Some Famous Personalities on Lucy Poems
- Timas Powell was the first to refer to the group as the Lucy Poems.
- John Stoddart called Strange fits and She dwelt “singular specimens” of Wordsworth’s poetry and praised their “unpretending yet irresistible pathos.”
- Dorothy Wordsworth admired Strange fits, calling it her personal favourite.
- Charles Lamb praised She dwelt for its touching simplicity.
- John Keats admired the quiet, tender spirit captured in Lucy’s portrayal.
- Francis Jeffrey criticised Strange fits for its abrupt and simple style.
- William Angus Knight described She dwelt as “an incomparable twelve lines.”
- David Rannie noted the poems’ “sublime simplicity” in conveying love and loss.
- Geoffrey Hartman viewed Lucy as the “purest spirit of place,” symbolising England.
- Meena Alexander called Lucy the “impossible object of desire” and a passive ideal.
- Hunter Davies said the Lucy Poems are “best-known but not most important.”
- Hartley Coleridge parodied the poems, reflecting their ambiguous meaning.
- Samuel Butler mocked the poems’ sentimental tone and unclear message.
- Harold Bloom felt the poems blend death and desire into lyrical elegy.
- Helen Vendler praised the poems’ stripped-down, raw language of grief.
- F.R. Leavis saw them as a model of emotional depth in few words.
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