What title does 'The New Colossus' give the Statue of Liberty?

“The New Colossus” gives the Statue of Liberty the title “Mother of Exiles.”

The phrase appears near the center of Emma Lazarus’s 1883 sonnet, where the statue is imagined as a powerful woman holding a torch. Lazarus describes her not as a conqueror, but as a welcoming figure whose “beacon-hand” offers refuge and whose light shines toward people arriving from other lands.

This wording is central to the poem’s interpretation. Lazarus contrasts Liberty with the ancient Colossus of Rhodes, which she presents as a symbol of military power and imperial spectacle. Her “new” colossus instead embodies compassion, asylum, and a maternal welcome. The poem’s later lines address the tired, poor, homeless, and displaced, helping establish the Statue of Liberty as an immigration symbol.

Lazarus wrote the poem to support fundraising for the statue’s pedestal. Although it was not read at the 1886 dedication, it was eventually mounted inside the pedestal in 1903. “Mother of Exiles” is therefore a poetic title, not the statue’s formal name: that name is Liberty Enlightening the World.