A Critical Analysis of A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal, by William Wordsworth

This poem has been composed by William Wordsworth. He is one of the best poets during Romantic Period. He wrote many poems with romantic atmosphere during his poetic career and his name and fame struck in the pages of world's history. He draws a real picture of human feelings and he believes himself as a heart motivator because he gives a sense of affection to the readers in the world through his conception of poetry. Here, I am going to explain line by line of "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal ".It is an elegy written by him on the death of Lucy. So simple question is here, who is lucy….I think she is a beautiful creation of William Wordsworth's imagination. But most of us not sure that she was a real girl of his life or a girl in imagination. This poem has only two stanzas with a wide sense of realization. 

"A slumber did my spirit seal, 

I had no human fears;

She seem'd a thing that could not feel, 

The touch of earthly years ".

                                        In the first stanza of the poem, the poet says that when I go to bed then my heart is sealed because during that period no sense of love and no sense of touch or no sense of fears. The poet feels that when I am in slumber, I am just as a thing. It seems that dead body. Even could not feel the activities of earthly things though he says that it is a powerful unit of the world that has power to seal immortal unit. The girl who is dead and flat on the earth. But he thinks that she is sleeping for years. 

"No motion has she now, no force, 

She neither hears nor sees;

Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course, 

With rocks, and stones, and trees".

                                                     In the second stanza of the poem, the poet says that his dream girl has no motion at all and no force to make anything. She looks like a lifeless thing. Now the poet says that she has lost the power of listening and looking around. She has lost everything and she is rolled down as a rock and stone from her diurnal course. Whatever the poet said and imagined in his life that is true. He means that she has everything now in her life except active spirit so without spirit she is as a rock and a stone. In this poem, he gives multiple messages to us to understand the fact of human existence. As a reader of this poem, I should understand his deep feeling and his innocent tenderness of life. S T Coleridge called this poem a "Sublime Epitaph ". I think it is one of the best poems of William Wordsworth's record.