For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul’s tasking:’Tis heaven alone that is given away,’Tis only God may be had for the asking.

These lines are from James Russell Lowell’s long poem “The Vision of Sir Launfal” (1848), written in the mid–19th century when Lowell was emerging as a leading New England poet and moral essayist. The poem reworks the medieval Grail legend to critique worldly ambition and social vanity, contrasting the costly pursuit of status and pleasure with the freely available grace of God. Lowell, shaped by Protestant moral culture and reformist currents of his time, uses the chivalric quest as an allegory for spiritual insight: the true “Grail” is found not through heroic striving for fame, but through humility, charity, and recognition of the divine in the poor and overlooked.

Lowell compresses a moral economy into four lines: people spend their lives buying trivialities (“cap and bells,” the fool’s costume) and chasing fragile illusions (“bubbles”), paying with the full labor of the soul. In contrast, what is ultimately real and lasting—“heaven,” and God—cannot be purchased or earned in the same transactional way; it is “given away” and “had for the asking.” The passage critiques materialism and self-important striving, suggesting that spiritual fulfillment depends less on achievement than on receptivity, humility, and grace. It also implies a reversal of values: the most precious goods are not commodities, and the deepest human hunger is met by gift rather than acquisition.