<P> The literary historian Kenneth Johnson concluded that Lucy was created as the personification of Wordsworth's muse, </P> <P> and the group as a whole is a series of invocations to a Muse feared dead . As epitaphs, they are not sad, a very inadequate word to describe them, but breathlessly, almost aware of what such a loss would mean to the speaker:' oh, the difference to me!' </P> <P> Writing in the mid-19th century, Thomas De Quincey said that Wordsworth, </P> <P> always preserved a mysterious silence on the subject of that' Lucy', repeatedly alluded to or apostrophised in his poems, and I have heard, from gossiping people about Hawkshead, some snatches of tragic story, which, after all, might be an idle semi-fable, improved out of slight materials . </P>

William wordsworth poems she dwelt among the untrodden ways