Idle 

thought in Wordsworth’s Lucy cycle
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Adelman, Richard (2011) Idle thought in Wordsworth’s Lucy cycle. Romanticism, 17 (1). pp. 94-
105. ISSN 1354-991X

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 Richard Adelman

Idle Thought in Wordsworth’s Lucy Cycle

Keywords: Wordsworth, idleness, sleep, than the abundance of rural ‘tasks’ that
Cowper, reverie punctuate Cowper’s narrative. The speaker of
Wordsworth’s ‘Strange fits of passion’ (1800)
Laugh ye, who boast your more mercurial might be described in similar terms. Daring to
powers, disclose a style of thought distinct from
That never feel a stupor, know no pause, everyday understanding, the narrator of the
Nor need one; I am conscious, and poem uses this confession in order to lead into
confess, an account of a mental experience both
Fearless, a soul that does not always ‘ludicrous’ and resonant. The selection of the
think. term ‘fits’, to the reader who has read both
(William Cowper, The Task1 ) poems, recalls the language with which Cowper
connects his fire and his state of mind, the
Strange fits of passion have I known: former casting its ‘shadow to the ceiling’ and
And I will dare to tell, ‘there by fits / Dancing uncouthly to the
But in the Lover’s ear alone, quivering flame’ (Task, IV. 285–6). Cowper’s
What once to me befell. ‘waking dream’, and his later classification of
(William Wordsworth, ‘Strange the experience of the brown study as taking
fits of passion’2 ) place during the understanding’s ‘sleep’ (Task,
IV. 298), also anticipates Wordsworth’s
William Cowper’s ‘fearless’ ‘confession’ is narrator’s description of such an experience as
situated, in The Task (1784), as an introduction ‘one of those sweet dreams’, ‘Kind Nature’s
to the free operations of the fancy that make up gentlest boon’ (‘Strange fits’, 17 & 18). And
the poem’s influential ‘brown study’ episode. beyond such similarities of the language in
Having ‘a soul that does not always think’ which these two episodes proceed, it is also
serves, in the passage that follows, not as an worth pointing out the ambivalence with which
inhibition so much as an opportunity for the both texts deal with such experiences. Not only
poet’s mind to do much more than think. The is Cowper problematically ‘restore[d]’ to
‘ludicrous and wild’ conjurings and imaginings, himself at the scene’s close, that event’s
a ‘waking dream’ of ‘strange visages’ (Task, fragility being signalled by the image of fancy’s
IV. 286–8) and other objects inspired by the ‘glassy threads’ being ‘snapp[ed] short’ (Task,
movements of the poet’s fire, hold a position of IV. 305–7), but the tone of the scene is also
intense creativity in the poem, offering a model instigated by its ‘pendulous and foreboding’ fire
of activity more powerful and more interesting (Task, IV. 293) and the patterns it generates. It

Romanticism 17.1 (2011): 94–105

DOI: 10.3366/rom.2011.0009
© Edinburgh University Press
www.eupjournals.com/rom
 Idle Thought in Wordsworth’s Lucy Cycle 95

is the ‘gloom’ (Task, IV. 278) of this fitful dumb positions. Richard Matlak’s focus on the poems’
show, marvellously strange but at the same ‘psychobiographical context’ as the key to
time disturbingly alien (the meanings most unlocking them and the identity of Lucy,
strongly invoked by the adverb ‘uncouthly’), Frances Ferguson’s exploration of the cycle’s
that matches and ‘suits’ (Task, IV. 279) the parody of medieval quest romance, Brian
poet’s mind, ebbing and flowing with the Caraher’s detailed analysis of linguistic
fantastical and the unfamiliar. Wordsworth’s ambiguity in ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’ and
version of such reticence can be seen beyond, represent just some of these various
throughout the poem in his various spoofs of possibilities.4
the quest motif,3 as well as in the poem’s The reading that I intend to construct here
opening stanza. The formal boast of daring to draws on many of these approaches at the same
tell of such ‘fits of passion’ is immediately time as attempting to achieve something
qualified in the speaker’s third line. It is only slightly different from them. I intend to use
‘the Lover’ that can be permitted to hear this Cowper’s serio-comic association of idle
confession, even though such a stipulation thought with sleep as a way into reading two of
barely limits the speaker’s audience. The failure Wordsworth’s Lucy poems as also concerned
of, but need for, this qualification sets the tone with the parameters and significances of this
for the manner in which the narrator’s ‘strange type of contemplation. These two poems are
fits’ will be subtly ironized in the poem. As in ‘Strange fits of passion’ and ‘A slumber did my
Cowper’s brown study, strangeness seems to spirit seal’, both of which are written in what
function as a description of radical individuality Matlak describes as the first phase of Lucy
at the same time as threatening to tip over into composition — taking place in Goslar in
comic bathos. 1798–9, in the first three months after the
The linguistic and rhetorical similarities Wordsworths’ separation from Coleridge —
between Cowper’s influential description of idle and both of which first appear in the second
thought and the terms of the first poem in edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1800. This will not
Wordsworth’s Lucy cycle offer not so much a be to claim, importantly, that Wordsworth’s
story of influence, as a starting point for a Lucy poems belong to the tradition of thought
reading of Wordsworth’s activities in these that responds directly, and that alludes overtly,
poems subtly distinct from current to Cowper’s brown study (as Mary
appreciations of them. This is not to say that Wollstonecraft’s Scandinavian Letters and
recent scholarly work on the Lucy cycle lacks Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’
variety. On the contrary, the factual problems do, for example5 ). Rather, this paper contends
of even dealing with the five texts as a cycle, the that Cowper, and indeed Coleridge, can be used
locations at which and social contexts in which to draw out the manner in which Wordsworth
the poems were written, the tentative first is concerned, in this series of poems, with a
interpretation Coleridge places on them, similar idea. That idea is that idle thought,
Wordsworth’s own 1815 distinctions between aligned in Cowper and Coleridge with the mood
poems ‘founded on the Affections’ and ‘of the that generates poetic composition, is at once
Imagination’, a distinction which splits the creative and disturbing, both ‘ludicrous and
series down the middle, not to mention the wild’.6 Rather than picking out a pattern of
work that the poet seems to be doing with the allusions to Cowper, then, as it is possible to do
poems’ various interconnections and with Wollstonecraft or with Coleridge, this
resonances, all mean that recent criticism comes paper will seek only to read Wordsworth’s
at the texts from a spectrum of contexts and Lucy-thought alongside Cowper’s brown study
96 Romanticism

