A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

During the autumn of 1798, Wordsworth travelled to Germany with his sister Dorothy and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From October 1798, Wordsworth worked on the first drafts for his "Lucy poems", which included "Strange fits of passion have I known", "She dwelt among the untrodden ways" and "A slumber". In December 1798, Wordsworth sent copies of "Strange fits" and "She dwelt" to Coleridge and followed his letter with "A slumber". Eventually, "A slumber", was published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads.

"A Slumber did my Spirit Seal" is the last poem in a short sequence known as the "Lucy poems," in which a speaker expresses his love for (and grief over) a mysterious, idealized woman. 

In this poem, the speaker marvels over the strangeness of his beloved's death: having always seen her as young and vibrant, he can hardly wrap his head around the fact that her body is now as inert as the "rocks, and stones, and trees." 

The poem reminds readers that most people live deep in a delusional "slumber," barely acknowledging mortality despite death's inevitability. 

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.


No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.


The poem is an ‘elegy’ or a literary form that conventionally mourns or laments the death of someone close to the speaker. There are many sub-forms or sub-genres of poetry like the epic, the sonnet, the ballad, the dramatic monologue and so on.

These pieces are all focused on the idealized love of a speaker for a girl by the name of Lucy. In this particular piece, she is not named, but her story remains the same and the speaker is faced with her premature death for which he was unprepared. 

‘A Slumber did my Spirit Seal’ is a short two stanza poem, made up of two quatrains, or sets of four lines. The stanzas are simple in their formation and follow the rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD. The rhythm and syllables of this piece are also constant. The second and fourth line of each stanza contains six syllables, while the first and third contain eight. 

Analysis

  • A slumber did my spirit seal; 

    I had no human fears: 

    She seemed a thing that could not feel 

    The touch of earthly years.

  • Slumber: sleep
    Spirit: soul
    The speaker of ‘A Slumber did my Spirit Seal’ begins by describing a state that he has been living in for an extended period of time. Some have proffered the idea that the speaker is Wordsworth himself, but when this poem is taken into consideration with the other four “Lucy” poems, it is perhaps more likely the speaker is a persona with which Wordsworth closely relates.
    At the beginning of this short but complex narrative, the speaker states that he has been consumed by a “slumber.” His “spirit” has been sealed up in a trance-like state that has kept him from seeing the truth of the world. Blinded by his idolized love for “Lucy,” who remains unnamed in this piece, the speaker has disregarded basic elements of life and death. 
  • While in this trance he has “no human fears.” He did not acknowledge or worry about the things that most humans, especially lovers, do. The speaker did not think of an end to the relationship, or the possible aging and death of his beloved. These are things that are going to surprise him, and that he is going to describe as the poem continues. 
  • It had “seemed” to the speaker, while his “spirit” was sealed up, that his love, Lucy, was immune from the “touch of earthly years.” She was to him, so beyond the realm of normal human women, that it was impossible to even fathom her death. Whether he truly believed this to be true, that his beloved could not age, is not clear. Either way, he was unprepared when confronted with the truth. 

  • No motion has she now, no force;

    She neither hears nor sees;

    Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,

    With rocks, and stones, and trees.

  • diurnal: daily
    (Earth’s diurnal course” is earth’s daily rotation on its axis)
    In the second stanza, the speaker is forced to come to his senses. He sees that she has died and regards her as now have “No motion.” She does not have the “force” that she did previously; to move her own body, or to wield the same power over him that she did when she was alive. That does not mean that he is unaffected by her death. He is surprised and shocked by the change in his circumstances. 

He speaks further on her new condition, saying that now she is unable to either “hear [or] see.” The “earthly years” have taken these senses away from her and have confined her to death. He now recognizes that she is, and always was, a part of “earth’s diurnal course.” She is impacted and changed by the daily progress of time, just like anyone else. 

Now, she has cemented her place within the Earth and is holding an even more important spot in it’s progression. She is “Rolled round” in the Earth and has become one, physically, and spiritually, with the “rocks, and stones, and trees.” Just as they do, she ages, and just as she does, they make up the foundation of the Earth. 

Literary devices
  • Alliteration - The repetition of a consonant sound at the start of two or more consecutive words is called alliteration. The instances of alliteration are as follows -
        ‘Spirit sealed’, ‘rolled round’
  • Enjambment - when a sentence continues into two or more lines ending without any punctuation marks, it is called Enjambment. The instances of enjambment are as follows 
         “She seemed a thing that could not feel
           The touch of earthly years.”

          “Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course
            With rocks and stones and trees.”
  • Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of the vowel sound in the same sentence. The examples in this poem are:
        A slumber did my spirit seal
        She seemed a thing that could not feel
        She neither hears nor sees
        Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course

  • Metaphor: The examples of metaphors used in this poem are; Calling tranquility as a sleeping spirit. Calling not being affected by time and aging as the touch of earthly years. The entire second stanza is a metaphor for death and becoming one with the earth, with the universal forces.
  • Image and Imagery.  An image is a  verbal representation of a sensory experience or of an object that can be known by one or more of the senses like sight, smell, touch and tastes.  Imagery is vivid descriptive language that appeals to one or more of the senses. The description of the speaker’s  dead beloved as being ,’ “Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course   With rocks, and stones, and trees” is an example of imagery.  The visual picture in our mind of earth revolving around the sun, and consequently the body and soul of the speaker’s beloved  revolving along with rocks, stones and trees suggests her as becoming one with Nature after her death.
  • Irony. The speaker’s description of his beloved as  having ‘no motion or force’ and she is ‘revolving with the earth around the sun’ actually implies she is dead and the speaker cannot be one with her . This is also because the speaker, unlike his beloved, was always alienated from nature. This mismatch between what is said and what is meant is an example of irony. The speaker’s opinion that it was because of ‘the slumber’ which ‘sealed’ his spirit that he felt that his beloved was ‘ untouched’ by earthly things like mortality is ironic, because it is not really the slumber but his desire that his beloved should not be touched by death as he loves her deeply, that has made him blind to the fact.