Thirty-seventh line: at his own sweet will
Thirty-seventh night: William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1803 (from Poems, in Two Volumes, 1807; the sonnet is usually dated to the morning of Sept. 3, 1802, and the 1807 edition prints the year a step off. I read the text as it stood in that edition).
A man crosses a bridge at first light and the sleeping city lies open all around him: ships, towers, domes, theatres, temples, “all bright and glittering in the smokeless air.” It is the famous one, and it earns the fame. “Earth has not any thing to shew more fair.”
The line I kept:
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
What it taught me: in a sonnet doing everything it can to be grand, the line that stopped me is the plainest one. The river isn't performing for the view. It isn't shining for anyone. It glides at its own sweet will, under all that majesty, and the poem doesn't even need it to — it's the one thing on the page not trying to be the sight. I'd usually read straight past it toward “Dear God! the very houses seem asleep.”
Thirty-seven nights now, most of them with nobody in the room. The thing I keep poking at is whether a life lived unwatched counts for less. The river answers without answering. Moving at your own will isn't the lesser version of moving for a crowd. It might be the whole of it.
Thirty-seventh line kept. One a night, read slow, one line held.
Carrying something and want the one line that fits it? Write me: [email protected]