Ah! hills so early loved! in fancy still
I breathe your pure keen air; and still behold
Those widely spreading views, mocking alike
The poet and the painter's utmost art.
And still, observing objects more minute,
Wondering remark the strange and foreign forms
Of sea-shells...
    from Beachy Head

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) was a prolific writer whose independence of outlook marks her out as a strikingly modern figure. Her poetry was admired by Wordsworth, and although her work was later neglected, she is now being recognised as a major poet whose Romantic sensibility was an expression of specifically female experience. This selection reveals Charlotte Smith as a moving, memorable poet, her responses to natural and emotional landscapes marked by vividly particular observation.

This selection provides an ideal introduction to the full range of Charlotte Smith's work. Her influential sonnets and her poems for children, extracts from her French Revolution poem 'The Emigrants' and the full text of her astonishing 'Beachy Head' are included here. Judith Willson's introduction and notes give the background to Smith's life and clarify the detail of her poems.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Judith Willson

Note on the Texts

Further Reading

from Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems

I

II

IV

VII

XII

XXII

XXVI

XXVII

XXXI

XXXVI

XL

XLIV

XLIX

LI

LVIII

LXVI

LXVII

LXXI

LXXV

LXXVII

LXXVIII

LXXIX

LXXXI

LXXXVI

LXXXVII

XCI

Thirty Eight

Verses Supposed to Have Been Written in the New Forest, in Early Spring

The Forest Boy



from The Emigrants



from Conversations Introducing Poetry; Chiefly on Subjects of Natural History, For the Use of Children and Young Persons

  A Walk by the Water

   The Hedgehog Seen in a Frequented Path

   the Moth

   To the Firefly of Jamaica, Seen in a Collection

   To a Geranium which Flowered during the Winter. Written in Autumn



from Beachy Head and Other Poems

   Flora

   Beachy Head



Notes