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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 doth¹, 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 glideth² at his own sweet will:

Dear God! The very houses seem asleep:

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

 

 

 

 

 

1. What does the poet describe? What time of day is it? Is the weather fine or bad?

2. Is it an objective or an emotional description? Which elements of the city/town are mentioned?

Which impression does the scene make on the poet? Which words refer to his feelings?

3. What does the poet think of London? How does he represent the town?

4. Is the town compared / contrasted with the countryside? How / Why?

5. Can you work out the rhyme scheme of the poem?

 

1. the meaning of the title

2. which paragraph contains the main idea

3. how the Notting Hill district has changed

4. how you can understand where properties are more expensive.

 

 

 

Once upon a time, London was a small city surrounded by villages: villages in Middlesex, north of Thames and in Surrey to the south. Many years have passed since London swallowed up both counties, and the villages have merged into each other. But they remain villages.

Anyone moving to London must choose his or her village with care – carefully discerning the character of the place and the people who live there – but they must also realise that, over time, they can change dramatically.

When I grew up in Notting Hill, in west London, in the 1970s, it was home to much of the city’s Afro-Caribbean community […] but in the 1980s the area’s elegant stucco houses, on leafy, crescent-shaped streets, became desirable to the city’s predominantly white professionals. Property prices rose dramatically and much of the black community, taking advantage of this, relocated.

Now Notting Hill probably is home to a smaller proportion of black people than London as a whole. It must presumably strike visitors as odd that the Caribbean-themed Notting Hill Carnival takes place there; indeed, prosperous residents lobby constantly to move the noisy event somewhere else. […]

Living in London is intimately connected with snobbish instincts. You buy into a district because it says something about you.

To generalise crudely: people who live in Fulham work in the City and hold robustly right-wing opinions; Hampstead residents, though they may also work in the City, consider themselves intellectual. Make no mistake: even Londoners unable to afford those exclusive areas are snobs. Poorer residents simply invert the snobbery. If they live amid crime and deprivation they might boast that they’re “keeping it real”. […]

Scientific measures of self-worth are: 1) Where you are on the Tube map: central zones are best.

2) Telephone dialling codes: numbers that begin with 020 8 denote a property in the suburbs, while 020 7 betokens a home at London’s heart. 3) Postcodes. No simpler rule applies, but it’s fair to say that central, western and northern districts in the low numbers (NW3, Hampstead) are classier than southern and eastern ones with high numbers (SE27, West Norwood). […]

I must say, however, that this snobbery is not altogether serious and has little to do with social class. I’m actually proud that London’s population is so mixed. Rich and poor may not actually hang out together, but they do at least live close by one another.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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