To vindicate my humble fame; to say,
That, not in selfish sufferings absorb’d,
“I gave to misery all I had, my tears .”
And if, where regulated sanctity
Pours her long orisons to Heaven, my voice
Was seldom heard, that yet my prayer was made
To him who hears even silence; not in domes
Of human architecture, fill’d with crowds,
But on these hills, where boundless, yet distinct,
Even as a map, beneath are spread the fields
His bounty cloaths; divided here by woods,
And there by commons rude, or winding brooks,
While I might breathe the air perfum’d with flowers,
Or the fresh odours of the mountain turf;
And gaze on clouds above me, as they sail’d
Majestic: or remark the reddening north,
When bickering arrows of electric fire
Flash on the evening sky — I made my prayer
In unison with murmuring waves that now
Swell with dark tempests, now are mild and blue,
As the bright arch above; for all to me
Declare omniscient goodness; nor need I
Declamatory essays to incite
My wonder or my praise, when every leaf
That Spring unfolds, and every simple bud,
More forcibly impresses on my heart
His power and wisdom — Ah! while I adore
That goodness, which design’d to all that lives
Some taste of happiness, my soul is pain’d
By the variety of woes that Man
For Man creates — his blessings often turn’d
To plagues and curses: Saint-like Piety,
Misled by Superstition, has destroy’d
More than Ambition; and the sacred flame
Of Liberty becomes a raging fire,
When Licence and Confusion bid it blaze.
From thy high throne, above yon radiant stars,
O Power Omnipotent! with mercy view
This suffering globe, and cause thy creatures cease,
With savage fangs, to tear her bleeding breast:
Refrain that rage for power, that bids a Man,
Himself a worm, desire unbounded rule
O’er beings like himself: Teach the hard hearts
Of rulers, that the poorest hind, who dies
For their unrighteous quarrels, in thy sight
Is equal to the imperious Lord, that leads
His disciplin’d destroyers to the field. ——
May lovely Freedom, in her genuine charms,
Aided by stern but equal Justice, drive
From the ensanguin’d earth the hell-born fiends
Of Pride, Oppression, Avarice, and Revenge,
That ruin what thy mercy made so fair!
Then shall these ill-starr’d wanderers, whose sad fate
These desultory lines lament, regain
Their native country; private vengeance then
To public virtue yield; and the fierce feuds,
That long have torn their desolated land,
May (even as storms, that agitate the air,
Drive noxious vapours from the blighted earth)
Serve, all tremendous as they are, to fix
The reign of Reason, Liberty, and Peace!
NOTES TO THE FIRST BOOK.
“ENDS the chace.”] — I have a confused notion, that this expression, with nearly the same application, is to be found in Young: but I cannot refer to it.
“Regrets his pious prison and his beads.”] — Lest the same attempts at misrepresentation should now be made, as have been made on former occasions, it is necessary to repeat, that nothing is farther from my thoughts, than to reflect invidiously on the Emigrant Clergy, whose steadiness of principle excites veneration, as much as their sufferings compassion. Adversity has now taught them the charity and humility they perhaps wanted, when they made it a part of their faith, that salvation could be obtained in no other religion than their own.
“ The splendid palaces.”] — Let it not be considered as an insult to men in fallen fortune, if these luxuries (undoubtedly inconsistent with their profession) be here enumerated — France is not the only country, where the splendour and indulgences of the higher, and the poverty and depression of the inferior Clergy, have alike proved injurious to the cause of Religion.
See the finely descriptive Verses written at Montauban in France in 1750, by Dr. Joseph Warton. Printed in Dodsley’s Miscellanies, Vol. IV. page 203.
5. “Who amid the sons
”Of Reason, Valour, Liberty, and Virtue,
“Displays distinguished merit, is a Noble
”Of Nature’s own creation.”] —
These lines are Thomson’s, and are among those sentiments which are now called (when used by living writers), not common-place declamation, but sentiments of dangerous tendency.
“ Exalt not from the crowd.”] — It has been said, and with great appearance of truth, that the contempt in which the Nobility of France held the common people, was remembered, and with all that vindictive asperity which long endurance of oppression naturally excites, when, by a wonderful concurrence of circumstances, the people acquired the power of retaliation. Yet let me here add, what seems to be in some degree inconsistent with the former charge, that the French are good masters to their servants, and that in their treatment of their Negro slaves, they are allowed to be more mild and merciful than other Europeans.
“But more the Men.”] — The Financiers and Fermiers Generaux are here intended. In the present moment of clamour against all those who have spoken or written in favour of the first Revolution of France, the declaimers seem to have forgotten, that under the reign of a mild and easy tempered Monarch, in the most voluptuous Court in the world, the abuses by which men of this description were enriched, had arisen to such height, that their prodigality exhausted the immense resources of France: and, unable to supply the exigencies of Government, the Ministry were compelled to call Le Tiers Etat ; a meeting that gave birth to the Revolution, which has since been so ruinously conducted.
