“The Psycho-Aesthetics of Romantic Moonshine: Wordsworth’s Profane Illumination” by Geoffrey Hartman is an article with a frightening title, but is filled with in-depth explanations of Wordsworth poem “Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known”, furthermore describing Wordsworth style of poetic writing and view on everyday, rural life. The poem, “Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known” is only one of the several Lucy Poems that Wordsworth wrote in the second volume of Lyrical Ballads. This poem can be taken in many ways; straightforward vs. not straightforward, real vs. surreal and naturalism vs. supernaturalism. The poem starts out with a lover riding on horse back in the moonlight to his beloved in her cottage (Lucy.) At the end, the poetic-lover has a final cry when the moon drops behind Lucy’s cottage; he fears that his beloved is dead. “Oh mercy, to myself I cried/ If Lucy should be dead!” (II 27-8). Hartman says about the poetic-lover’s final cry, “What is not straightforward is that the narrator’s “evening ride” or “walking cure” to cite Celeste Langan’s witty concept (225-271), ends in the final cry of distress that places a special burden on interpretation.” He distinctly says this because the final cry is ultimately the “strange fit”, however the “strange fit” can be viewed in several different ways, which seems to be what Wordsworth was going for with his readers.

The Lucy poems are a group of poems by Williams Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge that are about a woman Lucy, but “Lucy” is not just a woman. She is viewed as the spirit of the place she inhabits. In the poem “Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known”, it only suggests that Lucy is dead, but in the other Lucy poems, it justifies that Lucy does truly die. It makes the most sense that Lucy in this poem, portrays the poet’s sense of country side and rural environment. She is the Spirit of Nature that has remained mute and unknown. The thought the poetic-lover has that Lucy is dead, is not just about a dead woman. It is Wordsworth foreshadowing through his poetry the death of the rural environments ability to influence our imagination. The hidden beauty in nature that fuels are imagination will be forgotten and our imaginations will be dull. To analyze and pursue deeper into this poem, notice that the poetic-lover has the thought that Lucy is dead once the moon becomes hidden behind the cottage, what importance does the moon have to this poem? Nature’s beauty (the moon) pulls the lover into almost a trance-like hypnosis. “In one of the sweet dreams I slept/ Kind Nature’s gentlest boon!” (ll 17-18) This passage justifies that the lover is in a trance, through stanzas 5 and 6 the poem continues to describe the lover’s condition. Once the moon disappears, the lover falls out of the trance and back to reality. A mental defense is removed which causes the sudden fear of death to appear, and the lover begins to show anxiety. If this is the case, than the poem is about the mind, rather than action itself. Like all poetry, this poem does not have to “make sense.” “I have already admitted that the boundary between sense and non-sense is not a bright line.” This is what Hartman says about the poem. If we use our imagination when reading this poem we can say that the poetic-lover connects the moons disappearance with Lucy. He raises her, to be all sublime and be equal with the moon. If Lucy represents the moon, than the moon exists both in the mortal and sublunar realm and Lucy appears to be mortal and immortal (also existing in both realms.) As nature reveals its self, the thought of Lucy’s mortality appears and the moon-inspired spell on the lover is broken by the voice from a sublunar realm amplified through the sublimity of the landscape, replacing the previously dominant moon in its imaginative effect (Hartman pg 12). This means that the mute voice of nature is being heard when the spell breaks, and a whole new imagination can begin to excel and fill people’s mind. Almost like a wake up call to the world that is stuck in this “trance” of dull or hidden imagination. This explanation of the poem is definitely a stretch, but the message Wordsworth is trying to convey still comes across, using a part of the imagination that may even seem to be non-sensible. I have found that a lot of Wordsworth writings, or Romanticism poetry in general, seems to be full of hidden messages and when reading this type of poetry, imagination is key to understanding the deeper meanings.