“How am I chang'd! alas! how am I grown A frightful spectre, to myself unknown!”
- Date
- 1747
- Local voice
- Poetic speaker · Flavia
Meaning of “How am I chang'd! alas! how am I…”
Flavia experiences the change in her appearance as a shock to identity, exposing how strongly her former social value and self-image had been tied to youth and beauty.
Where does it come from?
“Saturday. The Small-Pox” in Six Town Eclogues (1747), represented by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive. Flavia speaks after smallpox has altered her appearance. Montagu survived smallpox herself, but this record preserves the poem’s dramatic Flavia voice and eighteenth-century beauty/satire context rather than collapsing it into autobiography or medical advice.
Why the local voice matters
Town Eclogues: Saturday; The Small-Pox. Flavia speaks while confronting the visible effects of smallpox and the social value attached to beauty; this is dramatic verse voice, not Montagu autobiography or medical guidance.