Poem Lake | Page 4 | The Greatest Poems of All Time

Rhœcus God sends his teachers unto every age, To every clime, and every race of men, With revelations fitted to their growth And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of truth, Into the selfish rule of one sole race. Therefore each form of worship that hath swayed... Poet: James Russell Lowell	Yussouf A Stranger came one night to Yussouf’s tent, Saying, “Behold one outcast and in dread, Against whose life the bow of power is bent, Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head; I come to thee for shelter and for food, To Yussouf, called through all our... Poet: James Russell Lowell	An Autograph O’er the wet sands an insect crept Ages ere man on earth was known— And patient Time, while Nature slept, The slender tracing turned to stone. ’T was the first autograph: and ours? Prithee, how much of prose or song, In league with the creative... Poet: James Russell Lowell	Abraham Lincoln From the Harvard Commemoration Ode, July 21, 1865 LIFE may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is Fate; But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride... Poet: James Russell Lowell
In a Copy of Omar Khayyám 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. Fit rosary for a queen, in shape and hue, When Contemplation tells her... Poet: James Russell Lowell	Lowell on Himself From “a Fable for Critics” THERE is Lowell, who ’s striving Parnassus to climb With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme. He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can’t with that bundle he has on his shoulders. The top of the... Poet: James Russell Lowell	To Henry Wadsworth Longfellow On His Birthday, 27th February, 1867 I NEED not praise the sweetness of his song, Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong The new moon’s mirrored skiff, he slides along, Full without noise, and... Poet: James Russell Lowell	The Present Crisis 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... Poet: James Russell Lowell
Jonathan to John It don’t seem hardly right, John, When both my hands was full, To stump me to a fight, John,— Your cousin, tu, John Bull! Old Uncle S., sez he, “I guess We know it now,” sez he, “The Lion’s paw is all the law, Accordin’ to J. B.,... Poet: James Russell Lowell	Washington [From “Under the Elm,” read at Cambridge, July 3, 1875, on the Hundredth Anniversary of Washington’s taking Command of the American Army.] BENEATH our consecrated elm A century ago he stood, Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood, Which redly foamèd round... Poet: James Russell Lowell