Bibliographical/Encoding Information The following transcription of the Phillis Wheatley poem To The University Of Cambridge, In New England, is my own amalgamation. The final form I have chosen for the transcription was inspired both by the original version of the poem, which appeared in the 1773 book, written by Wheatley, entitled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, published by A. Bell of London, and by the version of the text that appears in The Poems of Phillis Wheatley, edited by James Mason and published in both 1966 and 1989 by The University of North Carolina Press in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. All I have borrowed from the The Poems of Phillis Wheatley is the simple idea of changing the original text of the poem a bit in order to conform more to modern writing practices. In other words, I have performed simple acts of editing, such as the substitution of an "s" for an "f" where this substitution brought the text into the modern form of English, and the replacement of an apostrophe with an "e" where it seemed appropriate. Essentially, I have changed the original text very little, save for those alterations that served to make the poem more easily readable by a modern audience.
To The University Of Cambridge, In New England
WHILE an intrinsic ardor prompts to write,
The muses promise to assist my pen;
It was not long since I left my native shore
The land of errors, and Egyptian gloom:
Father of mercy, it was thy gracious hand
Brought me in safety from those dark abodes.
Students, to you it is given to scan the heights
Above, to traverse the ethereal space,
And mark the systems of revolving worlds.
Still more, ye sons on science, ye receive
The blissful news by messengers from heaven,
How Jesus' blood for your redemption flows.
See him with hands outstretched upon the cross;
Immense compassion in his bosom glows;
He hears revilers, nor resents their scorn:
What matchless mercy in the Son of God!
When the whole human race by sin had fallen,
He deigned to die that they might rise again,
And share with him in the sublimest skies,
Life without death, and glory without end.
Improve your privileges while they stay,
Ye pupils, and each hour redeem, that bears
Or good or bad report of you to heaven.
Let sin, that baneful evil to the soul,
By you be shunned, nor once remit you guard;
Suppress the deadly serpent in its egg.
Ye blooming plants of human race divine,
An Ethiopian tells you it is your greatest foe;
Its transient sweetness turns to endless pain,
And in immense perdition sinks the soul.
Photo Courtesy of Harvard University.