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LINES 7-8 —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. Lines 7 and 8 heighten Lucy’s beauty and complicate her character with a leap from earthly to heavenly description. An obvious starting point for analyzing line 7 is the em-dash. It's not typical to see an em-dash start a line. Why, the reader might ask, did Wordsworth choose to place it there and not at the end of line 6? Well, it could very well have been to avoid the clutter that would have resulted from combining it with the exclamation mark; "Half hidden from the eye!—" might have appeared to some as a typo. Another reason might have been to emphasize the major change that line 7 represents. In lines 5 and 6, the speaker describes Lucy in earthly terms. Lines 7 and 8, on the other hand, are totally cosmic. With that in mind, the em-dash represents a flight to the heavens, or the thin, imperceptible line between heaven and earth. Having crossed into that other zone, the reader can consider the relationship between Lucy and the speaker with the insight granted by a new perspective. Lucy is "Fair as a star." This simile prompts the reader to ask in what ways Lucy's fairness, or beauty, resembles a star in the young night sky. The following clause, "when only one," helps with this comparison. In this case, the star is fair because it is alone in the vastness of night. Despite its isolation, it shines on. The speaker appreciates—indeed, the speaker loves—its persistence. In another sense, however, the star will not persist. It will soon be joined by millions more. Lucy shares this central form of beauty with the star: she is beautiful for her fleetingness. Like the star, there is "only one" of her. Lucy's uniqueness is also reflected in line 7's meter, which breaks the poem's metrical conventions: —Fair as a star, when only one The first foot is not an iamb (da DUM), but a trochee (DUM da). Another unstressed syllable follows "as," which restores the line's iambic tetrameter, but the line is short enough that the one change makes a rather big difference, emphasizing the words that say the most about Lucy: she was as fair as the only star in the sky. Of course, it's not till line 8 that the reader understands what the phrase "only one" refers to. This star is the one star "shining in the sky." This information tells the reader that the star in question is the first to appear in the night sky. Depending on the time of year, it could be any number of stars, but the most well-known candidate for appearing first in the night sky is Venus (which is, obviously, not a star but a planet). The indirect allusion to Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty, fertility, and sex, emphasizes Lucy's beauty and the speaker's love for her, but it also hints at another layer to their relationship. It reveals that the speaker's feelings about Lucy may not have been entirely platonic. In line 3, Lucy is a "Maid," which in its archaic sense would have meant she was a virgin. The speaker, in reflecting on his or her relationship with Lucy, may not simply regret that Lucy didn't receive due praise in life, but also that the speaker wasn't able to add a physical dimension to their intimacy.