Analysis of the poem written Near a Port on a Dark Evening: This is a sonnet by one of the great proto-Romantic poets
of the second half of the eighteenth century, Charlotte Smith (1749-1806). Smith’s sonnets
anticipate Romanticism partly because nature in her poetry is so on feared with an awesome power
that verges on the terrifying: ‘life’s long darkling way’ is brooding and full of menace here.