Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Monday, August 3, 2020.

Today's poem is by Charlotte Turner Smith, an English romantic poet novelist who lived from 1749 to 1806.

She had 10 novels published, three books of poetry, four children's books, and then she is known for being one of the key figures that

brought back the English sonnet into popularity, and she also helped establish the conventions

of gothic fiction. You may know her for one of her later novels called The Old Manor House.

It's a fairly famous novel that some of you may have read,

but the poem that I'm going to read today is one of those sonnets,

and it's called Huge Vapers Brewed Above the Clifted Shore.

It goes like this.

Huge vapors brood above the clifted shore night o'er the ocean settles dark and mute save where as heard the repercussive roar of drowsy billows on the rugged foot of rocks remote

or still more distant tone of seamen in the anchored bark that tell the watch relieved.

Or one deep voice alone, singing the hour and bidding, strike the bell! All is black shadow,

but the lucid line marked by the light surf on the level sand,

or where afar the ship lights faintly shine like wandering fairy fires,

that oft on land mislead the pilgrim.

Such the dubious ray that wavering reason lends in life's long darkling way.

So I'm accessing this poem at the Poetry Foundation website, and they have a little thing

to learn more about this poem.

And what I didn't know previously, or at least had forgotten, is that Charlotte Smith

wrote this poem

in 1783 while she was in debtor's prison with her husband and children. And so given that

bleak context in which this poem was written, the bleak context in which she was living her life

...