Analysis of “She dwelt among the untrodden ways”

The title immediately draws the attention to the use of two rather remote words. This might mean the poem is written a long time ago or that the poet wanted to draw the attention of the reader on language itself. The two words are not only remote: they are also the longest in the title.

The text seems to refer to a she: this might mean that she might be a grown female, a young girl or an innocent child. The reader doesn’t know yet and he might be interested to find it out. In addition, he should be curious to discover why the “she” lives or has chosen to live in hidden places.

The poem is arranged into three quatrains and it looks like a ballad.

In the first quatrain, the poet introduces his subject: he’s going to talk about a female person, who lives in an hidden place. This poem looks like as an ode to the beauty and dignity of an idealised woman who lived unnoticed by all others except by the poet himself, who clearly understood her.

In the second quatrain, the poet uses a metaphor to compare her beauty to a violet: he wants to show his love to the she, but also describe his character as a shy and simple person, but always a beautiful woman, compared to the stars.

In the end, the poet shows his struggle of love, in the third and fourth line of the last quatrain, when “she is in her grave”, or she is dead, but just a few could know when and where, and the sadness proved by the writer is great, because he loved her and wanted her to be alive like him, but it’s not possible anymore and this is killing the poet’s soul.