Poems by Emma Lazarus

In English – En Français – На Русском Языке – Bilingual

American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Emma Lazarus – Poems by Emma Lazarus

In English

A June Night
Ten o’clock: the broken moon
Hangs not yet a half hour high,
Yellow as a shield of brass, … Continue Reading …

A Masque Of Venice
Not a stain,
In the sun-brimmed sapphire cup that is the sky—
Not a ripple on the black translucent lane … Continue Reading …

Admetus
He who could beard the lion in his lair,
To bind him for a girl, and tame the boar,
And drive these beasts before his chariot, … Continue Reading …

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

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 … Continue Reading …

Age And Death
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 … Continue Reading …

Arabesque
On a background of pale gold
I would trace with quaint design,
Penciled fine, … Continue Reading …

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

Autumn Sadness
Air and sky are swathed in gold
Fold on fold,
Light glows through the trees like wine. … Continue Reading …

City Visions
As the blind Milton’s memory of light,
The deaf Beethoven’s phantasy of tone,
Wrought joys for them surpassing all things known … Continue Reading …

Critic And Poet
No man had ever heard a nightingale,
When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred
To study and define—what is a bird, … Continue Reading …

Destiny
Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass,
Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells,
And martial strains, the full-voiced paean swells. … Continue Reading …

Don Rafael
“I would not have,” he said,
“Tears, nor the black pall, nor the wormy grave,
Grief’s hideous panoply I would not have … Continue Reading …

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

Fog
Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,
Dreamlike before me floating! what abides
Behind thy pearly veil’s … Continue Reading …

From One Augur To Another
So, Calchas, on the sacred Palatine,
Thou thought of Mopsus, and o’er wastes of sea
A flower brought your message. I divine … Continue Reading …

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

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 … Continue Reading …

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, … Continue Reading …

Magnetism
By the impulse of my will,
By the red flame in my blood,
By me nerves’ electric thrill, … Continue Reading …

Mater Amabilis
Down the goldenest of streams,
Tide of dreams,
The fair cradled man-child drifts; … Continue Reading …

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

Off Rough Point
We sat at twilight nigh the sea,
The fog hung gray and weird.
Through the thick film uncannily … Continue Reading …

On The Proposal To Erect A Monument In England To Lord Byron
The grass of fifty Aprils hath waved green
Above the spent heart, the Olympian head,
The hands crost idly, the shut eyes unseen, … Continue Reading …

Phantasies
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. … Continue Reading …

Restlessness
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, … Continue Reading …

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

Sic Semper Liberatoribus!
As one who feels the breathless nightmare grip
His heart-strings, and through visioned horrors fares,
Now on a thin-ledged chasm’s rock-crumbling lip, … Continue Reading …

Song
Frosty lies the winter-landscape,
In the twilight golden-green.
Down the Park’s deserted alleys, … Continue Reading …

Sonnets
ECHOES.
Late-born and woman-souled I dare not hope,
The freshness of the elder lays, the might
SUCCESS.
THE NEW COLOSSUS.*
VENUS OF THE LOUVRE.
CHOPIN. … Continue Reading …

Spring Longing
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 … Continue Reading …

Spring Star
Over the lamp-lit street,
Trodden by hurrying feet,
Where mostly pulse and beat … Continue Reading …

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 … Continue Reading …

Sunrise
Weep for the martyr! Strew his bier
With the last roses of the year;
Shadow the land with sables; knell … Continue Reading …

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

Symphonic Studies
Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July
Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea:
Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony … Continue Reading …

Tannhauser
The Landgrave Hermann held a gathering
Of minstrels, minnesingers, troubadours,
At Wartburg in his palace, and the knight, … Continue Reading …

The Cranes Of Ibycus
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 … Continue Reading …

The Elixir
“Oh brew me a potion strong and good!
One golden drop in his wine
Shall charm his sense and fire his blood, … Continue Reading …

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

The Spagnoletto. – Act I. – Act II. – Act III. – Act IV. – Act V.
The studio of the Spagnoletto. RIBERA at work before his canvas.
MARIA seated some distance behind him; a piece of embroidery is
in her hands, but she glances up from it incessantly toward her
father with impatient movements. … Continue Reading …

Youth And Death
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; … Continue Reading …

Bilingual

American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Emma Lazarus – Poems by Emma Lazarus