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1971 Wordworth's "Lucy" Poems Spencer Hall Rhode Island College, [email protected]

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Citation Hall, S. (1971). Wordsworth's" Lucy" poems: Context and meaning. Studies in , 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 , 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 concerning the dramatic and psychological The artistic failures of the his poetic achievement. blundering speak ers in are it clear several of the 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, "" 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. "Lucy" poems (including, reasons which will "I Travelled emerge later, Among Unknown Men") form their own context, in and of themselves. I do not mean this that are a in the by they unity impossibly theoretical, Coleridge an sense of or even their organic wholeness; that individual meanings are when seen as of a structure. This intelligible only part larger would not be for of "A Slumber Did Seal." true, example, My Spirit At the same common time, however, these lyrics do share features set tonal, thematic, conceptual, imaginal, verbal, metrical?which them from other Wordsworth. The reader apart poems by inevitably tends to them in at least a contextual and approach tentatively way; this as I shall to can lead to of approach, try show, important insights both an aesthetic and a nature. philosophical Surprisingly enough, it is observed that the are although commonly "Lucy" poems unique inWordsworth's have almost never been canon, they meaningfully considered as an intradependent group.5 When are of as a the of they thought group, problem chronology arises. To the order ofWordsworth's to judge by letters Coleridge, in which he out the three copied poems, "Strange Fits of Passion" and "She Dwelt the Untrodden were Among Ways" written first and "A a Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" little later in the winter of atGoslar. "Three Years She Grew" was written in the 1798-99 spring when Wordsworth and had leftGoslar and were Dorothy walking the Harz forest to Nordhausen. "I through Travelled Among Un known Men" was two in composed years later April, 1801.6 More than the are the problematical chronology of composition differ ences in the order inwhich the poems appeared in the several editions ofWordsworth's This as with a poetry.7 is, always Wordsworth,

To the is the 5- my knowledge, only exception intelligent study by Taaffe. His conclusions and mine Critics are, however, largely antithetical. have tended to discuss or at the three of the in their only one, most, "Lucy" poems respective works. The most extensive on all five is in commentary probably Geoffrey Durrant, (Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 60-75. 6. For information the and the concerning composition various editions of the "Lucy" poems, see, among others, Taaffe; Herbert Hartman, "Wordsworth's Poems: Notes and 'Lucy' Marginalia," PMLA, 49 (1934), 134-42; and Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: A Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), I, 422-26. 7. In the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads, "Three Years She Grew" comes last and is from the other three. In a to separated by many pages letter Mary Hutchinson in Wordsworth said that "I Travelled Unknown Men" 1801, Among should be inserted third in the after "She series, Dwelt Among the Untrodden and before "A Did came Ways" Slumber My Spirit Seal." When it time for the 1802 re-issue of Wordsworth his Lyrical Ballads, however, apparently changed WORDSWORTH'S "LUCY" POEMS 163

matter. own is I doubt complex My position, however, quite simple: a can in that specific order be determined which would correspond to a or in any critically meaningful fashion plan perspective Words worth's the of mind during period composition. are Having said this, however, there three relevant propositions can which be established, I think, and upon which I shall base my own conclusions the of the regarding unity "Lucy" poems. First, with its the and its "Strange Fits of Passion," "symbolism" of lover comes dominant structural metaphor of sleep and sudden awakening, in all the thus sets the first editions and pattern for the four original lyrics. Second, "I Traveled Among Unknown Men," despite Words to was two worth's letter Mary Hutchinson, written years after the not one others and should only be considered the last in the series, be as a new but should also thought of departure which differs from the four which it. while I significantly poems precede Third, do not with that Slumber Did agree David Ferry "A My Spirit Seal" "is at center 8 the powerful of [Wordsworth's] art," the poem is the most without doubt complex and controversial in the series. is to take the four My plan, therefore, up original "Lucy" poems as a I to using "A Slumber" point of reference. Next, shall try refine context my notion of by distinguishing between "A Slumber" in in particular, and the "Lucy" group general, and another lyric fre quently, and wrongly, confused with them?Wordsworth's of In I shall new "Lucy Gray." conclusion, say something about the of as it is in direction Wordsworth's thought represented "I Trav elled Among Unknown Men."

