Phillis Wheatley’s ‘A Hymn to the Morning’: An Analysis

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Hymn to the Morning’ is a poem written by Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-84) in praise of the morning; it’s a companion-piece to her ‘A Hymn to the Evening’ (which, as you’ve probably guessed, was a poem in praise of the evening).

Wheatley was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in 1773 when she was probably still in her early twenties (her precise year of birth is not known for certain).

Summary

Attend my lays, ye ever honour’d nine,
Assist my labours, and my strains refine;
In smoothest numbers pour the notes along,
For bright Aurora now demands my song.

Wheatley begins by calling on the Nine Muses of Greek mythology to help inspire her to write her poem. She wants to write poetry which flows, with a pleasing and regular metre (hence ‘smoothest numbers’: ‘numbers’ is an old word for metrical lines of verse), in honour of Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, who demands praise in the form of ‘song’ or poetry.

Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,
On ev’ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;

Wheatley addresses Aurora, the goddess of dawn, as well as the many colours or ‘dies’ (i.e., dyes) which show the trail or path the morning sun is making across the skies above. The morning arrives, as if ‘waking up’: the sun’s eye, as it were, opens as if rousing from a sleep, and spreads her light far across the land. Meanwhile, the west wind or Zephyrus gently moves every leaf on every plant and tree.

Harmonious lays the feather’d race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.

‘Harmonious lays’ are pleasing-sounding songs, and the ‘feather’d race’ needs no explanation. With the return of dawn comes the dawn chorus, and birdsong, as the birds look around them and shake their colourful feathers.

Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire:

Wheatley calls upon the shady groves of trees to use their dark greenness to shade her from the sun’s heat; she also calls upon Calliope, one of the Nine Muses (the one known for epic poetry and facility with language, specifically), to bring out her lyre, an ancient stringed instrument, while the other Muses can encourage the sun’s ‘fire’ to spread.

The bow’rs, the gales, the variegated skies
In all their pleasures in my bosom rise.
See in the east th’ illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away—

All the pleasures of the natural world and the landscape make the poet’s heart swell with delight. The sun, that ‘king of day’, now rises higher in the east, banishing the shadows.

But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,
And scarce begun, concludes th’ abortive song.

But no sooner has she celebrated the return of the day than she has cause to lament it and cut short her poem in praise of the morning, because already the sun’s ‘beams’ of light are too strong.

Analysis

‘A Hymn to the Morning’, like much of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, can be aligned with Augustan poetry: eighteenth-century verse which looked back to the age of the great Roman emperor Augustus and consciously echoed its style and values.

Such poetry is concerned with order and balance, not just in the world but in the poetry itself. It is also urbane, decorous, and ‘proper’: stately and formal, and often invoking figures from classical mythology (as she does with the Nine Muses, and specifically Calliope, in ‘A Hymn to the Morning’).

Such balance is witnessed in the poet’s attention to both celebration (the sun’s rays banish the ‘shades’ of darkness and night; although of course, sunlight also creates shadows, we should remember) and lament (the sun is too hot). Although the poem is a paean, or song of praise, it is one of cautious praise, for all that.

Form

The heroic couplet – rhyming couplets written in iambic pentameter – was the preferred form for neoclassical or Augustan poets of the eighteenth century, and this is the form Phillis Wheatley utilises here. The form is known as the ‘heroic couplet’ because this was the verse form of choice when poets translated the classical epics into English.

About Phillis Wheatley

Wheatley was freed shortly after the publication of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, a volume which bore a preface signed by a number of influential American men, including John Hancock, the famous signatory of the Declaration of Independence just three years later in 1776.

Wheatley even met George Washington, and wrote him a famous poem. Since Wheatley is estimated to have been born in around 1753, she wrote ‘A Hymn to the Morning’ when she was perhaps twenty years old, and possibly still a teenager. The poem shows her precocious ability to emulate neoclassical and Augustan models in praise of the morning, and to use the features we associate with verse of the period both adroitly and strikingly.