The Lucy poems

The Lucy poems are a series of five poems composed by the English
Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) between 1798 and
1801. All but one were first published during 1800 in the second edition
of Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration between Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge that was both Wordsworth's first major publication and
a milestone in the early English Romantic movement.[A 1] In the series,
Wordsworth sought to write unaffected English verse infused with
abstract ideals of beauty, nature, love, longing and death.

The poem was written during a short period while the poet lived in
Germany. Although they individually deal with a variety of themes, as a
series they focus on the poet's longing for the company of his friend
Coleridge, who had travelled with him to Germany but took up residence
separately in the university town of Göttingen, and on his increasing
impatience with his sister Dorothy, who had travelled with him abroad.
Wordsworth examines the poet's unrequited love for the idealised
character of Lucy, an English girl who has died young. The idea of her
death weighs heavily on the poet throughout the series, imbuing it with a William Shuter, Portrait of William Wordsworth,
1798. Earliest known portrait of Wordsworth,
melancholic, elegiac tone. Whether Lucy was based on a real woman or
painted in the year he wrote the first drafts of
was a figment of the poet's imagination has long been a matter of debate
"The Lucy poems"[1]
among scholars. Generally reticent about the poems, Wordsworth never
revealed the details of her origin or identity.[2] Some scholars speculate
that Lucy is based on his sister Dorothy, while others see her as a fictitious or hybrid character. Most critics agree that she is
essentially a literary device upon whom he could project, meditate and reflect.

The "Lucy poems" consist of "Strange fits of passion have I known", "She dwelt among the untrodden ways", "I travelled among
unknown men", "Three years she grew in sun and shower", and "A slumber did my spirit seal". Although they are presented as a
series in modern anthologies, Wordsworth did not conceive of them as a group, nor did he seek to publish the poems in sequence. He
described the works as "experimental" in the prefaces to both the 1798 and 1800 editions of Lyrical Ballads, and revised the poems
significantly—shifting their thematic emphasis—between 1798 and 1799. Only after his death in 1850 did publishers and critics
begin to treat the poems as a fixed group.

Contents
Background
Lyrical Ballads
Separation from Coleridge
Identity of Lucy
The poems
"Strange fits of passion have I known"
"She dwelt among the untrodden ways"
"I travelled among unknown men"
"Three years she grew in sun and shower"
"A slumber did my spirit seal"
Grouping as a series
 Interpretation
Nature
Death
Critical assessment
Parodies and allusions
Settings
Footnotes
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links

Background

Lyrical Ballads
In 1798, Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge jointly published Lyrical Ballads,
with a Few Other Poems, a collection of verses each had written separately. The book
became hugely popular and was published widely; it is generally considered a herald of
the Romantic movement in English literature.[3][4] In it, Wordsworth aimed to use
everyday language in his compositions[5] as set out in the preface to the 1802 edition:
"The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and
situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was
possible in a selection of language really used by men, and at the same time, to throw
over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be
presented to the mind in an unusual aspect."[5]

The two poets had met three years earlier in either late August or September 1795 in
Bristol.[6] The meeting laid the foundation for an intense and profoundly creative
friendship, based in part on their shared disdain for the artificial diction of the poetry of
the era. Beginning in 1797, the two lived within walking distance of each other in
Somerset, which solidified their friendship. Wordsworth believed that his life before
meeting Coleridge was sedentary and dull, and that his poetry amounted to little.
Title page for the first edition of
Coleridge influenced Wordsworth, and his praise and encouragement inspired
Lyrical Ballads
Wordsworth to write prolifically.[7] Dorothy, Wordsworth's sister, related the effect
Coleridge had on her brother in a March 1798 letter: "His faculties seem to expand
every day, he composes with much more facility than he did, as to the mechanism [emphasis in original] of poetry, and his ideas flow
faster than he can express them."[8] With his new inspiration, Wordsworth came to believe he could write poetry rivalling that ofJohn
Milton.[9] He and Coleridge planned to collaborate, but never moved beyond suggestions and notes for each other
.[10]

The expiration of Wordsworth's Alfoxton House lease soon provided an opportunity for the two friends to live together. They
conceived a plan to settle in Germany with Dorothy and Coleridge's wife, Sara, "to pass the two ensuing years in order to acquire the
German language, and to furnish ourselves with a tolerable stock of information in natural science".[11] In September 1798,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Dorothy travelled to Germany to explore proximate living arrangements, but this proved difficult.
Although they lived together in Hamburg for a short time, the city was too expensive for their budgets. Coleridge soon found
accommodations in the town of Ratzeburg in Schleswig-Holstein, which was less expensive but still socially vibrant. The
impoverished Wordsworth, however, could neither afford to follow Coleridge nor provide for himself and his sister in Hamburg; the
siblings instead moved to moderately priced accommodations inGoslar in Lower Saxony, Germany.[12]
Separation from Coleridge
Between October 1798 and February 1799, Wordsworth worked on the first draft
of the "Lucy poems" together with a number of other verses, including the
"Matthew poems", "Lucy Gray" and The Prelude. Coleridge had yet to join the
siblings in Germany, and Wordsworth's separation from his friend depressed him.
In the three months following their parting, Wordsworth completed the first three
of the "Lucy poems": "Strange fits", "She dwelt", and "A slumber".[14] They first
appeared in a letter to Coleridge dated December 1798, in which Wordsworth
wrote that "She dwelt" and "Strange fits" were "little Rhyme poems which I hope
will amuse you".[15] Wordsworth characterised the two poems thus to mitigate any
disappointment Coleridge might suffer in receiving these two poems instead of the
promised three-part philosophical epicThe Recluse.[16]