II

Fits "Strange of Passion" introduces the major structural and thematic elements in the first four "Lucy" poems. The "fits" which the recounts to with the poem have nothing do conventional "pas mind and wanted the inserted after "A Slumber Did poem fourth, My Spirit Seal" and before "Three Years She Grew." For unknown reasons, the poem never was in the 1802 re-issue at and published all, remained unpublished until the Poems In Two Volumes where it of 1807, appeared by itself, the other four not being included. In the 1815 edition of Wordsworth's collected poetry, Fits the "Strange of Passion," "She Dwelt Among Untrodden Ways," and "I were on Travelled Among Unknown Men" all included under "Poems Founded theAffections." "Three Years She Grew" and "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" were included under "Poems of the Imagination." I do not, however, find any relevance in this for the of particular grouping interpretation the poems them selves. 8. The Limits ofMortality (Middletown:Wesleyan University Press, 1959), p. 76. 164 SPENCER HALL

a sion" of lover; Lucy's sexlessness has often been noted. The speak er's does to do of it is the passion have with the perception death; causes to impending threat of mortality which the lover be represen tative of a human sort of value. The does much more specially poem assert not what we we than the truism about knowing have until of this truism have lost it?although the resurrection from platitude to is no means a minor artistic achieve psychological vitality by ment. The reason that the must the speaker suddenly perceive reahty to reason he has of human death is that he has been asleep it; and the to nature it so: one those been asleep it is that has ordered "In of sweet dreams I slept,/Kind Nature's gentlest boon!" Basically, then, the the fades into the She figure of girl Lucy background. becomes, as it the in the were, the occasion for primary conflict poem: that between the lover and nature.9 nature's "boon" The problematical quality of the "kindness" of in the and the of the In stanza emerges language imagery poem. in stanza three and again five, the speaker virtually "attaches" his to the moon in such a as to himself with its eyes way identify steady movement across moon the sky: "Upon the I fixed my eye,/All over the the wide lea," "And all the while my eyes I kept/On verb which descending moon." In lines 7-8, the "bent," could describe as well the moon's arc across the heavens as the taken equally path seems to the motion the moon with by the speaker, also equate of as to cot: to that of the lover he rides Lucy's "I her cottage bent my an there is the real way,/Beneath evening-moon." Finally, carefully horse. who has writ ized rhythm of the speaker's Geoffrey Durrant, ten the perceptively about the "Lucy" poems, opposes "intermittent nature" of the horse's hooves, which he associates with "clock-time," to the "slow and inexorable descent of the moon," which represents, he says, the inevitable approach of death {William Wordsworth, pp. 62-3). I am inclined to see the movements of the horse and the moon as movements correspondent rather than contrary. Both im the reader as press passive, unconscious, fated; they become objective of which nature has the correlatives the sleep imposed upon speaker to the has to be (or, vary the perspective, which speaker allowed imposed upon himself). the Whatever its origins, defining characteristic of the speaker's

On one of the "sweet dreams" 9. level, course, speaker's represent the visions to which lovers are at are (in literature least) notoriously prone. They warm, human, sympathetic, and their change into thoughts of death is the stuff of which drama is made. is the on a less My point that situation operates different, more level as well: the dreams of love have in romantic, philosophic, speaker's fact been a kind which nature has used to drown his of of opiate consciousness own mortality, and thus of his human identity. WORDSWORTH'S "LUCY" POEMS 165

and thus of human sleep is lack of consciousness identity. Having on "I" the "fixed" his eyes themoon, the of speaker is eclipsed, except stanza in in five, where he reaffirms his sleepy "fixation," and the final two the where he awakens to the dual lines of poem, suddenly awareness and The "I" to of death self. personal pronoun gives way "we" and in the fourth and to the (the speaker his horse) stanza, horse in stanza: alone, "he," the crucial sixth "My horse moved on; never hoof after hoof/He raised, and stopped." As others have the somnambulism undercuts noticed, moreover, speaker's ironically as a can assume his role lover. Not until he puts off nature's dreams he the It is a full, human meaning of that role. part of much larger that the loss of the loved one the of irony, of course, only (or fear such can lover to assume loss) induce the his proper identity. Images of determinate motion connoting, like the figures of horse moon in a to and "Strange Fits of Passion," threat human conscious ness reverberate through the first four "Lucy" poems. Such connota tions are and in the lightly ambiguously present perhaps image of "untrodden which has found so ways" Bateson suggestive.10 They more become pronounced in "Three Years She Grew": "Thus Nature was soon race was spake?The work done?/How my Lucy's runV to (italics mine). And, needless say, they acquire full voice in the lines of "A Did concluding Slumber My Spirit Seal," where is seen seen as "earth's diurnal course" steadily and whole, and not, in Fits of from the and "Strange Passion," affrighted partial perspective a awakened a to of suddenly mind: mind stirred life by intimations of which must be hidden from in the mortality itself guise of "fond and wayward thoughts."

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide Into a Lover's head? to "O mercy!" myself I cried, "If Lucy should be dead!"

As so often with the diction here is Wordsworth, easily parodied: "O threatens to to mind a host domestic or mercy" bring of colloquial Read word expletives. properly, however, the "mercy" should retain of its something theological heritage (see also, in this respect, the word "grace" in line 23 of "Three Years She Grew"). The lover, to awareness of human suddenly brought mortality, breathes what amounts to a desperate prayer in the final stanza, and the essential of his situation is that there is or no one to heed perplexity " nothing his but himself. to I supplication 'O mercy!' myself cried": the io. Wordsworth: A Re-interpretation (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1954), p. 30. 166 SPENCER HALL

of now personal pronoun, suggestive individuated human identity, is reintroduced into the with a poem vengeance. The speaker emerges from the which are an dreams "kind Nature's gentlest boon" to awareness of but a not intimate but selfhood, selfhood, only with, defined human loss. This same con by, recognition of loss marks the lines of "She Dwelt cluding Among the Untrodden Ways" and "Three Years She Grew." In all nature seem to of these poems, would betray the heart that loves her?or if she doesn't nature at least allows the really betray, to believe in a turns out speaker quasi-immortality for Lucy which to be The an in nature illusionary. promise of such immortality and of is manifest, I think, in the famous second stanza of "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways." Whatever else the comparison of to a violet and a star it assures the Lucy may signify, tacitly speaker stars a that his beloved is, like and flowers, part of nature's eternality. The assurance, of course, proves to be false: "But she is in her grave, to and, oh,/The difference me!" The cleavage between human lover nature in "Three Years She nature and dilates Grew," the speaker and in rivals for love. And it in becoming, effect, Lucy's is implicit Fits in what as as "Strange of Passion" is left out, well in what remains. mean a I by this that the manuscript version of the poem includes stanza was final which deleted for publication:

I told her this; her laughter light Is in ears: ringing my I And when think upon that night are tears. My eyes dimmed with

were doubtless a number of reasons Wordsworth cut There why this stanza, but I am interested here in a thematic consideration which a parallels the direction of my argument. To end the lyric with between the soon-to-die and the would not dialogue Lucy speaker sentimentalize what is a unsentimental but also only markedly poem, the theme. as I deflect attention from poem's central That theme is, see as came to it and I believe Wordsworth understand it, the prob "kind lematical relationship, and ultimate conflict, between Nature" and Lucy's human lover. to is the "Three Years She Grew," according Herbert Hartman, the as it does the "gospel" poem of "Lucy" series, "elaborating the influence of natural objects and piety upon child?a philosophy," are X1 he continues, "with which the others far less deeply interfused." ii. on one one Herbert Hartman, 134. The poem is, level, of the most a beautiful elaborations of favorite Wordsworthian speculation: nature's educa tion of man to ultimate of through contrary impulses leading unity being. WORDSWORTH'S "LUCY" POEMS 167

is a the Undeniably, there magical loveliness which shadows relation between and nature in this "And born of ship Lucy lyric: beauty One the murmuring sound/Shall pass into her face." suspects that was circumstances under which the poem composed?a springtime left their walk through the Harz forest?have mark upon it. Still, to not the poem is related the other three original lyrics only by the reversal at the when the end, speaker suddenly recognizes Lucy's human but its Given Words mortality, by very "gospel" quality. as in worth's ideas about poetic diction manifested the Lyrical Ballads, a a line which personified Nature speaking thirty-five apostrophe includes as and such diction "Lady" (1.6) "virgin bosom" (I.33) would seem to and rather than suggest formality distance, loving man nature. interchange, between and As has been the lover and nature contend for said, actually pos session of and nature's Lucy, victory is signalled by the number of uses stanzas one two: personal pronouns she in and

This Child I tomyself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make own. A Lady of my

