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More "Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everything is expressed which the poet wishes to impart. This feature will appear singular to those who are unacquainted with the character of the popular poetry of the south, and are accustomed to the redundancy and frequently tedious repetition of a more polished muse. It will be well to inform such that the greater part of the poetry sung in the south, and especially in Spain, is extemporary. The musician composes it at the stretch of his voice, whilst his fingers are tugging at the guitar; which style of composition ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... so lightly, well-known spire, That minded me of many a pleasure gone, Of merrier days, of love and Islington; Kindling afresh the flames of past desire. And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on To the green ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... of twenty-two, when a few sounds from the lyre of Malherbe, heard by accident, awoke in him the muse which slept. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... a relief to Dr. May that George's vigil soon became a sound repose on the sofa in the dressing-room; and he was left to read and muse uninterruptedly. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... man should have in man. Drinking songs and table songs do not belong to the highest flights of poetry; but if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one imagine English poems on port and sherry? or has a Frenchman much to tell us of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... some pride in mentioning the name of Peregrine Bingham, being a near relation, as well as rising in character and fame at the bar. The verses will speak for themselves, and are not unworthy his muse whose poem suggested the comparisons. The inscription is placed over ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... of Waller's earlier muse! In the year 1645, Humphrey Mosley published "Poems, &c., written by Mr. Ed. Waller, of Beaconsfield, Esquire, lately a Member of the Honourable House of Commons." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax, Hector, and many other heroes who may have served their country as faithfully as these, though their names do not live in the page of history. How gladly would I have trodden the plain, there to muse on the legends which in my youth had already awakened in me such deep and awe-struck interest, and had first aroused the wish to visit these lands—a desire now partially fulfilled! But we flew by with relentless rapidity. The whole ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... inspiration runs to seed. Some fine day every artist finds himself sitting face to face with his lump of clay, with his empty canvas, with his sheet of blank paper, waiting in vain for the revelation to be made, for the Muse to descend. He must learn to do without the Muse! When the fickle jade forgets the way to your studio, don't waste any time in tearing your hair and meditating on suicide. Come round and see me, and I will show you how ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... hitherto dwelt only on the cheering and the joyous features of her faith; her mind loved to muse on the legends of saints and angels and the glories of paradise, which, with a secret buoyancy, she hoped to be the lot of every one she saw. The mind of the Mother Theresa was of the same elevated cast, and the terrors on which Jocunda dwelt with such homely force of language seldom made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... writing, of epigrams, elegies, eulogistic verses, and similar grave trifles distinguished by the crabbed wit of the so-called "metaphysical poets," whose manner was in fashion when the Puritans left England; the manner of Donne and Cowley, and those darlings of the New English muse, the Emblems of Quarles and the Divine Week of Du Bartas, as translated by Sylvester. The Magnalia contains a number of these things in Latin and English, and is itself well bolstered with complimentary introductions in meter by the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... color from the thing to inform that thick hair's insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons: otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would have wished ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... that the gayety of nations was eclipsed by the death of Garrick, he did not mean that a mere barren amusement had lost one of its professors. When Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, and said he had achieved immortality by putting his name on the hem of her garment, he meant something more than a pretty compliment, for her name can never die. To give genuine and wholesome entertainment ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... spell a void, its charm a vacancy. Rosy Romance, thou owest many a page, Ay, many that erst grew beneath mine eye, To what was once the loved reality Of this true fairy-land; but I refuse To deck with Art's fantastic wizardry A haunt of Trade. Mine is not Mammon's Muse, She will not sing for hire of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... troublesome, their adherence having been given only in the regular course of complaisance. She was still comparatively an outsider here, her life with Lady Petherwin having been passed chiefly in alternations between English watering-places and continental towns. However, it was too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that from first to last Ethelberta never discovered from the Belmaines whether her proposal had been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly were they practised in sustaining that complete divorce between thinking ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... wisdom of the wise. So much, indeed, did the subtle mechanism of mind fascinate him that he despised language, or looked upon it as an incomplete instrument of expression. Rhyme, that exquisite echo which in the Muse's hollow hill creates and answers its own voice; rhyme, which in the hands of the real artist becomes not merely a material element of metrical beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passion also, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... of observation. Then he observes, and intensely. He does not analyse, he does not amass his facts; he concentrates. He wrings out quintessences; and when he has distilled his drops of pure spirit he brews his potion. Something of the kind happens to me now, whether verse or prose be the Muse of my devotion. A stray thought, a chance vision, moves me; presently the flame is hissing hot. Everything then at any time observed and stored in the memory which has relation to the fact is fused and in a swimming flux. Anon, as the ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Muse a liberty must take— Start not! still chaster reader—she'll be nice hence- Forward, and there is no great cause to quake; This liberty is a poetic licence, Which some irregularity may make In the design, and as I have a high sense ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... O Change and Time, you come Not knocking at my door, knowing me gone; Here have I dwelt within my heart alone, Watching and waiting, while my muse was dumb ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... replied, First on my roll stands Wyndham's bride, My trumpet oft I've raised to sound Her modest praise the world around; But notes were wanting-canst thou find A muse to sing her face, her mind? Believe me, I can name but one, A friend ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... there are poets and poets, poets sociable and poets very unsociable. Wordsworth made the country, but Lamb made the town; and there is quite a band of poets nowadays who share his distaste for mountains, and take London for their muse. If you'll promise not to cry again, I'll recall some lines by a friend of mine which were written for town-tastes like ours. But perhaps you ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored. Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont, And in those meads where sometime she might haunt, Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse, Though Fancy's casket were unlock'd to choose. 