The funeral and the marriage, now, alas! We know not which is sadder to recall. - Emma Lazarus

Sweet empty sky of June without a stain,
Faint, gray-blue dewy mists on far-off hills
Warm, yellow sunlight flooding mead and plain,
That each dark copse and hollow overfills:

Then Nature shaped a poet's heart — a lyre
From out whose chords the lightest breeze that blows
Drew trembling music.

The children of the prophets of the Lord,
Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate.
Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state,
The West refused them, and the East abhorred.
No anchorage the known world could afford.