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    William Wordsworth The Solitary Reaper

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    Alina Georgiana
    The document provides commentary on William Wordsworth's poem "The Solitary Reaper". It summarizes that the poem describes Wordsworth hearing the song of a young Highland girl reaping in the fields, though he does not understand the language. He appreciates the beauty and mood created by her music. The commentary notes that the poem ponders the limitations of language but praises the expressive power of music. It analyzes how the poem's rustic setting and focus on a simple rural girl reflect Wordsworth's values from Lyrical Ballads.

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    William Wordsworth The Solitary Reaper

    Uploaded by

    Alina Georgiana
    322 views1 page
    The document provides commentary on William Wordsworth's poem "The Solitary Reaper". It summarizes that the poem describes Wordsworth hearing the song of a young Highland girl reaping in the fields, though he does not understand the language. He appreciates the beauty and mood created by her music. The commentary notes that the poem ponders the limitations of language but praises the expressive power of music. It analyzes how the poem's rustic setting and focus on a simple rural girl reflect Wordsworth's values from Lyrical Ballads.

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    The document provides commentary on William Wordsworth's poem "The Solitary Reaper". It summarizes that the poem describes Wordsworth hearing the song of a young Highland girl reaping in the fields, though he does not understand the language. He appreciates the beauty and mood created by her music. The commentary notes that the poem ponders the limitations of language but praises the expressive power of music. It analyzes how the poem's rustic setting and focus on a simple rural girl reflect Wordsworth's values from Lyrical Ballads.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    322 views1 page

    William Wordsworth The Solitary Reaper

    Uploaded by

    Alina Georgiana
    The document provides commentary on William Wordsworth's poem "The Solitary Reaper". It summarizes that the poem describes Wordsworth hearing the song of a young Highland girl reaping in the fields, though he does not understand the language. He appreciates the beauty and mood created by her music. The commentary notes that the poem ponders the limitations of language but praises the expressive power of music. It analyzes how the poem's rustic setting and focus on a simple rural girl reflect Wordsworth's values from Lyrical Ballads.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    WILLIAM WORDSWORTH THE SOLITARY REAPER

    Commentary

    Along with I wandered lonely as a cloud, The Solitary Reaper is one of


    Wordsworths most famous post-Lyrical Ballads lyrics. In Tintern Abbey Wordsworth said
    that he was able to look on nature and hear human music; in this poem, he writes specifically
    about real human music encountered in a beloved, rustic setting. The song of the young girl
    reaping in the fields is incomprehensible to him (a Highland lass, she is likely singing in
    Scots), and what he appreciates is its tone, its expressive beauty, and the mood it creates within
    him, rather than its explicit content, at which he can only guess. To an extent, then, this poem
    ponders the limitations of language, as it does in the third stanza (Will no one tell me what she
    sings?). But what it really does is praise the beauty of music and its fluid expressive beauty,
    the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling that Wordsworth identified at the heart of
    poetry.

    By placing this praise and this beauty in a rustic, natural setting, and by and by
    establishing as its source a simple rustic girl, Wordsworth acts on the values of Lyrical
    Ballads. The poems structure is simplethe first stanza sets the scene, the second offers two
    bird comparisons for the music, the third wonders about the content of the songs, and the fourth
    describes the effect of the songs on the speakerand its language is natural and unforced.
    Additionally, the final two lines of the poem (Its music in my heart I bore / Long after it was
    heard no more) return its focus to the familiar theme of memory, and the soothing effect of
    beautiful memories on human thoughts and feelings.

    The Solitary Reaper anticipates Keatss two great meditations on art, the Ode to a
    Nightingale, in which the speaker steeps himself in the music of a bird in the forest
    Wordsworth even compares the reaper to a nightingaleand Ode on a Grecian Urn, in which
    the speaker is unable to ascertain the stories behind the shapes on an urn. It also anticipates
    Keatss Ode to Autumn with the figure of an emblematic girl reaping in the fields.

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