Behold her, single in the field, |
Yon solitary Highland Lass ! |
Reaping and singing by herself ; |
Stop here, or gently pass ! |
Alone she cuts and binds the grain, |
And sings a melancholy strain ; |
O listen ! for the vale profound |
Is overflowing with the sound.
|
No nightingale did ever chaunt |
More welcome notes to weary bands |
Of travellers in some shady haunt, |
Among Arabian sands : |
A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard |
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, |
Breaking the silence of the seas |
Among the farthest Hebrides.
|
Will no one tell me what she sings ? – |
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow |
For old, unhappy, far-off things, |
And battles long ago : |
Or is it some more humble lay, |
Familiar matter of to-day ? |
Some natural sorry, loss, or pain, |
That has been, and may be again ?
|
Whate’er the theme, the maiden sang |
As if her song could have no ending ; |
I saw her singing at her work, |
And o’er the sickle bending ; – |
I listened, motionless and still ; |
And, as I mounted up the hill, |
The music in my heart I bore, |
Long after it was heard no more.
|
William
Wordsworth |
Classic Poems |
|
[ Composed Upon Westminster Bridge September 3 ] [ Daffodils ] [ The Prelude ] [ Lucy ] [ Intimations of immortality ] [ The Solitary Reaper ] [ The world is too much with us ] [ My heart leaps up when I behold ] [ Milton ] [ Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg ] |