Lucy Gray

By Wordsworth
INTRODUCTION

 In his short poetic work, a poem entitled Lucy Gray, Wordsworth recounts the
disappearance of Lucy Gray, a young girl who is sent to town with a lantern to show her
mother’s way home safely through the snow.

 Wordsworth has love and sympathy for this little girl because she is a source of
inspiration for the poet to compose this poem. The poet’s love and sentiments for this little girl
is because of aesthetic elements.

 There are aesthetic elements in the poem Lucy Gray. An object of nature is either seen,
heard, felt, touched or tasted for aesthetics. There are five senses
which are prerequisites for the enjoyment of beauty: sight (visual), sound (auditory), smell
(olfactory), touch (tactile) and taste (gustatory).
ANALYSIS

 In his poem, Lucy Gray, Wordsworth, in showing the helplessness of both child and
parent, demonstrates the futility of man's ceaseless warring against nature and the
dominance of primitive forces. At the very outset of the poem, Lucy sets out to show her
mother through the snow before a winter storm rolls in. Her sole mission is to navigate a
path through the dark, winter-clogged landscape, only the artificially manifested light of
the lantern to illuminate her path. She is forced to subject this primeval world to a
sensible, labeled world of order by the need of her familial unit, which, through their very
existence, is at war with the forces of the natural world. This imposition represents the
arrogant, over- reaching attempt to pacify the surrounding environment, the brutal, yet
unbiased, force of nature. She leaves early—"the minster-clock has just struck two"—
lantern in hand, sure of her success (Line 19). "That, Father! will I gladly do," she cries,
agreeing with giddy self assurance when asked to head to town, unaware of the looming
danger (Line 17). Away from the shelter of civility, the storm falls upon her quickly.
Lucy is disoriented and she wonders through the premature snow and quickly becomes
lost.
 Another aspect of "Lucy Gray" that expresses Wordsworth's disdain of human interference in nature is the circumstances under
which the reader is lead to believe Lucy perishes. She does not simply freeze in the wilds, overcome by the sheer force of nature. The
child is lead astray by the bulky creations of men. The next morning, the parents track Lucy's footprints through the snow. They led them
across and open field and to a bridge. Not deep within the churning bowels of nature do Lucy's tracks disappear but on this man-made
creation: "They followed from the snowy bank / Those footmarks, one by one, / Into the middle fo the plank; / And further there were
none! (Line 53-56). The child meets her end far from the desolate wilds of unadulterated nature but in following the appropriate path.
After wandering from hill to hill, through the heart of wilderness, Lucy falls from the bridge.

Wordsworth depicts Lucy's footprints disappearing from the planks of the bridge instead of merely vanishing into the river from the
bank. By doing so, Wordsworth shows the disarming foolishness of claiming victory over nature. Had Lucy walked to edge of the river,
she would have acknowledged the adamant natural barrier and turned away but, instead, she was lulled by the structure and order of the
bridge and attempts to cross in the midst of a terrible storm. Lucy mocks the barrier of nature, this river, and puts her faith, and safety, solely
in the ordered hands of civilization.
  Finally, in the last two stanzas of the poem, Wordsworth soothes his reader with
the slim possibility of Lucy's survival. The girl, however, does not live on in the civil
confines of a familial unit or the rigorous confines of community. She lives on through
nature:
 She is a living child;
 That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
 Upon the lonesome wild.
 She treks on through nature, content with her plight—in the final lines of the poem,
Wordsworth shows that the girl is free, she "never looks behind; / And sings a solitary
song / That whistles in the wind. (Line 62-64). In death the child has become what she,
unlike her parents, never showed any fear of.
 In the first half of the poem, the child is overjoyed to go freely into nature, she is glad to go out alone. Now, the child "sings a
solitary song" and lives on through the same natural world others professed as her enemy (Line 59). Instead of showing the grief
and sorrow of her family, the models of ordered life and society, Wordsworth leaves the child in nature. The child is let go from
the shackles of order and structure—she is free to be nature.
1. SIGHT
 The poet sees a lonely girl at the time of dawn. It is the sense of sight.
 I chanced to see at break of day, The solitary child. - line 16
 In line 9, the poet says that you may see the young one of a deer playing and jumping. Here he uses the word “spy” which is the
optimum of the word “see”. Then he says that you may see the hare upon the green.

 You yet may spy the fawn at play, The hare upon the green. - line17 In lines 36 and 40, the poet uses the word “sight”
and “saw”. He says
 that there was no sight of Lucy Gray and then they saw a wooden bridge.
 But there was neither sound nor sight
 And thence they saw the bridge of wood. - line18

In line 44, the poet says that the mother of Lucy Gray saw the foot prints of Lucy Gray and again uses the word “spy”
  Similarly, there are a number of visual images in the poem which appeal to the sense of
sight, though the word “see” or “sight” has not been used. These are the optical and spectacular
sights which attract the sense of sight and then go deep into the heart of a human being. These
beautiful objects of Nature lead to investment in the heart and the soul. For instance, when the
poet uses the word snow in line 16, he says: your mother through the snow.

