Returning to Nature

Wordsworth’s “Three years she grew in sun and shower” is about a girl named Lucy that has died. The speaker in the poem is obviously sorrowful at losing Lucy, also evidenced by the other “Lucy poems” Wordsworth wrote. In “Three years she grew in sun and shower”, the speaker has very few lines to him or herself. The majority of the poem, 35 of 42 lines, is given to Nature who then speaks about Lucy. The majority of the poem told to the reader by Nature, as well as the other thematic elements of the poem, demonstrates the way in which Nature is reclaiming Lucy after her death.

Nature is the dominant voice in Wordsworth’s poem. The speaker, who knew Lucy in life and now misses her in death, has very little say in the course of the poem. The shift from the speaker telling the reader about Lucy to Nature telling the reader indicates that Nature is now taking over Lucy, that Lucy no longer belongs to the same world she belonged to when she was living. Rather, Lucy is now part of the Nature from which she came. Wordsworth writes “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.” (1-6). Here we see that Lucy is three years old when Nature takes her back. The way Lucy is described with words like “flower” or “she grew in sun and shower” suggests that she was always a part of Nature, and that at a certain point Nature decided that it was time for Lucy to no longer live in a human way, but rather rejoin the Nature she never completely left.

Nature seems to say that once Lucy has died and left the human world, she will continue to exist in Nature, and can be seen and felt “in rock and plain / In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,” (9-10). Lucy “shall be sportive as the fawn” (13) and “hers shall be the breathing balm / And hers the silence and the calm / Of mute insensate things.” (16-18). Nature illuminates that Lucy will be present even after her death in the world surrounding the speaker. Looking once again at the first six lines of the poem, quoted in the paragraph above, it is clear that Nature is reclaiming Lucy and taking her as Nature’s own daughter.

This idea, that Lucy is not truly gone but is returning to a nurturing place, is probably a comforting one for the speaker, a person that is plainly mourning Lucy. It is very possible that the speaker in the poem is actually the one telling himself this to cope with the sadness of Lucy’s death. The speaker might be quoting when he believes nature must have said after seeing Lucy in her youthful and lively beauty. Rationalizing Lucy’s death by believing that Nature is taking her back because she was so lovely makes the misery of Lucy dying more bearable. Thus, “Three years she grew in sun and shower” could be Nature telling the reader that Lucy died because she was reclaimed by Nature, or Wordsworth's poem could be the speaker telling himself that Lucy died for those reasons so the speaker can manage his sadness.

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