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.
ATTRIBUTION:
William Wordsworth (1770–1850), British poet. A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal, st. 2 (1800).
This verse has been the subject of a literary dispute centering on Wordsworth’s pantheism: is the death of the girl (Lucy) terrible because she is as inanimate as the earth’s inert objects, or consoling because she is one with nature?
