Kelvin O’Connell

Professor Katie Powell

Introduction to Professional Writing

February 4 2024

Introduction:

Charlotte Smith’s poem “To Mrs. ****; Sonnet 48” is a poem of complex intent. It

mourns the loss of the faculty of our speaker's imagination, and her feeling bare to the

strange frostbitten winds of reality. This Poem is an odd case due to the fact that the

person to whom it is addressed is unnamed, so for simplicity in communication I will call

her “Mrs. Friend” because that is effectively her role in this sonnet; she stands in for the

idea of friendship.

Pathos:

Pathos is the primary technique used in this poem to express Smith’s emotion,

which is rather self evident due to the fact that the goal of this poem is primarily self

expression.

Poems are unique artifacts when dissecting the rhetorical foundation of a

particular work, because their intent varies widely. This is especially the case of

Romantic era poetry where the purpose of a poem was expressing the emotion of the

poet themselves. They are not always trying to get you to feel sorry for them, or really

end up at any other destination driven by the vehicle of rhetoric, they are solely trying to

express themselves. But in attempting to express oneself through language, rhetoric will
ultimately bleed through as it does here.

Immediately this is almost comically clear with her use of adjectives in “wearied

soul”, “sad reality”, and “vain regret”. She then expands on the reasons for her sorrow

being, effectively, for loss of childhood. This loss takes many forms. The world to her is

now disenchanted, affliction lays siege to her wearied, vulnerable mind, and she lies in

the unutterably deep bareness of a mental Winter.

Ethos:

Of course as any single piece which exhibits nuanced rhetoric, every corner of

that rhetorical triangle is connected, thus a rhetorical triangle and not a rhetorical

triangular-constellation. Pathos is Smith’s primary mode for self expression, so in

building herself as a character of her own, with ethos, it is through a pathetic lens.

Through mourning the loss of her faculty of fancy and imaginative invention,

Charlotte Smith proves that she once possessed these powers potently and actively

used them; she once assayed the piercing assaults of reality solely with fancy’s

adamant veil: “palm and amaranth”.

Smith also uses the final sestet in building her own credibility and relation with

Mrs. Friend.

She conjures a scene where friendship mends the wound that comes with the

loss of youth, where they accompany each other on “the mournful path approaching to

the tomb”. But this mournful path resolves into “friendly gloom”.
Though there is an ambiguity to the general emotion surrounding gloom and it’s

uncharacteristic descriptive companion, there is a resolute certainty to the fact that

through friendship the world is better; no more are the double negative adjective-noun

pairs of the beginning of the poem (“sad reality” etc.).

Logos:

If the goal of this poem is to express the desire to escape the litanies of life’s

various sufferings, and the genuine thought that this escape can happen through

friendship, the logos used in the general universal fear of the loss of youth which Smith

describes. Though there are no clear statistics which Smith brings up, of course, the

poem is structured around the idea that we all have to walk the mournful path to the

tomb, and, if you wish to brighten this dreary way, take a “loved hand”.

Conclusion:

I find this poem to be absolutely beautiful and completely effective in a rhetorical

sense. One can feel and even sympathize with the weariness which Smith expresses in

her verse, and this lucidity is largely due to the effective rhetoric which she exhibits in

this text. Her own conclusion is triumphant in its emotional ambiguity, and though you

may not end fully convinced that the world will turn around and redeem itself, you get

the sense that Smith expressed her own emotions to the fullest, and though dim, her

lodestar of “Faith’s consoling voice” is completely visible to us. We leave this poem

feeling what she feels, which is, ultimately, her goal in writing this piece.