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 | The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder |  |
392
TO EMMA LAZARUS
(1905)
Dear bard and prophet, that thy rest is deepThanks be to God! Not now on thy heart falls
Rumor intolerable. Sleep, O sleep!
See not the blood of Israel that crawls,
Warm yet, into the noon and night; that cries
Even as of old, till all the world stands still
At rapine that even to Israel's agonies
Seems strange and monstrous, a mad dream of ill.
Thou sleepest! Yea, but as in grief we said:
There is a spiritual life unconquerable;
So, bard of the ancient people, tho' being dead
Thou speakest, and thy voice we love full well.
Never thy holy memory forsakes us;
Thy spirit is the trumpet that awakes us!
| The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder | |