The Solitary Reaper

1160 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Poem analysis

A ballad written by William Wordsworth in iambic tetrameter, “The Solitary Reaper” contains four eight-line stanzas. Having a rhyme scheme of ababccdd, the poem describes first hand how the singing of a Scottish Highlands girl in the field witnessed by the English Romantic poet dazzles and emotionally moves him. Having visited the Scottish highlands, mountainous regions, with his sister Dorothy and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1803 (Lancashire), Wordsworth recollects in his poem the common sight of working solitary reapers in Scotland. Conveying the essence of his ardent feelings through “The Solitary Reaper”, William Wordsworth praises the beauty of music as well as music’s ability to be a universal instrument of expression and language in which people of all cultures connect. The poem begins with Wordsworth instructing the reader through the use of apostrophe to look upon the “solitary Highland Lass” (2) who is “Reaping and singing by herself” (3). Calling the solitary reaper a “lass”, Wordsworth brings into focus the image of a girl who is young, yet experienced and mature due to the hardships of the rural countryside. As the solitary girl “cuts and binds the grain” (5) by herself, ostensibly unaware of her surroundings, Wordsworth commands people who encounter her to “Stop here, or gently pass” (4). Demanding others to “Stop here” (4), Wordsworth reveals his belief that the lass’s melody is alluring and worthy enough to be heard and acknowledged by all bystanders. Yet Wordsworth does not force people to listen to the reaper’s song as he also gives those passing by the option to “gently pass” (4). Not wanting anything to disturb the highland lass from both her labors and her singing, Wordsworth seemingly beseeches s... ... middle of paper ... ...which Wordsworth praises music and how through its beauty, manages to connect person-to-person, place-to-place. Written as a lyric, “The Solitary Reaper” illustrates the harmonious song the girl sings as the poem itself flows with numerous euphonious words. With short lines and rhymes, the poem has a quick pace, creating a musical rhythm, further asserting the underlying theme of music. Permitting readers to feel Wordsworth’s experience and awe, the lyric poem exists as evidence that the lingering effects of music endure through time, passing history down from one generation to the next. Works Cited Bergman, David, and Daniel Mark Epstein. The Heath Guide to Poetry. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1983. Print. Lancashire, Ian. "William Wordsworth: The Solitary Reaper." Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries, 2009. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.

Show More
Related

  • Foreshadowing and Flashback in The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst

    1024 Words  | 3 Pages

    Even from the first paragraph, Hurst's use of vocabulary evokes an emotional response to the story line. His word choice as the narrator describes his surrounding and hints to a fatal event that awaits the reader's attention. Hurst uses words and phrases such as “dead autumn,” “rotting brown magnolia,” “graveyard flowers.” The last sentence, “...speaking softly the names of our dead” adds one final melancholy statement (91). The imagery throughout the paragraph helps to imagine an eerie swamp land surrounded by death and depressing memories. This melancholy setting foresha...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Backyard Blues By Natasha Trethewey

    822 Words  | 2 Pages

    Part I is particularly anecdotal, with many of the poems relating to the death of Trethewey’s mother. The first part begins with an epitaph from the traditional Wayfaring Stranger, which introduces the movement of the soul after death, and the journey towards the ‘home’ beyond. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance of the soul’s movement after death. The ‘home’ described in the epitaph is a place of comfort and familiarity, where the speaker returns to their mother. In contrast, Trethewey describes the ‘home’ she returns to after her mother’s death as a hollow place, the journey back to which is incredibly

    Read More

  • Contrast Between Satire in The Rape Of The Lock and A Modest Proposal

    1669 Words  | 4 Pages

    Allison, Barrows, Blake, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry . 3rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 1983. 211.

    Read More

  • Wordsworth's Emotions In The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe

    497 Words  | 1 Pages

    Furthermore, Wordsworth’s assertion of feelings as the effects of an action or a situation, which means that actions should influence the emotions of the character and not the other way around, is dissimilar to The Raven’s character’s feeling of desperation in which he succumbed to his distress. However, the lesson derived from the bizarre workings of the human mind in preferring more devotion to the pain for the sake of “preserving the memory,” as “The Raven” illustrates, exposes to us how a particular person behaves towards grief. The statement thus proves in relation to Coleridge’s statement of the readers’ elicitation of the poem is more significant than the poem itself (in reference to his emphasis on the importance of the “Return”). Another variation between Wordsworth and Coleridge is that the former claims that the writer must bring the language near to the language of men, whilst the latter believes that the language of poetry should beautiful and elevated. “The Raven” in this case

    Read More

  • Word Choice and Tone in Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book"

    921 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia, eds. An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 21. Print.

    Read More

  • Slough by Sir John Betjeman

    452 Words  | 1 Pages

    Sir John Betjeman’s poem, Slough, opens with a wonderful, dramatic stanza. There is huge tension between the ideas of cows grazing and the idea of death. Even in the opening line there is conflict ‘friendly bombs’ is a contradiction in terms, as bombs are almost never thought of as friendly, and Betjeman’s use of this defines what a bad place. Another tool Betjeman employs is rhythm; the stanza is at a steady, predefined pace until the last line where the rhythm is broken with the word ‘Death’, which gives a powerful image of Slough.

