"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-tost, to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Scores of American school children over the years have memorized "The New Colossus," the poem by Emma Lazarus engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. I remember helping my son Brad get it by heart for his 4th-grade Citizenship Prize. The poem is part of the mythology that is Lady Liberty and as such is often taken for granted, but it is, as is Lazarus herself, worth revisiting.
Emma Lazarus was born in 1849, the daughter of a wealthy sugar merchant. Her family were Sephardic Jews who had been in America since the 17th century, and, while hers was not a particularly religious family and was as "assimilated" as it was possible to be in 19th century Protestant America, a sense of "otherness" permeates Lazarus' work. Growing up in New York and Rhode Island, she was educated by private tutors and was an eager pupil, learning literature, music, history, and languages (she was fluent in Italian, German, and French). Early on she showed a talent for writing, and when she was seventeen, her proud father paid for the publication of her first book, Poems and Translations: Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen.
This precocious book brought her to the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became a mentor of sorts. He encouraged and praised her poetry, and in 1871 she dedicated her second book, Admetus and Other Poems, to him. However, Emerson's enthusiasm apparently did not extend to including any of her work in Parnassus, an anthology of rising new American poets that he edited in 1874; Lazarus gave him hell for it in a letter:
Your favorable opinion
having been confirmed by some of the best critics
of England and America, I felt as if
I had won for myself by my own efforts a place in
any collection of American poets, and I find
myself treated with absolute contempt in the very
quarter where I had been encouraged to build my
fondest hopes.
It is not clear why Emerson left out her work, but it is possible that this slight understandably reinforced Lazarus' feeling of exclusion, of which she wrote in another context, "I am perfectly conscious that
this contempt and hatred underlies the general
tone of the community towards us." Certainly, there was the social distance: despite the fact that the Lazarus family had been in America since before Independence, despite Lazarus' talent, success (she published widely to much critical acclaim), and established place in literary circles, she was still referred to as "the Jewess" by her Christian friends. Also, it is important to remember that Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal by Ferdinand and Isabella, so a long family history of exile was part of Lazarus' cultural and personal identity.
Lazarus became more involved with Judaism after hearing of the Russian pogroms of the 1880s, and she was an early advocate of a Jewish state in Palestine. She wrote "The New Colossus" in 1883 for an auction to raise money for the completion of pedestal for the Statue of Liberty (proper name: "Liberty Enlightening the World"). The poem speaks to that sense of otherness in Lazarus – but it also champions the other, the newcomer, the wanderer in search of a home, and welcomes him inside the magic circle that is America. The poem is also an explicit expression of Lazarus' deep sympathy toward the wave of immigrants that flooded America beginning in the early 1880s.
The poem begins in defiance: "Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame/With conquering limbs astride from land to land." No, not the bullying, extravagantly bold warrior (note the double meaning of "brazen" – "audacious and insolent," and "made of brass"), but instead "a mighty woman…the Mother of Exiles," whose power comes from within – that torch "whose flame/Is the imprisoned lightning." Indeed, that "beacon-hand" is the source of her power; her willingness to welcome the outcast, the lost, the desperate, is her strength. She doesn't even need to speak – Liberty, with "mild eyes…cries from silent lips" the defiant challenge of the last lines: "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp…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!" The imperatives here – "keep," "give," "send" – are masterful. They reinforce Lazarus' maternal imagery by echoing a mother's ferocity – these are my children; I claim them. Note, too, how the poem ends with that "golden door," in direct contrast to the false shine of the "brazen" monstrosity of the opening lines.
Lazarus did not live to see her poem engraved on the Statue. She died, probably of Hodgkin's lymphoma, at age 38 in 1887, and the poem was not placed there until 1903. "The New Colossus" reminds us of the power of poetry – it has become the metaphor for America's identity as a country of immigrants (although, sadly, not always as welcoming as Lazarus imagined). Often, "occasional" poems – poems written for a specific event or purpose – are so dependent on the circumstances of their creation that they don't survive well beyond them, but "The New Colossus" stands up to contemporary scrutiny, both as a reflection of the author's values and as a work of art.