Phillis was brought from Africa to America in the Year 1761, between Seven and Eight Years of Age. Without any Assistance from School Education, and by only what she was taught in the Family, she, in sixteen Months Time from her Arrival, attained the English Language, to which she was an utter Stranger before, to such a Degree, as to read any, the most difficult Parts of the Sacred Writings, to the great Astonishment of all who heard her.
{ JOHN WHEATLEY }
Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet.
{ THOMAS JEFFERSON }
Notes on the State of Virginia
At your back dusk.
At your back stars
and this abiding sense
of what you would since
call God. The auction
block, the boat that rocked
and renamed you Phillis—
your young back the driver’s lash
(maybe) managed not to meet.
The writer’s toil, and prayer,
promising you immortal—
this foreign, frosted soil.
Latinate black girl, what
the Lord leaves us is this:—
your mother’s voice pressed
fainter each day; thick dust.
First poet of your Race,
you could be nothing but servant
in these States—learning Rs
to say The Lord, not learning you
but Thou. How thy face
lit up among the oil lamps each week
you had to clean! Sable
sister—at least your master
did not make you with him
(we think) sleep, or
out in the stable. Your world was now
whispers and Sincerelys—on the block
Master Wheatley bought you off,
you must have thought (though most thought
you could not):—Such strange beasts
haggling over me! My head must
stay covered, my must must
not show. I shall be the girl’s
plaything, taking orders, learning
to write in order to tell
what I am not. Thankful,
yes, I am for that:—for the Ink
which ran darker even than I
and which I could flood the world
with; for Temperance; for Faith
which lets me know what I must do,—
bend, bow my head and knee.
Be humble, so saieth Thee
and they, my family, who does not know
my first name. My quill feather flies
across the page. I wait.
Faith for me is waking—
a stitch in my neck
or back,
But Awake—
Tho it is still dark.
My job to walk
through stark
Dawn and provide a Spark—
I feel like
words not
fully known yet,
Like Electric—
The lanterns begin—
brighten—
and it is mine,
This time before Time,
The oil lamps’ companion.
Of soot born,
of burn,
Child of sand and sun,—
Here, in this wooden house
I take the gift to us
from Prometheus—
For which he was Punish-
Ed, and made
a slave—
starved and chained
Against the Rock face—
And the cold lamps I light.
The shadows hide
my silhouette,
The low fires
By which I write—
God
that my hand
Guides—
Hear my song!
Here it is morning.
Approaching,
Our Day shall not be long—
Why not run? Like young
Crispus Attucks unmoored
from Framingham
to become a dockhand
lugging tea and rum.
Like a mouth his master ran
an ad offering a reward
for his return. Instead,
Attucks, once you’re dead,
we will hoist your name
like a flag. The mob
had its orders, attacked,
the king his stones.
The lobster-coats
surely saw you, stevedore,
swaying there, a head taller
than anyone—they’d sparred
with you & others
just days before.
Death no one spares.
I’ve never heard a black man
loved so, by God—
through the streets
where slaves are sold
your name now rings
out like the cold, or coal
whistling in the fire.
One musket ball sped
through your spare rib.
The other through
your true. What all
you left behind:—
this pewter teapot,
dry, battered, parched,
without one dark drop.
Adam of us all,
you are buried
on a hill
where the stones
grow slowly small.
I, Benjamin Church, Jun., of lawful age, testify and say,
that being requested by Mr. Robert Pierpont, the Coroner,
to assist in examining the body of Crispus Attucks, who
was supposed to be murdered by the soldiers
on Monday evening the 5th instant, I found two wounds
in the region of the thorax, the one on the right side,
which entered through the second true rib
within an inch and a half of the sternum, dividing
the rib and separating the cartilaginous extremity from the sternum,—
the ball passed obliquely downward through the diaphragm
and entering through the large lobe of the liver and the gall-bladder,
still keeping its oblique direction, divided the aorta descendens
just above its division into the iliacs, from thence it made its exit
on the left side of the spine. This wound I apprehended
was the immediate cause of his death.
The other ball entered the fourth of the false ribs,
about five inches from the linea alba, and descending obliquely
passed through the second false rib, at the distance of about
eight inches from the linea alba; from the oblique direction
of the wounds, I apprehend the gun must have been discharged
from some elevation, and further the deponent saith not.
Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. —Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry.
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
Notes on the State of Virginia
Taken apart, dissected, held
up to the oily light—
through your pages men look
and poke, as if to see something lying
in wait, deceit or disease.
Your best hope is hoax.
Who in the Colonies would believe
all this you say you wrote?
Mere Negress, a girl
forever,—it’s true however
you were still
mostly a girl, nineteen by our
best judgement. And judge
we did:—asked you to speak
the Lord’s Prayer, catechisms
we later made you write
down while we watched. Who
do your words
belong to? Without ours
yours are no one’s—tho
perhaps belong to Messr. Wheatley
who still claims they
are your own. Even a parrot may
recite, but can a monkey write?
We have become convinced, by study
and questioning, to the best
of our ability,
of your words’ origin—Wheatley,
he does not lie. I see no reason
why we the Committee should not
grant this book the right
to publication, not as fiction
but as exhortation, a Declaration
that God has blessed
this black with a mind. I do not
mind listing you
among the creatures of old wives
and myth. Like Tituba the witch
you have told what it is
you have seen, tho thankfully
no devils. Like Attucks you’ll die
for wars we wage like sin
to secure our freedom. I cannot
find any evidence to dispute
this slave girl’s authorship
and place here my imprint.
