The Lucy Poems
by William Wordsworth
The Lucy poems are a series of five poems
composed by William Wordsworth between 1798 and 1801. All but one was first
published during 1800 in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads.
Although
the poems individually deal with a variety of themes, as a series they focus on
the poet's longing for the company of his friend Coleridge and on his
increasing impatience with his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth examines the poet's
love for the idealised character of Lucy, an English girl who has died young.
Wordsworth never revealed the details of her origin or identity.
The
"Lucy poems" consist of five poems:
1.
"Strange fits of passion have I
known",
2.
"She dwelt among the untrodden
ways",
3.
"I travelled among unknown
men",
4.
"Three years she grew in sun and
shower", and
5.
"A slumber did my spirit
seal".
Although
they are presented as a series, 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. Wordsworth did not reveal the inspiration for the character of
Lucy. He always preserved a mysterious silence on the subject of 'Lucy'.
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. 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 "invocations to a Muse feared to be dead". Lucy is
represented in all five poems as sexless. Instead, she is presented as an ideal
and represents Wordsworth's frustration at his separation from Coleridge.
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.
The poet's grief is private, and he is unable to fully explain its source. 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.
"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
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. 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.
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, while the image of the retreating, entrancing moon is
used to portray the idea of looking beyond one's lover.
"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. The poem charts her "growth,
perfection, and death". 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.
Lucy's
"untrodden ways" are symbolic of both her physical isolation and the
unknown details of her thoughts and life as well as her sense of mystery. 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.
"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.
The
poem has frequently been read as a declaration of Wordsworth's love for his
native England 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, and a
patriotic reading would reflect his appreciation and pride for the English landscape.
Lucy only appears in the second half of the poem, where she is linked with the
English landscape.
"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.
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.
"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 soporific
movement in which figurative language conveys the nebulous image of a girl. The
second maintains the quiet tone of the first. 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". The lifeless rocks and
stones depicted in the concluding line convey the finality of Lucy's death.
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