THE LUCY POEMS – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - ANALYSIS OF POEM IV (THREE YEARS SHE GREW IN SUN AND SHOWER)

Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower – This poem tells a story most of which is narrated by nature itself. It is a story of the growth of Lucy to mature beauty.

Nature reveals the way in which she works to create the complex unity of a living being to produce an almost perfect woman.  

The stanza is marked by a series of antithesis, a series of contrast, and these opposing principles are the loom in which the elaborate fabric of life is woven.

The third stanza deals with the vital energy produced by the opposition of forces. Lucy is the representative of all organic living things. In all of life, the capacity for calm rest and deep sleep, for contemplation and quiet depends on the opposing principles of energy and joy.

Lucy is not only molded by the physical forces but also by her imagination which can respond to the patterns which she sees in the universe.

Lucy is shaped not only by the graceful forms of nature like a bending willow, but also the motions of the storm. All these are converted by the imagination into patterns and models for human life itself.

Wordsworth here makes it clear that the world is largely what the mind makes of it. Lucy must listen and be attentive if she is to find in nature the harmony which is to be reflected in her own beauty.

Two opposing principles are advanced:

1.       The eternal order of the stars

2.       The ever-changing dance of the rivulets

Wordsworth expresses his sense of wonder at the complex inter-relationships between the permanent unchanging laws of nature and the magical complexities they produce – the dancing rivulets and also beautiful women.

The joyful creation of life has its inevitable results, the creation of death. The lover makes no complain, he expresses no grief, he merely states that there is nothing left but memory which by its very existence deepens the sense of loss.

This poem is not merely a lament of Lucy’s death, it is a statement on the condition of all of human life – nature combines to create a complex being and then it is doomed.

read the poem by clicking the link: https://www.poetry-archive.com/w/lucy.html