American poet & diplomat (1819-1891)
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"
Children are God's Apostles, day by day
Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Death of a Friend's Child"
Love called, and I could not linger,
But sought the forbidden tryst,
As music follows the finger
Of the dreaming lutanist.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Telepathy"
Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Vision of Sir Launfal"
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Democracy and Addresses
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
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.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
On Democracy
Reputation is in itself only a farthing-candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Keats", Literary Essays
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Rousseau and the Sentimentalists
The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Of a Certain Condescension in Foreigners
Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Among my Books, New England Two Centuries Ago
Ye come and go incessant; we remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot,
Of faith so nobly realized as this.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Cathedral
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.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Festina Lente, Moral
Here shall a realm rise
Mighty in manhood;
Justice and Mercy
Here set a stronghold
Safe without spear.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
'Tis easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue--
'Tis the natural way of living.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Vision of Sir Launfal"
Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Keats", Literary Essays
Fate loves the fearless.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak,
If you've once found the way you've achieved the grand stroke.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Emerson
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.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic