Lucy, an English girl who has died young. The idea of her death weighs heavily on the poet throughout the series, imbuing it with a melancholic, elegiac tone. Whether Lucy was based on a real woman or was a figment of the poet's imagination has long been a matter of debate among scholars. Generally reticent about the poems, Wordsworth never revealed the details of her origin or identity.[2] Some scholars speculate that Lucy is based on his sister Dorothy, while others see her as a fictitious or hybrid character. Most critics agree that she is essentially a literary device upon whom he could project, meditate and reflect.
The "Lucy poems" consist of "Strange fits of passion have I known", "She dwelt among the untrodden ways", "I travelled among unknown men", "Three years she grew in sun and shower", and "A slumber did my spirit seal".
Although they are presented as a series in modern anthologies, Wordsworth did not conceive of them as a group, nor did he seek to publish the poems in sequence. He described the works as "experimental" in the prefaces to both the 1798 and 1800 editions of Lyrical Ballads, and revised the poems significantly—shifting their thematic emphasis—between 1798 and 1799. Only after his death in 1850 did publishers and critics begin to treat the poems as a fixed group.
A Slumber did my spirit seal Introduction
This is one of the ‘Lucy poems’ written by William Wordsworth. These poems have been dedicated to his beloved. The poet refers to death which is a permanent sleep. The poet did not realize when his beloved Lucy slept forever i.e. she died. She had taken life for granted and realized this harsh truth of life after her death.
The poet admits that he was in a sort of a deep sleep because he did not fear the harsh reality of life. He had taken life for granted and had never thought that one day death could separate him from his beloved Lucy. For him she was like an immortal goddess who was unaffected by age and mortality.
As she is dead, she lies motionless. She cannot hear or see. She has been buried in the earth and rotates along with the Earth. One day she will get assimilated with the trees, rocks and stones that are a part of the earth.
A deep sleep closed up my soul. I wasn't afraid of anything people are usually afraid of (like death): my beloved seemed to me like someone who could never be changed by the passage of time.
My beloved is dead now, so she can't move—she has no strength or life force. She also can't hear or see. She just passively goes round and round with the earth's movement, spinning along with the rest of the inert natural world.
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William Wordsworth's "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" first appeared in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), a groundbreaking collaborative poetry collection by Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" is the last poem in a short sequence known as the "Lucy poems," in which a speaker expresses his love for (and grief over) a mysterious, idealized woman. In this poem, the speaker marvels over the strangeness of his beloved's death: having always seen her as young and vibrant, he can hardly wrap his head around the fact that her body is now as inert as the "rocks, and stones, and trees." The poem reminds readers that most people live deep in a delusional "slumber," barely acknowledging mortality despite death's inevitability.
Read the full text of “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Summary
A deep sleep closed up my soul. I wasn't afraid of anything people are usually afraid of (like death): my beloved seemed to me like someone who could never be changed by the passage of time.
My beloved is dead now, so she can't move—she has no strength or life force. She also can't hear or see. She just passively goes round and round with the earth's movement, spinning along with the rest of the inert natural world.
“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Themes
Theme Grief and Mortality
Grief and Mortality
The speaker of “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” looks back with wonder on a time when his now-dead beloved was alive. Back then, he reflects, he had no “human fears” of death, feeling that his beloved was somehow beyond “the touch of earthly years.” Now that she’s dead, that’s actually true—but not in the way he imagined it to be true. Rather than being an immortal, changeless goddess, his dead love has become an inert, passive, unchanging part of nature. Death, this poem suggests, is a perfectly simple and natural thing—but one that humans “seal” out, preferring to live in illusion. In this light, most of life is like a “slumber,” and grief is an awakening to the truth.
The speaker remembers his past life with his beloved as a kind of dream—a “slumber” he didn’t even know he was in. This “slumber” was so deep that it “seal[ed]” the speaker’s “spirit.” In other words, his soul was locked up safe, but also cut off from reality.
Specifically, this “slumber” protected the speaker from the thought of mortality. In his dreamworld, the speaker saw his beloved as “a thing that could not feel / The touch of earthly years”: eternally young and alive, someone death could never touch.
This image suggests that people tend to live in a sort of dream. Almost no one really goes about their day-to-day lives truly feeling that the people they love (and they themselves) will one day die. This slumber thus protects the speaker from pain, but he pays a price for that protection. Unable to accept that his beloved is mortal, he's setting himself up for a terrible shock.
After the speaker’s beloved dies, he seems to wake up, understanding that his belief in his beloved’s immortality was an illusion all along. Grief, this change suggests, forces humans to reckon with a reality they’d rather not face.
In the reality the speaker awakens to, his beloved is certainly past “the touch of earthly years,” but only because she’s become an object, just like the “rocks, and stones, and trees.” This natural imagery suggests that death is as normal as “earth’s diurnal course” (that is, the earth’s daily rotation).
In a twist, though, it’s exactly that normalcy that’s so bewildering. The speaker’s plain, factual statement of his beloved’s deadness—in contrast with his past dream of her—seems to ask: how could she really be dead? How could someone who seemed not to “feel / the touch of earthly years” be inert as a stone now?
Grief, in other words, shakes people awake from the “slumber” they seem to spend most of their lives in, forcing them to confront a simple but bewildering fact: death is at once the most normal and the most mysterious thing there is.
1. Rhyme scheme – abab cdcd
2. Alliteration – The repetition of a consonant sound at the start of two or more consecutive words is called alliteration. The instances of alliteration are as follows –
‘Spirit sealed’, ‘rolled round’
3. Enjambment – when a sentence continues into two or more lines ending without any punctuation marks, it is called Enjambment. The instances of enjambment are as follows –
“She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.”
“Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees.”
Question 1.
“A slumber did my spirit seal”, says the poet. That is, a deep sleep ‘closed
off’ his soul (or mind). How does the poet react to his loved one’s death? Does
he feel deep sense of grief? Or does he feel a great peace?
Answer:
The poet is shocked and surprised at the death of his loved one. It feels
painful. Death does not make anyone feel good. It is always associated with
misery.
Question 2.
The passing of time will no longer affect her, says the poet. Which lines of
the poem say this?
Answer:
“She seemed a thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years”.
Question 3.
How does the poet imagine her to be, after death? Does he think of her as a
person living in a very happy state (a ‘heaven’)? Or does he see her now as a
part of nature? In which lines of the poem do you find your answer?
Answer:
The poet imagines her to be an inseparable part of nature. No, he does not
think so because ‘heaven’ is not a dead thing. It is shown in the line ‘Rolled
round in earth’s diurnal course/With rocks and stones and trees’.
Additional questions
solved
Short answer type
questions
Question 1.
What happened to the poet’s beloved?
Answer:
The poet’s beloved was dead. She was not alive now. The poet remembers her
beloved through the poem. Her death has sealed or made her spirit peaceful. Her
death has ended all human fears. She was no more and was beyond the mortal
earthly touch.
Question 2.
How does she become an inseparable part of nature?
Answer:
She becomes an integral part of nature. She is trapped under the surface of the
earth and is rolled round in earth’s course with rocks, stones and trees. She
is rolling round in earth’s diurnal course. Actually, she has become one with
nature or inseparable part of it.
Question 3.
Is she visible? If not, why not?
Answer:
No, she is not visible because she is no more. She cannot be perceived with
eyes. The poet can visualize her through his soul. She has become a part of the
earth’s diurnal course. She has become one with rocks, stones and trees.
Question 4.
How will time not affect the poet’s beloved?
Answer:
The poet’s beloved is dead and a dead thing becomes immortal. It is a
universally accepted fact that immortality is not affected by time or the
physical world. She cannot hear or see. She has gone beyond the physical world.
She is beyond the touch of earthly years now. She has become a part of nature’s
diurnal course.
Question 5.
How does the poet react to his beloved’s death?
Answer:
The death of the poet’s beloved is so sudden and unexpected that his mind as
well as his body seems to be closed off. A deep slumber has taken hold over
him. His spirit seems to be sealed. He has lost touch of earthly consciousness.
Her death has cut him off from all earthly fears. A deep slumber has engulfed
all his wordly feelings.
Question 6.
How does the poet imagine her beloved to after her sudden and untimely death?
Answer:
Now his beloved is no more a part of this mortal world. She would be beyond the
touch of earthly years. She is beyond the action and reaction of all five
senses and the earthly body. However, she will become an inseparable part of
nature. She will be rolling round in earth’s diurnal course. She will become
one with rocks, stones and trees.
Long answer type
questions
Question 1.
Give a brief analysis of the poem ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’ in your own
words.
Answer:
In the poem ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’ the poet describes his beloved after
her death. In the first stanza, the poet says that the death of his beloved
made him very depressed. He says that his beloved has now become a non-living
thing which cannot feel the touch of anything on the earth. In the second
stanza, he says that his beloved has no motion. She can neither hear any sound
nor can she see any thing. She is trapped under the earth and revolves with
rocks, stones and trees.
Question 2.
How does the poet react to the untimely, sudden and shocking death of his
beloved? What does he imagine her to be after her death?