Myself will tomy darling be Both law and and me_ impulse: with

to "How soon race was The lover's lone claim possession, my Lucy's ear a run" (italics mine), strikes the with pathetic futility, futility double stanza one. heightened by the meaning of "of my own" in Once the of human comes with again, recognition relationship only that such no the consciousness relationship is longer possible. about "Three Years She David unveils a Writing Grew," Ferry in the major interpretative problem first four "Lucy" poems. He says:

We are made to two is a feel exactly contradictory feelings: first, that it pity so a so beautiful girl should have been taken away young, just when she had been for her life on and her is perfected earth; second, that death justified and the culmination of the work Nature was Even in right, only adequate doing. her life on earth she was in a with natural and special communication things, before our she becomes not so much a human as a sort of com eyes being nature. pendium of (Limits, p. 76)

The a most notion of contradictory feelings is perceptive appraisal seems to of reader response. It me, however, that Ferry has somewhat diluted the quality of the contradiction. The easily sentimentalized at the death of a beautiful which of an pity girl, is, course, elegiac is or in the commonplace, only superficially ostensibly operative these "Lucy" poems. The "contradiction" which poems exploit and 168 SPENCER HALL

between the human define is,most broadly, that inherently present and the natural orders. with that the thrust of the I disagree profoundly Ferry "Lucy" see as poems is to "the ideal human condition" that "of being hardly at Given the human all," of being "one with nature" (Limits, p. 74). in at the end of "Three Years She reversal the speaker's consciousness the fact that ismore a of nature" than a Grew," Lucy "compendium seem to be a cause for doubt and "human being" would perplexity rather than celebration.

Nature work was done Thus spake?The soon race was How my Lucy's run! She died, and left to me This heath, this calm, and quiet scene; The memory of what has been, And never more will be.

not The ideal human condition is at issue in the "Lucy" poems. The to human at all the difficult contradiction between the threat being is; life of nature and the life of man is. We come now to the most controversial of the "Lucy" poems. "A differs from the three Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" lyrics already its are the of discussed; but differences largely consequence pursuing to conclusion the "humane" which has its inescapable perspective to been traced so far. Since the poem has so often been subjected shall resist the to add one more close readings by others, I temptation to the number here.12 Suffice it to that in "A Slumber" analysis say and sudden reaches the theme of sleepy unconsciousness awakening most most structural its economical, and powerful, expression. In stanza one, the lover relives, in the past tense, his belief that Lucy a not was somehow deathless: "She seemed thing that could feel/The of He calls this delusive belief a to touch earthly years." "slumber," "because it is not his quote Geoffrey Hartman, something entering a or a so that consciousness but dream deep its explicitly, supposition 13 existence is not revealed until the delusion is actually destroyed." and the second The inevitable destruction occurs; Lucy dies; stanza, in the records the new awareness which her spoken present tense, his "slumber" in stanza death forces upon the speaker. During one, not seem to be a the lover "had no human fears" because Lucy did

and see F. R. 12. Besides Bateson, Brooks, Ferry, Durrant, especially Leavis, Emotional and "'Thought' and Quality," Scrutiny, 13 (Spring 1945), 53?5 of in ed. Charles S. Paul DeMan, "The Rhetoric Temporality," Interpretation, Univ. Singleton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969), pp. 205-6. 13. Wordsworth's Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), p. 159. WORDSWORTH'S "LUCY" POEMS 169

In stanza he becomes aware of her human being. two, humanness, at the cost the fact of her but only of recognizing mortality. reason "A One for the apparent power and complexity of Slumber" all the it is both the most of the is that of "Lucy" poems revelatory own and the one which considers speaker's consciousness only really on herself. In "She Dwelt the effect of Lucy's death Lucy Among "cease to to "her the Untrodden Ways," Lucy [s] be," goes grave," in and the focus of the poem returns to the "difference" this makes Fits death is a the lover's feelings. In "Strange of Passion," Lucy's drama enacted in the lover's mind. In "Three psychological wholly is mentioned in a line and a Years She Grew," Lucy's death third, soon race was and then our "How my Lucy's run!/She died," again attention reverts to the sorrow of the lover. In "A Slumber Did My the entire second stanza is devoted to the Spirit Seal," however, of the death: sheer physical consequence girl's

No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.

