TheSolitaryReaper赏析.doc

The Solitary Reaper By:William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 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 shrilling neer 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? ? Whateer the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And oer the sickle bending;-- I listend, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more. Notes 1] Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his sister had visited the Scottish Highlands in 1803. Dorothys Recollections for September 13 that year notes: It was harvest time, and the fields were quietly -- might I be allowed to say pensively? -- enlivened by small companies of reapers. It is not uncommon in the more lonely parts of the Highlands to see a single person so employed. In a note to the 1807 edition, Wordsworth traced the poems source: This Poem was suggested by a beautiful sentence in a MS Tour in Scotland written by a Friend, the last line being taken from it verbatim. Thomas Wilkinsons manuscript, Tours to the British Mountains (London, 1824), states: Passed a Female who was reaping alone: she sung in Erse as she bended over her sickle; the sweetest human voice I ever heard: her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious, long after they were heard no m