William Wordsworth's "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" first appeared in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), a groundbreaking collaborative poetry collection by Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 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.
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The Full Text of “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
1A slumber did my spirit seal;
2I had no human fears:
3She seemed a thing that could not feel
4The touch of earthly years.
5No motion has she now, no force;
6She neither hears nor sees;
7Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
8With rocks, and stones, and trees.
The Full Text of “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
1A slumber did my spirit seal;
2I had no human fears:
3She seemed a thing that could not feel
4The touch of earthly years.
5No motion has she now, no force;
6She neither hears nor sees;
7Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
8With rocks, and stones, and trees.
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“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Summary
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“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Themes
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Grief and Mortality
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
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Lines 1-2
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears: -
Lines 3-4
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years. -
Lines 5-6
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees; -
Lines 7-8
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
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“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Symbols
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Rocks and Stones and Trees
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Sleep
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“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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Caesura
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End-Stopped Line
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Polysyndeton
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Repetition
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Metaphor
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“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Slumber
- Seal
- Earth's Diurnal Course
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
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Form
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Meter
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Rhyme Scheme
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“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Speaker
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“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Setting
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Literary and Historical Context of “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
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More “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to the poem read out loud.
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The Wordsworth Trust — Visit the Wordsworth Trust's website for more on Wordsworth's life, poetry, and legacy.
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More on the Lyrical Ballads — Read about the second edition of Lyrical Ballads—the important collection in which this poem was first published—on the British Library's website.
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A Short Biography — Read a brief biography of Wordsworth from the Poetry Foundation, where you can find links to more of his poems.
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The Lucy Poems — Read a New Yorker essay that discusses what's so strange, novel, and important about Wordsworth's "Lucy poems."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Wordsworth
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