William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who helped launch the Romantic Age with his publication Lyrical Ballads alongside Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798. The Solitary Reaper describes the poet witnessing a highland girl singing as she reaps harvest alone in the fields. Though he does not understand the words, her song deeply moves him and reminds him of the songs of nightingales and cuckoos, leaving an indelible memory. The poem uses nature imagery and figurative language to convey the universal power of music.

3.  William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850)
was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic
Age in English literature with their joint
publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
 The second of five children born to John Wordsworth
and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April
1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth,
Cumberland, part of the scenic region in northwestern
England known as the Lake District.

4. › "Simon Lee"
› "We are Seven"
› "Lines Written in Early Spring"
› "Expostulation and Reply"
› "The Tables Turned"
› "The Thorn"
› "I travelled among unknown men"
› "Lucy Gray"
› "The Two April Mornings"

6.  The Solitary Reaper’ is William Wordsworth’s rendition
of the delight a simple peasant girl derives from nature
and how the entire atmosphere reverberates with that
happiness.
 The poet sees a highland girl reaping the harvest and
singing.
 The poet compares her song with the song of a
nightingale, soothing his sorrows, easing his weariness,
just the same way as the nightingale welcomes the
weary travelers in the shady oasis of the Arabian sands.

7.  The maiden’s song is also compared to the song of the
cuckoo bird which is the harbinger of summer and
ushers in happiness.
 The song of the maiden is as thrilling and convincing as
the song of the cuckoo bird which is effective enough to
break the silence of the seas.
 The poet cannot understand the dialect of the song, he
is unable to comprehend its meaning, but is able to
gauge from its sad tone that it probably relates to some
unhappy memory, some battles fought long ago.

8.  The poet also feels that the song may be about the
commonplace things like joys or sorrows.
 The poet feels that the girl’s song would have no
end and would continue forever.
 The poet saw the girl singing as she bent over her
sickle.
 The song of the maiden was so mesmerising and
spellbinding that it held the poet motionless and
still.

9.  When the poet started mounting the hill, the song
could not be heard but it left an indelible mark on
the poet’s heart.
 For the poet, it would always remain a fresh
evocative memory. The poem also shows how the
appeal of music is universal.

10.  The Solitary Reaper” is made up of four octaves,
primarily written in iambic tetrametre and
generally following the rhyme scheme
of ababccdd.

11.  Hyperbole
 Metaphor
 Rhetorical question
 Imagery

12.  Wordsworth is a representative of the romantic age
of poetry.
 His writing style is very impressive and generally
has the mention of mother nature.
 His poems were relevant to his time and to modern
period of time, along with relevance
to contemporary periods of history.

13.  In Wordsworthian poetry the temple of Mother Nature is a
constitution of three guiding principles: Solitude, Silence and
Loneliness, and his The Solitary Reaper is typically
characterized by them which results in a perfect ballad with
its simplicity, suggestiveness, pathos and verbal music.
Inspired by Wilkinson’s Tour in Scotland the poem is a sweet
-melancholic memoirs of tour de Scotland. While poet
Wordsworth was touring Scottish highland along with his
dear sister Dorothy, he met a reaper girl in her spontaneous
moods. Such of this sweet piece of memory of the highland
reaper girl is beautifully exhibited through this poem.