The Solitary Reaper

“The Solitary Reaper” first appeared in William Wordsworth’s 1807 poetry collection, Poems, in Two Volumes. Inspired by a trip to the Scottish Highlands that the poet had taken several years before, this lyrical ballad recalls the speaker’s encounter with a young woman who is singing while she works out in a field. Enchanted by her song, the speaker finds himself fascinated by both the beauty of her singing and the mystery of what her song could be about. The poem remains one of Wordsworth’s best-known works and presents many of his distinctive characteristics more generally: the deep love for rural settings, his valorization of “everyday” people, and his taste for beautiful experiences that can temporarily transport the speaker beyond himself. The poem also exemplifies English Romanticism, the literary movement Wordsworth pioneered first with his and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s groundbreaking collection Lyrical Ballads (1798) and on through the early 19th century.

Poet Biography

William Wordsworth is one of the giants of English literature, and his influence has been enormous both on his literary contemporaries and posthumously. Born on April 7, 1770, in England’s Lake District, Wordsworth became enchanted with the beauties of nature early in his life—a fascination that would later define him as a poet, and which would help to shape the trajectory of his life and personality.

Wordsworth experienced tragedy at a young age, having lost both his parents by his early teens. He received an excellent education, first at a grammar school in Hawkshead village and later at the University of Cambridge, although he gradually lost interest in distinguishing himself academically. As a young man, Wordsworth was enthusiastic about the French Revolution, and he stopped in France in 1790 during his walking tour of Europe to personally witness the country’s radical upheaval. In 1791, he met and fell in love with a Frenchwoman, who later gave birth to his daughter. They never married, as Wordsworth returned to England after hostilities broke out between England and France and a reunion gradually became less and less feasible. While in France, Wordsworth became heavily influenced by the radical ideas of the French revolutionaries, which shaped his political and poetic outlook at the time.

After returning to England, Wordsworth lived with his sister, Dorothy, with whom he had always been close and who would remain his devoted companion for the rest of their lives. His return to England also led to his befriending another young poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who further kindled Wordsworth’s confidence in his poetic talents. In 1798, they jointly published the collection Lyrical Ballads, which would become a landmark text in the history of English Romanticism. In his Preface to the 1802 edition of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth provided a now-famous explanation and defense of his and Coleridge’s poetic forms and themes, such as the privileging of emotion and individual experience, the beauties of nature, and the worth and dignity of the ordinary person.

In 1807, Wordsworth published another important poetry collection simply titled Poems, in Two Volumes, which included some of his most famous lyrics, such as “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and “The Solitary Reaper.” During these years, Wordsworth lived with his sister in a place known as Dove Cottage in the Lake District, writing his major works and enjoying long walks in the natural landscapes that so inspired him. He married Mary Hutchinson in 1802, and together they had several children. The death of one of his daughters, Catherine, would later inspire one of his most famous sonnets, “Surprised by Joy,” which details his deep grief.

Although a radical in his youth, Wordsworth became far more conservative with age, and he gradually adopted more reactionary beliefs. He also wrote less. Ironically, while English scholars generally agree that Wordsworth’s poetic gifts faded with time, he actually became more respected socially and critically as he aged, only beginning to enjoy a reasonably decent literary reputation in the 1830s. While his earlier and more radical work would prove to be enormously influential on other poets—especially the “second generation” Romantics such as Keats, Byron, and Shelley—contemporary critics seemed to prefer the mellower, more conservative Wordsworth of later years. Wordsworth was crowned Poet Laureate of England in 1843 and remained in the post until he died on April 23, 1850 at the age of 80.

Poem Text

Wordsworth, William. “The Solitary Reaper.” 1807. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem’s speaker is out walking in the Highlands when he spots a young local woman singing while out working in a field. She is an ordinary woman performing typical rural labor in reaping and binding grain, and yet the beauty of her song utterly captivates the speaker. The speaker praises the beauty of her singing, extolling how her voice and song are more enchanting than even the songs of birds in exotic, far-off locations. The speaker admits that he can’t quite decipher what her song is about: It appears to be sad, but he reflects that it could just as easily be a song about a long-ago tragedy as it could be about some more common, everyday sadness. The speaker listens for a while as the maiden continues to work and sing uninterrupted, then eventually continues his walk with the maiden’s song still echoing within him as he departs up a hill.