    Read More

  • Friendship in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey

    1052 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” we find the purest expression of Wordsworth’s fascination with friendship.

    Read More

  • William Wordsworth and the Mortality of the Imagination

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    Primarily in Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey the mortality of creativeness and imagination is expressed by Wordsworth. This is a poem about the beauty of an old cathedral called Tintern Abbey. He hasn’t been there in five years and he brought his sister along. Even though imagination isn’t immortal, there is a way to reclaim it, “That time is past, / and all its aching joys are ...

    Read More

  • An Analysis of Wilfred Owen’s Strange Meeting

    1792 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ellmann, Richard and O'Clair, Robert, ed. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Percy Shelley And The Sublime/Beautiful

    1126 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Wordsworth is easily understood as a main author whom expresses the element of nature within his work. Wordsworth’s writings unravel the combination of the creation of beauty and sublime within the minds of man, as well as the receiver through naturalism. Wordsworth is known to be self-conscious of his immediate surroundings in the natural world, and to create his experience with it through imagination. It is common to point out Wordsworth speaking with, to, and for nature. Wordsworth had a strong sense of passion of finding ourselves as the individuals that we truly are through nature. Three poems which best agree with Wordsworth’s fascination with nature are: I Wandered as a Lonely Cloud, My Heart leaps up, and Composed upon Westminster Bridge. In I Wandered as a Lonely Cloud, Wordsworth claims that he would rather die than be without nature, because life isn’t life without it, and would be without the true happiness and pleasure nature brings to man. “So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me

    Read More

  • Dorothy & William Wordsworth Analysis

    1832 Words  | 4 Pages

    ‘It is often suggested that the source for many of William Wordsworth’s poems lies in the pages of Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal. Quite frequently, Dorothy describes an incident in her journal, and William writes a poem about the same incident, often around two years later.’ It is a common observation that whilst Dorothy is a recorder – ‘her face was excessively brown’ – William is a transformer – ‘Her skin was of Egyptian brown’ . The intertextuality between The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals and ‘I wandered lonely as a Cloud’ allows both Dorothy and William to write about the same event, being equally as descriptive, but in very differing ways. Dorothy writes in a realist ‘log-book’ like style, whereas William writes in a romantic ballad style. This can be very misleading, as it gives William’s work more emotional attachment even though his work is drawn upon Dorothy’s diary, which in its turn is very detached, including little personal revelation. When read in conjunction with William’s poetry, Dorothy’s journal seems to be a set of notes written especially for him by her. In fact, from the very beginning of the journals Dorothy has made it quite clear that she was writing them for William’s ‘pleasure’ . This ties in with many of the diary entries in which she has described taking care of William in a physical sense. In a way this depicts the manner in which William uses his sister’s journal to acquire the subject of his poetry, which makes it seem as though Dorothy is his inspiration.

    Read More

  • O Captain My Captain Poem Analysis

    1001 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first two stanzas of the poem reflect upon elements of everyday life that are affected by the death of a loved one. Through an elegy poet wants others to feel his pain as “aeroplanes […] Scribble in the sky […] He is dead” and silence the world, making everyone mourn. In the last two stanzas of the poem the mood shifts to the poets’ grief and the tone becomes more cynical as “nothing now can ever come to any good”. The third stanza appears somewhat nostalgic when the speaker says, “he was my working week and my Sunday rest” as he remembers what it was like when the deceased was alive. Ultimately the poet reflects upon his grief creating a tone that is mournful and

    Read More

  • Gray's “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

    2194 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.

    Read More

  • Nature in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth

    867 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth is about the poet’s mental journey in nature where he remembers the daffodils that give him joy when he is lonely and bored. The poet is overwhelmed by nature’s beauty where he thought of it while lying alone on his couch. The poem shows the relationship between nature and the poet, and how nature’s motion and beauty influences the poet’s feelings and behaviors for the good. Moreover, the process that the speaker goes through is recollected that shows that he isolated from society, and is mentally in nature while he is physically lying on his couch. Therefore, William Wordsworth uses figurative language and syntax and form throughout the poem to express to the readers the peace and beauty of nature, and to symbolize the adventures that occurred in his mental journey.

    Read More

  • The Role of Nature in the poetry of William Wordsworth

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    In William Wordsworth’s poems, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and pivotal r ole within them. To Wordsworth’s poetry, interacting with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey, and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an everlasting- individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth, himself, a sense of console. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary elements of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, looking at the world as a soothing being of which he is a part of, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divinity aspects behind them. For Wordsworth, the world itself, in all its glory, can be a place of suffering, which surely occurs within the world; Wordsworth is still comforted with the belief that all things happen by the hands of the divinity and the just and divine order of nature, itself.

    Read More

More about The Solitary Reaper

Open Document