Charlotte Smith

I would like to focus on the last two lines of Charlotte Smith’s Sonnet “XLIV”.
“While I am doom’d-by life’s long storm opprest,
To gaze with envy, on their gloomy rest (Smith 153).”

It seems to me that Smith wants the release of death because she is deeply depressed. Smith may have situational depression as we discussed in class Smith is a single mother and struggling to survive on her writing. I am sure she was exhausted. Sleep deprivation alone is enough to make someone depressed. We discussed the idea that Smith is looking to write about what causes of depression. Speaking to that, in my opinion, abundant usage of negative language can cause depression. The few poems I read of Smith’s appear to use low vibrating language even when referring something positive. For example in “Written at the Close of Spring” she writes, “Each simple flower (Smith 144)”, she did not say beautiful flower or amazing flower, just simple. In the above lines Smith is jealous of the deceased’s “gloomy” rest, why gloomy? If one was depressed and exhausted wouldn’t death be a sweet release? It seems many of her words carry a very low vibration and People such as Dr. Wayne Dyer tell us that vibrations of this form attract other vibrations of the same form back to themselves, the idea being what you vibrate you will attract to yourself. Even if Smith was faced with situational depression maybe if she was able to use high vibrating language for the last half of her sonnets or a piece of her sonnets she would be able to start to put a positive spin on her language which may positively impact her thought patterns and maybe she would be able to attract positivity back to herself.
http://www.drwaynedyer.com/daily-inspiration

Charlotte Smith wrote in her Italian “Sonnet I”,
“…Far happier is the lot of those
Who never learn’d her delusive art, (Smith 143)”

As discussed in class Smith connects suffering with being an artist. In the selected quote Smith seems to be saying that life is happier or easier psychologically for people who do not have the minds of artists or poets. In this quote “her” refers to the “partial muse” or the art God that “smiled” on the speaker, Smith in this case. Many of the artists I have studied appear to see the world through eyes that belong to bleeding hearts. These artists’ minds almost have to concern themselves with the extra weight of the sufferings of the world. Pain runs so deep for a poet and needs to in order to be expressed in such a manner that other people can get close to feeling the poets emotions without suffering the poets suffering or having been part of that moment in time; or to pull out the readers own emotions. Smith ties the poets emotionally deep perception of life to the partial muse that, “…Reserves the thorn- to fester in the heart…(Smith 143). ” Smith closes with the idea that those that feel sadness to the deepest extent can paint it for others. Smith made it clear that those who never learned her delusive art, the non-poets and non-artists have a happier lot in life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9d5hjvFne8

To Sensibility

After reading “To Sensibility” several times I have continuously come back to the same question. Who is the “she” the speaker is referring to throughout the poem? The only idea I have been able to decide upon includes that in the poem both the “I” and the “she” are Helen Maria Williams. I find this to be the case because the speaker, the “I”, knows such intimate details about the “she”. I understand that I am probably very incorrect in say this but when I read the poem from this point of view it comes to life for me. In the fifth stanza Williams writes that “She knows the price of ev’ry sigh, The Value of a tear (Williams 149).” While Williams has taken on a new perception of life in terms of “sensibility” and these statements could apply to that alone, I still find them to be deeply understood details about the “she” in the poem. Because the “she” in the poem thinks and perceives in terms of “sensibility” I believe this could further defend the idea that the “she” very well could be the “I”. Williams later wrote, regarding the “she”: her heart rises to joy, sinks to anguish, that her soul has grief that only she knows and that she is vainly secure in her mortality. These are profound understandings of a person’s emotions and thoughts. About line 57 Williams wrote “She oft will heave a secret sigh, Will shed a lonely tear…(Williams).” How could Williams have known what “she” did secretly or alone?

Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

I want to focus on the line “The still, sad music of humanity (Wordsworth 113).”When Wordsworth said this I believe he was feeling the cycle of life in nature. The sad truth of humanity is that everything changes and dies no matter how beautiful or how bad we want it to stay the same. I think animals and humans have a drive to survive and when you realize that no matter what you do, your body and what you know here on earth will die; there is a sense of stillness in the world for that person at that moment. Prior to this quote Wordsworth stated that he no longer looked upon nature as he had when he was younger, thoughtlessly. I think he contrasts this with the idea that now he looks upon nature in deep thought because now he understands the depth of the cycle of life. Not just birth and death, but the process by which youth fades away and all the thoughts and heartaches that accompany it. When we discussed Simon Lee in class, we talked about how he was facing his own humanity in that he was aged and waiting for death and no longer able to do the things he could do in his youth. I felt a deep sadness for Simon Lee and now I’m starting to find that sadness shifting towards Wordsworth as he seemed to be deeply connected to nature, humanity as a whole, the cycle of life and the deep thoughts that can accompany such realizations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hzv0TSSDgU