While others chant of gay Elysian scenes,
Of balmy zephyrs, and of flow’ry plains,
My song more happy speaks a greater name,
Feels higher motives and a nobler flame.
For thee, O R—–, the muse attunes her strings,
And mounts sublime above inferior things.
I sing not now of green embow’ring woods,
I sing not now the daughters of the floods,
I sing not of the storms o’er ocean driv’n,
And how they howl’d along the waste of heav’n.
But I to R—– would paint the British shore,
And vast Atlantic, not untry’d before:
Thy life impair’d commands thee to arise,
Leave these bleak regions and inclement skies,
Where chilling winds return the winter past,
And nature shudders at the furious blast.
O thou stupendous, earth-enclosing main
Exert thy wonders to the world again!
If ere thy pow’r prolong’d the fleeting breath,
Turn’d back the shafts, and mock’d the gates of death,
If ere thine air dispens’d an healing pow’r,
Or snatch’d the victim from the fatal hour,
This equal case demands thine equal care,
And equal wonders may this patient share.
But unavailing, frantic is the dream
To hope thine aid without the aid of him
Who gave thee birth and taught thee where to flow,
And in thy waves his various blessings show.
May R—– return to view his native shore
Replete with vigour not his own before,
Then shall we see with pleasure and surprise,
And own thy work, great Ruler of the skies!
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Шекспир – С любовью связан жизненный мой путь – Сонет 92
- Minstrels by William Wordsworth
- Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot
- Ольга Берггольц – Я так хочу, так верю, так люблю
- Private Ground by Sylvia Plath
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Осеннее золото
- Night-Piece by Siegfried Sassoon
- Олег Бундур – В зоологическом музее
- Impromptu Lines to Captain Riddell by Robert Burns
- Владимир Высоцкий – Парня спасём, парня в детдом
- To a Lady on Her Remarkable Preservation by Phillis Wheatley
- A Song of Pitcairn’s Island by William Cullen Bryant
- Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Robin Redbreast by William Allingham
- Quest for Thee by Vanessa Perkins
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.