To the Shade of Burns

By Charlotte Smith 1749–1806 Charlotte Smith

Mute is thy wild harp, now, O Bard sublime!

Who, amid Scotia’s mountain solitude,

Great Nature taught to “build the lofty rhyme,”

And even beneath the daily pressure, rude,

Of laboring Poverty, thy generous blood,

Fired with the love of freedom—Not subdued

Wert thou by thy low fortune: But a time

Like this we live in, when the abject chime

Of echoing Parasite is best approved,

Was not for thee—Indignantly is fled

Thy noble Spirit; and no longer moved

By all the ills o’er which thine heart has bled,

Associate worthy of the illustrious dead,

Enjoys with them “the Liberty it loved.”

Source: Norton Anthology of Poetry (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 2005)

Biography

Charlotte Smith wrote Elegiac Sonnets in 1783 while she was in debtor’s prison with her husband and children. William Wordsworth identified her as an important influence on the Romantic movement. She published several longer works that celebrated the individual while deploring social injustice and the British class system.

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