William Wordsworth and Lucy Gray

The Romantic Era of literature encompasses the connection of the human mind in correspondence to nature as well as the conceptual ideas of liberty and freedom. Poets such as William Wordsworth embraced these ideals: emphasizing individual freedom, the connection between humans’ imagination and the physical world, as well as the subjectivity of reality (16-19). Published in 1798, Preface to Lyrical Ballads is often considered the catalyst of the Romantic Era and outlines the beliefs of Wordsworth in regards to poetry.

                  In the outline, Wordsworth describes poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (149). However, the “overflow” of emotions should be created from a recollection of a personal experience or imagining the reaction to a situation rather than an extreme reaction to a situation at hand. Furthermore, Wordsworth believes poetry should be written for the “common man” and pertain to a plethora of average habitual situations, which is why he ventured away from classical ideals and ignited the Romantic Era (148). These situations are presenting in unusual ways with imaginative and poetic aspects.

                  “Lucy Gray” is an exemplar depiction of the criteria set forth by Wordsworth aforementioned. Based on an actual drowning, the poem depicts the drowning of a young girl during a winter storm. Structured in quatrains with an alternating rhyme scheme, the poem has another aspect Wordsworth mentions, overbalance of happiness. By placing the poem to an even alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter, as well as the alternating rhyme scheme, Wordsworth successfully alters the traumatic situation of the young girl falling into a creek during a storm as she is searching for the mother to seem much more peaceful.

                  Continually, there is a connection in the poem to nature. Nature and the connection it plays with human imagination is a pertinent aspect of romantic literature. Not only was the death of Lucy set in nature, but Wordsworth utilizes imagery that makes a connection to the young girl growing and compares it to a blooming flower, “The sweetest Thing that ever grew, Beside a human door!” (156). At the conclusion to the poem Wordsworth again makes a Romantic connection to nature when speaking of her ghost that “whistles in the wind” and has become an aspect of nature (157).

                  Another aspect of Romantic literature shown in “Lucy Gray” is the commonality of an accident such as the one that caused her death. Although much rarer now, a child being lost in a heavy snow storm or drowning was not nearly as uncommon in Wordsworth’s time. Thus, the common language and situations are shown in this poem as well. Lucy Gray is from a rustic country; a class of people that Wordsworth was specifically attempting to reach with his poetry. He felt that those who lived closer to nature had naturalistic feelings, and being a Romantic poet Wordsworth considered nature to be above all.

                  Thus, it is apparent that several aspects categorized by William Wordsworth in Preface to Lyrical Ballads are imminent in his Romantic poetry such as “Lucy Gray”. Utilizing an overbalancing meter and rhyme scheme, an connection to nature, common dialect, a realistic situation which he looked back on, it is clear that “Lucy Gray” is an example of Romantic poetry.