Download William Wordsworth The solitary reaper The poem was probably

William Wordsworth
The solitary reaper
The poem was probably written in 1809 during a tour of Scotland. It’s about a solitary reaper who,
alone in a field, sings while she is cutting and binding the grain. Her song is perhaps in a Gaelic
language which the poet doesn’t understand and lets him image unknown landscapes as Arabian
sands or far events or past battles.
In this poem we can see that W. realizes what he wrote in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. In fact,
he uses incidents and situations taken from common life, i.e. the girl herself and what she does.
The setting of the poem is countryside and the solitary reaper represents the elementary joys of
countryside. He uses a language really spoken by men, utilizing simple words and imperatives.
Imagination has an important role in the poem when the poet compares the girl’s song to
nightingale or cokoo-bird and when he refers to 2 remote exotic places (Arabian sands and
Hebrides).
The poet doesn’t write in the same time he observes the scene, in fact from stanza 4 we can see
how he first listened, motionless and still, then he mounted up the hill and bore the music in his
heart. This means that poet’s feelings are contemplated and reorganized in tranquility (poetry as
memory).
Daffodils
The poem was composed in 1804 and was inspired by the sight of a field full of golden daffodils
waving in the wind, near a lake.
In the poem the feeling of joy is very strong and evident: all nature appears alive and happy and
involves the reader emotionally in the poem (the clouds float, the stars shine, the waves dance,
the daffodils also dance in the breeze…). When the poet is at home, in tranquility (“on my coach”),
he remembers the daffodils in the bliss of solitude and his heart fills with pleasure and he feels at
one with nature (poetry as memory) .
the poem is divided into 4 stanzas which correspond to the various mood of the poet.
-stanza 1: the poet shocks at the sight of daffodils
-stanza 2: there is the description of the flowers
-stanza 3: the relationship between the poet and the flowers is shown
-stanza 4: the poet recollect emotions in tranquility.