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
men citizens made
Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.
men race faces
Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.
memories giving perception
He gives us the very quintessence of perception,-the clearly crystalized precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impression after the impertinent and obtrusive particulars have evaporated from the memory.
heaven may asking
'T is heaven alone that is given away; 'T is only God may be had for the asking.
failure long tails
I tell ye wut, my judgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the the tail.
blood feet dancing
How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.
thinking blood mountain
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.
evil next higher
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.
nature men worn
Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
gold firsts trophies
There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.
war want murder
Ez fer war, I call it murder,- There you hev it plain an' flat; I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that. . . . . . An' you 've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.
war kind christ
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
fighting moon sea
The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.
past mirrors promise
The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change... [Truth's] mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past...