Written at the Close of Spring

Charlotte Smith's admiration of nature in her poetry compels the reader to really digest and analyze the meaning behind her beautiful arrangements of words, and descriptions of the nature that is all around us. Before beginning my research I learned in class about the major characteristic of the romantic era of literature. One of these charcteristics was the authors love for nature and it's significance, a theme that is constant in much of Charlotte Smith's poetry. Her elegiac sonnet, "Written at the Close of Spring" sports a main theme of the wonders of nature's creations, placing great emphasis on it's beauty and elegance. Though the poem was written in traditonal sonnet form, Smith's poem particularly interested me because of how she personified the flowers in the sonnet giving them futher meaning and significance. This literary technique was  very typical of romantic authors. Smith begins her poem with "The Garlands fade that Spring so lately wove, Each simple flower, which she had nursed in dew," (page 1398). Smith personified the season of Spring giving it a motherly role to the flowers and garlands, which caused me to make an assumption that Spring's relationship with the flowers was possibly symbolizing the roles woman of Charlotte Smith's time were expected to uphold. Smith later mentions in the poem "Ah! poor Humanity! so frail, so fair, Are the fond visions of thy early day," (page 1398). Smith seems to be saddended that humanity cannot renew itself the way the flowers in her poem could, reflecting the "emotional flourish" many romantics of her time incorporated in their writing. It appears that Smith is pitying humanity because we can not renew and bloom again like the flowers, as in the poem she descibes the detoriation of a flower which in actuality is symbolizing the youth growing old. She states on page 1398 on line 11, "Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care, Bid all thy fairy colors fade away!" Smith inventively took a stab at humanity and our selfish tendencies by comparing the exterior fading of a beautiful flower's color to the interior well being and youth of an individual wasting away as a person grows older. Charlotte Smith's insistence on the faithful rendering of detail within the poem caused me to re-read it and search for further meaning and depth within her carefully chosen words. Her last sentence of the poem seemed to intrigue me the most with it's mournful quality closing the poem with "Ah! why has happiness- no second Spring?" (page 1398). This quotation seemed to have mulitple meanings to me, both revealing the unavoidable truth that as humans the life we live will at some point come to an end. Smith questioned the reader with this ending line, by addressing the fact that since humans cannot renew as flowers can why not everyone get the equal opportunity at happiness? The affections and emotions Charlotte Smith associated with nature in this poem demonstrated her own idea and opinion of the mindset that many possessed in her time.

Citation:
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York, New
York: M.H. Abrams, 2006. Print. Pg. 1397-1405