Phillis Wheatley (1753 – 5 December 1784 / Gambia)

Brilliant, i love it!

Wow what a beautiful piece. :) me like!

She's sharing her unfettered inner-world.

Good ideas from Afirca. I enjoy reading it as the first African poem on Poemhunrt.................,

Beautiful word flow for one to read.

Heavenly choice of words outflowing effortlessly in this poem...Phillis Wheatley was a slave to poetry only I suppose...making us all slaves to her imagination...marvelous

The poem, On Imagination by Phillis Wheatley, is testament to the patronage and support of the ‘Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write, and helped encourage her poetry.’ A higher education is evident in every line. Phillis displays knowledge of subjects including philosophy, biology ‘Fair Flora’, astronomy ‘the rolling universe behind: From star to star the mental optics rove, Measure the skies, ’ and especially classical literature. ‘From Helicon's refulgent heights attend’ begins the plea to ‘Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend: To tell her glories with a faithful tongue’; is Phillis proclaiming her ardent desire to get her facts and the song of her poem right. ‘Sylvanus’ ‘in Roman religion (was) an ancient pastoral deity, protector of uncultivated lands.’ This is exactly the context within which Phillis references him. The names ‘Tithon’ and ‘Aurora’ are also pure classical imagery and probably also alludes to Tennyson’s poem ‘Tithon’. To quote directly from 'Literature is the source of Human real trace' in an attempt to prove Phillis Wheatley’s exact meaning.

‘Tithonus is based on a classical fable. Aurora, the goddess of Dawn, fell in love with a handsome youth, Tithonus by name. At the request of the goddess, Zeus allowed the gift of immortality on Tithonus. The goddess, however, forgot to ask for the perpetuation of her lover’s youth and beauty. With the passage of time Tithonus grew frightfully old and enfeebled, so much so that his goddess take back her gift and let him die, but Aurora was helpless, as even, “gods themselves can not recall their gifts”

Tithonus is immortal but as he is rapidly growing old he laments over his fate. All other objects ripen, decay and fall. But he is to hover for ever like a shadow over the Eastern Horizen in the hands of his ‘lover’ Aurora.


Wheatley wrote ‘From Tithon's bed now might Aurora rise, Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies, ' seems to mean exactly what the fable states, the shadow of Tithonus’ within the dawn of Aurora at the start of each day. Wheatley has written an exceptionally beautiful and complexly detailed poem.

The depiction of the fancy of imagination is endless in scope in this poem! Indeed the force and course cannot be measured by any means! The flight of fancy reveals the full power of imagination and can be realised well by those indulging in imagination!

What an amazing piece of literature, in her circumastances. The poem filled me with inner joy,10

Phillis Wheatley is one of the most remarkable figures in literature. Reading this poem you might imagine her to have been a well-educated European lady. She was in fact an almost entirely self-educated American black slave, though she was freed following the death of her mistress, Mrs Wheatley. Her life is as interesting as her work and she became something of a celebrity, even traveling to England, though it ended in tragic circumstances at an early age.Her writing is in faultless, classical style but it is fascinating to consider what she might have produced had she lived to read the works of the Romantic revolution.