“The breast of Patriot Virtue.”] — This sentiment will probably renew against me the indignation of those, who have an interest in asserting that no such virtue any where exists.
NOTES TO THE SECOND BOOK.
“HOPE waits upon the flowery prime.. “] —
“Famine, and Sword, and Fire, crouch for employment.”] —
SHAKSPEARE.
“Monsters both!”] — Such was the cause of quarrel between the Houses of York and Lancaster; and of too many others, with which the page of History reproaches the reason of man.
“Oh! polish’d perturbation! — golden care!”] SHAKSPEARE.
“ The brave Bernois.”] — Henry the Fourth of France. It may be said of this monarch, that had all the French sovereigns resembled him, despotism would have lost its horrors; yet he had considerable failings, and his greatest virtues may be chiefly imputed to his education in the School of Adversity.
“Delug’d, as with an inland sea, the vales.”] — From the heavy and incessant rains during the last campaign, the armies were often compelled to march for many miles through marshes overflowed; suffering the extremities of cold and fatigue. The peasants frequently misled them; and, after having passed these inundations at the hazard of their lives, they were sometimes under the necessity of crossing them a second and a third time; their evening quarters after such a day of exertion were often in a wood without shelter; and their repast, instead of bread, unripe corn, without any other preparation than being mashed into a sort of paste.
“The prey of dark suspicion and regret.”] — It is remarkable, that notwithstanding the excessive hardships to which the army of the Emigrants was exposed, very few in it suffered from disease till they began to retreat; then it was that despondence consigned to the most miserable death many brave men who deserv
ed a better fate; and then despair impelled some to suicide, while others fell by mutual wounds, unable to survive disappointment and humiliation.
“Right onward.”] —— MILTON, Sonnet 22d.
“I gave to misery all I had, my tears.”] —— GRAY.
Conversations Introducing Poetry
CHIEFLY ON SUBJECTS OF NATURAL HISTORY FOR THE USE OF CHILDREN AND YOUNG PERSONS, 1804
Published in 1804, this children’s book featured poems in which Mrs. Talbot instructs her son George and daughter Emily in natural lore and poetic forms and their usage. Occasionally, other texts are included in the text, particularly by the children’s aunt, who is in fact represented by Charlotte Smith’s sister Catherine Anne Dorset. Smith’s poems in the volume are concentrated upon the children’s needs and level of comprehension, with the verses often serving as mnemonic devices for retaining information and as tools of moral education, identifying natural subjects with their scientific names.
CONTENTS
TO A GREEN-CHAFER, ON A WHITE ROSE
A WALK BY THE WATER
INVITATION TO THE BEE
THE HEDGE-HOG SEEN IN A FREQUENTED PATH
THE EARLY BUTTERFLY
THE MOTH
TO THE SNOW-DROP
VIOLETS
TO A BUTTERFLY IN A WINDOW
WILD FLOWERS
THE CLOSE OF SUMMER
THE WHEAT-EAR
AN EVENING WALK BY THE SEA-SIDE
THE HEATH
ODE TO THE MISSEL THRUSH
ODE TO THE OLIVE TREE
TO THE FIRE-FLY OF JAMAICA, SEEN IN A COLLECTION
LINES COMPOSED IN PASSING THROUGH A FOREST IN GERMANY
TO A GERANIUM WHICH FLOWERED DURING THE WINTER
TO THE MULBERRY-TREE
TO A GREEN-CHAFER, ON A WHITE ROSE
You dwell within a lovely bower,
Little chafer, gold and green,
Nestling in the fairest flower,
The rose of snow, the garden’s queen.
There you drink the chrystal dew, 5
And your shards as emeralds bright
And corselet, of the ruby’s hue,
Hide among the petals white.
Your fringed feet may rest them there,
And there your filmy wings may close, 10
But do not wound the flower so fair
That shelters you in sweet repose.
Insect! be not like him who dares
On pity’s bosom to intrude,
And then that gentle bosom tears 15
With baseness and ingratitude.
A WALK BY THE WATER
Let us walk where reeds are growing,
By the alders in the mead;
Where the crystal streams are flowing,
In whose waves the fishes feed.
There the golden carp is laving, 5
With the trout, the perch, and bream;
Mark! their flexile fins are waving,
As they glance along the stream.
Now they sink in deeper billows,
Now upon the surface rise; 10
Or from under roots of willows,
Dart to catch the water-flies.
‘Midst the reeds and pebbles hiding,
See the minnow and the roach;
Or by water-lillies gliding, 15
Shun with fear our near approach.
