Some Keywords in "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways"

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"None" and "very few" mean two entirely different things, and unless we grasp the exact nature of the difference between them in this context, we shall not be within a hundred miles of properly understanding the poem. Wordsworth is telling us that although there were indeed a "very few" people who loved Lucy, those few ever think of praising her. He is quite definite about this - "a maid whom there were none to praise." the love of these people for Lucy, then, seems not to have involved feeling that she had any special distinction.

Reasons for this are given in the second stanza. Her beauty was of a singular inconspicuous type, like the beauty of a solitary violet barely visible beside "a mossy stone"; or like the beauty of one single star, which would never be noticed in the sky full of other glinting points of light.

Now, the question arises whether the poet himself is or is not to be included among the "very few" who loved Lucy without thinking her worthy of praise. The obvious interpretation would be that he is the solitary exception that he, of course, valued Lucy at her true worth all along. The last stanza, especially the last line might seem to suggest this.

Wordsworth, according to this interpretation, is singling himself out. The "few" who knew the time of Lucy's death are doubtless the "very few" who loved her, or at any rate include those persons. And the poet might appear to be telling us that he alone was genuinely affected by the event. In that case it must be assumed that her death makes such a "difference" to him precisely because his regard for her has always been of a unique kind. The second stanza would thus be taken as expressing the "praise" which he was the sole person to bestow upon her.

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Interpretations in "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways"

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One of the interpretations in this work, however, is not only possible, but even more probable. I had said Wordsworth is quite definite about there having been none to praise Lucy. If he says "none" he must be allowed to mean it. If we give full weight to this "none", we are forced to conclude that the poet himself is to be counted among the people who loved Lucy without her.

It is now that the words "she lived unknown" begin to sound with a new reverberation. emphasis comes to be placed on "lived", and the words can be interpreted as meaning not only that she lived without any kind of renown, but that while she was alive she was not really known by anybody6, including the poet, for what she truly was. It is only now that she is dead, now that what was taken for granted has vanished from the familiar scene that he realizes the value of what he has lost.

Some readers may object that a poem, which can be given two such interpretations, cannot be said to have used language with precision. To an objection of that kind, the best reply is that precision does not necessarily involve meaning one thing and one thing only. The poet is concerned here with a human experience, a human experience of more complexity than appears at the first sight.

To make us feel the full force of the experience, he packs as much meaning as he can into an extremely small pace. That this compression leaves us guessing about the poet's valuation of Lucy while she was alive is not to be accounted a weakness, since a degree of uncertainty on this score is itself part of the experience that the poem sets out to communicate. The ambiguity of the poem, therefore, paradoxically does make for precision, as it is a means of putting the experience before the reader as fully and disturbingly as possible.

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On Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways"

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This tiny poem, like so much of Wordsworth's, is simple only in appearance. Its language is so lucid and "ordinary", that once the reader has found that the dove is a ricer in the north of England, there would seem to be no obstacle to understanding. Surely Wordsworth is telling us that there was once a maid called Lucy, who lived in a remote place, who has a certain type of unostentatious beauty, and who is now dead. He certainly is telling us these things, but there is more to the whole business than at first meets the eyes.

If the reader concentrates upon the meaning, upon what the words are actually saying, two interesting points will rise. Consider first of all the opening lines of the final stanza: "She lived unknown, and few could know/when Lucy ceased to be". A curious problem here arises with regard to the words "unknown" and "know". If Lucy really did live "unknown", in what ways is it possible to suppose that even "few" could "know" the time of her death?

Taken in the most literal sense, the lines are absurd, since nobody at all could know when a genuine unknown person "ceased to be". It is obvious, then, that as Wordsworth presumably does not mean to be absurd, he must be using the verb "to know" in two different senses. What he is saying may be clumsily explained as follows: Lucy was a person who lived quite without any kind of renown. When she died, only a few people could have been aware of the event.

There is, however more to be said about the lines in the light of what we are told in the first stanza: "a maid whom there were none to praise, and very few to love." understanding Wordsworth's meaning depends upon a sharp distinction between "none", and "very few". It is all too easy to blur this distinction, and read the lines as though Wordsworth had said "a maid whom there were few to praise." such a lazy construction of his words will not do.

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