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Wordsworth's “Lucy” Poems: Notes and Marginalia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Because of their later apportionment among “Poems founded on the Affections” and “Poems of the Imagination” Wordsworth's “Lucy” lyrics are usually grouped as follows:
- I. “Strange fits of passion have I known”
- II. “She dwelt among the untrodden ways”
- III. “I travelled among unknown men”
- IV. “Three years she grew in sun and shower”
- V. “A slumber did my spirit seal”
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934
References
1 Lyrical Ballads (1800), ii, 50 (No. i “A Reverie” in MS.), 52 (No. ii originally entitled merely “Song”), 53 (No. v), and 136 (No. iv).
2 Poems in Two Volumes: 1807, i, 76–77.—Cf. Poems, ed. Smith, i, 504; and W. Hale White, Description of the Wordsworth and Coleridge MSS in the Possession of Mr. T. Norton Longman, 45; also Poems (1807), ed. Darbishire, p. 370.
3 Metrically, however, it does conform to the two lyrics which Professor Harper assigns to the Lucy group as “conceived at the same time and from the same impulse”: “I met Louisa in the shade” and “Dear Child of Nature, let them rail”—Wordsworth, 1929 ed., 292; also to the “ mysterious nebula” surrounding the group, “'Tis said that some have died for love” (3–6) and “The Two April Mornings” (10–15)—LTLS (Nov. 11, 1926), p. 797.
4 Fenwick notes (1843) to i and v.
5 “It is the first mild day of March,” “We Are Seven,” “Expostulation and Reply,” and “The Tables Turned.”
6 “Lucy Gray,” “The Two April Mornings,” and “The Fountain.”
7 “To the Cuckoo” (written 1802).
8 “George and Sarah Green,” “Lines on the Parrot Non-Pareil,” “Memorial near the Outlet of the Lake of Thun,” “Thoughts on the Seasons,” “Let other bards” and “Yes! thou art fair.”
9 A slight miscalculation, for Monday was the first.
10 Journals, ed. Knight (1925 ed.), 27. From this entry there is a regrettable hiatus to Grasmere, May 14, 1800—a silence perhaps in which the burthen of the Lucy mystery is forever lost.
11 Dorothy to Mrs. Marshall, Letters of the Wordsworth Family, i, 119. [The same Reliques, 1794 ed., 3 vols., with Wordsworth's MS notes, appeared in the Rydal Mount Library sale catalogue, 1859, Item 614.]
12 This unsubstantiated fancy places Dorothy first among the several claimants to the pseudonym of a real “Lucy.” But Coleridge at the time was morbid, confessedly giddied with insecurity by “this strange, strange, strange scene-shifter Death!” by reason of his infant Berkeley's death (letter to Poole, April 6, 1799). Actually, Wordsworth had sent the Epitaph from Goslar “some months ago.”
13 Cf. Stork, “The Influence of the Popular Ballad on Wordsworth and Coleridge,” PMLA (1914), 299–326; also Saintsbury, History of English Prosody, iii, 72.
14 Essay, Supplementary to the Preface (1815).
15 In addition to the poems listed above in strict Common Measure there are of course, in Lyrical Ballads, several in a4-b4-a4-b3 ballad measure, and some scattered pieces with other slight metrical variations; also, the double ballad stanza is to be found in several poems, notably in “Simon Lee.”
16 Prelude, ed. de Selincourt, vi, 191–195, a redaction of the 1805–6 version, ll. 208–210.
17 Professor Harper suggests that during his Hawkshead vacation Wordsworth must surely have visited his relatives at Penrith, to which place the route over Kirkstone Pass and along Ullswater is conveniently broken at Dovedale, at or in the vicinity of Hartsop Hall—LTLS, November 11, 1926.
18 Poems, ed. Knight (1896), viii, 224–225: a rejected “Michael” fragment, supplied by Dorothy's Grasmere Journals, May-December 1802.
19 Knight, passim.—Cf. also Catherine M. MacLean, Dorothy and William Wordsworth, 50–58; LTLS (January 30, 1930), p. 78, and Ibid. (February 13, 1930), p. 122; C. H. Herford, Wordsworth (1930), 115–116; Fausset, The Lost Leader, 250–253; and de Selincourt, Dorothy Wordsworth (1933), 102—who while inclining to the Dorothy hypothesis concludes: “Whether the lovely little poems to Lucy had their original in an early unrecorded episode in his life or are the pure creatures of his imagination we shall never know.”
20 Baroness von Stockhausen's “Vielchenduft,” in Novellen und Skizzenblätter (cf. Knight's Life, i, 188 n.); also Margaret L. Woods' A Poet's Youth.
21 Legouis, LTLS (December 9, 1926), p. 913.
22 Harper, Wordsworth (1929 ed.), 43; also LTLS, op. cit. Herbert Read, Wordsworth, 1932, p. 167, calls them “poems which give expression to some passion that is too strong to be merely visionary and too idealistic to be associated with mundane emotions.”
23 John D. Rea, Stud. in Phil. xxviii, No. 4 (January, 1931), 118–135.
24 First printed in Notes and Queries (July 24, 1869):
He lived amidst th' untrodden ways
To Rydal Lake that lead:
A bard whom there were none to praise
And very few to read. &c.
25 The Profession of Poetry (1929), 78–92.
26 Letters, ii, 31. Rogers' poem here alluded to was “Written in the Highlands of Scotland: September 2, 1812.”
27 In 1834 (Letters, iii, 38–39). See also his remarks to Professor Reed in 1845, on Rogers' and Bowles' reputations when he was but a schoolboy (Ibid., iii, 319).
28 Poems (1807), i, 74–75 (preceding “I travell'd among unknown men”). It was never reprinted, probably because of the ridicule it invited; “the Simpliciad makes much of Poets who
With fervent welcome greet the glow-worm's flame,
Put it to bed and bless it by its name.“
—Poems (1807), ed. Darbyshire, pp. 369–370.
29 Eric Robertson, Wordsworthshire, cited by Harper, LTLS, op. cit.
30 Despite the evidence of the Fenwick note, they have been considered practically identical by one commentator, MLN, xli, 314–316.
31 For example, Matthew's daughter Emma is the subject of a ballad lament with marked similarities, in spirit and form, with the Lucy group:“The Two April Mornings,” composed in 1789.
32 Earlier Lucys than Rogers' appear in poems by Tickell, Lyttleton, Edward Moore, and Chatterton (Garrod, Profession of Poetry, 91).
33 Garrod, Collins (1928), 112. The poem appeared also, anonymously, in The Public Advertiser of March 7, 1788; it was included among Collins' works in Anderson's Poets (1792–1795)—Oxford ed. Gray and Collins (1926), 311–312, 317.
Garrod, who was quick to note the Wordsworthian quality of the lyric, rather curiously failed to mention the Lucy.