Rhode Island College Digital Commons @ RIC Faculty Publications 1971 Wordworth's "Lucy" Poems Spencer Hall Rhode Island College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/facultypublications Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Citation Hall, S. (1971). Wordsworth's" Lucy" poems: Context and meaning. Studies in Romanticism, 10(3), 159-175. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/25599802 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ RIC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ RIC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Wordsworth's "Lucy" Poems: Context and Meaning SPENCER HALL ED. in a recent book on the of HIRSCH, theory interpreta discusses the of in the most tion, problem meaning famous Wordsworth's # of "Lucy" poems, "A Slumber Did My Seal." He to the the two Spirit points opposing interpretations of last the round lines of poem?"Rolled in earth's diurnal course,/With and rocks, and stones, trees"?put forward by F. W. Bateson and a Cleanth Brooks respectively. For Bateson, the lines constitute "climax" of "Pantheistic for magnificance"; Brooks, they suggest time most "dead lifelessness" and "earthly in its powerful and horrible Hirsch concludes that is no of image." there way reconciling these both of which seem and contrary emphases, linguistically plausible; that the to the of the is to only way verify meaning poem "establish the most means recon probable context," by which he "a deliberate stance to extent struction of the author's subjective the that this x stance is relevant to the text at hand." in this is to a context the My purpose essay suggest for interpreta not of "A Slumber Did but the tion, only My Spirit Seal," of "Lucy" as a I shall that the poems group. argue meaning of these poems lies neither in nor a despairing irony pantheistic affirmation, but in humanism which borders on the and whose are tragic implications relevant to an of broadly understanding Wordsworth's poetic devel opment. The context which I wish to propose ismulti-faceted; some of these facets have been if not other recognized, formulated, by critics. Let us with own statements to begin Wordsworth's in the Preface i. in Haven: Yale Validity Interpretation (New University Press, 1967). Bateson and Brooks are more on quoted fully by Hirsch p. 228. The material on quoted from Hirsch himself is pp. 238-39. Hirsch thinks that Wordsworth's tendencies the determinant context for pantheistic provide interpreting "A not an Slumber Did My Spirit Seal": "The poet is homme moyen sensuel; his characteristic attitudes are somewhat Instead of pantheistic. regarding rocks and stones and trees as inert merely objects, he probably regarded them in 1799 as as of the immortal life of nature." to deeply alive, part According Bateson, "stones and trees . .. had a value special mystical forWordsworth." He cites as evidence The Prelude, 1805 version, III, 124-26 and 161-62, {English Poetry: A Introduction Critical [London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1950], p. 29). It should be noted that Hirsch is much more tentative about Wordsworth's supposed than is Bateson. His interest is and the pantheism primary theoretical, theory of context itself is unaffected whether the is or is not a by poet pantheist. Person ally, I find itdifficult to thinkof anymajor poem byWordsworth inwhich the stance" of the and thus the "subjective author, presumptive meaning of the is in or poem, pantheistic any conceptually aesthetically determinant way. 159 160 SPENCER HALL nature of Lyrical Ballads concerning the dramatic and psychological The artistic failures of the his poetic achievement. blundering speak ers in are it clear several of the lyrical ballads notorious. And yet is thatWordsworth was interested in the of quite consciously problems he not some persona and point-of-view; that often attempted, without to the his success, manipulate speakers of poems for psychological and thematic effects.With this in mind, it seems reasonable to ask a as narrator the why Wordsworth chose lover the of "Lucy" most poems.2 The obvious answer, of course, is thatWordsworth in a a love speaks the person of lover because he iswriting group of a Over the poems stemming from real, biographical experience. past there have been numerous to this fifty years, attempts pinpoint to the "real" I share the hypothetical experience and identify Lucy. recent to as tendency of criticism dismiss these attempts irrelevant to not as as and view the "Lucy" poems, disguised biography, but concern the theme in essential poetic documents which major man nature. Wordsworth's best work, the relationship between and is the or or What, then, dramatic symbolic philosophical meaning of the