Misprint Is Spied In Lazarus Poem At Liberty Island

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!'"

"There's definitely a comma after the word ‘keep,'" said the publisher of Riverside Book Company Inc., Brian Eskenazi, who realized the discrepancy after Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, which once counted Lazarus as a member, commissioned him to publish a book on the 350th anniversary of the congregation. Mr. Eskenazi, who studied medieval and renaissance studies at Columbia University, said with one comma missing, the line was nonsensical or sounded as though what might be kept was "ancient lands" rather than their "pomp." The version on the plaque at the Statue of Liberty "didn't make sense to me as an editor," he said.

Investigating, he went online to the Jewish Women's Archive Web site at jwa.org and saw a reproduction of an original handwritten manuscript. The American Jewish Historical Society holds the original, said a professor of English at Princeton, Esther Schor, who has written a new biography of the poet, titled simply "Emma Lazarus."

Ms. Schor said Mr. Eskenazi was correct that the comma should be there, but said that without the comma, it is still clear that "ancient lands" are being addressed, not kept. The lack of a comma "doesn't seem like it demands a new interpretation."

Likewise, the librarian at the Statue of Liberty, Barry Moreno, did not think the lack of comma creates a serious conflict in the meaning. The poem is suggesting that the old world keep its storied pomp, Mr. Moreno said. He also said that the punctuation of that line had been mentioned to him before over the years.

A reformer and philanthropist, Georgina Schuyler, a friend of Lazarus's, had the sonnet engraved upon a plaque in 1903. Mr. Moreno said Schuyler could have had the plaque made according to a slightly different printed or handwritten version from the version that survives from the 1886 book.

Lazarus was asked to write a poem to raise funds to build the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. "The New Colossus" was auctioned off with other poets' works. The poem was not read at the statue's dedication in 1886, but Lazarus knew it was her best poem, Ms. Schor said.

"The New Colossus" was revived in the 1930s, Ms. Schor said, as a kind of pro-immigration anthem in fighting quotas. Since then, the beloved poem has achieved worldwide fame.

Ms. Schor said Lazarus's output is more varied than most people realize. Though most know only the final five lines of that famous sonnet, Lazarus wrote lyric poems, narrative poems, dramatic monologues, two plays, a short story, a novel, essays, criticism, reviews, and muckraking journalism. "She did it all," Ms. Schor said.

The Statue of Liberty sits on a 12-acre island administered by the National Park Service. Asked about errors on monuments and inscriptions in city parks, the director of art and antiquities for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Jonathan Kuhn, said sometimes public projects have "many cooks," including a draughtsman, a typesetter, and the person who approves a design. Mr. Kuhn said there was a bust of Washington Irving, carved in stone and dated 1871, in Prospect Park that has "a mysterious period." On a pedestal, the statue simply reads "Irving."

Mr. Kuhn said at the New York City Parks department, there were many levels of scrutiny of texts that go on landmarks and plaques. He said a principle in preservation is that the older an artifact, the less likely one is to change it, unless it egregiously misinforms the public. He said the "last line of defense" was Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. How so? He was an English major in college.