In other is the creation of the the lyrics, Lucy effectively speaker's is filtered his and he remembers mind. Her being through memory, as was her she alive: beautiful, vital, fragile, and yet somehow beyond like a is to a violet the touch of temporality, flower. Lucy compared the and a "rose in in in "She Dwelt Among Untrodden Ways" June" Fits Of Passion"; as Nature says in "Three Years She "Strange 14 Grew," "A lovelier flower/On earth was never sown." In "A to her as she is Slumber," however, the speaker attempts imagine now, as she is dead; when he does so, the individuated vitalism of to the vast astronomical indifference "earth's the flower gives way of to inertness diurnal course";15 the comparative of "rocks, and stones, and to the charnel of the "rolled trees";16 grimly passivity image, in his 14. Carl Woodring, Wordsworth, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), such looks back to Milton's who p. 46, has suggested that imagery Proserpine a "Gath'ring flow'rs/ Herself fairer Flow'r by gloomy Dis/Was gather'd." The to does seem to in to allusion, Paradise Lost, IV, 269-71, correspond part Lucy's nature: at once human victim and strangely ambivalent quasi-nature goddess. has 15. Technically scientific language generally problematical, often negative, seems to associations inWordsworth's early poetry. Such is the case, it me, with the often discussed term, "diurnal." as 16. It may be Hirsch, following Bateson, suggests, that Wordsworth rocks and stones "in as as of the immortal life regarded 1799 deeply alive, part nature." The context this of proper for determining meaning is, however, the not a And when that context "Lucy" poems themselves, presumptive pantheism. a is consulted, substantially different interpretation results. 170 SPENCER HALL

comes to awareness round." The speaker the deepest of his own, and because he is forced of Lucy's, threatened humanness precisely of his own his own beyond the interior landscape mind, memory, to a more more "A complete and objective view of things. Slumber Did one in My Spirit Seal" reflects of the major tensions Words worth's the never concluded to move poetry: satisfactorily attempt to an which would be both sufficient and beyond self objectivity necessary.

Ill

stance" in can Wordsworth's "subjective "A Slumber" be brought out the to an further, perhaps, by contrasting lyric "Lucy Gray," other written in the winter of poem 1798-99 and often thought of? it seems to me?as of the Irene wrongly, part "Lucy" group. Chayes, a in her informative study, "Little Girls Lost: Problems of Romantic sees both and the heroine of the Archetype," Lucy Gray "Lucy" as Romantic variants of the She com poems Persephone archetype. Wordsworth's "lost with Blake's pares girls" Lyca:

As is headed toward was to as Lyca presumably what later be particularized so Blake's Eden, the lost Lucy Gray, mingling with the sound and motion of the moor that will her the wind, gives promise she eventually join namesake, heroine of the in , absorption into Wordsworthian world-soul, to be "Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,/With rocks and stones, and trees."17

not with wind on the but Indeed, Lucy Gray only mingles the moor, seems to a new take possession, in and through death, of and fuller some mode of existence. (The scepticism potentially present in "Yet I in the maintain" is not, think, actualized poem.)

some to ?Yet maintain that this day She is a livingchild; see sweet That you may Lucy Gray the lonesome wild. Upon

and she O'er rough smooth trips along, And never looks behind; a And sings solitary song That whistles in the wind.

in Blake: A Collection Critical ed. ij. Reproduced of Essays, Northrop Frye Cliffs: Miss does (Englewood Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 74. Chayes recognize, not have "full stature" as a however, that Lucy does Lucy Gray's (p. 74) is the heroine of Blake's two Persephone (or Kore) archetype. Lyca companion Innocence and "The Little Girl Lost" and poems in Songs of of Experience, "The Little Girl Found." WORDSWORTH'S "LUCY" POEMS 171

Her is in fact an into mysterious drowning symbolic absorption nature's life.Her death, in accordance with the Romantic version of the Miss does seem to liberate Persephone myth described by Chayes, into a more kind of existence. Lucy Gray freer, positive can same in "A Did But the be said of the Lucy Slumber My Spirit Seal"?

