Summary
After the sunset, thunder resounds through the plain, and a gentle wind brings the scent of spring. Streams softly purl as birds begin to sing and the air is filled with their music. Throughout heaven, there are many "beauteous dies," or beautiful colors, but the west glories the deepest red. The speaker desires "our breasts" to be filled with virtue, and for humans to be living temples of God while on earth. As people are filled with praise for God, who brings light and pulls the black curtains of night, the speaker wishes calm sleep to soothe weary minds and to allow people to awake more heavenly and refined so that they can be free from sin. The poem ends with night closing the speaker's eyes with a sceptre, and the speaker bidding their song to cease until fair Aurora rises.
Analysis
Like many of Wheatley's other poems, this poem employs rhyming couplets as its main rhyme scheme. The poem has four stanzas, broken up into 6 lines, 4 lines, 6 lines, and 2 lines. These 18 lines are similar in form to a heroic sonnet.
This poem begins with a blissful description of nightfall, as a clash of thunder leads to a gentle wind, the scent of spring, and the singing of birds and the burbling of streams. These lines establish a musical quality to the "heav'nly plain."
The poem then shifts to a description of the colors of heaven, as the speaker describes the many "beauteous dies" of heaven. This phrasing evokes the "diabolic die" ascribed to the black people in "On Being Brought From Africa to America." Indeed, in heaven, people of all races preside, according to the speaker of this poem, but "the west glories in the deepest red." This red is the color of blood, and symbolizes anger and aggression. Thus, while the speaker is describing heaven as an idyllic place for all people, the west is an aggressive and deadly place. This red contrasts with the apostrophe, or direct address, of the speaker to the reader, which states the hope that "our breasts" glow with virtue and be temples of God.
In the following stanza, the speaker hopes that once people are filled with praise for God, who brings light and the curtain of night, that all will sleep well and wake to greater purity and refinement, and will be guarded from sin. This stanza suggests the themes of previous poems, where Wheatley contends with the dichotomy between people who support the enslavement of Africans and believe in God. The speaker here hopes that people will become temples of god so that they are guarded from sin and look more towards heaven.
The final couplet of the poem employs the motif of the night's leaden sceptre as a metaphor for tiredness. The poem ends with another apostrophe asking the song to cease until the sunrise, represented by the Roman goddess Aurora.
