Phyllis Wheatley (c. 1753 – 1784) was born in West Africa (probably Gambia or Senegal) and sold by a local chieftain into slavery as a child. Arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, the girl was given a name (in honour of the ship she was transported on, classified as cargo) and purchased by the Wheatley family. John Wheatley was a progressive – as much as an 18th century slave-owner can be – and encouraged his children to educate Phyllis. She was reading Greek and Latin at 12, and as a result avoided most of the domestic slavery duties for which she had been purchased. (It’s important to note Phyllis was given time off to write, but she was hardly treated like a princess.) Recognising her talent, John Wheatley took the young woman to London, aged 20, where she met with the Lord Mayor and a number of other society members, and – as John had predicted – her poems were successfully published in England, a fate she could not have achieved in the nascent United States.
In 1773, Phyllis Wheatley was emancipated from her owners, and married a free black man, John Peters. But despite an audience with George Washington (only months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence), the celebrated young poet faced distressing personal circumstances: the death of newborn children, financial peril, and the Revolutionary War, which was a hurdle for many. Her husband does not seem to have been very good at much in life. Wheatley’s short life ended as a new mother in 1784, with her husband imprisoned for debt and Wheatley’s last year spent with a humbling job as a scullery maid. She died of illness in December that year, and her surviving child followed shortly thereafter. Wheatley often wrote on the joys of revolution, which endeared her to the public, although she also faced challenges from white people who doubted she could writ the poems she did. There are complexities to her work – an uncomfortable juxtaposition between her African past and the Christianity into which she had been “enlightened” – but they are for further research. She is the first African-American woman to have published a book, and a pioneering figure who is being recognised more and more with each passing decade.
Scottish-born James Thomson (1700 – 1748) was not a bright student, but he had an interest in poetry from a young age. His family appear to have had some money – his father Thomas died in 1716 (local lore suggesting he was killed while performing an exorcism) leaving behind a wife and nine children, but no apparent struggle – and Thomson moved to London in his 20s to write verse and work as a tutor for a powerful family. In a great age of reason and science, Thomson wrote verse in honour of Isaac Newton and continued his teaching career for much of his life, despite never having taken a degree himself.
Thomson played two important roles in British history. First, a copyright dispute over his poem The Seasons led to a court ruling that heavily leaned in favour of booksellers, effectively arguing that licensed works would never enter the public domain due to the publisher holding works even if the author was gone. (This was, mercifully, overturned in the late 18th century with an acknowledgment of the importance of the public domain.) Second, Thomson was commissioned to write the lyrics for a 1740 masque called Alfred, performed for the Prince of Wales. The masque is forgotten but one key lyric he wrote has lived on: it is Rule, Brittania.
Phyllis Wheatley, To the University of Cambridge, in New-England (1773)
WHILE an intrinsic ardor prompts to write,
The muses promise to assist my pen;
’Twas not long since I left my native shore
The land of errors, and Egyptian gloom:
Father of mercy, ’twas thy gracious hand
Brought me in safety from those dark abodes.
Students, to you ’tis giv’n to scan the heights
Above, to traverse the ethereal space,
And mark the systems of revolving worlds.
Still more, ye sons of science ye receive
The blissful news by messengers from heav’n,
How Jesus’ blood for your redemption flows.
See him with hands out-stretcht upon the cross;
Immense compassion in his bosom glows;
He hears revilers, nor resents their scorn:
What matchless mercy in the Son of God!
When the whole human race by sin had fall’n,
He deign’d to die that they might rise again,
And share with him in the sublimest skies,
Life without death, and glory without end.
Improve your privileges while they stay,
Ye pupils, and each hour redeem, that bears
Or good or bad report of you to heav’n.
Let sin, that baneful evil to the soul,
By you be shunn’d, nor once remit your guard;
Suppress the deadly serpent in its egg.
Ye blooming plants of human race divine,
An Ethiop tells you ’tis your greatest foe;
Its transient sweetness turns to endless pain,
And in immense perdition sinks the soul.
James Thomson, excerpt from Autumn, from The Seasons (1730)
The western sun withdraws the shortened day;
And humid evening, gliding o’er the sky,
In her chill progress, to the ground condensed
The vapours throws. Where creeping waters ooze,
Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind,
Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along
The dusky-mantled lawn. Meanwhile the moon,
Full-orbed and breaking through the scattered clouds,
Shows her broad visage in the crimsoned east.
Turned to the sun direct, her spotted disk
(Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,
And caverns deep, as optic tube descries)
A smaller earth, gives all his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.
Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild
O’er the skied mountain to the shadowy vale,
While rocks and floods reflect the quivering gleam,
The whole air whitens with a boundless tide
Of silver radiance trembling round the world.
But when, half blotted from the sky, her light
Fainting, permits the starry fires to burn
With keener lustre through the depth of heaven;
Or quite extinct her deadened orb appears,
And scarce appears, of sickly beamless white;
Oft in this season, silent from the north
A blaze of meteors shoots-ensweeping first
The lower skies, they all at once converge
High to the crown of heaven, and, all at once
Relapsing quick, as quickly re-ascend,
And mix and thwart, extinguish and renew,
All ether coursing in a maze of light.
From look to look, contagious through the crowd,
The panic runs, and into wondrous shapes
The appearance throws-armies in meet array,
Thronged with aerial spears and steeds of fire;
Till, the long lines of full-extended war
In bleeding fight commixed, the sanguine flood
Rolls a broad slaughter o’er the plains of heaven.
As thus they scan the visionary scene,
On all sides swells the superstitious din,
Incontinent; and busy frenzy talks
Of blood and battle; cities overturned,
And late at night in swallowing earthquake sunk,
Or hideous wrapt in fierce ascending flame;
Of sallow famine, inundation, storm;
Of pestilence, and every great distress;
Empires subversed, when ruling fate has struck
The unalterable hour: even nature’s self
Is deemed to totter on the brink of time.
Not so the man of philosophic eye
And inspect sage: the waving brightness he
Curious surveys, inquisitive to know
The causes and materials, yet unfixed,
Of this appearance beautiful and new.
Now black and deep the night begins to fall,
A shade immense! Sunk in the quenching gloom,
Magnificent and vast, are heaven and earth.
Order confounded lies, all beauty void,
Distinction lost, and gay variety
One universal blot-such the fair power
Of light, to kindle and create the whole.
Drear is the state of the benighted wretch
Who then bewildered wanders through the dark
Full of pale fancies and chimeras huge;
Nor visited by one directive ray
From cottage streaming or from airy hall.
Perhaps, impatient as he stumbles on,
Struck from the root of slimy rushes, blue
The wild-fire scatters round, or, gathered, trails
A length of flame deceitful o’er the moss;
Whither decoyed by the fantastic blaze,
Now lost and now renewed, he sinks absorbed,
Rider and horse, amid the miry gulf —
While still, from day to day, his pining wife
And plaintive children his return await,
In wild conjecture lost. At other times,
Sent by the better genius of the night,
Innoxious, gleaming on the horse’s mane,
The meteor sits, and shows the narrow path
That winding leads through pits of death, or else
Instructs him how to take the dangerous ford.
The lengthened night elapsed, the morning shines
Serene, in all her dewy beauty bright,
Unfolding fair the last autumnal day.
And now the mounting sun dispels the fog;
The rigid hoar-frost melts before his beam;
And, hung on every spray, on every blade
Of grass, the myriad dew-drops twinkle round.
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