No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees;

Other critics have noted the emphasis which Wordsworth places in these lines?an which enhanced upon the negatives emphasis is by contrast to the of and which implicit powers sight, motion, hearing define in stanzas of "Three Years She Grew." Unlike Lucy 3-5 Lucy the does not Gray, the heroine of "Lucy" poems achieve through death a more existence in nature. to expansive Lucy's relationship nature while alive is recreated in the consciousness of the lover who narrator cannot, like the detached, reportorial, and credulous of look the and human loss "Lucy Gray," beyond bounds of mortality once in she has died. And when, "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal," the to he resorts to a set of poet attempts imagine Lucy dead, images utter connoting and hopeless passivity. The is some recent has last point of importance since criticism come to stress an toward the condition of in impulse death Words is one worth's poetry. This impulse modification of the principle of to was permanence which the poet strongly attracted; its substance is an inclination towards the and mysterious finality deeply-abiding of the or it stability dead dead-like; manifests itself frequently in treatment Wordsworth's of solitaries. In "The Danish Boy," for which would with example, John Jones include, along "Lucy Gray," in the Wordsworth ends with "Lucy" canon,18 the striking line: "Like a dead he is serene." One recalls too the Boy early versions of the "Intimations which so ," disturbed Coleridge, in which the child as pictures the grave

but a bed the sense or lonely without sight or warm Of day the light, A of where we in lie.... place thought waiting

18. The Egotistical Sublime (London: Chatto & Windus, i960), p. 71. Jones but does not it seems to recognizes properly evaluate, me, the uniqueness of the four original "Lucy" poems:

same as They touch the issues Wordsworth's other poetry of solitude and but their extreme of tone context relationship, spirituality and lack of literal is altogether untypical, (p. 70) 172 SPENCER HALL

I think that the can While "Lucy" poems be profitably studied in relation toWordsworth's and to his solitaries impulse toward the an essential to death-like, there is qualification be made. Like Lucy even in are Gray, like the buried children "We Seven," the Danish retains the aura of an individuated human he he Boy identity; sings, nature. true plays his harp, he observes the changes in This is also of the in the version the child early of "Ode": although the grave shuts out sense a impressions, it is "place of thought" and thus of human most consciousness and identity.Wordsworth's death-full solarities, the Old Leech Gatherer and the Soldier in The Prelude, for instance, are rich in an almost consciousness in as suprahuman proportion they are the senses. deprived of life of the Wordsworth's interest in the to in order to putting body sleep a we to become living soul is well-known. What need understand "A Slumber Did Seal" is nature about My Spirit the uncompromising is a corre of its vision. Lucy deprived of bodily function without increase in or sponding spirit consciousness. Nor is this increase im as plicitly transferred, it is inmost of the other poems on solitaries, to the the The is in mind of speaker. lover-poet unique that he does not to a derive from his approach deathfulness genuinely enhanced the conception of power and mysterious depth of the human mind. Does this mean that the last two lines of "A Slumber" reflect and bitter Not at all. Nor do "inconsolability irony?" they imply, as a a has been said, "vision of unity," "a rightful unification with beneficent natural world" (Taaffe, "Poet and Lover," 178-9). Both seem to me to of these interpretations be overstated and inattentive to the of the tone. Wordsworth does not em particularity poem's a brace the universe in vision of pantheistic oneness; neither does he the the with the "rage against dying of light" unregenerate irony of a or the an Byronic hero uncomprehending bitterness of homme sensuel. As Hartman "The have moyen Geoffrey puts it, poem may mood is its structural irony, but the poet's meditative beyond irony" (Wordsworth's Poetry, p. 159). At the of this I between the and beginning essay, distinguished poet the that the lover's voice becomes a lover, and I suggested part of in In we hear larger dialectic the "Lucy" poems. "A Slumber," still accents we are aware the of the lover; still of the special quality of sets humanness which he against the encroachments of mortality. At the same time, however, and for the first time in any of the we poems have considered, the voice of the bereaved lover is dom inated it is no means lost what I would call the by, although by in, has been a and an voice of the poet. Once again, there slumber to the of human awakening threatening knowledge mortality. Now, WORDSWORTH'S "LUCY" POEMS 173

in a however, this knowledge provokes the speaker substantially different thus a quality of consciousness and changed poetic voice. The voice of the as does at the end "" poet speaks, it of even awe and "The Ruined Cottage," of resignation, acceptance, and at the an awe processes of the universe, but which is,while deeply There are two in sincere, ultimately joyless. great guiding principles come Wordsworth's experience of life which into conflict in this the of and of in poem: principles permanence pleasure. Everywhere his poetry and his prose, Wordsworth tends to revere that which is whether in nature or permanent, regular, deeply abiding, in the heart of man. An and implicit essential promise of his early poetic theory, as for in to a mar expressed, example, the Preface Lyrical Ballads, is between this of and the riage principle permanence power of joy.

