{
 "id": "phillis-wheatley/to-the-right-honourable-william-earl-of-dartmouth-his-majestys-princip",
 "title": "To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North-America, etc.",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Phillis Wheatley",
 "poet_slug": "phillis-wheatley",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral",
 "book_slug": "poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 22,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1773,
  "venue": "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://github.com/standardebooks/phillis-wheatley_poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
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  "repo": "standardebooks/phillis-wheatley_poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral",
  "file": "poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/409",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsonvarioussu273whea",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofphilliswh00whea_1"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-14"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 43,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The northern clime beneath her genial ray,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While in thine hand with pleasure we behold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The silken reins, and Freedom’s charms unfold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She shines supreme, while hated faction dies:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Soon as appear’d the Goddess long desir’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sick at the view, she languish’d and expir’d;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus from the splendors of the morning light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "No more, America, in mournful strain",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whence flow these wishes for the common good,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By feeling hearts alone best understood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What pangs excruciating must molest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such, such my case. And can I then but pray",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Others may never feel tyrannic sway?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And thee we ask thy favours to renew,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since in thy pow’r, as in thy will before,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To sooth the griefs, which thou did’st once deplore.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May heav’nly grace the sacred sanction give",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To all thy works, and thou for ever live",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though praise immortal crowns the patriot’s name,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But to conduct to heav’ns refulgent fane,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May fiery coursers sweep th’ ethereal plain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And bear thee upwards to that blest abode,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}