SONNET [26] XXVI. To the River Arun. Charlotte Smith (née Turner) Alexander Huber Editor Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
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Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
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Oxford This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. N22357 Smith, Charlotte Turner, 1749-1806. Elegiac sonnets, and other poems. By Charlotte Smith. The first Worcester edition, from the sixth London edition, with additions. Printed at Worcester [Mass.] by Isaiah Thomas, sold by him in Worcester, and by said Thomas and Andrews in Boston 1795 pp. 46-[]. xix,[2],22-126,[2]p.,[5] leaves of plates: ill.; 15 cm. (12mo)

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SONNET [ 26 ] XXVI . To the River Arun . ON thy wild banks , by frequent torrents worn , No glittering fanes , or marble domes appear , Yet shall the mournful muse thy course adorn , And still to her thy rustic waves be dear . For with the infant Otway , lingering here ,

For with the infant Otway , lingering here .

Otway way born at Trotten , a village in Sussex . Of Woolbeding , another village on the banks of the Arun , which runs through them both , his father was rector . Here it was therefore that he probably passed many of his early years . The Arun is here an inconsiderable stream , winding in a channel deeply worn , among meadow , heath and wood .

Of early woes she bade her vot'ry dream , While thy low murmurs sooth'd his pensive ear , And still the poet — consecrates the stream . Beneath the oak and birch , that fringe thy side , The firstborn violets of the year shall spring , And in thy hazles , bending o'er the tide , The earliest nightingale delight to sing : While kindred spirits , pitying , shall relate Thy Otway's sorrows , and lament his fate !

For with the infant . Otway lingering here