And yet, where’er your pinions wave
O’er some lost friend’s — some lover’s grave,
Surviving sufferers still complain;
Some parent of his hopes deprived, 10
Some wretch who has himself survived,
Lament in vain.
Blow where ye list on this sad earth,
Some soul-corroding care has birth,
And Grief in all her accents speaks; 15
Here dark Dejection groans, and there
Wild Phrenzy, daughter of Despair,
Unconscious shrieks.
Ah! were it Death had torn apart
The tie that bound him to my heart, 20
Tho’ fatal still the pang would prove;
Yet had it soothed this bleeding breast
To know, I had till then possest
Hillario’s love.
And where his dear, dear ashes slept, 25
Long nights and days I then had wept,
Till by slow-mining Grief opprest
As Memory fail’d, its vital heat
This wayward heart had lost, and beat
Itself to rest. 30
But still Hillario lives, to prove
To some more happy maid his love!
Hillario at her feet I see!
His voice still murmurs fond desire,
Still beam his eyes with lambent fire, 35
But not for me!
Ah! words, my bosoms peace that stole,
Ah! looks, that won my melting soul;
Who dares your dear delusion try,
In dreams may all Elysium see, 40
Then undeceivd, awake, like me,
Awake and die.
Like me, who now abandon’d, lost,
Roam wildly on the rocky coast,
With eager eyes the sea explore; 45
But hopeless watch and vainly rave,
Hillario o’er the western wave
Returns no more!
Yet, go forgiven, Hillario go,
Such anguish may you never know 50
As that which checks my labouring breath;
Pain so severe not long endures,
And I have still my choice of cures,
Madness or death.
TO VESPER
Thou! who behold’st with dewy eye
The sleeping leaves and folded flowers,
And hear’st the night-wind lingering sigh
Thro’ shadowy woods and twilight bowers;
Thou wast the signal once that seem’d to say, 5
Hillario’s beating heart reproved my long delay.
I see thy emerald lustre stream
O’er these rude cliffs and cavern’d shore;
But here, orisons to thy beam
The woodland chantress pours no more; 10
Nor I, as once, thy lamp propitious hail,
Seen indistinct thro’ tears; confus’d, and dim, and pale.
Soon shall thy arrowy radiance shine
On the broad ocean’s restless wave,
Where this poor cold swoln form of mine 15
Shall shelter in its billowy grave,
Safe from the scorn the World’s sad outcasts prove,
Unconscious of the pain of ill-requited Love.
LYDIA
O’er the high down the night-wind blew,
And as it chill and howling past,
The Juniper and scathed Yew
Shrunk from the bitter blast.
Yet on the sea-mark’s chalky height, 5
The rude memorial of the Dane,
Thro’ many a drear and stormy night
Had hapless Lydia lain.
When I a lonely wanderer too,
Who loved to climb and gaze around, 10
Even as the Autumnal Sun withdrew,
The poor forlorn one found.
“Ah! wherefore, maiden, sit you so,
The cold wind raving round your breast,
While in the villages below 15
All are retired to rest?
The fires are out, no lights appear
But the red flames of burning lime,
None but the Horsemans ghost is here
At this pale evening time.” 20
With wild yet vacant eye, the maid
Gazed on me, and a mournful smile
On her wan sunken features play’d
As thus she spoke the while:
“Yes, to their beds my friends are gone, 25
They have no grief; they slumber soon;
But ’tis for me to wait alone
To meet the midnight Moon.
The Moon will rise anon, and trace
Her silver pathway on the sea; 30
I saw it from this very place,
When Edward went from me.
Tho’ like a mist the Horseman’s ghost
From you deep dell I often see,
Glide o’er the mountain to the coast, 35
It gives no fear to me.
I rather dread the clouds that rise
Like towers and turrets from afar,
And swelling high, obscure the skies,
And every shining star. 40
For then I can no longer trace
That long bright pathway in the sea,
Where Edward bade me mark the place
When last he went from me!
’Twas here, when loth to go, he gave 45
To his poor Girl his last adieu;
He mark’d the moonlight on the wave,
And bade me mark it too.
And, Lydia! — then he sighing cried,
When the tenth time that light so clear 50
Shine on the Sea — whate’er betide,
Thy Edward will be here.
Since then I watch with eager eyes,
(Nor feel I cold, or wind or rain,)
Till the tenth blessed moon arise, 55
And Edward comes again.”
“Ah, wretched Girl!” I would have cried,
But why awaken her to pain?
“Long since thy wandering Lover died,
The moon returns in vain! 60
Tho’ with her wane, thy visions fade,
Yet hopest thou, till again she shine?”
— The hopes of half the World, poor Maid!
Are not more rational than thine!
