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William Shakespeare’s sonnets are known and loved the world over. Those of John Keats are not far behind. But probably no sonnet has ever meant so much to so many people as the one by Emma Lazarus that adorns the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. It’s so worth reading once again. The closing five lines are the best-known in all of American poetry. And sometimes it’s good to remind the world . . . and ourselves . . . what America has stood for.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
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Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) is recognized as our first important Jewish-American poet, and while the fervor and inspired language of her sonnet suggests that she herself might have recently arrived in America, her family dates its actual arrival back to 1654 when her ancestors, Sephardic Portuguese immigrants, first reached New York. By the time of Emma’s birth, the family was prosperous and able to provide their daughter with a fine classic education. She was a natural poet and at seventeen published a collection of “Poems and Translations.” At twenty-two she published another book of poems followed by a novel, a verse drama and a volume of translations from the German poems and ballads of Heinrich Heine.
Emma Lazarus was well-respected by her peers. Ralph Waldo Emerson was unofficially but effectively her mentor. Robert Browning befriended her on her travels to England and France. James Russell Lowell told her he preferred her poem to the statue itself.
And how did her beautifully-wrought sonnet come to be? In this way.
The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States. It was financed, designed and constructed in Paris and shipped to New York in 1885. It was understood that Americans would finance and build a pedestal for the statue to be erected on. One of the fundraising efforts involved a donation of art and literary works with the proceeds to aid pedestal construction. Emma Lazarus contributed a sonnet which she named “The New Colossus,” paying homage to the original Colossus that straddled or more likely stood beside the harbor at Rhodes, Greece. That original statue, “the brazen giant of Greek fame,” celebrated a military conquest and was one of the Wonders of the Ancient World.
Lazurus, who was an immigration activist, especially wanted her Colossus sonnet to draw attention to the Eastern European immigrants who were fleeing pogroms and seeking a life in the New World, the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
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Not known to many is that Lazurus wrote a companion sonnet to the one at the Statue of Liberty. She called it “1492” because it concerned two signal events in her family background that occurred the same year: the expulsion of Jews from Spain at the height of the Inquisition and the arrival of Columbus in the Americas.
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 from sea to sea, from state to state,
The West refused them, and the East abhorred.
No anchorage the known world could afford,
Close-locked was every port, barred every gate.
Then smiling, thou unveil’dst, O two-faced year,
A virgin world where doors of sunset part,
Saying, “Ho, all who weary, enter here!
There falls each ancient barrier that the art
Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear
Grim bulwarked hatred between heart and heart!”
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Emma Lazarus studied the piano, and one of the great passions of her creative life was for the music of Chopin and Schumann. Here is a sonnet on Chopin, suggesting a musical liaison with Orpheus.
Who shall proclaim the golden fable false
Of Orpheus’ miracles? This subtle strain
Above our prose-world’s sordid loss and gain
Lightly uplifts us. With the rhythmic waltz,
The lyric prelude, the nocturnal song
Of love and languor, varied visions rise,
That melt and blend to our enchanted eyes.
The Polish poet who sleeps silenced long,
The seraph-souled musician, breathes again
Eternal eloquence, immortal pain.
Revived the exalted face we know so well,
The illuminated eyes, the fragile frame,
Slowly consuming with its inward flame,
We stir not, speak not, lest we break the spell.
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And here is a poem inspired by Schumann’s “Symphonic Studies.”
Divided ‘twixt the dream-world and the real,
We heard the waxing passion of the song
Soar as to scale the heavens on pinions strong.
Amidst the long-reverberant thunder-peal,
Against the rain-blurred square of light, the head
Of the pale poet at the lyric keys
Stood boldly cut, absorbed in reveries,
While over it keen-bladed lightnings played.
“Rage on, wild storm!” the music seemed to sing:
“Not all the thunders of thy wrath can move
The soul that’s dedicate to worshipping
Eternal Beauty, everlasting Love.”
No more! the song was ended, and behold,
A rainbow trembling on a sky of gold!
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In an all-too-brief career . . . Lazarus died of cancer at the age of thirty-eight . . . she wrote a number of poems that strike one with the modernity of their thoughts and expressions. Here is one called “Long Island Sound” that could have been written today.
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
In the grave sky; the sparkle far and wide,
Laughter of unseen children, cheerful chirp
Of crickets, and low lisp of rippling tide,
Light summer clouds fantastical as sleep
Changing unnoted while I gazed thereon.
All these fair sounds and sights I made my own.
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And here, remembering that Lazarus was writing at the height of the Victorian Period, is a sensual sonnet called “Assurance,” which has only recently been published for the first time.
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 our bliss.
The air was dank with dew, between the trees,
The hidden glow-worms kindled and were spent.
Cheek pressed to cheek, the cool, the hot night-breeze
Mingled our hair, our breath, and came and went,
As sporting with our passion. Low and deep,
Spake in mine ear her voice: “And didst thou dream,
This could be buried? This could be asleep?
And love be thrall to death! Nay, whatso seem,
Have faith, dear heart; this is the thing that is!”
Thereon I woke, and on my lips her kiss.
Quite extraordinary. Emma Lazarus.
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VIDEO. On September 14, 1893, a five-year-old immigrant, Irving Berlin, sailed past the Statue of Liberty and with his family entered the United States through Ellis Island. Fifty-five years later, his latest musical, “Miss Liberty,” opened on Broadway, and the audience was deeply moved by the closing chorus, a setting of “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,”
Here is that chorus as sung by our Connecticut neighbor, the Fairfield County Children’s Choir.
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: EMMA LAZARUS
