Phillis Wheatley holds a distinction that most poets suffer in reverse—her name is more widely known than her work. Those who have followed her in the African American tradition have tended to view her poetry with a mixture of gratitude and contempt, to be both attentive toward and dismissive of her influence. While citing her limitations as a poet, these critics nonetheless acknowledge her poetic efforts to be little short of miraculous given the high hour of slavery in America.
Wheatley’s work could indeed suffer at times from the sentimentality, prolixity, and overuse of allusion characteristic of the neoclassical style, but her keen awareness of the English tradition, her ability to translate emotion into language, and her abiding Christian faith are worthy of note.
Wheatley was born in West Africa, presumably in 1753. Her kidnapping for sale brought her to Boston; in July 1761 she was sold to John Wheatley from the slave ship Phillis. Wheatley would spend most of her short life in Boston. Encouraged in her early interest in books by her owners, Wheatley received great acclaim as a poet at the age of seventeen with her “A Poem, by Phillis, A Negro Girl in Boston, on the Death of the Reverend George Whitfield.”
Wheatley’s verse brought her international attention; in 1773 she traveled to London, where she was received by the countess of Huntingdon and was the object of a great deal of courtly interest. But before she could fulfill her arranged meeting at the court of George III, Wheatley, herself quite frail, rushed back to the American colonies to aid her ailing mistress.
After enduring an unhappy and poverty-stricken marriage, the loss of her three children in early childhood, and a long unproductive period, toward the end of her life Wheatley published several new poems displaying a patriotic (though poetically diplomatic) verve, indications, after all she had endured, of the importance poetry held in her life. Wheatley died on December 5, 1784. With the posthumous appearance of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley in 1793, Wheatley became the first African American to publish a volume of literature.
’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic die.”
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.
To show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight!
Still, wondrous youth! each noble path pursue;
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire,
To aid thy pencil and thy verse conspire!
And may the charms of each seraphic theme
Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame!
High to the blissful wonders of the skies
Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes.
Thrice happy, when exalted to survey
That splendid city, crowned with endless day,
Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring:
Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring.
Calm and serene thy moments glide along,
And may the muse inspire each future song!
Still, with the sweets of contemplation blessed,
May peace with balmy wings your soul invest!
But when these shades of time are chased away,
And darkness ends in everlasting day,
On what seraphic pinions shall we move,
And view the landscapes in the realms above!
There shall thy tongue in heavenly murmurs flow,
And there my muse with heavenly transport glow;
No more to tell of Damon’s tender sighs,
Or rising radiance of Aurora’s eyes;
For nobler themes demand a nobler strain,
And purer language on the ethereal plain.
Cease, gentle Muse! the solemn gloom of night
Now seals the fair creation from my sight.
Hail, happy saint! on thine immortal throne,
Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown:
We hear no more the music of thy tongue;
Thy wonted auditories cease to throng.
Thy sermons in unequalled accents flowed,
And ev’ry bosom with devotion glowed;
Thou didst, in strains of eloquence refined,
Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind.
Unhappy, we the setting sun deplore,
So glorious once, but ah! it shines no more.
Behold the prophet in his towering flight!
He leaves the earth for heaven’s unmeasured height,
And worlds unknown receive him from our sight.
There Whitefield wings with rapid course his way,
And sails to Zion through vast seas of day.
Thy prayers, great saint, and thine incessant cries,
Have pierced the bosom of thy native skies.
Thou, moon, hast seen, and all the stars of light,
How he has wrestled with his God by night.
He prayed that grace in ev’ry heart might dwell;
He longed to see America excel;
He charged its youth that ev’ry grace divine
Should with full lustre in their conduct shine.
That Saviour, which his soul did first receive,
The greatest gift that ev’n a God can give,
He freely offered to the numerous throng,
That on his lips with list’ning pleasure hung.
“Take him, ye wretched, for your only good,
“Take him ye starving sinners, for your food;
“Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream,
“Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme;
“Take him my dear Americans,” he said,
“Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid:
“Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you;
“Impartial Saviour is his title due:
“Washed in the fountain of redeeming blood,
“You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God.”
Great Countess,2 we Americans revere
Thy name, and mingle in thy grief sincere;
New England deeply feels, the orphans mourn,
Their more than father will no more return.
But though arrested by the hand of death,
Whitefield no more exerts his lab’ring breath,
Yet let us view him in th’ eternal skies,
Let ev’ry heart to this bright vision rise;
While the tomb, safe, retains its sacred trust,
Till life divine reanimates his dust.
I
Adieu, New-England’s smiling meads,
Adieu, th’ flow’ry plain:
I leave thine op’ning charms, O spring,
And tempt the roaring main.
II
In vain for me the flow’rets rise,
And boast their gaudy pride,
While here beneath the northern skies
I mourn for health deny’d.
III
Celestial maid of rosy hue,
Oh let me feel thy reign!
I languish till thy face I view,
Thy vanish’d joys regain.
IV
Susannah mourns, nor can I bear
To see the crystal shower
Or mark the tender falling tear
At sad departure’s hour;
V
Not regarding can I see
Her soul with grief opprest
But let no sighs, no groans for me
Steal from her pensive breast.
In vain the feather’d warblers sing
In vain the garden blooms
And on the bosom of the spring
Breathes out her sweet perfumes.
VII
While for Britannia’s distant shore
We weep the liquid plain,
And with astonish’d eyes explore
The wide-extended main.
VIII
Lo! Health appears! celestial dame!
Complacent and serene,
With Hebe’s mantle o’er her frame,
With soul-delighting mien.
IX
To mark the vale where London lies
With misty vapors crown’d
Which cloud Aurora’s thousand dyes,
And veil her charms around.
X
Why, Phoebus, moves thy car so slow?
So slow thy rising ray?
Give us the famous town to view,
Thou glorious King of day!
XI
For thee, Britannia, I resign
New-England’s smiling fields;
To view again her charms divine,
What joy the prospect yields!
XII
But thou! Temptation hence away,
With all thy fatal train,
Nor once seduce my soul away,
By thine enchanting strain.
XIII
Thrice happy they, whose heavenly shield
Secures their souls from harm,
And fell Temptation on the field
Of all its pow’r disarms.
Attend my lays, ye ever honored Nine,
Assist my labors, and my strains refine;
In smoothest numbers pour the notes along,
For bright Aurora now demands my song.
Aurora hail! and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,
On ev’ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;
Harmonious lays the feathered race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.
Ye shady groves, your verdant bloom display,
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope, awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire.
The bowers, the gales, the variegated skies,
In all their pleasures in my bosom rise.
See in the east, th’illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away—
But oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,
And scarce begun, concludes the abortive song.
Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main,
The pealing thunder shook the heavenly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
Through all the heavens what beauteous dyes are spread!
But the west glories in the deepest red:
So may our breasts with ev’ry virtue glow,
The living temples of our God below!
Filled with the praise of him who gives the light,
And draws the sable curtains of the night,
Let placid slumbers soothe each weary mind,
At morn to wake, more heavenly, more refined;
So shall the labours of the day begin
More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.
Night’s leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes;
Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.