The Solitary Reaper - William Wordsworth

Celebrating the Ordinary.... 

Beauty !

This is how one can best describe this sacred piece of art! 

Placed at the Peak of Romanticism, by English poets, this paean scales new heights when imagery is addressed. It's aura being strange yet soothing, the description of English Landscape being blissful and the rhyming words are like icings on a cake. In layman terms, this poem functions to appreciate the beauty of music.

Composed in four stanzas containing 8 lines each, Wordsworth introduces us to a damsel singing and reaping in Scotland vales. Without commenting upon her physical appearance, the poet shifts our imagination quickly towards the song that comes out from that heavenly being. The words of the song are not comprehendible to the poet, so he begins naturally to examine its tone. He concludes it to be a melancholic one, but fails to understand the reason behind such a rendition. Judging by the song's strain, he suggests reasons - war/battles, recent calamities and disasters, loss of a person and the like.

Wordsworth places her sound over the nightingale chant and is in lavish appreciation of its beauty as he thinks..'A voice so thrilling never was heard'

'What'er the theme the maiden sang', he was spellbound experiencing an iota of complete bliss.

The poet would then visualize the scene later in his life as to cherish 'those' moments of strange yet beautiful aura.

If Oscar Wilde is the doyen of personification, Wordsworth seems to be his counterpart in imagery!

Blissful, is what I'd say about the apposition of beautiful landscapes with the mental frontiers of the human mind. The lines are rhetorical. Each succession of words elicits the scene, the poet has witnessed in Scotland. For example, the poet says,'...for the vale profound is overflowing with the sound'. This conjectures musical notes and ethereal vibrations that loiter the picturesque valley.

Receding a few lines back, the poet who says us to 'to stop here, or gently  pass'. Here, it is understood that William wants to share his experience of trance with the passerbys. Such a selfless soul! Auditory imagery is also something not to be missed in this discussion.

True to his ideal of using 'common speech', Wordsworth uses words of rustic simplicity which have great evocative power. The words used by the poet engulfs our consciousness and we stand at the edge of infinity. Thus, the poem has delighted its readers in this manner.

 

Solitude is often perceived to be a dull moment in one's life. however, it is during these times of life when the clock seems to be ticking slow; that one's true self surfaces. It is buoyed by innate abstractions. Loneliness brings negative emotions only...Solitude brings out important decisions and/or ideas. Why? Well, God/Nature has created us in such a way. 

There ought to be a release of happy hormones one's body while skimming through poems of this level. My personal advice is to read the poem while listening to some sad music as they are the most thrilling ones.

In a nutshell, this poem reminds us of the eternal spell that Mother Nature has cast on mankind - something that lures him always. i.e, wondering at the feminine aspects of 'Her'.