during a time when he had been unusually long in keeping to good
resolutions, and had afterwards seen some one whom he liked better,
then Lucy's death would undoubtedly have made a considerable
difference to him, and this is all that he has ever said that it
would do. What right have we to put glosses upon the masterly
reticence of a poet, and credit him with feelings possibly the very
reverse of those he actually entertained?

Sometimes, indeed, I have been inclined to think that a mystery is
being hinted at more dark than any critic has suspected. I do not
happen to possess a copy of the poem, but the writer, if I am not
mistaken, says that "few could know when Lucy ceased to be."
"Ceased to be" is a suspiciously euphemistic expression, and the
words "few could know" are not applicable to the ordinary peaceful
death of a domestic servant such as Lucy appears to have been. No
matter how obscure the deceased, any number of people commonly can
know the day and hour of his or her demise, whereas in this case we
are expressly told it would be impossible for them to do so.
Wordsworth was nothing if not accurate, and would not have said that
few could know, but that few actually did know, unless he was aware
of circumstances that precluded all but those implicated in the
crime of her death from knowing the precise moment of its
occurrence. If Lucy was the kind of person not obscurely pourtrayed
in the poem; if Wordsworth had murdered her, either by cutting her
throat or smothering her, in concert, perhaps, with his friends
Southey and Coleridge; and if he had thus found himself released
from an engagement which had become irksome to him, or possibly from
the threat of an action for breach of promise, then there is not a
syllable in the poem with which he crowns his crime that is not
alive with meaning. On any other supposition to the general reader