The poem begins in a descriptive rather than narrative manner, and it is not until the line ``When Lucy ceased to be'' that the reader is made aware that the subject of the verse has died. Literary scholar Mark Jones describes this effect as finding the poem is ``over before it has begun'', while according to writer Margaret Oliphant (1828--1897), Lucy ``is dead before we so much as heard of _her_''. <sep>, Pronoun: her