Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Aliens or Americans?
Unguarded Gates
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, Celt, and Slav,
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 these,
Accents of menace alien to our air,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
O Liberty, White Goddess! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate,
Lift the downtrodden, but with the hand of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn
And trampled in the dust. For so of old
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome.
And where the temples of the Caesars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
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