The Solitary Reaper

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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 thrilling ne'er 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?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o'er the sickle bending;--

I listened, motionless and still;

And, as I mounted up the hill

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.

 

~William Wordsworth ~

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I was introduced to this poem by my maternal grandmother. It was among her favourites and often she would recite it while sitting in the evenings on the balcony of her flat, watching the birds fly home, and reminiscence about her childhood in Deoghar, Bihar, in the 1920s and 30s where she lived with her mother and father and, for six months of the year, was taught by an English lady subjects necessary for a young woman of those times.

(That is one long sentence!)

I cannot read this poem without the voice in my mind taking on her tone and tremble and it gives me gooseflesh!

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