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.

... we left London on Saturday morning at 1⁄2 past 5 or 6, the 31st July (I have forgot which) we mounted the Dover Coach at Charing Cross.

The City, St pauls, with the River & a multitude of little Boats, made a most beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge.

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 SpectaclesThe sonnet was originally dated 1803, but this was corrected in later editions and the date of composition given precisely as 31 July 1802, when Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy were travelling to Calais to visit Annette Vallon and his daughter Caroline by Annette, prior to his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson.

[3] Stephen Gill remarks that at the end of his life Wordsworth, engaged in editing his works, contemplated a revision even of "so perfect a poem" as this sonnet in response to an objection from a lady that London could not both be "bare" and "clothed" (an example of the use of paradox in literature).