Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/75

Rh Licentious and unbounded o'er the plains,

Where fancy's queen in giddy triumph reigns.

Hear in soft strains the dreaming lover sigh

To a kind fair, or rave in jealousy;

On pleasure now, and now on vengeance bent,

The lab'ring passions struggle for a vent.

What power, O man! thy reason then restores,

So long suspended in nocturnal hours?

What secret hand returns the mental train,

And gives improved thine active powers again?

From thee, O man, what gratitude should rise!

And when from balmy sleep thou op'st thine eyes,

Let thy first thoughts be praises to the skies.

How merciful our God, who thus imparts

O'erflowing tides of joy to human hearts,

When wants and woes might be our righteous lot,

Our God forgetting, by our God forgot!

Among the mental powers a question rose,

What most the image of the Eternal shows;

When thus to reason (so let Fancy rove,)

Her great companion spoke, immortal Love:

"Say, mighty power, how long shall strife prevail,

"And with its murmurs load the whispering gale?

"Refer the cause to Recollection's shrine,

"Who loud proclaims my origin divine,

"The cause whence heaven and earth began to be,

"And is not man immortalized by me?

"Reason, let this most causeless strife subside."

Thus love pronounced, and reason thus reply'd: