Muhammad Umair

M. A Finals

7.03.2019

Poetry Assignment

Noble and Virtue sometimes recieve little or no attention throughout

life.
"She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" - Lucy's isolation and being relatively unknown until news of
her death. Imagine reading a gravestone of a person unknown to you and imagining/creating
idealizations of what that person may have been like.

"Three years she grew in sun and shower" - again, linking Lucy to nature; her death separates her from
nature and humanity.

The poems are all different, different variations. Speculation about who Lucy is goes from his sister
Dorothy, Mary Hutchinson, or a made up person - who may or may not be a conglomeration of people
Wordsworth knew (possibly including those mentioned) as well as his own idealizations.

The poems are about a muse: love, or object of affection, inspiration - loved from afar and the
poet's/speaker dealing with the death of that person (Lucy). Compounding that grief is that Lucy was the
virtual and good ones lady. Who cares about people but suffered alone.

The Lucy poems begin with "Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known." This speculates about the
death/disappearance of his inspiration with the sinking moon analogy. The speaker reflects on what his
mood would be like in the wake of the death of his ideal love.

"A Slumber did my spirit steal" - the finality of Lucy's death and the speaker's calm because Lucy is at
peace and beyond the trials of life. There is almost a consolation for the speaker because although Lucy
has died (as if in a dream - 1st stanza and then in reality - 2nd stanza), she is now more connected to
nature, albeit separated from humanity.Now we can feel the virtuality of lucy.

She is less important, though, as a particular, precisely individualized person than as a symbol of any
beloved female. Although this poem is part of a series of lyrics by Wordsworth involving “Lucy,” she
remains more a “type” of character than an individual with a highly specific personality of her own. She
is more important as the object of the speaker’s feelings than as a complicated subject in her own right.
The poem, as it turns She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" - Lucy's isolation and being relatively
unknown until news of her death. Imagine reading a gravestone of a person unknown to you and
imagining/creating idealizations of what that person may have been like.

No sooner is the woman’s presence established by the poem’s first word than we immediately sense that
something has changed. No sooner, that is, do we read “She” than we read “dwelt” (past tense). Why is
she no longer dwelling? Has she moved? Has something bad happened to her? We later learn, of
course, that she is dead, but, for the moment, the word “dwelt” merely raises questions.

The fact that the woman dwelled among “untrodden” ways is significant. Her surroundings, apparently,
were rural; she was a figure of the country rather than the city. Romantic poets in general—and
Wordsworth in particular—often saw the country as a place of virtue and the city as a place of vice, and
so we can expect that the speaker will be sympathetic toward (rather than dismissive of) a young woman
living in the countryside. Presumably she was not only a rural woman but a woman of relatively modest
circumstances, and it is partly the fact that she represents the common folk of rural England that will
make her attractive both to the speaker and to Wordsworth.

Wherever it was that she “dwelt” in the countryside, it was in a place (or places) not frequently visited.
Notice, then, what this fact implies about the speaker: he, somehow, has visited her dwelling place; he,
somehow, has had the chance to know and appreciate her, and now he shares that privilege with the
reader. The poem will imply that she was somehow a particularly intriguing person, but the poem will
also imply that the speaker himself was capable of valuing a human being who might easily have been
overlooked or ignored by others.

The fact that the “Maid” dwelled “Beside the springs of Dove” is intriguing for several reasons. First, the
word “springs” immediately associates her with life and purity—with freely running, clear water
emerging from the earth. Thus in all these ways she is associated with the beauty and vitality of nature.
Secondly, “springs” once again emphasizes the remoteness of her home: she did not live in a place
where the river was wide, deep, or well-traveled. Just as the paths on the ground leading to her home
were relatively “untrodden,” so her home was not easily accessible by boat. In both ways, then, her
isolation is emphasized.

Finally, the reference to the “Dove” river seems significant. Several rivers in England and Wales bear this
or similar names, and so the word “Dove” seems important more for what it symbolizes than for its
precise geographical significance. The birds called doves, of course, have long been associated with
peace, tranquility, gentleness, tenderness, love, beauty, life (as in the Biblical legend of Noah), and even
the Holy Spirit (as in various other Biblical passages). (For more on the symbolism of doves, almost all of
it attractive in a variety of cultures, see Hans Biedermann's Dictionary of Symbolism.) The resonance of
the poem’s second line would be quite different if, for instance, the speaker had mentioned “the springs
of Hawk” or “the springs of Raven,” not to mention other kinds of birds one might easily name. The
phrase “springs of Dove” implies, in two ways at once, both freedom and beauty.

Line 3 describes the “Maid” as someone “whom there were none to praise,” but of course this poem,
paradoxically, rectifies that deficiency. In other words, this very poem praises the Maid even as it laments
the absence of persons to praise her. Similarly, when line 4 describes her as someone whom there were
“very few to love,” the poem itself once again seems to express the very love or affection it says the
woman was denied. Yet the emphasis here on the past tense (“were”) implies that both the praise and
the love the poem expresses may somehow be coming too late.
In the poem’s second stanza, both the imagery and the tone of the work become literally darker. The
color white, associated with the “Dove,” had been the main color emphasized in the first stanza. Now, in
stanza two, the dark, purple flower (and color) known as “violet” receives immediate stress. The speaker,
using a metaphor, describes the “Maid” as “A violet by a mossy stone / Half hidden from the eye,”
thereby implying her beauty, her smallness and delicacy, and her remoteness. Once again, the phrasing
is paradoxical: if the young woman was once “Half hidden from the eye,” part of the function of the
present poem is to call attention to her and celebrate her, yet the speaker’s praise (as the poem will soon
reveal) comes too late. When we later discover that the maid is dead, we realize that she is now no
longer merely half-hidden but (at least physically) completely hidden in the grave. Yet (to compound the
paradoxes even further) she will be much better known through this poem (while dead) than she ever
was when she was literally alive.

Imagery of darkness becomes even more intense in the second half of the second stanza than it had
been in the first. Lines 5-6 had compared the maid to a dark-colored violet, but lines 7-8 compare her to
a single star surrounded (and highlighted) by the darkness of the sky. (The name “Lucy” literally means
“light.”) This phrasing makes the maid sound, quite literally, uniquely attractive, but it also begins to
associate her with a kind of beauty that is far more remote, and far less accessible, than the beauty
described in stanza one. The first stanza had associated her with the water flowing from the earth; the
second stanza associates her, in its final two lines, with the distant beauty of the heavens.

Stanza three reiterates the key idea that the maid lived in a place and in a way that made her very
existence basically unknown. Indeed, her life was so remote from the lives of others that when she
“ceased to be” , her passing went mainly unnoticed. The poem announces her death to other people
even as it also has called her very existence, which has now “ceased,” to their attention. This, of course,
is just the latest in a variety of paradoxes that characterize this brief lyric.

Notice the symmetry afforded by the poem’s ending. The poem began by emphasizing that Lucy was
physically remote and basically unnoticed. It ends by stressing that she is now in her “grave” , so that
now she is even more remote, and even less subject to notice, than she had been while living. The poem
opened with basically factual statements carrying little emotional stress; the poem ends, however, by
implying a variety of emotions through the single, emphatic exclamation “oh!”. This simple, two-letter
word can suggest shock, pain, regret, remorse, and longing (to mention just a few possibilities). Finally,
the poem had opened with the pronoun “She,” but it closes with the pronoun “me”—a small fact that
nonetheless symbolizes how the focus of the poem has shifted from Lucy herself to the speaker’s
personal feelings for the maid who is now, unfortunately, dead.