Emma Lazarus
Symphonic Studies (After Schumann)
Prelude Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea: Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony With the wild, restless tone of air and sky. Shall we not call
Critic and Poet: an Epilogue
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
St Michael's Chapel
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 Of Toil’s incessant hammer, the fierce strain Of
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
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
From One Augur to Another
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
City Visions
I 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
Chopin
I 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
Assurance
Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed Together in my dream, through some dim glade, Where the shy moonbeams scarce dared light
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,
The New Ezekiel
What, can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried By twenty scorching centuries of wrong? Is this the House of Israel, whose pride Is as a tale that’s told, an ancient song? Are
The Cranes of Ibicus
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 play The boys made merry as they saw him go,
Marriage Bells
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, With cloudlike, cast-back veil and faint-flushed cheek,
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
1492
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, Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate. Hounded