 The word moon has an appeal to the sense of sight as moon is something attractive and
beautiful which is often used as a symbol of beauty. In lines 26-29, he uses the word mountain
roe and says that Lucy Gray is happier than the mountain deer and when she walks, she
disperses the powdery snow which rises like smoke. It is a beautiful image which has got
aesthetic pleasure to provide to the spectators.
 Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke

 From line 46 onward, there are a number of visual images enumerated by the poet when he says
that the parents of Lucy Gray came down from the steep hill’s edge, followed the footprints of the
child, through the broken hawthorn hedge, by the long stone-wall and then crossed an open field.

 In the presentation of Nature, Wordsworth is fascinated by the sound in the objects of

 In line 7 and 11 the poet says that she was the most beautiful child ever born on the earth. He uses the
word “sweetest” which is a comprehensive term appealing to all senses especially to the sense of taste.
 She dwelt on a wide moor,
 -The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door
 ………………………..
 But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
 Will never more be seen
 Similarly in line 59, the poet says that some people still believe
that she is still alive and that you may see the sweet face of Lucy
Gray on the wild moor.
 That you may see the sweet Lucy Gray
 Upon the lonesome wild.
 Losing a loved one is one of the hardest experiences every person must go through. The experience does not end
with the loss though, but begins with
it. The loss of a dear person leads those left behind into a downward spiral of emotions and memories. In Lucy Gray,
Wordsworth focuses on that loss and the emotions that follow it. By reading the poem one can objectively experience
both the grief that Lucy Gray’s death brings on but also her parents’ acceptance of her death.

The poem in brief summary allows us to experience an outsider’s view of the death of Lucy Gray and her parents’
grief. The character narrating the poem tells the story of Lucy, a girl who was sent by her father with a lantern to
light the way home, for her mother in town. On her way to town a snow storm hits and Lucy is never found neither
dead nor alive. The fact that a stranger is narrating the story as opposed to one of the parents telling the story,
allows the reader to witness the tragedy of Lucy Gray without feeling too tangled up in the parents’ grief. By
having an outsider who is in no way involved in the tragedy tell the story, the writer of the poem William
Wordsworth, gives the reader an objective point of view on the tragedy as well as room to relate the reader’s own
experience to the poem without feeling uncomfortable.
. Had the poem lacked objectivity the reader would have surely felt
uncomfortable and stifled by emotions of the parents’ or a parent telling the story
of their daughter’s death. As well as that, the objectiveness of the stranger
narrating gives the reader almost a communal experience. It is as if the reader was
in a small town one day, and a local just happened to tell the story. The communal
aspect as well as the reader being so far removed from the actual event, provides
an understanding by the reader of the parents’ grief yet it does not in any way
force the reader to feel something
 The stranger in the narration of the story, at one point focuses on the parent’s helplessness when their daughter does
not come home. The feeling of helplessness is the first emotion they experience as realization of their daughter’s
disappearance and possible death sets in. This helplessness is best expressed in the following lines of the poem:
 The wretched parents all that night Went shouting far and wide;
 But there was neither sight nor sound
 To serve them for a guide.
 Additionally the parents feel helpless is because no one else besides them

 is looking for their daughter. It is up to them to find her and if they do not find her alive, it is a failure on their part to
keep their child safe and alive. The lines also show the desperation that Lucy’s parents start to feel as they see that
they cannot find her and that the snowy weather lowers any chance in their hearts that she will actually be found
alive. It is these feelings of helplessness and the desperation that introduce the grief that will follow. The
helplessness is best shown the next day in the poem when Lucy’s parents find her footsteps and follow them. The
following lines how this helplessness:
 As for every parent that loses a child it is hard for Lucy’s parents to let go. The hardest part
seems that fact that they never even find Lucy. Though hope of her still being alive is gone, the parents
still have no closure because they never find her body. Yet they must do without and find a way to
accept her death. The following lines show the parents’ willingness to come to terms with Lucy’s death
and let her go, “In heaven we all shall meet” ( Line 42). Lucy’s parents do not let her go in a way that
they forget her, but they make peace with the fact that someday they shall all meet again and be
together. They allow themselves to grieve but also to accept that nothing can change the fact that Lucy
is dead. What really makes it apparent that Lucy’s parents refuse to let her fade away, is the fact that
the stranger is telling the story. The stranger is narrating it as if it was told to him by one of the
parents, word by word, to be repeated and spread throughout the town, so in a way Lucy is always kept
alive.
 The poem Lucy Gray focuses on a little child –a manifestation of aesthetic
elements and features. These aesthetic features appeal to the five senses. It is a great
piece of Wordsworth’s creative talent which observes the dimensions of romantic
aesthetics. He highlights these dimensions in such a way the scene comes almost in
front of the readers.
 Beauty – the ability of an object to appeal to the senses and provide emotional
satisfaction – is manifest in the poem appealing to the senses of the readers of the
poem