Thy name shall live while summers bloom and fade
And grateful memory guard thy leafy shrine."

Lowell's rich and varied personality presents a type of cultured
manhood that is the finest product of American democracy. The
largeness of his interests and the versatility of his intellectual
powers give him a unique eminence among American authors. His genius
was undoubtedly embarrassed by the diffusive tendency of his
interests. He might have been a greater poet had he been less the
reformer and statesman, and his creative impulses were often absorbed
in the mere enjoyment of exercising his critical faculty. Although he
achieved only a qualified eminence as poet, or as prose writer, yet
because of the breadth and variety of his permanent achievement he
must be regarded as our greatest man of letters. His sympathetic
interest, always outflowing toward concrete humanity, was a quality--

"With such large range as from the ale-house bench
Can reach the stars and be with both at home."

With marvelous versatility and equal ease he could talk with the
down-east farmer and salty seamen and exchange elegant compliments
with old world royalty. In _The Cathedral_ he says significantly:

"I thank benignant nature most for this,--
A force of sympathy, or call it lack
Of character firm-planted, loosing me
From the pent chamber of habitual self
To dwell enlarged in alien modes of thought,
Haply distasteful, wholesomer for that,
And through imagination to possess,