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SAI International School
Class IX - English
Chapter – A Slumber did my spirit seal
Lesson Notes

About the Author

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23
April 1850) was an English Romantic poet
who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped
to launch the Romantic Age in English

literature with their joint
publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally
considered to be The Prelude, a semi-

autobiographical poem of his early years
that he revised and expanded a number of
times. It was posthumously titled and
published by his wife in the year of his
death, before which it was generally
known as "the poem to Coleridge".

Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on
23 April 1850.

Introduction and Background of the Poem

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal is a poem written by William Wordsworth in
1798 and published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads. During the
autumn of 1798, Wordsworth travelled to Germany with his sister Dorothy
and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From October 1798, Wordsworth

worked on the first drafts for his Lucy poems, which included Strange Fits
of Passion Have I Known, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways and A
Slumber Did My Spirit Seal. Eventually, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal, was
published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads.

The poem is unique amongst Lucy poems as it does not directly mention
Lucy. The decision by critics to include the poem as part of the series is
based in part on Wordsworth‟s placing it in close proximity to the other