Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes them.”
- Date
- 1887
- Local voice
- Poetic speaker · Prose-poem narrator
Meaning of “Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of…”
Lazarus’s prose-poem narrator personifies America as receiving Jewish refugees, making national hospitality part of the work’s meditation on exile and migration.
Where does it come from?
By the Waters of Babylon: Little Poems in Prose, V. “Currents,” first published in March 1887 and represented by Project Gutenberg #3473. The line follows the image of Jewish exiles fleeing oppression toward America. It expresses a literary and historical ideal of welcome; it is not presented as evidence that immigrants in practice were universally welcomed.
Why the local voice matters
By the Waters of Babylon: Little Poems in Prose, V. Currents. The narrator personifies America as welcoming Jewish exiles; the line is a literary/historical ideal rather than a claim that immigrants universally received welcome.