Summary

“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” is a short, eight-line poem that begins with the speaker describing a state of hibernation-like sleep in which they “had no human fears” (2). They go on to describe an unnamed woman, who seemed immortal to them, unable to feel “the touch of earthly years” (4). In the second stanza, however, the speaker reveals that this woman has died, saying “no motion has she now, no force;/she neither hears nor sees” (5-6). The final two lines of the poem describe her body, buried beneath the earth “with rocks, and stones, and trees,” rolling “in earth’s diurnal course” (8, 7).

Analysis

In spite of its brevity, “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” is a relatively dense poem in terms of meaning and thematic content. Many critics classify it as one of Wordsworth’s Lucy poems, a...