 | Memoir of Phillis Wheatley : |  |
MEMOIR.
Not a great many of the younger readers of
this little book may know much about Slavery,
though they have all heard and read, of course,
that such a thing exists, and that even in the
southern and western parts of our own country.
I do not intend here to discuss the nature of
it, or the circumstances that gave rise to it
in the first instance, or the effect it is believed
to have on the country and the people in and
among which it is found. All these matters
are more proper for another place. My object
is simply to call the attention of those who feel
an interest in the condition and character of the
African race, to some particulars respecting
individuals of that race, who have, at different
times, been slaves in different parts of this
country, and whose characters were quite too
interesting to be passed over by the historian
in utter silence.
Of these, the most remarkable is Phillis
Wheatley, as she has been commonly called.
What her African name was, never has been
ascertained, for she was but about seven years
old when she was brought, in a slave-ship, with
many other slaves, from that country to this.
The vessel in which she came, sailed into Boston
harbor, in the year 1761, that is, seventy-three
years ago. Soon afterwards, the whole
`cargo,' as the language was in those times,
was offered for sale; and no doubt advertised
in the Boston newspapers, for any of my
readers who may happen, in the course of their
lives, to look up the Boston papers of that day,
will find almost all of them, from week to week,
more or less filled with advertisements of slaves;
sometimes singly, and sometimes in `lots;'
sometimes naming them and sometimes not—
to be sold, perhaps, or wanted to buy, or to be
given away, or run away—in a word, advertisements
in all forms, much as they appear now-a-days
wherever slavery exists, and very much
as they appear in the Boston papers of these
times respecting cattle and sheep. I have seen,
in one of the old Boston papers of 1764, which
boy' published in this way to be sold, in the
same advertisement with `a black moose, about
three months old.' Here is another, which I
copy from the same paper:
`Cesar, a negro fellow, noted in town by
having no legs, is supposed to be strolling about
the country. If he can be brought to the printers
for one dollar, besides necessary expenses,
it shall be paid.'
One gentleman in the same paper, informs
his customers and the public, that he has just
opened his goods for sale in Cornhill, near the
Post Office, where he will sell them hard ware,
by wholesale and retail, for ready money; and
then he goes on to say that `a good price will
be given for a likely negro boy, from 16 to
20 years of age, if he can be well recommended.'
It was not many years after this, however,
that slavery came to an end in Massachusetts.
The last I have heard of it from any of the old
people who lived in those times, is a story
which an aged gentleman told me, a few days
since, of his going, in the year 1777 (two years
Andover, in this state, to Haverhill. He passed
by a small house, near the road-side, where he
saw several black children, male and female,
playing in the sunshine near the door-way.
They were healthy and happy-looking children,
though rather poorly clad, and without shoes on;
but one of them, a girl, about thirteen years old,
struck the fancy of the gentleman, who stopped
his horse to look at them, as likely to make
very good `help' for his wife, in Cambridge.
He knocked at the door, and a woman, who
appeared to be the mother of the family, came
out. He entered into a conversation with her
respecting the child with which he was best
pleased, and proposed to purchase her. The
mother made no objection, except on the score
of the price, and this did not continue long, for
she soon agreed to sell her daughter for eight
dollars—to be given up whenever the gentleman,
after consulting his wife about the purchase,
should choose to send for her. He went
home, and there the matter rested, for his wife
had become tired of slaves, and she induced
him to give up the bargain.
I mention this incident to remind my readers
how short a time it is, comparatively, since
respectable people, in Massachusetts,—where
we now boast so much of our freedom and our
regard for the equal rights of all men—were
concerned in this business of buying and selling
the African like so many cattle in the stalls of
a cattle-show. We have abundant reason to
be grateful to a merciful Providence, that while
many other sections of our own country, as
well as others, are to this day afflicted with the
evils of Slavery, we are, as we think, much
more pleasantly situated. Neither are there
now any slaves in Vermont, Maine, or New
Hampshire; and there are very few, indeed,
in Rhode-Island and Connecticut—less than a
hundred in both those States. In Indiana and
Illinois, they have none. In Ohio there never
were any; and the number still remaining in
Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware and New
Jersey is quite small.
