Charlotte Smith, “Sonnet 39. To Night,” from Elegiac Sonnets, 1784

Charlotte Smith wrote many poems that trace the sublime beauty of nature, particularly the sea, as well as nightscapes and thunderstorms; she pairs these vast scenes with careful attention to smaller wonders, such as specific flowers and animals. Her observations of these phenomena often reflect the feelings of the poem’s speaker, revealing her to be a person of sensibility, taste, and turbulent emotion.

I love thee, mournful, sober-suited Night!
When the faint Moon, yet lingering in her wane,
And veil’d in clouds, with pale uncertain light
Hangs o’er the waters of the restless main.
In deep depression sunk, the enfeebled mind
Will to the deaf cold elements complain,
And tell the embosom’d grief, however vain,
To sullen surges and the viewless wind.
Tho’ no repose on thy dark breast I find,
I still enjoy thee—cheerless as thou art;
For in thy quiet gloom the exhausted heart
Is calm, tho’ wretched; hopeless, yet resign’d.
While to the winds and waves its sorrows given,
May reach—tho’ lost on earth—the ear of Heaven!