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William Wordsworth,Lyrical Ballads:

Lucy Poems
William Wordsworth started with Samuel Taylor Colridge the English Romantic
movement with their collection of poems Lyrical Ballads which was first published in
1798.They belong to the first generation of English Romantic poets,and together with
Southy are often refered as the Lake Poets. When many poets still wrote about ancient
heroes in grandiloquent style,Wordsworth focused on nature,children,the poor,common
people and used ordinary words to express his personal feelings,showing that poetry can
be written in the Language of conversation in the middle and lower society.He spent his
life in the Lake District with his sister Dorothy,who was a very important person in his
life.Her thoughts and impressions about nature were a valuable source of inspiration for
her brother,who also introduced himself as Natures child.
Dorothy is also important for being speculated to have been the inspiration for
Wordsworths famous and mysterious Lucy Poems,first published in the second edition of
Lyrical Ballads in 1800.A good deal of attention has been given to biographical problem
raised by these poems.Who was Lucy?Was it Dorothy,or Annette Vallon,Wordsworth
mistress,a certain friend,a well-loved child,or just a figment of his imagination?Was this
group of poems perhapse inspired by poems about an other Lucy,late wife of good lord
Lyttelton?Actually,there is no reason to think that Wordsworth had any particular person
in mind when he was writing these poems,and whatever the personal experience behind
them,these are not personal confessions.
These are lyrical ballads,each of which tells a verse story and presents it
dramatically.We shouldnt mistake the mode of these poems with one of the love
lyric,because we would overlook their structure in that way.Namely,in these poems,as in
the traditional ballad,the story is told as boldly and briefly as possible,using dramatic
changes of state,ironc inversions,and recognitions or discoveries.They differ from the
traditional ballad mainly in the concious intelligence which they bring,and in particular
the laws of nature with which all the life must conform.
As far as the tone is considered,there may be that heavy,dark side.Yet,there is euphony
or harmony of sounds.It has to do with the stress and rhyme pattren(mostly abab),as well
as with the already mentioned choice of language.The language and versification,read
and analyzed nowadays,may seem archaic or conventionl;however,if they are compared
to writings of their time,the content and its expression are smooth,facilated by an overall
result which is easy,pleasing,truly lyrical.

Wordsworth deliberately tried to avoid figures of speech such as personification in

order to elevate his style.The predominant figure of speech is simile,and comparisons are
to various elements of nature.
There are five Lucy Poems,grouped in order in which they were written: She Dwelt
among the Untrodden Ways, Strange Fits of Passion have I Known, Three Years She
Grew, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal, I Travelled among Unknown Men.However, these
five poems werent grouped in this way by the poet himself,Namely,this was done during
the mid-nineteenth century by the editors and critics.These are poems which discourse
about interpersonal love,but that are tacitly about artistic love.So they are all concerned
with love and grief,relationship between man and nature and cycle of life and death.
Poets love for Lucy is intimate and intense.In revealing it,the poet is baring his
soul.Lucy is The joy of his desire; she is cherished,present everywhere.He seems to
see her,feel her at every point in place and time.The sentiment is all-consuming.Cold fear
of lines if Lucy should be dead in Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known is a
premontion of
the impssioned grief at her loss.Sorrow is stark,sharp and
poignant,drenching everything in it.Mourning transforms a happy dell of Three Years
She Grew into a barren heath.The lament in She Dwelt reverberates
But she is in her grave and oh,/the difference to me.The realisation and confession
come suddenly after description of other matter,and the seeming control is deceptive.The
reflection in A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal: No motion has she now,no force;/
She neither hears or sees is less matter-of-fact than it appears.The sadness is deep and
stays long after the poem has finished.The finality in Three Years She Grew
And never more will be is really final.
The poet concendes Lucy in She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways as
quiet,unobtrusive,living unknown.She is an embodiment of Wordsworths perfect
character:solitary,simple,innocent,She is simple,but not crude.She is superlative.In Three
Years She Grew Nature says: A lovelier flower /on earth was never sown. In She Dwelt
amnog the Untrodden Ways she is delicate: a violet by a mossy stone. She is matchless
in her exquisitness in the same poem: Fair as a star,when only one/
Is shining in the sky. And in A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal she is almos ethereal :
She seemed a thing that could not feel/the touch of earthly years.
Lucy belongs to a world aboundin in refernces to manifestations of nature: Lucys cot
under the sinking moon,the bowers as places to play,the wayward,rivulet and its
murmurings,the floating clouds and the turbulent motions of the Storm.The images of
Lucy as a half-hidden violet by a mossy stone,as Fresh as a rose in June;
sportive as a fawn/that wild with glee across the lawn/or mountain springs are crystalclear,precise thanks to the poets eye and ear for the detail,since he was a great lover of
nature.
Strnage Fits of Passion Have I Known is more obviously a ballad than the other Lucy
poems.The poet tells about strange fits of passion,that is,moments when strange fears
have come into his mind.He says that only a lover can understand what he is talking
about.Then he tells,at the first sight simple story about his journey to Lucys cot.Riding
his horse,he keeps his eyes fixed upon the descending moon.This sinking moon,when it
finally descends,provokes seemingly fond and foolish thoughts in the poet :

