Emma Lazarus

Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate, Didst weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword, The children of the prophets of the Lord,

Where is the man who has been tried and found strong and sound? Where is the friend of reason and of knowledge? I see only sceptics and weaklings.

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

But yesterday the earth drank like a child With eager thirst the autumn rain. Or like a wistful bride who waits the hour

(A Dream.) Not a stain, In the sun-brimmed sapphire cup that is the sky -

Born July 22, 1849; Died November 19, 1887. One hesitates to lift the veil and throw the light upon a life so hidden and a personality so withdrawn as that of Emma Lazarus; but

Yea, she hath looked Truth grimly face to face, And drained unto the lees the proffered cup. This silence is not patience, nor the grace

To my friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He who could beard the lion in his lair, To bind him for a girl, and tame the boar,

Long in the lap of childhood didst thou sleep, Think how thy youth like chaff did disappear; Shall life's sweet Spring forever last? Look up,

Small, shapeless drifts of cloud Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky, With blur half-tints and rolling summits bright,

Uplift the ponderous, golden mask of death, And let the sun shine on him as it did How many thousand years agone!    Beneath

Come closer, kind, white, long-familiar friend, Embrace me, fold me to thy broad, soft breast. Life has grown strange and cold, but thou dost bend

From Joshua Ibn Vives of Allorqui to his Former Master, Solomon Levi-Paul, de Santa-Maria, Bishop of Cartegna Chancellor of Castile, and Privy Councillor to King Henry III. of Spain. [In this poem I have done little more than elaborate and versify the account given in Graetz's History of the Jews (Vol. VIII., page 77), of an Epistle actually written in the beginning of the 15th century by Joshua ben Joseph Ibn Vives to Paulus de Santa Maria - E.L.] I.

On a background of pale gold I would trace with quaint design, Penciled fine,

Dark lies the earth, and bright with worlds the sky: That soft, large, lustrous star, that first outshone, Still holds us spelled with potent sorcery.

Look! the round-cheeked moon floats high, In the glowing August sky, Quenching all her neighbor stars,

Air and sky are swathed in gold Fold on fold, Light glows through the trees like wine.

Weep, Israel! your tardy meed outpour Of grateful homage on his fallen head, That never coronal of triumph wore,

I. A    dream of interlinking hands, of feet Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof,

1. Long, long has the Orient-Jew spun around his helplessness the cunningly enmeshed web of Talmud and Kabbala. 2. Imprisoned in dark corners of misery and oppression, closely he drew about him the dust-gray filaments, soft as silk and stubborn as steel, until he lay death-stiffened in mummied seclusion. 3. And the world has named him an ugly worm, shunning the blessed daylight.

I. As the blind Milton's memory of light, The deaf Beethoven's phantasy of tone,

'T is not alone that black and yawning void That makes her heart ache with this hungry pain, But the glad sense of life hath been destroyed,

O strange, dim other-world revealed to us, Beginning there where ends reality, Lying 'twixt life and death, and populous

An Apologue. ("Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned; this man is neither simple, sensuous, nor impassioned; therefore he is not a poet.") No man had ever heard a nightingale,

1. Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable tides, oversweep our continent. 2. From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of Europe, 3. From Odessa and Bucharest, from Kief, and Ekaterinoslav,

"Conquer the gloomy night of thy sorrow, for the morning greets thee with laughter. Rise and clothe thyself with noble pride,

1856. Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass, Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells,

1879. Born to the purple, lying stark and dead, Transfixed with poisoned spears, beneath the sun

Not a lad in Saragossa Nobler-featured, haughtier-tempered, Than the Alcalde's youthful grandson,

"I would not have," he said, "Tears, nor the black pall, nor the wormy grave, Grief's hideous panoply I would not have

(From the German of Heine) In the evening through her garden Wanders the Alcalde's daughter,

Late-born and woman-souled I dare not hope, The freshness of the elder lays, the might Of manly, modern passion shall alight

Rest, beauty, stillness: not a waif of a cloud From gray-blue east sheer to the yellow west - No film of mist the utmost slopes to shroud.

