James Russell Lowell (1819 – 1891)
American Romantic poet, critic, satirist, writer, diplomat, and abolitionist.
To win the secret of a weed’s plain heart.
Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.
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.
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. And in this case, also, the prudent will prepare themselves to encounter what they cannot prevent. Some people advise us to put on the brakes, as if the movement of which we are conscious were that of a railway train running down an incline. But a metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home and imbed it in the memory.
Endurance is the crowning quality,
And patience all the passion of great hearts.
The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does.
Earth’s noblest thing, — a woman perfected.
Bad work follers ye ez long's ye live.
Soft-heartedness, in times like these,
Shows sof'ness in the upper story.
In vain we call old notions fudge,
And bend our conscience to our dealing;
The Ten Commandments will not budge,
And stealing will continue stealing.
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.
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?
Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal;
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?
It ain't by princerples nor men
My preudunt course is steadied—
I scent wich pays the best, an' then
Go into it baldheaded.
The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,
But hern went pity-Zekle.
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.
From lower to the higher next,
Not to the top, is Nature’s text;
And embryo Good, to reach full stature,
Absorbs the Evil in its nature.
I have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences. It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of mediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's conceptions of life, and therefore their code of morals, manners, and conduct — to endanger the rights of property and possession. But I believe that the real gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers that Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to be. If the powers that be are in a condition to give a satisfactory answer to this inevitable question, they need feel in no way discomfited by it.
I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast
Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest.