The Solitary Reaper

The poem opens with a command as the speaker calls attention to the eponymous figure of “The Solitary Reaper”—an ordinary country maiden out gathering the harvest—by urging: “Behold her, single in the field” (Line 1). While “solitary,” this “Highland Lass” (Line 2) is not idle, as she is “Reaping and singing” (Line 3) at the same time. The speaker finds himself captivated by the “melancholy strain” (Line 6) of her song, describing how “the Vale profound / Is overflowing with the sound” (Lines 7-8) of the maiden’s song. In this stanza, the maiden’s solitude serves a dual function: First, it allows her to become an easy focal point for the poem, elevating her importance and enabling her to personify the timeless beauty of both art and human expression (in the form of her song) and the traditional, agrarian lifestyle out in the Scottish Highlands (in the form of her harvesting work). In this sense, the maiden is not just an individual character in the poem, but a symbol of the rural world and the power of song/art more generally.

Second, her solitude creates an unspoken link between her and the poem’s speaker, who is likewise solitary as he wanders through the Highland landscape. This suggests that while engaged in separate activities individually (and unknown to each other socially), the speaker and the maiden nevertheless having a shared experience; each partakes in the beauty of the music—one as the singer and one as the listener—creating a bond between them.

In the second stanza, the speaker turns to praising the supreme beauty of the maiden’s voice and song. He compares her to two birds, the “[n]ightingale” (Line 9) that serenades “travellers in some shady haunt / Among Arabian sands” (Lines 11-12), and—a bit closer to home out in the Scottish island archipelago—“the Cuckoo bird” (Line 14) that “break[s] the silence of the seas / Among the farthest Hebrides” (Lines 15-16), claiming that the maiden sings even more beautifully than either bird. The speaker extolls the “welcome notes” (Line 10) and the “voice so thrilling” (Line 13), transfixed by the power of the song. In declaring that the maiden is even more captivating as a singer than an Arabian nightingale, the speaker suggests that there is no need to seek exotic or novel locations to find transcendence: This simple rural maiden, in the Highlands right in front of him, provides experience even more transportive and special.

Moreover, the contrast between the birds and the maiden suggests both her superiority to natural elements (birdsong) while also more deeply associating her with rural world she represents: The speaker automatically compares her to birds, not to other human singers, as if it is unthinkable to dissociate the maiden from her natural landscape. The speaker’s celebration of the maiden’s singing and his ineluctable vision of her within only her natural context dignifies both her singing and her rural Highlander status: Her singing, like her reaping, appears effortless, elegant, natural. The speaker’s distinct regard suggests that, while she may be lower-class and presumably uneducated, the maiden nevertheless merits attention and praise; the ordinary is extraordinary.

In the third stanza, the speaker shifts to wondering over the song’s actual subject matter. While, in the poem’s first stanza, he mentioned the “melancholy” (Line 6) sound of her song, he admits here that he’s unsure of the content. He speculates that “[p]erhaps the plaintive numbers flow / For old, unhappy, far-off things” (Lines 18-19), such as “battles long ago” (Line 20)—but he also muses that she might be singing of present events and perhaps something less grandiose in theme than ancient battles: “Or is it some more humble lay [song] / Familiar matter of to-day?” (Lines 21-22). The ambiguity surrounding the maiden’s song creates a sense of mystery around her while also emphasizing how she synchronously represents past, present, and future. She may be singing about ancient times, which draws the past into the present, or she may be singing about “some natural sorrow, loss, or pain / That has been, and may be again” (Lines 23-24, italics added), which draws the future into the present. The timelessness of her song represents the ability of art to transcend time while also suggesting that the nature of time is cyclical. What has already happened “may be again” (Line 24), just as her reaping evokes the natural, predictable seasons that make planting, growing, and harvesting all possible.

In the fourth and final stanza, the speaker mentions how “the Maiden sang / As if her song could have no ending” (Lines 25-26), and how she continues her harvest, “singing at her work / And o’er the sickle bending” (Lines 27-28). The speaker continues to listen to her, “motionless and still” (Line 29), for a while longer, before finally turning to go “up the hill” (Line 30), away from her. As he departs, however, her song remains with him, as he remarks in the closing lines that “[t]he music in my heart I bore / Long after it was heard no more” (Lines 31-32). The encounter was emotionally compelling and even transportive: The speaker was temporarily taken out of himself while listening to her, entirely caught up in the beauty of her song even after walking away. The maiden’s way of singing “[a]s if her song could have no ending” (Line 26) once more suggests a timelessness or at least a temporal cyclicality—the power of her music persists, both as she works and within the speaker’s recollection and as he continues his own solitary walk.