The New Colossus

by Emma Lazarus. Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet born in New York City. She is best known for this sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty installed in New York Harbor in 1903, a decade and a half after Lazarus's death.