20 Ah, what a world of love was at her feet! So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat Burnt from his winged heels to either ear, That from a whiteness, as the lily clear, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... "Your theory is that a man ought to be able to return to the Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ceased to interest ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... women have!" And Charlie leaned his chin on his hand to muse pensively for a moment over the blindness of one woman who could admire an excellent old uncle more ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... sweetly, but wherever the English language is spoken, his fame is cherished and his verse repeated. Nor is the delight inspired by his works limited to the language in which they were written. All over the continent of Europe, among the nations whose language is of Latin and Celtic origin, his muse inspires deep interest and pleasure. His extraordinary oriental poem, "Lalla Rookh," has been translated into Persian, and delights the literary sons of Iran as it erst thrilled the imagination and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... deliberately dropped the subject. Iris took it up. Sitting by the only table in the room, she was in a position which placed her exactly opposite to one of the prints—the magnificent portrait of Mrs. Siddons as The Tragic Muse. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... dated, or supposed to be so, from the banks of the Garonne. Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same time that he highly extolled ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "Ah, Muse! You dare not claim A nobler man than he— Nor nobler man hath less of blame, Nor blameless man hath purer name, Nor purer name hath grander ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... divisions correspond, moreover, with those of time; the contemplation of the present is Comedy—mirth for the most part being connected with the present only—and the past and the future are the dominions of the Tragic muse. ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... a woman's work is never done," remarked Ik Stanton, dropping into the easiest chair in the studio, "and for this reason, were there no other, your muse is evidently of the feminine persuasion. I also admit that she is a lady of great antiquity. Indeed I would place her nearer to the time when 'Adam delved and Eve span' than to ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... that the experience would repay me, in awakened pleasant memories, for a very poor hair-cut. Instead, I got a very good hair-cut, and no pleasant memories were awakened at all; not, that is, by the direct process of suggestion. I was only led to muse on barber shops of my boyhood because this one was so different. Even the barber was different. He chewed gum, he worked quickly, he used shaving powder and took his cloths from a sterilizer, and finally ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... intricate financial lures which Average Jones was able to dispose of by a mere "Don't." The third was a Spiritualist announcement behind which lurked a shrewd plot to entrap a senile millionaire into a marriage with the medium. These having been settled, the expert was free to muse upon a paragraph which had appeared in all the important New York morning papers ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... juxtaposition, a remarkably close soldering. Ursule was whimsical, and displayed at times the shyness, the melancholy, and the transports of a pariah; then she would often break out into nervous fits of laughter, and muse lazily, like a woman unsound both in head and heart. Her eyes, which at times had a scared expression like those of Adelaide, were as limpid as crystal, similar to those of kittens doomed to die ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... (Right Honorable and that worthily) may haply make your Honors muse; wellfare that dedication, that may excite your muse. I am no auctorifed Herauld to marshall your precedence. Private dutie might perhaps give one the prioritie, where publike respect should prefer another. To choose Tullie or Ausonius Consuls, is ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... hold on a little strand o' human wisdom," said Tumm, breaking a heavy muse, "an' hangs his whole weight to it," he added, with care, "he've no cause t' agitate hisself with surprise if the ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... that high emotion, Muse more rapturous, you, than any Sappho. The Great Mother he ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... been paid to the number of feet on which the lines moved along. But, however defective their poetry may be in point of harmony of numbers, it describes, in vivid and barbaric language, scenes of barbaric grandeur, which in these days are never witnessed; and, which, though the modern muse may imagine, she generally fails in attempting to pourtray, from the violent desire to be smooth and tuneful, forgetting that smoothness and tunefulness are nearly synonymous with tameness ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... spontaneous inspiration come Ev'n in this mingled crowd of good and ill, To make us hail a Wonder:—but Elsewhere Without or let or hindrance we shall use Forces neglected here, but nurtured there; Till all the powers of every classic Muse, Ninefold, may dwell in each—as each may choose: Since Heaven for creatures must have creature gifts, Not only love, religion, gratitude, But also light, and every force that lifts Man's spirit to the heights ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that a gentleman, and a gallant officer, can find no other subject for his muse, in these times of trial, than in such beastly invocations to that notorious follower of the camp, the filthy Elizabeth Flanagan. Methinks the goddess of Liberty could furnish a more noble inspiration, and the sufferings of your country a ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... quiet for some time without speaking, and George also seemed inclined to muse awhile upon the subject. "George," said the uncle, at last, "I think it will be better that we should thoroughly understand each other. You are a good fellow in your way, and I like you well enough. But you must not get into your head any ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... suppressed anger, in many passages of his writings: and many of his Studies, as well as his Scherzos, depict a concentrated exasperation and despair, which are sometimes manifested in bitter irony, sometimes in intolerant hauteur. These dark apostrophes of his muse have attracted less attention, have been less fully understood, than his poems of more tender coloring. The personal character of Chopin had something to do with this general misconception. Kind, courteous, and affable, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... gown—the parish priest of a century ago—a friend of Whitefield." He is likely to come under the spell of this reverend Ghost who haunts the "Manse" and as it rains and darkens and the sky glooms through the dusty attic windows, he is likely "to muse deeply and wonderingly upon the humiliating fact that the works of man's intellect decay like those of his hands" ... "that thought grows moldy," and as the garret is in Massachusetts, the "thought" and the "mold" are likely to be quite native. When the same anyone ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Inconveniencies which Writers for the Stage labour under, besides 'tis observable, that an obsequious prolifick Muse generally meets with a worse Reception than a petulant inanimate Author; and when a Poet has finished his Labours, so that he has brought his Play upon the Stage, the best Performance has oftentimes the worst Success, for which I need only instance Mr. Congreve's Way of the World, a Comedy esteem'd ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... above-named Titian has done it. Corregio, moreover, and Giorgione and Leonardo, very nearly, trying hard. Holbein three or four times, in precious pieces, highest wrought. Raphael, it may be, in one or two crowns of Muse or Sibyl. If any one else in later times, we have to consider.' There is no endeavour to show how or why accurate drawing of the leaf leads to general accuracy in drawing; no analogy is attempted, for instance, between the human and vegetable anatomies. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams: return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... Niccolo da Correggio, called by Isabella d'Este and Sabba da Castiglione "the most accomplished gentleman of the age, the foremost man in all Italy, in the art of poetry and in courtesy," who devoted his muse to the service of gentle ladies, and composed canzoni and capitoli or set Petrarch's sonnets to music for Isabella and Beatrice's pleasure. And among Ercole's courtiers at Ferrara there was one still greater, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... our friends, we have ready to hand a refuge from the clash of wits or the small talk of the day amid the solemn beauties of our venerable minster, whose silvern chimes daily 'knoll us to prayer,' and in the shady walks of whose tranquil graveyard we muse with softened heart, and ever and anon with moistened eye, upon the memorials of the young, the beautiful, the aged, the wise, and ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... "The muse must be partial to red hair," said Amanda. And though Kitty sniffed insultedly at this insinuation, her bright head was soon bent over a pad beside Blue Bonnet's, and after much chewing of their pencils and shrieks of laughter at impossible rhymes, ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... to be antiquytye. But howe yo{u} may seme to force and racke the worde to Chaucers meaninge, Iknowe not; but sure I ame the proper signyficat{i}one of autenticke is a thinge of auctoritye or credit allowed by menne of auctoritye, or the originall or fyrste archetypu{m} of any thinge; whiche I muse that ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... words! who is there that does not wish the honest muse should rise no more? Goldsmith came next, and shared the same fate. His country curate, the most amiable of men, we heard of till ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... 18th, 1848. The following Sunday John Quincy Adams attended public worship at the Capitol, and on Monday, the 21st, he was, as usual, in his seat when the House was called to order. During the preliminary business he was engaged in copying a poetical invocation to the muse of history for one of the officials, and he appeared to be in ordinarily good health. A resolve of thanks to the generals of the Mexican War came up, and the clerk had read, "Resolved by the House that"—when he was arrested by the cry ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Feast," judging that its "glow" was "extinct," had risen to conclude it by crowning the parting cup. He had crowned it with judicious reserve to the "Good Genius;" and Strattis (the comic poet) had burst forth in an eulogium of the Comic Muse which claimed the title of Good Genius for her—when yielding to this new and over-mastering impulse, he (Aristophanes) checked the coming applause, and demanded that the Tragic Muse and her ministrant Euripides should receive the libation instead; justifying the demand ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to that solemn festival of the Catholic Church, where the erring could obtain indulgence by fifteen days of devotion. Yet the very break in the usual life of audiences and journeys must have been grateful to the tired ambassador. He began to muse on the poetic aims of his first youth and the work which was to make Beatrice's name immortal. Some lines of the new poem were written in the Latin tongue, then held the finest language for expressing a great subject. The poet had to abandon his ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... attempt to write you a letter In verse, tho' in prose I could do it much better; The Muse, this cold weather, sleeps up at Parnassus, And leaves us poor poets as stupid as asses. She'll tarry still longer, if she has a warm chamber, A store of old massie, ambrosia, and amber. Dear mother, don't laugh, you may think she is tipsy ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... long, the drooping Muse hath stray'd, And left her debt to Addison unpaid, Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan, And judge, O judge, my bosom by your own. What mourner ever felt poetic fires! Slow comes the verse, that real woe inspires: Grief unaffected ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... and cries "How d' ye do?" Or Mungo, the negro, who quaintly and sly Takes his tea, Cayenne pepper, and cold apple-pie. Some gaze on the Cygnets that glide like a dream, And bend down to admire their fair forms in the stream; Some laugh at their fancies, or muse on a flower, And all are delighted, so happy the hour. Wouldst thou gaze with emotions far purer than mirth On one of the fairest creations of earth, Go at even, and breathe the pure breath of the breeze, From the seat by the ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... they left that barren threshold! And the priest felt all this, as, melancholy and envious, he turned from the door in that November day, to find himself thoroughly alone. He now began seriously to muse upon those fancied blessings which men wearied with celibacy see springing, heavenward, behind the altar. A few weeks afterwards a notable change was visible in the good man's exterior. He became more careful of his dress, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me, Sabbath! In thy light I sit and muse, this sweet, June morning, till The past, with all its varied scenes of good and ill, Fades from my thought—fades, with the bliss ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according to the ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth he said one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, tho insensible to some fine traits of culture, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... fanatic to-night, for you read history not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocian for the Greek, and Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, and John Brown the ripe fruit ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... gave relief to the picture. But he had got what he wanted. He felt on the spot that this WAS the real word from Woollett. "So don't you go home!" Jim added while he alighted and while his friend, letting him profusely pay the cabman, sat on in a momentary muse. Strether wondered if that were ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... his thought; The melodies and measures fraught With sunshine and the open air, Of vineyards and the singing sea Of his beloved Sicily; And much it pleased him to peruse The songs of the Sicilian muse,— Bucolic songs by Meli sung In the familiar peasant tongue, That made men say, "Behold! once more The pitying gods to earth ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... "Unless you can muse in a crowd all day, On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving; Unless you can die when the dream is past— ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... words find credit in these latter days, If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase: What Chaucer, Spenser, did, we scarce refuse To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer muse. If you can add a little, say why not, As well as William Pitt and Walter Scott, Since they, by force of rhyme, and force of lungs, Enrich'd our island's ill-united tongues? 'Tis then, and shall be, lawful to present Reforms in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... thanks—not in our own name, for we are but atoms—but in the name of philology itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and tormented Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... can learn except when I am drawing," he said, and his slate was often so filled with designs, that the sums were jostled into the narrowest possible space, while his Latin grammar was similarly adorned. There sat the Muse in full beauty, enthroned upon Parnassus, close to musa musae; magister had a wig, and dominus a great rod; while the extraordinary physiognomies round facies faciei would have been worthy of any collection of caricatures. Moreover the illustrations of the verb ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of Eden fade, Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain— Godlike to muse o'er his own Trade And manlike ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... down scarcely knowing how to grasp my own meaning, and give it a tangible shape in words; and yet it is concerning this very expression of our thoughts in words that I wish to speak. As I muse things fall more into their proper places, and, little fit for the task as my confession pronounces me to be, I will try to make clear that which is in ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... world. He has followed more or less the wild, shifting impulses of his nature—restless and reckless, if aimless and harmless; fickle and passionate, if rebelliously natural; exhausting his youth and manhood in fruitless action, and devoting the moments of reflection to the playful current of the muse's fancy, forsooth, to the delectation of the more prosaic humanity in this his locality. A life of pleasure was ever his treasure, and he agrees, after experience of ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... the wand of Muse— Queen Posy's shaft of subtle art— Seared to the distant heights of blue, Past onyx lees that Sunsets dyed, And put to Vellum Couplets' fuse, Sped same to Fate with timid heart, Then shed dim tears in Sorrow's pew, This ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... hastily this sincere effort of a maiden muse. Here was a sense of rhythm, and an effort in the direction of rhyme; here was an honest transcript of an occurrence of daily life, told with a certain idealizing expression, recognizing the existence of impulses, mysterious instincts, impelling us even in the selection