A slumber did my spirit seal

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A slumber did my spirit seal
"A slumber did my spirit seal" is a poem written by William Wordsworth in 1798 and published in the 1800 edition
of Lyrical Ballads. It is usually included as one of his Lucy poems, although it is the only poem of the series not to
mention her name.
Background
During the autumn of 1798, Wordsworth travelled to Germany with his sister Dorothy and fellow poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. From October 1798, Wordsworth worked on the first drafts for his "Lucy poems", which included
"Strange fits of passion have I known", "She dwelt among the untrodden ways" and "A slumber".
[1]
In December
1798, Wordsworth sent copies of "Strange fits" and "She dwelt" to Coleridge and followed his letter with "A
slumber". Eventually, "A slumber", was published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads.
[2]
Unique amongst Lucy poems, "A slumber" does not directly mention Lucy. The decision by critics to include the
poem as part of the series is based in part on Wordsworth's placing it in close proximity to "Strange fits" and directly
after "She dwelt" in the Lyrical Ballads.
Poem
The Lucy poems falls within a genre of poems that includes Robert Herrick's lamentations on the death of young
girls.
[3]
Written in spare language, "A slumber..." consists of two stanzas, each four lines. The first is built upon an
even, soporific movement in which figurative language conveys the nebulous image of a girl.
[4]
The poem begins:
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years. (lines 1!4)
The second stanza maintains the quiet, even tone of the first, but serves to undermine the former's sense of the
eternal by revealing that Lucy has, by the time of composition, died. The narrator's response to her death lacks
bitterness or emptiness; and instead takes consolation from the fact that she is now beyond life's trials:
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees. (lines 5!8)
Themes
Lucy is an isolated figure in which the narrator responds to her death.
[5]
The beginning of the poem, according to
Wordsworth biographer Mary Moorman, depict a "creative sleep of the senses when the 'soul' and imagination are
most alive."
[6]
This idea appears in other poems by Wordsworth, including Tintern Abbey. The space between stanza
one and stanza two depicts a transition of Lucy from life into death. The two stanzas also show that Lucy, a being
connected intrinsically to nature, dies before she can attain her own distinct consciousness apart from nature.
However, as literary critic Geoffrey Hartman explains, "Growing further into consciousness means a simultaneous
development into death [...] and not growing further also means death (animal tranquillity, absorption by nature)."
[7]
The lifeless rocks and stones described in the concluding line convey the finality of Lucy's death.
[8]
Boris Ford
argues that within the second stanza as "the dead girl is now at last secure beyond question, in inanimate community
with the earth's natural fixtures." Coleridge, in a letter to Thomas Poole, states, "Whether it had any reality I cannot
A slumber did my spirit seal
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say. Most probably, in some gloomier moment he had fancied the moment when his sister might die."
[9]
Coleridge's reference was to the state of Lucy as dying or dead within the Lucy poems as a whole and to "A slumber"
in particular. Although Lucy cannot be established, it is certain that there is a relationship between the name Lucy
and Wordsworth's sister within Wordsworth's poetry since Wordsworth used the name Lucy in reference to his sister
in many poems, including "The Glow-Worm" and "Nutting". The problem with relating Lucy to Dorothy is in
explaining why Dorothy would be presented in a state of death.
[10]
Within other Wordsworth poems like The
Prelude, Dorothy is presented in a lively state. As such, the poems are most likely not about Dorothy but just a
continuation of a theme in general.
[11]
Lucy is presented as character connected to nature who exists in a state between the spiritual and human; similar to a
mythical nymph. However, she represents a state of consciousness and exists within the poem as part of the
narrator's consciousness. The first stanza describes the narrator transcending human fears because his feelings
towards an immortality connected to Lucy, a feeling brought up in "Strange fits". These feelings of immortality
continue in the second stanza because, though dead, she is separated from him by death. She is always a being
connected to nature, and the narrator slumbers because his understanding of Lucy is not conscious.
[12]
Since Lucy exists on an unconscious level for the narrator, he cannot grasp her until she has died. As such, he
experiences the events as one who is woken from a dream without an understanding of what the dream entailed, and
is not able to feel shock at learning of her death. This is thematically represented in the poem by placing Lucy's death
between the two stanzas.
[13]
Critical reception
Upon receiving Wordsworth's letter containing a copy of "A slumber", Coleridge described the work as a "sublime
epitaph". Wordsworth's friend Thomas Powell wrote that the poem "stands by itself, and is without title prefixed, yet
we are to know, from the penetration of Mr. Wordsworth's admirers, that it is a sequel to the other deep poems that
precede it, and is about one Lucy, who is dead. From the table of contents, however, we are informed by the author
that it is about 'A Slumber;' for this is the actual title which he has condescended to give it, to put us out of pain as to
what it is about."
[14]
In 1967, Hartman claims that within the poem, "Wordsworth achieves the most haunting of his elisions of the human
as a mode of being separate from nature."
[15]
John Mahoney, in 1997, emphasises the poem's "brilliant alliteration of
the opening lines" along with pointing out that "the utter simplicity masks the profundity of feeling; the delicate
naturalness of language hides the range of implication". Antonia Till remarks that the poem consists mainly of
monosyllables with the occasional disyllable. Thus the use of the near-scientific word 'diurnal' achieves astonishing
power, bringing a cosmic dimension to the girl's death and demonstrating Wordsworth's mastery of both the majestic
and the mundane in his poetry.
Notes
[1] Matlak 1978 pp. 46!50
[2] [2] Moorman 1968 p. 422
[3] [3] Hartman 1967 p. 157
[4] [4] Ford 1957 p. 165
[5] [5] Mahoney 1997 p. 106
[6] [6] Moorman 1968 p. 426
[7] [7] Hartman 1967 p. 21
[8] [8] Hirsch 1998 p. 40
[9] [9] Moorman 1968 qtd. p. 424
[10] Moorman 1968 pp. 423!424
[11] [11] Moorman 1968 p. 424
[12] Hartman 1967 pp. 158!159
[13] [13] Hartman 1967 p. 159
A slumber did my spirit seal
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[14] [14] Powell 1831 p. 63
[15] [15] Hartman 1967 p. 158
References
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
Ford, Boris. From Blake to Byron. The Pelican Guide to English Literature Vol. 5. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1957.
Hartman, Geoffrey. Wordsworths Poetry 1787!1814. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.
Hirsch, Edward. " Five acts (http:/ / findarticles. com/ p/ articles/ mi_qa3692/ is_199805/ ai_n8804436/ pg_11)".
The American Poetry Review (May/June 1998): 35!48. Retrieved on 4 October 2008.
Mahoney, John L. William Wordsworth: A Poetic Life. New York: Fordham University Press, 1997.
Moorman, Mary. William Wordsworth A Biography. The Early Years 1770!1803. London: Oxford University
Press, 1968.
Powell, Thomas. "Literary Characters. No. III. Mr. Wordsworth." Frasers Magazine 3 (June 1831): 557!566.
Draconian, a Doom Metal band from Sweden, composed music for this poem, and was included as part of their
debut album Where Lovers Mourn (2003).
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