Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/54

48 But guide my steps to endless life and bliss.

Greatness, or Goodness, say what shall I call thee,

To give an higher appellation still:

Teach me a better strain, a nobler lay,

O thou, enthroned with cherubs in the realms of day!

was mercy brought me from my pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there's a God — that there's a Saviour too;

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye—

'Their color is a diabolic dye.'

Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain

May be refined, and join the angelic train.

an intrinsic ardor prompts to write,

The Muses promise to assist my pen.

'T was not long since I left my native shore,

The land of errors and Egyptian gloom: