Charlotte Smith: Sonnet VIII To Spring

In the beginning of this Sonnet, Smith describes how she views the scene she is witnessing. Her description of nature is as a watcher and she adds a subjective depiction of age and beauty to the scene such as "young leaves" and "tint of tender green". The reader, through Smith's description, gets a good understanding of how Smith feels about nature. She is an onlooking admirer and almost taken over by nature's outside beauty.

Her description is well followed by discussing the ability of nature to change moods. She can delight in nature. Nature can turn her sorrow and nature has an ability to change human mood except only temporarily; "to soothe AWHILE the tortured bosom's pain". Nature may somewhat heal human sorrow but cannot cure it. It is like a drug in this sense, a natural eye seeing drug. Going back to Smith's early description of Nature to make a further point, she seems to only be describing the sight of nature. She does not describe its smell, or physical feel such as wind, or leave texture. This shows her again as a scientific onlooker analyzing the scene and how it affects the body.

At the end of the Sonnet, Smith summarizes her view about nature, which is something we can expect from the previous stanza. "The sounds of harmony, thy balmy air" can temporarily heal sadness with its overwhelming color and beauty but cannot undue entirely the gutted despair of a human or at least in this case, just Smith (not humankind all together). It is a relationship like many others, which cannot give full satisfaction.