove up onto the pavement and straight into the path of passersbys. Four of those people are now dead. Tens of others are severely injured.
The two associations now sit alongside each other in a grotesque marriage.
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333″>about the acts of compassion that unfolded in the minutes and hours after the attack.
The bridge itself is also becoming a site for remembrance. And just as laying flowers can become marks of defiance against an act nobody wanted or condones, so too can memories. Not memories of horror stumbled upon on social media. But of the brave actions of police and paramedics, of the lives the victims led, and of Westminster’s “mighty heart” that these events have so entirely failed to crush.
So if you find yourself upon the bridge in coming weeks, perhaps commuting to work or showing visitors round the city, here are some other thoughts had upon Westminster Bridge which no man in an estate car will ever take away:
Tourists taking photos with friends:
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The end of the film Pride – and the 1985 march on which it is based
Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway’s “moment in June”
One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.
Brilliant Boudicca guarding the bridge’s Northern end
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Penis Shadows! (I say no more)
The naughty Westminster Bridge :) #sex #London #Westminster #fun #funny #england #uk #penis #shadow #dick #xxx #nsfw pic.twitter.com/i2Nq75BH9A
— Caroline Beneš (@CarolineBenes) January 25, 2017
Sci-fi scenes from 28 Days Later
The “Build Bridges Not Walls” protest from January this year
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And “Upon Westminster Bridge” by William Wordsworth (1802)
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!
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