"To the KING's Most Excellent Majesty"
By Phillis Wheatley

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students of Marymount University, James West, Amy Ridderhof
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Sources

London : Printed for A. Bell, 1773Page images are sourced from two copies of the first edition housed in the Library of Congress.Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative, 1999Online SGML text from the University of Michigan HTI. SGML markup edited to conform to LiC parameters, including changes to element and attribute case, ligatures, and other special html characters.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not. Where pages break in the middle of a word, the complete word has been indicated prior to the page beginning.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section.

Citation

Wheatley, Phillis. "To the KING's Most Excellent Majesty". Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Printed for A. Bell, 1773 , p 17 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthology.lib.virginia.edu/work/Wheatley/wheatley-majesty. Accessed: 2024-11-21T10:59:12.43Z

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TEST Audio
17 To the KING's Most Excellent Majesty. 1768. 1YOUR subjects hope, dread Sire -- 2The crown upon your brows may flourish long, 3And that your arm may in your God be strong! 4O may your sceptre num'rous nations sway, 5And all with love and readiness obey! 6But how shall we the British king reward! 7Rule thou in peace, our father, and our lord! 8Midst the remembrance of thy favours past, 9The meanest peasants most admire the last.*auth1auth1The Repeal of the Stamp Act. [Wheatley's note.] 10May George, belov'd by all the nations round, 11Live with heav'ns choicest constant blessings crown'd! 12Great God, direct, and guard him from on high 13And from his head let ev'ry evil fly! 14And may each clime with equal gladness see 15A monarch's smile can set his subjects free!

Footnotes

Footnotes

_auth1The Repeal of the Stamp Act. [Wheatley's note.]