of our bodily ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... found the jovial Alexander Dumas in bed, even long after mid-day: here he lay, with paper, pen, and ink, and wrote his newest drama. I found him thus one day; he nodded kindly to me, and said, "Sit down a minute; I have just now a visit from my muse; she will be going directly." He wrote on; spoke aloud; shouted a viva! sprang out of bed, and said, "The ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... board the necessary stores for the long voyage, and for service after our arrival there. Lieutenant-Commander Theodorus Bailey was in command of the vessel, Lieutenant William H. Macomb executive officer, and Passed-Midshipmen Muse, Spotts, and J. W. A. Nicholson, were the watch-officers; Wilson purser, and Abernethy surgeon. The latter was caterer of the mess, and we all made an advance of cash for him to lay in the necessary mess-stores. To enable us to prepare for so long a voyage and for an indefinite ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... JOHN BRADBURY, the Muse shall fill my strain To sing thy praises; thou hadst spent thy time Not idly, nor hadst lived thy life in vain, Unfitted for the guerdon of my rhyme. For lo, the Funds went sudden crashing down, And men grew pale with monetary fear, And in the toppling mart The stoutest heart ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... could strut and caper and fling bombastic insults at the authorities in Rome, until the Government found it opportune to take them in hand. The greatest Italian poet and one of the greatest imaginative writers in Europe will now be able to devote himself—if his rather morbid Muse has suffered no injury—to his predestined task. Those—the comparatively few that read—whose acquaintance with this writer's work usually caused them to regret his methods, could not help admiring his personal activities, his genius for leadership and his vital fire during the War. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... miraculously performed—he believed that a benefactor had arisen from the grave to save us. Oh, it was a touching superstition, monsieur, and although I did not myself believe it, I would not for the world have destroyed my father's faith. How often did he muse over it and pronounce the name of a dear friend—a friend lost to him forever; and on his death-bed, when the near approach of eternity seemed to have illumined his mind with supernatural light, this thought, which had until then been but a doubt, became a conviction, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... what then? Why, next morning I was horrified by seeing that it had struck, and split upon, the petticoat of Euterpe's graven image in the garden, and grimed her as if it were on purpose[45]. Only think of my distress,—and the epigrams that might be engendered on the Muse and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... that they would not be put to death was the prefect allowed to proceed to their arrest. Michael and Constantine were then dragged by the feet as far as the Sigma, above S. Mary Peribleptos (Soulou Monastir), and after having their eyes burnt out were banished to different monasteries, to muse on the vanity of human greatness and ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... sense distinct and clear, As any muse's tongue could speak, When from its lid a pearly tear Ran ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... their tents. Their songs had charmed me, and made the long hours flit by like birds. Where are you, brave singers, in this year '68? I know not—you are all scattered. Your guns have ceased their thunder, your voices sound no more. But I think you sometimes remember, as you muse, in these dull years, those gay moonlight nights on the banks of ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... thinking how noble and delightful it was to be a free spirit, to wander about in angelic company, quite secure, though seemingly in the midst of peril. I had now nothing to console me, save the Muse, and she being half angry, would do nothing more than bleat to me the ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... thou art, Thou rushing warmth that hover'st round my heart, Sweet inmate, hail! thou source of sterling joy, That poverty itself cannot destroy, Be thou my Muse; and faithful still to me, Retrace the paths of wild obscurity. No deeds of arms my humble lines rehearse, No Alpine wonders thunder through my verse, The roaring cataract, the snow-topt hill, Inspiring awe, till breath itself stands still: Nature's sublimer scenes ne'er charm'd mine eyes, ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... resolved into finer and lovelier truth the purity which completes it as the fragrance completes the rose. That's what they call idealism; the word's vastly abused, but the thing is good. It's my own creed, at any rate. Lovely Madonna, model at once and muse, I call you to witness that I ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... bark yielded the best writing-paper, while the outer layers were made into packing-paper (emporetica); the uppermost bark was used for making ropes. A case of this kind full of parchment rolls, with a cover to it, stands by the side of Klio in a wall-painting of Herculaneum. In her left hand the muse holds a half-opened roll on which are inscribed the words "Klio teaches history." The ink was made of a black coloring substance; it was kept in an inkstand made of metal, with a cover to it. Double inkstands, frequently seen ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... fire burns cheerfully; the room is filled with my old friend's sober voice; and I am left to muse upon the story ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behooving and unbehooving; ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... were actually printed in a journal to which ANDREW LANG is an occasional contributor. I myself have never dared to go so far. There is something sacred about an established reputation. And I can honestly say that I like the elegant airy trifles which your little Muse has bestowed upon us, though I confess to a weariness when the talk is too much of golf-clubs and salmon rods. And I admire your appreciation of the original work of other men. In the present case you and I disagree upon a question of taste. That is all. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... separated unwillingly, each thinking only of the other's safety and comfort. The girl knew she was not wanted because the man wished to spare her some unpleasant experience. She obeyed him with a sigh, and sat down, not to sleep, but to muse, as girls will, round-eyed, wistful, with the angelic fantasy of youth ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... full of absurdities." Furthermore, nothing is said in the Brahmanas of the Bauddhas—ergo, there were none before "Sandracottus," nor have the Buddhists or Brahmans any right to a history of their own, save the one evoluted by the Western mind. As though the Muse of History had turned her back while events were gliding by, the "historian" confesses his inability to close the immense lacunae between the Indo-Aryan supposed immigration en masse across the Hindoo Kush, and the reign ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... she announced. "That is all there is left in life for me, now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me. In school I can look at her and muse over days departed." ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Plentiful the choice; And, in few moments, of all hues I held A glowing handful. In a few moments more Where are they? Dropping as I went along Unheeded on my path, and I was gone— Wandering again in muse of thought perplex'd. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... sheltered by various dishes with spirit-lamps burning beneath them worked gloomily at a sonnet inspired by the girl he had met the day before while his mother thought he was eating his patent food. The girl, it seemed, could not inspire much, for beyond the fourth line his muse refused to go; and he was beginning to be unable to stop himself from an angry railing at the restrictions the sonnet form forces upon poets who love to be vague, which would immediately have concentrated his mother's attention on himself and resulted in his ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... unimportance of your subject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. In general, what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to grandees? Yet in the "Divan" you would not skip them, since his muse seldom supports him better. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and the vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it may be taken once for all as the truth, that Shakespeare, in the absolute universality of his genius, always reverences whatever arises out of our moral nature; he never profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning away of the genuine and general, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Finding the Head of Orpheus. Edward Berge The mourning muse has just chanced upon the severed head of Orpheus which had been cast into the stream by the Thracian maidens; short pieces of marble are left ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... of 'The Cottage Muse,' was also my neighbour and friend at Todrigg, during the summer part of the year; and even at this hour I feel delight in recalling to memory the happy harmony of thought and feeling that blended with and enhanced the genial sunshine of those departed days. I rejoice ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of his real relations to Kaethchen, which, indeed, would have been as distasteful to her as to their father. In another letter, addressed to her in the following August, he is not more frank. There he tells her that Annette is now his muse, and that, as Herodotus names the books of his History after the nine muses, so he has given the name of Annette to a collection of twelve poetical pieces, magnificently copied in manuscript.[27] But, he significantly adds, Annette had no more to do with his poetry than the Muses had to do ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger." When Margaret Greylston came across that verse, she closed her Bible, and sat down beside the window to muse. "Ah," she thought, "how true is that saying of the wise man! If I had only from the first given John soft answers, instead of grievous words, we might now have been at peace. I knew his quick temper so well; I should have been more gentle with him." Then she recalled all John's ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... chief merit consists in the agreeable pertness and vivacity of his dialogue—Addison, whose fame as a poet greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems to have been mere misanthropy; he was a cynic rather than a poet, and his natural dryness and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... muse beside the rolling waves; We ponder on the grassy hill; We linger by the new-piled graves, And find that star is shining still. God in his great design hath spread, Unnumber'd rays to lead afar; They beam the brightest o'er the dead, And ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Jonson's learned sock, the flowing vein of Middleton, Heywood's ease, the pathos of Webster, and Marlow's deep designs, add a double lustre to the sweetness, thought, gravity, grace, wit, artless nature, copiousness, ease, pathos, and sublime conceptions of Shakspeare's Muse. They are indeed the scale by which we can best ascend to the true knowledge and love of him. Our admiration of them does not lessen our relish for him; but, on the contrary, increases and confirms it.—For such an extraordinary combination and development of fancy and genius ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... uniformly asserted his freedom and dignity in the court of Augustus. The triumph of Messalla was justified by the conquest of Aquitain. As an orator, he disputed the palm of eloquence with Cicero himself. Messalla cultivated every muse, and was the patron of every man of genius. He spent his evenings in philosophic conversation with Horace; assumed his place at table between Delia and Tibullus; and amused his leisure by encouraging the poetical talents of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... eyes Are not reflected where that dark pool lies: It is not hope, for life makes no amends, And hope and I are long no longer friends: It is a ghost out of another Spring It needs but little for its comforting— That I should hold your hand and see your face And muse a little in this quiet place, Where, through the silence, I can hear you sigh And feel you sadden, O Virgin Mystery, And know my thought has in your thought begot Sadness, its child, and that you know ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... bright, and vanished, and Lister, leaning on the rails, felt they called him on. One knew them by their colors and measured flashes. They were beacons, burning on a well-ordered plan to guide the navigator, but he did not know the plan. In a sense, this was important, and he began to muse. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... its merchandise; I barter curl for curl upon that mart, And from my poet's forehead to my heart Receive this lock which outweighs argosies,— As purply black, as erst to Pindar's eyes The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart The nine white Muse-brows. For this counterpart, ... The bay-crown's shade, Beloved, I surmise, Still lingers on thy curl, it is so black! Thus, with a fillet of smooth-kissing breath, I tie the shadows safe from gliding back, And lay the gift ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... her honour because she organised out of her charity the first infants' school in the Austrian empire, and did many other good works. It is both pity and solace that the noble woman did not wed Beethoven. She was his muse for years. That was, as she said, something to thank God for. She was also a beautiful ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Perugino. Both men were egotists, as are all men who do things. They had heard the voice—they had had a "call." The talent is the call, and if a man fails to do his work in a masterly way, make sure he has mistaken a lazy wish for a divine passion. There is a difference between loving the muse ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... The popular Muse regards not probability. Old Robin, who hails from Portugal, marries the daughter of the mayor of Linne, that unknown town so dear to ballads. In Young Bekie, Burd Isbel's heart is wondrous sair to find, on liberating her lover, that the bold rats and mice have eaten his yellow hair. We must ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... days of seasickness were over, gazing out across the waves, and trying to descry something that looked like land, or a tree, or anything that seemed familiar and like home. Then they would shake their heads disconsolately and go below, to brood and muse and be an extremely unhappy and forlorn lot of savages. The joy that seized them when at last they came in sight of land, and were assured that we did not intend to keep on sailing till we fell over the edge of the earth, was ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... convert to that way of thinking, but once or twice of late I have imagined that it was happening. My mind has all but recovered its tone, and I am able to read, to think—I mean really to think, not to muse. I get through big and solid books. Presently, if your offer still hold good, I shall send you a scrap of writing on something or other. The pestilent atmosphere of this place seems to invigorate me. Last Saturday evening I took train, got away into the hills, and spent the Sunday geologising. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... sung by the muse in the Homerican style, and which none but the classical reader ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... it were from sleep and night, let us use in broad day. The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the Muse of history will utter oracles, as never to those who do not respect themselves. I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions a la Grecque," and abruptly inquiring, "Madam, did you ever see a fairy's funeral?" "Never, Sir!" responds the startled Muse. "I have," pursues Blake, as calmly as if he were proposing to relate a bon mot which he heard at Lady Middleton's rout last night. "I was walking alone in my garden last night: there was great stillness among the branches and flowers, and more than common sweetness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... templars and minstrels and ladies and pages, And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land; But, ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster, The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf, And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster, When Middle-Age stares ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... characteristics of Sanskrit poetry, its tender love for the objects of nature, for flowers and animals and the similes and metaphors inspired thereby, and he invests them with all the grace and charm peculiar to his muse. Some of his finest verses owe their inspiration to the lotus; and in that famous poem "Die Lotosblume aengstigt,"—so beautifully set to music by Schumann—the favorite flower of India's poets may be said to ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... performance on the pianoforte had created at Vienna, Mozart forgot all the fears he had expressed previously to his journey to Paris; thought no more that teaching would interfere with the higher vocation of his muse; and was content to become the fashionable performer, teacher, and pianoforte composer of the day. This mode of life for a time had its temptations and its success; and he hoped that he might still better assist his father at Vienna than at Salzburg, as he was at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... tolde. The king somdiel hadde an Envie, And thoghte he wolde his wittes plie To sette som conclusioun, Which scholde be confusioun Unto this knyht, so that the name And of wisdom the hihe fame Toward himself he wolde winne. And thus of al his wit withinne 3090 This king began to studie and muse, What strange matiere he myhte use The knyhtes wittes to confounde; And ate laste he hath it founde, And for the knyht anon he sente, That he schal telle what he mente. Upon thre pointz stod the matiere Of ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... is my daughter. Yonder you see my latter muse for whose dear sake I spin romances. I do not mean that she takes any lively interest in them. That is not to be expected, since she cannot read or write. Ask her about the poet we were discussing, and I very much fear ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Madame Sand will always find the same charm in what she now composes? Will not the merit and the enthusiasm of twenty lose their value in her mind as the works of my first days are depreciated in mine? There is nothing changeless except the labors of the antique muse, and they are sustained by a nobility of manners, a beauty of language, and a majesty of sentiments, which belong to the entire human species. The fourth book of the Eneid remains forever exposed to the admiration of men because it is suspended in heaven. The ships bearing the founder ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... with earnestness, as if to ascertain whether I was really as unconcerned as I affected to be. Then she seemed to muse, picking the cotton of the spotless counterpane on which she was lying, like one at a loss what ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... frontier rendered war inevitable, and he accordingly made ready for the future by preparing his brother for the career of a soldier, so far as it could be done. He brought to Mount Vernon two old companions-in-arms of the Carthagena time, Adjutant Muse, a Virginian, and Jacob Van Braam, a Dutch soldier of fortune. The former instructed Washington in the art of war, tactics, and the manual of arms, the latter in fencing and the sword exercise. At the same ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... I wonder, realise in anything like its full extent the beauty and the glory of our Catholic heritage. Do we think how the Great Mother, the keeper of truth, the guardian of beauty, the muse of learning, the fosterer of progress, has given us gifts in munificent generosity, gifts that sprang from her holy bosom, to enlighten, to cheer, to guide and to help; gifts that she, large, liberal, glorious, could not but ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... and there was little chance of a hearing for the author of the Martyr'd Souldier when James Shirley was at work. From the address To the Courteous Reader, it would seem that Henry Shirley did not seek for popularity: "his Muse," we are told, was "seldome seene abroad." Evidently he was not a professional playwright. In his attempts to gain the ear of the groundlings he is often coarse without being comic; and sometimes (a less ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... being left alone, turned the book several times in his hand with a doubting air, then placing it at a little distance before him, leaned his head on his elbow, and began to muse. ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... observation. Then he observes, and intensely. He does not analyse, he does not amass his facts; he concentrates. He wrings out quintessences; and when he has distilled his drops of pure spirit he brews his potion. Something of the kind happens to me now, whether verse or prose be the Muse of my devotion. A stray thought, a chance vision, moves me; presently the flame is hissing hot. Everything then at any time observed and stored in the memory which has relation to the fact is fused and in a swimming flux. Anon, as the Children of Israel said to Moses, "There came forth this ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... this action had been miraculously performed—he believed that a benefactor had arisen from the grave to save us. Oh, it was a touching superstition, monsieur, and although I did not myself believe it, I would not for the world have destroyed my father's faith. How often did he muse over it and pronounce the name of a dear friend—a friend lost to him forever; and on his death-bed, when the near approach of eternity seemed to have illumined his mind with supernatural light, this thought, which had until then ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... yielded the best writing-paper, while the outer layers were made into packing-paper (emporetica); the uppermost bark was used for making ropes. A case of this kind full of parchment rolls, with a cover to it, stands by the side of Klio in a wall-painting of Herculaneum. In her left hand the muse holds a half-opened roll on which are inscribed the words "Klio teaches history." The ink was made of a black coloring substance; it was kept in an inkstand made of metal, with a cover to it. Double inkstands, frequently ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... shoulder; her figure is fragile and dainty; and though her cheek lacks bloom, the lines are soft and graceful, and the face pensive and poetic. The mouth is small and well curved, and the air of repose that rests upon the imaginative brow resembles the Muse of Meditation. The serenity that is uniformly spread over her unique countenance is in strong contrast to the animated, vivacious features of her cousin. Celina's head is fashioned after a classic model, and the mass of amber-hued hair ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... are the ruins to visit, the Campagna to stroll over, the villas and their grounds to gather flowers in, the Forum to muse in, the Pincian Hill or the Capitoline for a ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... cleansing the leper, raising the dead, saving sinners. As we think thereon, man's true sense is filled with peace, and power; and we say, It is well that Christian Science has taken [20] expressive silence wherein to muse His praise, to kiss the feet of Jesus, adore the white Christ, and stretch out ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... taking the gallant captain between them as escort. Reginald hovered on the rear. Kenealy was charmingly equipped, and lent the party a luster. If he did not contribute much to the conversation, he did not interrupt it, for the ladies talked through him as if he had been a column of red air. Sing, muse, how often Kenealy said "yaas" that afternoon; on second thoughts, don't. I can weary my readers without celestial aid: Toot! toot! toot! went a cheerful horn, and the mail-coach came into sight round a corner, and rolled rapidly ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... mirrored with any exactitude in the Elder Edda. Indeed only a travesty of the faith of our ancestors has been preserved in Norse literature. The early poet loved allegory, and his imagination rioted among the conceptions of his fertile muse. "His eye was fixed on the mountains till the snowy peaks assumed human features and the giant of the rock or the ice descended with heavy tread; or he would gaze at the splendour of the spring, or of the summer fields, till Freya with the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... the horses are ready, and we have further to go," broke in upon the muse of Lebanon. The day's work had to be finished, and time was short; so we rode away to the bitumen pits in the neighbourhood of Cocaba. These are not worked in warm weather, for the people are afraid of the possible effects of their gas generated ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... and the ambitions of diplomatic service had not stepped in between Lord Lytton and his muse, he would have been a fine poet," he said half aloud;—"A pity he was not born obscurely and in poverty—he would have been wholly great, instead of as now, merely greatly gifted. He missed his true vocation. So many of us do likewise. