The solitary Reaper

Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

[Look at her, alone in the field, that Scottish Girl by herself over there]

Reaping and singing by herself;

[She is cutting the grain and singing to herself]

Stop here, or gently pass! [Stop and listen to her or walk on quietly]

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;

[alone she cuts and binds the grain and sings in a sad manner with strain]

O listen! for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

[Listen: the deep valley is overflowing with her music]

No Nightingale did ever chaunt 

More welcome notes to weary bands 

Of travellers in some shady haunt, 

Among Arabian sands: 

[No nightingale ever sang more soothing notes to tired groups of travellers as they rested at an oasis in the Arabian Desert]

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. 

[The cuckoo-bird never sang with such an affecting voice in the spring, breaking the ocean’s silence around the Scottish isles]

Will no one tell me what she sings?— 

[No one will tell me what she sings?]

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 

For old, unhappy, far-off things, 

And battles long ago: 

[Maybe she sings so sadly for old tragedies and ancient battles]

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? 

[Or maybe the song is humbler, about everyday things—the pains and sorrows that everyone endures.]

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang 

As if her song could have no ending; 

[Whatever she was singing about, the young woman sang as though her song would never end]

I saw her singing at her work, 

And o'er the sickle bending;— 

[I saw her singing while she worked, bending over to cut the wheat with a sickle]

I listened, motionless and still; [I listened to her without moving] 

And, as I mounted up the hill, 

The music in my heart I bore, 

Long after it was heard no more.

[And as I walked on, up a hill, I carried her music in my heart: and I still do, long after I stopped hearing it.]

D. About the Poet:

William Wordsworth was born on 7th April 1770, in Cockermouth in the Lake District, England. He is regarded as a worshipper of nature. Love of nature is a major theme of his poetry. He wrote about ordinary men and women in the language of the ordinary people. For him poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” arising from “emotions recollected in tranquility.” He died at Rydal Mount and Gardens, United Kingdom on April 23, 1850.