In Lucy Gray and There was a boy Wordsworth examines childhood in similar ways bringing out his views of this time in peoples lives
by
moz12345 (student)
Holly Mozley Sunday, 25 November 2012
Examine the ways in which Wordsworth portrays childhood in two poems from the Lyrical Ballads
In Lucy Gray and ‘There was a boy’ Wordsworth examines childhood in similar ways bringing out his views of this time in people’s lives. Lucy Gray is about a young girl who gets lost on the “Wild” who died in a snowstorm. ‘There was a boy’ is about a boy imitating owls and the oppressive nature of the silence he encounters when they leave as well as his possibly metaphorical and literal death at the end of the poem. Wordsworth discusses the ephemerality of life in these poems with the idea of “spots of time”, the innocence lost and the experience gained in these poems through the use of images of death and examines the relationship that the children have with nature. Throughout these poems he creates tensions of time, expression and emotions with the structure of the poems aiding the way he portrays the boy and Lucy in the poems.
In the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth is obsessed with the ephemeral nature of human life juxtaposed with his portrayal of the natural world as something timeless. Wordsworth uses edges in the natural landscape to mirror human ephemerality in the everlasting natural world the “Cliffs”, “edges of hills” and the idea of things “setting” suggests this poem is interested in the edges and boundaries of human knowledge juxtaposed with natural world which Wordsworth depicts as timeless as all-knowing. In ‘There was a boy’ the natural world is depicted as steady and timeless in the first lines of the poem especially through the image of “when the stars had just begun/ To move”. The stars are a recurring image in his poetry and symbolise timelessness and constancy in the natural world. They also represent a form of distant beauty creating spirituality in the natural world which the children often revere. In Lucy Gray “the Moon” is depicted in a similar way to the stars but is also used to indicate the season is winter as “the Minster-clock has just struck two” emphasising the danger of nature at this time of year, the danger of the dark and changing weather. Wordsworth never depicts a clear picture of Lucy for the reader to see; she is blurred as though, like the time of day in which the poem is set, she is always depicted in a half light as “Her feet disperse the powd’ry snow/ That rises up like smoke”. The image of Lucy is distorted, the reader never sees the girl entirely even when she is alive, to the reader she is fading already. Wordsworth intentionally portrays her as a transient being as she is only glimpsed like she is a ghost on the “Wild”. These spots of time are sensitively and poignantly portrayed in Lucy Gray and ‘There was a boy’ as Lucy and the boy both die. In Lucy she just disappears as “further there were none [of her footprints]” suggesting she has been taken by the river and the storm as if nature has taken her back. Wordsworth makes her ephemeral and timeless as although she dies she becomes this symbol of innocence as she never grows up as “you may see sweet Lucy Gray/ Upon the lonesome Wild”. On the other hand in ‘There was a boy’ the boy “died when he was ten years old”, this death is somewhat ambiguous in the poem it could be argued that this is the literal death of the boy due to the “silence” and the dark, bleak images created in his mind from this. Or it is also argued that this is the depiction of the death of Wordsworth’s own childhood and the gaining of experience.
