To His Excellency General Washington

Elision is the omission of a syllable or sound in a word; this is indicated by the eliding apostrophe and serves the purpose of changing the way a word is pronounced to better fit a given metrical scheme. Commonplace in 17th and 18th century—as well as neoclassical—poetry, elisions are a mainstay of the inherited form and the aesthetics of classical and neoclassical poetry Wheatley was working to evoke. The presence of elisions in “To His Excellency General Washington” offer their own aesthetic value to a page, instantly self-identifying in the style of old masters. In the poem, Wheatley uses elision to keep the music of her lines even, allowing the lines to maintain a predictable pulse throughout. As metrical traditions have been challenged by blank verse—which is currently the most common form of poetry—elisions have become a novel artifact owing to an earlier age of writing.

Wheatley’s specific diction choices have a profound impact on the poem. Within the poem’s sonic textures, Wheatley frequently employs alliteration, the doubling of consonant sounds in words close to one another on a line:

When Gallic powers Columbia's fury found;         

And so may you, whoever dares disgrace (Lines 30-31)[.