The Emigrants
First published in 1793, The Emigrants parallels the fate of those driven out of France by the revolution with the sufferings of victims of the British state machinery. Smith was an admirer of the French Revolution and the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of the revolutionary A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft’s husband, William Godwin, reported that in the late 1790s Smith’s house was a vital gathering place for radical intellectuals. However, she was also critical of the tyranny of Jacobinism. In her part-epic poem The Emigrants, Smith deals with the situation of the French clergy and nobility, who have fled for safety in exile in rural Sussex. She points out the injustice of their former conduct towards the poor, but she also condemns the violent turn the Revolution has taken.
Title page of the first edition
CONTENTS
THE EMIGRANTS. BOOK I.
THE EMIGRANTS. BOOK II.
NOTES TO THE FIRST BOOK.
NOTES TO THE SECOND BOOK.
TO WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ.
DEAR SIR,
THERE is, I hope, some propriety in my addressing a Composition to you, which would never perhaps have existed, had I not, amid the heavy pressure of many sorrows, derived infinite consolation from your Poetry, and some degree of animation and of confidence from your esteem.
The following performance is far from aspiring to be considered as an imitation of your inimitable Poem, “THE TASK;’’ I am perfectly sensible, that it belongs not to a feeble and feminine hand to draw the Bow of Ulysses.
The force, clearness, and sublimity of your admirable Poem; the felicity, almost peculiar to your genius, of giving to the mo
st familiar objects dignity and effect, I could never hope to
reach; yet, having read “The Task” almost incessantly from its first publication to the present time, I felt that kind of enchantment described by Milton, when he says,
“The Angel ended, and in Adam’s ear
“So charming left his voice, that he awhile
“Thought him still speaking.”
And from the force of this impression, I was gradually led to attempt, in Blank Verse, a delineation of those interesting objects which happened to excite my attention, and which even pressed upon an heart, that has learned, perhaps from its own sufferings, to feel with acute, though unavailing compassion, the calamity of others.
A Dedication usually consists of praises and of apologies; my praise can add nothing to the unanimous and loud applause of your country. She regards you with pride, as one of the few, who, at the present period, rescue her from the imputation of having degenerated in Poetical talents; but in the form of Apology, I should have much to say, if I again dared to plead the pressure of evils, aggravated by their long continuance, as an excuse for the defects of this attempt.
Whatever may be the faults of its execution, let me vindicate myself from those, that may be imputed to the design. — In speaking of the Emigrant Clergy, I beg to be understood as feeling the utmost respect for the integrity of their principles; and it is with pleasure I add my suffrage to that of those, who have had a similar opportunity of witnessing the conduct of the Emigrants of all descriptions during their exile in England; which has been such as does honour to their nation, and ought to secure to them in ours the esteem of every liberal mind.
Your philanthropy, dear Sir, will induce you, I am persuaded, to join with me in hoping, that this painful exile may finally lead to the extirpation of that reciprocal hatred so unworthy of great and enlightened nations; that it may tend to humanize both countries, by convincing each, that good qualities exist in the other; and at length annihilate the prejudices that have so long existed to the injury of both.
Yet it is unfortunately but too true, that with the body of the English, this national aversion has acquired new force by the dreadful scenes which have been acted in France during
the last summer — even those who are the victims of the Revolution, have not escaped the odium, which the undistinguishing multitude annex to all the natives of a country where such horrors have been acted: nor is this the worst effect those events have had on the minds of the English; by confounding the original cause with the wretched catastrophes that have followed its ill management; the attempts of public virtue, with the outrages that guilt and folly have committed in its disguise, the very name of Liberty has not only lost the charm it used to have in British ears, but many, who have written, or spoken, in its defence, have been stigmatized as promoters of Anarchy, and enemies to the prosperity of their country. Perhaps even the Author of “ The Task,” with all his goodness and tenderness of heart, is in the catalogue of those, who are reckoned to have been too warm in a cause, which it was once the glory of Englishmen to avow and defend — The exquisite Poem, indeed, in which you have honoured Liberty, by a tribute highly gratifying to her sincerest friends, was published some years before the demolition of regal despotism in France, which, in the fifth book, it seems to foretell — All the truth and energy of the passage to which I allude, must have been strongly felt, when, in the Parliament of England, the greatest Orator of our time quoted the sublimest of our Poets — when the eloquence of Fox did justice to the genius of Cowper. I am, dear SIR,
With the most perfect esteem,
Your obliged and obedient servant,
CHARLOTTE SMITH.
Brighthelmstone, May 10, 1793.
THE EMIGRANTS. BOOK I.
SCENE, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of Brighthelmstone in Sussex. TIME, a Morning in November, 1792.