In the same letter, Wordsworth complained that:

As I have had no books I have been obliged to write in self-

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by Peter Van
Dyke, 1795. A major poet and one of
the foremost critics of the day,
Coleridge collaborated on Lyrical
Ballads with Wordsworth and remained
a close friend and confidant for many
years.[13]
defense. I should have written five times as much as I have done
but that I am prevented by an uneasiness at my stomach and side,
with a dull pain about my heart. I have used the word pain, but
uneasiness and heat are words which more accurately express my
feelings. At all events it renders writing unpleasant. Reading is
now become a kind of luxury to me. When I do not read I am
absolutely consumed by thinking and feeling and bodily exertions
[15]
of voice or of limbs, the consequence of those feelings.

Wordsworth partially blamed Dorothy for the abrupt loss of Coleridge's company. He felt that their finances—insufficient for
supporting them both in Ratzeburg—would have easily supported him alone, allowing him to follow Coleridge. Wordsworth's
anguish was compounded by the contrast between his life and that of his friend. Coleridge's financial means allowed him to entertain
lavishly and to seek the company of nobles and intellectuals; Wordsworth's limited wealth constrained him to a quiet and modest life.
Wordsworth's envy seeped into his letters when he described Coleridge and his new friends as "more favored sojourners" who may
[17]
"be chattering and chatter'd to, through the whole day".

Although Wordsworth sought emotional support from his sister, their relationship remained strained throughout their time in
Germany. Separated from his friend and forced to live in the sole company of his sister, Wordsworth used the "Lucy poems" as an
emotional outlet.[18]

Identity of Lucy
Wordsworth did not reveal the inspiration for the character of Lucy, and over the years the topic has generated intense speculation
among literary historians.[19] Little biographical information can be drawn from the poems—it is difficult even to determine Lucy's
age.[20] In the mid-19th century, Thomas DeQuincey (1785–1859), author and one-time friend of Wordsworth, wrote that the poet
"always preserved a mysterious silence on the subject of that 'Lucy', repeatedly alluded to or apostrophised in his poems, and I have
heard, from gossiping people about Hawkshead, some snatches of tragic story, which, after all, might be an idle semi-fable, improved
out of slight materials."[21]

Critic Herbert Hartman believes Lucy's name was taken from "a neo-Arcadian commonplace", and argues she was not intended to
represent any single person.[22] In the view of one Wordsworth biographer, Mary Moorman (1906–1994), "The identity of 'Lucy' has
been the problem of critics for many years. But Wordsworth is a poet before he is a biographer, and neither 'Lucy' nor her home nor
his relations with her are necessarily in the strict sense historical. Nevertheless, as the Lyrical Ballads were all of them 'founded on
[23]
fact' in some way, and as Wordsworth's mind was essentially factual, it would be rash to say that Lucy is entirely fictitious."
Moorman suggests that Lucy may represent Wordsworth's romantic interest Mary Hutchinson,[A 2] but wonders why she would be
represented as one who died.[24] It is possible that Wordsworth was thinking of Margaret Hutchinson, Mary's sister who had died.[25]
There is no evidence, however, that the poet loved any of the Hutchinsons other than Mary. It is more likely that Margaret's death
.[26]
influenced but is not the foundation for Lucy

In 1980, Hunter Davies contended that the series was written for the poet's sister
Dorothy, but found the Lucy–Dorothy allusion "bizarre".[27] Earlier, literary critic
Richard Matlak tried to explain the Lucy–Dorothy connection, and wrote that
Dorothy represented a financial burden to Wordsworth, which had effectively forced
his separation from Coleridge.[28] Wordsworth, depressed over the separation from
his friend, in this interpretation, expresses both his love for his sister and fantasies
about her loss through the poems.[28] Throughout the poems, the narrator's mixture
of mourning and antipathy is accompanied by denial and guilt; his denial of the
Lucy–Dorothy relationship and the lack of narratorial responsibility for the death of
Lucy allow him to escape from questioning his desires for the death of his sister.[29]
After Wordsworth began the "Lucy poems", Coleridge wrote, "Some months ago
Wordsworth transmitted to me a most sublime Epitaph / whether it had any reality, I
cannot say. —Most probably, in some gloomier moment he had fancied the moment
in which his Sister might die."[30] It is, however, possible that Wordsworth simply
.[31][A 3]
feared her death and did not wish it, even subconsciously W. Crowbent, 1907, Portrait of
Dorothy Wordsworth, depicting her
Reflecting on the significance and relevance of Lucy's identity, the 19th-century later in life, (drawing from a
poet, essayist and literary criticFrederic Myers (1843–1901) observed that: photograph).

here it was that the memory of some emotion prompted the lines on
"Lucy". Of the history of that emotion, he has told us nothing; I
forbear, therefore, to inquire concerning it, or even to speculate. That
it was to the poet's honour, I do not doubt; but who ever learned such
secrets rightly? or who should wish to learn? It is best to leave the
sanctuary of all hearts inviolate, and to respect the reserve not only
of the living but of the dead. Of these poems, almost alone,
Wordsworth in his autobiographical notes has said nothing
whatever.[32]

