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I AT the gate of the West I stand, | |
| On the isle where the nations throng. | |
| We call them “scum o’ the earth”; | |
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| Stay, are we doing you wrong, | |
| Young fellow from Socrates’ land? | 5 |
| You, like a Hermes so lissome and strong | |
| Fresh from the Master Praxiteles’ hand? | |
| So you’re of Spartan birth? | |
| Descended, perhaps, from one of the band— | |
| Deathless in story and song— | 10 |
| Who combed their long hair at Thermopylæ’s pass? | |
| Ah, I forget the straits, alas! | |
| More tragic than theirs, more compassion-worth, | |
| That have doomed you to march in our “immigrant class” | |
| Where you’re nothing but “scum o’ the earth.” | 15 |
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II You Pole with the child on your knee, | |
| What dower bring you to the land of the free? | |
| Hark! does she croon | |
| That sad little tune | |
| That Chopin once found on his Polish lea | 20 |
| And mounted in gold for you and for me? | |
| Now a ragged young fiddler answers | |
| In wild Czech melody | |
That Dvo ak took whole from the dancers. | |
| And the heavy faces bloom | 25 |
| In the wonderful Slavic way; | |
| The little, dull eyes, the brows a-gloom, | |
| Suddenly dawn like the day. | |
| While, watching these folk and their mystery, | |
| I forget that they’re nothing worth; | 30 |
| That Bohemians, Slovaks, Croatians, | |
| And men of all Slavic nations | |
| Are “polacks”—and “scum o’ the earth.” | |
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III Genoese boy of the level brow, | |
| Lad of the lustrous, dreamy eyes | 35 |
| A-stare at Manhattan’s pinnacles now | |
| In the first sweet shock of a hushed surprise; | |
| Within your far-rapt seer’s eyes | |
| I catch the glow of the wild surmise | |
| That played on the Santa Maria’s prow | 40 |
| In that still gray dawn, | |
| Four centuries gone, | |
| When a world from the wave began to rise. | |
| Oh, it’s bard to foretell what high emprise | |
| Is the goal that gleams | 45 |
| When Italy’s dreams | |
| Spread wing and sweep into the skies. | |
| Cæsar dreamed him a world ruled well; | |
| Dante dreamed Heaven out of Hell; | |
| Angelo brought us there to dwell; | 50 |
| And you, are you of a different birth?— | |
| You’re only a “dago,”—and “scum o’ the earth”! | |
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IV Stay, are we doing you wrong | |
| Calling you “scum o’ the earth,” | |
| Man of the sorrow-bowed head, | 55 |
| Of the features tender yet strong,— | |
| Man of the eyes full of wisdom and mystery | |
| Mingled with patience and dread? | |
| Have not I known you in history, | |
| Sorrow-bowed head? | 60 |
| Were you the poet-king, worth | |
| Treasures of Ophir unpriced? | |
| Were you the prophet, perchance, whose art | |
| Foretold how the rabble would mock | |
| That shepherd of spirits, erelong, | 65 |
| Who should carry the lambs on his heart | |
| And tenderly feed his flock? | |
| Man—lift that sorrow-bowed head. | |
| Lo! ’t is the face of the Christ! | |
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| The vision dies at its birth. | 70 |
| You’re merely a butt for our mirth. | |
| You’re a “sheeny”—and therefore despised | |
| And rejected as “scum o’ the earth.” | |
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V Countrymen, bend and invoke | |
| Mercy for us blasphemers, | 75 |
| For that we spat on these marvelous folk, | |
| Nations of darers and dreamers, | |
| Scions of singers and seers, | |
| Our peers, and more than our peers. | |
| “Rabble and refuse,” we name them | 80 |
| And “scum o the earth,” to shame them. | |
| Mercy for us of the few, young years, | |
| Of the culture so callow and crude, | |
| Of the hands so grasping and rude, | |
| The lips so ready for sneers | 85 |
| At the sons of our ancient more-than-peers. | |
| Mercy for us who dare despise | |
| Men in whose loins our Homer lies; | |
| Mothers of men who shall bring to us | |
| The glory of Titian, the grandeur of Huss; | 90 |
| Children in whose frail arms shall rest | |
| Prophets and singers and saints of the West. | |
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| Newcomers all from the eastern seas, | |
| Help us incarnate dreams like these. | |
| Forget, and forgive, that we did you wrong. | 95 |
| Help us to father a nation, strong | |
| In the comradeship of an equal birth, | |
| In the wealth of the richest bloods of earth. | |
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