The Lucy poems are a series of five poems composed by the English
Romantic poet William Wordsworth between 1798 and 1801. All but one
were first published in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1800,
a collaboration between Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that was
both Wordsworth’s first major publication and a milestone in the early
English Romantic movement. In the series, Wordsworth sought to write
unaffected English verse infused with abstract ideals of beauty,
nature, love, longing and death. Although they individually deal with a
variety of themes, as a series they focus on the poet's longing for the
company of his friend Coleridge, who had stayed in England, and on his
increasing impatience with his sister Dorothy, who had travelled with
him abroad. Wordsworth channeled his frustrations into an examination
of unrequited love for the idealised character of Lucy, an English girl
who has died young. The idea of her death weighs heavily on the poet
throughout the series, imbuing it with a melancholic, elegiac tone.
Whether Lucy was based on a real woman or was a figment of the poet's
imagination has long been a matter of debate among scholars. The "Lucy
poems" consist of "Strange fits of passion have I known", "She dwelt
among the untrodden ways", "I travelled among unknown men", "Three
years she grew in sun and shower", and "A slumber did my spirit seal".
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucy_poems>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1609:
Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana opened its reading room to the public,
becoming the second public library in Europe.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblioteca_Ambrosiana>
1941:
The Holocaust: The Chelmno extermination camp in Poland, the first such
Nazi camp to kill the Jews of the Ghetto Litzmannstadt and the
Warthegau by poison gas, began operating.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelmno_extermination_camp>
1980:
Former Beatle John Lennon was fatally shot in the entrance hallway of
the Dakota apartments in New York City.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_John_Lennon>
1991:
Leaders of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine signed the Belavezha Accords,
agreeing to dissolve the Soviet Union and establish the Commonwealth of
Independent States.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States>
2004:
Twelve South American countries signed the Cusco Declaration,
announcing the foundation of what is now the Union of South American
Nations, an intergovernmental union modelled after the European Union.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_South_American_Nations>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
John Lennon glasses (n):
A pair of eyeglasses (spectacles) with round lenses
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/John_Lennon_glasses>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the
world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he
identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for
the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true
nature.
--James Thurber
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Thurber>