American poet & diplomat (1819-1891)
Softly comes Old Age, the thief,
Steals the rapture, leaves the throes.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Scherzo"
But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet
Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet;
And Death is beautiful as feet of friend
Coming with welcome at our journey's end.
For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied,
A nature sloping to the southern side;
I thank her for it, though when clouds arise
Such natures double-darken gloomy skies.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Epistle to George William Curtis
A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler
O' purpose thet we might our principles swaller.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
The wisest man could ask no more of Fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the Many -- honored by the Few;
To count as naught in World or Church or State;
But inwardly in secret to be great.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Jeffries Wyman
Summer's cheek too soon turns thin,
Days grow briefer, sunshine rare;
Autumn from his cannekin
Blows the froth to chase Despair.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Scherzo"
Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Conversations on Some of the Old Poets
Walking the New Earth,
Lo, a Divine One
Greets all men godlike,
Calls them his kindred,
He, the Divine.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Conversations on Some of the Old Poets
Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut tu du
Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
All thoughts that mould the age begin
Deep down within the primitive soul.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
An Incident in a Railroad Car
The disjoining of deed from will, of practice from theory, is to put asunder what God has joined by an indissoluble sacrament. The soul must be tainted before the action become corrupt; and there is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Rousseau", Literary Essays
My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow:
Don't never prophesy -- onless ye know.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Democracy and Addresses
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Stanzas on Freedom"
Folks never understand the folks they hate.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
New England Two Centuries Ago
But all God's angels come to us disguised: sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, one after other lift their frowning masks, and we behold the Seraph's face beneath, all radiant with the glory and the calm of having looked upon the front of God.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"On the Death of a Friend's Child"
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Rousseau and the Sentimentalists
If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed?
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Stanzas on Freedom"
Ez fer war, I call it murder--
There you hev it plain an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers