Sonnet 44

           Charlotte Smith was a poet and sonnet writer in the time of the Romantic period of writers. She wrote Sonnet 44 while she was in a churchyard at Middleton in Sussex. She wrote her feelings and emotions about the experiences she perceived as she thought about the visuals of this seascape while she walked the area. It is hard to know if she was emoting and writing down ideas she was truly personally experiencing or if she was writing about the "mythology" or tales told about people who lived in the area and had experienced its secrets. Charlotte speaks about the moon and its creation of the science of tides and how these tides wear away at the seashore of this area in England. She states how powerful the tides are and how they have caused the erosion of the shore. She talks about how the power of the ocean timelessly wears away the shore. She talks about the huge breakers and the breaking waves in this geological area and refers to the "caves". Next she begins to talk about the graveyard and how the power of nature eats away at the graveyard. She states the shoreline is not typical by stating shells and sea weed mingled...bones whiten in the frequent wave"...clearly bones do not belong whitening in an ocean on a sea shore. Therefore she reveals the bad secret of this area , that the graveyard was built too close to the raging waves of the ocean and the graves are being revealed and uprooted by the ocean and the bones decimated.
           Although Charlotte seems sad about this lack of appropriate rest for the bodies of the dead, she personalizes the plight of the dead as she experiences her own personal depression and chooses to engage her thoughts upon the serenity of the dead who lie on the moor. She states a wish that "gaze with envy, on their gloomy rest...." Charlotte Smith lived a sad life and had a very unhappy marriage so perhaps, according to her biographers, her sad demise caused her to wish for an early death where she could escape her life and lie in repose with the other graves on the seashore. Being a romantic poet and writer of sonnets in this time period, nature would have had a strong meaning and significance and reference to her mentality. Romanticists were drawn to the serenity and symbolism of nature and the ultimate reunited of man with nature in death as well as life.