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The tone of “The New Colossus” is resolute and earnest. Over the course of the poem, the speaker presents a determined and unwavering vision of the New Colossus as a literal and figurative torchbearer lighting the way home for the world’s exiles. The clarity of this vision is already evident in the grammatical structure of the long opening sentence, which begins with a resolute rejection of the old to make way for the new (lines 1–6):

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.

The speaker starts with a space-clearing gesture, describing in no uncertain terms what the New Colossus is not. That is, she is not like the Greek colossus of old, with “conquering limbs astride from land to land,” signifying the patriarchal attitude of the empire. This opening rejection sets the stage for the positive image that comes in the second part of the sentence. There, the speaker provides an idealized vision of a “mighty” yet maternal figure who stands majestically “at our sea-washed, sunset gates.”

The poem’s resolute and earnest tone is also evident in the elevated rhetoric that appears in the final lines, where Lazarus uses a technique known as diacope (die-ACK-uh-pee). This term refers to a type of repetition that involves the recurrence of the same word or phrase, separated by one or more words. Diacope has an especially powerful effect in lists, where the use of a repeating, parallel structure allows the rhetorical force of the language to accumulate. This is precisely the tactic Lazarus uses in the final lines of the poem, much of which is organized around the repetition of “your” (lines 9–12):

“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.”

The word your appears five times in just four lines, each time amplifying the speaker’s address to the “ancient lands.” That said, even though the speaker is technically addressing the nations of Europe, each instance of “your” also points to those “tired,” “poor,” and “wretched” people whom those nations have left behind. The overall effect of the passage, then, is to create an implicit sense of collectivity that includes all of Europe’s exiles. The author’s purposeful deployment of diacope in this passage reflects the resolute and earnest tone of the poem at large.

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