William Wordsworth’s “Lucy Poems” consist of five verses composed between 1798 and 1801. They include “Strange fits of passion have I known,” “She dwelt among the untrodden ways,” “I travelled among unknown men,” “Three years she grew in sun and shower,” and “A slumber did my spirit seal.” All but one of the poems, “I travelled among unknown men,” were included in the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads—a collection of poems Wordsworth composed with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. While the poems all focus on the same subject, Wordsworth did not intend to present them as a group or in a particular sequence. However, in 1831, literary critic Thomas Powell recognized the works as a collection unified by a common theme. Since then, scholars typically consider the works in the order in which they were written.
The “Lucy Poems” convey the unrequited love of the speaker for a woman named Lucy. As the poems progress, we learn that she died young and inspired the speaker to write his elegiac verses about her. To this day, the person on whom Lucy was based remains unknown. Some have suggested that Lucy may represent Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy or one of his love interests. However, her description does not match any particular known person from Wordsworth’s life. Scholars now regard Lucy as the poet’s imaginary muse—the embodiment of Wordsworth’s poetic views and life experiences. She represents Romantic ideals of love and loss, nature and the supernatural, joy and pain.
Like the other verses in the Lyrical Ballads—considered the defining work of the English Romantic literary movement—the “Lucy Poems” are written in a direct, vernacular style that reflects the speaker’s emotions. As Wordsworth proclaimed in the prelude to the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads, he wished to “choose incidents and situations from common life” recounted through “language really used by men.”
With the exception of “A slumber did my spirit seal,” all the poems in the grouping mention Lucy by name. Another poem written around the same period has been excluded from the grouping, despite being titled “Lucy Gray,” due to its supposedly factual inspiration. Ultimately, the speaker's elegiac treatment of Lucy's death transforms her into an idealization of a young woman, more than a literal interpretation of the flesh-and-blood being she might have been before her premature death.
