Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley (the lemonade war series .TXT) 📕
Description
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was the first book of poetry ever published by an African-American author. Phillis Wheatley’s deep familiarity with Latin literature and Christianity, combined with her African ancestry, provided her with a unique and inimitable view of poetry.
She was kidnapped and brought over to America on a ship called The Phillis after which she was named. Her interest in poetry and literature was recognized by the Wheatley family who, though keeping her enslaved, provided her with classic works of literature by authors such as Virgil, Homer, Terence, and Pope, all of whom had a significant influence on her work.
She received praise from many of her contemporaries including George Washington, John Hancock, and Voltaire. Shortly after publishing her collection of poetry she was emancipated by the Wheatley family. Even so, her life ended in poverty and obscurity.
Though her influence on poetry and African-American literature is indisputable, more modern critics of her work point to the lack of censure of slavery and the absence of discussion about the lives of black people in the United States as an example of the Uncle Tom syndrome.
Read free book «Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley (the lemonade war series .TXT) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Phillis Wheatley
Read book online «Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley (the lemonade war series .TXT) 📕». Author - Phillis Wheatley
A town of gaiety and sport,
Where beaux and beauteous nymphs resort,
And gallantry doth reign;
A Dardan hero fam’d of old
For youth and beauty, as we’re told,
And by a monarch slain;
A peer of popular applause,
Who doth our violated laws,
And grievances proclaim.
Th’ initials show a vanquish’d town,
That adds fresh glory and renown
To old Britannia’s fame.
The poet asks, and Phillis can’t refuse
To show th’ obedience of the Infant muse.
She knows the Quail of most inviting taste
Fed Israel’s army in the dreary waste;
And what’s on Britain’s royal standard borne,
But the tall, graceful, rampant Unicorn?
The Emerald with a vivid verdure glows
Among the gems which regal crowns compose;
Boston’s a town, polite and debonair,
To which the beaux and beauteous nymphs repair,
Each Helen strikes the mind with sweet surprise,
While living lightning flashes from her eyes.
See young Euphorbus of the Dardan line
By Manelaus’ hand to death resign:
The well known peer of popular applause
Is C⸺m zealous to support our laws.
Quebec now vanquish’d must obey,
She too much annual tribute pay
To Britain of immortal fame.
And add new glory to her name.
He was an African by birth. ↩
The repeal of the Stamp Act. ↩
The Countess of Huntingdon, to whom Mr. Whitefield was Chaplain. ↩
This verse to the end is the work of another hand. ↩
Enoch. ↩
Elijah. ↩
Three amiable daughters who died when just arrived to Women’s Estate. ↩
ColophonPoems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
was published in 1773 by
Phillis Wheatley.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Matic Likar,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1996 by
Judith Boss and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Sunday Morning in Virginia,
a painting completed in 1877 by
Winslow Homer.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
September 1, 2020, 1:06 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/phillis-wheatley/poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
UncopyrightMay you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
Copyright pages exist to tell you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S. public domain. The U.S. public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S. to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions.
Copyright laws are different around the world. If you’re not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook.
Non-authorship activities performed on public domain items—so-called “sweat of the brow” work—don’t create a new copyright. That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks L3C, its contributors, and the contributors to this ebook release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the underlying works, which, though believed to already be in the U.S. public domain, may not yet be in the public domain of other countries. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.
Comments (0)