Topic 44 of 53: William Wordsworth
Wed, Oct 13, 1999 (19:40) |
Wolf (wolf)
28 responses total.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 1 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Wed, Oct 13, 1999 (19:48) * 442 lines
For John:
William Wordsworth. 1770–1850
536. Ode
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,
10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
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As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
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No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
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Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
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My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
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And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—
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I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
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Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
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From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
85
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
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And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
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That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
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Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
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On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,
120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
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Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
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Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
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Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
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To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
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Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 2 of 28: John Burnett (mrchips) * Wed, Oct 13, 1999 (20:17) * 1 lines
Thank you, Marcia, and good night. I think the topic is now overloaded, he he.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 3 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Wed, Oct 13, 1999 (20:29) * 1 lines
I compressed it on wordpad before posting it and it was spread out again. Sorry for messing up your first Wordsworth. After the damage I have inflicted on Spring today I think I shall close out and retire to somewhere else. Aloha!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 4 of 28: John Burnett (mrchips) * Wed, Oct 13, 1999 (21:55) * 1 lines
I was only kidding. Youy didn't mess it up. If I need to see it compressed, I have hard copy of it in my handy-dandy Norton Anthology of English Lit, pt. 2.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 5 of 28: John Burnett (mrchips) * Wed, Oct 13, 1999 (22:00) * 172 lines
LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY,
ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE
DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. -- Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: -- feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: -- that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, --
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft --
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart --
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all. -- I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, -- both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance --
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence -- wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love -- oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 6 of 28: John Burnett (mrchips) * Wed, Oct 13, 1999 (22:04) * 2 lines
At his best, he was as good as anyone. At his worst, well I won't print "Simon Lee" here to make my point...you'll have to look it up if you don't believe me. I don't want to ruin the memory of the fantastic poet whose best stuff my dad used to read to me in my early childhood.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 7 of 28: Amy Keene (Irishprincess) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (00:23) * 20 lines
I used this poem in a story once, and it worked so perfectly for what was happening in the plot! (I won't tell you what it was about, because it would taint your reading of the poem.)
SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 8 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (00:25) * 1 lines
That is incredible. Possibly I am vulnerable right now, but it is making my monitor blurry and my cheeks wet...
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 9 of 28: Wolf (wolf) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (21:52) * 1 lines
hey, i feel like lucy sometimes (alright, a lot!)
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 10 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (22:03) * 1 lines
*hugs* (sniffle) *hugs*
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 11 of 28: Wolf (wolf) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (22:08) * 1 lines
i've written several poems to depict those feelings too. *hugs* back atcha!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 12 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (22:14) * 1 lines
...thanks...those must be angst-ridden verses fyi only...I have written things like that, as well...only to consign them to the flames as too painful to keep. Now, I am sorry I did...!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 13 of 28: John Burnett (mrchips) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (22:17) * 1 lines
Never burn poetry. Put it away under lock and key, but never burn it. What if Dickinson had burned the contents of her steamer trunk?
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 14 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (22:17) * 33 lines
William Wordsworth. 1770–1850
540. The Trosachs
THERE 's not a nook within this solemn Pass,
But were an apt confessional for one
Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone,
That Life is but a tale of morning grass
Wither'd at eve. From scenes of art which chase
5
That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes
Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities,
Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass
Untouch'd, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy quest,
If from a golden perch of aspen spray
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(October's workmanship to rival May)
The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast
That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay,
Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 15 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (22:19) * 1 lines
...You did not tell me in time...I was in pain and did not want to rememeber it, and it was a very l o n g time ago...
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 16 of 28: John Burnett (mrchips) * Thu, Oct 14, 1999 (22:23) * 20 lines
Ironic title, and one of Wordsworth's better "later" (beyond his 30s) works:
Surprised by joy - impatient as the Wind
by William Wordsworth - 1815
Surprised by joy - impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport - Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind -
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss! - That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 17 of 28: Amy Keene (Irishprincess) * Fri, Oct 15, 1999 (11:11) * 1 lines
I know how it is to throw away something that had a lot of potential...when I was younger and cranking out stories every day (which I can't do anymore--I'm lucky to get one a semester,) I had a temper-tantrum and threw a bunch of them away. Granted, they were pretty juvenile, but I might have made them into something.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 18 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Sat, Oct 16, 1999 (14:36) * 39 lines
This one seems to precede the one John posted on Poems of Loss...there are several Lucy poems..I just did not have the heart to handle Poems of Loss this morning.
