Written to help raise money for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal, the sonnet renames the statue: not a warlike colossus but a 'Mother of Exiles' whose beacon is welcome — defining America's greatness by whom it takes in rather than whom it conquers.
What it is contested on. The poem's era tells the counter-story: the Chinese Exclusion Act passed the year before it was written, and the 1920s quota laws followed. The lamp and the closed door have coexisted through most of American history; the poem states the aspiration, the statute books record the practice, and citizens argue the gap — as this library keeps showing.
Public domain: published before 1931
This copy: National Park Service; the sonnet. source · 110 words
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
November 2, 1883
Nothing on this page was recorded — not how far you scrolled, not how long you stayed, not that you were here at all.
Back to the reader · The Founders’ Library · The library’s own source for this text
