solitary reaper
William Wordsworth
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more
اولا : التحليل العربي
The Solitary Reaper
Explanation:
First stanza:
The girl is singing alone while she is cutting and binding the grain. Her song is out-of-place in the valley, however separated from the traditions of fine verse by her class, occupation, and location.
Her song, like a found poem, springs directly from nature, without literary context. Her "music" runs like the water in the valley.
Metaphor: the valley profound: He means that her music smoothly runs like the water in the valley.
Visual image: the image of the girl cutting and binding the grain. Also, the image of the mountains and the valley.
Auditory Image: the sound of the girl singing, and the sound of the water in the valley.
Second stanza:
Her song surpasses the beauty of two celebrated English song-birds, the nightingale and the cuckoo. Reaping takes place at harvest time, in the autumn, not in the spring or summer, which are associated with the cuckoo and the nightingale. He wants to say that: From last spring till this Autumn, no good voice like the girl's is heard. Her only voice has the ability to break the silence of the Hebrides islands and the Arabian sands.
Auditory images: the voice of the two-birds, the nightingale and the cuckoo. And the voice of the girl which breaks the silence of the nature.
Visual images: the image of the Highland Islands and the Sand Desert.
Personification: The voice can't break anything else so it is given a human quality.
Symbols: 1- In Classical myth, the female nightingale is that to which Philomela, tragically raped by her sister's husband, metamorphoses on carrying out her revenge.
2- Cuckoo bird: a symbol that refers to renewal.
Third stanza:
The reaper, or the single "Maiden", hardly fits the myth of married Philomela, rape victim and tragic revenger, even though the reaper sings in a melancholic, sad way with natural sorrow. The strange language in which the girl chants also removes her from any poetic tradition known to the speaker. He understands only her "sound," "voice," and "music," but he doesn't know if she talks about an old battle or about Philomela.
Auditory Image: the sound of the girl's song which is sad and full of sorrow.
Fourth stanza:
So what transfixes him in her song is not its content, but its emotional music. The listener does not understand why she sings in melancholy, only what the emotion itself is. This feeling "could have no ending". Despite its sadness, the song helps the speaker to mount up the hill. In current psychology, the capacity to feel emotion and link it to goals makes life, indeed survival itself, possible. The speaker's "heart", by bearing her music, can go on.
Visual Images: 1- the image of the girl swings the sickle. 2- the image of the listener on his horse walking up the mountain.
Auditory image: The sound of the girl's song which hangs in the listener's heart for a long time and helps him to go on.
Alliteration:
5- alone – and
9- No Nightingale
10- welcome – weary
12- Among Arabian
15- silence – seas
17- will – what
18- plaintive – perhaps
19- for – far
23- some – sorrow
24- be – been / again – and
25- the theme, the
26- her – have
27- saw – singing/
repetition:
27- her / her
Apostrophe:
7- O listen
Poet's Style:
The poem contains a natural description of human passions, human characters, and human incidents. It isn't judged by the presence of artificial, poetic diction. Rather, "the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society
Theme:It describes a nameless listener's delight in a young woman's melancholy song in an unknown language as, working by herself in a Scottish valley, she swings a sickle , reaping grain.
Rhyme: It is consisted of Four eight-line stanzas, each closing with two couplets and all written in octosyllabic lines. It is rhymed as the following: abcbddee/
ثانيا التحليل الانجليزي
William Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper" is one of the most loved ballads in the corpus of English Literature. The poem "The Solitary Reaper " was first published in Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807.The poem was written after the publication of his Lyrical Ballads and is in iambic tetrameter. The poem bears testimony to his theory how poetry ought to focus on the mundane and the commonplace. His subject here is a Scottish Highland lass who sings while reaping. Dorothy Wordsworth tells us in her diary how solitary reapers were a common phenomenon in the Scottish scenario. Wordsworth expresses his gratitude to Thomas Wilkinson for his manuscript that pertains to a tour of Scotland.
The reaper is defined by her cutting and binding. She is described with the adjective 'solitary'. Nevertheless, it is this solitariness that sets her apart. Wordsworth often dealt with solitary characters to exemplify that they were the sole companions of Nature and were in total communion with the same. Her tremulous voice haunts the distances. The valley seems to be significant, primarily for this enchanting music that envelops it. The poet implores to: stop here or gently pass. He requests to stop to listen to the song; or gently pass so as to not disturb the smooth flow of the song.
The metaphor of the Nightingale at once points to her commonness and exclusiveness. It also underlines the power and purity of the voice of the lass that rouses the poet from his reverie. Like some soothing balm to weary travelers, they act as shade to wanderers overcome with fatigue traversing the deserts. The voice was hitherto the most thrilling one he had heard. The voice of the cuckoo-bird in the spring-time, pales in comparison. Its pervading presence breaks the silence of the seas among the farthest of the Hebrides. 'Hebrides' refers to the North-Western coast of Scotland where reeds are abundant. "Will no one tell me what she sings?-"makes obvious that the poet catches only the tone of the melody, but not the lyrics. The poet catches the plaintive emotion the song encompasses and speculates whether the song is in quest of something long-lost, is out of nostalgia or grieves for heroes (of battles) unsung. Or does it pertain to any domestic problem that is a daily routine, and may occur yet again:"Some natural sorrow, loss or pain." The poet's here musings echo Keats' speculations regarding the stories behind the engravings on the Grecian Urn. Whatever the song dealt with, the maiden sang as though there was no end to it. The beauty of the song lay in its melody, and its haunting quality that continued to enchant the poet long after he was out of earshot. The theme of the poem actually bears testimony to the power of poetry that if true to the aesthetic feel, endows the reader with an experience to retain, long after the poem is read.
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