THE SOLITARY REAPER

I am going to analyse the lyrical poem The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth.

The title means "la mietitrice solitaria": the reader can understand that the protagonist of the poem may be a woman who reaps alone. The poem consists of 4 stanzas (octaves).

In the first octave the poet invites the reader to listen to a solitary girl that is singing: "Behold her single in the field yen solitary Higland Lass". The poet provides a space reference where the scene takes place: it is a mountainous region of Scotland (Highlands). After that girl's actions are presented: she is reaping and singing. The poet's attention is caught by the girl's song and he is totally involved.

In the second octave the poet focuses his attention on girl's voice using beautiful words to describe it: "a voice so thrilling never was heard". He compares the girl's voice to Cuckoo-bird's chaunt and he finds that the first one is better. In the last two lines there is another space reference: "breaking the silence of the seas among the farthest Hebrides". It is the name of the islands off the Scottish coast.

In the third octave the poet makes some hypothesis about what she is singing: she might sing "the plaintive numbers of old, unhappy, far-off things, battles long ago" or "familiar matter of today" or "some natural sorrow, loss, pain". All poet's curiosity comes to surface from these lines.

In the last octave the poet makes a reflection: he is fascinated by girl's song but abandons the possibility to know the words of that song ("whatever the theme"). He compares the girl to a Maiden saying that her song has no ending. The poet adds that he mounts up a hill and therefore he is not able to hear the song. Anyway he says "the  music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more": it means that although the poet cannot hear the song because he is going away, the music is born in his heart. He is totally involved.

The poem is characterized by the presence of open sounds which create the idea of a wide dimension. The poet uses a lot of metaphors and comparisons thus providing a vivid and brilliant image of the scene. As a matter of fact the reader can immediately imagine the situation. It seems as if the reader could hear the song because there are a lot of words connected to the semantic field of hearing.

The poet wants to communicate his personal feelings and emotions (subjectivity) in front of a particular moment of his life. The scene belongs to ordinary life but the poet is able to overtake this conception providing an ordinary moment of work in the countryside as something supernatural.