A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Short Summary
In this poem, the poet seems to be immortalising her beloved’s death by saying that she had no human fears. Now earthly years were no longer a matter of concern for her because they could not make her older now.
In the second stanza he describes her dead body. She is now under the surface of the earth revolving along with it on its path. He tells us that like other stones, rocks and trees, she also revolves with the earth now.
Summary
This poem is one of Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’ poems. The poem is an expression of William Wordsworth’s feelings on the death of a loved one. The poet expresses his feelings and also imagines his beloved after death.
In this poem, the narrator says that he was in a state of unconsciousness, as if he were sleeping. He was in such a trance that he did not want to acknowledge the fear that any human being has, especially the fear of death — so is with Lucy.
Lucy’s presence in the narrator’s life has always been eternal, though her body does not move anymore now. Her eternal presence has become an eternal absence. He thinks it to be the rotation of the earth. Just as the rocks and the trees of the earth are liable to grow, develop, die and decompose, in the same way it was with Lucy also and the poet will have to accept it.