On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley: analysis

On Being Brought from Africa to America the full poem, lines numbered

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

5Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

The poem in 60 seconds

Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped from West Africa as a child and enslaved by the Wheatley family of Boston. This eight-line poem appeared in her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), among the first books of poetry published by an African American. It calls the speaker’s passage from Africa a mercy, then turns to face people who call Black skin the devil’s dye. Readers still argue about whether the poem accepts the story slavery’s defenders told or quietly turns Christian teaching against them.

The speaker says it was mercy that brought the speaker away from a “Pagan land.” That mercy taught a “benighted” soul, one living in spiritual darkness, that there is a God and also a Saviour. Line 4 adds that the speaker once neither looked for redemption nor knew what it was.

Line 5 widens the view from “me” to “our sable race,” meaning Black people. Some people, the speaker says, look at this race with a scornful eye. The poem then quotes what they say: that Black skin is a “diabolic die.” Die is an old spelling of dye, so the claim is that the devil colored Black people’s skin.

The last two lines answer by speaking straight to Christians. The speaker tells them to remember that “Negroes, black as Cain,” may be refined and may join the “angelic train,” the company of angels in heaven. The poem ends on that claim: the salvation Christians teach is open to Black people too.

Speaker & situation

SpeakerAn African-born Christian convert looking back on being brought to America. The poem never names the speaker, but readers usually take the voice to be Wheatley’s own. She was freed around 1773 or 1774, close to the time the book appeared.

Addressed toAt first, any reader. In line 7 the speaker turns to “Christians” and addresses them directly, right after describing the people who scorn Black skin.

OccasionThe speaker reflects on the journey from Africa, which the poem credits to mercy, and on the faith learned afterward. The poem then answers people who call Black skin the work of the devil.

SettingThe title names the movement from Africa to America. Inside the poem the only place named is a “Pagan land,” and the final line points toward heaven.

ToneDevout and grateful in the first four lines, then firm and corrective in the last four. Readers disagree about how to hear the gratitude: as sincere faith, as a careful strategy with white readers, or as both at once.

The speaker

Narrator and convert

An African-born Christian who credits mercy with the journey to America and the faith learned there. Readers usually identify the speaker with Wheatley herself.

The scorners

People who despise Black people

The “Some” of line 5, who view Black people “with scornful eye” and call their color the devil’s dye. The poem gives them one line of quoted speech.

The Christians

Addressed in line 7

The readers the speaker commands to “Remember.” The poem does not say outright that they are the same people as the scorners, but placing the address right after the insult suggests the two groups overlap.

Form & sound

FormHeroic couplets; eight lines arranged as four rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter. This was the leading form of English poetry in the eighteenth century, used by poets such as Alexander Pope.

MeterIambic pentameter: ten syllables in five unstressed-stressed pairs. Line 5, for example, scans as some VIEW our SAble RACE with SCORNful EYE. Elisions such as “’Twas” (line 1) and “th’ angelic” (line 8) hold those lines to ten syllables, and the apostrophe in “refin’d” shows that the -ed is not sounded as a separate syllable. Line 2 opens on a stressed syllable, “Taught,” a common variation.

Rhyme schemeAABBCCDD. The pairs are land and understand (lines 1–2), too and knew (lines 3–4), eye and die (lines 5–6), and Cain and train (lines 7–8). The last rhyme joins the Bible’s first murderer to the company of angels.

SoundAlliteration links key words: the s sounds of “Some,” “sable” and “scornful” in line 5, and the d sounds of “diabolic die” in line 6. In line 7 the hard k sound runs through “Christians,” “black” and “Cain,” setting the listeners’ name beside the insult.

StructureOne stanza made of three sentences: lines 1 to 4, lines 5 to 6, and lines 7 to 8. The first four lines speak of “me” and “my”; the last four speak of “our sable race” and then address Christians. Line 2 runs on into line 3 without punctuation, and the subject of the last sentence, “Negroes,” waits until line 8 for its verb.

Line by line what each part says and does

1

Lines 1–4

Mercy and conversion

The speaker says mercy brought the speaker out of a “Pagan land” and taught a “benighted” soul that there is a God and a Saviour. Line 4 adds that the speaker once neither looked for redemption nor knew of it.

How it worksThe opening speaks the language of Christian conversion that Wheatley’s readers would recognize. The word “mercy” divides readers: some take it as sincere thanks, while others note that it leaves the people who carried the speaker out of the story entirely.
2

Lines 5–6

The scornful eye

The poem turns from “me” to “our sable race” and describes people who look at Black people with scorn. It then quotes their words, the claim that Black skin is a “diabolic die,” a color made by the devil.

How it worksSetting the insult in quotation marks holds it at a distance and marks it as someone else’s opinion. The pronoun “our” shows the speaker standing with other Black people rather than apart from them.
3

Lines 7–8

Remember, Christians

The speaker addresses Christians directly and tells them to remember that Black people, “black as Cain,” may be “refin’d” and may join the “angelic train” in heaven. This single sentence ends the poem.

How it worksThe command “Remember” implies that the readers already know this teaching and have failed to apply it. The once “benighted” speaker now instructs Christians, a reversal of roles that many readers see as the poem’s quiet point.

