Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/89

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phillis wheatley.
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Still to the field, and still to virtue true:
Britannia glories in no son like you.




TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE WILLIAM,

EARL OF DARTMOUTH.


His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for North America, &c.

Hail, happy day! when, smiling like the morn,
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 caves of night.

No more, America, in mournful strain,
Of wrongs and grievance unredressed complain;
No longer shall thou dread the iron chain
Which wanton Tyranny, with lawless hand,
Has made, and with it meant t'enslave the land.