NON-AFRICAN POETRY
Examine the use of poetic devices in “The Solitary Reaper.”
Explanation
The use of Poetic devices in “The Solitary Reaper.” The narrative structure of the poem is the first device to catch the reader’s eye. The first two lines are an invitation to celebrate this lady:
“Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass!”
The narrative structure combines statements with rhetorical questions from start to finish. It is thus responsible for the ranges of sorrow and excitement that constitute the mood of the poem. The call on all creation to celebrate the solitary reaper, the travelers. Nightingale, cuckoo and the earth itself illustrates Wordsworth’s pantheistic view of nature.
Simile is another device used in the poem. Through simile, “thrilling” voices of Highland Lass, Nightingale and cuckoo are mad to compare and contrast with the melancholy strain. The contrast is especially heightened when distant lands, the Hebrides and Arabian sands relive the sorrow in the reaper’s song.
The rhetorical question heightens the tension:
“Will no one tell me what she sings”.
This triggers off a chain of possible answers: plaintive numbers, history, romantic ditties, battles and everyday occurrences such as love, joy, birth, maturity and death are simultaneously invoked and made to evoke complex emotions.
Diction is yet another device used in the poem. The first word “Behold” is incantatory. Powerful emotions are captured in simple language “Stop here or gently pass!. The evocative: “0 listen! For the vale profound is deflowing with the sound” establishes the magical influence of the lass’s song on the poet who finds himself in a transport of contemplation and reflection.
Metaphor is also another device. The reaper’s “melancholy strain” becomes the Nightingale’s welcome note” and the thrilling voice of the cuckoo. There is a magical quality about the song; sorrowful and welcoming and thrilling all at the same time. Metaphor has blended them into a monody. There are rhymes galore to echo the sound of music:
“pass, lass, grain, strain, profound, sound, …. Pain, again …. Fill, hill, bore more” In these, rhyme combines with assonance to reinforce the monody as well as enact the sorrow and pain strained from the lass’ song.