To His Excellency General Washington

In the poem, Wheatley twice evokes a muse, eventually calling on the embodiment of inspiration to bring her pen good favor: “Muse! Bow propitious while my pen relates ...” (Line 13). This is one of Wheatley’s clearest allusions to classical and neoclassical tradition. In ancient Greek and Roman epics, the speaker of a poem often opened on a summons of the muse when composing poetry, music, or histories. Such a gesture signaled a grandiosity of the work at hand, its events, and characters. By calling on the muse, to “bow propitious” (Line 13) the poet figuratively gives herself over as a vessel to the spirit of inspiration so that the composition at hand might be inspired to greatness.

True to the nature of a poem focused on a war and its general, Wheatley’s poem presents idealized images of war and warrior culture. Classical and neoclassical traditions both have long continuums of verse honoring war and its warriors; Homer’s famed epics Iliad and Odyssey focus on the battle and the subsequent journey home following the fall of Troy. Over centuries, various writers and poets borrowed techniques, allusions, and characters from the epics, hearkening back to, parodying, and taking inspiration from its depictions of heroism.