"On Being Brought From Africa To America" by Phillis Wheatley

Journal #14
Posted By: Melissa Veum
11-04-09
Engl 48A

"Some view our sable race with scornful eye./ "Their color is diabolic dye."/ Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,/ May be refined, and join the angelic train/ (Wheatley, 753)."

"Now here, now there, the roving fancy flies,/ Till some lov'd object strikes her wand'ring eyes,/ whose silken fetters all the senses bind,/ And so captivity involves the mind/ (Wheatley, On Imagination)."

I believe Phillis Wheatley's poems to be very powerful yet witty at the same time. I like the way she rhymes every other line and does so throughout every poem I have read. In this quote from her poem On Being Brought From Africa To America, she states the not so obvious from both sides of the spectrum. She sees things from the slaveholders eyes and then comes back at them from the very slaves eyes. She states that some may look at the black race negatively and even quotes that they are labeled as having "diabloic dye" on their skin, but that even though many feel this way, it does not matter in the eyes of God because one day we will all be on that "angelic train" riding towards Heaven, no matter the color of your skin.

It's like she's saying a little prayer to her fellow mistreated Christians, "Remember..." as in don't forget that we too are going to some day rise above this insanity which be our lives and be allowed to ride that "angelic train" to our much needed and God-given fates. She has a wonderful way of making even the gloomiest of thoughts have a light at the end of the tunnel. She says that it doesn't matter if you are a black Christian, you are a Christian, regardless of skin color and that blacks are "refined" and it no matter the turmoil you feel that you are in right now in your life, look to the future for Heaven and that saving grace await us all.