Do not dread us, timid fishes,
We have neither net nor hook;
Wanderers we, whose only wishes
Are to read in natures book.
INVITATION TO THE BEE
Child of patient industry,
Little active busy bee,
Thou art out at early morn,
Just as the opening flowers are born,
Among the green and grassy meads 5
Where the cowslips hang their heads;
Or by hedge-rows, while the dew
Glitters on the harebell blue. —
Then on eager wing art flown,
To thymy hillocks on the down; 10
Or to revel on the broom;
Or suck the clover’s crimson bloom;
Murmuring still thou busy bee
Thy little ode to industry!
Go while summer suns are bright, 15
Take at large thy wandering flight;
Go and load thy tiny feet
With every rich and various sweet,
Cling around the flow’ring thorn,
Dive in the woodbines’ honied horn, 20
Seek the wild rose’ that shades the dell,
Explore the foxglove’s freckled bell,
Or in the heath flower’s fairy cup
Drink the fragrant spirit up.
But when the meadows shall be mown, 25
And summer’s garlands overblown;
Then come, thou little busy bee,
And let thy homestead be with me,
There, shelter’d by thy straw-built hive,
In my garden thou shalt live, 30
And that garden shall supply
Thy delicious alchemy;
There for thee, in autumn, blows
The Indian pink and latest rose,
The mignonette perfumes the air, 35
And stocks, unfading flowers, are there.
Yet fear not when the tempests come,
And drive thee to thy waxen home,
That I shall then most treacherously
For thy honey murder thee. 40
Ah, no! — throughout the winter drear
I’ll feed thee, that another year
Thou may’st renew thy industry
Among the flowers, thou little busy bee.
THE HEDGE-HOG SEEN IN A FREQUENTED PATH
Wherefore should man or thoughtless boy
Thy quiet harmless life destroy,
Innoxious urchin? — for thy food
Is but the beetle and the fly,
And all thy harmless luxury 5
The swarming insects of the wood.
Should man to whom his God has given
Reason, the brightest ray of heaven,
Delight to hurt, in senseless mirth,
Inferior animals? — and dare 10
To use his power in waging war
Against his brethren of the earth?
Poor creature! to the woods resort,
Lest lingering here, inhuman sport
Should render vain thy thorny case; 15
And whelming water, deep and cold,
Make thee thy spiny ball unfold,
And shew thy simple negro face!
Fly from the cruel; know than they
Less fierce are ravenous beasts of prey, 20
And should perchance these last come near thee,
And fox or martin cat assail,
Thou, safe within thy coat of mail,
May cry — Ah! noli me tangere.
THE EARLY BUTTERFLY
Trusting the first warm day of spring,
When transient sunshine warms the sky,
Light on his yellow spotted wing
Comes forth the early butterfly.
With wavering flight, he settles now 5
Where pilewort spreads its blossoms fair,
Or on the grass where daisies blow,
Pausing, he rests his pinions there.
But insect! in a luckless hour
Thou from thy winter home hast come, 10
For yet is seen no luscious flower
With odour rich, and honied bloom.
And these that to the early day
Yet timidly their bells unfold,
Close with the sun’s retreating ray, 15
And shut their humid eyes of gold.
For nights dark shades then gather round,
And night-winds whistle cold and keen,
And hoary frost will crisp the ground,
And blight the leaves of budding green! 20
And thou, poor fly! so soft and frail,
May’st perish ere returning
morn,
Nor ever, on the summer gale,
To taste of summer sweets be borne!
Thus unexperienc’d rashness will presume 25
On the fair promise of life’s opening day,
Nor dreams how soon the adverse storms may come,
“That hush’d in grim repose, expect their evening prey.”
THE MOTH
When dews fall fast, and rosy day
Fades slowly in the west away,
While evening breezes bend the future sheaves;
Votary of vesper’s humid light,
The moth, pale wanderer of the night, 5
From his green cradle comes, amid the whispering leaves.
The birds on insect life that feast
Now in their woody coverts rest,
The swallow slumbers in his dome of clay,
And of the numerous tribes who war 10
On the small denizens of air,
The shrieking bat alone is on the wing for prey.
Eluding him, on lacey plume
The silver moth enjoys the gloom,
Glancing on tremulous wing thro’ twilight bowers, 15
Now flits where warm nasturtiums glow,
Now quivers on the jasmine bough,
And sucks with spiral tongue the balm of sleeping flowers.
Yet if from open casement stream
The taper’s bright aspiring beam, 20
And strikes with comet ray his dazzled sight;
Nor perfum’d leaf, nor honied flower,
To check his wild career have power,
But to the attracting flame he takes his rapid flight.
Round it he darts in dizzy rings, 25
And soon his soft and powder’d wings
Are singed; and dimmer grow his pearly eyes,
Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works Page 15