Literary scholar Karl Kroeber (1926–2009) argues that Lucy "possesses a double existence; her actual, historical existence and her
idealised existence in the poet's mind. In the poem, Lucy is both actual and idealised, but her actuality is relevant only insofar as it
makes manifest the significance implicit in the actual girl."[33] Hartman holds the same view; to him Lucy is seen "entirely from
within the poet, so that this modality may be the poet's own", but then he argues, "she belongs to the category of spirits who must still
become human ... the poet describes her as dying at a point at which she would have been humanized."[34] The literary historian
Kenneth Johnston concludes that Lucy was created as the personification of Wordsworth's muse, and the group as a whole "is a series
of invocations to a Muse feared to be dead...As epitaphs, they are not sad, a very inadequate word to describe them, but breathlessly,
ference to me!'"[35]
almost wordlessly aware of what such a loss would mean to the speaker: 'oh, the dif

Scholar John Mahoney observes that whether Lucy is intended to represent Dorothy, Mary or another is much less important to
understanding the poems than the fact that she represented "a hidden being who seems to lack flaws and is alone in the world."[36]
Furthermore, she is represented as being insignificant in the public sphere but of the utmost importance in the private sphere; in "She
dwelt" this manifests through the comparison of Lucy to both a hidden flower and a shining star.[37] Neither Lucy nor Wordsworth's
other female characters "exist as independent self-conscious human beings with minds as capable of the poet's" and are "rarely
allowed to speak for themselves."[38]
The poems
The "Lucy poems" are written from the point of view of a lover who has long viewed the object of his affection from afar, and who is
now affected by her death.[A 4] Yet Wordsworth structured the poems so that they are not about any one person who has died; instead
they were written about a figure representing the poet's lost inspiration. Lucy is Wordsworth's inspiration, and the poems as a whole
are, according to Wordsworth biographer Kenneth Johnston, "invocations to a Muse feared to be dead".[39] Lucy is represented in all
five poems as sexless; it is unlikely that the poet ever realistically saw her as a possible lover. Instead, she is presented as an ideal[40]
[40]
and represents Wordsworth's frustration at his separation from Coleridge; the asexual imagery reflects the futility of his longing.

Wordsworth's voice slowly disappears from the poems as they progress, and his voice is entirely absent from the fifth poem. His love
operates on the subconscious level, and he relates to Lucy more as a spirit of nature than as a human being.[41] The poet's grief is
private, and he is unable to fully explain its source.[42] When Lucy's lover is present, he is completely immersed in human
interactions and the human aspects of nature, and the death of his beloved is a total loss for the lover. The 20th-century critic Spencer
Hall argues that the poet represents a "fragile kindof humanism".[43]

"Strange fits of passion have I known"

"Strange fits" is probably the earliest of the poems and revolves around a fantasy of Lucy's death. It describes the narrator's journey to
Lucy's cottage and his thoughts along the way. Throughout, the motion of the moon is set in opposition to the motion of the speaker.
The poem contains seven stanzas, a relatively elaborate structure which underscores his ambivalent attitude towards Lucy's imagined
death. The constant shifts in perspective and mood reflect his conflicting emotions.[44] The first stanza, with its use of dramatic
phrases such as "fits of passion" and "dare to tell", contrasts with the subdued tone of the rest of the poem. As a lyrical ballad,
[45]
"Strange fits" differs from the traditional ballad form, which emphasises abnormal action, and instead focuses on mood.

The presence of death is felt throughout the poem, although it is mentioned explicitly only in the final line. The moon, a symbol of
the beloved, sinks steadily as the poem progresses, until its abrupt drop in the penultimate stanza. That the speaker links Lucy with
the moon is clear, though his reasons are unclear.[45] The moon nevertheless plays a significant role in the action of the poem: as the
lover imagines the moon slowly sinking behind Lucy's cottage, he is entranced by its motion. By the fifth stanza, the speaker has
been lulled into a somnambulistic trance—he sleeps while still keeping his eyes on the moon (lines 17–20).

The narrator's conscious presence is wholly absent from the next stanza, which moves forward in what literary theorist Geoffrey
Hartman describes as a "motion approaching yet never quite attaining its end".[46] When the moon abruptly drops behind the cottage,
the narrator snaps out of his dream, and his thoughts turn towards death. Lucy, the beloved, is united with the landscape in death,
.[47] The darker possibility
while the image of the retreating, entrancing moon is used to portray the idea of looking beyond one's lover
also remains that the dream state represents the fulfilment of the lover's fantasy through the death of the beloved. In falling asleep
.[48]
while approaching his beloved's home, the lover betrays his own reluctance to be with Lucy

Wordsworth made numerous revisions to each of the "Lucy poems".[49] The earliest version of "Strange fits" appears in a December
1798 letter from Dorothy to Coleridge. This draft contains many differences in phrasing and does not include a stanza that appeared
in the final published version. The new lines direct the narrative towards "the Lover's ear alone", implying that only other lovers can
understand the relationship between the moon, the beloved and the beloved's death.[50] Wordsworth also removed from the final
stanza the lines:

I told her this; her laughter light

Is ringing in my ears;
And when I think upon that night
My eyes are dim with tears.[51]

This final stanza lost its significance with the completion of the later poems in the series, and the revision allowed for a sense of
anticipation at the poem's close and helped draw the audience into the story of the remaining "Lucy poems". Of the other changes,
only the description of the horse's movement is important: "My horse trudg'd on" becomes "With quickening pace my horse drew
 [48]
nigh", which heightens the narrator's vulnerability to fantasies and dreams in the revised version.

