Beside the springs of Dove,2
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love: 5 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
10 When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me! 1799 1800
Three years she grew
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; 5 She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.1
2. An additional stanza in an earlier manuscript to this volume. version demonstrates how a poem can be improved 2. There are several rivers by this name in
by omission of a passage that is, in itself, excellent England, including one in the Lake District.
poetry: 'I told her this: her laughter light / Is ring-1. I.e., Lucy was three years old when Nature
ing in my ears; / And when I think upon that night made this promise; line 37 makes clear that Lucy
/ My eyes are dim with tears.' had reached the maturity foretold in the sixth
1. For the author's revisions while composing this stanza when she died. poem, see 'Poems in Process,' in the appendices
.
27 6 / WILLIA M WORDSWORT H 10'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. 1520'She shall be sportive as the fawn That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers 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 mould the Maiden's form By silent sympathy. 253035 '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.' 40Thus 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. 1799 1800 A slumber did my spirit seal A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. 5 No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees;
.
LUCY GRAY / 277
Rolled round in earth's diurnal0 course, daily
With rocks, and stones, and trees. 1799 1800
I travelled among unknown men I travelled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee. 5 Tis past, that melancholy dream! Nor will I quit thy shore A second time; for still I seem To love thee more and more. 10Among thy mountains did I feel The joy of my desire; And she I cherished turned her wheel Beside an English fire. isThy mornings showed, thy nights concealed The bowers where Lucy played; And thine too is the last green field That Lucy's eyes surveyed. ca. 1801 1807
Lucy Gray1
Or, Solitude
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child. 5 No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
?The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door! You yet may spy the fawn at play,
10 The hare upon the green;
1. Written in 1799 while Wordsworth was in Ger-Crabbe's matter-of-fact style of treating subjects of many, and founded on a true account of a young the same kind' [Wordsworth's note, 1843], George
girl who drowned when she lost her way in a snow-Crabbe (1765-1832) won fame in the late 18th
