Wordsworth sees beauty in his morning view of the city of London, but from where does that beauty originate? Is the beauty of the city inherent, or is it caused by external assistance? Wordsworth describes the beauty of the city as a garment, something worn to hide what is underneath and to display an image that is manufactured and superficial. An article of clothing can also be removed, just as the morning is fleeting and will soon give way to noon. In fact, Wordsworth attributes the "bright and glittering" buildings to the work of the sun in the "first splendor" of the morning. Light has the ability to make a subject ugly, attractive, clean, or mysterious; by the afternoon, the light would surely have altered one's conception of the city.

This tends to downplay the role of "composition" in Wordsworth's city, as if the city of London were a composed song. But it would seem, by Wordsworth's perspective, that the beauty of the city is derived almost entirely from the angle of the sun but derived from nothing in the city. In fact, he revels in the hour of the day because the city is, for a brief moment, asleep and still. In other words, the composite parts of the city are latent, leaving only the shell of the city ("ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples") to bask in the glory of the morning sun. It is this shell which, by its interaction with the light, produces an effect which originates from the outside and is projected back out again. If London were a song, its beauty would be apparent in the performance of it, not in its internal composition.

On the other hand, the city still needs to exist in order to reflect the light of the sun. The city is more than just a shape, of course; the city is a complex and pre-determined network of component parts. But the interaction between city and sun produces the illusion of the city being "bare," leaving the shell of the city as what appears to be a unified whole, like a garment does to the human figure. In other words, the beauty that Wordsworth has witnessed on Westminster Bridge is the result of friction between the morning sun and the composition of the city to produce a "sight so touching in its majesty," a unified entity that makes its component parts invisible. When applied to Wordsworth's poem itself, it is clear that the medium of poetry is a complex network of sound (diction, rhyme, synchopation) and device (metaphor, personification, imagery) which is hidden by its own external effect.