If Lucy should be dead.The poem actually suggests two different ways of thinking
about our lives in time.We usually think of time as divisible into weeks,days,hours, so
called clock-time,and we dont realize that that time is going to stop for us one day.We
dont think about passage of time as of something that brings us nearer the end of our
life.In the same way poet doesnt think of the moon he is watching as of descending,but
as of shining.He doesnt get the message tne moon conveys until it completely sinks.Only
then does he realize that everything must end,including Lucys life and their love and that
she wont forever be Fresh as rose in June as he first thought.So at the beginning he
refuses to think in such a way,just like we try to ignore the fact that life implies death
which is ineviteable.The only thing lover hears is the rise and fall of his horses
hooves,which represent the clock-time.He only think about how and when he is going to
get to the Lucys cot,without realizing that rose blossoms only to fade,and the moon
shines only to sink.In the same way,mans life is a path to death.Lovers supposently fade
and foolish thoughts are in the end proved to be justified.Whats more,there was an
additional stanza,later omitted,which lives no doubt that his initial fear wasnt
unreasonable:
I told her this;her laughter light
Is ringing in my ears:
And when I think upon that night
My eyes are mim with tears.
Three Years She Grew also tells a story which is narreated mostly by Nature herself.It is
a story of the growth of Lucy to mature beauty and describes the process in which this
beauty is achived.Lucy presents not only a young beautiful woman as one of the miracles
of the Nature,but also all organic forms of life.Nature reveals the methods which she uses
to create the complex unity of living beings.This process is one of opposing polarities.
In the secon stanza there are patterns of antithesis between law and impulse, rock and
plain, earth and heaven, etc.
This opposition forces produced vital energy.In all life,the capacity for conteplation and
quiet depends upon the opposite principle of energy and joy,so we have this pair of
oppositions in next stanza.
Wordsworth understood that the world is largely what the perceiving mind makes of it.So
there will be a balance between spontaneous,free play of individuality,or humans active
participation,and natures control and restrain.This Natures request for obedience is
obvious in the fifth stanza.The maiden must listen and be attentive if she wants to find in
Nature the harmony which is to be reflected in her own being.There are again two
opposing principles in this stanza:the eternal order of midnight stars,and the everchanging dance of rivulets;the compexity of laws of nautre is expressed.
Lucy is being moulded not only physically,but also spiritually,by her imagination,which
can be respond to the patterns which she perceives in the universe.This is described in the
sixth stanza.Nature also reminds again that Lucy is not merely being a passive object to
moulding.
In the end comes the dramatic inversion,characheristic of these ballads.Again,as in the
previous poem,after joyful creation of life,comes ineviteable death,whose creation was

actually implied in the creation of life.It is one of the Natures laws.Thats why the poet
makes no complaint,he simply states that there is nothing left of Lucy,but a memory.
I Travelled among Unknown Men was written two years after the other poems from the
group.It also deals with Lucys life and death,but beside that,it contains some national
and patriotic elements.Of course,this devotion for his country is actually traced to poets
devotion to Lucy,who once lived in that country.He returns from a travel to lands beyond
the sea,he doesnt even mention which lands exactly,considering it irrelevant.The only
important thing for him is that he is again in England.That trave seemed to him as a
melancholy dream,something he wants to forget.Here in his country everything reminds
him of Lucy.That brings him old pain and grief of her death,but also sweet memories of
her life and time they spent together.The history of Lucys life is told firmly cyclical;the
spinning wheel that Lucy turns beside an English fire shows her movin through
childhood,maturity and death.it again suggests that everything is predetermined and
ineviteable.Lucys death isnt mentioned,but only implied,as though she has gently
completed the turning of the wheel.If you read She Dwelt among the Untroddeen Ways
and I Travelled among Unknown Men side by side,its easy to notice they were meant to
complement eachother,and only in terms of meter and rhyme scheme.Namely,they both
speak of love:one to a simple maid,and the other glorifying the magnificent country.Both
end with the mention of physical loss.These complementaries point on the ties between
Man and Nature,between feeling and its expression.

Durrant,G.-Wordsworth
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2220/is_n2_v39/ai_20017512
http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/wordsworth-lucy.html
http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/1999/v/n13/005843ar.html