The Haunted Beach by Mary Robinson

"The Haunted Beach" by Mary Robinson was the poem that we had to read for this week. This poem goes back to the poems we read before reading sonnets. The difference with this poem is that you can immediately feel the Gothic influence while reading the first couple of lines. To emphasize, the poem starts out by describing the setting as a lonely beach with a single hut. There seems to be nothing else around. It is like a setting for a horror story. There is this hut and there is even mention of a cliff so i kind of saw the hut being on this high up cliff. Next, sea birds are hovering overhead and they are mentioned as craving. When I read this, the image of crows hovering over a person before they died popped into my head. Other scary aspects of this poem include the "moaning" wind mentioned at the beginning of the third stanza and of course the dead body found in the hut.

One part that confused me was the mentioning of the Spectres. At first I did not know what they were and assumed they were normal people who were spectators. After looking up spectres in the dictionary, I found out that they are ghost and this fit into the poem even better. The ghost gives the poem that supernatural element that can be found in Gothic poetry.

Something else i noticed while reading the poem is that at the end of every stanza, except for the very last one, Mary Robinson mentions the green billows. This is in reference to the waves crashing up against the shore.With her use of the green billows, I was constantly reminded of the waves and could not only picture them while reading, but i could hear them crashing. This help put set the entire mood as being eerie.

Another observation i saw was that of the Shipwreck'd Mariner. It is a coincidence because earlier we read a poem by Wordsworth called, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Obviously this poem is written by Mary Robinson, but it is in the same book as the other poem. So it would not surprise me if she wrote this poem with the Mariner in mind. Or it might have just been a coincidence and Wordsworth put this poem in his book because it can tie into his other poem. Overall, I really enjoyed this poem.