Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main
The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring,
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
Through all the heav’ns what beauteous dyes are spread!
But the west glories in the deepest red;
So may our breasts with every virtue glow,
The living temples of our God Below!
Fill’d with the praise of him who gives the light,
And draws the sable curtains of the night,
Let placid slumbers soothe each weary mind,
At morn to wake more heav’nly, more refin’d;
So shall the labors of the day begin
More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.
Night’s leaden scepter seals my drowsy eyes,
Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.
—Phillis Wheatley, the first published African American poet. On December 21, 1767, the fourteen-year-old Wheatley had her first poem published in the Newport (Rhode Island) Mercury. This amazing achievement came only six years after her arrival in America, without any prior knowledge of the English language.
The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring,
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
Through all the heav’ns what beauteous dyes are spread!
But the west glories in the deepest red;
So may our breasts with every virtue glow,
The living temples of our God Below!
Fill’d with the praise of him who gives the light,
And draws the sable curtains of the night,
Let placid slumbers soothe each weary mind,
At morn to wake more heav’nly, more refin’d;
So shall the labors of the day begin
More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.
Night’s leaden scepter seals my drowsy eyes,
Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.
—Phillis Wheatley, the first published African American poet. On December 21, 1767, the fourteen-year-old Wheatley had her first poem published in the Newport (Rhode Island) Mercury. This amazing achievement came only six years after her arrival in America, without any prior knowledge of the English language.