and its responses. Neither will this be an events of the poem, but the precise timing he
attempt to claim that Cowper’s brown study, or assigns to the fit in question. Seeing it as caused
even Coleridge’s reaction to it, are specifically by the ‘triangulation’ (Wordsworth’s
in Wordsworth’s mind in late 1798. It is the ‘Slumber’, 114) of the poem’s speaker in
contention of this paper, rather, that these texts relation to the moon and his beloved, Caraher
share a distinct set of concerns about idle has the narrator prone to ‘fitful’ passion only
thought and its attendant mood of poetic after his own movement ‘leaves him lightless’.
composition. Those concerns have already been It is apparent, from this observation, that
hinted at by my opening quotations, and they the ‘passion’ in question for Caraher is that
will be explored in more detail below. contained in the poem’s final two lines:
‘ “O mercy” to myself I cried, / “If Lucy should
Let us begin with a more thorough analysis of
be dead!” ’ (‘Strange fits’, 27–8). The poem
‘Strange fits of passion’, for it is in this poem
begins, in this view, by introducing the idea of a
that the parameters in which Wordsworth is
‘fit of passion’ and ends the moment such
operating are most clearly visible. Following his
passion is voiced, in its published form at least.8
excellent analysis of ‘A slumber did my spirit
Cowper’s association of the ‘fitful’ mental
seal’, Brian Caraher offers the following
experience with the language of sleep offers the
description of the last stages of the plot of
possibility of approaching things slightly
‘Strange fits’:
differently, however.
[B]ecause the speaker is ascending a hill the Turning back to the poem in question, I want
moon will appear to him to drop much faster to pay attention to the timings of its slender plot.
until it is quickly blocked from view behind Here are its last four stanzas in their final form:
the roof of the cottage. Since the speaker, And now we reached the orchard-plot;
apparently, is not very far from the cottage And, as we climbed the hill,
[. . . ] the roof will appear large enough to The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot
accomplish this optical delusion. The Came, near, and nearer still.
speaker’s own physical movement toward
the house of his beloved, then, causes the In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
moon to drop abruptly out of sight. As a Kind Nature’s gentlest boon!
consequence, the speaker’s own effort leaves And all the while my eyes I kept
him lightless in the night shade cast by On the descending moon.
Lucy’s roof and fitful with the strange My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
passion that befalls him there.7 He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
This account of the poem occurs in a passage in
At once, the bright moon dropped.
which Caraher is using Erasmus Darwin’s
Zoönomia to read Wordsworth’s narrator as What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
‘delusional’, hence his description of the Into a Lover’s head!
moon’s movement as an ‘optical delusion’. The “O mercy!” to myself I cried,
strange fit of passion considered by the poem is “If Lucy should be dead!”
most importantly empirically false for Caraher,
(‘Strange fits’, 13–28)
its narrator ‘prone to mental delusion’
(Wordsworth’s ‘Slumber’, 112). What is most At the beginning of the second stanza
intriguing in this description, however, is not of this quotation, the poem’s fifth, the narrator
the negativity with which Caraher views the describes his state of mind as that of a ‘sweet
 Idle Thought in Wordsworth’s Lucy Cycle 97

