Composed 1799.--Published 1800
[Written at Goslar, in Germany, in 1799. It was founded on a circumstance told me by my sister, of a little girl, who, not far from Halifax in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snow storm. Her footsteps were tracked by her parents to the middle of a lock of a canal, and no other vestige of her, backward or forward, could be traced. The body, however,was found in the canal. The way in which the incident was treated, and the spiritualizing of the character, might furnish hints for contrasting the imaginative influences, which I have endeavoured to throw over common life, with Crabbe's matter-of-fact style of handling subjects of the same kind. This is not spoken to his disparagement, far from it; but to direct the attention of thoughtful readers into whose hands these notes may fall, to a comparison that may enlarge the circle of their sensibilities, and tend to produce in them a catholic judgment.--I.F.]
One of the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood."--Ed.
Oft I had heard [1] of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor, [2]--
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet [3] face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.
"To-night will be a stormy night--
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."
"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon--
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!"
At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped [4] a faggot-band;
He plied his work;--and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.
Not blither is the mountain roe:
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THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - VOL. 2 (Completed)
經典The poetical works of William Wordsworth, edited by William Knight.
