Phillis Wheatley: Poems Literary Elements

Strong, heroic voice that often uses apostrophe and directly addresses the reader

Heroic, rhyming couplets

Metaphor:

"How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?" ("To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works")

Simile:

"Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God." ("To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth")

Alliteration:
"Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main" ("Hymn to the Evening")
Here, Wheatley repeats several "s" sounds.

"Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good," ("On Being Brought from Africa to America")
Wheatley repeats several "w" sounds in these lines.

Assonance:
"Their colour is a diabolic die." ("On Being Brought from Africa to America")
Here, Wheatley repeats "i" sounds.

"May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give
To all thy works, and thou for ever live
Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame,
Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name,
But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane,
May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain,
And bear thee upwards to that blest abode,
Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God. ("To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth")

Since Dartmouth has not yet done the action that Wheatley urges—advocating for the freedom of enslaved people—there is a tinge of verbal irony in Wheatley's wishes for an extravagant and heavenly future for the Earl of Dartmouth.

Poetry

confident, resolute

Several of these poems contend with the nature of enslavement and the violence of being stolen from Africa and forcibly brought to America.

'Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring:
Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring." ("To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works")

These lines are an allusion to the 12 gates of Jerusalem in Revelation 21.

Metonymy:

"Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire
To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire!" ("To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works")

In these lines, pencil is a metonymy for writing.

Synecdoche:

"There shall thy tongue in heav’nly murmurs flow," ("To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works")

Here, the tongue is a synecdoche for speech.

"Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand
Would now embrace thee, hovers o’er thine head." ("On Virtue")

In these lines, Wheatley personifies Virtue as a hovering and comforting force.

"Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?" ("On Imagination")

"Though Winter frowns to Fancy's raptur'd eyes"("On Imagination")

In "On Imagination," Wheatley personifies imagination, winter, and fancy.

"And bid their waters murmur o'er the sands." ("On Imagination")

Murmur is an example of onomatopoeia.