Charlotte Smith (writer)

Charlotte Smith (née Turner; 4 May 1749 – 28 October 1806) was an English novelist and poet of the School of Sensibility whose Elegiac Sonnets (1784) contributed to the revival of the form in England.

Quotes

 * The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove, Each simple flower, which she had nurs’d in dew, Anemonies that spangled every grove,  The primrose wan, and hare-bell, mildly blue. No more shall violets linger in the dell,  Or purple orchis variegate the plain, Till Spring again shall call forth every bell,  And dress with humid hands, her wreaths again. Ah! poor humanity! so frail, so fair,  Are the fond visions of thy early day, Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care,  Bid all thy fairy colours fade away! Another May new buds and flowers shall bring; Ah! why has happiness—no second spring?
 * "Elegiac Sonnet: Written at the Close of Spring"


 * Pressed by the moon, mute arbitress of tides, While the loud equinox its power combines,  The sea no more its swelling surge confines, But o’er the shrinking land sublimely rides. The wild blast, rising from the western cave,  Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed,  Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead, And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave! With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore  Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave;  But vain to them the winds and waters rave; They hear the warring elements no more: While I am doomed—by life’s long storm oppressed, To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest.
 * "Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex" (1789)
 * Wordsworth rewrote the final line: "To envy their insensible unrest."


 * Oh! for imperial Polydamna’s art, Which to bright Helen was in Egypt taught,  To mix with magic power the oblivious draught Of force to staunch the bleeding of the heart, And to Care’s wan and hollow cheek impart  The smile of happy youth, uncursed with thought. Potent indeed the charm that could appease  Affection’s ceaseless anguish, doomed to weep O’er the cold grave; or yield even transient ease  By soothing busy Memory to sleep! —Around me those who surely must have tried  Some charm of equal power, I daily see, But still to me Oblivion is denied,  There’s no Nepenthe, now, on earth for me.
 * "Nepenthe" (1797)
 * Cp. Homer, Odyssey, IV, 219—32


 * Queen of the silver bow! by thy pale beam, Alone and pensive, I delight to stray, And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream,  Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way. And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light  Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast; And oft I think, fair planet of the night,  That in thy orb the wretched may have rest; The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go,  Released by death, to thy benignant sphere, And the sad children of despair and woe  Forget in thee their cup of sorrow here, O that I soon may reach thy world serene, Poor wearied pilgrim in this toiling scene!
 * "To the Moon"