HAIL, happy saint, on thine immortal throne,
Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown;
We hear no more the music of thy tongue,
Thy wonted auditories cease to throng.
Thy sermons in unequall’d accents flow’d,
And ev’ry bosom with devotion glow’d;
Thou didst in strains of eloquence refin’d
Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind.
Unhappy we the setting sun deplore,
So glorious once, but ah! it shines no more.
Behold the prophet in his tow’ring flight!
He leaves the earth for heav’n’s unmeasur’d height,
And worlds unknown receive him from our sight.
There Whitefield wings with rapid course his way,
And sails to Zion through vast seas of day.
Thy pray’rs, great saint, and thine incessant cries
Have pierc’d the bosom of thy native skies.
Thou moon hast seen, and all the stars of light,
How he has wrestled with his God by night.
He pray’d that grace in ev’ry heart might dwell,
He long’d to see America excell;
He charg’d its youth that ev’ry grace divine
Should with full lustre in their conduct shine;
That Saviour, which his soul did first receive,
The greatest gift that ev’n a God can give,
He freely offer’d to the num’rous throng,
That on his lips with list’ning pleasure hung.
“Take him, ye wretched, for your only good,
“Take him ye starving sinners, for your food;
“Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream,
“Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme;
“Take him my dear Americans, he said,
“Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid:
“Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you,
“Impartial Saviour is his title due:
“Wash’d in the fountain of redeeming blood,
“You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God.”
Great Countess,* we Americans revere
Thy name, and mingle in thy grief sincere;
New England deeply feels, the Orphans mourn,
Their more than father will no more return.
But, though arrested by the hand of death,
Whitefield no more exerts his lab’ring breath,
Yet let us view him in th’ eternal skies,
Let ev’ry heart to this bright vision rise;
While the tomb safe retains its sacred trust,
Till life divine re-animates his dust.
*The Countess of Huntingdon, to whom Mr. Whitefield was
Chaplain.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Is Hiring a Resume Writer Really Worth It?
- Precious Pearl by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Who is at my door? by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- What Was Lost by William Butler Yeats
- Epigram at Brownhill Inn by Robert Burns
- The Bride-Cake by Robert Herrick
- let’s go mummy by Raj Arumugam
- The Wolf039s Postcript To 039little Red Riding Hood039
- The Hermit poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Miscast II poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sonnet 128: How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st by William Shakespeare
- Illusion by Mercedes Madrigal
- 30th Birthday poem – Alice Notley
- Flute-Priest Song For Rain poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The School of Night
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
Phillis Wheatley (1753-84), a negro poetess, also an American poet or Afro-American poet, and an English Colonial poet, . She was born in Africa (in Gambia or Senegal) and was aptured by slave traders at the age of eight, she was sold to a family living in Boston, Mass., whose name she bears. While serving as a maid-servant to her proprietor’s wife, she showed an unusual facility with languages. She began writing poetry at the age of thirteen, using as models British poets of the time, especially Alexander Pope and Thomas Gray). In 1773 she accompanied a member of the Wheatley family to England, where she gained widespread attention in literary circles. She subsequently returned to Boston. Her best-known poems are “To the University of Cambridge in New England” (1767), In all honestly Phillis Wheatley should rather be considered English than an Afro-American poet but the exact classification of who she was would depend on the political and cultural views, and biases, of the “classifier.