Emma Lazarus:
(July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887).
American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish and Georgist causes. She is remembered for writing the sonnet “The New Colossus”, which was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, in 1883. Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque, installed in 1903, on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus was involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Europe, and she saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue.The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor” for the 1949 musical Miss Liberty, which was based on the sculpting of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). The latter part of the sonnet was also set by Lee Hoiby in his song “The Lady of the Harbor” written in 1985 as part of his song cycle “Three Women”.
Ten o’clock, the broken moon hangs not yet a half-hour high, yellow as a shield of brass. In the dewy air of June, poised between the vaulted sky and the ocean’s liquid glass.
Thick February mists cling heavily to the dead earth and to each leafless tree.
