James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowellwas an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets. These poets usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth22 February 1819
CountryUnited States of America
pride men heaven
Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.
reading thinking mind
It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
wise character heart
A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.
loyalty bravery may
Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field.
army greek march
It is not a great Xerxes army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand that march safely down to posterity.
sweet hero men
Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan Repeating us by rote: For him her Old World moulds aside she threw And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.
broken purpose vain
It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.
ends lows
To have greatly dreamed precludes low ends.
evil inward driven
Evil is a far more cunning and persevering propagandist than good, for it has no inward strength, and is driven to seek countenance and sympathy.
son past world
The New World's sons from England's breast we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came, Proud of her past wherefrom our future grew, This window we inscribe with Raleigh's fame.
death believe glasses
We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.
death wise country
The realm of death seems an enemy's country to most men, on whose shores they are loathly driven by stress of weather; to the wise man it is the desired port where he moors his bark gladly, as in some quiet haven of the Fortunate Isles; it is the golden west into which his sun sinks, and, sinking, casts back a glory upon the leaden cloud-tack which had darkly besieged his day.
criticism moral teach
Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed.
character angel heart
All that hath been majestical In life or death, since time began, Is native in the simple heart of all, The angel heat of man.