Mother of Exiles

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!"



Of the Poem (Poetic Parameters and Notes)

Parameters:

Stanza: Sonnet
Meter: Iambic Pentameter (i.e. 10 syllables per line)
Rhyme Scheme: abba abba cdc dcd (in the tradition of an Italian sonnet)

Notes:

When Emma Lazarus wrote "Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame" she was referring to the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue of the Greek god Helios that was so massive in size that it's revered as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. When she entitled her poem, The New Colossus, she quite blatantly refers to the Statue of Liberty, drawing a nobly audacious comparison of her with that titan statue of old.

Initially intended as a dedication to raise funds for the statue's pedestal, the poem found its way to a vault where it lay invisible to the world until shortly after her death in 1887. When it was brought back into the hands of a minute public an endeavor was made to honor her- and the Statue- by inscribing the poem on a commemorative plaque and placing it with Lady Liberty as an invitation to all people around the world who would desire to live in a land that would secure their God-given right to live as free souls (and what a wonderful land it is).

Along with the previous post, this post is a sort of "thank you" to this poet whose birthday it was yesterday, to commemorate her and reflect on the invitation to freedom this particular poem endorses. Thank you for your heart and your life and your poetry, Emma Lazarus- world without end.

Emma Lazarus*

Emma Lazarus (1849 - 1887)

Emma Lazarus was an American Jewish poet, born in New York. She is perhaps best known for a single verse from her poem The New Colossus (1883), appearing on Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty in New York City:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

When the Civil War broke out Lazarus was inspired to lyric expression. Her first book (1867) included poems and translations which she wrote between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. As yet her models were classic and romantic. At the age of twenty-one she published Admetus and other Poems (1871). Admetus is inscribed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who greatly influenced her, and with whom she maintained a regular correspondence for several years. She led a retired life, and had a modest conception of her own powers. Much of her next work appeared in Lippincott's Magazine, but in 1874 she published a prose romance (Alide) based on Goethe's autobiography, and received a generous letter of admiration from Ivan Turgenev. Two years later she visited Concord and made the acquaintance of the Emerson circle, and while there read the proof sheets of her tragedy The Spagnoletto. In 1881 she published her excellent translations of Heine's poems. Meanwhile events were occurring which appealed to her Jewish sympathies and gave a new turn to her feeling. The Russian massacres of 1880-81 were a trumpet call to her. So far her Judaism had been latent. She belonged to the oldest Jewish congregation of New York, but she had not for some years taken a personal part in the observances of the synagogue. But from this time she took up the cause of her race, and "her verse rang out as it had never rung before, a clarion note, calling a people to heroic action and unity; to the consciousness and fulfilment of a grand destiny." Her poems, "The Crowing of the Red Cock" and "The Banner of the Jew" (1882) stirred the Jewish consciousness and helped to produce the new Zionism. She now wrote another drama, the Dance to Death, the scene of which is laid in Nordhausen in the 14th century; it is based on the accusation brought against the Jews of poisoning the wells and thus causing the Black Death. The Dance to Death was included (with some translations of medieval Hebrew poems) in Songs of a Semite (1882), which she dedicated to George Eliot. In 1885 she visited Europe. She devoted much of the short remainder of her life to the cause of Jewish nationalism. In 1887 appeared By the Waters of Babylon, which consists of a series of "prose poems", full of prophetic fire. She died in New York on the 19th of November 1887.

*Biography from NNDB