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways"

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways" presents Lucy as having lived in solitude near the source of the River Dove.[A 5] According
to literary critic Geoffrey Durrant, the poem charts her "growth, perfection, and death".[52] To convey the dignified, unaffected
naturalness of his subject, Wordsworth uses simple language, mostly words of one syllable. In the opening quatrain, he describes the
isolated and untouched area where Lucy lived, as well as her innocence and beauty, which he compares to that of a hidden flower in
the second.[53] The poem begins in a descriptive rather than narrative manner, and it is not until the line "When Lucy ceased to be"
that the reader is made aware that the subject of the verse has died. Literary scholar Mark Jones describes this effect as finding the
poem is "over before it has begun", while according to writer Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897), Lucy "is dead before we so much as
heard of her".[54]

Lucy's "untrodden ways" are symbolic of both her physical isolation and the unknown details of her thoughts and life. The third
quatrain is written with an economy intended to capture the simplicity the narrator sees in Lucy. Her femininity is described in girlish
terms. This has drawn criticism from those who see the female icon, in the words of literary scholar John Woolford, "represented in
Lucy by condemning her to death while denying her the actual or symbolic fulfillment of maternity".[55] To evoke the "loveliness of
body and spirit", a pair of complementary but paradoxical images[53] are employed in the second stanza: the solitary, hidden violet
juxtaposed to the publicly visible Venus, emblem of love and first star of evening.[56] Wondering if Lucy more resembles the violet
or the star, the critic Cleanth Brooks (1906–1994) concludes that while Wordsworth likely views her as "the single star, completely
dominating [his] world, not arrogantly like the sun, but sweetly and modestly", the metaphor is a conventional compliment with only
vague relevance.[57] For Wordsworth, Lucy's appeal is closer to the violet and lies in her seclusion and her perceived affinity with
nature.[55]

Wordsworth acquired a copy of the antiquarian and churchman Thomas Percy's (1729–1811) collection of British ballads Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry (1765) in Hamburg a few months before he began to compose the series. The influence of the traditional
English folk ballad is evident in the metre, rhythm and structure of "She dwelt". It follows the variant ballad stanza a4–b3–a4–b3,[58]
and in keeping with ballad tradition tells a dramatic story. As Durrant observed, "To confuse the mode of the 'Lucy' poems with that
of the love lyric is to overlook their structure, in which, as in the traditional ballad, a story is told as boldly and briefly as
possible."[52] Kenneth and Warren Ober compare the opening lines of "She dwelt" to the traditional ballad "Katharine Jaffray" and
note similarities in rhythm and structure, as well as in theme and imagery:

"Katharine Jaffray" "She dwelt"

There livd a lass in yonder dale, She dwelt among the untrodden ways
And doun in yonder glen, O. Beside the springs of Dove,
And Katherine Jaffray was her name, A maid whom there were none to praise
Well known by many men, O.[59] And very few to love; (lines 1–4)

The narrator of the poem is less concerned with the experience of observing Lucy than with his reflections and meditations on his
observations.[60] Throughout the poem sadness and ecstasy are intertwined, a fact emphasised by the exclamation marks in the
second and third verses. The critic Carl Woodring writes that "She dwelt" and the Lucy series can be read as elegiac, as "sober
meditation[s] on death". He found that they have "the economy and the general air of epitaphs in the Greek Anthology... [I]f all
elegies are mitigations of death, the Lucy poems are also meditations on simple beauty, by distance made more sweet and by death
preserved in distance".[61]

An early draft of "She dwelt" contained two stanzas which had been omitted from the first edition.[62] The revisions exclude many of
the images but emphasise the grief that the narrator experienced. The original version began with floral imagery, which was later
cut:[63]
 My hope was one, from cities far,
Nursed on a lonesome heath;
Her lips were red as roses are,
Her hair a woodbine wreath.[64]

A fourth stanza, also later removed, included an explanation of how Lucy was to die:[65] "But slow distemper checked her bloom /
And on the Heath she died."[64]

"I travelled among unknown men"

The last of the "Lucy poems" to be composed, "I travelled among unknown men", was the only one not included in the second edition
of Lyrical Ballads. Although Wordsworth claimed that the poem was composed while he was still in Germany, it was in fact written
during April 1801.[16][49] Evidence for this later date comes from a letter Wordsworth wrote to Mary Hutchinson referring to "I
travelled" as a newly created poem.[66] In 1802, he instructed his printer to place "I travelled" immediately after "A slumber did my
spirit seal" in Lyrical Ballads, but the poem was omitted. It was later published inPoems, in Two Volumes in 1807.[67]

The poem has frequently been read as a declaration of Wordsworth's love for his native England[68] and his determination not to live
abroad again:

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!

Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more. (lines 5–8)

The first two stanzas seem to speak of the poet's personal experience,[69] and a patriotic reading would reflect his appreciation and
pride for the English landscape.[70] The possibility remains, however, that Wordsworth is referring to England as a physical rather
[71]
than a political entity, an interpretation that gains strength from the poem's connections to the other "Lucy poems".

