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LUCY GRAY - William Wordsworth

      William Wordsworth is an English Romantic poet. His  poem “Lucy Gray” is based on an incident about a little girl narrated to him by his sister Dorothy. In this poem, the poet portrays an image of a little solitary girl who lives with her father and mother in the countryside. She is a lonely child who always likes to roam about the wild.

“No mate, no comrade, Lucy knew” This line expresses Lucy’s state of loneliness or solitude.

The poetic line, she is “the sweetest thing that ever grew beside a human door” refers Lucy to a plant that grows outside the four walls in the wide moor. The poet then mentions that a fawn or a hare can be easily seen in the wild, but Lucy’s “Sweet face will never more be seen”. On one stormy day at two o’ clock, she goes to town with a lantern in search of her mother as instructed by her father. She walks in the snow with her playful stroke on the powdery snow. It foreshadows that she leaves behind her footsteps everywhere. Unfortunately, the storm comes up before its time and she climbs many hills but never reaches the town.

The miserable parents search for her all over the moor. The next morning, they find her small footprints near the bridge after crossing the long stone wall and the open field.

After the middle of the bridge, the footprints disappear. They conclude that she must have fallen and died. But still, some say that Lucy is a living child who wanders in the wild and over the rough and steep hills. Her song echoes in the mountains. Hence the poet wants to establish that Lucy lives in the arms of nature as she usually does. Thus Lucy’s life has become one with nature.

Wordsworth suffered the loss of his son and daughter, and those deaths seem to haunt him. He finds comfort in the thoughts of the afterlife. Here, he has used symbols to refer to the cycle of life and death. The tragic tone leaves an everlasting impression on the reader’s mind.

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