Since we were talking about Westminster bridge. here is a bonus picture:

from this side, which has a fantastic collection of historic photographs...

and since we are talking poems

THE HOWRAH BRIDGE

I stood on the Bridge at midnight,
And gazed at the waters below,
And thought of the fanciful dreams that
From the brains of our Councilors flow.

Then I thought of the quick intuition,
Which these schemes had engendered and said,
"Will these schemes ever come to fruition?"
Then I quietly stood on my head.

 For I'd looked at the question sideways,
And from both sides of the town,
Taking careful account of the tideways,
But never from upside down.

So I`ve got a new angle of vision,
As bright and as fresh as wet paint,
Which will take off the general attention?
Away from the New Market Saint

Up my sleeve I've another red herring,
"The Scare of the Bidyadhari Silt",
Which will merrily keep the ball rolling?
Ere The Bridge on the Hooghly is built.

-Diogenes, in the "Englishman"

(Appeared in The Calcutta Municipal Gazette dated 11 th July 1925)

and since its never just about bridges...

Donna Kate Ruskin

I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me

Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little  sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white  feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black  church folks
To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists  the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to the my  friends' parents. .

Then I've got to explain myself

To everybody
I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I'm sick of it

I'm sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white  people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip
I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness

I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you to breath
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self.
Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the Bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses
I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful.

and here are some more...

The Tay Bridge Disaster

Emily Dickinson's Faith -- is the Pierless Bridge

and a new version to the Westminster classic

ups forgot to mention it. It is the bridge in Arta, Greece. I put in a link to the image and the text. Thanks.

more info on the fantastic structura webpage

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Guillaume Apollinaire

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

Just a note on Westminster Bridge: dating and attribution of Canaletto paintings is sometimes difficult. It's strange if this one is from 1747, because the bridge is shown complete, when in fact it was opened in November 1750. (But the artist may have sketched in what remained to be built...)

The Monet painting is rather more than a couple of years later -- say about a century after the Canaletto and half a century after Wordsworth's sonnet. No?

If you like, I'll put something up in another Bridge Blogging about London's bridges, particularly Old London Bridge, the one that is falling down, my fair lady. (another bridge poem). Let me know when that might fit in with future subjects.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind