Notes

Each stanza provides a slightly different perspective of the woman reaping and singing in a field. The first sets the scene: a rustic vale, or valley, filled with the woman's voice. The second stanza compares her song to that of a cuckoo bird and a nightingale. Each bird is associated with a distant location—the Arabian sands and the "farthest" Hebrides. In the third stanza, the speaker wonders what the words of the song might be: Are they epic or personal? Are they about battles or the repeated sorrows of life? The last stanza describes how the reaper's song affected the speaker. He says the song will "have no ending" because it will stay in his memory.


This stanza structure helps express the theme of the natural beauty of a country woman's song, which is as good as or better than that of songbirds. Because he can't understand the words, the speaker listens to them in much the same way as he'd listen to a bird's song. As a field-worker, the woman also represents the value of someone whose art has developed without training. This quality echoes Wordsworth's belief in poetry that is accessible to people of all classes.