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