mirror imaging and a typically precise natural observation from Wordsworth, who saw all the tiny details in nature clearly and conveyed them graphically.
The third stanza returns to what we learned at the beginning of the poem, that Lucy lived in obscurity: ‘She lived unknown’. So much so that, when she died, very few people knew: ‘and few could know/ When Lucy ceased to be’. The phrase ‘ceased to be’ uses both assonance and sibilance, and is a gentle way of telling us of Lucy’s death. The last two lines of this elegy are particularly poignant: ‘But she is in her grave, and, oh,/ The difference to me!’ The sigh of ‘oh’ and the exclamation mark are effective in conveying how much Lucy’s death has impacted on the speaker. Having emphasised how very few people knew this beautiful girl and how she received very little praise or love in her short life, he then tugs at our heartstrings with his poignant admission that Lucy’s death, ignored by the world, has devastated him.
