Phillis Wheatley addresses a lady grieving the deaths of three family members—a brother and two sisters. The poem opens with a grand, unsettling vision of Death as a ruler who commands the planets and can shake the world. Yet this force is not final: the brother’s spirit breaks free, rising above the stars. The speaker gently scolds the mourner for weeping in vain, then likens her sisters to young plants torn from the earth but replanted in a radiant court, shining on golden thrones. Wheatley’s tone shifts from awe at death’s scope to tender insistence: stop your tears, fix your longing on heaven, and ascend in thought to join the seraphs’ ecstatic song. The mood is solemn but grows hopeful as sorrow yields to the promise of seeing God. The final lines invite the mourner to add her voice to the divine praise, finding solace in faith.
To A Lady On The Death Of The Three Relations — Summary
WE trace the pow'r of Death from tomb to tomb, And his are all the ages yet to come. 'Tis his to call the planets from on high, To blacken Phoebus, and dissolve the sky; His too, when all in his dark realms are hurl'd, From its firm base to shake the solid world; His fatal sceptre rules the spacious whole, And trembling nature rocks from pole to pole. Awful he moves, and wide his wings are spread: Behold thy brother number'd with the dead! From bondage freed, the exulting spirit flies Beyond Olympus, and these starry skies. Lost in our woe for thee, blest shade, we mourn In vain; to earth thou never must return. Thy sisters too, fair mourner, feel the dart Of Death, and with fresh torture rend thine heart. Weep not for them, and leave the world behind. As a young plant by hurricanes up torn, So near its parent lies the newly born-- But 'midst the bright ehtereal train behold It shines superior on a throne of gold: Then, mourner, cease; let hope thy tears restrain, Smile on the tomb, and sooth the raging pain. On yon blest regions fix thy longing view, Mindless of sublunary scenes below; Ascend the sacred mount, in thought arise, And seek substantial and immortal joys; Where hope receives, where faith to vision springs, And raptur'd seraphs tune th' immortal strings To strains extatic. Thou the chorus join, And to thy father tune the praise divine.