James Russell Lowell

Our love is not a fading earthly flower:
Its wingèd seed dropped down from Paradise,
And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower,
Doth momently to fresher beauty rise

AY is a pious fraud of the almanac
A ghastly parody of real
Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind;
Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date,

Then Thorstein looked at Hakon, where he sate,
Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall,
And said: "O Skald, sing now an olden song,
Such as our fathers heard who led great lives;

It don't seem hardly right,
John,   When both my hands was full,
To stump me to a fight,
John,—   Your cousin, tu,

Not as all other women
Is she that to my soul is dear;
Her glorious fancies come from far,
Beneath the silver evening-star,

Soldier and statesman, rarest unison;
High-poised example of great duties done Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn As life's indifferent gifts to all men born;
Dumb for himself, unless it were to God,
But for his barefoot sol...

I thought our love at full, but I did err;
Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes;
I could not
That sorrow in our happy world must

O poet
above all men blest,
Take heed that thus thou store them;
Love,

I cannot say a scene is
Because it is beloved of
But I shall love to linger there,
For sake of thy dear memory;

Ay, pale and silent maiden,  Cold as thou liest there,
Thine was the sunniest nature  That ever drew the air;
The wildest and most wayward,  And yet so gently kind,
Thou seemedst but to body  A breath of summer wind

GH old the thought and oft exprest, 'Tis his at last who says it best,
I'll try my fortune with the rest
Life is a leaf of paper white Whereon each one of us may write His word or two, and then comes night
'Lo, time and space enough...

The wisest man could ask no more of
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the Many, honoured by the Few;
To count as naught in World, or Church, or State,