by Homer
Thank Heaven for three. Amen! 10
I always thought cold victual nice; —
My choice would be vanilla-ice.
I care not much for gold or land; —
Give me a mortgage here and there, —
Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, 15
Or trifling railroad share, —
I only ask that Fortune send
A little more than I shall spend.
Honors are silly toys, I know,
And titles are but empty names; 20
I would, perhaps, be Plenipo, —
But only near St. James;
I’m very sure I should not care
To fill our Gubernator’s chair.
Jewels are baubles; ’tis a sin 25
To care for such unfruitful things; —
One good-sized diamond in a pin, —
Some, not so large, in rings, —
A ruby, and a pearl, or so,
Will do for me; — I laugh at show. 30
My dame should dress in cheap attire
(Good, heavy silks are never dear); —
I own perhaps I might desire
Some shawls of true Cashmere, —
Some marrowy crapes of China silk, 35
Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.
I would not have the horse I drive
So fast that folks must stop and stare;
An easy gait — two forty-five —
Suits me; I do not care; — 40
Perhaps, for just a single spurt,
Some seconds less would do no hurt.
Of pictures, I should like to own
Titians and Raphaels three or four, —
I love so much their style and tone, 45
One Turner, and no more
(A landscape, — foreground golden dirt, —
The sunshine painted with a squirt).
Of books but few, — some fifty score
For daily use, and bound for wear; 50
The rest upon an upper floor; —
Some little luxury there
Of red morocco’s gilded gleam
And vellum rich as country cream.
Busts, cameos, gems, — such things as these, 55
Which others often show for pride,
I value for their power to please,
And selfish churls deride; —
One Stradivarius, I confess,
Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. 60
Wealth’s wasteful tricks I will not learn,
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; —
Shall not carved tables serve my turn,
But all must be of buhl?
Give grasping pomp its double share, — 65
I ask but one recumbent chair.
Thus humble let me live and die,
Nor long for Midas’ golden touch;
If Heaven more generous gifts deny,
I shall not miss them much, — 70
Too grateful for the blessing lent
Of simple tastes and mind content!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
James Russell Lowell
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Present Crisis
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth’s aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. 5
Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth’s systems to and fro;
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,
And glad Truth’s yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future’s heart. 10
So the Evil’s triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,
And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God
In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,
Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod. 15
For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,
Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frame
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame; —
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 20
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light. 25
Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet ’tis Truth alone is strong,
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong. 30
Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion’s sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those Crises, God’s stern winnowers, from whose feet earth’s chaff must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. 35
Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word;
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. 40
We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within, —
‘They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.’ 45
Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,
Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey; —
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play? 50
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. 55
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. 60
By the light of burning heretics Christ’s bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calv
aries ever with the cross that turns not back,
And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned
One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned. 65
For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands,
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;
Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
To glean up the scattered ashes into History’s golden urn. 70
’Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father’s graves,
Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime; —
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime? 75
They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past’s;
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea. 80
They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom’s new-lit altar-fires;
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day? 85
New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood-rusted key. 90
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Pious Editor’s Creed
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
I DU believe in Freedom’s cause,
Ez fur away ez Payris is;
I love to see her stick her claws
In them infarnal Phayrisees;
It’s wal enough agin a king 5
To dror resolves an’ triggers, —
But libbaty’s a kind o’ thing
Thet don’t agree with niggers.
I du believe the people want
A tax on teas an’ coffees, 10
Thet nothin’ aint extravygunt, —
Purvidin’ I’m in office;
Fer I her loved my country sence
My eye-teeth filled their sockets,
An’ Uncle Sam I reverence, 15
Partic’larly his pockets.
I du believe in any plan
O’ levyin’ the taxes,
Ez long ez, like a lumberman,
I git jest wut I axes; 20
I go free-trade thru thick an’ thin,
Because it kind o’ rouses
The folks to vote, — an’ keeps us in
Our quiet custom-houses.
I du believe it’s wise an’ good 25
To sen’ out furrin missions,
Thet is, on sartin understood
An’ orthydox conditions; —
I mean nine thousan’ dolls. per ann.,
Nine thousan’ more fer outfit, 30
An’ me to recommend a man
The place ‘ould jest about fit.
