The first two lines of “The New Colossus” introduce the inverse simile that gives the poem its title, as well as several of its most prominent stylistic qualities. In this half of the simile between two statues, the speaker makes an allusion to the ancient Colossus of Rhodes. The ancient statue, which celebrated a military victory over Cyprus and was built from the defeated army’s bronze weapons, was believed to have stood with its enormous legs straddling a harbor. The use of the word "brazen" to describe this ancient statue refers to the fact that it was made from bronze. But the word "brazen" also means "bold or shameless," which implies a negative connotation of this ancient statue. The description of the limbs as "conquering" also suggests that the statue stands not in welcome, but rather as a symbol of military might designed to strike fear into the hearts of foreigners.
These lines also demonstrate how the poem both conforms to and diverges from the usual iambic pentameter of its Italian sonnet form. Lines of regular iambic pentameter contain five iambs, each of which has one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The second line of the poem follows this iambic pattern (the "quering" of "conquering" should be read as a single syllable, with a sound like "ring"):
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
The poem's first line, on the other hand, immediately breaks from the norm by opening with a trochee (a foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable) and ending with a spondee (a foot consisting of a stressed-stressed pattern):
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
The inverse simile and irregular meter of these first two lines are the first indications of the way that the poem's style mirrors and emphasizes its vision of America as both embracing and breaking from European tradition. Written in the form of an Italian sonnet, the poem directly connects to a long and illustrious European literary tradition. And yet in its first line, the poem refuses to follow the traditional meter of the Italian sonnet. Similarly, the inverse simile turns the original function of a simile on its head: rather than showing how two unlike things are in fact similar, the poem's simile will show how two seemingly similar things are in fact unlike each other. As the poem proceeds, these twists on traditional poetic tools will add up, and suggest ways that America itself has emerged from a European history and tradition, and yet also turns that tradition on its head in service of new—and, the poem, argues, better—values.
The alliteration and assonance that help give the poem a repetitive sound are also featured in these first two lines. The first line uses long “a” and “i” vowels in “brazen” and “fame,” “like” and “giant,” while the second line uses the short forms of those vowels in “land to land” and “with” “conquering,” and “limbs.” Between the two lines, four words begin with an “l”: “like,” “limbs,” “land,” and “land.” These two kinds of repetition overlap to create a network of corresponding sounds, one which gives the poem a sense of sonic continuity even as it argues for a radical departure from ancient values.