Re: Beside the Golden Door
EDIT: Please check out my revised version of this shirt... there's a link in my signature image below. Thanks!
Long before I was born, my great aunt, Celia, came to America aboard a great sea vessel. Arriving in New York Harbor she was greeted by a statue more grand and more awe-inspiring than any she had seen before. This statue towered over the ship filled with future Americans, but they were not afraid. For instead of a great king on a horse, instead of a mighty warrior with a spear, this statue was of a lady. And in that lady’s hands were a torch and a tablet. Light and words, wisdom and reason.
Years later my father would come to join my aunt, coming over from a small fishing village on the Mediterranean to the largest city in the United States. He, too, got to see the lady in the harbor, and walk inside her as well. Inscribed there, to this day still, are these words:
“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!"
--Emma Lazarus
It is from these words that I have created my portrait, inspired by the Statue of Liberty.
