Unguarded Gates, 1895

This poem, written in 1895, seems to some critics to reflect the fears of many native-born, Protestants of European descent about growing numbers of immigrants entering the United States. Nativists feared that Catholics and Jews from eastern and southern Europe did not share their religious and cultural values or their work ethic. The concerns in this poem reflected the fears expressed by the Dillingham Commission (1911) that immigration from southern and eastern Europe would "subvert" American values and put on policy in the 1924 Immigration and Naturalization Act. 
 
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
Named of the four winds, North, South, East and West;
Portals that lead to an enchanted land
Of cities, forests, fields of living gold,
Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with snow,
Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past
The Arab's date-palm and the Norseman's pine—
A realm wherein are fruits of every zone,
Airs of all climes, for lo! throughout the year
The red rose blossoms somewhere--a rich land,
A later Eden planted in the wilds,
With not an inch of earth within its bound
But if a slave's foot press it sets him free.
Here, it is written,
Toil shall have its wage,
And Honor honor, and the humblest man
Stand level with the highest in the law.
Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed,
And with the vision brightening in their eyes
Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword.   
 
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, Kelt, 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 loud,
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 down-trodden, but with 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. So for of old
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome,
And where the temples of the Caesars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.
 
Questions to Think About and Discuss
  1. How does Aldrich describe the United States?
  2. How are the first and second stanza different in tone and content?
  3. How can we explain the differences between the first and second stanzas? Who (what groups) does Aldrich describe in the second stanza?
  4. Was Aldrich a nativist? Explain what evidence in this poem supports your argument.
  5. What do you believe is the relationship between Aldrich's poem and Thomas Edison's early film of immigrants arriving on Ellis Island?

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