She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways by William Wordsworth: Analysis and Commentary

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

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;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

Commentary

This is one of several short poems that William Wordsworth wrote concerning the death of a beautiful young woman named Lucy. Like its companions, this deceptively simple piece is a meditation on death and how it affects the loved one’s survivor.

The Lucy of this poem is not famous. She was not celebrated. In fact, she lived an isolated and obscure life “among the untrodden ways.” As the speaker of the poem informs us, there was no one to sing her praises, and only a few loved her during her life. She was, if we were to use a harsher term than the poem employs, a nobody.

If the first stanza of the poem tells us that Lucy lived an obscure, lonely, and isolated existence virtually unknown and uncelebrated, the second stanza tells us that the speaker of the poem, nevertheless, found her to be a rare beauty. He compares her to “a violet by a mossy stone/ Half-hidden from the eye” and then emphasizes that beauty further by pointing to its rarity. As a flower, she was “half-hidden from the eye.” As a heavenly body, so to speak, she was “Fair as a star/ When only one is shining in the sky.” 

Imagine the sky at night, pitch black, even though there are no clouds, with only one star shining in that inky darkness. The eye would be drawn to it instantly, and its solitary brightness would seem all the brighter by virtue of it’s being alone. The implication is that the lonely Lucy had seemed all the more beautiful to her lover because she lived alone, “among the untrodden ways.”

In the poem’s final stanza, the speaker points out that isolated Lucy lived a life that was so seemingly insignificant that only a handful of people even knew that she had died: “She lived unknown, and few could know/ When Lucy ceased to be.” However, for the speaker, the death of his beautiful, beloved Lucy has made a world of difference: “But she is in her grave, and, oh,/ The difference to me!”

Most of us, beautiful or not, do not achieve great fame. Most of us are not praised or celebrated. Nevertheless, a simple, unassuming girl can mean more than anyone, including herself, can imagine, especially when she is no longer one who dwells “among untrodden ways”—or anywhere else. To gain an appreciation of the power of this poem, all one needs to do is imagine that its Lucy is one’s own girlfriend. She may not be a movie star, but her death would hurt far more than that of any sultry siren of the silver screen who, despite her fame and celebrity, was unknown and unloved.