Compare Charlotte Smith: "To a Nightingale" and Coleridge: "The Nightingale, A Conversation Poem"

... Compare Charlotte Smith: "To a Nightingale" and Coleridge: "The Nightingale, A Conversation Poem" Both Charlotte Smith's 'To a Nightingale' and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem' are both written in iambic pentameter, using a set strict rhythm in order to convey their message. However, in their view of the nightingale itself, they differ. Smith presents it as a 'poor melancholy bird'1, whereas Coleridge claims that it is poets who 'echo this conceit,'2 and that 'in nature there is nothing melancholy'3 but man, who makes his own misery, and imagines that everything else echoes it. He 'filled all things with himself/ And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale/ Of his own sorrow.'4 Coleridge actually seems to reject the whole purpose of Smith's poem. Coleridge contrasts nature and society, pointing out the stark difference between the 'ball rooms and hot theatres'5 and the beauty and purity of nature. Charlotte Smith,

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