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Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
The New Colossus.1
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!"
1 Written in aid of Bartholdi Pedestal Fund, 1883.
The above poem appears on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The poem can
be found, for example, in:
Lazarus, Emma. The Poems of Emma Lazarus, In Two volumes, Vol. I.
Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1888.
Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, eds.
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
(Fourth Edition). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.
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