“The New Colossus”: The Poem That Gave Voice to the Statue of Liberty

Emma Lazarus

1883

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-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 6.

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Emma Lazarus wrote the poem “The New Colossus” in 1883 as a way of raising money for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, where it would be emblazoned in 1903, sixteen years after her death. The poem was written during a period in which Lazarus, having learned about the pogroms’ devastating effect on Russian Jewry, became involved in supporting Jewish immigrants and writing about Jewish themes. Although the poem is not only about Jews seeking a better life in the United States, their experience—and perhaps the ancestral memory of Lazarus’s Portuguese family who fled the Inquisition—inspired her vision of a country with arms open wide to the “tired,” the “poor,” and the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

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Literature and Modernity

1750–1880

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Creator Bio

Emma Lazarus

1849–1887

The socially conscious writer Emma Lazarus grew up in an established Sephardic family in New York. Lazarus’s eloquent essays, emotive poetry, and insightful translations—particularly of the works of Heinrich Heine—garnered her early respect and acclaim. She was a fervent activist against antisemitism and a champion for Jewish immigrants, volunteering and supporting social services. Her efforts reflected her proto-Zionist views advocating Jewish cultural rebirth and settlement in Palestine. The words she is perhaps most remembered by, which encapsulate her views on the importance of immigrant rights and freedom from persecution, were added to the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903, sixteen years after her death at the age of thirty-eight.

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