persona of the lover in the "Lucy" poems? One writer has to the the the said thatWordsworth transfers world of lover prob lems of which are also those of the both lover and temporality poet; are and often concerned with the limita poet intimately tragically tions of would take this a farther. even more mortality.31 step Perhaps a un so than the poet, the lover represents type of specifically and in the world of and compromisingly human involvement process The him as one who did?find change. poet may?Coleridge defined man nature. on the other ways of reconciling and The lover, hand, were like the hero ofWordsworth's "Matthew" poems which written with the first four has contemporaneously "Lucy" poems, only one, all-too-human as the his That once being object of passion. being as as dead, his loss is total it is definitively human. As Wordsworth "the says in "Three Years She Grew," there is nothing left but never more contrast to memory of what has been,/And will be." In the even creative of celebrated supportive, unifying, powers memory 2. use a lover as in other most Wordsworth did occasionally speaker poems, in the beautiful "A There is successfully, perhaps, extraordinarily Complaint." narrator even a All a lover for and "Lucy" in "Among Lovely Things My Love Had Been," which "I Travelled Unknown Men" immediately precedes " Among in Poems In Two Volumes (1807). See also, 'Tis said, that some have died for as in love." The radical differences between the narrator-lover used the "Lucy" as elsewhere inWordsworth's too poems and employed poetry are, however, to here. manifest require discussion 61 3. James TaafTe, "Poet and Lover inWordsworth's 'Lucy' Poems," MLR, (1966), 175. WORDSWORTH'S "LUCY" POEMS 161 in The Prelude and elsewhere, recollection in the "Lucy" poems is not a means of It acts to remind the "But grace. only lover of his loss: she is in her grave, and, oh,/The difference to me!" ("She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways").4 I a stanza find special relevance, therefore, in the first of "Strange Fits Passion." states he "dare to of When the speaker that will tell" his ear we are more passion "but in the Lover's alone," alerted to than the that to mine the vein of fact Wordsworth plans particularly rich a lover's in order to trace "the manner inwhich we asso sensibility ciate ideas in a state of excitement." We are alerted, I think, to a and special fragile kind of humanism which is symbolized by the the and which a figure of lover will become part, but only part, of to as a larger dialectic be enacted in the "Lucy" series whole. context The second aspect of the interpretative which I would establish is in nature. If the of the "real" biographical identity Lucy is the fact the largely irrelevant, thatWordsworth composed first in four "Lucy" poems during his stay Germany is not. The bleak at and frustrating winter which the poet spent Goslar in 1798-99 is a matter of common From knowledge. this problematical winter derive a number which of poems confront the implications of human death. and rather our Particularly interesting, surprising given usual notions about Wordsworth, is the range in tone which these poems the display: from elegiac poignancy of the "Matthew" poems, to the satire "A to uncharacteristic of Poet's Epitaph," the strange confu sion of "To a which vascillates between Sexton," unsuccessfully the not maudlin and the grotesque. Whether or Wordsworth's charac teristic attitudes were and that pantheistic, I doubt they were, the context of the four must be as a original "Lucy" poems thought of case. not special Their immediate, if ultimate, frame of reference should be defined in terms of cast Wordsworth's peculiar of thought and his in a cast feeling during stay Germany; of thought and feeling which in in a radical and at times expressed itself, part, highly idio awareness of human death. As most commentators have syncratic to perceived, it is the speaker's coming consciousness about man's not the death the is matter mortality, of girl per se, which the subject of these lyrics. As will be this does not to "I Travelled 4. seen, generalization apply Among Unknown Men." that the reader two My argument requires distinguish between When I to the or mean poetic groupings. refer "Lucy" poems series, I the five as lyrics conventionally denominated such. For reasons which will become I exclude from the to apparent, "Lucy Gray" series altogther. When I refer the "first four" or "four I mean to original" "Lucy" poems, exclude "I Travelled Unknown Men." The reasons Among for making this distinction will also be made clear in the text. 162 SPENCER HALL The final of context to which I would is in aspect point implicit what has been said The for already.