Theodor Boder
Lucy Gray
Fiktive Rekonstruktion der Hintergründe und Ereignisse
zu einem Gedicht von William Wordsworth
Theodor Boder Verlag
Impressum
ebook, Juni 2020
Erstausgabe
Copyright © 2017 by Theodor Boder Verlag,
CH-4322 Mumpf
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Covergestaltung: Theodor Boder
Illustrationen: Roloff
ISBN 978-3-9521993-5-0
www.boderverlag.ch
Handlungsort
NORD-YORKSHIRE
Zeit:
1799
DAS GEDICHT
Lucy Gray; or, Solitude
*
Oft I heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.
*
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
– The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
*
You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.
*
“To-night will be a stormy night –
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow.”
*
“That, Father! will I gladly do:
’Tis scarcely afternoon –
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!”
*
At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped a faggot-band;
He plied his work; – and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.
*
Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.
*
The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down;
And many a hill did Lucy climb:
But never reached the town.
*
The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.
*
At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.
*
They wept – and, turning homeward, cried,
“In heaven we all shall meet;”
– When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy’s feet.
*
Then downwards from the steep hill’s edge
They tracked the footmarks small;
And through the broken hawthorn hedge,
And by the long stone-wall;
*
And then an open field they crossed:
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.
*
They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank;
And further there were none!
*
– Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
*
O’er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.
*
Composed 1799,