I. The shadow of the houses leave behind, In the cool boscage of the grove reclined,

From the oped lattice glance once more abroad While the ethereal moontide bathes with light Hill, stream, and garden, and white-winding road.

She feels outwearied, as though o'er her head A storm of mighty billows broke and passed. Whose hand upheld her?    Who her footsteps led

The ceaseless whirr of crickets fills the ear From underneath each hedge and bush and tree, Deep in the dew-drenched grasses everywhere.

Like bodiless water passing in a sigh, Thro’ palsied streets the fatal shadows flow, And in their sharp disastrous undertow

Golden lights and lengthening shadows, Flings the splendid sun declining, O'er the monastery garden

My friend spoke with insinuating tongue: "Drink wine, and thy flesh shall be made whole. Look how it hisses in the leathern bottle like a captured serpent."

I never see, after nocturnal rain, The wandering stars move through the air serene, And flame forth 'twixt the dew-fall and the rime,

I know how well Love shoots, how swift his flight, How now by force and now by stealth he steals, How he will threaten now, anon will smite,

Now since nor grief nor fear was longer there, Each thought on her fair face was clear to see, Composed into the calmness of despair -

So, Calchas, on the sacred Palatine, Thou thought of Mopsus, and o'er wastes of sea A flower brought your message.    I divine

My thoughts impelled me to the resting-place Where sleep my parents, many a friend and brother. I asked them (no one heard and none replied):

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

There is a hungry longing in the soul, A craving sense of emptiness and pain, She may not satisfy nor yet control,

In rich Virginian woods, The scarlet creeper reddens over graves, Among the solemn trees enlooped with vines;

Her languid pulses thrill with sudden hope, That will not be forgot nor cast aside, And life in statelier vistas seems to ope,

How long, and yet how long, Our leaders will we hail from over seas, Master and kings from feudal monarchies,

Almighty! what is man? But flesh and blood. Like shadows flee his days,

"Since that day till now our life is one unbroken paradise. We live a true brotherly life. Every evening after supper we take a seat under the mighty oak and sing our songs." - Extract from a letter of a Russian refugee in Texas. Twilight is here, soft breezes bow the grass, Day's sounds of various toil break slowly off,

The golden harvest-tide is here, the corn Bows its proud tops beneath the reaper's hand. Ripe orchards' plenteous yields enrich the land;

The noble Column, the green Laurel-tree Are fall'n, that shaded once my weary mind. Now I have lost what I shall never find,

Yon nightingale who mourns so plaintively Perchance his fledglings or his darling mate, Fills sky and earth with sweetness, warbling late,

Unto the house of prayer my spirit yearns, Unto the sources of her being turns, To where the sacred light of heaven burns,

The God of Love and I in wonder stared, (Ne'er having gazed on miracles ere now,) Upon my lady's smiling lips and brow,

I saw on earth angelic graces beam, Celestial beauty in our world below, Whose mere remembrance thrills with grief and woe;

O waters fresh and sweet and clear, Where bathed her lovely frame, Who seems the only lady unto me;

Since thou and I have proven many a time That all our hope betrays us and deceives, To that consummate good which never grieves

Sennuccio, I would have thee know the shame That's dealt to me, and what a life is mine. Even as of yore, I struggle, burn and pine.

Let us go in: the air is dank and chill With dewy midnight, and the moon rides high O'er ghostly fields, pale stream, and spectral hill.

The fervent, pale-faced Mother ere she sleep, Looks out upon the zigzag-lighted square, The beautiful bare trees, the blue night-air,

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 little and the great are joined in one By God's great force.    The wondrous golden sun Is linked unto the glow-worm's tiny spark;

All stupor of surprise hath passed away; She sees, with clearer vision than before, A world far off of light and laughter gay,

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,

O city of the world, with sacred splendor blest, My spirit yearns to thee from out the far-off West, A stream of love wells forth when I recall thy day,

Look westward o'er the steaming rain-washed slopes, Now satisfied with sunshine, and behold Those lustrous clouds, as glorious as our hopes,

I. The long-closed door, oh open it again, send me back once more my fawn that had fled. On the day of our reunion, thou shalt rest by my side, there wilt thou shed over me the streams of thy delicious perfume.

"See'st thou o'er my shoulders falling, Snake-like ringlets waving free? Have no fear, for they are twisted

By the impulse of my will, By the red flame in my blood, By me nerves' electric thrill,

Down the goldenest of streams, Tide of dreams, The fair cradled man-child drifts;

Gray earth, gray mist, gray sky: Through vapors hurrying by, Larger than wont, on high

Forget thine anguish, Vexed heart, again. Why shouldst thou languish,

Night, and the heavens beam serene with peace, Like a pure heart benignly smiles the moon. Oh, guard thy blessed beauty from mischance,

Will night already spread her wings and weave Her dusky robe about the day's bright form, Boldly the sun's fair countenance displacing,

We sat at twilight nigh the sea, The fog hung gray and weird. Through the thick film uncannily

The grass of fifty Aprils hath waved green Above the spent heart, the Olympian head, The hands crost idly, the shut eyes unseen,

I. My two-score years and ten are over, Never again shall youth be mine.

The passion of despair is quelled at last; The cruel sense of undeserved wrong, The wild self-pity, these are also past;

The calm outgoing of a long, rich day, Checkered with storm and sunshine, gloom and light, Now passing in pure, cloudless skies away,

Raschi of Troyes, the Moon of Israel, The authoritative Talmudist, returned From his wide wanderings under many skies,

Thin summer rain on grass and bush and hedge, Reddening the road and deepening the green On wide, blurred lawn, and in close-tangled sedge;

Would I had waked this morn where Florence smiles, A-bloom with beauty, a white rose full-blown, Yet rich in sacred dust, in storied stone,

I give God thanks that I, a lean old man, Wrinkled, infirm, and crippled with keen pains By austere penance and continuous toil,

And so we twain must part! Oh linger yet, Let me still feed my glance upon thine eyes. Forget not, love, the days of our delight,

March 13, 1881. As one who feels the breathless nightmare grip His heart-strings, and through visioned horrors fares,

"Am I sipping the honey of the lips? Am I drunk with the wine of a kiss? Have I culled the flowers of the cheek,

Frosty lies the winter-landscape, In the twilight golden-green. Down the Park's deserted alleys,

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 with thee - only go away. - Marcus Antoninus Lilac hazes veil the skies.

I. Now the dreary winter's over, Fled with him are grief and pain,

I. Over the lamp-lit street, Trodden by hurrying feet,

When the vexed hubbub of our world of gain Roars round about me as I walk the street, The myriad noise of Traffic, and the beat

"With tears thy grief thou dost bemoan, Tears that would melt the hardest stone, Oh, wherefore sing'st thou not the vine?

Serene was morning with clear, winnowed air, But threatening soon the low, blue mass of cloud Rose in the west, with mutterings faint and rare

Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain, The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng. These I ignore to-day and only long

September 26, 1881. Weep for the martyr!    Strew his bier With the last roses of the year;

When the stunned soul can first lift tired eyes On her changed world of ruin, waste and wrack, Ah, what a pang of aching sharp surprise

It comes not in such wise as she had deemed, Else might she still have clung to her despair. More tender, grateful than she could have dreamed,

Therefore I dare reveal my private woe, The secret blots of my imperfect heart, Nor strive to shrink or swell mine own desert,

(After Robert Schumann.) Prelude. Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July

To my mother.    May, 1870. The Landgrave Hermann held a gathering Of minstrels, minnesingers, troubadours,

Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day The glorious Maccabean rage, The sire heroic, hoary-gray,

A Legend of the Talmud. I. When angels visit earth, the messengers

I saw in dream the spirits unbegot, Veiled, floating phantoms, lost in twilight space; For one the hour had struck, he paused; the place

There was a man who watched the river flow Past the huge town, one gray November day. Round him in narrow high-piled streets at play

Across the Eastern sky has glowed The flicker of a blood-red dawn, Once more the clarion cock has crowed,

A Historical Tragedy in Five Acts. This play is dedicated, in profound veneration and respect, to the memory of George Eliot, the illustrious writer, who did most among the artists of our day towards elevating and ennobling the spirit of Jewish nationality. THE PERSONS.

