James Russell Lowell
Poet, critic, and diplomat, 1819-1891
Cited as Lowell. — 76 quotations
Anthropomorphize
You may see imaginative children every day anthropomorphizing.
Assonance
Assonance between facts seemingly remote.
Athanasia
Is not a scholiastic athanasy better than none?
Atrabilious
A hard-faced, atrabilious, earnest-eyed race.
Availability
He was . . . nominated for his availability.
Canorousness
He chooses his language for its rich canorousness.
Captain
Men who captained or accompanied the exodus from existing forms.
Come
They were cried In meeting, come next Sunday.
Creep
Out of the stillness, with gathering creep, Like rising wind in leaves.
Disguise
All God's angels come to us disguised.
Disleave
The cankerworms that annually that disleaved the elms.
Dreamland
[He] builds a bridge from dreamland for his lay.
Dross
At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross coats its ounce of gold.
Drowse
In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees.
Drowsy
To our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.
Enmesh
My doubts enmesh me if I try.
Epical
His [Wordsworth's] longer poems (miscalled epical).
Epitaphial
Epitaphial Latin verses are not to be taken too literally.
Ermine
The snows that have ermined it in the winter.
Falter
The falter of an idle shepherd's pipe.
Flap
The crows flapped over by twos and threes.
Formicate
An open space which formicated with peasantry.
frail
An old bent man, worn and frail.
Freck
The painted windows, frecking gloom with glow.
Full
The heart is so full that a drop overfills it.
Gyneolatry
The sentimental gyneolatry of chivalry, which was at best but skin-deep.
Historionomer
And historionomers will have measured accurately the sidereal years of races.
Inhabitiveness
What the phrenologists call inhabitiveness.
Intellectualize
Sentiment is intellectualized emotion.
Interfuse
Keats, in whom the moral seems to have so perfectly interfused the physical man, that you might almost say he could feel sorrow with his hands.
June
And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.
Livery
Pegasus does not stand at livery even at the largest establishment in Moorfields.
Lumberer
Lumberers have a notion that he (the woodpecker) is harmful to timber.
Luster
Flooded and lustered with her loosened gold.
Metrist
Spenser was no mere metrist, but a great composer.
Miserere
Where only the wind signs miserere.
Mornward
And mornward now the starry hands move on.
Mythologizer
Imagination has always been, and still is, in a narrower sense, the great mythologizer.
Nidificate
Where are the fishes which nidificated in trees?
Open door
She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind.
Pokerish
There is something pokerish about a deserted dwelling.
Politic
Swiftly the politic goes; is it dark? he borrows a lantern; Slowly the statesman and sure, guiding his feet by the stars.
Poppied
The poppied sails doze on the yard.
Preëminence
Beneath the forehead's walled preëminence.
Preterit
Things and persons as thoroughly preterite as Romulus or Numa.
Rag
Our ship was a clipper with every rag set.
Redemonstrate
Every truth of morals must be redemonstrated in the experience of the individual man before he is capable of utilizing it as a constituent of character or a guide in action.
Risky
Generalization are always risky.
Romanticism
He [Lessing] may be said to have begun the revolt from pseudo-classicism in poetry, and to have been thus unconsciously the founder of romanticism.
Rondure
High-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown Of maiden rondure, like the rose half-blown.
Runlet
To trace out to its marshy source every runlet that has cast in its tiny pitcherful with the rest.
Sallow
July breathes hot, sallows the crispy fields.
Sartorial
Our legs skulked under the table as free from sartorial impertinences as those of the noblest savages.
Sate
But sate an equal guest at every board.
Scutcheoned
Scutcheoned panes in cloisters old.
Shaper
The secret of those old shapers died with them.
Sibilance
Milton would not have avoided them for their sibilancy, he who wrote . . . verses that hiss like Medusa's head in wrath.
Sightproof
Hidden in their own sightproof bush.
Spindle
It has begun to spindle into overintellectuality.
Spiritual
He assigns supremacy to the pope in spirituals, and to the emperor in temporals.
Statuesquely
A character statuesquely simple in its details.
Sternforemost
A fatal genius for going sternforemost.
Streamer
While overhead the North's dumb streamers shoot.
Stunsail
With every rag set, stunsails, sky scrapers and all.
Temporal
He assigns supremacy to the pope in spirituals, and to the emperor or temporals.
Trample
The huddling trample of a drove of sheep.
Transhumanize
Souls purified by sorrow and self-denial, transhumanized to the divine abstraction of pure contemplation.
Transumptive
Fictive, descriptive, digressive, transumptive, and withal definitive.
Triform
Goddess Triform, I own thy triple spell.
Truant
By this means they lost their time and truanted on the fundamental grounds of saving knowledge.
Unpractical
I like him none the less for being unpractical.
Unrealize
His fancy . . . unrealizes everything at a touch.
Vague
The gray vague of unsympathizing sea.
wirepuller
Political wire-pullers and convention packers.
witch
Whether within us or without The spell of this illusion be That witches us to hear and see.
Yaw
Just as he would lay the ship's course, all yawing being out of the question.