Phillis Wheatley poem?

Question

for an english project, i am doing a presentation of On the Death of the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield by Phillis Wheatley. i was wondering if anyone could explain it to me in modern english... i'm trying to find similes and metaphores and allusions and all that good stuff.... but its kinda hard with the old english. i also have to re write it in modern english, so dont just do that or thatll b cheating! hahaha lol
thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Three Things:

1. Read this article first:
"Where Racism and Myth-Making Intersect "
http://www.alsopreview.com/gazebo/messages/2306/4478.html?1133718868

2. . Then Read this as well:
When Phillis Wheatley landed in America on July 11, 1761, a frail West African girl barely 8 years old, she could not guess the extraordinary life that awaited her. As she stood on the auction block in Boston, she must have been terrified and no doubt confused by the strange faces and the strange language spoken around her. Brutally snatched from her homeland, she was now homeless, without a country, without a family, without identity. Based on the horrors she had experienced on the slave ship during the "middle passage," she could scarcely have imagined anything better awaiting her--that is provided she had strength left to do any imagining.

However, it seemed that the heavens decided she had had enough suffering. She was purchased by the Wheatley family who, conscious of her tender age and sympathetic to her poor health, treated her with kindness. She served as the personal attendant of Mrs. Susanna Wheatley and was given household duties. She was named after the ship that brought her from Africa, taking the last name of her owners as was the custom in those slave-owning days. Mary, the daughter of the family, befriended her and tutored her in Latin, religion, English language, and literature. Apparently brilliant and with an aptitude for learning, Phillis soon acquired an education that any free young woman from a well-off family of that time would envy. She became an avid student of the Bible and especially admired the works of Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the British neoclassical writer. Through Pope's translation of Homer, she also developed a taste for Greek mythology. Thus was launched a remarkable career as a poet and a life of deep religious piety for young Phillis.

On December 21, 1767, the fourteen year old Wheatley published her first poem in the Newport (Rhode Island) Mercury. This achievement came just six years after her arrival in America, without any prior knowledge of the English language. The poem that really launched Wheatley to prominence was an elegy, "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, 1770." The elegy became Phillis' poetic trademark. Twenty of the 46 poems published in her lifetime are about death.

Whitefield was a well known minister and evangelist in America and Britain. He was also chaplain to the Countess of Huntingdon in England
http://brownvboard.org/brwnqurt/01-1/01-1f.htm

3. Finally:

She was especially fond of writing in the elegiac poetry style, perhaps mirroring the genre of oration taught to her through the women in her African American tribal group. Her elegy on a popular evangelical Methodist minister, George Whitefield, brought her instant success upon his death. She also was well versed in Latin which allowed her to write in the epyllion (short epic) style with the publication of "Niobe in Distress."

SIMILES:
Thou moon hast seen, and all the stars of light
*Means Like the moon, you have seen all the stars of light
New England deeply feels, the Orphans mourn 40
Their more than father will no more return.
* Means we in New England mourn like orphans because your loss is more than a father's.
METAPHORES:
-We hear no more the music of thy tongue,
-But, though arrested by the hand of death,
Whitefield no more exerts his lab'ring breath,
-There Whitefield wings with rapid course his way,
And sails to Zion through vast seas of day.

ALLUSIONS:

Allusions to Death
-Behold the prophet in his tow'ring flight!
-We hear no more the music of thy tongue
- Whitefield no more exerts his lab'ring breath,
-New England deeply feels, the Orphans mourn
-Their more than father will no more return.

Allusions to his verbal sermons
- He freely offer'd to the num'rous throng,
That on his lips with list'ning pleasure hung.
"Take him, ye wretched, for your only good,
"Take him, ye starving sinners, for your food;
"Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream, 30
Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme;
"Take him, my dear Americans," he said,

http://shs.westport.k12.ct.us/radler/ColonialEarly%20AmLit/phillis_wheatley.htm#on


good luck
.

Answer 2

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Phillis Wheatley poem?
for an english project, i am doing a presentation of On the Death of the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield by Phillis Wheatley. i was wondering if anyone could explain it to me in modern english... i'm trying to find similes and metaphores and allusions and all that good stuff.... but its kinda...