Lucy only appears in the second half of the poem, where she is linked with the English landscape. As such, it seems as if nature joins
.[72]
with the narrator in mourning for her, and the reader is drawn into this mutual sorrow

Although "I travelled" was written two years after the other poems in the series, it echoes the earlier verses in both tone and
language.[23] Wordsworth gives no hint as to the identity of Lucy, and although he stated in the preface to Lyrical Ballads that all the
poems were "founded on fact", knowing the basis for the character of Lucy is not necessary to appreciating the poem and
understanding its sentiment.[23] Similarly, no insight can be gained from determining the exact geographical location of the "springs
of Dove"; in his youth, Wordsworth had visited springs of that name inDerbyshire, Patterdale and Yorkshire.[23]

"Three years she grew in sun and shower"

"Three years she grew in sun and shower" was composed between 6 October and 28 December 1798. The poem depicts the
relationship between Lucy and nature through a complex opposition of images. Antithetical couplings of words—"sun and shower",
"law and impulse", "earth and heaven", "kindle and restrain"—are used to evoke the opposing forces inherent in nature. A conflict
between nature and humanity is described, as each attempts to possess Lucy. The poem contains both epithalamic and elegiac
characteristics; Lucy is shown as wedded to nature, while her human lover is left alone to mourn in the knowledge that death has
separated her from humanity.[73]

"A slumber did my spirit seal"

Written in spare language, "A slumber did my spirit seal" consists of two stanzas, each four lines long. The first stanza is built upon
even, soporific movement in which figurative language conveys the nebulous image of a girl who "seemed a thing that could not feel
/ The touch of earthly years". The second maintains the quiet and even tone of the first but serves to undermine its sense of the eternal
by revealing that Lucy has died and that the calmness of the first stanza represents death. The narrator's response to her death lacks
bitterness or emptiness; instead he takes consolation from the fact that she is now beyond life's trials, and "at last ... in inanimate
community with the earth's natural fixtures".[74] The lifeless rocks and stones depicted in the concluding line convey the finality of
Lucy's death.[75]

Grouping as a series
Although the "Lucy poems" share stylistic and thematic similarities, it was not Wordsworth but literary critics who first presented the
five poems as a unified set called the "Lucy poems". The grouping was originally suggested by critic Thomas Powell in 1831 and
later advocated by Margaret Oliphant in an 1871 essay. The 1861 Golden Treasury, compiled by the English historian Francis
Palgrave (1788–1861), groups only four of the verses, omitting "Strange fits". The poems next appeared as a complete set of five in
the collection of Wordsworth's poems by English poet and criticMatthew Arnold (1822–1888).[76]

The grouping and sequence of the "Lucy poems" has been a matter of debate in
literary circles. Various critics have sought to add poems to the group; among those
proposed over the years are "Alcaeus to Sappho", "Among all lovely things", "Lucy
Gray", "Surprised by joy", "Tis said, that some have died for love", "Louisa",
"Nutting", "Presentiments", "She was a Phantom of delight", "The Danish Boy",
"The Two April Mornings", "To a Young Lady", and "Written in Very Early
Youth".[77] None of the proposals have met with widespread acceptance. The five
poems included in the Lucy "canon" focus on similar themes of nature, beauty,
separation and loss, and most follow the same basic ballad form. Literary scholar
Mark Jones offers a general characterisation of a Lucy poem as "an untitled lyrical
ballad that either mentions Lucy or is always placed with another poem that does,
that either explicitly mentions her death or is susceptible of such a reading, and that
is spoken by Lucy's lover."[78]

With the exception of "A slumber", all of the poems mention Lucy by name. The
decision to include this work is based in part on Wordsworth's decision to place it in Frederick Augustus Sandys (1829–
close proximity to "Strange fits" and directly after "She dwelt" within Lyrical 1904), Margaret Oliphant, chalk,
Ballads. In addition, "I travelled" was sent to the poet's childhood friend and later 1881. In 1875, she was one of the
wife, Mary Hutchinson, with a note that said it should be "read after 'She dwelt'".[16] first anthologists to group together
the "Lucy poems".
Coleridge biographer J. Dykes Campbell records that Wordsworth instructed "I
travelled" to be included directly following "A slumber", an arrangement that
indicates a connection between the poems.[79] Nevertheless, the question of inclusion is further complicated by Wordsworth's
eventual retraction of these instructions and his omission of "I travelled" from the two subsequent editions Lyrical
of Ballads.[80]

The 1815 edition of Lyrical Ballads organised the poems into the Poems Founded on the Affections ("Strange fits", "She dwelt", and
"I travelled") and Poems of the Imagination ("Three years she grew" and "A slumber"). This arrangement allowed the two dream-
based poems ("Strange fits" and "A slumber") to frame the series and to represent the speaker's different sets of experiences over the
course of the longer narrative.[81] In terms of chronology, "I travelled" was written last, and thus also served as a symbolic conclusion
[82]
—both emotionally and thematically—to the "Lucy poems".

