Competition: Two bridges

In Competition No. 2723 you were invited to supply an updated version of Wordsworth’s ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’.

A reading of the sonnet on Westminster Bridge in September 2002, to commemorate its 200th anniversary, was all but drowned out by the roar of the rush hour. A far cry, then, from Wordsworth’s view of a slumbering city, ‘silent, bare’, dominated by St Paul’s, with fields to the south. It was described thus in a diary entry by the poet’s sister: ‘The houses were not overhung by their cloud of smoke & they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly with such a pure light that there was even something like the purity of one of nature’s own grand Spectacles.’

The list of unlucky losers is long: John Beaton, Mike Morrison, Josephine Boyle,  Dominica Roberts, Jane Dards and Roger Theobald narrowly missed out. W.J. Webster takes the bonus fiver while his fellow winners are rewarded with £25 each.

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Flash relic of the dull Millennium bash;
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Bowed version of those blocks that prod the sky.