American poet & diplomat (1819-1891)
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
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"Stanzas on Freedom"
As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,
So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Yussouf"
Folks never understand the folks they hate.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Dryden
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Present Crisis
My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow:
Don't never prophesy -- onless ye know.
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
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
A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler
O' purpose thet we might our principles swaller.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
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"
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"
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
To the Dandelion
Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Conversations on Some of the Old Poets
Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
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"
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
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"
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"
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays