“The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus

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!”

The Statue of Liberty, the formal name of which is “Liberty Enlightening the World” (La Liberté éclairant le monde), was a gift to the people of the United States from the people of France. It was designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and represents Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom. In 1903, “The New Colossus,” a sonnet written by the American poet Emma Lazarus, was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the Statue of Liberty, which has stood on Liberty Island in New York Harbor since 1886. The Colossus of the title and the opening lines refers to the Colossus of Rhodes, a massive statue of the god Helios erected on the Greek island of Rhodes and destroyed by an earthquake in 226 BC. Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) was born in New York City into a family of Portuguese Sephardic Jews. A novelist, playwright, poet, and translator, she is best remembered for this poem that she composed in 1883.