ns of the silent dead:
Columbia, too, beholds with streaming eyes
Her heroes fall--'tis freedom's sacrifice!
So wills the power who with convulsive storms
Shakes impious realms, and nature's face deforms;
Yet those brave troops, innum'rous as the sands,
One soul inspires, one General Chief commands;
Find in your train of boasted heroes, one
To match the praise of Godlike Washington.
Thrice happy Chief in whom the virtues join,
And heaven taught prudence speaks the man divine."

What Phillis Wheatley failed to achieve is due in no small degree to her
education and environment. Her mind was steeped in the classics; her
verses are filled with classical and mythological allusions. She knew Ovid
thoroughly and was familiar with other Latin authors. She must have known
Alexander Pope by heart. And, too, she was reared and sheltered in a
wealthy and cultured family,--a wealthy and cultured Boston family; she
never had the opportunity to learn life; she never found out her own true
relation to life and to her surroundings. And it should not be forgotten
that she was only about thirty years old when she died. The impulsion or
the compulsion that might have driven her genius off the worn paths, out
on a journey of exploration, Phillis Wheatley never received. But,
whatever her limitations, she merits more than America has accorded her.

Horton, who was born three years after Phillis Wheatley's death, expressed
in all of his poetry strong complaint at his condition of slavery and a
deep longing for freedom. The following verses are typical of his style
and his ability:

"Alas! and am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil, and pain?

* * * * *

Come, Liberty! thou cheerful sound,
Roll through my ravished ears;
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears."

In Mrs. Harper we find something more than the complaint and the longing
of Horton. We find an expression of a sense of wrong and injustice. The
following stanzas are from a poem addressed to the white women of America:

"You can sigh o'er the sad-eyed Armenian
Who weeps in her desolate home.
You can mourn o'er the exile of Russia
From kindred and friends doomed to roam.

* * * * *

But hark! from our Southland are f