THE SOLITARY REAPER
By William Wordsworth
A friend of Wordsworth's, while traveling in the Highlands of Scotland, was impressed by the beautiful singing voice of a girl whom he saw working alone in a field; he wrote in his diary—"the sweetest human voice I ever heard. The strains felt delicious long after they were heard no more." Wordsworth had traveled through the same country, and from the note and his own impressions he built up this poem. The first stanza gives the real picture, the second offers two comparisons—the nightingale and the cuckoo—one sad, the other happy, both associated with solitude and open spaces. The third stanza relates the girl and her song to the background of history and human experience that belongs to the scene; and the last refers to Wordsworth's delight in recalling beautiful things.
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, 5
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No nightingale did ever chant
More welcome notes to weary bands 10
Of travelers in some shady haunt
Among Arabian sands;
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In springtime from the cuckoo bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas 15
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, 5
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; 10
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 15
Long after it was heard no more.
1. Describe what is seen and heard. To what bird songs is the girl's voice compared? Have you ever heard the song of the nightingale? What widely different places are thought of in the second stanza? What have the desert and the sea in common? Where are the Hebrides?
2. Explain: numbers, lay, sickle, lass, vale, profound.
3. What in this poem reminds you of "The Daffodils?" How is the theme identical with Longfellow's "The Arrow and the Song?"
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.