A Slumber did my Spirit Seal
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Notes
What becomes of someone we love when they are no longer here to experience the world? In William Wordsworth's *A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal*, death arrives almost without announcement. The speaker once imagined his beloved untouched by the passage of time; now she lies motionless, absorbed into the earth's endless movement. There is something unsettling in this dissolution of individuality into nature. The person who once possessed consciousness, desire, and a distinct existence becomes indistinguishable from the rocks, stones, and trees. Yet Wordsworth offers neither consolation nor protest. His restraint leaves us confronting a difficult possibility: that nature's continuity depends upon no particular life, however irreplaceable that life may appear to those who loved it. October's *Decay* finds its quietest expression here. Nothing dramatic remains of death, only the earth continuing its ancient rotations. Perhaps what unsettles us most is how easily the world carries on without us. #WilliamWordsworth #RomanticPoetry #EnglishLiterature #Existentialism #Mortality