His Excellency General Washington
by Phillis Wheatley
Celestial choir! enthron'd in realms of light,
Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom's cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
See mother earth her offspring's fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown!
See the bright beams of heaven's revolving light
Involved in sorrows and the veil of night!
The Goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,
Olive and laurel binds Her golden hair:
Wherever shines this native of the skies,
Unnumber'd charms and recent graces rise.
Muse! Bow propitious while my pen relates
How pour her armies through a thousand gates,
As when Eolus heaven's fair face deforms,
Enwrapp'd in tempest and a night of storms;
Astonish'd ocean feels the wild uproar,
The refluent surges beat the sounding shore;
Or think as leaves in Autumn's golden reign,
Such, and so many, moves the warrior's train.
In bright array they seek the work of war,
Where high unfurl'd the ensign waves in air.
Shall I to Washington their praise recite?
Enough thou know'st them in the fields of fight.
Thee, first in peace and honors—we demand
The grace and glory of thy martial band.
Fam'd for thy valour, for thy virtues more,
Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!
One century scarce perform'd its destined round,
When Gallic powers Columbia's fury found;
And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom's heaven-defended race!
Fix'd are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia's arm prevails.
Anon Britannia droops the pensive head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! Cruel blindness to Columbia's state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.
Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev'ry action let the Goddess guide.
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! Be thine.
Wheatley sent this poem to Washington in October 1775; he replied with a thank-you letter in February of 1776; it seems to have been put in a pile of correspondence and only rediscovered that February when Washington was going through his papers. He then seems to have sent his thanks and showed the letter to Joseph Reed, with a comment that he had considered having it published, but decided he could not because it would like vanity; Reed seems to have taken this as permission to publish it himself, and it was published in Pennsylvania Magazine in April of 1776, as fitting a poetic preface to the rest of the year as any could be.
Wheatley, I think, had the great misfortune of being re-discovered in exactly that period of criticism least sympathetic to all the poetic arts at which she excelled, and least able to appreciate her excellence in them. One thinks of James Weldon Johnson's comment that she was not a great poet but an important one, which is the sort of damning with faint and condescending praise to which she has been continually subjected. And it is all based on entirely arbitrary notions. There is no universal poet; even Virgil or Dante or Du Fu could not have managed that. Every great poet is great at something. Wheatley's greatest strength is personal portraiture; this is an extremely difficult poetic field, and there have only been a handful of poets who are even as good at it as she is.
One of the nice features of the portraiture here (and one reason why Washington may have liked it), that is, the focus on person as such, is that instead of simply pouring out epithets on Washington, it frames him indirectly. We get Columbia, Columbia's armies, then Washington himself, but even the latter is as representing the former. This is good portraiture work, and not at all easy. All of Wheatley's portraiture is good; she is a poet who sees people.
But she's also more technically colorful than poets like Milton or Pope, and thus (despite being heavily influenced by the latter) is easily distinguished as not merely imitative; we see this in this eulogy on Washington for his victories against the French. What strikes me today is the restrained but excellent use of mixed alliteration and assonance as well as meter and rhyme to tie the poem together:
Celestial choir! enthron'd in realms of light,
Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom's cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
See mother earth her offspring's fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown!
See the bright beams of heaven's revolving light
Involved in sorrows and the veil of night!
And, of course, we have the soundplay with refulgent and her offspring and with revolving and involved, which connect alliteratively with the v in veil, and the pattern scenes, see, scenes, see. None of this can really be done in a strained mechanical way, and that it is not an accident can be seen by continuing through the poem. She uses meter and rhyme as a trellis, and then runs through a vast and ever-changing array poetic devices and techniques; her metric verse is more free than most free verse.
