The poet has one central aim in this poem: to sing the praises of a particular woman and to show how he has perceived her at three different times over an extended period. Although Wordsworth does not state it explicitly, he wrote “Phantom” about his wife, Mary. “Phantom” was composed in 1804, two years after William and Mary’s wedding, and covers a period of seventeen years of their relationship (though again, this is not stated directly). Across three stanzas, Wordsworth describes how the unnamed woman developed over time through his eyes.

The first stanza describes the effect Mary had on Wordsworth when the two first met in 1787, when Mary was seventeen years old. (Incidentally, Wordsworth and Mary were almost the same age—Wordsworth was the elder by just four months.) She had an ethereal quality; she seemed to belong more to the spiritual than the earthly realm. The words “Phantom” (Line 1) and “Apparition” (Line 3) suggest this spiritual dimension. In modern usage, both words often convey something eerie or strange, but that is not Wordsworth’s intention here. He qualifies his ghostly nouns with positive adjectives—"delight” (Line 1) and “lovely” (Line 3)—to convey the extraordinary something in his visual perception of the woman that captured his attention.