Interpretation

Nature
According to critic Norman Lacey, Wordsworth built his reputation as a "poet of nature".[83] Early works, such as "Tintern Abbey",
can be viewed as odes to his experience of nature. His poems can also be seen as lyrical meditations on the fundamental character of
the natural world. Wordsworth said that, as a youth, nature stirred "an appetite, a feeling and a love", but by the time he wrote Lyrical
Ballads, it evoked "the still sad music of humanity".[84]

The five "Lucy poems" are often interpreted as representing Wordsworth's opposing views of nature as well as meditations on the
cycle of life. They describe a variety of relationships between humanity and nature.[85] For example, Lucy can be seen as a
connection between humanity and nature, as a "boundary being, nature sprite and human, yet not quite either. She reminds us of the
traditional mythical person who lives, ontologically, an intermediate life, or mediates various realms of existence."[34] Although the
poems evoke a sense of loss, they also hint at the completeness of Lucy's life—she was raised by nature and survives in the memories
of others.[86] She became, in the opinion of the American poet and writer David Ferry (b. 1924), "not so much a human being as a
sort of compendium of nature", while "her death was right, after all, for by dying she was one with the natural processes that made
her die, and fantastically ennobled thereby".[87]

Cleanth Brooks writes that "Strange fits" presents "Kind Nature's gentlest boon", "Three years" its duality, and "A slumber" the
clutter of natural object.[88] Other scholars see "She dwelt", along with "I travelled", as representing nature's "rustication and
disappearance".[85] Mahoney views "Three years" as describing a masculine, benevolent nature similar to a creator deity. Although
nature shapes Lucy over time and she is seen as part of nature herself, the poem shifts abruptly when she dies. Lucy appears to be
eternal, like nature itself.[89] Regardless, she becomes part of the surrounding landscape in life, and her death only verifies this
connection.[90]

[91] It is shown at times to be oblivious to and uninterested in the

The series presents nature as a force by turns benevolent and malign.
safety of humanity.[92] Hall argues, "In all of these poems, nature would seem to betray the heart that loves her".[93] The imagery
used to evoke these notions serves to separate Lucy from everyday reality. The literary theorist Frances Ferguson (b. 1947) notes that
the "flower similes and metaphors become impediments rather than aids to any imaginative visualization of a woman; the flowers do
not simply locate themselves in Lucy's cheeks, they expand to absorb the whole of her ... The act of describing seems to have lost
touch with its goal—description of Lucy."[94]

Death
The poems Wordsworth wrote while in Goslar focus on the dead and dying. The "Lucy poems" follow this trend, and often fail to
delineate the difference between life and death.[35][95] Each creates an ambiguity between the sublime and nothingness,[96] as they
attempt to reconcile the question of how to convey the death of a girl intimately connected to nature.[97] They describe a rite of
passage from innocent childhood to corrupted maturity and, according to Hartman, "center on a death or a radical change of
consciousness which is expressed in semi-mythical form; and they are, in fact, Wordsworth's nearest approach to a personal
myth."[98] The narrator is affected greatly by Lucy's death and cries out in "She dwelt" of "the difference to me!". Yet in "A slumber"
he is spared from trauma by sleep.[99]

The reader's experience of Lucy is filtered through the narrator's perception.[100] Her death suggests that nature can bring pain to all,
even to those who loved her.[101] According to the British classical and literary scholar H. W. Garrod (1878–1960), "The truth is, as I
believe, that between Lucy's perfection in Nature and her death there is, for Wordsworth, really no tragic antithesis at all."[102]
Hartman expands on this view to extend the view of death and nature to art in general: "Lucy, living, is clearly a guardian spirit, not
of one place but of all English places ... while Lucy, dead, has all nature for her monument. The series is a deeply humanized version
of the death of Pan, a lament on the decay of English natural feeling. Wordsworth fears that the very spirit presiding over his poetry is
[103]
ephemeral, and I think he refuses to distinguish between its death in him and its historical decline."

Critical assessment
The first mention of the poems came from Dorothy, in a letter sent to Coleridge in December 1798. Of "Strange fits", she wrote, "
[104] The first recorded mention of any of the "Lucy poems" (outside of
[this] next poem is a favorite of mine—i.e. of me Dorothy—".
notes by either William or Dorothy) occurred after the April 1799 death of Coleridge's son Berkeley. Coleridge was then living in
Germany, and received the news through a letter from his friend Thomas Poole, who in his condolences mentioned Wordsworth's "A
slumber":

But I cannot truly say that I grieve—I am perplexed—I am sad—and a little thing, a very trifle would make me weep;
but for the death of the Baby I have not wept!—Oh! this strange, strange, strange Scene-shifter, Death! that giddies
one with insecurity, & so unsubstantiates the living Things that one has grasped and handled!—/ Some months ago
Wordsworth transmitted to me a most sublime Epitaph / whether it had any reality, I cannot say.—Most probably, in
[105]
some gloomier moment he had fancied the moment in which his sister might die.

Later, the essayist Charles Lamb (1775–1834) wrote to Wordsworth in 1801 to say
that "She dwelt" was one of his favourites from Lyrical Ballads. Likewise Romantic
poet John Keats (1795–1821) praised the poem. To the diarist and writer Henry
Crabb Robinson (1775–1867), "She dwelt" gave "the powerful effect of the loss of a
very obscure object upon one tenderly attached to it—the opposition between the
apparent strength of the passion and the insignificance of the object is delightfully
conceived."[106]

Besides word of mouth and opinions in letters, there were only a few published
contemporary reviews. The writer and journalist John Stoddart (1773–1856), in a
review of Lyrical Ballads, described "Strange fits" and "She dwelt" as "the most
singular specimens of unpretending, yet irresistible pathos".[107] An anonymous
review of Poems in Two Volumes in 1807 had a less positive opinion about "I
travell'd": "Another string of flat lines about Lucy is succeeded by an ode to
Duty".[108] Critic Francis Jeffrey (1773–1850) claimed that, in "Strange fits", "Mr Benjamin Haydon, Wordsworth on
Wordsworth, however, has thought fit to compose a piece, illustrating this copious Helvellyn, 1842

subject by one single thought. A lover trots away to see his mistress one fine
evening, staring all the way at the moon: when he comes to her door, 'O mercy! to
myself I cried, / If Lucy should be dead!' And there the poem ends!"[109] On "A slumber did my spirit seal", Wordsworth's friend
Thomas Powell wrote that the poem "stands by itself, and is without title prefixed, yet we are to know, from the penetration of Mr.
Wordsworth's admirers, that it is a sequel to the other deep poems that precede it, and is about one Lucy, who is dead. From the table
of contents, however, we are informed by the author that it is about 'A Slumber;' for this is the actual title which he has condescended
[110]
to give it, to put us out of pain as to what it is about."

