Host Elisa New joins singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, activist Cristina Jiménez, AFT President Randi Weingarten, financier David Rubenstein, and poet Duy Doan to discuss the sonnet by Emma Lazarus that hangs inside the Statue of Liberty.
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by Emma Lazarus
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!”
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!”
“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus (1883)
Singer-songwriter
President, American Federation of Teachers
Business Leader and Philanthropist
Executive Director & Co-Founder, United We Dream
Poet
Illustration, Immigrants on deck of steamer GERMANIC. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Immigrants crossing the Atlantic, circa 1906. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Poet Emma Lazarus, courtesy Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia
The Statue of Liberty in the distance: "Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand / A mighty woman with a torch ..."
The Statue of Liberty: "'I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"
Closeup of the Statue of Liberty, whose "mild eyes command / The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame"
Regina Spektor performing "Après Moi" during a day of filming with the Poetry in America team
