Death, in this poem, is a king surveying his treasury. Phillis Wheatley begins by fixing her eyes on his "domain," and what she sees is less a scene of mourning than a vast inventory: "whole kingdoms" thrust into a "gloomy den," nations mixing with "primeval dust," "the offspring of six thousand years" arriving "in endless numbers." Death is the "great conqu'ror" with "spoils" to distribute, and an "Insatiate" appetite that "gluts the ample tomb." Only at the end of this opening section does the view narrow to a single household: "a brother, here a sister spread, / And a sweet daughter mingled with the dead." The enormous scale makes the small, particular losses land harder.
The poem then turns on a single word, "But." The speaker addresses a grieving "Madam" and gives instructions: "let your grief be laid aside," "let the fountain of your tears be dry'd." The reason is bleak. Tears "wet the dusty plain," and the dust carries over from the "primeval dust" of the first section, so grief just sinks into the same ground Death already owns. Sighs are "wafted to the skies in vain." Tears and sighs "witness" the pain "but they can no more," as if they were bystanders with no power to act.
The consolation that follows begins oddly, by making things seem even bleaker. Even the "glowing stars and silver queen of light" must "perish in the gloom of night." The logic seems to be that nothing in creation lasts, so the only safe place for what we love is outside creation altogether. From here the poem answers Death's claims one by one. Death's grasp is replaced by the "Almighty hand / Which gave them life." Death's gorging is matched by the child's soul, which "feeds on truth and uncreated things." Even the verb "waft" is reversed. Sighs were wafted upward "in vain," but the child's soul is escorted by "shining guards" to "waft triumphant through the seas of air." The line "His is the present, his the age to come" is quietly overturned by the promise of "immortal bliss."
The most intimate moment is the naming of "Thine Avis," tucked into a command: "give without a murm'ring heart, / Though half thy soul be fated to depart." After the cosmic imagery, "half thy soul" shows the poem knows exactly what it is asking of the mother. Then comes the boldest image. "Methinks I hear her in the realms above, / And leaning forward with a filial love, / Invite you there." The phrase "Methinks" admits that the speaker is imagining this, and the effect is tender. A child whose life was short becomes a guide, her soul "enlarg'd," and the mother is invited to follow her.
The form supports this steady, controlled comfort. The poem is written in heroic couplets, rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter lines such as "eyes/lies" and "abode/bestow'd." Almost every couplet closes its thought with a full stop or pause, giving a measured, tolling rhythm. Contractions like "conqu'ror," "heav'nly" and "tow'ring" keep each line to its ten syllables. The odd pairing "tomb/come" now looks like an eye-rhyme, though the sounds may have been closer in Wheatley's time. The repeated "There there" in the fifth line briefly breaks the smooth pace, as if the speaker were stunned by the crowd she sees. In the final section the couplets run on for sixteen unbroken lines, which makes the consolation feel like one long upward movement. It ends on rising words: "tow'ring hopes," "arise," "beyond the skies."
Elegies are often thought of as poems that mourn, but this one is closer to an argument with a rival. Death is given every grand title (conqueror, tyrant, glutton), so that each can be taken back. Wheatley was an enslaved woman, and it is hard not to notice how much authority the speaker claims. She directs a "Madam" with a run of imperatives: "resign," "bow," "give," "arise." That confidence, and the way the poem turns an image of Death's greed into one of the soul's nourishment, is what makes it worth reading closely.