I du believe in special ways
O’ prayin’ an’ convartin’;
The bread comes back in many days, 35
An’ buttered, tu, fer sartin;
I mean in preyin’ till one busts
On wut the party chooses,
An’ in convartin’ public trusts
To very privit uses. 40
I du believe hard coin the stuff
Fer ‘lectioneers to spout on;
The people’s ollers soft enough
To make hard money out on;
Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, 45
An’ gives a good-sized junk to all, —
I don’t care how hard money is,
Ez long ez mine’s paid punctooal.
I du believe with all my soul
In the gret Press’s freedom, 50
To pint the people to the goal
An’ in the traces lead ‘em;
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes
At my fat contracts squintin’,
An’ withered be the nose thet pokes 55
Inter the gov’ment printin’!
I du believe thet I should give
Wut’s his’n unto Cæsar,
Fer it’s by him I move an’ live,
Frum him my bread an’ cheese air; 60
I du believe thet all o’ me
Doth bear his superscription, —
Will, conscience, honor, honesty,
An’ things o’ thet description.
I du believe in prayer an’ praise 65
To him thet hez the grantin’
O’ jobs, — in every thin’ thet pays,
But most of all in CANTIN’;
This doth my cup with marcies fill,
This lays all thought o’ sin to rest, 70
I don’t believe in princerple,
But oh, I du in interest.
I du believe in bein’ this
Or thet, ez it may happen
One way or ‘t other hendiest is 75
To ketch the people nappin’;
It aint by princerples nor men
My preudunt course is steadied, —
I scent wich pays the best, an’ then
Go into it baldheaded. 80
I du believe thet holdin’ slaves
Comes nat’ral to a Presidunt,
Let ‘lone the rowdedow it saves
To hev a wal-broke precedunt;
Fer any office, small or gret, 85
I couldn’t ax with no face,
‘uthout I’d ben, thru dry an’ wet,
Th’ unrizzest kind o’ doughface.
I du believe wutever trash
‘ll keep the people in blindness, 90
Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash
Right inter brotherly kindness,
Thet bombshells, grape, an’ powder ‘n’ ball
Air good-will’s strongest magnets,
Thet peace, to make it stick at all, 95
Must be druv in with bagnets.
In short, I firmly du believe
In Humbug generally,
Fer it’s a thing thet I perceive
To hev a solid vally; 100
This heth my faithful shepherd ben,
In pasturs sweet heth led me,
An’ this ‘ll keep the people green
To feed ez they hev fed me.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Courtin’
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
GOD makes sech nights, all white an’ still
Fur ‘z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an’ snow on field an’ hill,
All silence an’ all glisten.
Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown 5
An’ peeked in thru’ the winder,
An’ there sot Huldy all alone,
‘ith no one nigh to hender.
A fireplace filled the room’s one side
With half a cord o’ wood in — 10
There war n’t no stoves (tell comfort died)
To bake ye to a puddin’.
The wa’nut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the po
otiest, bless her,
An’ leetle flames danced all about 15
The chiny on the dresser.
Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung,
An’ in amongst ’em rusted
The ole queen’s-arm the gran’ther Young
Fetched back f’om Concord busted. 20
The very room, coz she was in,
Seemed warm f’om floor to ceilin’,
An’ she looked full ez rosy agin
Ez the apples she was peelin’.
’Twas kin’ o’ kingdom-come to look 25
On sech a blessed cretur,
A dogrose blushin’ to a brook
Ain’t modester nor sweeter.
He was six foot o’ man, A I,
Clear grit an’ human natur’, 30
None couldn’t quicker pitch a ton
Nor dror a furrer straighter.
He’d sparked it with full twenty gals,
Hed squired ‘em, danced ‘em, druv ‘em,
Fust this one, an’ then thet, by spells — 35
All is, he couldn’t love ‘em.
But long o’ her his veins ‘ould run
All crinkly like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o’ sun
Ez a south slope in Ap’il. 40
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.
An’ she’d blush scarlit, right in prayer, 45
When her new meetin’-bunnet
Felt somehow thru’ its crown a pair
O’ blue eyes sot upun it.
Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!
She seemed to ‘ve gut a new soul, 50
For she felt sartin-sure he’d come,
Down to her very shoe-sole.