A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
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.
Notes
Composed whilst on his travels in in Germany.
Coleridge wrote of this poem in a letter of April 1799: "Some months ago Wordsworth transmitted to me a most sublime Epitaph ... whether it had any reality, I cannot say.--Most probably, in some gloomier moment he had fancied the moment in which his Sister might die."
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Thanks to Andrew Hide
when first i read this poem some time ago i can't understand its theme and its meaning, that what idea the poet want to express, but by the time now when i read it in Allpoetry, and when i read the comments of Mr. Andrew, Now its so easy for me to understand, Mr. Andrew has explain it very good,
Thanks Andrew Hide -
Estute analysis dear Hide,
Darmok, his head bowed. -
Well my analysis of this piece would be as follows:
To be appreachiated fully, it should be read in its completness, (this being part 5 of the 'Lucy' poems)
The final verse of the previous poem gives us a clue to the opening...
'She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she in her grave, and, oh,
the difference to me!'
The difference he felt, was the slumber upon his spirit. (it is often claimed by people who when faced with the apperition of a deceased person, that a total calm [slumber] comes over them, removing all fears.) And it is Lucy's spirit he now faces since her death in the previous poem.
Being of spirit she 'seemed a thing that could not feel, the touch of earthly years.' (she would age no more as she no-longer has a physical body.) Which again is highlighted by the lines
'No motion has she now, no force;
she neither hears nor sees;
The final two lines I see as explaining that her spirit no longer has any intrest or even awareness of the worlds daily coarse, just as rocks and stones and trees.
Prior to this being written, Wordworth and Coleridge had been working and travelling together very closely, and had both been working on pieces relating to the supernatural. (although both had very different approaches to it.)
Another possible referance to this same person might be found in the poem 'Lucy Gray'. The tale of a young gil, (Lucy Gray) who was lost upon the moors in a snow storm and never found. But in that poem a verse claims...
'-Yet some maintain that to this day
she is a living child;
That you may see sweet lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.'
Andrew -
please analyed the poems
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