She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways 3

8/13/2019 She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways 3

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Course/Romantic & Victorian Poetry Group/3College Number/42907763Name/Wed Al-Qurashi

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Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" Analysis

The publication of a collection of poems calledLyrical Ballads, a collaboration between

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, began the Romantic period in England.

Romanticism is defined as a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that

originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength in

reaction to the Industrial Revolution. It was a revolt against aristocratic social and political

norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of

nature. Romanticism turned away from the eighteenth-century emphasis on reason and artifice.

Instead, the Romantics embraced imagination and naturalness. Most Romantics believed in

individual liberty and sympathized with those who rebelled against tyranny. The Romantics

thought of nature as transformative; they were fascinated by the ways nature and the human

mind mirrored the others creative properties.The era was dominated by six poets: Three

(William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge) were born before the

period began and lived through most or all of it, while three others (the second generation of

Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and George Gordon, Lord Byron) began their short careers

in the second decade of the new century but died before 1825.

William Wordsworth born April 1770, was a major English Romantic poet who, with

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the

1798 joint publicationLyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's father, although rarely present, did teach

him poetry, including that of Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser, in addition to allowing his son

to rely on his own father's library. Along with spending time reading in Cockermouth,

Wordsworth would also stay at his mother's parents house in Penrith, Cumberland. At Penrith,

Wordsworth was exposed to the moors and was influenced by his experience with the

landscape and was further turned toward nature by the harsh treatment he received at the hands

of his relatives. In particular, Wordsworth could not get along with his grandparents and his

uncle, and his hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating

suicide. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Robert Southey came to be known as the "Lake Poets".

Many of his poems revolve around themes of death, endurance, separation and grief.


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The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years, is one of his most famous

poems. The year 1793 saw Wordsworth's first published poetry with the collectionsAn

Evening WalkandDescriptive Sketches. That year, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The two

poets quickly developed a close friendship. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge produced

Lyrical Ballads(1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement. One of

Wordsworth's most famous poems, "Tintern Abbey", was published in the work, along with

Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The Preface to Lyrical Balladsis considered a

central work of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the

elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the "real language of men" and which avoids

the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth gives his famous

definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from

emotion recollected in tranquility". William Wordsworth died by re-aggravating a case of

pleurisy on 23 April 1850, and was buried at St. Oswald's church in Grasmere. His widow

Mary published his lengthy autobiographical "poem to Coleridge" as The Preludeseveral

months after his death. Though this failed to arouse great interest in 1850, it has since come to

be recognized as his masterpiece.

William Wordsworth wrote "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" while in Germany in

1798. Longman published it in London in 1800 in the second edition ofLyrical Ballads, a

collection of poems by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This poem is one of

five Wordsworth poems centering on a woman named Lucy, who died young.Whether she was a

real person whom Wordsworth encountered while living in the village of Grasmere in Cumbria

County, England, is unknown. Other Lucy poems include "Three Years She Grew in Sun and

Shower," "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal," "Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known" and "I

Travelled among Unknown Men." William Wordsworth's She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

is a three-stanza poem with characteristics of an elegy (in that the poem laments a person's death)

and a ballad (in that the poem tells a bit of a story). The setting of the poem is set in northern

England in Cumbria County's Lake District, near the village of Grasmere. The rhyme scheme is

abab, cdcd, efef. It is a three-stanza poem with characteristics of an elegy and a ballad. The diction

of the poem is simple and the words used are easy.


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The first two stanzas focus on Lucy while she is still alive, and the last stanza tells the reader of

Lucy's death and the poet's response to it. In these short stanzas, the poet tells of his admiration and

singular devotion to Lucy and his utter despair over her death. In the first stanza, Lucy lived in

seclusion near the springs of the river Dove. She remained unmarried, unpraised, and unloved

except by a few. One wonders who those few were. Lines like, "none to praise," "very few to love,"

and the word "untrodden" tell the reader that Lucy was a nobody to everyone except the poet. The

'untrodden ways' not only refer to her life, but also to the people among whom she mixed with

because when we refer to a group of people, we commonly make use of the word 'among'. This tells

us that the people with whom Lucy lived or mixed with, possibly did not have a very good image

and maybe that was the reason why she wasn't loved by anyone.

In the second stanza, Wordsworth's aim is to show her innocence and beauty again. He uses two

simple metaphors to emphasize these qualities. "A violet by a mossy stone" and "Fair as a star,

when only one is shining in the sky." Lucy is a "violet growing " by a mossy stone." She is all by

herself and "half hidden" from view. A simile now intrudes. She is - Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky. Again her loneliness is emphasized. Not only is she a single flower, but also

she is not like the sun - the most dominant inhabitant of the daytime sky - but a lone star passively

reflecting sunlight. Some thinks that Wordsworth is referring to the star Venus who comes out all

alone after sunset and is hence, the first star. Venus is also the Goddess of love, and in contrast to

the violet, very public for all the world to see. In the third stanza, Wordsworth tells the reader of

Lucy's death. He doesn't just say she died. He says, "She ceased to be," which creates greater impact

with the typical expectancy of an infinitive. Again, the diction of anonymity is shown in that she

lived "unknown" and "few could know." However, in the last two lines, her significance to

Wordsworth is made very clear with "and oh, the difference to me!" Wordsworth clearly

experiences a great sense of loss at her death. This last line also emphasizes her "only one" status as

the only star in the sky. The theme of this poem is that the noble and virtuous sometimes receive

little or no attention during their journey through life. They are blazing stars who soar through the

heavens unnoticed or seldom seen, then burn out and die. The poem can stand as a lament on behalf

of all people who go through life unnoticed and unappreciated.

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She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways 3