Lowell usually makes the laziest readers do a little pleasant thinking. It is common for even inert students to investigate his meaning; for instance, in his statements that in the age of Pope "everybody ceremoniously took a bushel basket to bring a wren's egg to market in," and that everybody "called everything something else." The high ideals and sterling common sense of Lowell's political prose deserve special mention. In _Democracy_ (1886), which should be read by every citizen, Lowell shows that old age had not shattered his faith in ideals. "I believe," he said, "that the real will never find an irremovable basis until it rests on the ideal." Voters and lawmakers are to-day beginning to realize that they will go far to find in the same compass a greater amount of common sense than is contained in these words:-- "It is only when the reasonable and the practicable are denied that men demand the unreasonable and impracticable; only when the possible is made difficult that they fancy the impossible to be easy. Fairy tales are made out of the dreams of the poor." [Footnote: _Democracy and Other Addresses_, p. 15.] General Characteristics.--Lowell has written verse which shows sympathetic treatment of nature. His lines _To the Dandelion_:-- "Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May Which children pluck, and full of pride uphold * * * * * ... thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be," show rare genuineness of feeling. No one not enthusiastic about nature would ever have heard her calling to him:-- "To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take The winds into his pulses." He invites us in March to watch:-- "The bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence," and in June to lie under the willows and rejoice with "The thin-winged swallow, skating on the air." Another pronounced characteristic which he has in common with the New England group is nobility of ideals. His poem entitled _For an Autograph_, voices in one line the settled conviction of his life:-- "Not failure, but low aim, is crime." He is America's greatest humorist in verse. _The Biglow Papers_ and _A Fable for Critics_ are ample justification for such an estimate. As Lowell grew older, his poetry, dominated too much by his acute intellect, became more and more abstract. In _Under the Old Elm_, for example, he speaks of Washington as:-- "The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim."