 | Poems of Phillis Wheatley |  |
RECOLLECTION.
SIR,
As your Magazine is a proper repository for any thing valuable or curious, I hope you will excuse the communicating the following by one of your subscribers.
L.There is in this town a young Negro woman, who left her country at ten years of age, and has been in this eight years. She is a compleat sempstress, an accomplished mistress of her pen, and discovers a most surprising genius. Some of her productions have seen the light, among which is a poem on the death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield.—The following was occasioned by her being in company with some young ladies of family, when one of them said she did not remember, among all the poetical pieces she had seen, ever to have met with a poem upon RECOLLECTION. The African (so let me call her, for so in fact she is) took the hint, went home to her master's, and soon sent what follows.
“MADAM,
“Agreeable to your proposing Recollection as a subject proper for me to write upon, I enclose these few thoughts upon it; and, as you was the first person who mentioned it, I thought none more proper to dedicate it to; and, if it meets with your approbation, the poem is honoured, and the authoress satisfied. I am, Madam,
Your very humble servant, PHILLIS.”Your vent'rous Afric in the deep design.
Ye god-like powers! the glowing thoughts inspire,
Immortal Pow'r! I trace thy sacred spring,
Assist my strains, while I thy glories sing.
By thee, past acts of many thousand years,
Rang'd in due order, to the mind appears;
The long-forgot thy gentle hand conveys,
Returns, and soft upon the fancy plays.
Calm, in the visions of the night he pours
Th' exhaustless treasures of his secret stores.
Swift from above he wings his downy flight
Thro' Phœbe's realm, fair regent of the night.
Thence to the raptur'd poet gives his aid,
Dwells in his heart, or hovers round his head;
To give instruction to the lab'ring mind,
Diffusing light cœlestial and refin'd.
Still he pursues, unweary'd in the race,
And wraps his senses in the pleasing maze.
The Heav'nly Phantom points the actions done
In the past worlds, and tribes beneath the sun.
He, from his throne in ev'ry human breast,
Has vice condemn'd, and ev'ry virtue bless'd.
Sweet are the sounds in which thy words we hear,
Cœlestial musick to the ravish'd ear.
We hear thy voice, resounding o'er the plains,
Excelling Maro's sweet Menellian strains.
But awful Thou! to that perfidious race,
Who scorn thy warnings, nor the good embrace;
By Thee unveil'd, the horrid crime appears,
Thy mighty hand redoubled fury bears;
The time mis-spent augments their hell of woes,
While through each breast the dire contagion flows.
Now turn and leave the rude ungraceful scene,
And paint fair Virtue in immortal green.
For ever flourish in the glowing veins,
For ever flourish in poetick strains.
Be Thy employ to guide my early days,
In due succession, round the central sun;
How did each folly unregarded pass!
But sure 'tis graven on eternal brass!
To recollect, inglorious I return;
'Tis mine past follies and past crimes to mourn.
The virtue, ah! unequal to the vice,
Will scarce afford small reason to rejoice.
In ev'ry breast of mortals, ever own'd.
The wretch, who dar'd the vengeance of the skies,
At last awakes with horror and surprise.
By Thee alarm'd, he sees impending fate,
He howls in anguish, and repents too late.
But oft thy kindness moves with timely fear
The furious rebel in his mad career.
Thrice bless'd the man, who in thy sacred shrine
Improves the REFUGE from the wrath divine.
| Poems of Phillis Wheatley | |