- William Wordsworth
The speaker of this poem is a very mysterious figure. He keeps us in the dark about both him and Lucy. He is grieving over her death but the situation surrounding this is kept from us. He doesn't go into any actual physical descriptions about Lucy, just saying that she was "fair as a star". The speaker is obviously grieving over Lucy's death. He is so overwhelmed with emotions that he is unable to to express "the difference" now that Lucy is gone. He doesn't discuss her physical features as the thought of her form would be too much for him to handle. He recalls simply her in comparison to her surroundings, "a violet by a mossy stone" and "a star, when only one is shining in the sky". The speaker is talking of how Lucy was a rarity, a diamond in the rough as it were. He found her to be the silver lining to the world. His words here simply reinforce the immense toll this must be taking on his mind. Wordsworth is displaying grief in a very real form, an overwhelming entity that consumes people.
There is a lot of debate as to whether or not Wordsworth wrote this poem as a reference to a nonfictional person, and also who this person might be. I have done a little research on this debate, but I do not believe that this poem refers to any specific Lucy, but instead I believe this is an example of human guilt, which can only come from a lifetime of experience. I personally think that Wordsworth is using this poem to describe human emotion using his immense wealth of experience as opposed to a single event/person. What do you guys think?
No comments:
Post a Comment