American poet & diplomat (1819-1891)
One of the things particularly admirable in the public utterances of President Lincoln is a certain tone of familiar dignity, which, while it is perhaps the most difficult attainment of mere style, is also no doubtful indication of personal character. There must be something essentially noble in an elective ruler who can descend to the level of confidential ease without forfeiting respect, something very manly in one who can break through the etiquette of his conventional rank and trust himself to the reason and intelligence of those who have elected him.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Dryden
My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow:
Don't never prophesy -- onless ye know.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
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
A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler
O' purpose thet we might our principles swaller.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
When the birds their sweethearts win
And champagne is in the air,
Love is here, and Love is there,
Love is welcome everywhere.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Scherzo"
As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,
So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Yussouf"
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
And as nearer and ever nearer
I felt the throb of your tread,
To be in the world grew dearer,
And my blood ran rosier red.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Telepathy"
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
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
These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
In a Copy of Omar Khayyam
The pennoned reeds, that, as the west-wind blew,
Gleamed and sighed plaintively, as if they knew
What music slept enchanted in each stem,
Till Pan should choose some happy one of them,
And with wise lips enlife it through and through.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Invita Minerva"
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays
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"
Softly comes Old Age, the thief,
Steals the rapture, leaves the throes.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Scherzo"
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"
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"
Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Conversations on Some of the Old Poets