“Lucy Gray” in Accordance to “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”

Williams Wordsworth’s poem “Lucy Gray” has a very sad subject, but is set to an upbeat rhyme scheme and meter. Readers of the poem learn the story of a little girl who got lost in a snowstorm and most likely drowned while on her way to meet her Mother in town. Lucy Gray’s parents are only able to find her footprints that disappear on a bridge and since then her rarely seen spirit, though often heard in the wind, has become a local legend. Overall, this poem fits Wordsworth’s own requirements of his ideal poems described in his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” The language, topic and emotions entailed, and even the rhyme scheme of this poem are in accordance to the conditions established in “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.”

Wordsworth believed that good poetry uses language of the “common man” due to the duty of the poet being one who speaks to all men, the permanence of common language, and the ease of connecting the poem to man’s natural feelings (Broadview 148). “Lucy Gray” is written in the common language rather than the traditional poetic diction. Any person who can read can easily follow along with the relatively simple diction of the poem. The last stanza of the poem is good example of the simple language used, “O’er rough and smooth she trips along, / And never looks behind; / And sings a solitary song / That whistles in the wind (Broadview 157).” The story of the poem is even more easily understood as the common man’s language is matched to a topic familiar to the common man’s life.

Children going missing and dying were common enough in Wordsworth’s time that most of his readers would have heard of some child who had met a similar fate. Of course, this type of event would be traumatic and induce a whirlwind of emotions for any person to witness. Wordsworth also thought that good poetry must be about common life and written as a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” that are composed after careful consideration (Broadview 148-153). This poem fits part of this requirement, as the topic is fairly familiar to his readers and the story certainly would be extremely emotional for anyone who experienced such a thing. However, the structure and wording of the poem is unexpectedly cheerful and does not overwhelm the reader with emotions. This is due to Wordsworth’s own loophole he wrote in his preface.

According to Wordsworth, if the poem is about a painful or too emotional subject matter, the good poet will compensate with the “pleasure” of meter and rhyme. Thus, Wordsworth chose to counteract the painfully sad little girl’s death with the happier feelings given when reading in verse. Lines 29-32 are incredibly awful if the reader stops to think of the meaning of the little girl getting lost in a snowstorm and never reaching her destination, but the sing-song quality makes this stanza relatively innocent: “The storm came on before its time, / She wander’d up and down, / And many a hill did Lucy climb: / But never reach’d the Town” (Broadview 157). Rhyming “time” with “climb” and “down” with “Town” along with the tempo set by Wordsworth’s meter is remindful of those joyful-sounding, though actually quite dark, nursery rhymes like “Ring around the Rosie” and “Rock-A-By Baby.” The structure of the poem does not allow the reader to be crushed in the sadness of the situation, as Wordsworth intended.

Although “Lucy Gray” does not fit most of Wordsworth’s teeming emotional prose as in most of his poems, this poem does fit all that he requires for good poetry outlined in his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” This poem is written in the common man’s language, about an emotional common man’s experience, and in verse to keep the sad topic from overcoming the reader.