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1、孤独的割麦女看，一个孤独的高原姑娘在远远的田野间收割，一边割一边独自歌唱，请你站住或者俏悄走过！她独自把麦子割了又捆，唱出无限悲凉的歌声，屏息听吧！深广的谷地已被歌声涨满而漫溢！还从未有过夜莺百啭，唱出过如此迷人的歌，在沙漠中的绿荫间抚慰过疲惫的旅客；还从未有过杜鹃迎春，声声啼得如此震动灵魂，在遥远的赫布利底群岛打破过大海的寂寥。她唱什么，谁能告诉我？忧伤的音符不断流涌，是把遥远的不悦诉说？是把古代的战争吟咏？也许她的歌比较卑谦，只是唱今日平凡的悲欢，只是唱自然的哀伤苦痛昨天经受过，明天又将重逢？姑娘唱什么，我猜不着，她的歌如流水永无尽头；只见她一面唱一面干活，弯腰挥镰，操劳不休我凝神不动，听
2、她歌唱，然后，当我登上了山岗，尽管歌声早已不能听到，它却仍在我心头缭绕。-Wordsworths preface to the 1800 Lyrical Ballads argues that poetry contains a natural delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents. It ought not be judged by the presence of artificial, poetic diction. Rather, the language of conversation
3、in the middle and lower classes of society can be its medium. The Solitary Reaper exemplifies these beliefs. Written seven years after Lyrical Ballads, it describes a nameless listeners delight in a young womans melancholy song in an unknown language as, working by herself in a Scottish valley, she
4、swings a sickle, reaping grain. Four eight-line stanzas, each closing with two couplets and all written in octosyllabic lines, have a musical lilt. Short lines deliver the rhymes at a quick pace. Sentences normally need two or more such short lines to complete, so that few lines are strongly end-sto
5、pped; most freely enjamb. Diction is conversational. Often lines consist mainly of monosyllabic words (4-5, 13, 17, 21, 24, 27, 30-32). Wordsworth prefers common verbs, behold, reap, sing, stop, pass, cut, bind, chant, hear, and break. Words imported into English from Latin or Greek, like solitary a
6、nd melancholy or forms with -ive and -ion endings (e.g., plaintive and motionless), are infrequent. Wordsworth writes plain, almost undemanding verse. For example, he repeats the simplest idea in varying words. The girl is single, solitary, and by herself (1-3). She is reaping (3), that is, cuts and
7、 binds the grain (5), oer the sickle bending (28). The onlooker is both motionless and still (29). The lass sings (3, 17, 25, 27) or does chant (9) a strain (6), a lay (21), or a song (26). The speaker relies on everyday idioms, worn to vagueness by overuse in ordinary talk. Her theme (25) is of thi
8、ngs (19) or matter (22) That has been, and may be again (24). This excludes only what never existed at all. Whenever the speaker might become elevated in speech, his language seems prosaic, even chatty: Will no one tell me . (17), Whatere the theme (25), and Long after it was heard no more (32). Wor
9、dsworth notes, pointedly, that this last line comes verbatim from a prose travel book. The Solitary Reaper does not implement, programmatically, his dogma of plain diction. For example, Vale profound (7), plaintive numbers (18), and humble lay (21) are semi-formulaic catch phrases in the very eighte
10、enth-century verse whose artificiality he rejects. These exceptions may be deliberate, characterizing the speaker (not Wordsworth) as someone for whom poetry means much. He resorts to formulas as if to hint that the girls song is out-of-place in the valley, however separated from the traditions of f
11、ine verse by her class, occupation, and location. Wordsworth may deliberately impoverish his speakers language so as to contrast it with the reapers song. Unlike other poets, this lass sings alone, isolated from both her predecessors (her poetic tradition) and any audience. Dryden, Pope, Gray, and s
12、o many others defined themselves by quoting from classical literature and each other. Wordsworths The Solitary Reaper shatters this continuity. Her song, like a found poem, springs directly from nature, without literary context. Her music runs like water (overflowing the valley) and surpasses the be
13、auty of two celebrated English song-birds, the nightingale and the cuckoo. Here again the speaker raids conventional poetic language, as if incapable of finding truly suitable language. Ironically, both his analogies break down. Reaping takes place at harvest time, in the autumn, not in the spring o
14、r summer, seasons traditionally associated with the cuckoo and the nightingale. The reaper, a single Maiden (25), hardly fits the myth of married Philomela, rape victim and tragic revenger, even though the reaper sings in a melancholic, plaintive way about Some natural sorrow (23). The strange langu
15、age in which the lass chants also removes her from any poetic tradition known to the speaker. He comprehends only her sound, voice, and music, though it rings in his heart - his memory - long after it was heard no more (32). This simple confession redeems the speaker from his own impoverished language. He bears witness to something that eighteenth-century poetry seemed at times embarrassed of. What transfixes him in song is not its content, but its emotionally expressive music. The listener does not understand why she sings in melancholy,
