She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways

The object of the present text is to provided a personal interpretation of William Wordswoth poem She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways.

It is not meant to give a definitive answers but I am going to try to make some possible conjectures supported by textual reference.

Considering the title it arouse curiosity in the intelligent reader who asks himself some questions like “who is the lady?”, “Why did she decide to live in a secluded place?”, “why did the poet speak about this girl?”, 2why did the poet use the word dwelt”?. Therefore the reader may aspect the poem to be about a special girl who lived in a remote place where only a few people gone.

The poet may told about this lady because he know who the girl is, he had seen her or because he had already heard about her and he was interested in her. It suggests that he could be one of the few people who visited that place.

Looking now the lay-out and the structure it’s clear that the poem is arranged into 4 stanzas, precisely 4 quatrains with four lines each. The first line of the first stanza report the title therefore the reader may aspect the poem could be part of a collections.

So I am going to read the poem to find out if my expectations were correct or not and the reason why the poet chose this structure.

Considering the sound level the vowels are long and they remind the reader the echo’s effect. The echo is an acoustic phenomenon which implies distance, so it recalls the distance’s idea underlined with the term “untrodden”.

In every quatrains there are alternate rhymes which stress the echo’s effect.

Moving to the other levels, I consider now the first stanza; there the poet celebrated a Maid who lived among untrodden ways beside the springs of Dove, who was loved from a few people. The poet used the pronoun “she” to create suspense in the reader who want to know who the girl is and to create a sort of distance with the girl.

In the line two, the term “springs” associates the Maid to the life’s purity and with the clear flowing water; therefore the woman is associated to natural beauties.

In addition the term springs indicates also the mouth of a river so it could add the idea of remoteness.

The poet used in the second quatrains a metaphor and a simile to make clear the figure of the girl.The girl is associate to a violet by a moss stone for many reason; the first one is because you could find the violet in a place where nobody gone so he grow in a dispersed place like the Maid who is alone and loved by the only person is able to find and to understand her. The second one is because the girl is natural and simple just like violet.

Moreover she was defined fair as the only star that is shining in the sky because she is illuminate and she give light to things indeed both become essential.Last but not least in the third one he used a lot of perception verbs to underlines how matters happen despite the subject’s involuntary. The poet called the Maid by her name which reinforce her humanity; she called Lucy and as a star she brings light and if she is the only one I fall in love with this.

 All things consider I believe the poem gradually answers to my question. The poet used the term “dwelt” instead the term “lived” to create in the reader’s mind the sense of something has changed indeed she finally dead.The poet spoke about this girl because he probably fell in love with her because she was shy, smell, uniq, modest and she never want to be in the centre of attention