Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/39

Rh light of its wide-spreading beams; but at the time when Phillis lived, our own land was darkly over-shadowed. We had no philosophers, no historians, no poets; and our statesmen—those wonderful men, who stood forth in the day of a nation's peril, the wonder and glory of the world—had not then breathed forth those mighty energies which girded the warrior for the battle, and nerved the hearts of a whole people as the heart of one man. All here was calm and passionless as the natural world upon the morning of creation, ere the Spirit of God had moved upon the face of the waters. It passed, and the day-spring knew its place. Even thus with the Spirit of Liberty. It breathed upon our sleeping nation, awakening the genius of the people to appear from time to time in a thousand new and multiplying forms of ever-varying beauty.

Since that day, our philosophers have stood in the courts of monarchs, more honored than he who held the sceptre; and the recesses of the leafy forest, and the banks of the solitary stream and lonely lake, have been hallowed by the legends of the children of song. Nor has skill been wanting to embody the deeds of our fathers, or shadow forth the gentle and the brave, in tales that have stirred many hearts, even beyond the waters. But Phillis lived not amid these happy influences. True, she heard the alarum of Liberty, but it