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EMMA LAZARUS
I UNDER no skies but ours, her grave be made! | |
| ’Neath blue unblurred and clear stars never shamed | |
| ’Tis meet that she be laid! | |
| Just Heaven accorded that sad right we claimed: | |
| The Old World gave its guest | 5 |
| Back to the loving West. | |
| The city of her birth, which exiles hail | |
| From that broad-breasted harbor, known so long, | |
| Forever heaving in its rippled mail | |
| Of steely waves, to clasp the island-seat | 10 |
| Of Freedom—whom she sang with voice so sweet, | |
| With voice so sweet and strong! | |
| Not in the shadow of the shameful Past, | |
| But in the radiance of the days to be, | |
| The glory of the brows of Liberty. | 15 |
| The singer of that splendor sleeps at last; | |
| Proud Spring, shall heap her painless rest with flowers | |
| Under no skies but ours! | |
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II On the far azure, eastern hills, where prone, | |
| Like slowly-crumbling pillars, memories lie, | 20 |
| Discrowned, and overthrown, | |
| The wrinkled Orient calls upon her sons, | |
| Uncomforted, with an unceasing cry: | |
| “Come, come, ye wandering ones! | |
| A nation’s hearth-stone waits the sacred fire!” | 25 |
| But, quenching their desire, | |
| “Mother, not yet,” they sigh, | |
| “Not yet; the silver trumpets have not blown, | |
| Nor eastward moves in heaven the column-cloud. | |
| Haply, with faint host strengthened, by-and-by, | 30 |
| With psalms, with shawns, with ring of cymbals loud | |
| Shall Israel return unto his own; | |
| Not yet—alas, not yet! | |
| To-day his face is set | |
| Westward: for there the Foster mother stands, | 35 |
| Young, forceful, mild, with frank, front-beaming light, | |
| And large, warm-welcoming hands. | |
| Lo, in her spacious lands | |
| The arm of Israel shall gather might!” | |
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III This was her home—aye, hers, whose noble pride | 40 |
| Had that dear name denied | |
| To soil whereon her brothers suffered wrong: | |
| Yet of another country she was free,— | |
| The golden vales, the fields of Arcady, | |
| The woods that whispered, and the streams of song! | 45 |
| Among the lucent marbles of the Greek | |
| ’Twas hers to pass, and charm grand lips to speak, | |
| But as in siren palace reared apart, | |
| One born to lead his people through the sea, | |
| Saw the Egyptian smite, and felt the smart | 50 |
| Quickening the fire-seed in his Hebrew heart | |
| To burst in blaze—so she! | |
| Yea, in that bitterest year | |
| When Russia spurned the Jew, | |
| She, too, ah, from a lovelier land she, too, | 55 |
| Went forth, and left, for service more austere, | |
| Pure Beauty smiling in the fair white fane | |
| (The strong sweet voice we nevermore shall hear) | |
| Thrilled sword-like through the ear | |
| Of whoso slept, though sleep were dull as death! | 60 |
| O strange, O holiest hour | |
| Of rapture and of power, | |
| When a great soul is girded with a Cause! | |
| Finding at length, led on by deep hid laws, | |
| That Deed to do, wherefore God lent His breath, | 65 |
| O Awful Hour more strange, | |
| Of chill surprise and change, | |
| Command most stern that bids the doer pause | |
| Ere yet that Deed is done, | |
| The trump be silent, ere the field is won! | 70 |
| How green, in coming years, | |
| For her the glistening victor-palm had sprung! | |
| Woe for the words unsaid, the song unsung! | |
| Speech falters into tears | |
| Tears—but such tears as fed the vital root | 75 |
| Of Hope, and haste the time of bloom and leaf. | |
| None shall forbid high Grief: | |
| But doubt she had forbidden, who deeply know | |
| The vigor of that stem whence life she drew, | |
| The sure succession, the unfailing fruit! | 80 |
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IV O faithful Israel, that keep’st aflame | |
| The Lamp perpetual with remembrance due | |
| Of the undying deed! Be this her fame: | |
| The source of steadfast purpose, tireless borne. | |
| If, in some dazzling morn | 85 |
| That breaks on e’en the blank eyes of the blind, | |
| The flag of Judah shall indeed unfurl, | |
| The hero-Ezra on his arm shall bind | |
| No lordlier hand, no subtler amulet | |
| Than her linkéd songs of pearl, | 90 |
| And rubies passion-red as with rare life-blood wet! | |
| We, too, we, too, have claim | |
| On this uniting name! | |
| We of the West may bow where Israel weeps. | |
| Beneath our clear stars, never veiled in shame | 95 |
| She woke to life, and now, alas, she sleeps, | |
| (Proud May-time heap her painless rest with flowers!) | |
| Under no skies but ours! | |
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