To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1773

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Wheatley uses a rigid structure in this lyric poem, though she does not use a traditional poetic form. Wheatley's writing has a musical quality due to its meter and rhyme, which aligns with her Neoclassical tendencies and her admiration of poets like John Milton.

The first 12 lines are an example of ekphrasis, or a deeply emotional response to a piece of art. Her praise and glorification of S.M. in both emotional and intellectual terms suggest that the poem is an ode, though the poem lacks the strict structural breaks of the form. Finally, the turn toward death marks the end of the poem as an elegy lamenting the death of creative expression.

Like much Neoclassical poetry, Wheatley uses heroic couplets—rhyming couplets written in iambic pentameter (five sets of stressed and unstressed syllables) that end on a stressed syllable. By using this form, Wheatley elevates her subject to the status of a hero, while emphasizing her deep admiration for his artistic skills.

While the form of this poem mirrors the conventions used by poets she studied, like Alexander Pope and John Dryden, Wheatley deviates from strict form by including near or slant rhymes, subtle disruptions of the expected rhyme scheme that draw attention to these lines.

Allusions

Wheatley uses allusions, or indirect references to outside works that the reader would recognize, to support her themes. Wheatley’s allusions could be categorized into Christian and Neoclassical groups.

Her Christian allusions support her discussion of freedom and creativity. Her allusion to the “Celestial Salem” with “twice six gates on radiant hinges” (Line 18, 17) refers to the biblical New Jerusalem, or the heaven on earth after the Second Coming of Jesus. Here, the poet and their subject will be “[t]hrice happy” (Line 15) to live and create. The speaker connects her artistic ascension to the wings of angels when she declares that she and S.M. will move on “seraphic pinions” (Line 25), released from their human bodies and experiencing freedom in a deeper, more profound way. This desire is especially evocative as the poet and the subject were both previously enslaved and experienced harsh limitations even as free people.

Wheatley’s classical allusions span the myth of noble friends Damon and Pythias, the divine inspiration of the Muses, and the figure Aurora. However, unlike her religious allusions, Wheatley uses the classical references to reject Neoclassical secular immortality and artistic legacy. For instance, though Wheatley acknowledges that the “rising radiance of Aurora” (Line 30), the Roman personification of the dawn, is a fitting image for Morehead’s paintings, Wheatley entreats him to instead focus on “nobler themes” (Line 31). This allusion suggests that the immortality gained from Christianity is a more pure state than that attained by the Greeks, Romans, and Neoclassical artists.