Great Regulars: The poem begins by stressing the statue's

radical break with the past. This colossus is not the wonder of old, which bestrode the harbor at Rhodes--a figure imagined by Lazarus as a "brazen" or shameless symbol of conquest "from land to land." The new colossus, by way of contrast, is the result of two nations collaborating. France provided the statue, America the pedestal, to mark the centenary of the American Revolution.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus

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