Poems of James Russell Lowell: With biographical sketch by Nathan Haskell DoleLowell, James Russell
General
Poems of James Russell Lowell: With biographical sketch by Nathan Haskell Dole
Lowell, James Russell
American poetry
You say,--"We'd ha' scared 'em by growin' in peace,
A plaguy sight more then by bobberies like these"?
Who is it dares say thet "our naytional eagle
Wun't much longer be classed with the birds thet air regal,
Coz theirn be hooked beaks, an' she, arter this slaughter,
'll bring back a bill ten times longer 'n she ough' to"?
Wut's your name? Come, I see ye, you up-country feller,
You've put me out severil times with your beller;
Out with it! Wut? Biglow? I say nothin' furder,
Thet feller would like nothin' better 'n a murder;
He's a traiter, blasphemer, an' wut ruther worse is,
He puts all his ath'ism in dreffle bad verses;
Socity aint safe till sech monsters air out on it,
Refer to the Post, ef you hev the least doubt on it;
Wy, he goes agin war, agin indirect taxes,
Agin sellin' wild lands 'cept to settlers with axes,
Agin holdin' o' slaves, though he knows it's the corner
Our libbaty rests on, the mis'able scorner!
In short, he would wholly upset with his ravages
All thet keeps us above the brute critters an' savages,
An' pitch into all kinds o' briles an' confusions
The holl of our civilized, free institutions;
He writes fer thet ruther unsafe print, the Courier,
An' likely ez not hez a squintin' to Foorier;
I'll be----, thet is, I mean I'll be blest,
Ef I hark to a word frum so noted a pest;
I shan't talk with _him_, my religion's too fervent.--
Good mornin', my friends, I'm your most humble servant.
[Into the question, whether the ability to express ourselves
in articulate language has been productive of more good or
evil, I shall not here enter at large. The two faculties of
speech and of speech-making are wholly diverse in their
natures. By the first we make ourselves intelligible, by the
last unintelligible, to our fellows. It has not seldom
occurred to me (noting how in our national legislature every
thing runs to talk, as lettuces, if the season or the soil
be unpropitious, shoot up lankly to seed, instead of forming
handsome heads) that Babel was the first Congress, the
earliest mill erected for the manufacture of gabble. In
these days, what with Town Meetings, School Committees,
Boards (lumber) of one kind and another, Congresses,
Parliaments, Diets, Indian Councils, Palavers, and the like,
there is scarce a village which has not its factories of
this description driven by (milk-and-) water power. I cannot
conceive the confusion of tongues to have been the curse of
Babel, since I esteem my ignorance of other languages as a
kind of Martello-tower, in which I am safe from the furious
bombardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I have
ever preferred the study of the dead languages, those
primitive formations being Ararats upon whose silent peaks I
sit secure and watch this new deluge without fear, though it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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