Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.

Lucy Gray; Or, Solitude

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

OFT I had heard 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,

—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 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 a fagot-brand:

He plied his work;—and Lucy took

The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe:

With many a wanton stroke

Her feet disperse the powdery snow,

That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:

She wandered up and down;

And many a hill did Lucy climb:

But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night

Went shouting far and wide;

But there was neither sound nor sight

To serve them for a guide.

At daybreak on a hill they stood

That overlooked the moor;

And thence they saw the bridge of wood,

A furlong from their door.

They wept—and, turning homeward, cried,

‘In heaven we all shall meet;’

—When in the snow the mother spied

The print of Lucy’s feet.

Then downwards from the steep hill’s edge

They tracked the footmarks small:

And through the broken hawthorn hedge,

And by the long stone-wall;

And then an open field they crossed;

The marks were still the same;

They tracked them on, nor ever lost;

And to the bridge they came.

They followed from the snowy bank

Those footmarks, one by one,

Into the middle of the plank;

And further there were none!

—Yet some maintain that to this day

She is a living child;

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray

Upon the lonesome wild.

O’er rough and smooth she trips along,

And never looks behind;

And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind.