The speaker's first thought, when he observes the solitary reaper—a young maiden who is cutting and binding the grain in the field while she sings a song to herself—is that her song is a "melancholy strain" (line 6). Though he cannot understand the language in which she sings, he identifies the sadness of the tune. He goes on to claim that no song sung by nightingales has ever felt so welcome to weary travelers, who only wish to stop for the night, as this young woman's song was to him; moreover, no notes from a cuckoo have ever been so welcome to sailors on the lookout for land as this woman's song was to him. Her song and voice, then, must be quite beautiful.
Wordsworth's thought process has two main phases in his poem "The Solitary Reaper." His first thoughts tend to be upbeat, as he initially imagines the song "Among Arabian sands" (12) and "Breaking the silence of the seas / Among the farthest Hebrides" (15-16). In short, Wordsworth's first thoughts are that the reaper's song has a freeing power, as the musicality of the young woman's singing initially inspires his imagination to explore distant and exciting locations. This first exciting thought is then tempered by one that is more wary, as Wordsworth imagines the song refers to "unhappy, far-off things" (19), and the poet appears to at least partially take back his initial assessment. With this difference between Wordsworth's first and second thoughts in mind, an interesting duality emerges in the solitary reaper's song, as it appears to be simultaneously exciting, awe-inspiring, and melancholy. That said, the lively imagination that was inspired in Wordsworth's first thoughts runs throughout the poem, effectively fusing the two disparate modes of thought represented in the piece.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45554/the-solitary-reaper
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