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Sights and Sounds of Robinson’s Summer Morning Mary Robinson’s “London’s Summer Morning” uses various pieces of imagery to take the reader back to the busy streets of London at the turn of the 19th century. The poem was written during Europe’s Industrial Revolution, which is illustrated in its descriptions of workers and patrons going through the motions of their morning routines. By focusing her descriptions on the workers as individuals, Robinson highlights them as pieces of a larger whole. Together, they create the setting of the hustle and bustle of an urban London street on a hot summer morning. In addition to her attention to the individuals, Robinson uses patterns of imagery to emphasize feelings and ideas. Robinson’s narrator takes the voice of the poet awakened by the city’s commotion. She begins with a comment on the London summer’s “sultry smoke,” (2) which gives the reader a feel for the intensity of the heat. She continues on to her first mention in a pattern of the hot road in line 3, where the reader encounters the “sooty chimney-boy” working on the “pavement hot.” A lower-class worker characterized by his dirty, rugged clothing, the boy’s work has disturbed not only the poet but also the sleepy housemaid as he “shrilly bawls his trade” (5-6). These images allow the reader an insight to the relationships between members of a busy city block, and also begin another pattern in the poem of tired workers struggling through the daily motions of urban life in 19th century London. Robinson creates movement as the clatter of the “hackney-coaches, waggons, carts” (10) rolls down the street through the stationary sounds of the vendors. “The hunger-giving cries” of the vegetable merchants ring in the reader’s ear as they move on to feel the heat of the day the vendors are out working in, a third pattern found in the poem, in line 15. The cries of the workers create a second mention of the tired worker pattern here, and her second mention in the pavement pattern as well comes in this line to ground the reader back to the street itself as the center of the poem’s focus. “The fresh-sprinkled pavement” is discussed to “cool the feet of early walkers” (15-16) along the street on the summer morning. These lines make the reader imagine how early it really is when the poet was awakened, as the merchants are hard at work preparing for the day while the streets are just beginning to see the “early walkers” out and about along the market. “At the private door the ruddy housemaid twirls the busy mop, annoying the smart ‘prentice, or neat girl” (14-16). Here, Robinson touches again on the relationships between members of the street as each one’s tasks overlap another’s, and each tired worker navigates through a struggle to find their place among the crowd. Again in the pattern, the heat of the morning is discussed with “Now the sun darts burning splendor on the glittering pane, save where the canvas awning throws a shade on the gay merchandise” (20-23). Robinson’s use of words like “burning” emphasize the radiant weather the dedicated merchants work in, and the brightness of the day contrasts the interrupted sleep the poet began in.

Robinson continues, “All along the sultry pavement, the old-clothes-man cries in tone monotonous” (33-34). This touches again on her patterns of both the heat and the pavement, which keep the poem grounded to basic themes as the differences between each merchant add color to the feverish day. The man’s cries ring in the reader’s ear again as the vegetable vendors’ did in line 15, and his monotonous tone suggests his exhaustion in the heat as well as the routine. The images expressed in the “half-worn suit...for one half its worth, sinks in the green abyss” (36-39) create a somber feeling as the man’s weariness is comparable to his work’s success. She moves on to encounter another tired worker, the porter who “bears his huge load along the burning way” (39-40), who reiterates the pattern of overworked merchants and miserable heat. The poet returns back to her sleepy awakening to the hot day with her final lines, “and the poor poet wakes from busy dreams, to paint the summer morning” (41-42). In using various patterns in her imagery, Robinson emphasizes the heat of the day and struggles of the workers. She uses the repetition of the pavement as well to bring readers back to the center of the poem--the street--on which the rest of the poem is built. Her words convey vivid images of the various merchants, wagons, shops, and people cluttering and bustling throughout the street, which individually tell their own stories but come together as a whole to create the scene of a typical summer morning on a busy London street.

Work Cited Robinson, “London’s Summer Morning.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume D, The Romantic Period, e  d. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. 9th ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. 80-81....