The version of the poem used to create this study guide appears in: Applebaum, Stanley, editor. English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. Dover Publications, Inc., 1996. Parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” is one of William Wordsworth’s shortest published poems, and also one of his most well known. It was originally published in 1800 in the collection Lyrical Ballads, a compilation of poems by Wordsworth and his close contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The piece is part of Wordsworth’s series of five Lucy poems, all of which feature the mysterious Lucy character as their central subject. While it is the only Lucy poem that does not reference the character by name, its thematic content, as well as the speaker’s reference to an unnamed woman subject, tie the piece to the others in the series.

The poem begins with the speaker looking back on a time when they found themselves so impassioned by love that they felt their spirit sealed off from the outer world, ridding them of all their fears. While it seemed at that time as though their beloved could never die, the second stanza reveals that she has since passed away, and she now joins the rocks, stones, and trees in earth’s endless course.