"Pressed by the moon, mute arbitress of tides, While the loud equinox its power combines, The sea no more its swelling surge confines, But o’er the shrinking land sublimely rides. The wild blast, rising from the western cave, Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed, Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead, And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave! With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave; But vain to them the winds and waters rave; They hear the warring elements no more: While I am doomed—by life’s long storm oppressed, To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest."
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Wordsworth rewrote the final line: "To envy their insensible unrest."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charlotte_Smith_(writer)
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Charlotte Smith (writer)
Charlotte Smith (née Turner; 4 May 1749 – 28 October 1806) was an English novelist and poet of the School of Sensibility whose Elegiac Sonnets (1784) contributed to the revival of the form in England.
4 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Charlotte Smith (writer) →
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