James Russell Lowell on Poetry
1819–1891 United States
← All quotes by James Russell Lowell
6 quotes
A terrible thing to be pestered with poets!
But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good,
She never will cry till she's out of the wood!
Fable for Critics (1848)
The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snow
Not whiter than the thoughts that housed below.
Epistle to George William Curtis (1874)
It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland.
For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet
Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it.
Fable for Critics (1848)
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.
Heartsease and Rue (1888)
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.