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Read through it, and don’t tell me you don’t love it. This poem was actually a part of my three-part English Literature and Culture exam today. Give an analysis of the poem and discuss the typical romantic feattures present. I must admit that I analyze poems better than anything, but I tend to be too detailed in my quest of unlocking the secrets contained in mere lines. Seeing how the time was ticking away and threatening to smother my sanity, I decided against it and picked a quicker alternative; analyzing the protagonists of an extract from a novel. Could easily have cost me a grade, but it’s better than loosing a grade or two for not finishing your paper, don’t you think?

I managed to at least scramble down the title and author before the guard snatched my exam papers away due to time being up. Oh, how I love the Romantic Age!

The Solitary Reaper

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 sorrow, 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

Listening: Alexander Rybak – Funny Little World
Reading: Glass Houses (The Morganville Vampires Book One) by Rachel Caine (Am. fantasy) – Trying out Lutten’s recommendations!
Watching: Angelic Layer. HA. HA.

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