Complete Poetical Works of Charlotte Smith
Page 17
Thy berries pale;
Yet for thy virtues art thou known,
And not the Anana’s burnish’d cone,
Or golden fruits that bless the earth
Of Indian climes, however fair, 10
Can with thy modest boughs compare,
For genuine worth.
Man, from his early Eden driven,
Receiv’d thee from relenting Heaven,
And thou the whelming surge above, 15
Symbol of pardon, deign’d to rear
Alone thy willowy head, to cheer
The wandering dove.
Tho’ no green whispering shade is thine,
Where peasant girls at noon recline, 20
Or, while the village tabor plays,
Gay vine-dressers, and goatherds, meet
To dance with light unwearied feet
On holidays;
Yet doth the fruit thy sprays produce, 25
Supply what ardent Suns refuse,
Nor want of grassy lawn or mead,
To pasture milky herds, is found
While fertile Olive groves surround
The lone Bastide. 30
Thou stillest the wild and troubled waves,
And as the human tempest raves
When Wisdom bids the tumult cease;
Thee, round her calm majestic brows
She binds; and waves thy sacred boughs, 35
Emblems of Peace!
Ah! then, tho’ thy wan blossoms bear
No odours for the vagrant air,
Yet genuine worth belongs to thee;
And Peace and Wisdom, powers divine, 40
Shall plant thee round the holy shrine
Of Liberty!
TO THE FIRE-FLY OF JAMAICA, SEEN IN A COLLECTION
How art thou alter’d! since afar,
Thou seem’dst a bright earth wandering star;
When thy living lustre ran,
Tall majestic trees between,
And Guazume, or Swietan, 5
Or the Pimento’s glossy green,
As caught their varnish’d leaves, thy glancing light
Reflected flying fires, amid the moonless night.
From shady heights, where currents spring,
Where the ground dove dips her wing, 10
Winds of night reviving blow,
Thro’ rustling fields of maize and cane,
And wave the Coffee’s’ fragrant bough;
But winds of night, for thee in vain
May breathe, of the Plumeria’s, luscious bloom, 15
Or Granate’s scarlet buds, or Plinia’s mild perfume.
The recent captive, who in vain,
Attempts to break his heavy chain,
And find his liberty in flight;
Shall no more in terror hide, 20
From thy strange and doubtful light,
In the mountains cavern’d side,
Or gully deep, where gibbering monkies cling,
And broods the giant bat, on dark funereal wing.
Nor thee his darkling steps to aid, 25
Thro’ the forest’s pathless shade,
Shall the sighing Slave invoke;
Who, his daily task perform’d,
Would forget his heavy yoke;
And by fond affections warm’d, 30
Glide to some dear sequester’d spot, to prove,
Friendship’s consoling voice, or sympathising love.
Now, when sinks the Sun away,
And fades at once the sultry day,
Thee, as falls the sudden night, 35
Never Naturalist shall view,
Dart with corruscation bright,
Down the cocoa avenue;
Or see thee give, with transient gleams to glow,
The green Banana’s head, or Shaddock’s loaded bough. 40
Ah! never more shalt thou behold,
The midnight Beauty, slow unfold
Her golden zone, and thro’ the gloom
To thee her radiant leaves display,
More lovely than the roseate bloom 45
Of flowers, that drink the tropic day;
And while thy dancing flames around her blaze,
Shed odours more refin’d, and beam with brighter rays.
The glass thy faded form contains,
But of thy lamp no spark remains; 50
That lamp, which through the palmy grove,
Floated once with sapphire beam,
As lucid as the star of Love,
Reflected in the bickering stream;
Transient and bright! so human meteors rise, 55
And glare and sink, in pensive Reason’s eyes.
Ye dazzling comets that appear
In Fashion’s rainbow atmosphere,
Lightning and flashing for a day;
Think ye, how fugitive your fame? 60
How soon from her light scroll away,
Is wafted your ephemeron name?
Even tho’ on canvas still your forms are shewn,
Or the slow chisel shapes the pale resembling stone.
Let vaunting ostentation trust 65
The pencil’s art, or marble bust,
While long neglected modest worth
Unmark’d, unhonor’d, and unknown,
Obtains at length a little earth,
Where kindred merit weeps alone; 70
Yet there, tho’ Vanity no trophies rear,
Is Friendship’s long regret, and true Affection’s tear!
LINES COMPOSED IN PASSING THROUGH A FOREST IN GERMANY
If, when tomorrow’s Sun with upward ray,
Gilds the wide spreading oak, and burnish’d pine,
Destin’d to mingle here with foreign clay,
Pale, cold, and still, should sleep this form of mine;
The Day-star, with as lustrous warmth would glow, 5
And thro’ the ferny lairs and forest shades,
With sweetest woodscents fraught, the air would blow,
And timid wild deer, bound along the glades;
While in a few short months, to clothe the mould,
Would velvet moss and purple melic rise, 10
By Heaven’s pure dewdrops water’d, clear and cold,
And birds innumerous sing my obsequies;
But, in my native land, no faithful maid
To mourn for me, would pleasure’s orgies shun;
No sister’s love my long delay upbraid; 15
No mother’s anxious love demand her son.
