22 quotes
To his sunny creed
A thousand gloomy, warring sects succeed.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)
Nathless the sacred shrine is holy yet,
With its lone floors where reverent feet once trod.
Take off your shoes as by the burning bush,
Before the mystery of death and God.
Admetus and Other Poems (1871)
Then Nature shaped a poet's heart — a lyre
From out whose chords the lightest breeze that blows
Drew trembling music.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)
A lady 'twixt two knights' stone effigies,
And every day in dusky glory steeps
Their sculptured slumber of five centuries.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)
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.
Time's brutal hand hath maimed but could not mar.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)
Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned; this man is neither simple, sensuous, nor impassioned; therefore he is not a poet.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)
Each separate soul contains the nation’s force,
And both embrace the world.
Songs of a Semite (1882)
Lo — a black line of birds in wavering thread
Bore him the greetings of the deathless dead!
The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)
His cup is gall, his meat is tears,
His passion lasts a thousand years.
Songs of a Semite (1882)
The word "Jew" is in constant use, even among so-called refined Christians, as a term of opprobrium, and is employed as a verb, to denote the meanest tricks.
Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
Songs of a Semite (1882)
Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm,
The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)
Thou art a giant altar, where the Earth
Must needs send up her thanks to Him above
Who did create her.
Poems and Translations (1866)
Alas! we wake: one scene alone remains, —
The exiles by the streams of Babylon.
Admetus and Other Poems (1871)
Night, and beneath star-blazoned summer skies
Behold the Spirit of the musky South,
A creole with still-burning, languid eyes,
Voluptuous limbs and incense-breathing mouth.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)
What prayers were in this temple offered up,
Wrung from sad hearts that knew no joy on earth,
By these lone exiles of a thousand years,
From the fair sunrise land that gave them birth!
Admetus and Other Poems (1871)
Sweet empty sky of June without a stain,
Faint, gray-blue dewy mists on far-off hills
Warm, yellow sunlight flooding mead and plain,
That each dark copse and hollow overfills.
Admetus and Other Poems (1871)
The children of the prophets of the Lord,
Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate.
Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state,
The West refused them, and the East abhorred.
No anchorage the known world could afford.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)
The Spirit is not dead, proclaim the word,
Where lay dead bones, a host of armed men stand!
I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord,
And I shall place you living in your land.
Songs of a Semite (1882)
The burning noon sends floods of molten gold,
The calm night crowns thee with its host of stars,
The moon enfolds thee with her silver veil,
And o'er thee e'er is arched the rainbow's span, —
The gorgeous marriage-ring of Earth and Heaven.
While ever from the holy altar grand
Ascends the incense of the mist and spray,
That mounts to God with thy wild roar of praise.
Poems and Translations (1866)