The Solitary Reaper

The rural maiden and her song are the poem’s central and supreme symbol. She is the eponymous “Solitary Reaper” who “cuts and binds the grain” (Line 5) out in the field. The maiden represents the traditional agrarian way of the life out in the countryside, and the beauty of her song suggests that there is dignity—and even something transcendent—in her common, lower-class lifestyle.

The song itself, on its most overt level, symbolizes the power of art to transport and inspire the audience, thereby emphasizing the worth of such forms of expression. However, the song is an unusually dynamic symbol that seamlessly flows into the poem’s other symbolic elements. For example, the song leads to the speaker’s comparison of birds (nightingale and cuckoo); birds are a prevalent symbol in poetry, especially Romantic poetry, where they broadly represent nature, freedom, and even the poet themselves (birdsong is analogous to poetry).

As a motif, time functions on two levels. First, time appears as something cyclical in nature, as the maiden’s reaping calls to mind seasonal cycles and the way nature can renew itself every year with new growth and new harvests. Second, the maiden’s song is at once enchanting and elusive in terms of subject matter: It could be about something historical and rather grandiose, such as “battles long ago” (Line 20), or it could be about something contemporary and “[f]amiliar” (Line 22)—“[s]ome natural sorrow, loss, or pain” (Line 23) that is nevertheless inherent to the human experience whether past, present, or future, “[t]hat has been, and may be again” (Line 24).