James Russell Lowell Quotes

And finally Winter, with its bitin', whinin' wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow.

Chill air and wintry winds! My ear has grown familiar with your song; I hear it in the opening year, I listen, and it cheers me long.

In the woods where snow is thick, bars of sunlight lay like pale fire.

There's plenty of fire in the coldest flint!

I watch the springs, the summers, the autumns; And when comes the winter snow monotonous, I shut all the doors and shutters To build in the night my fairy palace.

When the long, varnished buds of beech Point out beyond their reach, And tanned by summer suns Leaves of bright bryony turn bronze, And gossamer floats bright and wet From trees that are their own sunset, Spring, summer, autumn I come here, And what is there to fear? And yet I never lose the feeling That someone else behind is stealing Or else in front has disappeared; Though nothing I have seen or heard, Makes me still walk beneath these boughs With cautious step as in a haunted house.

Thick February mists cling heavily To the dead earth and to each leafless tree, And closer down upon the hilltops draw, Dull forecasts there of bright, sure-coming spring; Yet the heart gathers hope and strange delight From this dear, unlovely, wished-for sight Of leaden-misted twilights lengthening.

Not yesterday I learned to know The love of bare November days Before the coming of the snow.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

The unknown energy that can help humanity is that which lies hidden in the child.

Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.

Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white-then melts for ever . . .

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.

Peace to these little broken leaves, That strew our common ground; That chase their tails, like silly dogs, As they go round and round. For though in winter boughs are bare, Let us not once forget Their summer glory, when these leaves Caught the great Sun in their strong net; And made him, in the lower air, Tremble - no bigger than a star!

In the summer there are twelve cottonwoods around the pool, which in the winter become an elevated thicket. There is also a courtyard with a small garden of plants that stay green all year. The winter is bleak. This place is primarily for the installation of art, necessarily for whatever architecture of my own that can be included in an existing situation, for work, and altogether for my idea of living.

O thou who passest through our valleys in Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat That flames from their large nostrils! Thou, O Summer, Oft pitchest here thy golden tent, and oft Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.

There is a beautiful spirit breathing now Its mellowed richness on the clustered trees, And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, Pouring new glory on the autumn woods, And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds. Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down By the wayside a-weary.