BA Study's blog of poem - Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth

Solitary reaper

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English Literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;

O listen! for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands

Of travellers in some shady haunt,

Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o'er the sickle bending;—

I listened, motionless and still;

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.

The solitary Reaper was written on November 5, 1805 and published on 1807. The poem is broken into four eight line stanzas. Most of the poem is in iambic tetrameter. The rhyme scheme for the stanzas is either abcbddee or ababccdd.

In the first stanza the speaker comes across a beautiful girl working alone in the fields of Scotland. She is Reaping and singing by herself. He tells the reader not to interrupt her, and then mentions that the valley is full of song.

The second stanza is a list of things that cannot equal the beauty of the girl’s singing.

In the third stanza the reader learns that the speaker cannot understand the words being sung. He can only guess at what she might be singing.

In the fourth and final stanza the speaker tells the reader that even though he did not know what she was singing about, the music stayed in his heart as he continued up the hill.

The poem is unique in Wordsworth’s oeuvre because while most of his work is based closely on his own experiences,
“The Solitary Reaper” is based on the experience of someone else. Part of what makes this poem so intriguing is the fact that the speaker does not understand the words being sung by the beautiful young lady. In the third stanza, he is forced to imagine what she might be singing about. He supposed that she may be singing about history and things that happened long ago, or some sadness that has happened in her own time and will happen again.

As the speaker moves on, he carries the music of the young lady with him in his heart.

(gardesaver)

Bibliography

gardesaver. <https://www.gradesaver.com/wordsworths-poetical-works/study-guide/summary-the-solitary-reaper#>.