Quotes
Quotes - Lowell
To say why gals acts so or so,
Or don't, 'ould be persumin';
Mebby to mean yes an' say no
Comes nateral to women.
He stood a spell on one foot fust
Then stood a spell on t' other,
An' on which one he felt the wust
He could n't ha' told ye nuther.
All kin' o' smily round the lips,
An' teary round the lashes.
Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snow-hid in Jenooary.
My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 't is to crow:
Don't never prophesy--onless ye know.
It's 'most enough to make a deacon swear.
The one thet fust gits mad's 'most ollers wrong.
Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut tu du
Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu.
No, never say nothin' without you're compelled tu,
An' then don't say nothin' thet you can be held tu.
Our Pilgrim stock wuz pithed with hardihood.
Soft-heartedness, in times like these,
Shows sof'ness in the upper story.
Earth's biggest country's gut her soul,
An' risen up earth's greatest nation.
Under the yaller pines I house,
When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented,
An' hear among their furry boughs
The baskin' west-wind purr contented.
Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal;
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?
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.
Though old the thought and oft exprest,
'T is his at last who says it best.
Nature, they say, doth dote,
And can not make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote.
What men call treasure and the Gods call dross.
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.
Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
But surely God endures forever.
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past.
The one thing finished in this hasty world.
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.
The wisest man could ask no more of Fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the Many--honored by the Few;
To count as naught in World or Church or State;
But inwardly in secret to be great.
The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snow
Not whiter than the thoughts that housed below.
