"She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" by William Wordsworth -- Norton Literature

William Wordsworth was born in England on April 7, 1770.  Throughout his life, he was a very prolific and renowned writer, accredited with initiating the Romantic Age in English Literature with his publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, and posthumously acknowledged for his greatest work, The Prelude.  This fame earned him the title of Poet Laureate of Britain in 1843, which he possessed until his death in 1850.




"She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" by William Wordsworth


She dwelt among the untrodden ways
    Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
    And very few to love:


A violet by a mossy stone                                 5
    Half hidden from the eye!
--Fair as a star, when only one
    Is shining in the sky.


She lived unknown, and few could know
    When Lucy ceased to be;                            10
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
    The difference to me!
                                                                  [1800]

Though only twelve lines long, William Wordsworth’s poem “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways” is a moving piece, written about a most potent feeling indeed, revealing a powerfully quiet and personal quality as well as an elegiac tone through the voice of the first person speaker, as much of heart and soul of the poem would be lost to a clinical third person narration.  Throughout the poem, we learn much not only about the object of the speaker’s love, but his own personal feelings as well.  We learn that the speaker’s love was a beautiful woman who led a simple life by a small stream in northern England, secluded and unknown to the rest of the world.  But we also learn why the speaker loved her: she was “like a violet by a mossy stone,” untainted by the smog and sin of cities, and “fair as a star, when only one/Is shining in the sky,” or pure as the light in the black of night.  The lover is so stricken by her death that he visibly displays breathlessness and speechlessness (and, oh,/The difference to me!).  In fact, he is so overcome with emotional angst that he has only the ability to procure a very short poem, using only simple and concise diction and syntax throughout very short lines, just over ten in number.  Through this short but deeply elegiac poem, the speaker summons every last ounce of poetic skill he has to give a pure and simple eulogy for his pure and simple flower, who, though he will not ever see again in life, will continue to be with him as one more twinkling star, giving hope on a cloudless night.