Nor let this of as a necessity producing immediate pleasure be considered of the Poet's art. It is far It is an degradation otherwise. acknowledgment of the of the . . . it is a to beauty universe, further, homage paid the native and naked of to the of he dignity man, grand elementary principle pleasure, by which knows, and feels, and lives, and moves.

"A Did Seal" to a Slumber My Spirit and, lesser degree, the other three are original "Lucy" poems, unique because their view of time and nature differs from the characteristic permutations of the concept of inWordsworth's do on one permanence thought. They not, the or the of man" in hand, ground (pantheistically otherwise) "dignity the or of or in the teleology goodness nature, "grand elementary prin of Nor do on the the ciple pleasure." they assume, other, perspective of "the faith that looks death" to secure human in through identity a mortal existence. tone post- (or pre-) The of resignation in "A not Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" is much different from that in "Resolution and or stanzas Independence" in the concluding of the "Intimations that it is unrelieved the in Ode," except by hope Chris tian and which providence spiritual immortality broods, however over the later one unconvincingly, Wordsworth. Perhaps this is reason, along with the often discussed artistic ones, which made Wordsworth's with the a experiment "Lucy" poems poetic dead-end. or no The perspectives of the lover the poet who finds sufficient for human either in nature or are remedy mortality beyond it per which it would have spectives been impossible forWordsworth, to beingWordsworth, sustain. his Despite modernity, and it is considerable; despite his "existen tial" and he does exhibit tendencies, some; despite his egoism, which is both ample and sublime, Wordsworth's idosyncratic mode of humanism demands some of sustenance principle beyond the indi 174 SPENCER HALL

vidual self. The first four the existence of "Lucy" poems question on a sense any such principle, and thus border peculiarly modern of the was both and unable to tragedy which poet unwilling explore.

IV

It is in this that I think context, finally, "I Travelled Among Un known Men" must be understood. The "in critical judgment that it as to the as feeling and language belongs closely other four though same it had been written at the time" (Moorman, p. 422) seems to me to in in two be untenable. Written England 1801, years after the a new more others, "I Travelled" represents, rather, departure; it an to transmute the precisely, represents attempt nascently tragic of the first four into a new and perceptions poems affirmative form. Most critics have found "I Travelled" to be inferior to the artistically one to a common other"Lucy" poems, and is tempted read critical this as more conven place into fact: Wordsworth's views became to tional, his poetry tended decline. However the is a this may be, poem remarkable example of what be in a might called, psychoanalytic terms, type of displacement. The the unknown foreignness, mystery originally surrounding are now a across Lucy's life and death, given local habitation the channel:

I travelled amoung unknown men, In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.

stanza two The image of slumber and dream in (" 'Tis past, the no as in to a melancholy dream!") longer refers, the previous poems, state of human consciousness or problematical unconsciousness. The allusion now is to an still historical, although metaphorically potent, event: Wordsworth's traumatic sojourn inGermany. Most the relation to is importantly, poet-lover's Lucy dissolved, with its and considerable of human in along complex range meaning, the a patriot's love of country. Lucy becomes sentimentalized and conventionally-conceived talisman inWordsworth's love song to in the to England ("thy" following quatrain refers England):

Among thy mountains did I feel The joy ofmy desire; And she I cherished turned her wheel an Beside English fire. WORDSWORTH'S "LUCY" POEMS 175

As has evolved Crane Brinton pointed out,Wordsworth's patriotism severe It is to see the from introspection.19 possible poet's nationalism, turned into as an to domesti which gradually reactionism, attempt to a cate, to traditionalize, and thus somehow control power of insight he was no able to sustain and which he and imagination which longer came, therefore, to fear. seem to In the broadest sense, the "Lucy" poems almost telescope the of life. developmental pattern Wordsworth's poetic They provide an of the of the which uniquely uncompromised expression depth gulf he discovered could exist between man and nature; and, in "I Trav elled Unknown afford one of the earliest Among Men," they inwhich he was to seek after such examples of the way redemption on the one are the most knowledge. While, hand, they probably and individualized that the ever stylized highly thing poet wrote, context as broad as the ultimate of the "Lucy" poems is Words worth's poetry itself.

University of Virginia

19. Political Ideas of the English Romanticists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), p. 55.