Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE LESSON, by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: I sat and watched the walls of night Last Line: God but a bigger kind of me? | ||||||||
I SAT and watched the walls of night With cracks of sudden lightning glow, And listened while with clumsy might The thunder wallowed to and fro. The rain fell softly now; the squall, That to a torrent drove the trees, Had whirled beyond us to let fall Its tumult on the whitening seas. But still the lightning crinkled keen, Or fluttered fitful from behind The leaden drifts, then only seen, That rumbled eastward on the wind. Still as gloom followed after glare, While bated breath the pine-trees drew, Tiny Salmoneus of the air, His mimic bolts the firefly threw. He thought, no doubt, "Those flashes grand, That light for leagues the shuddering sky, Are made, a fool could understand, By some superior kind of fly. "He's of our race's elder branch His family-arms the same as ours, Both born the twy-forked flame to launch, Of kindred, if unequal, powers." And is man wiser? Man who takes His consciousness the law to be Of all beyond his ken, and makes God but a bigger kind of Me? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL AUF WIEDERSEHEN! SUMMER by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL AUSPEX by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL BEAVER BROOK by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL COMMEMORATION ODE READ AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYAM by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL IN THE TWILIGHT by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL LINES; SUGGESTED BY GRAVES TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL MY LOVE by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ON BOARD THE '76; WRITTEN FOR BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL |
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