James Russell Lowell (1819 – 1891)
American Romantic poet, critic, satirist, writer, diplomat, and abolitionist.
An umbrella is of no avail against a Scotch mist.
To say why gals acts so or so,
Or don't, 'ould be persumin';
Mebby to mean yes an' say no
Comes nateral to women.
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.
Is true Freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt?
Earth's biggest country 's gut her soul,
An' risen up earth's greatest nation.
I du believe with all my soul
In the gret Press's freedom,
To pint the people to the goal
An' in the traces lead 'em.
God, give us Peace! not such as lulls to sleep,
But sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit!
And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep,
Her ports all up, her battle lanterns lit,
And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap.
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur.
Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were souls that stood alone,
While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him. There is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil.
She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;
My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring
She knowed the Lord was nigher.
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp.
Their problem was how to adapt English principles and precedents to the new conditions of American life, and they solved it with singular discretion. They put as many obstacles as they could contrive, not in the way of the people's will, but of their whim.
Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new, and near the end
The milestones into headstones change,
'Neath every one a friend.
I do not believe in violent changes, nor do I expect them. Things in possession have a very firm grip. One of the strongest cements of society is the conviction of mankind that the state of things into which they are born is a part of the order of the universe, as natural, let us say, as that the sun should go round the earth. It is a conviction that they will not surrender except on compulsion, and a wise society should look to it that this compulsion be not put upon them. For the individual man there is no radical cure, outside of human nature itself, for the evils to which human nature is heir.
How little inventiveness there is in man,
Grave copier of copies, I give thanks
For a new relish, careless to inquire
My pleasure's pedigree, if so it please,
Nobly, I mean, nor renegade to art.
The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness,
Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained,
The one thing finished in this hasty world,
Forever finished, though the barbarous pit,
Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout
As if a miracle could be encored.