Many Victorian critics appreciated the emotion of the "Lucy poems" and focused on "Strange fits". John Wilson, a personal friend of
both Wordsworth and Coleridge, described the poem in 1842 as "powerfully pathetic".[111] In 1849, critic Rev. Francis Jacox, writing
under the pseudonym "Parson Frank", remarked that "Strange fits" contained "true pathos. We are moved to our soul's centre by
sorrow expressed as that is; for, without periphrasis or wordy anguish, without circumlocution of officious and obtrusive, and
therefore, artificial grief; the mourner gives sorrow words... But he does it in words as few as may be: how intense their beauty!"[112]
A few years later, John Wright, an early Wordsworth commentator, described the contemporary perception that "Strange fits" had a
"deep but subdued and 'silent fervour'".[113] Other reviewers emphasised the importance of "She dwelt among the untrodden ways",
[114]
including Scottish writerWilliam Angus Knight (1836–1916), when he described the poem as an "incomparable twelve lines".

At the beginning of the 20th century, literary critic David Rannie praised the poems as a whole: "that strange little lovely group,
which breathe a passion unfamiliar to Wordsworth, and about which he—so ready to talk about the genesis of his poems—has told us
nothing [...] Let a poet keep some of his secrets: we need not grudge him the privacy when the poetry is as beautiful as this; when
there is such celebration of girlhood, love, and death [...] The poet's sense of loss is sublime in its utter simplicity. He finds harmony
[115] Later critics focused on the importance of
rather than harshness in the contrast between the illusion of love and the fact of death."
the poems to Wordsworth's poetic technique. Durrant argued that "The four 'Lucy' poems which appeared in the 1800 edition of
Lyrical Ballads are worth careful attention, because they represent the clearest examples of the success of Wordsworth's
experiment."[116] Alan Grob (1932–2007) focused less on the unity that the poems represent and believed that "the principal
importance of the 'Matthew' and 'Lucy' poems, apart from their intrinsic achievement, substantial as that is, is in suggesting the
presence of seeds of discontent even in a period of seemingly assured faith that makes the sequence of developments in the history of
."[117]
Wordsworth's thought a more orderly, evolving pattern than the chronological leaps between stages would seem to imply

Later critics de-emphasised the significance of the poems in Wordsworth's artistic development. Hunter Davies (b. 1936) concluded
that their impact relies more on their popularity than importance to Wordsworth's poetic career. Davies went on to claim, "The poems
about Lucy are perhaps Wordsworth's best-known work which he did in Germany, along with 'Nutting' and the Matthew poems, but
the most important work was the beginning of The Prelude" (emphasis in original).[27] Some critics emphasised the importance
behind Lucy as a figure, including Geoffrey Hartman (b. 1929), when he claimed, "It is in the Lucy poems that the notion of spirit of
place, and particularly English spirit of place, reaches its purest form."[103] Writer and poet Meena Alexander (b. 1951) believed that
[118]
the character of Lucy "is the impossible object of the poet's desire, an iconic representation of the Romantic feminine."

Parodies and allusions

The "Lucy poems" have been parodied numerous times since their first publication. These were generally intended to ridicule the
simplification of textual complexities and deliberate ambiguities in poetry. They also questioned the way many 19th-century critics
sought to establish definitive readings. According to Jones, such parodies commented in a "meta-critical" manner and themselves
present an alternative mode of criticism.[119] Among the more notable is the one by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's son Hartley Coleridge
(1796–1849), called "On William Wordsworth"[120] or simply "Imitation", as in the 1827 version published for The Inspector
magazine ("He lived amidst th' untrodden ways / To Rydal Lake that lead; / A Bard whom there were none to praise / And very few
to read" lines 1–4).[121] Parody also appears in the 1888 murder-mystery reading of the poem by Victorian author Samuel Butler
(1835–1902). Butler believed Wordsworth's use of the phrase "the difference to me!" was overly terse, and remarked that the poet
was "most careful not to explain the nature of the dif
ference which the death of Lucy will occasion him to be ... The superficial reader
takes it that he is very sorry she was dead ... but he has not said this."[2] Not every work referring to the "Lucy poems" is intended to
mock, however; the novelist and essayist Mary Shelley (1797–1851) drew upon the poems to comment on and re-imagine the
Romantic portrayal of femininity.[118]

Settings
The "Lucy poems" (omitting "I travelled among unknown men" but adding "Among all lovely things") have been set for voice and
piano by the composer Nigel Dodd. The settings were first performed at St George's, Brandon Hill, Bristol, in October 1995 at a
ordsworth and Coleridge.[122]
concert marking the bicentenary of the first meeting of W

[123]
Among settings of individual poems isBenjamin Britten's "Lucy" ("I travelled among unknown men") composed in 1926.

The poem was set to music and recorded by theorchestral pop band The Divine Comedy on their album Liberation.

