Russell Lowell

Famous quotes by russell lowell:

    A stranger came one night to Yussouf’s tent,
    Saying, ‘Behold one outcast and in dread,
    Against whose life the bow of power is bent,
    Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head;
    I come to thee for shelter and for food,
    To Yussouf, called through all our tribes ‘he Good.’ ‘

    ‘This tent is mine,’ said Yussouf, ‘but no more
    Than it is God’s; come in, and be at peace;
    —James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

    They talk about their Pilgrim blood,
    Their birthright high and holy!
    A mountain-stream that ends in mud
    Methinks is melancholy.
    —James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

    Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
    Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
    First pledge of blithesome May,
    Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
    Hight-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
    An Eldorado in the grass have found,
    Which not the rich earth’s ample round
    May match in wealth—thou art more dear to me
    Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.
    —James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

    ‘There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
    That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
    A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
    So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet,
    Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;
    —James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

    ‘There is Lowell, who’s striving Parnassus to climb
    With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme,
    He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
    But he can’t with that bundle he has on his shoulders,
    The top of the hill he will ne’er come nigh reaching
    Till he learns the distinction ‘twixt singing and preaching;
    —James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)