Charlotte Turner Smith: Poems Literary Elements

The poems are told from the perspective of a first person subjective narrator.

The poems are written in an iambic pentameter.

In the poem entitled "The Emigrants’’ the narrator compares the past with a temple many look back to. This similarity is important because it shows how humanity looks at the past with almost reverence and love. The modern society watched the past as being a better time, when the world was a safer place, while also portraying the present as a dismal time, when everyone suffers.

We find alliteration in the line "When still at dewy eve thou leav'st thy nest,/Thus to the listening night to sing thy fate!’’

An ironic element appears in the poem entitled "To a Nightingale’’ when the narrator talks about a bird which was held captive and then eventually released. The narrator notes however ironically that even though the bird was released, it did not find happiness in freedom and longed for the day of its captivity.

The poems are meditative poems.

Most of the poems do not have a fixed setting but what is common to many of them is how the action takes place during the night.

The poems are written in a depressing tone.

Because the poems are meditative poems, there are no protagonists and antagonists.

The major conflict in the poem entitled "From Beachy Head’’ is between the sea and the beach.

No climax can be found in the poems.

In the poem entitled "The Emigrants’’ the narrator describes a field of flowers tinted with blood. This image foreshadows the war later described by the narrator in the poem.

When the narrator claims in the beginning that the poets can understand why birds sing is an understatement as she fails to understand why the nightingale is sad and why it sings.

In the poem entitled "To a Nightingale’’ the narrator alludes the idea that only poets are able to understand nature to the full extent. The narrator suggests this by claiming that only poets can understand and translate the songs the birds sing every night.

The term "breast’’ is used in the poem "To a nightingale’’ as a general term to refer to the heart of a person or animal and also to refer to the feelings a person may have towards something or someone.

We find personification in the line "Poor melancholy bird---that all night long/Tell'st to the Moon’’.

We find a hyperbole in the line "Pale Sorrow's victims wert thou once among,/Tho' now releas'd in woodlands wild to rove?’’

We find onomatopoeia in the line "To sigh and sing at liberty’’.