Answer:
The sudden and untimely death of his beloved leaves the poet stunned. It is not
easy to express the poet’s feelings in words. Actually, a deep slumber ‘sealed’
his spirit. He fell as if he were in deep sleep. This deep sleep seems to have
closed off his body and soul. She is no more and will not be affected by the
earthly years as well as by the touch of five physical senses. She will feel no
motion, movement or force. Nor will be able to hear or see. Yet she will become
an in separable part of nature. Physical death doesn’t mean that will be
condemned to an everlasting death. No, she will roll round in earth’s diurnal
course. She will become one with rocks, stones and trees.
Value based questions
Question 1.
All of us know that nothing is ours permanently, then why do we suffer so much
to have more and more?
Answer:
It is true that nothing belongs to us permanently because one day we have to
leave all the things on the earth. Nevertheless, people crave for more wealth,
fame, knowledge, beauty and even commit crime, because this is human nature. We
cannot separate ourselves from such things. If we give up our greed to have
more and more, the world would be a much better place to live in. People would
not go to extremes to achieve something.
Question 1.
What does the poet mean by ‘spirit’ and in what state was it?
Answer:
In the poem the word ‘spirit’ refers to the mind of the poet. He was in a
slumber. That is, a deep sleep or a state of unawareness as if unconscious to
the realities of life. It is as if he was drugged or under some spell.
Question 2.
What caused the slumber of the poet?
Answer:
The poet was passionately in love with the girl. Her death shocked and saddened
him. He felt bitter grief. His deep emotion overwhelmed his mind. Such was the
intensity of his sorrow that it overpowered his consciousness.
Question 3.
What changes did the slumber bring in the poet’s feelings?
Answer:
The poet was shocked and saddened by his beloved’s death. But the slumber
brought peace to his mind. He realised that his beloved had become part of
Nature and would always remain around him.
Question 4.
Who does not feel any human fears? Why?
Answer:
The poet does not feel any fears and his soul feels at peace, as though asleep
and existing in a deep calm where he has nothing to fear. His love for Lucy was
so strong that he did not want her to grow old and suffer the problems of old
age as human beings do. She would not now be marked by the passing of time or
the ravages of nature as other mortals are. For him, she has attained the
status of a supernatural being.
Question 5.
Explain the line: “The touch of earthly years”. Who would not feel the touch of
earthly years?
Answer:
The expression “The touch of earthly years,” refers to the ravages of old age
faced by human beings – the depletion of energy, diseases, senility and death
which a person has to suffer as one grows old during life on this earth. The
poet’s beloved Lucy will not face the problems of old age as she is no more
alive.
Question 6.
How does the poet come out of his ‘slumber’?
Answer:
The poet comes out of ‘slumber’ as the realisation dawns of him that with her
death Lucy is no longer a human being and as vulnerable to death as others. She
has become an immortal being and he sees her as a supernatural goddess. This
brings him out of his unconsciousness or ‘slumber’.
Question 7.
How does the poet react to his loved one’s death?
Answer:
At first the poet is shocked by the death of his beloved and he feels bitter
grief. But after some realisation, he feels a great peace. He is content that
the passing of time will no longer affect her. She has become part of Nature
and is free from human travails.
Question 8.
The poet does not refer to the death of Lucy. How does he reveal that she is no
more?
Answer:
The poet does not refer to Lucy as being dead directly. However, he makes it
obvious that she is no longer alive by stating that she has become completely
still, motionless, inactive and inert. Moreover, she has lost her senses of
hearing and seeing.
Question 9.
How does the poet imagine “her” to be after death?
Answer:
The poet imagines her to be at peace after death. She is in a deep sleep, no
longer affected by worldly affairs or by the passage of time. She is now part
of nature. ‘No motion has she now, no force She neither hears nor sees,’
Question 10.
What does the poet mean by “earth’s diurnal course”? How has “she” become a
part of earth’s diurnal course?
Answer:
The phrase “earth’s diurnal course” refers to the daily rotation of the earth
on its axis that causes day and night. According to the poet Lucy has become an
inseparable part of the earth after her death. As she has mingled with the
earth, she naturally participates in its daily course just like the stones, the
rocks, and the trees.
Question 11.
What is the relation of Lucy with rocks, stones, and trees?
Answer:
Lucy, after her death, has part of Nature as she has mingled with the soil. As
such she is a part of the other things on the earth like rocks, stones or
trees. She has now become a part of Nature.
Question 12.
What is the central theme of the poem?
Answer:
The poem deals with the loss of a loved one through death and the sorrow that
follows. The death of Lucy left the poet in great pain. However, Wordsworth
conveys the idea that death may separate our loved ones from us but they always
remain around us in the form of nature. Wordsworth immortalizes Lucy by stating
that she lives on in Nature after her physical death. Therefore, the death of a
loved one should not leave us grief-stricken.
Extra Questions and
Answers Long Answer Type
Question 1.
Give a brief summary of the poem ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’ in your own
words.
Answer:
In the poem A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal the poet says that grief over the
death of his beloved has left him numb and that human fears no longer affect
him. But he realises the reality of life after her death and through this
realisation he has now attained peace. He is content as the passing of time
will no longer affect her. She is in her grave, covered with soil and has thus
become the part of Nature and of the earth. She is rolling with the earth as it
turns from day to night and vice versa.
Question 2.
How did Lucy’s death affect the poet? What does it reveal about his attitude
towards her?
Answer:
The poet remarks that he had become unaware of the realities of life when he
was under the spell of Lucy’s love. He felt as if he was under some spell and
this seemed to have clouded his sense of reasoning. He felt Lucy was not
subject to the consequences of time and the aging process. He did not realise
she would one day be conquered by death. For him, she had attained the status
of a supernatural being – a goddess or a deity beyond worldly suffering.
Such was the poet’s
intensity of love for the girl that he was blind to the hard fact of life that
everybody who is born has to ultimately die. Death, however, leaves her unable
to perform any physical activity. As he comes to terms of her death, the poet
feels that in her death his beloved Lucy has become a part of Nature. She is
now under the surface of the earth and revolving along with it on its path. He
tells us that like other stones, rocks and trees she also revolves with the
earth now.
Question 3.
How does the poet reveal that Lucy is dead without using the words ‘death’ or
‘dead’? What according to him, has happened to Lucy after her death?
Answer:
Though the poet does not use the words ‘death’ or ‘dead’ for Lucy, yet he is
able to convey very clearly that Lucy is no longer alive. He writes that Lucy
has lost all force and strength; she has become absolutely inert and
motionless. Her body has lost all activity. The young girl is also deprived of
her senses like that of hearing or seeing. He says that her body has integrated
itself with the earth. She has become as inseparable from the earth as stones,
rocks, or trees. Like them, she rolls with the earth as it rotates on its axis.
The idea that she still exists as a part of the earth soothes the mind of the
poet who does not shed tears or cry over her death.
Extra Questions and
Answers Reference to Context
Read
the extracts given below and answer the questions that follow.
Question 1.
A slumber did my spirit seal
I had no human fears.
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
(a) What was the
poet’s state of mind when Lucy was alive?
Answer:
When Lucy was alive the poet was in a state of spiritual peace as he did not
even think about her aging or dying.
(b) What was the
‘human fear’ he did not have?
Answer:
It blinded him to the reality that eventually all things that are born perish
or die one day.
(c) Why did he not
have this fear?
Answer:
The poet could not imagine that she was a human being and subject to suffering
and death.
(d) How does the poet
imagine her to be, after death?
Answer:
The poet imagines her to now be a part of nature.
Question 2.
A slumber did my spirit seal-
I had no human fears.
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
(a) Who does ‘she’
refer to?
Answer:
The poet does not disclose in the poem the identity of the girl. But because
the poem is one of the Lucy Poems, she refers to Lucy, the girl Wordsworth
loved.
(b) What could she not
feel?
Answer:
She could not feel the touch of earthly years.
(c) Explain “the touch
of earthly years”.
Answer:
By “the touch of earthly years”, the poet means the ravages of time or the
process of aging.
(d) Why does the poet
say that his loved one is rolling round in the way of the earth?
Answer:
The poet says that his beloved is a part of Nature she is also moving round
with the earth.
Question 3.
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.
(a) What happened to
the poet’s beloved?
Answer:
The poet’s beloved was dead.
(b) Where is she now?
Answer:
After her death she has become one with Nature.
(c) How does she
become an inseparable part of nature?
Answer:
She has become an integral part of nature as she is buried and has become one
with the earth.
(d) Explain: she is in
“earth’s diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees”?
Answer:
She is now a participant in the daily routine of the earth and rolls with it
along with the rocks and trees and other things of Nature.
Question 4.
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.
(a) What does the word
‘slumber’ refer to?
Answer:
The word ‘slumber’ refers to a deep sleep. Here it refers to death.
(b) How will time not
affect the poet’s beloved?
Answer:
The poet’s beloved is dead and therefore has become immortal.
(c) ‘No motion has she
now, no force.’ Why is ‘she’ motionless?
Answer:
‘She’ is the poet’s beloved who is no longer alive. Therefore she is motionless.
(d) What is the
central theme of the poem?
Answer:
The poet wants to convey the idea that though death separates our loved ones
from us but they always remain around us in the form of nature.
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