Romantic poetry, as Wordsworth explains in his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, emphasizes the life of the common person, exalts the beauty and power of nature, delights in folklore and supernatural tales, and puts an emphasis on lyricism or emotion. In terms of style, Wordsworth and other Romantic poets wanted to write simply, in the language of the everyday person, so that their poetry could be easily accessible to a broad range of people. Although Wordsworth was deeply disillusioned by his time in France during the French Revolution, he was able to pour his idealistic beliefs in equality and the brotherhood of all people into his poetry, as he explains in his long autobiographical poem The Prelude.

Wordsworth's "Lucy Gray" is in many ways an exemplary Romantic poem. It focuses on a common child and her parents, simple, obscure cottagers living in the English Lake District. The poem celebrates the natural world, identifying Lucy as a child of nature and likening her to a plant or flower:

She dwelt on a wild Moor,
The sweetest Thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

The poem, a folk ballad, has a supernatural element: when Lucy is lost during a snowstorm, rumor has it that she has not died, but can still be seen "upon the lonesome wild," where she

sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.

The poem also expresses emotion, showing the distress of the parents as they search for their lost child and identifying with Lucy as an innocent natural creature.

The poem is Romantic in style in that it uses simple language. As the quotes show, the story is told in everyday words such as "wild," "grew," "door," "song," and "wind."

William Wordsworth was the poet who most exemplified the Romantic movement in America, and his poem "Lucy Gray" contains many elements of Romanticism, both in style and in content.

The most notable element of Romanticism in this poem is Wordsworth's use of sensory imagery; he uses four of them in particular in this poem. Taste imagery is represented in his description of the young Lucy Gray:

--The sweetest thing that ever grew 

Beside a human door! 

Later he says she has a "sweet face" and then that we 

may see sweet Lucy Gray 

Upon the lonesome wild. 

The poet's consistent use of "sweet" to describe the girl is a clear reference to taste, though it also suggests touch and smell.

Touch is also clearly presented in this poem. Though we have some rough wood and the wooden bridge, the falling and fallen snow (which is both cold and wet) is the primary touch imagery.

Sound imagery is also prevalent in this short poem. Most are literal sounds; however, the first line ("Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray") only suggests storytelling, the sound of a human voice relating a tragic tale. More literal sound is found in nature; it is the "stormy night," the reason the young girl leaves her house. Though it is a snowstorm, there is the sound of the wind and the snow in a time of disturbance. Most of the other sound imagery is man-made in some fashion: the minster-clock striking two, Lucy's father working, and of course the human cries as her parents search for her and then realize she is gone: 

The wretched parents all that night 

Went shouting far and wide;... 

They wept--and, turning homeward, cried....

Finally, we have the sound of a "new" Lucy, as she  

...sings a solitary song 

That whistles in the wind.

Sight imagery is the most obvious, as we have the light of a lantern, the whiteness of the snow, the footprints on the bridge, and more. Clearly Wordsworth wanted us to experience this narrative with all of our senses, indicative of the Romantics.

This poem is also consistent with the themes of Romanticism, primarily the idea that it is futile for man to fight against Nature, as Nature is preeminent. Here a young girl happily ventures from her home and family to do a kind deed; however, she is met with the mighty force of Nature and, equipped only with her small, man-made, light, she succumbs to it. Ironically, while it is the forces of Nature which defeat her, the specific place of her defeat is man-made. 

When her parents trace her footprints, they discover that the prints end at the bridge, a man-made structure designed to thwart Nature's intended landscape. Lucy Gray did not just inadvertently walk into a river, she was disoriented in her harsh surrounding and met a rather violent death as she walked off the bridge. This depiction of man's helplessness in the face of Nature is a quintessential aspect of the Romantic thinking.

There is also a Gothic element to this narrative poem, as a little, innocent girl is tragically killed in the course of doing a loving and kind thing for someone she loves, which is turn causes more grief to those she intended to help. It is a kind of grotesque, tragic circle of irony, not an uncommon Romantic element. 

Finally, the last picture we have of "sweet Lucy Gray" is one of joy and contentment; however, that is only because she has now, through her death, become one with Nature. This, too, is one of the primary themes of the Romantic movement in literature.