To His Excellency General Washington

Despite his titular stance, General Washington does not enter the poem until the fourth of five stanzas. Instead, “His Excellency General Washington” is more a showcase of neoclassical style and its ability to heighten and elevate a given feeling, moment, person, or event. In this case, General Washington’s heroism in the clash against British forces is heightened to mythological status, alluding in Line 6 to the spectacle of the colonial rebellion on a world stage that was at the time populated by imperialist superpowers. To capture the enormity and significance of such a daring rebellion, Wheatley composes the poem in heroic couplets. In his landmark epic Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer championed the heroic couplet, which are used for composing verse extolling tales and figures of heroism throughout much of 17th and 18th century poetry. Each of Wheatley’s lines is a 10 or nearly 10 syllable lines with its duplicate end rhyme and imagery echoed in the immediate next.

In Lines 13–28, Wheatley’s imagery empowers the poem’s middle passages, guiding the reader to the poem’s turn at Line 23, and on to the end of the poem.