[Aaron Ben Mier "loquitur."] If I remember Raschi? An I live, Grandson, to bless thy grandchild, I'll forget

Teach me, my God and King, In all things Thee to see, And what I do in anything

What dainty note of long-drawn melody Athwart our dreamless sleep rings sweet and clear, Till all the fumes of slumber are brushed by,

1. The Spanish noon is a blaze of azure fire, and the dusty pilgrims crawl like an endless serpent along treeless plains and bleached highroads, through rock-split ravines and castellated, cathedral-shadowed towns. 2. The hoary patriarch, wrinkled as an almond shell, bows painfully upon his staff. The beautiful young mother, ivory-pale, well-nigh swoons beneath her burden; in her large enfolding arms nestles her sleeping babe, round her knees flock her little ones with bruised and bleeding feet. "Mother, shall we soon be there?" 3. The youth with Christ-like countenance speaks comfortably to father and brother, to maiden and wife. In his breast, his own heart is broken.

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth, And add each night a lustre till afar

Spoken by a Citizen of Malta - 1300. A curious title held in high repute, One among many honors, thickly strewn

MUSE. Give me a kiss, my poet, take thy lyre; The buds are bursting on the wild sweet-briar.

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

What, can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried By twenty scorching centuries of wrong? Is this the House of Israel, whose pride

ROSH-HASHANAH, 5643. Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled, And naked branches point to frozen skies, -

POET. My haunting grief has vanished like a dream, Its floating fading memory seems one

1. Moses Ben Maimon lifting his perpetual lamp over the path of the perplexed; 2. Hallevi, the honey-tongued poet, wakening amid the silent ruins of Zion the sleeping lyre of David; 3. Moses, the wise son of Mendel, who made the Ghetto illustrious;

Night, and beneath star-blazoned summer skies Behold the Spirit of the musky South, A creole with still-burning, languid eyes,

1. Over a boundless plain went a man, carrying seed. 2. His face was blackened by sun and rugged from tempest, scarred and distorted by pain. Naked to the loins, his back was ridged with furrows, his breast was plowed with stripes. 3. From his hand dropped the fecund seed.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE. DON JOHN of AUSTRIA. JOSEF RIBERA, the Spagnoletto.

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,

1. Daylong I brooded upon the Passion of Israel. 2. I saw him bound to the wheel, nailed to the cross, cut off by the sword, burned at the stake, tossed into the seas. 3. And always the patient, resolute, martyr face arose in silent rebuke and defiance.

PSALM LXXXIV. A brackish lake is there with bitter pools Anigh its margin, brushed by heavy trees.

If the sudden tidings came That on some far, foreign coast, Buried ages long from fame,

The Autumn promised, and he keeps His word unto the meadow-rose. The pure, bright lightnings herald Spring,

Oh, that the golden lyre divine Whence David smote flame-tones were mine! Oh, that the silent harp which hung

1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black prison. 2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl slumbers in mud and ooze. 3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the ingot of gold.

Down the long hall she glistens like a star, The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone, Yet none the less immortal, breathing on.

How strange, in some brief interval of rest, Backward to look on her far-stretching past. To see how much is conquered and repressed,

Deep languor overcometh mind and frame: A listless, drowsy, utter weariness, A trance wherein no thought finds speech or name,

With heavy groans did I approach my friends, Heavy as though the mountains I would move. The flagon they were murdering; they poured

Yet life is not a vision nor a prayer, But stubborn work; she may not shun her task. After the first compassion, none will spare

What hast thou done to this dear friend of mine, Thou cold, white, silent Stranger?    From my hand Her clasped hand slips to meet the grasp of thine;

Sweet empty sky of June without a stain, Faint, gray-blue dewy mists on far-off hills, Warm, yellow sunlight flooding mead and plain,