A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

Content Warning: This section includes child death.

The form is discernibly organized. Wordsworth divides the poem into two four-line stanzas—quatrains. The simple configuration creates tension with the content of the poem. While the form is sharp, the poem’s narrative is nebulous. Neither the speaker nor the girl possesses defined identities, and though the girl dies, the speaker never overtly labels her death. Moreover, the girl loses her form once she becomes a part of nature. Conversely, the poem never strays from its structure. Aside from the two quatrains, Wordsworth provides a reliable rhyme scheme; in each stanza, the first and third lines rhyme, and the second and fourth lines rhyme. The speaker is in a trance-like state, and the girl experiences mutability. In contrast, the form is constant and stable. This steadiness creates a subtle irony: The most structured element of the poem is its vessel, not its subject.

The meter is sturdy, like the form. Wordsworth, in keeping with his goal to create accessible poems, uses a common meter—four pairs of unstressed-stressed syllables. In Line 1, don’t stress the “A,” stress “slum,” don’t stress “ber,” stress “did,” and so on.