THE SOLITARY REAPER (1805)

This is one of the poems inspired by the tour Wordsworth made in Scotland with his sister Dorothy, in 1803. But, the immediate suggestion came from his friend Thomas Wilkinson's Tour in Scotland  which he had read in manuscript. "Passed by a female who was reaping alone, she sang in Erse as she bended over a sickle, the sweatwst human voice I've ever hear; her strain were tenderly melancholic, and felt delicious long after they heard no more".

As in Wilkinson's source, in this poem what matters is not so much the woman's singing as the poet's response.

Look at the title

The reaper; she is solitary (living alone, without companions, lonely, only one, seldom visited). The expectation is the poet speeks about a reaper.

Read the poem!(over and over again)

The poem consist of four stanzas of eight lines each (octaves).

Denotations:

•¶     First stanza: the poet invites the reader or the passer-by to stop and look at the girl. She is a girl, a young girl, cutting the grain, by herself. She is obviously a peasant girl, therefore from a low and rustic life. She is Scottish: she cames from the Highlands, the mountanous regional Scotland. She is singing a "melancholic strain". The Vale reinforces............the poem as at rural setting. The poet addresses an imaginary viewer of the scene so that he can visualize the scene.

•¶     Second stanza: Her song is compared to a Nightingale song welcoming tired travellers to Arabian deserts.  Again her song is compared to the Cuckoo-bird song in Spring, which brings good news to the faraway Hibredes highlands.

•¶     Third stanza: the poet makes hyphotesis about the content of the song. His answers is: 1) perhaps she sings about "old, unhappy, far-off things" or about ancien battles. 2) About a familiar matter of today, whichseems to be sad because "from some natural sorrow, loss, pain"

•¶     Fourth stanza: the last stanza is the conclusive one. In it the poet remembers the girl at work: he says he sees her and listens and so he bears the music in his heart. But, later on he could hear the music.

PHONOLOGICAL LEVEL:The rythm is the rythm of natural speech/ there are three or four stresses in esch line, but there is a rythm scheme with a few exception ABAB CCDD.Preponderance of the sound as in the first stanza, alliteration such as: "sing strain"

PHONOLOGICAL PARALLELISM: created also by the use of prograssive aspects of the verbs and cordinate sentences in the simple present.

"No Nightingale"/ "Welcome Wearing"/ " Silence Seas"/ "Same Sorrow"

SYNTHATTIC LEVEL: The sintax is very simple and so his language. It looks everybody's. There are some movemnts of poetical evocaytion:

•¶    SIMPLE LANGUAGE: cut and binds the grain, humble, familiar matter of today.

•¶    POETIC LANGUAGE: Yon solitary, Vale, profound, chaunt, shady haunt.

There it is interesting to notice that the poet uses certain verb tenses: the poem begins in the present tense, it continues in the present prograessive(singing, reaping...etc), beacause it is as if the scene were taking place before his eyes. Others one are ini the simple present.

The scene anyway ends in the past tense because the vision has ended. The shift of the tense of the girl takes place at lines 24 "that has been, an may be again?"

The poet is thinking about the possible maining of the girl's song. The shift  in verb tense suggestes a movement from present reality towards an initial thought proses.

Employment of imperative mood it carries an emotional quality. It is an invuìitation of the poet to the reader.

SEMANTHIC LEVEL: the language is generally simple and everyday language, but there are some moments of the poetic evocation.

Poetry is born out of "emotions recallected in tranquillity"

• ¶ References to nature
• ¶ References to humble people
• ¶ Rerferences to feelings.

RETHORICAL LEVEL: in the second stanza there is a comparison, two similes: the reaper's song is compared to à the singing of Nightingale

                                                                  à the singing of a Cuckoo- bird

Therefore the poem deals with a peasant womwn, reaping alone in a field, that became a symbol of a poetry.

Whever is close to nature is also close to the poet who like as astonished child, knows how to look at things with the new eyes.