1849–1887

Emma Lazarus knew she would be a poet from an early age, and while she was still in her teens Ralph Waldo Emerson praised her literary endeavors. She lived in New York her entire life and found much in the city worth praising in her poetry. She saw America as a haven for the oppressed of the world, particularly the Russian Jews forced out of their homeland during the Russian pogroms of the 1880s, and she helped publicize the plight of the penniless refugees who arrived at the New York Harbor. Her most famous poem is The New Colossus (1883), written in honor of the Statue of Liberty; the poem was inscribed on the statue’s pedestal in 1903.

The New Colossus
(1883)
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.”