NYC Island Hopping:
Liberty Island 🗽

Miss Liberty is the sole draw of Liberty Island… and she’s enough. Though my love for oxidized green ladies is far and wide, she is quite special–both in stature and symbolism. And like many special ladies, she inspires poetry. Below, the most famous “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, written to raise funds for the construction of her pedestal–which is temporarily not open to visitors. 

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!”

Green, but oxidizing much less noticeably.