A Summary and Analysis of ‘The New Colossus’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Emma Lazarus is most famous for writing one poem, ‘The New Colossus’, which adorns the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Written in 1883, the poem helped to shape the popular idea of the Statue of Liberty as a welcoming mother, and of America as the great nation of immigrants.

This view was helped by the fact that the Statue was the first great US landmark that immigrants arriving in the United States would see.

Context

The arrival of the Statue of Liberty in the United States from France in 1886 was a huge national occasion: it is thought to have inspired the very first ticker-tape parade. Lazarus’ poem didn’t enjoy quite the same level of acclaim.

Indeed, it was hardly read during her lifetime. ‘The New Colossus’ was commissioned to help raise money for the statue’s construction, but it was only after her death, in 1887, that the poem was published.

But it would not be until 1945 that the poem would achieve widespread fame, when it was inscribed over the entrance to the Statue of Liberty. Not only this, but France intended for the Statue of Liberty to be propaganda, with the light-bearing female personification of Liberty – that French Revolutionary watchword – symbolising a beacon of enlightenment for those European countries still living under tyranny.

But Lazarus twisted this propagandistic intention, and her poem ensured that the Statue of Liberty would instead be viewed as a beacon of welcome for immigrants leaving their European mother countries, for the new ‘Mother of Exiles’.

Summary

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

As her title makes clear, the Statue of Liberty is a ‘new colossus’; Lazarus’ title contrasts this modern statue with the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. According to a misconception popularised in the Middle Ages, the Colossus straddled the harbour and thus, like the Statue of Liberty, was one of the first things to greet incoming travellers.

In fact, the Colossus didn’t stand astride the harbour, but this myth helps Lazarus to contrast the ‘brazen’ male statue of the Greek Colossus (‘brazen’ carries a double meaning:  the statue was literally covered in brass plates, but it is also boldly standing astride the water like a conqueror) with the more welcoming female Statue of Liberty.

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 …

This welcoming nature is also contained within the epithet for the statue, ‘Mother of Exiles’: this new colossus will be a nurturing, caring figure, a beacon of support, for those who have been exiled from their own countries elsewhere in the world. We’re a long way from the ‘conquering’ stance of the Greek Colossus.

Note how the Statue of Liberty is portrayed as feminine, but as powerful, too: it is no meek, placid figure, but a ‘mighty woman’ carrying as much strength, one suspects, as the male Colossus of ancient Greece. Similarly, the torch the woman holds aloft in her ‘beacon-hand’ carries not just a flamer but ‘imprisoned lightning’, conveying the white-hot power of the enlightenment values the statue stands for.

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

The triple alliteration of ‘world-wide welcome’, with the repeated ‘w’ sounds, reflects the fact that the statue – and, by extension, the United States as a whole – welcomes people from all over the globe. Sure enough, immigrants from various countries did emigrate to the US in the nineteenth century in the hope of making a better life for themselves and their families.

Critics disagree over the meaning of the eighth line, ‘The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.’ Carol Rumens has suggested that it refers to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in the year the poem was written, and that the cities referred to, therefore, are Brooklyn and New York as separate settlements.

‘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.

The sestet, or six-line stanza which concludes the poem, gives the Statue of Liberty a voice, imagining its ‘silent lips’ addressing the arriving immigrants and welcoming them to the land of the free. Lazarus’ phrase ‘the huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ has become familiar to those who haven’t read the poem, or even heard of it. The line is indelibly associated with the Statue of Liberty itself.

The line underscores the fact that many people who were arriving in the US at the time were fleeing persecution, war, or poverty (such as the Irish immigrants who were forced to move to America in the wake of the Great Famine) and longed or ‘yearned’ to live their lives freely.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’

These ‘homeless’ people who have fled their native countries or homelands are borne across the stormy ‘tempest-tost’ (i.e., ‘tossed’) Atlantic in ships until they arrive at New York. The Statue of Liberty raises her lamp in welcome. (And indeed, the Statue of Liberty is literally a lighthouse, a beacon designed to help ships to find the harbour during night-time; recall the mention of ‘sunset’ earlier on.)

The fact that the ‘door’ into the US is ‘golden’ recalls the ‘sunset’ image from earlier in the poem, but also suggests the idea of America as a land of ‘golden’ opportunity, where people could make their fortunes or at least free themselves from poverty and starvation.

Analysis

‘The New Colossus’ is a poem full of contrasts: images of land/sea, fire/water, light/dark, freedom/imprisonment can be found within this short sonnet. But perhaps, as the poem’s title points out, the most important contrast in Lazarus’ poem is between old and new, specifically the old colossus and the new one, and, by extension, the Old World with the New World of America.

‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries the new colossus. The ancient lands of Europe can keep their history; America, the new land of the free, offers a new start for anybody in search of one. And the gender switch is significant: the ‘conquering’ male Colossus of Rhodes, which was erected in order to strike fear into any invading army or fleet that thought it might try to take on the might of the Greek empire, has been replaced by the female, motherly Statue of Liberty which welcomes those coming to American shores in search of a better life.

Form

Lazarus’ poem takes the form of a Petrarchan sonnet rhymed abbaabba cdcdcd. This means that the poem is divided into an octave (eight-line unit) and a sestet (six-line unit). In Petrarchan sonnets (also sometimes known as Italian sonnets, after where they originated), there is usually a ‘turn’ or volta at the start of the sestet.

Sure enough, Lazarus’ sestet begins by moving or ‘turning’ from the poet’s own words to the (imagined) words of the statue, which appears to speak: ‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp …’

This means that the ‘argument’ of the poem can be summarised as follows: the poet uses the octave to describe the Statue of Liberty or ‘New Colossus’, before giving over the sestet to the statue itself, which is given a ‘voice’ within the poem. It is as if this ‘Mother of Exiles’ is speaking directly to all of us, the readers of the poem, and welcoming us personally.