To return to our little African—she was
found out and purchased soon after the advertisement
of her appeared (in 1761) by Mrs.
Wheatley, the wife of Mr. John Wheatley, a
lady is another instance to show that it had
not yet become altogether disgraceful, among
decent people, to buy and sell their fellow-men
in the market, to serve their convenience. Mrs.
Wheatley had several slaves already—acting,
as they generally did in Massachusetts, as
house-servants; but these were getting rather
advanced in life, and she wished to obtain one
more active and docile, whom she could herself
educate in such a manner, as to make her a
suitable companion for herself in her old age.
It is very evident, such being the good lady's
feelings, that the little slave could not have fallen
into better hands, if she must be sold. Mrs.
Wheatley, on the other hand, was much pleased
with the appearance of the child, though the poor
thing had nothing to recommend it to her
notice, or to any body's, but the meekness and
modesty of her manners, and her intelligent
and comely features. Her only garment at this
time, was a piece of dirty carpet placed around
her like what is called a `fillibeg.' The lady
preferred her, nevertheless, to the older females,
whom she found her with, and having paid her
stranger home with herself in a chaise.
At this period she is supposed, as I said
before, to have been about seven years old,
being in the act of shedding her front teeth.
How much of the English language she could
speak, does not appear; probably not a great
deal, nor with much ease, for she had enjoyed
no opportunity of learning it, that we hear of,
excepting the very limited one she must have
had, if she had any, in the course of her passage
from the shores of Africa to those of this country,
and the little stay she made with her
master and her fellow-slaves after that time,
and previous to her being purchased by Mrs.
Wheatley. Very likely it is owing to this circumstance—her
inability to speak the language
with much ease or clearness—that we hear
scarcely anything of her early history in Africa.
It has never been known what part of that continent
she came from, to what tribe or kingdom
she belonged, what relatives or friends she left
behind or sailed with; and everything else of
that kind is equally a matter of uncertainty.
No doubt, before she had learned enough of the
her new friends—or so much of it as she then
remembered—she forgot that little, and very
soon found, in the midst of new society, and in
a country full of strange sights and sounds, that
her mind had become filled with a multitude of
new impressions which rapidly crowded out
the old.
The little girl who had now received the
name by which she has been since known,
Phillis Wheatley, being taken into the
family of her mistress, and treated with exemplary
kindness, soon began to show very plain
indications of the character and talent which a
few years after became so decided and so distinguished.
Mrs. Wheatley's daughter undertook
to teach her writing and reading, and the
little girl's disposition to imitate what she had
seen in others, in regard to the former of these
accomplishments, had already made itself manifest
in her childish endeavors to describe letters
and figures of different kinds, on some of the
walls about the house, and upon other stationary
of like sort, with a piece of chalk or charcoal.
She was not, at this time, left to associate much
color or condition, in the dwelling of her mistress,
but was kept almost constantly about her
person.
I remarked that nothing of the early history
of Phillis could be gathered from her lips. One
circumstance alone, it might have been said,
she remembered; and that was, her mother's
custom of pouring out water before the sun at
his rising. This, no doubt, was a custom of
the tribe to which she belonged, and was one
of their religious rites. That the child should
retain the memory of this apparently trifling
incident, when she forgot almost everything
else, is not, perhaps, very remarkable. It is
one which would be quite as likely to make an
impression on the mind of a child, as a much
more important event. One writer, who has
treated of the life of Phillis, says in relation to
this subject, very properly—`We cannot know
at how early a period she was beguiled from the
hut of her mother; or how long a time elapsed
between her abduction from her first home and
her being transferred to the abode of her benevolent
mistress, where she must have felt like
was, no doubt, a long one; and filled, as it
must have been, with various degrees and kinds
of suffering, might naturally enough obliterate
the recollection of earlier and happier days.