dream’. But one should observe, here, that Caraher’s location of the ‘passion’ in the
this waking sleep is not definitively described poem common-sensically attributed it to the
as beginning at this point. The narrator speaker’s only spoken utterance in his plot. We
does not say that it was as he ‘climbed the hill’ can now summarise the poem slightly
that he ‘fell’ asleep, or into such a state. Rather, differently. The association of the fit with the
the association of the waking sleep with ‘the language of sleep instigated by the comparison
descending moon’ raises the possibility that with Cowper, allows us to characterize more of
this reverie or trance might have begun in the the poem’s action as corresponding to the idea
poem’s third stanza, where the speaker ‘fixed’ of a ‘strange fit of passion’. Doing so,
his ‘eye’ ‘[u]pon the moon’ (‘Strange fits’, furthermore, enables us to be more positive
9). Either way, if we are to follow Cowper and with the waking state characterized by the
associate the ‘strange fit’ in question with that poem. Consider, for example, the first
experience indicated by the language of sleep, exclamatory sentence of the poem’s final
we should note that this experience fills more of stanza: ‘What fond and wayward thoughts will
the poem’s action than simply its final two lines. slide / Into a Lover’s head!’ Building on Frances
There is further evidence for taking the Ferguson’s cogent analysis of the quest motif in
waking sleep to be the main referent of this the Lucy cycle, Caraher observes the various
poem, its ‘strange fit’, rather than simply the connotations attached to Wordsworth’s
housing of its final passion. Take the curious deployment of the adjective ‘fond’ here. Given
inclusion of the narrator’s horse in his the poem’s repeated reference to Chaucer’s
description of the pair’s movement at the ‘Tale of Sir Thopas’, alongside evidence of
beginning of the poem’s fourth stanza: ‘And Bishop Percy’s ‘brief essay on the word “fit”’ in
now we reached the orchard-plot; / And as we his Reliques of Ancient Poetry, bought by the
climbed the hill’. Functionally, this device Wordsworths shortly before their departure for
allows Wordsworth to characterize the Goslar, Caraher contends that —
narrator’s sleep as both a withdrawal from
The speaker’s thoughts can be tender and
sympathy with his companion and a
affectionate in their waywardness; or they
paradoxical inertia within overall movement.
can be contrived, devised, or invented, as a
Both effects are generated by the contrast of
rhymer would contrive tender and
this inclusive terminology in the poem’s fourth
adventurous thoughts in comprising a fit.
stanza with that of its sixth, immediately
“Fond,” for Chaucer, could mean foolish or
following the description of the narrator’s
foolishly tender or could be the past
dreaming state. There, that the speaker’s horse
participle of “finden”, the Middle English
‘move[s] on’, ‘He’ not ‘we’ raising ‘hoof after
form of the verb “to find”, which also
hoof’, characterizes the speaker’s state as one of
includes the sense of “to devise” or
aloneness. Further, that such movement on the
“to invent”.
animal’s part ‘never stopped’ implies that the
(Wordsworth’s ‘Slumber’, 107)
speaker, now detached from this process
pronominally, is also detached from it Let us look, in the light of these observations,
physically. Such careful use of language at this at the tone of the sentence ‘What fond and
moment amounts to this occurrence of ‘one of wayward thoughts will slide / Into a Lover’s
those sweet dreams’ representing a kind of head!’ The first thing to notice is that, in
solipsistic stillness over and above the company accordance with the mood of perceptive
and movement foregrounded by the detachment figured in Wordsworth’s
poem. characterisation of his narrator’s ‘sweet dream’,
98 Romanticism