Thou, only thou, my friend, would feel regret,
My blighted hopes and early fate deplore;
And, while my faults thou’dst palliate or forget,
Would half rejoice, I felt that fate no more.
TO A GERANIUM WHICH FLOWERED DURING THE WINTER
Written in autumn
Native of Afric’s arid lands,
Thou, and thy many-tinctur’d bands,
Unheeded and unvalued grew,
While Caffres crush’d beneath the sands
Thy pencill’d flowers of roseate hue. 5
But our cold northern sky beneath,
For thee attemper’d zephyrs breathe,
And art supplies the tepid dew,
That feeds, in many a glowing wreath,
Thy lovely flowers of roseate hue. 10
Thy race, that spring uncultur’d here,
Decline with the declining year,
While in successive beauty new,
Thine own light bouquets fresh appear,
And marbled leaves of cheerful hue. 15
Now buds and bells of every shade,
By Summer’s ardent eye survey’d,
No more their gorgeous colours shew;
And even the lingering asters fade,
With drooping heads of purple hue. 20
But naturalized in foreign earth,
’Tis thine, with many a beauteous birth,
As if in gratitude they blew,
To hang, like blushing trophies
forth,
Thy pencill’d flowers of roseate hue. 25
Oh then, amidst the wintry gloom,
Those flowers shall dress my cottage room,
Like friends in adverse fortune true;
And soothe me with their roseate bloom,
And downy leaves of vernal hue. 30
TO THE MULBERRY-TREE
On reading the oriental aphorism, “by patience and labour the mulberry-leaf becomes satin.”
Hither, in half blown garlands drest,
Advances the reluctant Spring,
And shrinking, feels her tender breast
Chilld by Winters snowy wing;
Nor wilt thou, alien as thou art, display 5
Or leaf, or swelling bud, to meet the varying day.
Yet, when the mother of the rose,
Bright June, leads on the glowing hours,
And from her hands luxuriant throws
Her lovely groups of Summer flowers; 10
Forth from thy brown and unclad branches shoot
Serrated leaves and rudiments of fruit.
And soon those boughs umbrageous spread
A shelter from Autumnal rays,
While gay beneath thy shadowy head, 15
His gambols happy childhood plays;
Eager, with crimson fingers to amass
Thy ruby fruit, that strews the turfy grass.
But where, festoon’d with purple vines,
More freely grows thy graceful form, 20
And skreen’d by towering Appenines,
Thy foliage feeds the spinning worm;
Patience and Industry protect thy shade,
And see, by future looms, their care repaid.
They mark the threads, half viewless wind
That form the shining light cocoon, 25
Now tinted as the orange rind,
Or paler than the pearly moon;
Then at their summons in the task engage,
Light active youth, and tremulous old age.
The task that bids thy tresses green 30
A thousand varied hues assume,
There colour’d like the sky serene,
And mocking here the rose’s bloom;
And now, in lucid volumes lightly roll’d,
Where purple clouds are starr’d with mimic gold. 35
But not because thy veined leaves.
Do to the grey winged moth supply
The nutriment, whence Patience weaves
The monarch’s velvet canopy; 40
Thro’ his high domes, a splendid radiance throws,
And binds the jewell’d circlet on his brows;
And not, that thus transform’d, thy boughs,
Now as a cestus clasp the fair,
Now in her changeful vestment flows, 45
And filets now her plaited hair;
I praise thee; but that I behold in thee
The triumph of unwearied Industry.
’Tis, that laborious millions owe
To thee, the source of simple food 50
In Eastern climes; or where the Po
Reflects thee from his classic flood;
While useless Indolence may blush, to view
What Patience, Industry, and Art, can do.
Beachy Head and Other Poems
Following the difficulties that arose with the publication of The Emigrants, Smith started writing in less politically charged genres in order to continue earning money. Her most successful new foray was into children’s literature: Rural Walks (1795), Rambles Farther (1796), Minor Morals (1798) and Conversations Introducing Poetry (1804). Smith also wrote two volumes of a History of England (1806) and A Natural History of Birds (1807). She returned to writing poetry in Beachy Head and Other Poems, which was to be her last book of verse, published posthumously in 1807. Publishers had not paid as much for these works as her novels, however, and by 1803, Smith was poverty-stricken. She could barely afford food and had no coal for her home. She even sold her beloved library of five hundred books in order to pay off debts, fearing she would still be sent to jail for a remaining debt of £20.
