Probably the best known of Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’ poems. A brief note on these:

The Lucy who is the subject of a small group of poems, most of them written in the winter of 1798-99, has never been identified, if she ever existed except as a creation of the poet’s imagination. A widely held theory is that the poems represent an attempt to give literary expression and distance to Wordsworth’s feeling of affection for his sister.

– http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/wordswor7.html

As for the poem itself, it contains in full measure the blend of beauty and simplicity that permeates Wordsworth’s poetry. The images are unstartling, the metre regular, and the rhymes predictable; yet the poem as a whole has a certain ineffable greatness to it that defies attempts at breakdown. As I’ve mentioned several times, one of the marks of a great poet is the ability to take a trite subject and, without any stylistic tricks, write a lasting, memorable poem on it.

Theme

This week’s two-for-the-price-of-one theme is based on Kenneth Baker’s excellent anthology “Unauthorized Versions”, a collection of poetic parodies. Here’s today’s parody:

He Liv’d amidst th’Untrodden Ways

  He liv'd amidst th'untrodden ways
  To Rydal Lake that lead;
  A bard whom there were none to praise,
  And very few to read.

  Behind a cloud his mystic sense,
  Deep hidden, who can spy?
  Bright as the night when not a star
  Is shining in the sky.

  Unread his works - his 'Milk White Doe'
  With dust is dark and dim;
  It's still in Longman's shop, and oh!
  The difference to him!

– Hartley Coleridge

(eldest son of S T Coleridge)

A trifle cutting, but nonetheless fun to read :)

Links

Biography and assessment, as well as a quote by Wordsworth on poetry, can be found after ‘The Daffodils”, poem #63

Another nice parody is Kipling’s ‘The Idiot Boy’ (the title itself is from another Wordsworth poem),
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/idiot_boy.html

For more on Wordsworth and the Lucy poems see
http://www.bartleby.com/221/0519.html

— Martin