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Emma Lazarus
Emma Lazarus
Posthumously famous for her sonnet, "The New Colossus," which is engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty, Emma Lazarus is considered America's first important Jewish poet...
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FURTHER READING
Poems about America
A House Divided
by Kyle Dargan
Abraham Lincoln
by Abraham Lincoln
América
by Richard Blanco
America
by Herman Melville
America
by Claude McKay
America
by Walt Whitman
America
by Robert Creeley
America [Try saying wren]
by Joseph Lease
Gate A-4
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Handshake Histories
by Jeff Hoffman
I am the People, the Mob
by Carl Sandburg
Last Century
by Wyatt Prunty
Like Any Good American
by Brynn Saito
Passing Through Albuquerque
by John Balaban
Psalm
by Vanessa Place
The Blank of America
by Terese Svoboda
The House-top
by Herman Melville
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1492

 
by Emma Lazarus

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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