The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth.

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The romantic era, often called the age of revolutions and not just the social and economic revolutions but also a literary revolution, the age of the romantic poet. The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth was written in 1807, during the first generation of romantic poets, like many of his other poems it expresses the benefits of work, solitude and being close to nature and the countryside. Wordsworth wrote many of his poems in the language of the everyday man, he was a revolutionary and believed in the power of the people. The Solitary Reaper illustrates the beauty and importance of music found in nature and the solitude of the countryside.

In the first stanza the scene is set of the rustic highland countryside in Great Britain, illustrating the importance of solitude and song. Nature is characterized as simple and peaceful in contrast with the harsh and black industrialised London of his time. “Reaping and Singing by herself” symbolic of the solitude encountered in the countryside and the cheerful mood of a rural area, that Wordsworth believed was very important and benefited the everyday man. Solitude and peace were often hard to find in the London of his time and even revellent to today’s modern worker day world. Wordsworth did believe though that there was no place greater than England.

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The second stanza offers comparisons between far off tropical places and the countryside of England. The speaker compared two tropical birds to the beautiful singing of the simple rustic girl, a nightingale and a cuckoo. The speakers says that the sound is more welcome than any chant of the nightingale to weary travellers in the desert, and that the cuckoo-bird in spring never sang with a voice so thrilling. Concluding that tropical places are nothing when compared with the simplicity and solitude found in the countryside. Where music and expressive beauty are at its best in the solitude and ...

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