The solitary exception which held its place so
tenaciously in her mind, was probably renewed
from day to day through this long season of affliction;
for, every morning, when the bereaved
child saw the sun emerging from the wide
waters, she must have thought of her mother,
prostrating herself before the first golden beam
that glanced across her native plains.'
The opportunities of learning became greater
to Phillis as she advanced in life. Her friends,
who had already taken a deep interest in her
improvement, were encouraged, both by the
rapid advances she made, and the warm gratitude
which their efforts excited, to increased
exertions in her favor. She had begun also, to
attract the attention of the society of the city,
out of the family of her mistress; and, as the
fame of her talent and virtue extended itself,
she received favors from several of the literary
characters of the day, in the shape of books
desire of knowledge increased, as such desire
generally does, with every gratification. She
made considerable progress in belle-lettres;
and then she acquainted herself, in a good
degree, with the Latin tongue, evidence of
which acquirements may be frequently observed
in her poems.
Of the place she had by this time, in consequence
of her amiable traits of character, no
less than of her extraordinary intellectual exhibition,
obtained in the family, and especially in
the affection of her excellent mistress, some
idea may be formed from the following incident,
which is referred to by the writer I have already
borrowed from.
`It is related that, upon the occasion of one
of the visits she was invited to pay to her neighbors,
the weather changed during the absence
of Phillis; and her anxious mistress, fearful of
the effects of cold and damp upon her already
delicate health, ordered Prince (also an African
and a slave) to take the chaise, and bring home
her protegee. When the chaise returned, the
good lady drew near the window, as it approached
look at the saucy varlet—if he has n't the impudence
to sit upon the same seat with my
Phillis!' And poor Prince received a severe
reprimand for forgetting the dignity thus kindly,
though perhaps to him unaccountably, attached
to the sable person of `my Phillis.'[1]
The prejudice so common in those times
against colored people, even more than now,
which this anecdote indicates in the mind of Mrs.
Wheatley, may be readily pardoned for the sake
of the kindness which the good lady manifested
in favor of the more fortunate servant of the
two.
It would have been no very wonderful thing,
under these circumstances of partiality, and
perhaps sometimes flattery, if the mind of the
young favorite had been influenced more than
it should be by the compliments she constantly
received. That it was not so influenced, so
far as we can ascertain, and that, on the contrary,
she can scarcely be said to have known
vanity were—is a circumstance highly indicative
of the excellent good sense which was
among her most obvious natural endowments.
It is said, that when, as I have already intimated
was often the case, she was invited, with or
without the other members of the family of Mrs.
Wheatley, to visit individuals of wealth and distinction,
she always declined the seat offered her
at their board, and, requesting that a side-table
might be laid for her, dined modestly apart
from the rest of the company. This was, no
doubt, the wisest, as well as most modest course
she could take. However illiberal, and unchristian
might be the prejudice, which many people
entertained in those days, and which many are
not rid of, against their fellow citizens—or at
least fellow-men—who are `guilty of a skin not
colored like their own,' it was peculiarly amiable
in Phillis to be content, according to the
admonition of the holy apostle, with the condition
wherein she was placed by Providence;
and it was equally prudent in her, not to
increase the evils of that condition by permitting
such trifles, as they must have appeared to
single moment. Her modesty admirably contrasted
with her merit, and powerfully increased
its charms.
The earliest attempt in poetical composition,
by Phillis, which has been preserved—though
she probably made many at an earlier date—
is the little poem intended to express her
loyal acknowledgements to the King, (George
III,) on occasion of the Repeal of the Stamp
Act—an event of intense interest in all the
American Colonies. It shows a degree of
grammatical correctness, and a propriety of
sentiment and feeling, which certainly do not
disgrace the literary character of a slave at the
age of fourteen years—for the piece was written
in 1768. It is as follows:
Upon your brows may flourish long,
And that your arm may in your God be strong,
Oh! may your sceptre numerous nations sway,
And all with love and readiness obey.
