I Lift My Lamp

As my relentless purging of reading material continues, I came upon yet another book I didn't know I had.

Called Famous Americans, it's one of those Dover Clip Art books. There are 75 pages of famous folks, mostly men. The woman who are featured are largely president's wives. However, there were a handful of others, and these were the women who intrigued me.

I decided one of them would be the subject of this blog. Without looking at the names, I peered at each picture until I came to one that stopped me. Then I looked at her name and claim to fame.

It was Emma Lazarus, 1849-1887.

Emma is the poet who wrote the words that appear at the base of the Statue of Liberty, part of a sonnet she penned entitled The New Colossus. The piece was written in 1883 and donated to an organization that auctioned it off to raise money to help pay for construction of the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. (The French provided the statue, but not the base). A bronze plaque with the words to The New Colossus was affixed to the pedestal in 1903, six years after Emma's death from Hodgkin's Lymphoma. 

Born into a wealthy Jewish family with roots firmly planted in America (she had ancestors that landed here way before the Revolutionary War), Emma enjoyed a private education and comfortable home life. Her love of words was evident from an early age, and with her father's help, a book of her early poetry was published in 1867. She continued to write poetry and prose all her life. 


In her later years, Emma began to explore her Jewish heritage. She was appalled by the Russian pogroms in 1881 that followed Tsar Alexander's assassination. She began to advocate on behalf of destitute Jewish immigrants, helping to establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York, which provided vocational training. She also founded the Society of the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews.

Emma was just 38 when she died. But she certainly made the most of the years she had.

Here is Emma Lazarus' sonnet, in its entirety:

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!"