Teaching “Lucy Gray”

If I had the opportunity to teach anything from this course to any grade level of my choosing I would teach “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth in a High School English Class. I would teach this piece during a unit structured around either poetry or creative writing because I believe it would help my students to better understand what to look for(or put themselves) into a lyrical ballad.

This piece is a strong introductory piece to beginning poets, it shows the importance of form, the use of end rhyme in “A B A B” form, and it is a very obvious example of a lyrical ballad because lyrical ballads often reveal some sort of a lesson through a given incident. For example, in “Lucy Gray,” Lucy is a very young child who gets lost and supposedly dies. This is a very universal fear that can be understood by all walks of life: the loss of an innocent, young loved one. When showing this to my students, they would be able to see what message this poem was trying to reveal because they would feel the grief and sadness behind the disappearance of little Lucy Gray.

Because this poem uses the easy to follow “A B A B” rhyme form and has only four lines per stanza it is a wonderful poem for beginners to practice reading because it very easy to follow along with the rhythm of the poem. I think this poem uses very beautiful imagery that can help show my students the importance of intentional language use. For example, the third stanza references a “Fawn at play” and “Hare upon the Green” which shed light on innocent creatures that are found in nature, therefore referring to Lucy Gray as small and innocent just like a fawn or hare. I would want my students to draw an illustration based off of the poem because that would require them to truly focus on the imagery and the language used in the poem.

This piece would be a good exercise for students to read before going on the read the following poem “Nutting.” For students that are new to poetry, “Nutting” could be more difficult to read because it is not broken up into smaller stanzas like in “Lucy Gray” and there are far less end stops. “Nutting” does not carry the same “A B A B” rhyming pattern so students would have to be able to decipher the intended rhythm of the poem.