Sonnet LXX. (On Being Cautioned against Walking on Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic.)

1749 –

1806

Is there a solitary wretch who hies
 To the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow,
And, measuring, views with wild and hollow eyes
 Its distance from the waves that chide below;
Who, as the sea-born gale with frequent sighs
 Chills with cold bed upon the mountain turf,
With hoarse, half-utter’d lamentation, lies
 Murmuring responses to the dashing surf?
In moody sadness, on the giddy brink,
 I see him more with envy than with fear;
He has no nice felicities that shrink
 From giant horrors; wildly wandering here,
He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know
 The depth or the duration of his woe.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 27, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.

Sonnet XLIV

^{written in the churchyard at Middleton in Sussex}

Press’d by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides,
While the loud equinox its pow’r combines,
The sea no more its swelling surge confines,
But o’er the shrinking land sublimely rides.
The wild blasts, rising from the Western cave,

Charlotte Smith

2021

Huge Vapours Brood above the Clifted Shore

Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore,
Night o’er the ocean settles, dark and mute,
Save where is heard the repercussive roar
Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot
Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone
Of seamen, in the anchored bark, that tell
The watch reliev’d; or one deep voice alone
Singing the hour, and bidding “strike the bell.”
All is black shadow, but the lucid line
Mark’d by the light surf on the level sand,
Or where afar, the ship-lights faintly shine
Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land

Charlotte Smith

2017

Poems

Sonnet LXX. (On Being Cautioned against Walking on Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic.)

More by this poet

Sonnet XLIV

Sonnet XCI [I can in groups these mimic flowers compose]

Huge Vapours Brood above the Clifted Shore

Poems

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Sonnet LXX. (On Being Cautioned against Walking on Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic.)

More by this poet

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