Footnotes
1. The fifth poem, "I travelled among unknown men", first appeared in Poems in Two Volumes, published in 1807. Wu
1999, 250
2. Critics strongly contested this assertion; see Margoliouth 1966, 52
3. Further examples of Lucy representing Dorothy can be found in "The Glow-W orm" and "Nutting". A recently
published version of "Nutting" makes the connection between Dorothy and Lucy more explicit, and suggests that the
play with the incest prohibition came equally from Dorothy as from William. See Johnston 2000, 465
4. Most of the poems Wordsworth wrote while living in Goslar were about people who had died or were about to die.
Johnston 2000, 463
5. Wordsworth knew three rivers of that name; ni Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Westmorland, but each could equally be
the setting for the verse.

References
Notes
1. "The Cornell Wordsworth Collection (http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/collections/wordsworth.html)". Cornell University.
Retrieved on 13 February 2009.
2. Jones 1995, 4
3. Wu 1999, 189–90
4. Gilbert; Allen; and Clark 1962, 198
5. Murray 1967, qtd in 5
6. Sisman 2006, 111–112
7. Matlak 1978, 48
8. Wordsworth 1967, 200
9. Alexander 1987, 62
10. Gill 1989, 131
11. In a letter to James Losh dated 11 March 1798. W
ordsworth 1967, 212
12. Matlak 1978, 49–50
13. Ford 1957, 186–206
14. Matlak 1978, 46–47
15. Wordsworth 1967, 236
16. Moorman 1968, 422
17. Matlak 1978, 50; Wordsworth 1967, 254
18. Matlak 1978, 50–51
19. Abrams 2000, 251 note 1
20. Robson 2001, 33
21. De Quincey 1839, 247
22. Hartman 1934, 141
23. Moorman 1968, 423
24. Moorman 1968, 423–424
25. Margoliouth, 1966 52–56
26. Moorman 1968, 425
27. Davies 1980, 101
28. Matlak 1978, 46
29. Matlak 1978, 54–55
30. Johnston 2000, qtd in 464
31. Jones 1995, 51
32. Myers 1906, 34
33. Kroeber 1964, 106–107
34. Hartman 1967, 158
35. Johnston 2000, 463
36. Mahoney 1997, 105–106
37. Bateson 1954, 33
38. Mellor 1993, 19
39. Johnston 2000, 463
40. Johnston 2000, 465
41. Hartman 1964, 158–159
42. Grob 1973, 201–202
43. Hall 1971, 160–161
44. Matlak 1978, 51
45. Hartman 1967, 23
46. Hartman 1967, 24
47. Hartman 1967, 24–25
48. Matlak 1978, 53
49. Jones 1995, 8
50. Matlak 1978, 51–52
51. Wordsworth 1967, 237–238
52. Durrant 1969, 61
53. Jones, 36
54. Jones, 78
55. Woolford 2003, 30–35
56. Ober and Ober 2005, 31
57. Brooks 1951, 729–741
58. Ober and Ober 2005, 30
59. Ober and Ober 2005, 29
60. Slakey 1972, 629
61. Woodring 1965, 44 and 48
62. Abrams 2000, A-4 note 1
63. Matlak 1978, 55
64. Wordsworth 1967, 236–237
65. Matlak 1978, 54
66. Beatty 1964, 46 and 92
67. Wu 1998, 250
68. Jones 1995, 40
69. Beatty 1964, 46
70. Jones 1995, 41
71. Jones 1995, 40–41
72. Ferguson 1977, 185–186
73. Grob 1973, 202–203
74. Ford 1957, 165
75. Hirsch 1998, 40
76. Jones 1995, 7–10
77. Jones 1995, 10
78. Jones 1995, 11
79. Jones 1995, 8–9
80. Jones 1995, 7–8
81. Taaffe 1966, 175
82. Matlak 1978, 47
83. Lacey 1948, 1
84. Lacey 1948, 3
85. Jones 1995, 190
86. Beer 1978, 98
87. Ferry 1959, 76–78
88. Brooks 1951, 736
89. Mahoney 1993, 107–108
90. Robson 2001, 33–34
91. Mahoney 1997, 105
92. Jones 1995, 198–199
 93. Hall 1979, 166
94. Ferguson 1977, 175
95. Hayden 1992, 157
96. Beer 1978, 199
97. Beer 1978, 95
98. Hartman 1967, 157–158
99. Mahoney 1997, 106
100. Hartman 1967, 158–159
101. Hartman 1967, 161
102. Garrod 1929, 83
103. Hartman 1987, 43
104. Wordsworth 1991, 237
105. Coleridge 1956–1971, 479
106. Robinson 1938, 191
107. quoted in Jones 1995, 56
108. Le Beau Monde 2, October 1807, 140
109. Jeffrey 1808, 136
110. Powell 1831, 63
111. Wilson 1842, 328
112. Jones 1995, qtd in 4
113. Wright 1853, 29
114. Knight 1889, 282
115. Rannie 1907, 121, 123
116. Durrant 1969, 60
117. Grob 1973, 204
118. Alexander 1989, 147
119. Jones 1995, 95
120. Hamilton 1888, 95
121. Hartley 1827, 40
122. The Coleridge Bulletin, New Series 44, Winter 2014, v
123. "Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) - The Comprehensive Britten Song Database"
(http://www.brittensongdatabase.com).
brittensongdatabase.com.

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External links
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