Phillis Wheatley's Poem. Help please!.?

Question

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,

Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,

Whence flow these wishes for the common good,

By feeling hearts alone best understood,

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate

Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:

What pangs excruciating must molest,

What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?

Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd

That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd:

Such, such my case. And can I then but pray

Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

Can someone please explain this poem to me, I don't understand this poem as much as I should. Can you put it in your own words so it's easier for me to understand? Thank you.

Answer 1

It's probably easy if you remember that Phillis Wheatley was taken by force from her African home and sold into slavery in the United States at the age of seven.

She tries to explain her love of freedom and her desire for the good of all people. People who read her poem (song), who have hearts that feel will understand her best. Where did she get this love?

When she was young, she was taken from her native Africa, somewhere in central Africa (She calls it the seat as it's the centre; it's believed it was Senegal) and she tries to imagine what it must have been like for her parent. She seems to have her father especially in mind. She tries to imagine too what a heart of steel, a heart that cannot feel, that person must have had who took her by force from her father.

That is what happened to her (such my case) so she claims she has no alternative but to hope (pray) that other people may never experience the tyranny that took her away and made her a slave.