In class this week we read some ballads by Charlotte Smith. Ballads are fourteen line poems that have a rhyme scheme, such as ABAB. We read the ballad “Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex” as a class and then my group read “To Fancy”. In this blog post I am going to give a general summary of both of the ballads and compare them to each other.

“Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex” is set in Middleton, a village in Sussex. It is an abandoned village, with an ominous churchyard scattered with broken graves and human remains. Smith’s mood in the ballad is very dark and depressing. She speaks of the moon and its dominance and the ocean’s power and dangerous waves. She watches the sea disrupt the churchyard with awe. Smith wants to be among those who are already dead, she gazes “with envy on their gloomy rest”.

“To Fancy” is another depressing ballad by Charlotte Smith. She contrasts her younger self’s perspective of life, which was filled of beauty and dreams, to her present life’s perspective, which is now harsh and far from perfect. As a young woman she seemed happy and describes her “early radiance”. As time went on, she writes “those glowing tints are dead”. She blames experience for murdering her state of happiness.

Both of these poems have a depressing and dark mood. Time seems to be a factor creating that somber and gloomy feeling. In “Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex” the reason for her mood is not clear, but it can be inferred that something dreadful must have happened to her to make her want to die. In “To Fancy” the reason is a bit more clearer, life experience is the reason her happiness has died.