"No sweeter voice was ever heard/In the spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,/Breaking the silence of the seas/Among the farthest Hebrides" (lines 13-16).The reader assumes that the speaker does not speak the language the woman sings in, however, because he asks if "no one will tell [him] what she sings" (line 17). This makes the woman more mysterious and intriguing and adds to her appeal for both the reader and the speaker. Not one time is the woman ever physically described, but her voice "sings a melancholy strain" (line 6) and "the Vale profound/Is overflowing with the sound" (lines 7-8). For the speaker, the ability to create beauty is far more important and valuable than being physically beautiful. Through this, the speaker shows that what is inside of a person is much more important than how beautiful they are. Though the speaker never actually sees the woman, the music she created "in [his] heart [he] bore,/Long after it was heard no more" (lines 31-32), signifying that while physical beauty may fade, artistic beauty will last long after it has been exposed.
Monday, June 23, 2008
William Wordsworth
The "Highland Lass" (line 2) in Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper" is described in great detail with eloquent language and imagery. What makes her beautiful is not what she looks like, but rather her entrancing singing voice. The speaker claims that
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3 comments:
Rachel,
Interesting and unusual choice of a poem by Wordsworth to discuss, with good selection of particularly passages to analyze, and some good commentary.
It seems like the speaker is in a deep hole because Wordsworth might just mean that he does not understand what women want or need.
Good job on this post. I like how you jump right into the poem. You throw yourself into the middle of the poem and dig into the meaning. I dont think that the speaker understands what women want. He talks about beauty and the ability to create beauty, to him women are the icon of beauty, some in physical ways other with interal atributes. He attempts to say that whats on the inside of a person is what counts, but if he really meant that why bother to explain physical beauty?
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