By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Ode to Death’ is a poem by Charlotte Smith (1749-1806), a fascinating poet who is regarded as one of the first English Romantic poets (before Wordsworth and Coleridge had officially ushered in the movement in Britain). Published in 1797, ‘Ode to Death’ takes the perhaps unlikely position of celebrating death as a blessed release from the struggles and hardship of life.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening’ is a sonnet by one of the great proto-Romantic poets of the second half of the eighteenth century, Charlotte Smith (1749-1806). Smith’s sonnets anticipate Romanticism partly because nature in her poetry is so often feared with an awesome power that verges on the terrifying: ‘life’s long darkling way’ is brooding and full of menace here.