Poem by Phillis Wheatley

On Recollection

  MNEME begin. Inspire, ye sacred nine,
  Your vent’rous Afric in her great design.
  Mneme, immortal pow’r, I trace thy spring:
  Assist my strains, while I thy glories sing:
  The acts of long departed years, by thee
  Recover’d, in due order rang’d we see:
  Thy pow’r the long-forgotten calls from night,
  That sweetly plays before the fancy’s sight.
  Mneme in our nocturnal visions pours
  The ample treasure of her secret stores;
  Swift from above the wings her silent flight
  Through Phoebe’s realms, fair regent of the night;
  And, in her pomp of images display’d,
  To the high-raptur’d poet gives her aid,
  Through the unbounded regions of the mind,
  Diffusing light celestial and refin’d.
  The heav’nly phantom paints the actions done
  By ev’ry tribe beneath the rolling sun.
    Mneme, enthron’d within the human breast,
  Has vice condemn’d, and ev’ry virtue blest.
  How sweet the sound when we her plaudit hear?
  Sweeter than music to the ravish’d ear,
  Sweeter than Maro’s entertaining strains
  Resounding through the groves, and hills, and plains.
  But how is Mneme dreaded by the race,
  Who scorn her warnings and despise her grace?
  By her unveil’d each horrid crime appears,
  Her awful hand a cup of wormwood bears.
  Days, years mispent, O what a hell of woe!
  Hers the worst tortures that our souls can know.
    Now eighteen years their destin’d course have run,
  In fast succession round the central sun.
  How did the follies of that period pass
  Unnotic’d, but behold them writ in brass!
  In Recollection see them fresh return,
  And sure ’tis mine to be asham’d, and mourn.
    O Virtue, smiling in immortal green,
  Do thou exert thy pow’r, and change the scene;
  Be thine employ to guide my future days,
  And mine to pay the tribute of my praise.
    Of Recollection such the pow’r enthron’d
  In ev’ry breast, and thus her pow’r is own’d.
  The wretch, who dar’d the vengeance of the skies,
  At last awakes in horror and surprise,
  By her alarm’d, he sees impending fate,
  He howls in anguish, and repents too late.
  But O! what peace, what joys are hers t’ impart
  To ev’ry holy, ev’ry upright heart!
  Thrice blest the man, who, in her sacred shrine,
  Feels himself shelter’d from the wrath divine!

1. A Funeral Poem on the Death of C. E. an Infant of Twelve Months
2. A Hymn to the Evening
3. On the Death of a Young Gentleman
4. On the Death of the Rev. Dr. Sewell, 1769
5. To a Lady and Her Children

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