Poems by Emma Lazarus

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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To RWE

As when a father dies, his children draw

About the empty hearth, their loss to cheat

With uttered praise & love, & oft repeat

His all-familiar words with whispered awe.

The honored habit of his daily law,

Not for his sake, but theirs whose feeble feet

Need still that guiding lamp, whose faith, less sweet,

Misses that tempered patience without flaw,

by Emma Lazarus

Critic and Poet: an Epilogue

("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,

When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred

To study and define—what is a bird,

To classify by rote and book, nor fail

To mark its structure and to note the scale

Whereon its song might possibly be heard.

Thus far, no farther;—so he spake the word.

by Emma Lazarus

Life and Art

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

The aching gladness, the voluptuous pain.

Life is his poem then; flesh, sense, and brain

One full-stringed lyre attuned to happiness.

by Emma Lazarus

Destiny

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 broad streets swarm

With glad-eyed groups who chatter, laugh, and pass,

In holiday confusion, class with class.

by Emma Lazarus

The Taming of the Falcon

The bird sits spelled upon the lithe brown wrist

Of yonder turbaned fowler, who had lamed

No feather limb, but the winged spirit tamed

With his compelling eye. He need not trust

The silken coil, not set the thick-limed snare;

He lures the wanderer with his steadfast gaze,

It shrinks, it quails, it trembles yet obeys.

And, lo! he has enslaved the thing of air.

by Emma Lazarus

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport

Here, where the noises of the busy town,

The ocean's plunge and roar can enter not,

We stand and gaze around with tearful awe,

And muse upon the consecrated spot.

No signs of life are here: the very prayers

Inscribed around are in a language dead;

The light of the "perpetual lamp" is spent

That an undying radiance was to shed.

by Emma Lazarus

Agamemnon’s Tomb

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,

Behold the young, heroic face, round-eyed,

Of one who in his full-flowered manhood died;

Of nobler frame than creatures of to-day,

Swathed in fine linen cerecloths fold on fold,

by Emma Lazarus

Long Island Sound

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,

The quiet fishing-smacks, the Eastern cove,

The semi-circle of its dark, green grove.

The luminous grasses, and the merry sun

by Emma Lazarus

City Visions

As the blind Milton's memory of light,

The deaf Beethoven's phantasy of tone,

Wroght joys for them surpassing all things known

In our restricted sphere of sound and sight,—

So while the glaring streets of brick and stone

Vix with heat, noise, and dust from morn till night,

I will give rein to Fancy, taking flight

by Emma Lazarus

Echoes

Late-born and woman-souled I dare not hope,

The freshness of the elder lays, the might

Of manly, modern passion shall alight

Upon my Muse's lips, nor may I cope

(Who veiled and screened by womanhood must grope)

With the world's strong-armed warriors and recite

The dangers, wounds, and triumphs of the fight;

Twanging the full-stringed lyre through all its scope.

by Emma Lazarus

Chopin

A dream of interlinking hands, of feet

Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof

Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet,

Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof.

Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow

Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms

Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, the dazzling snow

by Emma Lazarus

Success

Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain,

The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng.

These I ignore to-day and only long

To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain,

One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song,

For all the victories of man's high endeavor,

Palm-bearing, laurel deeds that live forever,

The splendor clothing him whose will is strong.

by Emma Lazarus