STRANGE FITS OF PASSION
William Wordsworth
STRANGE fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.
When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.
Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.
And now we reached the orchard-plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came near, and nearer still.
In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eye I kept
On the descending moon.
My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy hould be dead!"
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 19 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Sat, Oct 16, 1999 (14:44) * 55 lines
Can anyone tell me who Lucy was to him? I do not recall anyone in his life other than his sister Dorothy!
THREE YEARS SHE GREW
William Wordsworth
THREE years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This Child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.
"Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.
"She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And her's shall be the breathing balm,
And her's the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
"The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the Storm
Grace that shall mold the Maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
"The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
"And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height,
Her virgin bosom swell;
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
While she and I together live
Here in this happy dell."
Thus Nature spake---The work was done---
How soon my Lucy's race was 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.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 20 of 28: Wolf (wolf) * Sat, Oct 16, 1999 (19:01) * 1 lines
maybe he liked the name!!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 21 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Sat, Oct 16, 1999 (19:59) * 1 lines
either that or he liked the lady bearing the name *smile* It is amazing what a lovely person can do for a seemingly 'ugly' name...!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 22 of 28: John Burnett (mrchips) * Sun, Oct 17, 1999 (02:22) * 6 lines
Nobody knows who "Lucy" was. He wrote the five poems editors grouped together as "Lucy" poems between 1977 and 1801. More specifically four were written in 1799 when W. was in Germany. The fifth in 1801, back in the Lake District.
Wordsworth scholars believe that Lucy was almost certainly NOT Lucy Gray, the subject of a 1799 poem. Lucy Gray was a young girl who got lost in a snowstorm, fell into a canal and drowned. Wordsworth did not know Lucy Gray, but was moved by her story and wrote the poem "Lucy Gray."
As for women in his life, he met and nearly married a woman in France named Annette Vallon during his year there 1791-92. They had a daughter, Caroline, who died young. Annette's father, a surgeon, disapproved of Wordsworth, his poverty at the time, and his anti-Royalist politics, effectively dooming the planned marriage. In 1802, Wordsworth came into his father's inheritance and married a Lake District woman named Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend. There is no account of it being a passionate union
such as the one between him and Vallon, but she lived quietly with Wordsworth and Dorothy, his devoted sister who served as secretary, confidante, and biographer, until her physical and mental decline in the 1830s. Most accounts paint Vallon as the true love of Wordsworth's life. Lucy remains a mystery.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 23 of 28: Wolf (wolf) * Sun, Oct 17, 1999 (10:48) * 1 lines
maybe to protect the innocent, he used lucy as a pseudonym for his true love.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 24 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Sun, Oct 17, 1999 (15:23) * 1 lines
Thanks for that summary of the ladies in WW's life...one mostly hears of Dorothy and the other are swept aside. Perhaps Lucy was an alias adopted to protect someone very special to him...? Of course, unless we unearth something in an attic trunk, we will porbably never know for sure!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 25 of 28: John Burnett (mrchips) * Sun, Oct 17, 1999 (22:48) * 1 lines
He basically lived in a cottage. Don't know where he'd hide a trunk that wouldn't be discovered for 150 years.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 26 of 28: John Burnett (mrchips) * Sun, Oct 17, 1999 (22:52) * 1 lines
I doubt that Lucy was Vallon, but who knows. If Wordsworth told anyone, it was Dorothy, and she didn't talk. Lucy seems to die young in all his poems, but not as a child as the real Lucy Gray did.
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 27 of 28: Marcia (MarciaH) * Sun, Oct 17, 1999 (23:25) * 1 lines
Thanks for the clarification, John! Much appreciated!
Topic 44 of 53 [poetry]: William Wordsworth
Response 28 of 28: Wolf (wolf) * Sat, Nov 6, 1999 (22:38) * 1 lines
maybe it's a personification. the "lucy" he so cared for but was cut short and so she "died"?
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