Emma Lazarus

“I seem to have always one little window looking but into life.”

“Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned.”

“Sweet empty sky of June without a stain,That each dark copse and hollow overfills:”

“The children of the prophets of the Lord,No anchorage the known world could afford.”

“Then Nature shaped a poet's heart — a lyreDrew trembling music.”

“No man had ever heard a nightingale,To study and define — what is a bird.”

“No signs of life are here: the very prayersInscribed around are in a language dead.”

“Alas! we wake: one scene alone remains, —The exiles by the streams of Babylon.”

“The funeral and the marriage, now, alas!We know not which is sadder to recall.”

“A lady 'twixt two knights' stone effigies,Their sculptured slumber of five centuries.”

“Lo — a black line of birds in wavering threadBore him the greetings of the deathless dead!”

“Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standMother of Exiles.”

“Give me your tired, your poor,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”