Jake’s Sunday Post theme: Silence

Jake’s Sunday post theme this week, is “Silence.” I thought long and hard over this one. Should I put up one of my many awesome ‘silent‘ sunset photos from far away places, like this one in Tahiti;

or maybe a serene scene taken whilst silently cruising down the Li River in China.

Then I remembered a photo taken on our first of many visits to New York, of the lady with the lips which have been forever silent, but who has never ceased to proclaim a message which has inspired and thrilled so many people across the world, not just Americans who are so proud of her, as she stands there for all to see as one flies or sails into New York City.

The inscription on a bronze plaque, mounted inside the lower level of the pedestal of the Statue, is a sonnet written in 1883 by Emma Lazarus, and reads thus;

“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!”