Rule thou in peace, our father and our Lord!
Midst the remembrance of thy favors past,
The meanest peasants most admire the last.
Live with heaven's choicest, constant blessings crowned.
Great God! direct and guard him from on high,
And from his head let every evil fly;
And may each clime with equal gladness see
A monarch's smile can set his subjects free.
In the year 1769 or 1770, Phillis was received
as a member of the church worshipping
in the Old South Meeting House, which for
several years, while she attended there, was
under the pastoral charge of the excellent Dr.
Sewell. He died in 1769, and the following
poem, written by Phillis on that occasion, will
sufficiently illustrate both the character of the
subject, and the feelings with which the amiable
author regarded that melancholy event.
It shows also an evident improvement in her
style:
See Sewell numbered with the happy dead.
Hail, holy man! arrived the immortal shore;
Though we shall hear thy warning voice no more,
Come, let us all behold, with wistful eyes,
The saint ascending to his native skies:
From hence the prophet winged his rapturous way,
To the blest mansions in eternal day.
And panting eager for the same abode,
Come, let us all with the same vigor rise,
And take a prospect of the blissful skies;
While on our minds Christ's image is impressed,
And the dear Saviour glows in ev'ry breast.
Thrice happy saint! to find thy heaven at last,
What compensation for the evils past!
By sense, we how at thine exalted throne.
Oh, while we beg thine excellence to feel,
Thy sacred Spirit to our hearts reveal,
And give us of that mercy to partake,
Which thou hast promised for the Saviour's sake!
"Is Sewell dead?" my trembling tongue replied.
Oh, what a blessing in his flight denied!
How oft for us the holy prophet prayed!
How oft to us the word of life conveyed!
By duty urged my mournful verse to close,
I for his tomb this epitaph compose.
A sinner once, but now a saint with God.
Behold, ye rich, ye poor, ye fools, ye wise,
Nor let his monument your heart surprise;
'T will tell you what this holy man has done,
Which gives him brighter lustre than the sun.
Listen, ye happy, from your seats above.
I speak sincerely, while I speak and love.
He sought the paths of piety and truth,
By these made happy from his early youth.
Which rescues sinners from the chains of guilt.
Mourn him, ye indigent, whom he has fed,
And henceforth seek, like him, for living bread;
Ev'n Christ, the bread descending from above,
And ask an int'rest in his saving love.
Mourn him, ye youth, to whom he oft has told
God's gracious wonders, from the times of old.
I, too, have cause, this mighty loss to mourn,
For he, my monitor, will not return.
Oh, when shall we to his blest state arrive?
When the same graces in our bosoms thrive?"
Since we are making extracts from these exceedingly
interesting compositions—the Poems
of a Slave—we will add another, written the
next year after the last, that is, in 1770, on occasion
of the decease of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield,
the celebrated Methodist clergyman, an eminently
distinguished man in his time, and whose
memory is even to this day much cherished by
many persons of advanced age, who listened to
his eloquent exhortations from the Boston
Pulpits and the Boston Common. Vast multitudes
of hearers thronged around him wherever
he preached, in England, (which was his native
land) or in this country, and great numbers of
these were impressed by his appeal to their
been, in a manner which they never afterwards
could forget. She alludes with great propriety,
as it will be seen, `to the music of his tongue,'
for his voice was one of the most agreeable and
powerful with which a public speaker was ever
gifted. She says, too, very beautifully,
How he has wrestled with his God by night;
referring to those frequent occasions, on which
the devoted clergyman had retired to the fields
and woods, in the solitude of midnight as well
as amid the glare of the noon-day, to commune
on his knees with that Being, to the advancement
of whose kingdom, on earth, he consecrated
the energies of his body and his mind.
