"Democracy gives every man
The right to be his own oppressor."
"But Chance is like an amberill,—it don't take twice to lose it."
"An' you've gut to git up airly,
Ef you want to take in God."
In the second series of the Papers, there is one of Lowell's best lyrics, The Courtin'. It would be difficult to find another poem which gives within the compass of four lines a better characterization of many a New England maiden:—
"… she was jes' the quiet kind
Whose naturs never vary,
Like streams that keep a summer mind,
Snowhid in Jenooary."
This series contains some of Lowell's best nature poetry. We catch rare glimpses of
"Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill
All silence an' all glisten,"
and we actually see a belated spring
"Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' birds."
The Vision of Sir Launfal has been the most widely read of Lowell's poems. This is the vision of a search for the Holy Grail. Lowell in a letter to a friend called the poem "a sort of story and more likely to be popular than what I write about generally." But the best part of the poem is to be found in the apotheosis of the New England June, in the Prelude to Part I.:—