seneca was the speaker in she dwelt among the untrodden ways.
seneca was the speaker in she dwelt among the untrodden ways.
who is the speaker in she dwelt among the untrodden ways?
seneca
wordsworth purchased a copy of thomas percy's collection of british ballad material "reliques of ancient english poetry" in hamburg a few months before he began to compose the lucy series. the influence of traditional english folk ballad is evident in the meter, rhythm, and structure of the poem. "she dwelt among the untrodden ways" follows the variant ballad stanza a4—b3—a4 b3, and in keeping with ballad tradition seeks to tell its story in a dramatic manner. as the critic kenneth ober observed, "to confuse the mode of the 'lucy' poems with that of the love lyric is to overlook their structure, in which, as in the traditional ballad, a story is told as boldly and briefly as possible." ober compares the opening lines of "she dwelt among the untrodden ways" to the traditional ballad "katharine jaffray" and notes the similarities in rhythm and structure, as well as in theme and imagery:
she dwelt among the untrodden ways
section::::structure and style.









































"she dwelt among the untrodden ways" consists of three quatrains, and describes lucy who lives in solitude near the source of the river dove. in order to convey the dignity and unaffected flowerlike naturalness of his subject, wordsworth uses simple language, mainly words of one syllable. in the opening quatrain, he describes the isolated and untouched area where lucy lived, while her innocence is explored in the second, during which her beauty is compared to that of a hidden flower. the final stanza laments lucy's early and lonesome death, which only he notices.
she dwelt among the untrodden ways