A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

Content Warning: This section includes child death and gender discrimination. 

“She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” by William Wordsworth (1800)

This is one of Wordsworth’s “Lucy poems.” Unlike “A Slumber,” the speaker in “She Dwelt,” names the “she.” The girl is clearly Lucy. More so, the speaker doesn’t allude to Lucy’s death but directly confronts it, using the term “grave.” Both poems blend the girl with nature, but in “She Dwelt,” Lucy mixes with nature while alive. Once she dies, the speaker becomes overtly dismayed, suggesting that Lucy won’t live on in nature; instead, Lucy has met a concrete end. She’s “ceased to be,” (Line 10), so the speaker won’t see her in the rocks, trees, and stones. 

“The World Is Too Much with Us” by Williams Wordsworth (1807)

“The World” isn’t one of Wordsworth’s “Lucy poems,” yet it illustrates what the girl in “A Slumber” missed by dying early. “The World” presents human life as volatile and dispiriting. People misuse their potential and become alienated from nature. The menacing world makes the speaker gloomy and wish that they were something other than human. In conversation with “A Slumber,” the girl represents innocence because she didn’t have to experience the world’s upset.