the tone of this line is not one of passion, in the does itself actually exist in the mind. In this
sense in which Caraher applies that term to the mood successful composition generally
poem’s final exclamation. Rather, the speaker of begins, and in a mood similar to this it is
the poem seems to be knowingly and carried on;9
retrospectively treating the ‘sliding’ of such
‘thoughts’ into his head with equanimity. Both here and in ‘Strange fits’, Wordsworth
Secondly, if in this context the word ‘fond’ foregrounds a movement from ‘tranquillity’ to
carries connotations of contrivance and poetic ‘emotion’, the latter engendered by the former.
invention in conjunction with its tender In the act described by the ‘Preface’ this
overtones, then the mental state being depicted transition is so practised as to almost be
here, the waking sleep, seems to move very premeditated. In the poem, by contrast, such a
close to a state of poetic creativity. The tone of transformation takes place involuntarily and
equanimity, representing thoughts ‘tender and thus troublingly. Further, while the ‘Preface’
affectionate in their waywardness’, would seem gives the case of a specific ‘emotion’ being
to derive from the positive overtones of such ‘recollected’, the poetic act producing a
creativity. That this waking sleep is indeed ‘kindred’ emotion in the poet’s mind, ‘Strange
‘Kind Nature’s gentlest boon’ is thus depicted fits’ contains no such specificity. The
by the subtle play of positivity and strangeness of the experience being depicted
mischievousness in the ‘sliding’ of ‘fond and there, its disturbing overtones, seem to be
wayward thoughts’ into the speaker’s head. connected to its speaker’s lack of control over,
These connotations, importantly, allow or focus on, his own emotion. It does not seem
another context to be brought to bear on this to be a stretch in this context to describe the
first Lucy poem, alongside and in conjunction poem as depicting something very similar to,
with Wordsworth’s medieval reading. Carrying but importantly distinct from, the poetic act as
connotations of creativity and playful Wordsworth describes it. The reason this
mischievousness, the speaker’s reverie of death passion is denominated a strange fit seems to
is an experience in which a ‘strange fit’ have to do with both its involuntary genesis
generates a ‘passion’. Strikingly, to the reader and its deathly content. The manner in which
considering this poem’s first published the passion under consideration is described as
appearance in the Lyrical Ballads, such a ‘slid[ing]’ into the speaker’s head, and the
description seems to recall the 1802 ‘Preface’ to connotations of the word ‘wayward’, can now
those volumes, and its portrait of the be seen to carry such troubling overtones. That
composition of poetry. This is Wordsworth’s sentence’s tone of equanimity might now be
delineation of that process, occurring in the characterized as something akin to stilted
wake of his repetition of the phrase ‘the ambivalence. The waking sleep here would
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’: seem to be contemplation out of control, poetic
creativity that is not a voluntary act, but a kind
I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous of seizure. The phrase a ‘strange fit of passion’
overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its would seem to characterize more than simply
origin from emotion recollected in the speaker’s feeling after ‘the bright moon’ has
tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till ‘dropped’, in other words. The event referred to
by a species of reaction the tranquillity by the poem’s first line is the ‘sweet dream’
gradually disappears, and an emotion, itself, with all its detachments from everyday
kindred to that which was before the subject movement, all its apparent poise, and all its
of contemplation, is gradually produced, and consequent forebodings.
 Idle Thought in Wordsworth’s Lucy Cycle 99

Now that we have observed this subtle This thought, arising from a position of idle
connection between idle thought and poetic contemplation, reconsiders what it means both
creativity in ‘Strange fits’, it is also worth to think and to compose. And importantly,
noting that this is a connection made by both these two activities, poetic creativity and
Cowper and Coleridge in the years leading up contemplation in general terms, are aligned as
to the composition of the Lucy poems. The stemming from the exact same impulse, in this
Task, for instance, aligns a series of moments of tentative suggestion. Man, the poet, and indeed
idle thought along the lines of the terminology ‘all of animated nature’ might ‘tremble into
we have already witnessed in the brown study. thought’ for the same reason. They are only to
Idle thought is at once passive and active, akin be distinguished by the manner in which they
to sleep but also wildly creative. And, are ‘fram’d’. It should also be noted, as we shall
importantly, these parameters are set down see below, that this poem subsequently confers
first, in Cowper’s long poem, in an account of physically danegrous connotations on this
poetic creation that occurs in Book II, ‘The ‘intellectual Breeze’ in much the same way that
Time-Piece’. There, the poet’s task is depicted the brown study’s creativity also conatins
as paradoxically work and not work, both ‘dangers’ that must be ‘escaped’.
pleasurable and taxing, comprising ‘dangers’ What these examples point to, therefore, is
and ‘escapes’, but ‘pleasing’ when considered at not that ‘Strange fits’ functions by direct
a distance (Task, II. 309 & 299). It is this reference to the writing of Coleridge or of
history of idle thought in the poem that lies Cowper, but that Wordsworth’s poem is
behind the creative overtones of the brown animated by a very similar set of concerns. Idle
study’s reverie, the second key moment at thought, for all three poets at this moment,
which Cowper explores such territory. In that represents an activity poised between creativity
scene, therefore, the ability of the poet to and danger, and between pleasure and pain.
conjure a ‘waking dream’ of ‘houses, towers, / ‘Kind Nature’s gentlest boon’, to use
Trees, churches, and strange visages’ (Task, Wordsworth’s terms, is also ‘wayward’, and is
IV. 287–8) bears an important relation to inclined, on the evidence of ‘Strange fits’ and
composition itself. Idle thought leads, almost Cowper’s brown study, to invoke the idea of
involuntarily, to poetic creativity.10 death at the very moment it is most
It is also possible to trace a similar ‘sweet’.
connection between idle thought and poetic It is with this shared subject matter in mind,
creativity in Coleridge’s writing. In the poem and its tension between creativity and the idea
that becomes ‘The Eolian Harp’, for instance, of death, that I want to turn to the third Lucy
the reverie instigated by the poet’s carefully poem in their 1800 ordering, ‘A slumber did
positioned idleness is one concerning poetic my spirit seal’. Because this pattern of ideas,
inspiration directly: equating sleep, idle thought, and mental
disturbance, is also of central importance there.
And what if all of animated nature Here is the two stanza poem in its entirety:
Be but organic Harps diversly fram’d,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them A slumber did my spirit seal;
sweeps, I had no human fears:
Plastic and vast, one intellectual Breeze, She seemed a thing that could not feel
At once the Soul of each, and God of The touch of earthly years.
all? No motion has she now, no force;
(‘Effusion XXXV’, 36–4011 ) She neither hears nor sees;
100 Romanticism

Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, Conceals the mood lethargic with a mask
With rocks, and stones, and trees. Of deep deliberation, as the man
(‘A slumber’, 1–8) Were task’d to his full strength, absorb’d
and lost.
At a first glance, the ‘slumber’ in question in
Thus oft reclin’d at ease, I lose an hour
this poem might appear to be distinct from the
At evening, till at length the freezing
waking sleep explored in ‘Strange fits’. The
blast
discrepancy revolves around the verb to ‘seal’ in
That sweeps the bolted shutter,
the poem’s first line. Although the speaker of
summons home
‘Strange fits’ floats between experience and
The recollected powers, and snapping
reflection, between writing about, and writing
short
from within, a ‘fit of passion’, that poem does
The glassy threads with which the fancy
not function along the lines of the type of
weaves
self-reflection found in Cowper’s brown study.
Her brittle toys, restores me to myself.
There, in the brown study, the poet is detached
(Task, IV. 296–307)
enough from the experience he is depicting to
describe the interplay of those of his faculties
There are several elements of this passage that
under consideration. It is the ‘sleep’ of the
are pertinent to reading ‘A slumber’. One
poet’s ‘understanding’ (Task, IV. 296), for
should note, most prominently, that Cowper’s
instance, that is characterized by his ‘Fancy’
classification of the fancy’s ‘wild’ imaginings as
being ‘soothed’ (Task, IV. 286) by the ‘waking
taking place while the ‘understanding’ ‘sleeps’
dream’. In the first line of ‘A Slumber’,
is equated, chronologically and physically in
however, the presence of the speaker’s ‘spirit’
these lines, with the appearance of a ‘mask’ of
achieves something like this register of
‘deep deliberation’. The suspension of the
description. It is now the speaker’s ‘spirit’ that
understanding’s activities thus corresponds to a
is under the spell of a waking sleep, rather than
kind of fixed posture that separates internal
the poem’s narrator considered as a whole. And
activity from outward interaction. The mask
further, the relationship between the speaker’s
replaces normal interactions with the world
spirit and the ‘slumber’ is now classified as one
with a rigid appearance of ‘absorption’.
of ‘sealing’.
Secondly, the process underneath this mask is
It is my contention that it is by reading ‘A
represented in these lines as a troubling
slumber’ alongside Cowper’s brown study
alienation from the world, and from the self.
episode that the nature of this ‘sealing’, and the
The effect of this is that phrases such as
import of the type of analysis this poem
‘ludicrous and wild’, and the fitful and
attempts, can be seen most clearly. Again, this
‘foreboding’ movements of the poet’s fire, take
is not to say that this poem functions
on more solidly dangerous connotations when
exclusively by reference to Cowper, but that its
the episode’s reverie ends with the poet being
concern for a similar problem, or tension, in idle
‘restored’ to himself. Further, these lines also
thought renders it apt to such a treatment. Let
serve to classify this excursion out of the self
us turn back briefly to the brown study, then,
that has taken place in the episode so far as
and to the lines that conclude that episode:
troublingly fragile: the ‘glassy threads’ that led
’Tis thus the understanding takes repose to ‘brittle toys’ turn out to ‘snap’ as soon as the
In indolent vacuity of thought, physicality of the world, the ‘freezing blast’,
And sleeps and is refresh’d. Meanwhile penetrates the poet’s mask. The whole episode
the face is rendered both insubstantial and dangerously
 Idle Thought in Wordsworth’s Lucy Cycle 101

