The Poems of Emma Lazarus Volume I Part 13

Against the pale tints black the slim elms rise,

The earth exhales sweet odors nigh and far, And from the heavens fine influences fall.

Familiar things stand not for what they are:

What they suggest, foreshadow, or recall The spirit is alert to apprehend, Imparting somewhat of herself to all.

Labor and thought and care are at an end: The soul is filled with gracious reveries, And with her mood soft sounds and colors blend;

For simplest sounds ring forth like melodies In this weird-lighted air--the monotone Of some far bell, the distant farmyard cries,

A barking dog, the thin, persistent drone Of crickets, and the lessening call of birds.

The apparition of yon star alone

Breaks on the sense like music. Beyond word The peace that floods the soul, for night is here, And Beauty still is guide and harbinger.

II. Aspiration.

Dark lies the earth, and bright with worlds the sky: That soft, large, l.u.s.trous star, that first outshone, Still holds us spelled with potent sorcery.

Dilating, shrinking, lightening, it hath won Our spirit with its strange strong influence, And sways it as the tides beneath the moon.

What impulse this, o'ermastering heart and sense?

Exalted, thrilled, the freed soul fain would soar Unto that point of s.h.i.+ning prominence,

Craving new fields and some unheard-of sh.o.r.e, Yea, all the heavens, for her activity, To mount with daring flight, to hover o'er

Low hills of earth, flat meadows, level sea, And earthly joy and trouble. In this hour Of waning light and sound, of mystery,

Of shadowed love and beauty-veiled power, She feels her wings: she yearns to grasp her own, Knowing the utmost good to be her dower.

A dream! a dream! for at a touch 't is gone.

O mocking spirit! thy mere fools are we, Unto the depths from heights celestial thrown.

From these blind gropings toward reality, This thirst for truth, this most pathetic need Of something to uplift, to justify,

To help and comfort while we faint and bleed, May we not draw, wrung from the last despair, Some argument of hope, some blessed creed,

That we can trust the faith which whispers prayer, The vanis.h.i.+ngs, the ecstasy, the gleam, The nameless aspiration, and the dream?

III. Wherefore?

Deep languor overcometh mind and frame: A listless, drowsy, utter weariness, A trance wherein no thought finds speech or name,

The overstrained spirit doth possess.

She sinks with drooping wing--poor unfledged bird, That fain had flown!--in fluttering breathlessness.

To what end those high hopes that wildly stirred The beating heart with aspirations vain?

Why proffer prayers unanswered and unheard

To blank, deaf heavens that will not heed her pain?

Where lead these lofty, soaring tendencies, That leap and fly and poise, to fall again,

Yet seem to link her with the utmost skies?

What mean these clinging loves that bind to earth, And claim her with beseeching, wistful eyes?

This little resting-place 'twixt death and birth, Why is it fretted with the ceaseless flow Of flood and ebb, with overgrowth and dearth,

And vext with dreams, and clouded with strange woe?

Ah! she is tired of thought, she yearns for peace, Seeing all things one equal end must know.

Wherefore this tangle of perplexities, The trouble or the joy? the weary maze Of narrow fears and hopes that may not cease?

A chill falls on her from the skyey ways, Black with the night-tide, where is none to hear The ancient cry, the Wherefore of our days.

IV. Fancies.