Introduction

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This is the 4th of the "Lucy" poems by William Wordsworth. In this one we get another poem about Wordsworth's view of death. 

Wordsworth kicked off the English Romantic movement. He, like the romantics that proceeded him, was heavily focused on the internal world of humans. As the French Romanticist, Victor Hugo put it, "There is one thing grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one thing grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul." 
The lucy poems taken as a whole are very helpful in understanding how unique this viewpoint really is. Why do we have the thoughts in our heads that we do? Where do those thoughts come from? What associations do we make in moments of high passion and why those associations? And, most importantly, how does the external world affect our internal one?

If you have not listened to the other episodes, then listen to this one! I give a brief overview at the beginning of the key points. 

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Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower

by William Wordsworth

Three years she grew in sun and shower, 

Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower 

On earth was never sown; 

This Child I to myself will take; 

She shall be mine, and I will make 

A Lady of my own. 

"Myself will to my darling be 

Both law and impulse: and with me 

The Girl, in rock and plain, 

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 

Shall feel an overseeing power 

To kindle or restrain. 

"She shall be sportive as the fawn 

That wild with glee across the lawn 

Or up the mountain springs; 

And hers shall be the breathing balm, 

And hers the silence and the calm 

Of mute insensate things. 

"The floating clouds their state shall lend 

To her; for her the willow bend; 

Nor shall she fail to see 

Even in the motions of the Storm 

Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

"The stars of midnight shall be dear 

To her; and she shall lean her ear 

In many a secret place 

Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 

And beauty born of murmuring sound 

Shall pass into her face. 

"And vital feelings of delight 

Shall rear her form to stately height, 

Her virgin bosom swell; 

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give 

While she and I together live 

Here in this happy dell." 

Thus Nature spake—The work was done— 

How soon my Lucy's race was run! 

She died, and left to me 

This heath, this calm and quiet scene; 

The memory of what has been, 

And never more will be.