Misprint Is Spied In Lazarus Poem At Liberty Island
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There appears to be an error on the bronze plaque inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, inscribed with the famous sonnet “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus.
Lazarus’s poem contains the immortal lines: “‘Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.'” Just prior to these lines on the plaque are inscribed the following lines: “‘Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she / With silent lips.” But in the handwritten manuscript for a collection of poems that Lazarus compiled in 1886, a year before her death, the phrase “ancient lands” is set off by commas: “‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!'”
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