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Beachy Head: with Other Poems

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Beachy Head: with Other Poems (1807)
by Charlotte Smith
Title Page and Advertisement
3402879Beachy Head: with Other Poems — Title Page and Advertisement1807Charlotte Smith

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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BEACHY HEAD. &c.



BEACHY HEAD:


WITH


OTHER POEMS,


BY


CHARLOTTE SMITH.


NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.




LONDON:

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR;

AND SOLD BY J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S
CHURCH-YARD.

1807.






W. Pople, Printer,
22,Old Boswell Court, Strand.



ADVERTISEMENT.




AS the following Poems were delivered to the Publisher as early as the month of May last, it may not be thought improper to state the circumstances that have hitherto delayed their appearance.

The fulfilling this duty to the public has since devolved to other hands; for alas! the admired author is now unconscious of their praise or censure, having fallen a victim to a long and painful illness, on the 28th of October last. The delay which since that period has taken place, has been occasioned partly by the hope of finding a preface to the present publication, which there was some reason to suppose herself had written, and partly from an intention of annexing a short account of her life; but it having been since decided to publish biographical memoirs, and a selection of her correspondence, on a more enlarged plan, and under the immediate authority of her own nearest relatives, it was thought unnecessary; and the motives for deferring the publication are altogether removed.

The public, who have received the several editions of Mrs. Smith's former Poems with unbounded approbation, will, without doubt, admit the claims of the present work to an equal share of their favour; and her friends and admirers cannot fail of being highly gratified in observing, that although most of the Poems included in this volume were composed during the few and short intervals of care which her infirmities permitted her to enjoy; yet they bear the most unquestionable evidence of the same undiminished genius, spirit, and imagination, which so imminently distinguished her former productions.

The Poem entitled Beachy Head is not completed according to the original design. That the increasing debility of its author has been the cause of its being left in an imperfect state, will it is hoped be a sufficient apology.

There are two Poems in this collection, viz. Flora, and Studies by the Sea, which have already been published in Mrs. Smith's "Conversations for the Use of Children and Young Persons"; but as many of her friends considered them as misplaced in that work, and not likely to fall under the general observation of those who were qualified to appreciate their superior elegance and exquisite fancy, and had expressed a desire of seeing them transplanted into a more congenial soil, the Publisher, with his usual liberality, has permitted them to reappear in the present volume.



January 31, 1807.

Beachy Head: with Other Poems


CONTENTS.




Beachy Head

9

The Truant Dove

52

The Lark's Nest

69

The Swallow

79

Flora

84

Studies by the Sea

100

The Horologe of the Fields

110

Saint Monica

117

A Walk in the Shrubbery

125

Hope. A Rondeau

131

Evening

133

Love and Folly

135

On the Aphorism, "L'Amitié est l'Amour sans ailes."

139

NOTES

141