physical by these lines, therefore. And it is this study depicts. The waking sleep, the
perspective that also allows the final element of contemplative idle reverie in which one
these lines to be drawn out. Since the brown disengages one’s understanding to explore a
study episode is founded on the shared different world, represents a ‘sealing’ of the
physicality between the movements of the ‘spirit’ from that world. It is in such reverie,
poet’s fire and the operations of his ‘fancy’, according to the first lines of ‘A slumber’, that
what takes place in these lines classifies that one can encounter the idea of death without
relationship as allowing the individual to enter ‘human fear’, even though that encounter led
a world a dangerous physicality. As in to the reverie’s conclusion in ‘Strange fits’.
Coleridge and Wollstonecraft’s versions of this The second element that I picked out of
process, ceasing to control one’s mind Cowper’s conclusion to the brown study
consciously leads to an encounter with episode is also to be traced in ‘A slumber’. First,
something shifting, shadowy, and sublimely however, I must note that I am considering
powerful that surrounds the individual in ‘A slumber’ in the light of Brian Caraher’s
moments of reverie. In Cowper’s brown study, masterful treatment of the poem’s syntax, in
allowing the understanding to sleep is thus which he demonstrates that the pronoun ‘She’
equated with a dangerous engagement with the in its third line equates more directly to the
‘uncouth’, ‘pendulous’, and ‘foreboding’ poet’s ‘spirit’ than it does to the enigmatic
physicality of the scene’s fire. All this takes figure of Lucy herself, despite this poem’s
place at the expense of normal understanding position in the Lucy cycle.12 So, as the brown
of, and normal interaction with, the study depicted the poet’s alienation from the
world. normal physicality of the world, so do the third
This paradigm, of idle thought leading to an and fourth lines of ‘A slumber’, when one
encounter with a world of dangerous follows Caraher. ‘She’, the speaker’s spirit,
physicality that threatens to subsume the ‘seemed’, in this waking sleep, to belong in a
individual’s identity, is shared between Cowper, realm untouched by ‘earthly’ concerns. In
Coleridge, and Wollstonecraft, in this period. much the same way, at the height of Cowper’s
And it is this paradigm that is also explored, but reverie, it is only the dramatic interaction of the
in an original way, I suggest, by Wordsworth’s ‘freezing blast’ and the ‘bolted shutter’ that can
‘A slumber did my spirit seal’. Let us return to rouse the poet from his contemplation. The
the poem now. If we equate the ‘slumber’ of the speaker’s detachment from the movement of
poem’s first line with the reverie of idle his horse in ‘Strange fits’ fulfils a similar
thought that is depicted by the language of function. The ‘touch of earthly years’, the
sleep in ‘Strange fits’ and in the brown study, physicality of worldly concerns, is suspended
then the process taking place at the beginning by the alienation of the idle reverie.
of Wordsworth’s poem seems to correspond to Following the paradigm of Cowper’s thought
Cowper’s delineation. Where Cowper’s mask in this manner becomes most useful, however,
sealed and insulated him from the world of the when one considers the final four lines of
understanding, this ‘slumber’ has the same Wordsworth’s ‘A slumber’, for that is where
effect, isolating the poem’s speaker, and his this process enables us to see Wordsworth’s
‘spirit’, from usual interaction with the world. originality, in comparison to Cowper,
This relationship is made evident by the poem’s Coleridge, or Wollstonecraft’s treatment of this
second line, for having ‘no human fears’ idea. We have already seen, in the brown study,
corresponds to the kind of engagement with the that the experience of alienation from the self,
world of shadowy physicality that the brown and the suspension of understanding’s
102 Romanticism

interaction with the world, takes place at the ‘earth’s diurnal course’ itself, and to objects
same time as a heightened experience of the considered generically. The speaker’s spirit,
physicality of one key object. In the brown now motionless as in the riding passage of
study, and in Coleridge’s recreation of that ‘Strange fits’, and so cut off from normal
scene in ‘Frost at Midnight’ (1798), this is the sensory understanding that it ‘neither hears
object that instigates the poet’s reverie — the nor sees’, experiences instead the cold eternality
fire. In Wollstonecraft’s Scandinavian Letters, of the movements of symbolic inanimate
heightened experiences of a series of natural objects, of ‘rocks, and stones, and trees’. Where
objects are explored, that cast the traveller’s Cowper and Coleridge portrayed the possibility
thought away from herself on fancy’s ‘glassy of redefinition in the image of one object,
threads’.13 In all these cases, the physicality of ‘A slumber’ considers redefinition by death,
that object carries disturbing overtones, and therefore. The connotations of idle thought
threatens, importantly, to reconstitute the that were held in check as troubling, uncouth,
individual concerned in its own shifting image. or frighteningly wild, as a particular problem of
In the brown study, this danger takes the form one class of object, by Cowper and Coleridge,
of the fitful, uncouth, pendulous movements of are unleashed wholesale, by ‘A slumber’.
the poet’s fire. In the ‘Eolian Harp’, it is the A reverie on the idea of an ‘intellectual Breeze’,
notion that the ‘intellectual Breeze’ might or on the idea of the fitful movement of flames,
actually become a ‘wild’, ‘various’, and is rendered a reverie on the idea of death itself,
‘random’ ‘gale’ (‘Effusion XXXV’, 34), given by Wordsworth. And the effect of this
mastery over the poet’s mind when he reframing of Cowper’s paradigm of idle
disengages his understanding. thought, is that ‘A slumber’ plumbs greater
What is unique about ‘A slumber’, in the depths of thought than the brown study or
context of these treatments of idle thought, is Coleridge’s versions of that scene.
that its events take place without attachment to Wordsworth’s idle reverie passes beyond
a single physical object. Whereas in ‘Strange specific physical danger to categorically invoke
fits’, it is the ‘evening-moon’ (‘Strange fits’, 8), death, and burial, as a physical reality. What
or the scene more generally, that seems to was localised and therefore containable in
throw the poem’s speaker into reverie, in Cowper and Coleridge, is rendered conceptual
‘A slumber’ the whole process, although similar and universal by Wordsworth.
in design, takes place in a more abstracted,
undefined sphere. The poem’s ‘slumber’ is not There is one further manner in which
just ‘uncall’d’ (‘Effusion XXXV’, 31) and ‘A slumber’ must be understood to represent a
involuntary, therefore, but unprompted. It is different degree of attention to the problem of
nevertheless the case that, as in Cowper and idle thought than any of its equivalent accounts
Coleridge, the problematic nature of this type in the writing of Coleridge or Cowper. That is
of idle thought is depicted, in ‘A slumber’, by in terms of its consistency of tone. Reading
dangerous interaction with physicality that ‘A slumber’ in terms of the paradigm of
takes place in the poem’s second stanza. There thought to be found in Cowper’s brown study,
as well, however, Wordsworth has opened up makes clear that the two accounts of idle
the problematic connection with objects of thought differ significantly in terms of irony.14
reverie in a more universal manner. No longer Consider, for example, the connotations of
using a single fire or the idea of a gale to Cowper’s image of the ‘mask of deep
represent the problem of idle thought, the deliberation’. That mask functions, in the
reverie of ‘A slumber’ equates this danger to brown study, both to describe the withdrawal of
 Idle Thought in Wordsworth’s Lucy Cycle 103

