Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)

THERE is a hungry longing in the soul,

A craving sense of emptiness and pain,

She may not satisfy nor yet control,

For all the teeming world looks void and vain.

No compensation in eternal spheres,

She knows the loneliness of all her years.

There is no comfort looking forth nor back,

The present gives the lie to all her past.

Will cruel time restore what she doth lack?

Why was no shadow of this doom forecast?

Ah! she hath played with many a keen-edged thing;

Naught is too small and soft to turn and sting…..