To Be a Thing: Wordsworth's "A slumber did my spirit seal" and the Paradox of Corporealization.

This article examines the disagreement among informed readers in interpreting the eight lines on the poem of William Wordsworth titled "A slumber did my spirit seal." Brian G. Caraher has devoted an entire book to the critical history of the poem and Mark Jones to the small group of verses from the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads," also known as "Lucy" poems. Readers, traditionally have identified the unnamed "She" of line three of the poem who "seemed a thing," as Lucy, the doomed or threatened heroine of poems like "Three years she grew," which "A slumber" is often grouped. However, Hugh Sykes Davies first pointed out in 1965 that the identification of the readers is largely a result of the editing and anthologizing decisions of Victorian admirers of Wordsworth.