the poet’s understanding from the world, and to neither Lucy’s laughter nor the speaker’s own
portray that process, mockingly, as one of deathly premonition. The possibility that the
deception. It is as if the poet were ‘task’d to his poem’s fit of passion might be a matter for
full strength, absorb’d and lost’, as if he were serious concern is maintained, even though that
engaged in some serious occupation, the fit is also thoroughly undermined.
implication being that idle thought could not be Turning back to ‘A slumber’, therefore, one
considered to engage the individual completely. finds a striking difference in tone, in
The sealing of the speaker’s spirit that takes comparison to these examples of Cowper and
place in ‘A slumber’, by contrast, carries no Coleridge’s thought, as well as of
such possibility of flippancy. Wordsworth does Wordsworth’s own. In ‘A slumber’ the reverie,
not draw back from the deathly connotations of and its thorough sealing of the speaker’s spirit
idle thought, in that poem, as Cowper does by from any ironic detachment, is given regular
means of such carefully sustained irony. And it metrical assurance. The first and third lines’
is important to note that across Coleridge’s unbroken iambic tetrameter and precise rhyme
various treatments of this model of idle achieve this directness of purpose. And without
thought, such irony is also consistently playful commentary, ironic coda, or dramatic
deployed. In the ‘Eolian Harp’ poem, for counter-voice, the constant features of Cowper
instance, ironic disavowal is achieved by the and Coleridge’s treatment of troubling idle
presence of the poet’s wife, Sara, who is used to thought, ‘A slumber’ proceeds with conviction
voice an instant repost to the reverie’s in the spiritual seriousness of its reverie. The
possibilities: Sara’s ‘more serious eye’ ‘darts’ an effect of this departure from irony and humour
instant ‘reproof’ along the lines of the poet’s is to cast ‘A slumber’ into a realm of
blasphemy (‘Effusion XXXV’, 41–2). The philosophical gravity that is deliberately
transcendent possibilities of the idle reverie are avoided by every other example of the idle
thus transformed, by this poem’s action, into reverie we have considered. ‘A slumber’ thus
the ‘shapings of an unregenerate mind’, stands out, in the context of this period’s
‘Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break / On thought, for its simultaneously formal and
vain Philosophy’s aye-babbling spring’ thematic assurance. In seemingly calm
(‘Effusion XXXV’, 47–9). One should also note, disinterestedness, it takes the analysis of idle
in this connection, that Wordsworth’s ‘Strange thought it shares with Cowper and Coleridge
fits’ dramatises a similarly ironic withdrawal beyond those poets’ diverse concerns for that
from the concerns of its speaker’s reverie. Not activity’s validity.16
only is this achieved by the playful
undermining of its speaker in the poem’s first I want to conclude by making a couple of
stanza that we have already noted, but also, in observations about the analysis of
the unpublished final stanza, the reverie’s Wordsworth’s Lucy-thought made possible by
content itself becomes the object of laughter: simultaneous attention to Cowper’s brown
study and to Coleridge and Wollstonecraft’s
I told her this: her laughter light meditations on that scene. Firstly, and
Is ringing in my ears: importantly, using Cowper as a heuristic device
And when I think upon that night in this manner makes it possible to follow Brian
My eyes are dim with tears.15 Caraher’s excellent analysis of the linguistics of
These lines continue the poem’s serio-comic ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’ and emancipate
tone, balancing humour and earnestness. The that poem from its problematic connection to
speaker’s tears are definitively aligned to the figure of Lucy herself. A reading that
104 Romanticism

follows Cowper and Coleridge in their concern in terms uniquely emancipated from the local,
for the parameters of idle thought renders the the particular, and the ironic.
shared subject matter of ‘Strange fits’ and
‘A slumber’ that category itself, rather than the
protean figure of Lucy. Moreover, were there
Notes
space here to offer treatments of the three 1. W. Cowper, The Task, and Selected Other Poems,
remaining poems in the Lucy cycle, it is my ed. J. Sambrook (4 vols, London, 1994), iv. 282–5.
belief that it could be demonstrated that the Hereafter Task.
figure of Lucy in Wordsworth’s Lucy-thought 2. W. Wordsworth, The Poetical Works of William
is rendered a kind of shorthand for the Wordsworth, ed. E. de Selincourt and H.
problematic nature of idle thought itself. This is Darbishire (5 vols, Oxford, 1940–9), ii. 29, lines
1–4. Quotations from the Lucy poems will
to say that Cowper’s brown study also opens up
hereafter be referred to by their conventional
ways of reading ‘She dwelt among untrodden titles, and can be found in The Poetical Works, ii.
ways’, ‘I travelled among unknown men’, and 29–31, and 214–16.
‘Three years she grew’ along similar lines to 3. See Frances Ferguson, ‘The Lucy Poems:
the readings of ‘Strange fits’ and ‘A slumber’ I Wordsworth’s Quest for a Poetic Object’, ELH, 40.
have offered here. The notion of the fire’s 4 (Winter 1973), 532–48.
movement, in the brown study, invoking ‘some 4. Richard Matlak, ‘Wordsworth’s Lucy Poems in
Psychobiographical Context’, PMLA, 93. 1
stranger’s near approach’ (Task, IV. 295), which
(January 1978), 46–65; Brian Caraher,
is explored at even greater length in Coleridge’s Wordsworth’s ‘Slumber’ and the Problematics of
‘Frost at Midnight’, could be the starting point Reading (Pennsylvania, 1991).
for an analysis of the idea of ‘strangeness’ and 5. See Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Frost at Midnight’,
the ‘stranger’ in ‘She dwelt’, for instance. Poetical Works, ed. J. C. C. Mays, Bollingen
Likewise, the notion of the involuntary genesis Collected Coleridge Series, 16 (3 parts in 6 vols,
of this style of idle thought, in Cowper and Princeton, 2001), i. 453–6, and Mary
Wollstonecraft, Letters written during a short
in Coleridge, seems to bear an important
residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark,
relation to the idea of enslavement by
Works, eds. J. Todd and M. Butler (7 vols,
nature-contemplation, and by Lucy-thought, in New York, 1989), vi. 237–348. It should also be
‘Three years she grew’ and ‘I travelled’.17 It is noted that the shared concerns of Cowper,
my assertion that, by these analyses, Coleridge, and Wollstonecraft are the subject of
Wordsworth’s conversation with Cowper and extended analysis in the third chapter of my
Coleridge on this subject could be opened up Idleness, Contemplation and the Aesthetic,
even further. And it is my contention that the 1750–1830 (Cambridge, forthcoming 2011), and
that although I will be making repeated reference
consideration of Cowper’s brown study
to the writing of each of these figures in this
alongside Wordsworth’s writing allows us to paper, this is not an attempt to move beyond the
witness such a conversation taking place analysis represented there.
concerning the problematic nature of idle 6. Idleness, Contemplation and the Aesthetic,
thought in ‘Strange fits’ and ‘A slumber’. Chapters 1–3 offer an in-depth portrait of the
When the details of this conversation are intellectual context of this idea in the political
charted, furthermore, Wordsworth’s significant economy and social philosophy of the second half
of the eighteenth century.
departure from the repeated reticence and irony
7. Wordsworth’s ‘Slumber’, 113.
that Cowper and Coleridge infuse into their 8. I will be addressing the final unpublished stanza of
depictions of idle thought becomes clear. the poem below.
‘A slumber did my spirit seal’ thus represents 9. W. Wordsworth, ‘Preface’, Lyrical Ballads,
an examination of the dangers of idle thought ed. M. Mason (London, 1992), 82.
 Idle Thought in Wordsworth’s Lucy Cycle 105

10. For a fuller treatment of these interconnections, Idleness, Contemplation and the Aesthetic,
see Idleness, Contemplation and the Aesthetic, Chapter 3.
Chapter 3. 15. Poetical Works, ii. 29n.
11. S. T. Coleridge, ‘Effusion XXXV’, The Complete 16. It should be noted that in Coleridge’s thought, the
Poems, ed. W. Keach (London, 1997), 85–6; problematic status of idle thought lies most
for the final version of the poem, ‘The Eolian importantly in the apparent inactivity of the will
Harp’, see Coleridge, Poetical Works, i. when the individual is in such a state. It is for this
231–35. reason that the Biographia Literaria considers the
12. See Wordsworth’s ‘Slumber’, 15–48, where this will’s operation in poetic creativity at such length;
case is made extremely thoroughly. see S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria,
13. See, for instance, Letters written during a short eds. J. Engell and W. J. Bate (2 vols, Princeton,
residence, 248–9. 1983), and Idleness, Contemplation and the
14. The irony of Cowper and Coleridge is again Aesthetic, Chapter 4.
considered at much greater length, including 17. I have constructed a reading of ‘Three years’
in the four re-writings of ‘Frost at Midnight’ largely along these lines in the Epilogue to
that occur between 1798 and 1829, in Idleness, Contemplation and the Aesthetic.