Your Opinion
Through analyzing these two poems, “The New Colossus” and “Unguarded Gates,” you have been introduced to the two major and opposing views on U.S. immigration in the early 20th century. Imagine that you are debating the author, Thomas B. Aldrich, about America’s immigration policy. Select and refute three reasons that Aldrich uses to oppose “new” immigration to the United States. To review the poem, click "+" below. You can also click "My Work" to access your notes.
Unguarded Gates
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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. For so of old
The throngingGoth and Vandal trampled Rome,
And where the temples of the Caesars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.
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