Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral/To the Rt. Hon. William, Earl of Dartmouth

by Phillis Wheatley

 

To the Right Honourable 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,

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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 sides

She shines supreme, while hated faction dies:

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Soon as appear'd the Goddess long desir'd,
Sick at the view, she languish'd and expir'd;
Thus from the splendors of the morning light
The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night.

$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$No more, America, in mournful strain

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Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain,
No longer shall thou dread the iron chain,
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land.

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,

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Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate

Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:

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What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?
Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd
That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd:

Such, such my case. And can I then but pray

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Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

<poem>For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due,

And thee we ask thy favours to renew, Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before,

To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore.

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May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give To all thy works, and thou for ever live Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame, Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name,

But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane,

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May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain, And bear thee upwards to that blest abode, Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.