The title poem of the collection is recognised by many as being the one of poet’s finest achievements. Composed in 1807, when Britain was at war with France and fearing invasion at any moment, the poem offers a combination of personal meditative poetry and political propaganda. It presents the poet looking out at daybreak over the English Channel from Beachy Head, a vastly impressive chalk cliff top in East Sussex, as she ponders geological time, meditating on the forces that divided Britain from the continental land mass. Whilst she catches sight of a ship returning from the Orient, Smith follows a train of thought leading her to a critique of imperialism. Returning from the east by following the sun setting in the west, she relates the history of Britain’s proud defiance of continual waves of invaders. These broad meditations are grounded by a strong sense of personal presence, helping shape the patterns of thought and conventions of style now familiar to us in the greatest works of the Romantic era.
Smith had complained of suffering gout for many years, making it increasingly difficult and painful for her to write. By the end of her life, the condition almost paralysed her. She wrote to a friend that she was “literally vegetating, for I have very little locomotive powers beyond those that appertain to a cauliflower”. On 23 February 1806, her husband died in a debtors’ prison and Smith finally received some of the money he owed her, but she was too ill to do anything with it. She died a few months later, on 28 October 1806, at Tilford and was buried at Stoke Church, Stoke Park, near Guildford.
CONTENTS
ADVERTISEMENT.
BEACHY HEAD.
NOTES TO THE FABLES.
THE DICTATORIAL OWL.
THE JAY IN MASQUERADE.
THE TRUANT DOVE, FROM PILPAY.
THE LARK’S NEST.
THE SWALLOW.
FLORA.
STUDIES BY THE SEA.
THE HOROLOGE OF THE FIELDS.
SAINT MONICA.
A WALK IN THE SHRUBBERY.
HOPE. A RONDEAU.
EVENING.
LOVE AND FOLLY, FROM THE FABLES OF LA FONTAINE.
ON THE APHORISM, “L’AMITIÉ EST L’AMOUR SANS AILES.”
TO MY LYRE.
NOTES TO BEACHY HEAD AND OTHER POEMS.
The title page of the first edition
Beachy Head, East Sussex
ADVERTISEMENT.
AS the following Poems were delivered to the Publisher as early as the month of May last, it may not be thought improper to state the circumstances that have hitherto delayed their appearance.
The fulfilling this duty to the public has since devolved to other hands; for alas! the admired author is now unconscious of their praise or censure, having fallen a victim to a long and painful illness, on the 28th of October last.
The delay which since that period has taken place, has been occasioned partly by the hope of finding a preface to the present publication, which there was some reason to suppose herself had written, and partly from an intention of annexing a short account of her life; but it having been since decided to publish biographical memoirs, and a selection of her correspondence, on a more enlarged plan, and under the immediate authority of her own nearest relatives, it was thought unnecessary; and the motives for deferring the publication are altogether removed.
The public, who have received the several editions of Mrs. Smith’s former Poems with unbounded approbation, will, without doubt, admit the claims of the present work to an equal share of their favour; and her friends and admirers cannot fail of being highly gratified in observing, that although most of the Poems included in this volume were composed during the few and short intervals of care which her infirmities permitted her to enjoy; yet they bear the most unquestionable evidence of the same undiminished genius, spirit, and imagination, which so imminently distinguished her former productions.
The Poem entitled Beachy Head is not completed according to the origina
l design. That the increasing debility of its author has been the cause of its being left in an imperfect state, will it is hoped be a sufficient apology.
There are two Poems in this collection, viz. Flora, and Studies by the Sea, which have already been published in Mrs. Smith’s “Conversations for the Use of Children and Young Persons”; but as many of her friends considered them as misplaced in that work, and not likely to fall under the general observation of those who were qualified to appreciate their superior elegance and exquisite fancy, and had expressed a desire of seeing them transplanted into a more congenial soil, the Publisher, with his usual liberality, has permitted them to reappear in the present volume.
January 31, 1807.
BEACHY HEAD.
ON thy stupendous summit, rock sublime!
That o’er the channel rear’d, half way at sea
The mariner at early morning hails,
I would recline; while Fancy should go forth,
And represent the strange and awful hour
Of vast concussion; when the Omnipotent
Stretch’d forth his arm, and rent the solid hills,
Bidding the impetuous main flood rush between
The rifted shores, and from the continent
Eternally divided this green isle.
Imperial lord of the high southern coast!
From thy projecting head-land I would mark
Far in the east the shades of night disperse,
Melting and thinned, as from the dark blue wave
Emerging, brilliant rays of arrowy light
Dart from the horizon; when the glorious sun
Just lifts above it his resplendent orb.
Advances now, with feathery silver touched,
The rippling tide of flood; glisten the sands,
While, inmates of the chalky clefts that scar
Thy sides precipitous, with shrill harsh cry,
Their white wings glancing in the level beam,
The terns, and gulls, and tarrocks, seek their food,