Something new and beautiful awoke in her soul and she gave her strength and energy in caring for these exiles of her own blood. When she wrote now it was of her people. She read our long and wonderful history and immortalized the heroism of our martyrs in such poems as her tragedy, "The Dance to Death." She wrote shorter verses, too, and there are few Jewish boys and girls who have not recited or at least heard her stirring Chanukkah recitations, "The Feast of Lights," and "The Banner of the Jew." Her poems had always been very beautiful, winning the praises of such a high critic as Ralph Waldo Emerson, but now they glowed with a new beauty, her love and new found kinship with her race. It was her passionate love for America and her knowledge of all that our country means to the Jew, both the native-born and the persecuted wanderer from other lands, that made her see in the Statue of Liberty more than a mere mass of sculptured stone. Instead she saw a gracious, loving woman guarding the gates of the New World, not like the ancient giant figure striding the harbor at Rhodes, a haughty menace to the nations, but a symbol of welcome and freedom and justice to all mankind. So she wrote her verses, to be inscribed later at the statue's base, telling as only a great poet could what America means to her children. Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land, Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome: her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" * * * * *