I don't like this poem, having read it entirely, but this excerpt prefaced chapter six of a book I am currently reading - Neil Gaiman's "American Gods". I will post another poem from the same era tomorrow, with a more positive message. (Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus")
| Unguarded Gates (Excerpt) | |
| Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, | |
| And through them presses a wild motley throng— | |
| Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes, | |
| Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, | |
| Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav, | 5 |
| Flying the Old World’s poverty and scorn; | |
| These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,— | |
| Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws. | |
| In street and alley what strange tongues are loud, | |
| Accents of menace alien to our air, | 10 |
| Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! |