SLOW in the Wintry Morn, the struggling light
Throws a faint gleam upon the troubled waves;
Their foaming tops, as they approach the shore
And the broad surf that never ceasing breaks
On the innumerous pebbles, catch the beams
Of the pale Sun, that with reluctance gives
To this cold northern Isle, its shorten’d day.
Alas! how few the morning wakes to joy!
How many murmur at oblivious night
For leaving them so soon; for bearing thus
Their fancied bliss (the only bliss they taste!),
On her black wings away! — Changing the dreams
That sooth’d their sorrows, for calamities
(And every day brings its own sad proportion)
For doubts, diseases, abject dread of Death,
And faithless friends, and fame and fortune lost;
Fancied or real wants; and wounded pride,
That views the day star, but to curse his beams.
Yet He, whose Spirit into being call’d
This wond’rous World of Waters; He who bids
The wild wind lift them till they dash the clouds,
And speaks to them in thunder; or whose breath,
Low murmuring, o’er the gently heaving tides,
When the fair Moon, in summer night serene,
Irradiates with long trembling lines of light
Their undulating surface; that great Power,
Who, governing the Planets, also knows
If but a Sea-Mew falls, whose nest is hid
In these incumbent cliffs; He surely means
To us, his reasoning Creatures, whom He bids
Acknowledge and revere his awful hand,
Nothing but good: Yet Man, misguided Man,
Mars the fair work that he was bid enjoy,
And makes himself the evil he deplores.
How often, when my weary soul recoils
From proud oppression, and from legal crimes
(For such are in this Land, where the vain boast
Of equal Law is mockery, while the cost
Of seeking for redress is sure to plunge
Th’ already injur’d to more certain ruin
And the wretch starves, before his Counsel pleads)
How often do I half abjure Society,
And sigh for some lone Cottage, deep embower’d
In the green woods, that these steep chalky Hills
Guard from the strong South West; where round their base
The Beach wide flourishes, and the light Ash
With slender leaf half hides the thymy turf! —
There do I wish to hide me; well content
If on the short grass, strewn with fairy flowers,
I might repose thus shelter’d; or when Eve
In Orient crimson lingers in the west,
Gain the high mound, and mark these waves remote
(Lucid tho’ distant), blushing with the rays
Of the far-flaming Orb, that sinks beneath them;
For I have thought, that I should then behold
The beauteous works of God, unspoil’d by Man
And less affected then, by human woes
I witness’d not; might better learn to bear
Those that injustice, and duplicity
And faithlessness and folly, fix on me:
For never yet could I derive relief,
When my swol’n heart was bursting with its sorrows,
From the sad thought, that others like myself
Live but to swell affliction’s countless tribes!
— Tranquil seclusion I have vainly sought;
Peace, who delights solitary shade,
No more will spread for me her downy wings,
But, like the fabled Danaïds — or the wretch,
Who ceaseless, up the steep acclivity,
Was doom’d to heave the still rebounding rock,
Onward I labour; as the baffled wave,
Which yon rough beach repulses, that returns
With the next breath of wind, to fail
again. —
Ah! Mourner — cease these wailings: cease and learn,
That not the Cot sequester’d, where the briar
And wood-bine wild, embrace the mossy thatch,
(Scarce seen amid the forest gloom obscure!)
Or more substantial farm, well fenced and warm,
Where the full barn, and cattle fodder’d round
Speak rustic plenty; nor the statelier dome
By dark firs shaded, or the aspiring pine,
Close by the village Church (with care conceal’d
By verdant foliage, lest the poor man’s grave
Should mar the smiling prospect of his Lord),
Where offices well rang’d, or dove-cote stock’d,
Declare manorial residence; not these
Or any of the buildings, new and trim
With windows circling towards the restless Sea,
Which ranged in rows, now terminate my walk,
Can shut out for an hour the spectre Care,
That from the dawn of reason, follows still
Unhappy Mortals, ‘till the friendly grave
(Our sole secure asylum) “ends the chace .”
Behold, in witness of this mournful truth,
A group approach me, whose dejected looks,
Sad Heralds of distress! proclaim them Men
Banish’d for ever and for conscience sake
From their distracted Country, whence the name
Of Freedom misapplied, and much abus’d
By lawless Anarchy, has driven them far
To wander; with the prejudice they learn’d
From Bigotry (the Tut’ress of the blind),
Thro’ the wide World unshelter’d; their sole hope,
That German spoilers, thro’ that pleasant land
May carry wide the desolating scourge
Of War and Vengeance; yet unhappy Men,
Whate’er your errors, I lament your fate:
And, as disconsolate and sad ye hang
Upon the barrier of the rock, and seem
Complete Poetical Works of Charlotte Smith Page 12