“Attend my lays, ye every honour’d nine”
Phillis Wheatley’s poem “An Hymn to the Morning” consists of ten riming couplets. As the early 18th century poets such as Alexander Pope did, the speaker of Wheatley’s poem addresses the nine muses, asking them to guide her hand, heart, and mind as she composes her song. The nine muses are the goddesses who guide and guard the various arts and sciences: Cleo (heroes), Urania (astronomy), Calliope (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Euterpe (lyric poetry), Erato (love), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Polyhymnia (sacred hymns).
Then the speaker says that dawn, “Aurora” or goddess of dawn, is motivating her to write her song dedicated to the goddess of morning, and the speaker wants the song to flow smoothly like a gentle brook, so she asks the muses to “pour the notes along.” The speaker want to be sure her song his worthy of being dedicated to the important morning deity.
“Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies”
As morning approaches, the stars recede from view, and the speaker asks the muses to help her honor dawn’s victory of arrival. The speaker describes the morning’s sun with its far-reaching rays of light. She observes that the light is falling on every leaf, and a gentle breeze is playing upon them.
She pays homage to the songs of the birds as she describes their singing as “harmonious,” and she notes that as the birds are looking around, their eyes are darting about, and they are shaking their feathers as they wake up.
“Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display”The speaker then addresses the trees, asking them to “shield your poet from the burning day.” She exaggerates somewhat as she calls their shade “verdant gloom.” But the comparison is playful and serves well to foreground the brightness of the sun and the colorful morning sunrise.
She addresses Calliope, the muse of music, to play upon the lyre, while her sisters, the other muses, “fan the pleasing fire.” Fanning fire makes it burn brighter, and she is celebrating the rising sun that becomes warmer and brighter as it becomes more visible. The little drama is pleasing the poet as she composes.
“The bow'rs, the gales, the variegated skies”
The speaker thinks of leafy alcoves, and gentle breezes, and the sky with its many colors of purple, pink, orange stretching across the vast panorama of blue, and these things give her much pleasure.
Then she suddenly exclaims, “look! the sun!,” to whom she refers as the “king of day.” As the sun rises, all darkness has gradually faded away. The radiance of the sun inspires the speaker so immensely, but then she feels something of a let down: “But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong, / And scarce begun, concludes th' abortive song.” As soon as the sun has fully arrived, then the morning is gone, and her song was celebrating morning, and thus the song must end.
