American poet & diplomat (1819-1891)
Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic
What visionary tints the year puts on,
When falling leaves falter through motionless air
Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone!
How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare,
As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills
The bowl between me and those distant hills,
And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"An Indian-Summer Reverie"
'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Present Crisis"
For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions,
Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
A Fable for Critics
Two meanings have our lightest fantasies --
One of the flesh, and of the spirit one.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Sonnet XXXIV
Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
Nationality, then, is only a less narrow form of provincialism, a sublimer sort of clownishness and ill-manners.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
Poets so their verses write,
Heap them full of life and light,
And then fling them to the rude
Mumbling of the multitude.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Eleanor Makes Macaroons"
Great truths are portions of the soul of man.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Sonnet VI
Not what we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Vision of Sir Launfal"
The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"New England Two Centuries Ago", The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose
And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak,
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store,
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Cooper
It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled. Every man was to be trained, not only to the use of arms, but of his wits also; and it is these which alone make the others effective weapons for the maintenance of freedom.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"New England Two Centuries Ago", The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose
There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
New England Two Centuries Ago
With every anguish of our earthly part
The spirit's sight grows clearer.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Death of a Friend's Child"
New conditions of life will stimulate thought and give new forms to its expression.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
On Democracy
The course of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays
This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers