Century Readings for a Course in American Literature

EMMA LAZARUS (1849-1887)

One of the most passionate and inspired of the later American poets was Emma Lazarus, born in New York City of Portuguese Jewish ancestry, a Heine-like soul full of an impetuous fire that too early consumed her, and dying, eyen as did the great German-Jewish lyrist, in Paris after agonizing weeks and months on a mattress grave.' Her early poems are imaginative and dreamy, but in 1883 she was aroused by the persecution of the Jews in Russia, and from that time she became the voice of her people, pouring out Whittier-like 'voices of freedom,' fiery denunciations, stirring challenges to action, and realistic pictures of persecution like The Guardian of the Red Disk' and that gripping drama of persecution in the 12th Century, The Dance of Death. The Jewish race has had in later years no more compelling and inspired lyrist than Emma Lazarus. Moreover, she was an American in heart and soul. Her cries for her race are from the deepest heart of America as well as from a member of a peculiar people. Her 'How Long' is a trumpet-call that should stir every American soul.

Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day
The glorious Maccabean rage,
The sire heroic, hoary-gray,

His five-fold lion-lineage:
The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God,
The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod.
1 Copyright by Houghton Mifflin & Co.

From curl-crowned forehead to darkbearded chin.

And over all the seal is stamped thereon ́

Of anguish branded by a world of sin, 30 In fire and blood through ages on their name, Their seal of glory and the Gentiles' shame. Freedom to love the law that Moses brought,

To sing the songs of David, and to think The thoughts Gabirol to Spinoza taught, 35 Freedom to dig the common earth, to drink The universal air for this they sought

Refuge o'er wave and continent, to link Egypt with Texas in their mystic chain, And truth's perpetual lamp forbid to wane. 40 Hark! through the quiet evening air, their

song

Floats forth with wild sweet rhythm and glad refrain.

They sing the conquest of the spirit strong, The soul that wrests the victory from pain;

The noble joys of manhood that belong 45 To comrades and to brothers. In their

strain

Rustle of palms and Eastern streams one

hears,

And the broad prairie melts in mist of tears

IRWIN RUSSELL (1853-1879)

The biography of Irwin Russell is brief and pathetic. He was undoubtedly a genius like Stephen Collins Foster, wayward, unstable, convivial, a skilful banjo player and endowed freely with the temperament that accompanies this humorous and rollicking instrument. In education he surpassed Foster: he was a graduate of the Jesuit college at St. Louis and he studied law, but it was not in his nature to settle down to any steady occupation. He delighted to visit the river boats at Port Gibson, Mississippi, his native town, and improvise negro melodies to the delight of the captain and the roustabouts. Some of his dialect poems were printed in Scribner's Monthly in 1876, and, encouraged by their reception, he went himself to New York, where he received considerable attention. After a few months, however, he drifted South again, worked for a time on a New Orleans newspaper, and at twenty-six was 'dead in Bohemia' as one poet has expressed it. A thin volume of his poems appeared in 1888. Russell was undoubtedly the pioneer in what proved to be a rich field, for it was he who discovered the literary possibilities of the negro. Thomas Nelson Page dedicated his Befo' de War, 1888, To Irwin Russell, who awoke the first echo'; and Joel Chandler Harris also considered him his master. What he left must be counted only as a few pitiful fragments, but it is enough to show the undoubted genius of the man and to make us regret all the more deeply his untimely end.