Despite small alterations in its form, William Wordsworth’s “The Solitary Reaper” retains its function as a ballad. Typically, ballads are composed of quatrains with alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter and a rhyme scheme of ABCB. Instead, “The Solitary Reaper” consists of four octaves, eight-line stanzas, with lines that are for the most part in iambic tetrameter. And while the first four lines of each octave retain the ballad rhyme scheme, the last four lines are two couplets. Functioning as a ballad, “The Solitary Reaper” is a narrative: the speaker of the poem tells of a lone girl whom he witnesses reaping the season’s harvest. Though he never approaches the stranger like the wandering narrators of most Wordsworth’s ballads, he fixates on the song which she sings and he overhears. It is the girl, the solitary reaper’s, song that provides the basis for the rest of the poem.

( the rest of 'Reaping Emotional Meaning' )