Mr. Whitefield died during one of his numerous
visits to this country, at Newburyport, where
his grave, with the inscription on the marble,
may still be seen:
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;
Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind.
Unhappy, we the setting sun deplore,
So glorious once, but ah! it shines no more.
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 num'rous throng,
That on his lips with list'ning pleasure hung.
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."
Thy name, and mingle in thy grief sincere;
New England deeply feels, the orphans mourn,
Their more than father will no more return.
Whitefield no more exerts his lab'ring breath,
Yet let us view him in the eternal skies,
Let every heart to this bright vision rise,
While the tomb safe retains its sacred trust,
Till life divine re-animates his dust.
Of the excellent kindness of seeling, as well
as talent and propriety of sentiment, which is
manifested in these poems, I need not speak.
It is time, however, to call the attention of my
readers to the sequel of the history of the
authoress.
Her constitution was always frail, and her
health at no time firm. Early in 1773, it
became decidedly worse than it had been
before, and so much so that her fond friends,
and especially Mrs. Wheatley, became alarmed
on her account. Her physician recommended
a sea voyage, and this according with the
opinion of the family who were most interested
of the opportunity of visiting England, offered
her by the departure of a son of her mistress,
who was about sailing on a mercantile engagement.
She went with him in the summer of
the same year, being now about nineteen years
of age. The writer of the notice to which I
have before referred, has the following remarks,
in reference to this short but interesting visit:
`Phillis was well received in England, and
was presented to Lady Huntingdon, Lord Dartmouth,
and many other individuals of distinction;
but, says our informant, "not all the
attention she received, nor all the honors that
were heaped upon her, had the slightest influence
upon her temper or deportment. She
was still the same single-hearted, unsophisticated
being." During her stay in England, her
poems were given to the world, dedicated to
the Countess of Huntingdon, and embellished
with an engraving, which is said to have been a
striking representation of the original. It is
supposed that one of these impressions was
forwarded to her mistress, as soon as they were
struck off; for a grand niece of Mrs. Wheatley's
Phillis, she one day called upon her relative,
who immediately directed her attention to a
picture over the fire-place, exclaiming—"See!
look at my Phillis! does she not seem as
though she would speak to me!"
`Phillis arrived in London so late in the season,
that the great mart of fashion was deserted.
She was therefore urgently pressed by her distinguished
friends to remain until the Court
returned to St. James's, that she might be presented
to the young monarch, George III. She
would probably have consented to this arrangement,
had not letters from America informed
her of the declining health of her mistress, who
intreated her to return, that she might once
more behold her beloved protegee.
`Phillis waited not a second bidding, but
immediately re-embarked, and arrived in safety
at that once happy home, which was so soon to
be desolate.'
Mrs. Wheatley died in 1774, and her husband
and daughter not long afterwards, leaving
our African orphan once more almost desolate.
After spending a short time with one of the
apartment, and lived alone. The Revolution
was at this period fast coming on, and the
general discouragement and distress which it
brought with it, were already beginning to be
felt among all classes. Phillis no doubt, must
have borne, though in silent fortitude, her share
of the troubles of the times.
At this period of destitution, Phillis received
an offer of marriage from a respectable colored
man of Boston, named Peters, who kept a
grocery in Court Street, and was a man of very
handsome person and manners, (as our writer
informs us,) wore a wig, carried a cane, and
quite acted out `the gentleman.' In an evil
hour he was accepted; and he proved utterly
unworthy of the distinguished woman who
honored him by her alliance. He was unsuccessful
in business, and failed soon after their
marriage; and, though an intelligent man, he
is said to have been both too proud and too
indolent to apply himself to any occupation
below his fancied dignity. Hence his unfortunate
wife suffered much from this ill-omened
union.
