An old poem everyone once knew

The Writers' Almanac cites today as the 136th anniversary of the day America laid the cornerstone for the foundation of what would become the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. That cornerstone was little more than that--a cornerstone. Some years later it was inscribed thusly:

So the cornerstone doesn't hold what has to be among the most famous American poem of all time, a sonnet by Emma Lazurus, a sonnet which includes lines that just about every American can recite--or should. "The New Collosus" was once engraved on the outside of the foundation, but today is inside as a precaution against weathering. 

If today we can't repeat the words of that sonnet, we should be able to out a line or two. But let's be honest: today Emma Lazarus's poem does not inspire national immigration policy. The Lazarus' poem is the flip side of American dream, a dream about America--that this country would always be a refuge, and in that way "a city on the hill" for all the world to see. 

Here 'tis in her own handwriting.

Just in case you can't read it easily, here it is once more. Ms. Lazarus died just a year after it became affixed, spiritually and physically, to the Statue. It's a poem about the colossal American power of grace and acceptance.

“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!”

Worth remembering.