Stanza 2 Summary

Lines 9-12

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:

• The speaker begins the second stanza by elaborating on how great the highland lass's song is. 
• Let's break this down just a bit: 
• "Chaunt" is just an old British spelling of "chant," and here it means "sing" or "chirp." 
• A "shady haunt" is kind of weird because it makes us think of a bower, or shady area, enclosed by trees, kind of like this. 
• Just where, exactly, would such a place be located "Among Arabian sands"? 
• We're not sure, but the speaker is probably just being poetic here. (Okay, so he's obviously being poetic because, you know, he's a poet.)
• What we mean is that he's talking about travelers in "shady haunts" and nightingales, which happen to be very common images in British poetry. (Don't believe us? Just check out this poem by John Keats, and this one by Wordsworth's buddy Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or this one by John Milton, who was one of Wordsworth's faves.) 
• What's also interesting here is that the speaker describes the woman's song by describing what it is not. 
• He doesn't gush and say, "OMG this song was amazing and it was the greatest thing I ever heard." On the contrary, he just says no nightingale ever sang anything even remotely as beautiful as this woman's song.
• Now, we just told you that lots of other poets have mentioned the nightingale. The speaker seems to be suggesting, ever so quietly, that no other poets have ever sung about something like this.
• They've sung about nightingales greeting weary travelers in the middle of nowhere, not about the remarkable Scottish lasses who actually sing better.
• If lots of poets in Wordsworth's day, and before, thought nightingales were great poetic subjects, this speaker says that a highland lass, and her song, is actually a better choice.
• By the way, this is a totally Wordsworthian thing to do. In the "Preface" to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1800, for example, Wordsworth talks about writing a more human poetry. While he doesn't come right out and say that there will be no poems about nightingales, he does say that the poems in Lyrical Ballads will take events from "common life" and use the "language really used by men."
• Translation? "Hello everyone and welcome to 1800. I'm done with all the high-brow, phony poetry of the eighteenth century and will now proceed to write poems about actual, real subjects like highland lasses. The end."
• If you've read our "In a Nutshell," you know that Wordsworth, and his close buddy Coleridge, launched a poetic revolution in 1798 when they first published Lyrical Ballads.
• "The Solitary Reaper" continues that revolution. Viva la revolución!

Lines 13-16

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. 

• Birds sure are on the speaker's mind, that's for sure. This time it's the "cuckoo-bird," and the speaker makes the same kind of comparison as before.
• The highland lass's voice is way more thrilling than the cuckoo's spring-time song.
• And that cuckoo-song, according to our speaker, was one of the only sounds that broke the calm silence of the seas near the Hebrides.
• Hebrides did he say? The Hebrides are a group of islands off the northwest coast of island. There's the Outer Hebrides and the Inner Hebrides. 
• The speaker mentions these because he's been talking about Scotland a lot, and he probably figured he might as well cram some more Scottish stuff in while he can.
• Either way, the Hebrides are pretty far from downtown London, and they symbolize what we would describe as "way out there." 
• Even still, the cuckoo-bird's song—way out there in the Hebrides, breaking the silence of the ocean—has got nothing on this woman's song.
• Once again, the speaker lets us know that this woman's song is much better than all the typical songs poets like to talk about (nightingales, cuckoos, etc.).
• Before we go any further, note that this second stanza rhymes a little more neatly than the first, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCCDD. Hit up "Form and Meter" for more.