An ELEGIAC POEM, On the DEATH
of that celebrated Divine,
and eminent Servant
of JESUS CHRIST, the late
Reverend, and pious George Whitefield,
Chaplain to the Right
Honourable the Countess
of Huntingdon, &c &c.
Who made his exit from this transitory
State, to dwell in the celestial
Realms of Bliss, on LORD’S DAY,
30th of September, 1770, when he was seiz’d
with a Fit of the Asthma,
at NEWBURY-PORT,
near Boston, in New-England,
In which is a Condolatory
Address to His truly noble
Benefactress
the worthy and pious Lady
HUNTINGDON,—and the Orphan-Children
in GEORGIA; who, with many
Thousands, are left, by the Death
of this great man, to lament
the Loss of a Father, Friend,
and Benefactor,
By PHILLIS, a Servant
Girl of 17 Years of Age, belonging
to Mr. J. WHEATLEY, of Boston:—
And has been
but 9 Years from Africa
in this country.
Whatever the hour carried
On that brilliant grey day
When you married you made
The most of,—a quiet kiss, a cry.
No one threw rice. It was
All you could afford, the clothes
And the pastor secondhand—
Inherited like you had
Your freedom once the Mistress
(you wept) grew sick and passed.
Months later you lost your first:—
His small fluttering chest
Like a bird far fallen from the nest.
His shy head the size of your opening fist.
Freedom for me means rising up
early, to sweep and clean the chamber
pots of strangers,—this house
boards many men who manage
never to see me:—I am no language
they know, or I let them think so.
It is worse if one has heard
of me somehow, if the papers run
my elegies, or print on this new nation
my praises. I sleep beneath the stair
dreaming the risers stars, run
lines thro my head like a poor
pastor, or understudy. I write
when time I can spare, wonder:—
Lord, why was I spared? Times
like this I miss my Mistress
who fed and taught me to read
God’s word—now dead
(so set me free), she still speaks
often to me—discouraged
my marrying, her spirit still unwilling
tho I own my freedom. My body weak.
From Britain’s bosom, lionized,
I returned just in time to hear
the first shots, for Revere to ride
through town and Crispus Attucks
to embrace the muskets.
That seems long ago indeed—
my mistress having called me
back home, to her, then the Lord
summoning her to Him.
Like prayer I cleaved to her side.
Whether martyr or maid
you die and join with God,
you hope—your name written
deep enough and dark
it will not be forgot.
Presented with Paradise
Lost in London by the mayor
your first (and last)
triumphant trip there
you read Milton with care, knew
his Devil not as talk, or fast hands,
but silence:—your words that no longer
arrive, your husband in debtor’s
prison to pay off first the house
on Queen Street (your envious
neighbors), then on Prince
where your third colic
breathing babe grew cold
and passed. (Where hours after
you met your Lord.)
Your beloved
copy (and you only 31 years old)
of Paradise Lost, to eat, long sold.
NOTICES:
The body of the young Lady, lost
in Capt. Copeland’s sloop
on Cohasset rocks, as late-
ly mentioned in this paper,
has since been found, and
decently interred.
SHIPS ENTERED:
MARRIED, at her Father’s Mansion,
in Duxbury, by the Reverend
Mr. Sanger, the amiable
Miss NABBY ALDEN, youngest Daughter
of Colonel Briggs Alden, of that Place,
to Mr. BEZA HAYWARD, of Bridgewater.
SHIPS CLEARED:
Last Lord’s day died,
Mrs. PHILLIS
PETERS (formerly Phillis
Wheatly) aged 31, known
to the literary world
by her celebrated miscellaneous
Poems. Her funeral is
to be this afternoon, at 4 o’
clock, from the house lately improved
by Mr. Todd, nearly opposite
Dr. Bulfinch’s, at West-
Boston, where her friends
and acquaintances are desired
to attend. (No one did.)
On Her Maiden Voyage to England
There are days I can understand
why you would want to board
broad back of some ship
and sail: venture, not homeward
but toward Civilization’s
Cold seat,—having from wild
been stolen, and sent into more wild
of Columbia, our exiles
and Christians clamoring upon
the cobblestones of Bostontown—
Sail cross an Atlantic (this time) mild,
the ship’s polite and consumptive
passengers proud. Your sickness
quit soon as you disembarked in mist
of London—free, finally, of our Republic’s
Rough clime, its late converts who thought
they would not die, or die simply
in struggle, martyr to some God,—
you know of gods there
are many, who is really only
One—and that sleep, restless fever
would take most you loved. Why
fate fight? Death, dark mistress,
would come a-heralding silent
the streets,—no door to her closed,
No stair (servant, or front) too steep.
Even Gen. Washington, whom you praise,
victorious, knows this—will even admit
you to his parlor. Who could resist a Negress
who can recite Latin and speak the Queen’s?
Docked among the fog and slight sun
of London, you know who you are not
but that is little new. Native
of nowhere—you’ll stay a spell, return,
write, grow still. I wake with you
In my mind, leaning, learning
to write—your slight profile
that long pull of lower lip, its pout
proving you rescued by
some sadness too large to name.
My Most Excellence, my quill
and ink lady, you scrawl such script
no translation it needs—
your need is what’s missing, unwritten
wish to cross back but not back
Into that land (for you) of the dead—
you want to see from above
deck the sea, to pluck from wind
a sense no Land can
give: drifting, looking not
For Leviathan’s breath, nor for waves
made of tea, nor for mermen half-
out of water (as you)—down
in the deep is not the narwhal enough real?
Beneath our wind-whipt banner you smile
At Sea which owns no country.