Another Wordsworth poem that was discussed in class is the fourth "Lucy" poem. My group also presented on this. It speaks of a "Maid" and uses very specific imagery to paint a scene. Some of the images the reader gets are a secluded dwelling alongside some springs, a shining star, and a violet next to a mossy stone. Some took the violet/stone comparison to be stark, showing the beautiful and the ugly, but personally (as I felt the image we used in our presentation showed), this is not a contrastive image but rather complimentary in that neither is more beautiful than the other, and they simply coexist.

The poem speaks of “untrodden ways” and “springs of Dove.” This spiked my curiosity as to whether Wordsworth was creating a fictional scenario, town, or community, or if perhaps this was an actual town to which he was referring. If it was the latter (and it turned out to be so), I thought to myself, “I wonder what the story is behind this place?” I wondered about the significance of him mentioning this place in particular. Did it hold some emotional importance? Did he meet up with his lover here? Was this “Maid” his lover? Was she his daughter? Was this his mother’s story, perhaps? Was she even pretty? Maybe she was one of those girls who was plagued with the catchphrase, “She has a great personality….” Imagery is given with a violet and a mossy stone…. Is this maid supposed to be the violet, or are we perhaps intended to conclude that she is the stone? Is the stone a gravestone, and the only beautiful thing left of this woman/girl is a flower growing on her grave? Ultimately, this whole poem seemed to me to be a classic example of disguising an insult with a compliment. Wordsworth juxtaposes each beautiful reference with something that detracts from its aesthetic value in some way. If there are ten thousand women and one or even ten are selected as being the most beautiful, there is a certain prestige that is associated with receiving such a label. A status symbol is sometimes even bestowed. Conversely, if there are two or three women in a village, receiving the title of most beautiful subsequently loses much, if not all, of its value in comparison with the larger picture. Wordsworth continues with the ambiguously complimentary yet somehow insulting poetic description of this woman and his feelings, and ends up concluding the poem by saying how he personally noted her passing on as being significant in some way. He does NOT however specify to the audience whether this “difference” is a positive or negative one. While common courtesy would encourage the reader to first assume that this is a relatively positive opinion of someone who has died, much like a eulogy, I understood the less common reading that the poetic voice could be noting her death and that she “ceased to be” as a good thing – almost as if he were saying “good riddance.” At any rate, those are just some thoughts that crossed my mind.