After the Revolution broke out, and Boston
was besieged by the enemy, the distress which
I have before alluded to very much increased,
and multitudes of the inhabitants took the earliest
opportunity to find an asylum somewhere in
the country towns. Phillis accompanied her
husband to Wilmington, and lived there several
years, during which we hear scarcely anything
of her, excepting that she became the mother
of three children, in as many years, of whose
subsequent history still less has been ascertained.
Some time after the evacuation of the
city, she returned, and there resided several
weeks with a niece of Mrs. Wheatley's, a
widow of considerable wealth. During this
period, Phillis, who seems to have exerted herself
to the utmost, to make the best of her circumstances,
taught a small day-school; and at
the end of it, her husband having also come in
from the country, and reclaimed her society,
she and her little family accompanied him to
the lodgings he had provided in town.
From this date we learn but little of her, and
it may reasonably be inferred from this circumstance,
as well as from the general state of
suffering which pervaded the whole community,
and particularly its poorer classes.
In noticing this condition of things, the
writer of the latest memoir of Phillis has the
following just remarks:
`The depreciation of the currency added
greatly to the general distress. Mr. Thacher, for
example, in his History of Plymouth, tells us of a
man who sold a cow for forty dollars, and gave
the same sum for a goose! We have ourselves
heard an elderly lady relate, that her husband,
serving in the army, forwarded her in a letter
fifty dollars, which was of so little value when
she received it, that she paid the whole for a
quarter of mutton, so poor and so tough, that
it required great skill and patience, in the culinary
department, to render it fit for the table.
"In this condition of things," observes the lady,
whom we have more than once referred to, and
to whom we expressed our surprise at the neglect
and poverty into which Phillis was suffered to
decline, "people had other things to attend to
than prose and poetry, and had little to bestow
in charity, when their own children were clamorous
care of her negligent husband.'
I may take this occasion to add to the above
illustration of the worth of the `Continental
Money,' the fact, which I have heard from an old
gentleman, that he once paid between ten and
eleven hundred dollars in that currency for a
tolerable load of wood, and I believe he thought
himself doing pretty well by the bargain!
The close of the history of Phillis is even
sadder than any of its previous pages. She
died in the year 1780, having lost two of her
children, and suffered in her own person the
united pains of sickness, privation, exposure
and fatigue, to an extent which is melancholy
to contemplate even for a moment. No stone
now tells the stranger where rest the ashes of
the Boston Slave of the Revolution.
Yet she is not forgotten. The character of
Phillis is too remarkable, and her brief career
too extraordinary, to be overlooked by the
friends of virtue or the admirers of genius.
Her memory will be cherished, in many a
benevolent heart, long after the proud names of
those who, perhaps, despised her, and her
dust of oblivion.
If any reader has, perchance, in the perusal
of this slight tribute to her worth, felt the idea
suggesting itself to his prejudice, that the country
or the complexion of the subject of my
Memoir might have been a sufficient reason for
omitting to notice her at all, I cannot, perhaps,
make a more suitable admonition to such a
mind than in the language of her own:
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 color is a diabolic dye.'
Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain
May be resined, and join the angelic train.
In regard to the poetry of Phillis, it will be
observed, by those who examine her works,
that she has written, almost wholly, upon occasional
subjects, apparently on those of mere
feeling, suggested to her by the occurrence of
some event in which her own sympathies were
deeply interested. The subjects, accordingly,
mind, as the style is. When this circumstance
is considered, in connection with the fact that
she was born, and brought up, to her eighth
year, a complete barbarian in a barbarous land;
that at that period she was made a slave; that
in this condition, and at this age she commenced
the business of self-education; that
she had to contend through life with all these
circumstances, added to the prejudice commonly
entertained against persons of her color,
and much of the time, too, with its most trying
personal sufferings—it must be admitted that her
compositions furnish abundant proof of a degree
of native genius which is exceedingly rare
among persons of any race, class or condition.
