1. von
  2. English
Chez Brebant

The vicomte is wearing a brow of gloom
As he mounts the stair to his favorite room.
“Breakfast for two!” the garçons say,
“Then the pretty young lady is coming to-day!”
But the patron mutters, A Dieu ne plaise!
I want no clients from Père la Chaise....

Poet: Francis Alexander Durivage
The Poet

Gather all kindreds of this boundless realm
  To speak a common tongue in thee! Be thou—
Heart, pulse, and voice, whether pent hate o’erwhelm
  The stormy speech or young love whisper low.
Cheer them, immitigable battle-drum!
  Forth, truth-mailed, to the...

Poet: Cornelius Mathews
From "Rhoecus"

Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece,
As full of gracious youth and beauty still
As the immortal freshness of that grace
Carved for all ages on some Attic Frieze.

  A youth named Rhœcus, wandering in the wood,
Saw an old oak just trembling to its...

Poet: James Russell Lowell
A Stanza on Freedom

They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right...

Poet: James Russell Lowell
Hebe

  i saw the twinkle of white feet,
I saw the flash of robes descending;
  Before her ran an influence fleet,
That bowed my heart like barely bending.

  As, in bare fields, the searching bees
Pilot to blooms beyond our finding,
  It led me on, by...

Poet: James Russell Lowell
She Came and Went

As a twig trembles, which a bird
  Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent,
So is my memory thrilled and stirred;—
  I only know she came and went.

As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven,
  The blue dome’s measureless content,
So my soul held that...

Poet: James Russell Lowell
From "The Vision of Sir Launfal"

  for a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul’s tasking;
  ’T is heaven alone that is given away,
’T is only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.

And...

Poet: James Russell Lowell
From "A Fable for Critics"

To his COUNTRYMEN
THERE are one or two things I should just like to hint,
For you don’t often get the truth told you in print;
The most of you (this is what strikes all beholders)
Have a mental and physical stoop in the shoulders;
Though you ought to be...

Poet: James Russell Lowell
From "The Biglow Papers"

What mr. ROBINSON THINKS
GUVENER B. is a sensible man;
  He stays to his home an’ looks arter his folks;
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
  An’ into nobody’s tater-patch pokes;
          But John P.
          Robinson he
    Sez he...

Poet: James Russell Lowell
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration

I
    weak-winged is song,
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height
Whither the brave deed climbs for light:
    We seem to do them wrong,
Bringing our robin’s-leaf to deck their hearse
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,
Our...

Poet: James Russell Lowell