The Sublime and Beachy Head

I’d like to focus on one particular excerpt of Beachy Head, and how it is exemplary, if not an extension, of the sublime. Line 368-371: “Ah! hills so early loved! in fancy still / I breathe your pure keen air; and still behold / Those widely spreading views, mocking alike / The Poet and the Painter's utmost art.” Keeping in mind a painting like Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, we see nature towering over man in its breadth and majesty. In Beachy Head, Smith suggests that nature is so powerful that even man’s greatest celebration of himself, ART, cannot compete with the nature found at Beachy Head. Line 371 is an act of surrender, a poet recognizing the futility of her craft versus the sublimity of the natural world.