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Far On The Sands By William Wordsworth Analysis

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In the romantic era, British authors and poets focused on nature and its influence. Two of those poets, Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, wrote many pieces on the beauty of nature and their personal experiences with the beaches of England. In “Far on the sands” and “It is a beauteous evening,” Smith and Wordsworth describe their respective experiences on the shore at sunset. Smith uses tone and theme to convey her feelings of despair and isolation. Wordsworth utilizes various religious images to communicate his awe in the face of the natural world. While the sonnets share a setting and the topics of nature and tranquility, Smith and Wordsworth have different focuses which achieve different effects on the reader. One of the ways that the two poems differ is in structure. While both are sonnets, Smith’s poem is a Shakespearean sonnet and Wordsworth’s lacks traditional structure. In “Far on the sands,” Smith utilizes the form of a Shakespearean sonnet to enhance its theme of personal reflection. The first six lines of the poem are dedicated to describing the scene before the speaker. Smith gives details about the shore, saying “Far on the sands, the low, retiring tide, / In distant murmurs hardly seems to flow” (ll. 1-2). After speaking about the view she spends an octave explaining how this scene affects her. She asks if “the soft lustre of the sleeping main” can “‘Erase the written troubles of the brain’” (ll. 8, 10). While this is an inversion of a traditional

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