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"New Colossus, The" → Global Index  → Works Index
Poem in sonnet form by American Jewish poet Emma Lazarus, written in 1883 as a donation to the "Art and Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty", an American fundraising effort for the pedestal on which the statue (a French gift) was to be placed. In 1903, a plaque with the text of the poem was mounted inside the pedestal.
The "brazen giant of Greek fame" is the Colossus of Rhodes; the "twin cities" are New York City and the City of Brooklyn (consolidated in 1898 to form the modern City of New York).
→ 10.8
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!'
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