Some of them show also that she had contrived,
by some means, not only to make
herself familiar with the Holy Scriptures, which
seem to have been her favorite authority and
study, but to have read and remembered not a
little of ancient and modern profane history,
geography, astronomy, poetry, and other matters
of the kind, of which in her times it was
considered no disgrace, certainly, for ladies, (not
in society, to be much more uninformed. Few of
them, we presume, would have been unwilling
to acknowledge their claims to the following,
had they written it—the first lines of an address
to the Earl of Dartmouth, a leading English
statesman, (under George III,) to whom Phillis
was introduced in that country:
Fair Freedom rose, New England to adorn:
The northern clime, beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth! congratulates thy blissful sway:
Elate with hope, her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold.
Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies,
She shines supreme, while hated faction dies:
Soon as appeared the Goddess long desired,
Sick at the view she languished and expired;
Thus, from the splendors of the morning light,
The owl, in sadness, seeks the shades of night.
We will conclude our extracts from these
Poems, (the whole of which have been recently
republished in one small volume,) with
the Lines addressed to Harvard University,
at Cambridge, which, it will be seen, contain
plainly indicative of the feeling with which she
recalled so much as she knew of it:
The Muses promise to assist my pen.
'T was not long since, I left my native shore,
The land of errors and Egyptian gloom:
Father of mercy! 't was thy gracious hand
Brought me in safety from those dark abodes.
Above, to traverse the etherial space,
And mark the systems of revolving worlds.
Still more, ye sons of science, ye receive
The blissful news by messengers from heaven,
How Jesus' blood for your redemption flows.
See him, with hands outstretched upon the cross!
Immense compassion in his bosom glows;
He hears revilers, nor resents their scorn.
What matchless mercy in the Son of God!
He deigned to die, that they might rise again,
And share with him, in the sublimest skies,
Life without death, and glory without end.
Ye pupils; and each hour redeem, that bears
Or good or bad report of you to heaven.
Let sin, that baneful evil to the soul,
By you be shunned; nor once remit your guard:
Suppress the deadly serpent in its egg.
Ye blooming plants of human race divine,
An Ethiop tells you, 't is your greatest foe;
And in immense perdition sinks the soul.
Several reflections are suggested by the facts
of the preceding memoir, too obvious to be
overlooked by any reader who is willing to
derive benefit or pleasure from even the humblest
source.
One is, that genius is not limited, by the
Creator of man, to any color, country, or condition.
The darkest skin may cover the
brightest intellect, as well as the warmest heart.
This consideration should serve to allay that
ungenerous contempt, which is still but too commonly
entertained, unworthy as it is of a liberal
mind, towards a class of our fellow men whose
chief fault it seems to be, that they have been
made, in their ignorance and heathenism, the
victims of the avarice of the civilized world.
Another is, that determination and perseverance,
under favor of Providence, are sufficient
to accomplish almost anything. Phillis has
immortalized herself by her poems; and yet
she commenced her literary career a savage
and slave, ignorant of the merest rudiments of
the language in which she afterwards wrote,
efforts to give vent to her rising conceptions, no
better materials than charcoal or a piece of
chalk! Surely, no man, woman, or child, in
whatever circumstances, has occasion, after
this, to be discouraged in an honest exertion to
add to his own usefulness and the happiness of
the world around. The lowliest being that
lives—let him but rely meekly on God's blessing,
and upon his own best use of the faculties
which that good Being has given him—need
not despair of doing something to render the
memory of his name precious to some one
heart, at least, that shall mourn for him long
after the frail remains of his mortal body shall
be mixed with the common dust from which it
sprung. If any reader of mine, then, shall ever
give way for a moment to a feeling of despondence,
or of distrust of the goodness of an
overruling Providence, let me advise him to
think of the poor Boston Slave, and murmur
and doubt no more.
| Memoir of Phillis Wheatley : | |