Three Years She Grew in Sun and

Shower by William Wordsworth:

Summary and Analysis

William Wordsworth's poem Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower, is a
lyrical elegy on the untimely demise of Lucy. This poem is also known as
'The Education of Nature', and is considered one of the Lucy poems. Lucy
poems are written about an ideal female who is sometimes symbolized as
nature, for whom the speaker feels great a ection. It was written in the year
of 1798 in collaboration with S.T. Coleridge and was published in 1800 in the
Lyrical Ballads anthology.

In this poem Wordsworth personi ed Nature. He points out the education of

nature, and the great in uence nature can exercise on human life. Nature has
the power to impart education better than all the sages can. The experiment
of nature's education has to be tried on Lucy by Nature itself. Nature thinks
that she is the most beautiful thing on earth. Nature takes her to make her ‘a
lady of her own’. So, Lucy lived in close communion with the objects of
nature, the rocks, the earth, the glades, the heaven, the mountains, the
clouds, the trees and the storms. But, before she could be a perfect woman,
she was snatched away by the cruel hands of death.

The personi ed nature speaks of Lucy in the rst stanza. Nature says, 'A
lovelier ower on earth was never sown' than Lucy, and decides to take the
child and make her 'A Lady of my own'. In the second stanza this idea is
elaborated. Nature will be with the child both 'law and impulse' and have the
power to 'kindle or restrain'. The use of words like 'rock', 'plain', 'earth',
'glade', 'bower' all serve to emphasize Lucy's closeness to nature.

The third stanza emphasizes her vital, spontaneous energy and also her
equally spontaneous calm and peace. She will have closeness to all nature,
‘The oating clouds their state shall lends To her ' - and will respond to all
the natural beauty around her, as stanza ve makes clear: 'The stars of
midnight shall be dear/To her.’   She will be lled by 'vital' feelings as she
grows.

 The nal stanza is a contrast and shows, poignantly, the feelings of the lover
on Lucy's death— or total merging with nature. But the lover accepts the
cyclical pattern of things; he is left with ‘This health, this calm and quiet
scene' and the memory of Lucy.

The short poem profoundly teaches us the universal truth of the nature of the
life, that is, we are from nature, we sustain by the nature, we have to return
to nature and there is no loss of human life after death. It is a loss only to the
living. This big but bitter truth must be accepted. Nature is personi ed in this
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poem. Lucy is not only a particular person, but also the representative of all
organic living beings. Lucy was to be educated by nature as nature dreamt
of making her the perfect lady. The poet believes that if a child is given
freedom to play in the lap of nature, he or she will be a better person in life.

'Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower' is about the poet’s love to a pure
young girl and the loss of the beloved one, as his beloved (Lucy) belongs to
nature, her return to nature is her death. The separation made by death,
though painful to the living one, it is rewarding to the dead one as he or she
returns to where he/she really belongs to. The poem is narrated by nature
herself and compares Lucy to a beautiful ower. She claims the ower and
wants to make her mature lady of nature upon whom she showers her
greatest bene ts of grace and beauty. Nature reveals the method of the
process of the complex unity of living being while making her almost perfect
lady. In the poem the process is one of opposing polarities, of a dialectic
from which the living complexity arises:

My self 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.
The whole passage shows a pattern of antitheses, between 'law and
impulse', 'rock and plain', 'earth and heaven', 'glade and bower' and 'kindle'
and 'restrain'. These opposing principles are the base of our life. Wordsworth
articulates his sense of curiosity at the complex interrelationships between
the permanent and uctuating laws of nature, and the magical intricacies
which they produce, that not only the dancing rivulets, but also such
phenomena as beautiful young women. Lucy is not passively molded by
nature, but she is given all the necessary thoughts of growth.

The reversal of expectations of the nature and the sudden death of Lucy
gives a heartbreaking ending to the poem. The beautiful and exciting life has
its predictable result: the death. This is not only a lament over the death of
Lucy but a truth of the condition of all human life. Though all the powers of
nature combine in complex ways to create a human being, nally it is
doomed by nature's law to death. The last line is silent, which brings a rare
clarity of perception where the lover without making any complaint states
that there is nothing more than a memory.

This poem easily delivers a universal truth about human life, a very common
truth of death that we live with since our birth but yet we fail to recognize.

This poem can be interpreted as the celebration as the marriage of nature

and Lucy at the end. When the physical body of Lucy died, she merges with
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nature. Her worldly lover, the poet or the speaker, laments for the death and
mourned knowing that she will never be back. She will be with nature for
ever and ever. So, in this sense, this poem is an elegiac for the human lover
and epithalamic (a song sung in marriage) for the nature as she is united with
Lucy for the lifelong. Nature is given an interesting role here. At rst she
seems beautiful and giving but, after a while she dictates the human
conditions and takes back Lucy.

This poem has seven stanzas, each containing six lines having an aabccb
rhyme scheme. In these short poems, the language is simple, yet intense
and moving. The most striking fact is that the speaker in the poem does not
speak until the nal stanza. Only at the end of the poetry, the speaker let us
know why he is writing the poem and what happened to Lucy. Most of the
lines are di cult to interpret and language is ambiguous. In some line the
diction is simple, but the ideas are di cult to cater.

Reference: Sharma, K.N. "Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower by

William Wordsworth: Summary and Analysis."
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