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Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784)

On Being Brought from Africa to America


              1'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
              2Taught my benighted soul to understand
              3That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
              4Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
              5Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
              6"Their colour is a diabolic die."
              7Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
              8May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Notes

1] See Sondra O'Neale, "A Slave's Subtle War: Phillis Wheatley's Use of Biblical Myth and Symbol," Early American Literature 21.2 (Fall 1986): 144-65.

6] For her punning on indigo die and sugarcane, see James A. Levernier, "Wheatley's On BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA," Explicator 40 (1981): 25-26.

Online text copyright © 2012, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London: by A. Bell, for Cox and Berry, Boston, 1773): 18. Facsimile edition in The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley, ed. John C. Shields (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). PS 866 W5 1988 Robarts Library
First publication date: 1773
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/2/28

Composition date note: dated 1768 in her 1772 proposals
Form: couplets

Other poems by Phillis Wheatley

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