William Wordsworth’s Lucy Poems: Finding Beauty in the Sublime: Connection and Nature

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I love the Lucy poems written by William Wordsworth. I’ve never been a huge fan of poetry, and I certainly didn’t know much about Wordsworth. I actually first read an altered version of the first Lucy poem in Suzanne Collins’ prequel to her Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I loved that book and the character of Lucy Gray Baird, so when I was assigned the Lucy poems for class a few months later, I was immediately intrigued and wanted to better understand this mysterious and tragic character.

In this essay that I wrote for class, I try my best to document Lucy’s journey as she leaves her home and becomes lost out in the wild. I also look at the two vying forces of the “beautiful” and the “sublime.” The two concepts are similar, but there is a comfort and peacefulness to beauty while the sublime holds an element of fear in its mystery. By way of example, most people would probably call a butterfly beautiful and a dragon sublime. Lucy’s story blurs the distinctions between these two elements in some incredible ways, and I wanted to share that here.

I hope you enjoy this essay. You can also listen to me read it on my podcast, “Determination, Deliberation, and Dragons.” You can find the show wherever you get your podcasts. We also do original writing workshops, author interviews, and book and film analyses.