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 mile 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!”

 

–  By Emma Lazarus,

her poem is  graven on a table within the pedestal on which stands The Statue Of Liberty in New York harbor. My grandmother Minnie often told me of the tears she and her family shed upon seeing this statue, her first real sight of America. I knew, she said, that I was at last safe, and at last free.