Above: Digitized manuscript of the poem Below: Our class's text
On the British Library’s site, I found the manuscript of Wordsworth’s “Composed upon Westminster Bridge.” It’s fascinating to see the actual poem hand-written on paper (or, at least a picture of it) and to see the places where Wordsworth modified a part of the poem. Wordsworth watches on as the city is still asleep at dawn, and he details how the sun clothes Westminster. He claims, in the version we read for class, that “Dull would he be of soul who could pass by / A sight so touching in its majesty” (2-3). Yet, where he wrote “soul,” Wordsworth originally wrote “heart.” Although this is a seemingly minor change, it changes the undertones and meaning of those lines. If we read the lines with the original “heart,” it becomes, in a way, more about emotion and basic (not really so basic) feeling. “Dull would he be of heart” if anyone could “pass by” the beautiful sight of dawn and the sun over Westminster. In other words, whoever does not appreciate the beauty of that moment lacks something. Think of the phrases “Have you no heart” (as in asking someone), “You’re heartless,” etc. Each context means an individual lacks emotional understanding or something lacking in their being that becomes inappropriate in one way or another.
However, if we read the same lines and instead consider them with Wordsworth’s revision, the meaning is a bit different. If anyone passes by the beauty of this scene without any reaction, “[d]ull would he be of soul.” This insinuates a more spiritual (and maybe deeper) meaning. To say your heart is dull versus your soul is dull means/insinuates different things. When Wordsworth uses the word “soul,” I think that he means there is a disconnect between our spiritual, more abstract sense of being and the natural world. The definition of “soul” is literally “the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans.” Not only are your cognitions, emotions, and behavior removed from the natural world if you neglect it, so is your principle of life: you are spiritually dead (or dying). It’s beyond the physical and material world, and thus beyond our own bodies (the heart).