Wordsworth’s “Lucy Gray” is an excellent example of the type of poetry he spent almost two dozen lengthy paragraphs idealizing in his preface to Lyrical Ballads. The story of a young girl gone missing is derived from “incidents and situations from common life,” actively avoids language that is overly lofty and complex, and pays special attention not only to nature, but to the nature of people. Although he defends the use of prose in poetry, each stanza in “Lucy Gray” contains the consistent meter. Most importantly, he exemplifies the idea that poetry should arise from an intense outburst of emotion that is contemplated upon greatly and later recreated for the pleasure of the self or others to experience those feelings.
In his preface Wordsworth describes the importance of basing his poetry off of real or common events, and as the footnote describes, “Lucy Gray” is based on real events but shaded with a “certain colouring of imagination.” Although we know from the footnote that the girl’s body was eventually found and confirmed dead, the poem leaves the reader with a sense of mystery and wonder whether the narrator has seen some sort of ghost or a wild and missing child. The spontaneous overflow of emotion is realized when we consider that the narrator has just witnessed a huge anomaly, a fact which is not completely apparent until the end of the poem. Wordsworth seemed to pride himself on creating feelings from stating facts rather than overtly stating or personifying emotions, and here he achieves this with great success. Not only are we to consider what the narrator has seen, but we are also left reflecting upon the situation the father and mother of the lost girl must now deal with. Furthermore, we can ask whether she’s a wild girl or a ghost based in the poem’s reality, or whether the parents are simply unable to give up hope in the face of a terrible situation. Either way, much is left to contemplation that is not explicitly stated which appears to be what Wordsworth thought poetry should strive for.
In addition to successfully capturing an outburst of feeling, Wordsworth manages to follow his aesthetic recommendations as well. He pays attention to meter, as each stanza has four lines which alternate between iambic tetrameter and trimeter, respectively. Much of the language is not only relatively common, but is often focused on nature like the “hare upon the green” and “the broken hawthorn-hedge.” The setting is rural and nature plays a sort of dual role as the antagonist by causing the girl to disappear and/or die.
While Wordsworth’s philosophy is slightly restrictive and limited in its own right, “Lucy Gray” is a prime example of how his ideal style should and could work to effectively create compelling poetry.
Brit Lit 2020 