Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley/To a Lady, on the Death of three Relations
TO A LADY, ON THE DEATH OF THREE
RELATIONS.
We 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.
Awful he moves, and wide his wings are spread:
Behold thy brother numbered with the dead:
From bondage freed, the exulting spirit flies
Beyond Olympus, and these starry skies.
Lost in our woe for thee, blest shade, we mourn
In vain; to earth thou never must return.
Thy sisters, too , fair mourner, feel the dart
Of death, and with fresh torture rend thine heart.
Weep not for them, who wish thine happy mind
To rise with them and leave the world behind.
As a young plant by hurricanes upturn,
So near its parent lies the newly born—
But midst the bright etherial train, behold,
It shines superior on a throne of gold;
Then mourner, cease; let hope thy tears restrain,
Smile on the tomb, and soothe the raging pain,
On yon blest regions fix thy longing view,
Mindless of sublunary scenes below;
Ascend the sacred mount, in thought arise,
And seek substantial and immortal joys;
Where hope receives, where faith to vision springs,
And raptured seraphs tune the immortal strings
To strains extatic. Thou the chorus join,
And to thy father tune the praise divine.