Between 1799 and 1801, William Wordsworth composed five poems about an unknown woman or girl called Lucy, telling his love for her and her unfortunate death. They have since been called the “Lucy poems,” although he did not use this designation. The order in which they are usually given follows that in later editions of his works, such as the 1815 edition of Poems by William Wordsworth, where the first three appear in the part “Poems founded on the affections,” pages 128 to 131, and the last two in the part “Poems of the imagination,” pages 313 to 315.

Four of these poems were first published in Volume II of the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800): the 1st, 2nd (titled “Song”) and 5th successively pages 50 to 53, then the 4th pages 136 to 138. The 3rd, the last composed, appeared in Volume I of Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), pages 68 and 69.

I reproduce here the second and fifth poems, as they appear successively in Lyrical Ballads; indeed they share a same style and are linked together as a single story.

S O N G.

She dwelt among th’ untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love.

A Violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the Eye!
— Fair, as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky!

She liv’d unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceas’d to be;
But she is in her Grave, and Oh!
The difference to me.

☙ ❦ ❧

A slumber did my spirit seal,
I had no human fears:
She seem’d a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force
She neither hears nor sees
Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees!

Note that there are small changes, in particular of punctuation, in later editions of the five poems.

Volume II of Lyrical Ballads also contains a poem titled “Lucy Gray,” which tells the story of a little girl who disappeared during a storm; as it deals with another person, it does not belong to the “Lucy poems.”

Sources of the poems:

• William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, with other poems, Vol. II, London: Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees, Paternoster Row, by Biggs and Co., Bristol (1800), digitised on Internet Archive and transcribed as Project Gutenberg ebook.
• William Wordsworth, Poems, in two volumes, Vol. I, London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme (1807), digitised on Internet Archive and transcribed as Project Gutenberg ebook.

This is a revised version of the first part of a post previously published on Agapeta, 2018/05/09.