Give a detailed analysis of "The Solitary Reaper" by Wordsworth.

This poem is typical of the work of Wordsworth in the way
that it focuses on an enounter that Wordsworth had in the countryside with a woman who
works in a field, harvesting the grain. This encounter impacts Wordsworth so strongly
because of the way that the sight of this woman working and the sound of her song
dominates the scene. The "melancholy strain" she sings "overflowers" the "vale profound"
in its beauty. Having introduced the woman in the first stanza, the speaker then goes on
to compare the song of the woman in the second stanza to that of the nightingale and the
cuckoo and in each case finding the song of the woman more
attractive:

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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.

Note how Wordsworth
chooses deliberately Romantic settings, imagining exotic "Arabian sands" and the distant
"farthest Hebrides." Compared to the song of these two birds, the woman's tune is far
superior, yet the third stanza specifies that Wordsworth is not able to discern what it
is she actually is singing. He speculates that perhaps the tune echoes "old, unhappy,
far-off things" or "battles long ago," or does her tune capture "some natural sorrow,
loss, or pain, / That has been, and may be again!" The way that the tune resonates with
Wordsworth is undoubtedly part of its appeal, as in it he seems to find immortalised
something about the perennial human experience of
suffering.

The final stanza talks of how Wordsworth reacted
to seeing and hearing the woman,and how he stood there entranced, "motionless and
still," listening to her song and watching her as she worked. The final three lines
reinforce the massive impact this chance encounter has had on
him:

And, as
I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I
bore

Long after it was heard no
more.

The song and sight of
the solitary reaper is something that he takes away with him and is not able to forget.
Somehow, the tune echoes on in his soul as he leaves the woman, reflecting the massive
impact that this woman and her song had on the poet.