Emma Lazarus

Well-nigh two thousand years hath Israel Suffered the scorn of man for love of God;
Endured the outlaw's ban, the yoke, the rod,
With perfect patience.
Empires rose and fell

Uplift the ponderous, golden mask of death,
And let the sun shine on him as it did
How many thousand years agone! Beneath
This worm-defying, uncorrupted lid,…

In rich Virginian woods,
The scarlet creeper reddens over graves,
Among the solemn trees enlooped with vines;
Heroic spirits haunt the solitudes,—The noble souls of half a million braves,

Look! the round-cheeked moon floats high,
In the glowing August sky,
Quenching all her neighbor stars,
Save the steady flame of Mars.

Down the goldenest of streams,
Tide of dreams,
The fair cradled man-child drifts;
Sways with cadenced motion slow,…

So,
Calchas, on the sacred Palatine,
You thought of Mopsus, and o'er wastes of sea A flower brought your message.
I divine (Through my deep art) the kindly mockery That played about your lips and in your eyes

I give God thanks that I, a lean old man,
Wrinkled, infirm, and crippled with keen pains
By austere penance and continuous toil,
Now rest in spirit, and possess "the peace…

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

What art thou doing here, O Imagination? Go
away I entreat thee by the gods, as thou didst
come, for I want thee not. But thou art come
according to thy old fashion. I am not angry…

Here was a man who watched the river flow Past the huge town, one gray November day.
Round him in narrow high-piled streets at
The boys made merry as they saw him go,
Murmuring half-loud, with eyes upon the stream

I.Over the lamp-lit street,
Trodden by hurrying feet,
Where mostly pulse and beat
Life's throbbing veins,…

If the sudden tidings came
That on some far, foreign coast,
Buried ages long from fame,
Had been found a remnant lost…

"The epochs of our life are not in the facts, but in thesilent thought by the wayside as we walk."—EmersonI.
Youth.
Sweet empty sky of June without a stain,
Faint, gray-blue dewy mists on far-off hills

March 13, 1881.As one who feels the breathless nightmare grip
His heart-strings, and through visioned horrors fares,
Now on a thin-ledged chasm's rock-crumbling lip,
Now on a tottering pinnacle that dare…

I see it as it looked one afternoon In August,-by a fresh soft breeze o'erblown.
The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon,
A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon.
The shining waters with pale currents strewn

Ten o'clock: the broken moon
Hangs not yet a half hour high,
Yellow as a shield of brass,
In the dewy air of June,…

Not while the fever of the blood is strong,
The heart throbs loud, the eyes are veiled, no less With passion than with tears, the Muse shall bless The poet-sould to help and soothe with song.
Not then she bids his trembling lips express…

"O World-God, give me Wealth!" the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was granted.
High as heaven,
Palace and Pyramid; the brimming

Music and silver chimes and sunlit air,
Freighted with the scent of honeyed orange-flower;
Glad, friendly festal faces everywhere.
She, rapt from all in this unearthly hour

Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,
Dreamlike before me floating! what
Behind thy pearly
Opaque, mysterious woof?

On a background of pale goldI would trace with quaint design,
Penciled fine,
Brilliant-colored,
Moorish scenes,

1856 Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass,
Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells,
And martial strains, the full-voiced pæan swells.
The air is starred with flags, the chanted mass Throngs all the churches, yet the…

A
AM of lilies: all the blooming earth,
A garden full of fairies and of flowers;
Its only music the glad cry of mirth,