"The New Colossus" || Poem by Emma Lazarus (1883)

              The New Colossus

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!”

Emma Lazarus (1849 – 1887) was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations. Her sonnet "The New Colossus" was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, in 1883. Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty installed in 1903. The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song "Give Me Your Tired, Your Your Poor. Lazarus was also the author of Poems and Translations (New York, 1867); Admetus, and other Poems (1871); Alide: An Episode of Goethe's Life (Philadelphia, 1874); Poems and Ballads of Heine and several others.

This poem, published in 1883,  is in the Public domain