Page:Poems of Emma Lazarus vol 2.djvu/98

Secure asylum, if here be not one ?
Fly ? Onr forefathers had the wilderness,
The aea their gateway, and the fire-cored cloud
Their divine guide. Us, hedged by ambushed foes,
No frank, free, kindly desert shall receive.
Death crouches on all sides, prepared to leap
Tiger-like on our throats, whea first we step
From this safe covert. Everywhere the Plague !
Aa nigh as Erfurt it has crawled — the towns
Beek with miasma, the rank fields of spring,
Bain-saturated, are one beautiful — lie.
Smiling profuse life, and secreting death.
Strange how, unbidden, a trivial memory
Thrusts itaelf on my mind in this grave hour.
I saw a large white buU ui^ed through the town
To slaughter, by a stripling with a goad.
Whom but one sure stamp of that solid heel,
One toss of those mooned horns, one battering
Of that square marble forehead, would have crushed,
Aa we might crush a worm, yet on he trudged,
Patient, in powerful health to death. At once.
As though o' the sudden stong, he roared aloud.
Beat vrith fierce hoofs the air, shook desperately
His formidable head, and heifer-swift,
Baced thi-ough scared, screaming streets. Well, and the end ?
He was the promptlier bound and killed and quartered.