William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. In 1807, his Poems in Two Volumes were published, including "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". One of these was the famous poem-The Solitary Reaper.
The reason I love this poem is because it defines simplicity, it makes the readers see the beauty in simple things. It is very relevant in today’s mad world where people have no time to appreciate the world around them.
In 1803, Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, and his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge had gone to visit the Scottish Highlands. According to Dorothy's diary, solitary reapers were not an uncommon sight. This poem is based on one such girl who is a reaper. Wordsworth describes in the first person, present tense, how he is amazed and moved by this girl who sings as she reaps grain in a solitary field.
The beauty that I referred to before is the beauty that Wordsworth appreciates in the girl’s voice-her music and melody. The fact that Wordsworth would stop and take notice of something uncommon and take time to enjoy it is something that we all need to learn. How many of us stop to enjoy birds chirping, how many of us go the nearby park and enjoy the soft rhythmic tune of the swaying trees?
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
Wordsworth spots a Scottish Highland girl who is singing and reaping by herself. He likes her song so much that he doesn’t want her to end it, which is why he asks others to either stop or pass gently so she wouldn’t be interrupted. He is thrilled that the quiet valley is now filled with melodious music. He also hints here that the girl is singing about something sad.
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.
The girl’s voice is so beautiful that it can revive the tired wanderers and travelers. Her voice is compared to the voice of Nightingale and Cuckoo-bird. He says that her voice even surpasses their melody.
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?
In the first stanza, there is a hint about the girl singing about something sad. In this stanza, Wordsworth tries to find out what exactly she is a singing about. It is beyond his comprehension due to some reason and he assumes that it might be about the battles, some kind of loss or pain.
However, since the words aren’t clear, his attention is free to focus on the tone, expressive beauty, and the blissful mood it creates in him.
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.
This is the best part of the poem because this gives out the theme of the poem. He snaps out of his musings about the wordings of the song and seeks to actually listen to the music. Although he had to go about the hill and couldn’t hear her voice anymore, it was one of the experiences that’ll be etched in his heart forever.
The poem functions to 'praise the beauty of music and its fluid expressive beauty, the "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion" that Wordsworth identified at the heart of poetry.
