Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/76

70 "Thy birth, celestial queen! 't is mine to own,

"In thee resplendent is the Godhead shown;

"Thy words persuade, my soul enraptured feels

"Resistless beauty which thy soul reveals."

Ardent she spoke, and kindling at her charms,

She clasped the blooming goddess in her arms.

Infinite Love, where'er we turn our eyes,

Appears: this ev'ry creature's want supplies;

This most is heard in Nature's constant voice;

This makes the morn, and this the eve, rejoice;

This bids the fostering rains and dews descend,

To nourish all, to serve one gen'ral end,

The good of man: yet man ungrateful pays

But little homage, and but little praise.

To him whose works arrayed in mercy shine,

What songs should rise, how constant, how divine!

trace the power of death from tomb to tomb,

And his are all the ages yet to come.

'T is his to call the planets from on high,

To blacken Phœbus, and dissolve the sky;

His too, when all in his dark realms are hurled,

From its firm base to shake the solid world;

His fatal sceptre rules the spacious whole,

And trembling nature rocks from pole to pole.