The turn

Lines 5

The poem turns from private testimony to public argument. Lines 1 to 4 tell the speaker’s own story with “me” and “my.” Line 5 speaks of “our sable race” and the people who scorn it, and line 7 sharpens the turn into a direct command to Christians.

Literary devices with line numbers

Personification

In lines 1 and 2, mercy is the one who acts: “’Twas mercy brought me” and mercy “Taught my benighted soul.” Making mercy the agent frames the journey as part of God’s plan. It also means the people who actually carried the speaker from Africa never appear in the poem, a silence that readers interpret in opposite ways.

Wordplay on darkness

The poem keeps returning to words for darkness. In line 2, “benighted” means spiritually ignorant, but its root is night. In line 5, “sable” is a formal word for black, and in line 6, “die” is an old spelling of dye. The speaker applies darkness to an unconverted soul in line 2, then shows others applying it to skin in line 6, and the contrast separates a darkness that faith can cure from one that has nothing to do with faith.

Quotation of opponents

Line 6 is set in quotation marks: “Their colour is a diabolic die.” The speaker reports the prejudice in the scorners’ own words instead of stating it as a personal belief. That separation lets the final couplet answer the claim head on.

Direct address

In line 7 the speaker turns to the readers with a command: “Remember, Christians.” The imperative gives an African convert the role of teacher, reminding Christians of a doctrine they already claim to hold.

Biblical allusion

In line 7, the simile “black as Cain” refers to Cain, who in Genesis kills his brother Abel and is given a mark by God. The phrase links dark skin to the Bible’s first murderer, and line 8 answers it by saying that even people described this way may join the “angelic train.” Some critics also hear an echo of a racist belief that Cain’s mark was dark skin.

Double meaning

In line 8, “refin’d” can mean purified, the way metal is refined in fire, a familiar biblical image for spiritual cleansing. It can also mean polished and cultured. Read the first way, the line is about salvation. Read the second way, it also claims for Black people the cultivation that their scorners might reserve for themselves.

Themes in On Being Brought from Africa to America

Conversion and redemptionChristian equality against prejudiceWho has the right to teachMercy and the slave trade

Conversion and redemption

The poem’s stated subject is the speaker’s movement from not knowing God to faith in “a God” and “a Saviour” (line 3). Christian redemption frames everything else, including the closing claim that Black people can be saved.

Christian equality against prejudice

The final couplet turns Christian teaching into an argument. If the faith says any soul can be refined, then Christians who scorn Black people are breaking with their own beliefs. The poem answers a racist claim with doctrine its readers already accept.

Who has the right to teach

The poem begins with a soul that had to be “Taught” (line 2) and ends with the same speaker instructing Christians (line 7). Some readers of Wheatley’s time doubted that an enslaved African could write poetry, and before her book was published a group of prominent Boston men signed a statement that she had written the poems. The confident command at the end is part of the poem’s case.

Mercy and the slave trade

Line 1 calls being taken from Africa a mercy, and readers disagree about what to make of that. Some read it as accepting a claim made by defenders of slavery, that enslavement was a kindness because it brought Africans to Christianity. Others argue that the mercy belongs to God alone, working in spite of the people who carried the speaker away, and they note that the poem never praises those people.

Images and symbols

Darkness

Darkness stands for ignorance of God in line 2 (“benighted”) and becomes an insult about skin in lines 5 to 7. The poem pulls the two apart: the speaker’s soul was dark before conversion, but skin color, the poem argues, keeps no one from heaven.

Refining

The image in line 8 comes from metalwork, where fire burns away impurities to leave pure metal. It pictures salvation as a process open to anyone, which answers the scorners’ claim that Black skin carries a stain from the devil.

The angelic train

A train here is a procession or company. The “angelic train” of line 8 pictures heaven as a gathering of angels that Black people may join, so the poem’s last image is one of welcome.

Patterns

Knowing and remembering. The speaker learns to “understand” in line 2, recalls in line 4 a time when redemption was neither sought nor known, and tells Christians to “Remember” in line 7. The poem moves from the speaker gaining knowledge to the speaker reminding others of knowledge they have let slip.

Tensions

Faith vs. prejudice. The Christian belief that any soul can be saved collides with the scorn some people show for Black skin. The final couplet settles the conflict on the side of faith.

Gratitude vs. protest. The poem thanks mercy for the journey from Africa and also rebukes people who hold Black people in contempt. Readers disagree about how the two fit together, and about whether the gratitude softens the protest or makes it possible.

The ending

How On Being Brought from Africa to America ends, explained

The poem ends with one sentence addressed to Christians: Black people, “black as Cain,” may be “refin’d” and may join the “angelic train.” On its surface the couplet states a point of doctrine. If Christianity teaches that any soul can be purified and saved, then Black people can be saved too, and the scorn described in lines 5 and 6 has no basis in the faith.

Readers disagree about how much more the ending does. One reading takes the whole poem at its word. The speaker thanks God for being brought from Africa, accepts the idea that enslavement was a mercy because it led to Christianity, and asks only that Black converts be counted among the saved. Some readers see this as sincere evangelical faith; others have faulted the poem for it.

Another reading hears a sharper voice. The command “Remember” suggests that the Christians being addressed know their own teaching but fail to live by it. The word “refin’d” can mean spiritually purified, but it can also mean cultivated, which quietly claims for Black people the polish the scorners keep for themselves. Some readers also point out that the commas in line 7 let “Christians” and “Negroes” be read side by side, as if both groups are “black as Cain” and both need refining.

Many readers hold that both readings can be true at once: the faith is sincere, and it is also used to challenge the people who share it.

“’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land”

Line 1. The opening credits mercy for the journey from Africa. Readers who think the poem accepts slavery point to this line first, while others read it as thanking God rather than the people who carried the speaker away.

“Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.”

Line 4. The inverted word order places “redemption” early and stresses how completely the speaker’s life changed. The line closes the personal half of the poem.

“Some view our sable race with scornful eye, / “Their colour is a diabolic die.””

Lines 5–6. The move from “my” to “our” and the quoted insult carry the poem from testimony to argument.

“Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, / May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.”

Lines 7–8. The closing command reminds Christians that their faith offers salvation to Black people too. The double meaning of “refin’d” sits at the center of the debate over whether the poem is simply devout or also a rebuke.

Common misreadings

MythThe poem simply says slavery was good.

ActuallyLine 1 calls being brought from Africa a mercy, but the poem never uses the word slavery or mentions slaveholders, and it ends by rebuking people who scorn Black people. Readers disagree about whether the opening is sincere, strategic or both.

MythThe line “Their colour is a diabolic die” is the speaker’s own opinion.

ActuallyLine 6 is in quotation marks. It reports what the “Some” of line 5 say about Black people, and the final couplet answers it.

Myth“Die” in line 6 is about death.

ActuallyIn line 6, “die” is an older spelling of dye, and that is its main sense. The scorners claim that the devil colored Black people’s skin.

AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style

Read Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” published in 1773. Then write an essay that analyzes how Wheatley uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on Christian faith and on the way some Christians regard Black people.

What a strong response notices

Lines 1–4: the conversion story is told in the first person, and mercy, not any human being, is the subject of “brought” and “Taught.”
Line 5: the pronoun shifts from “my” to “our sable race,” moving the poem from private testimony to a public case.
Line 6: the insult is set in quotation marks, which marks it as the scorners’ view rather than the speaker’s.
Line 7: the imperative “Remember, Christians” makes the convert the teacher, and the allusion to Cain names the prejudice before answering it.
Line 8: “refin’d” carries both a spiritual and a social meaning, and the rhyme of “Cain” with “train” (lines 7–8) joins the Bible’s first murderer to the company of angels.

Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.

Test yourself

1. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?

2. According to line 1, what brought the speaker from a “Pagan land”?

3. Whose words are quoted in line 6?

4. In line 5, what does “sable” mean?

5. Which pair of meanings do readers find in “refin’d” in line 8?

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Answer

Explain it like I’m 12

Phillis Wheatley was taken from Africa as a child and enslaved by a family in Boston. In this short poem, the speaker says being brought to America was a mercy, because it led to learning about God. Then the poem turns to people who look down on Black people and say their skin color comes from the devil. The speaker tells Christians to remember that Black people can go to heaven too. People still argue about the first line. Some think Wheatley meant it plainly, and others think she was carefully using Christian ideas to scold Christians who treated Black people unfairly.

Compare & connect

We Wear the Mask

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Another poem by a Black American poet about a smiling public face that hides what lies beneath it. The gap between surface and depth is the heart of the debate over Wheatley’s tone.

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

Frederick Douglass

Douglass openly charges American Christians with hypocrisy about slavery, a useful contrast with Wheatley’s quieter reminder to “Christians” in line 7.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes

Hughes presents an ancient heritage, including African rivers, as a source of depth and pride, while Wheatley’s speaker calls Africa a “Pagan land.” Reading them together shows how differently two Black poets frame an African past.

Discussion and essay prompts:

💬 Discussion questions

What is On Being Brought from Africa to America about
Does On Being Brought from Africa to America support slavery
What does refined mean in On Being Brought from Africa to America
How does On Being Brought from Africa to America explore the theme of conversion and redemption?
How does On Being Brought from Africa to America explore the theme of christian equality against prejudice?
What is the central conflict in On Being Brought from Africa to America, and how does it shape the ending?

✎ Essay prompts

Analyze how Phillis Wheatley develops the theme of conversion and redemption in On Being Brought from Africa to America. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
Examine the significance of darkness in On Being Brought from Africa to America. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
How does Phillis Wheatley use personification to shape the reader’s experience of On Being Brought from Africa to America?
Some readers assume that the poem simply says slavery was good. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.

Key questions students ask

What is On Being Brought from Africa to America about
Does On Being Brought from Africa to America support slavery
What does refined mean in On Being Brought from Africa to America
Who is the speaker addressing in On Being Brought from Africa to America
What is the rhyme scheme of On Being Brought from Africa to America
What does black as Cain mean in Phillis Wheatley’s poem

Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), as edited by Standard Ebooks. It is in the public domain.