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... his great example in dividing his poem into the four seasons, and he begins, Thomson-like, with an invitation to the Muse:— ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... gayly, "this affair will arrange itself quite easily. Henceforth, Mr. Poet, you shall draw your inspirations in the midst of good fortune instead of adversity. Sad muse! But first of all, bonds shall be given ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... a real injustice to the memory of Baron Swieten, the good friend of more than one composer, to hold him up needlessly to ridicule. [In one of George Thomson's letters to Mrs Hunter we read: "It it is not the first time that your muse and Haydn's have met, as we see from the beautiful canzonets. Would he had been directed by you about the words to 'The Creation'! It is lamentable to see such divine music joined with such miserable broken ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... to support himself by his pen appears to have been deliberate; we hear nothing of those experiments in counting-houses or lawyers' offices, of which a permanent invocation to the Muse is often the inconsequent sequel. He began to write, and to try and dispose of his writings; and he remained at Salem apparently only because his family, his mother and his two sisters, lived there. His mother had a house, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... beauty of her face, which was but of a little model, and yet proportionable to her body; her eyes black and full of loveliness and sweetness, her eyebrows small and even, as if drawn with a pencil, a very little, pretty, well-shaped mouth, which sometimes (especially when in a muse or study) she would draw up into an incredible little compass; her hair a sad chestnut; her complexion brown, but clear, with a fresh colour in her cheeks, a loveliness in her looks inexpressible; and by her whole composure ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... but the legends respecting it are fewer and partake less of extravagance. Indeed, he had himself discouraged the songs of the bards, by ordering the highest honours to be paid to Tac'ita, the Came'na or Muse of Silence. His memory was best preserved by the religious ceremonies ascribed to him by universal tradition. The later poets loved to dwell on his peaceful virtues, and on the pure affection that existed between him and the nymph Egeria. They tell us that when the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between W—m and Shrewsbury, and immortalise every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... our Priests to reason of the starres, Hence Plato fecht his deepe Philosophy: And heere in Heauenly knowledg they excell. Antho. More then most faire, another Heauen to me, The starres where on Ile gaze shalbe thy face, 860 Thy morall deedes my sweete Philosophy, Venus the muse whose ayde I must implore: O let me profit in this study best, For Beauties scholler I am now prefest. Lord. See how this faire Egiptian Sorceres, Enchantes these Noble warriars man-like mindes, And melts their hearts in loue and wantones. Caes. Most glorious Queene, ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... 'Not that my life has been lonely, for I could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going on like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners, and Lavvy being spiteful—though of course I am very fond of them both. I wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have no more of what they call character, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... allow a poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... old when I fell in love with Urania. Was she a fair, young, blue-eyed daughter of Eve? No; she was an exquisite statue of the Muse of Astronomy, chiselled by Pradier in the days of the Empire. She stood on the mantelpiece in the study of the famous mathematician, Le Verrier, who directed the Paris Observatory, where I was working. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... shrines nor strange altars, but ever unwaveringly at the feet of my divine countrywomen. Is it needful that I recross the ocean to bow before the reigning muse? Is it not conceded that the brightest, loveliest planet in Parisian skies, brought all her splendour ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Jasper was last of the band. As he was following the rest, he stopped suddenly, and looked on the ground appearing to muse; then, turning round, he came up to me where I was standing, leered in my face, and then, thrusting out his hand, he said, "Good-bye, Sap, I dare say we shall meet again, remember we ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... source of the purest happiness; and never was happiness more deserved. Even at that early age, I often could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient to make ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the verdure of laurels eternally green, and by Castaly's ever pure fountains, There found he all broken and voiceless the pipe that, in rage at these poets profaning, At these now-a-day sons of Marsyas, the noble old Muse had flung ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... recreant muse—sometimes apt to refuse The guidance of bit and of bridle— Still blankly demur, spite of whip and spur, Unimpassioned, inconstant, or idle; Only let me puff, puff, till the brain cries, "Enough!" Such excitement ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... the heart of friendship knows Be to your ear conveyed in rustic prose, Lost in the wonders of your Eastern clime, Or rapt in vision to some unborn time, Th' unartful tale might no attention gain; For Friendship knows not, like the Muse, to feign. Forgive her, then, if in this weak essay She tries to emulate thy daring lay, And give to truth and warm affection's glow The charms that from ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... India? Then people of this way of thinking say "That is not what we meant." Then what is it that is meant, gentlemen? The outcome, the final outcome, of British rule in India may be a profitable topic for the musings of meditative minds. But we are not here to muse. We have the duty of the day to perform, we have the tasks of to-morrow spread out before us. In the interests of India, to say nothing of our own national honour, in the name of duty and of common sense, our first and commanding task is to keep order and to quell violences among race ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... pointed ones. It is famed as the resting-place of Saints Ildefonso and Leocadia, whom we have met before. The statue of the latter stands over the door graceful and pensive enough for a heathen muse. The little cloisters leading to the church are burial vaults. On one side lie the canonical dead and on the other the laity, with bright marble tablets and gilt inscriptions. In the court outside I noticed a flat stone marked Ossuarium. The sacristan told me this ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... verse, noting the true, tender, and the natural sublime from affectation and fustian. "To this," he said, "I am convinced that I owe much of my critic craft, such as it is." His mother, too, unconsciously led him in the ways of the muse: she loved to recite or sing to him a strange, but clever ballad, called "the Life and Age of Man:" this strain of piety and imagination was in his mind when he wrote "Man ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... behind that of Evelyn which for two years had held its place above my armchair, I turned its face to the wall when I rose in the morning. But at night it beamed ever upon me, becoming as the months passed, the one thing to hold to and muse over when the world grew a little noisy in my ears and the never ceasing conflict of the ages beat a trifle too loudly on heart ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... historical and sublime in spite of themselves. And I do not find that all this is done in the ages of barbarism alone; it is still going on, and it molds the history of yesterday to the taste of public opinion—a Muse tyrannical and capricious, which preserves the general purport and ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... possibly they do, that Down by the Docks is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the savage girls plait flowers, and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut shells, and the grim blind idols muse in their shady groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests and chiefs. And possibly the parrots don't know, possibly they do, that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and has ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... habitations,—and never did He set His sacred foot within a palace, save the palace of the High Priest where He was condemned to die. Much symbolic meaning did Cardinal Felix discover in this incident,—and often would he muse ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of Horace, the gentleness and high spirit of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of Juvenal, but, had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give utterance to the grandest conceptions with all that sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the Grecian Muse rolls forth her ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... activity. We never thought of demanding friendship, or a hint of his voice, or common froggish activities from Gawain. We were content to visit him now and then, to arouse him, and then leave him to disincarnate his vertebral outward phase into chlorophyll or lifeless stone. To muse upon his courtship or emotions was impossible. His life had a feeling of sphinx-like duration—Gawain as a tadpole was unthinkable. He seemed ageless, unreal, wonderfully beautiful, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... partitions sans etre gagne par la tristesse et sans penser que de morceaux a retoucher! En composant, je n'ai jamais connu d'autre muse que l'ennui." ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... to be principal, or accessory, in any manner or way, to the substitution of any created thing for the ever-living God. In after-life Mark Woolston often thought of this, when reflection succeeded to action, and when he came to muse on the causes which may have led to his being the subject of the wonderful events that occurred in connection with his own fortunes. We have now reached a part of our narrative, however, when it becomes necessary ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... followed, during which the parent seemed to muse on the past, while the child rejoiced in the suspension of questions which harrowed his soul, since those of whom the other spoke had long been the victims of family misfortune. The old man, for the prisoner was aged as well as ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... at the post-office this morning, our worthy and efficient postmaster offered for my perusal a paragraph in the Boston Morning Post of the 3d instant, wherein certain effusions of the pastoral muse are attributed to the pen of Mr. James Russell Lowell. For ought I know or can affirm to the contrary, this Mr. Lowell may be a very deserving person and a youth of parts (though I have seen verses of his which I could never rightly understand); and if he ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... adroit artist, "are of no particular nation; and may our Muse never deign me her prize, but it is my greatest pleasure to compare them, as existing in the uncultivated savage of the north, and when they are found in the darling of an enlightened people, who has added the height of gymnastic ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... farouche and intractable, and did battle with the governesses, and overcame them one after another. I break the promise of a former page, and am obliged to describe the youthful days of more than one person who is to take a share in this story. Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth him. But of this be sure—she is as inexorable as Truth. We must tell our tale as she imparts it to us, and go on or turn aside at ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... westward over the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit and muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys—a kind of horse—and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged laddies dream, as ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... house withal" (Rolls Calendars of Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., III. pt. 1.). No doubt it was also thought that this would be an excellent opportunity for the eulogist of the Defender of the Faith to again take up the lyre to sing the glories of his royal master, but no effort of his muse on the subject of this great chivalric pageant has descended to us ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... father, and seemed to muse upon it for a moment while he eyed her paternally. "A very good name, O Princess, and beloved of old ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... like young savages in the fields with their mother, the sick man sat at his dormitory window, or peeped out of his doorway, seeking a ray of sunshine. In the small hours of the night came the visit of the muse, and the man, sick and melancholy, seated himself at the piano, where, coughing and moaning, out of the bitterness of his spirit ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... more humane type; and after giving a long succession of kindly and learned men to the public service through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it finally died out with Constance de Theis, Princesse de Salm, who was known under the Directory and the Empire in Paris as the 'Muse of Reason,' and the 'Boileau of Women,' and with her nephew, the last Baron de Theis, one of the most charming of men, and one of the most conscientious and accurate of archaeologists and collectors. The baron died in 1874. The 'objets d'art et de haute curiosite,' brought together ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of the Lyn Valley climbed to my feet, and I sat down in the shade of the outermost fringe of trees to eat my lunch, and dream and muse, and doze away the first hot hours of the afternoon. I sat looking down over the valley; below me and to right and left the green spikes of the larches were aflutter in the wind; before me rose a great bare shoulder of hill, outlined sharply against the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... compliment of turning her back upon her. The Duke plied his guest with food and wine, declaring that ambrosia and nectar were better fitted for her; he toasted her; he praised her; he exhausted his knowledge of mythology in her honour, calling her Melpomene, the tragic Muse, for had she not made men weep with her song that very night? Song, did he say? nay, hymn it was! She was Polyhymnia, singer of sublimity. He named her Philomele, and desired the lute of Orpheus that he might play an accompaniment to ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... incidental gleams of vivacity; of energy frequently pathetic, sometimes sarcastic, and not seldom sublime. And we have here an additional proof, that a true poetic Spirit, in whatever Breast it inhabits, will create Thoughts, Language, and Numbers, worthy of the Muse, however unfavourable the occupation and ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... the generalities of poetry; and I know your precaution enough to know that you will screen yourself in them against any direct charge of heterodoxy. But the great clamour of all will be raised when you descend lower, and let your Muse loose among the herd of mankind. Then will those powers of dulness whom you have ridiculed into immortality be called forth in one united phalanx against you. But why do I talk of what may happen? You have experienced lately something more than I prognosticate. Fools and ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... little "quoting, quipping, quaffing" club of fellow-workers in Bohemia; and Lemon, it was explained, had dabbled both in verse and the lighter drama, efforts which were "not half bad." Little did the writer dream that his modest Muse had marked him out for the editorship of the greatest comic journal the world has seen! To the duties of tavern-keeper Lemon, who was enamoured of literature and the drama, had been condemned by a fate ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... of death begins, Acts of the night, deeds of the ouglie darke, When Furies brands gaue light to furious sins, And gastlie silence gaping wounds did marke; Sing sadlie then my Muse (teares pittie wins) Yet mount thy wings beyond the mornings Larke, And wanting thunder, with thy lightnings might, Split cares that heares the dole of this ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... idea as to Loeben's temperament can he derived from the following passage in a letter to Tieck: "Gott sei mit Ihnen und die heilige Muse! Oft drAengt es mich, niederzuknien im Schein, den Albrecht DUerers und Novalis Glorie wirft, im alten frommen Dom. dann denk' ich Ihrer und ich lieg' an Ihrer Seele. Ich fUehle Sie in mir, wie man eine Gottheit ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... The comic Muse, we see, disdained not the name, nor refused it the hospitality of the boards; and parents took no shame to give it to their daughters. Tragedy goes further and speaks of the fly in high terms of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Mutual-Admiration Society, organized by the vanity of all to the profit of the vanity of each, kindled in me a desire to show myself frank and independent. I murmured, loud enough to be heard by all my neighbors,—"Of a truth, the Country's Muse is not Melpomene!" Madame Emile de Girardin, when Mademoiselle Delphine Gay and in the most brilliant period of her poetical youth, had styled herself "the Country's Muse"; her admirers had adopted the title, and it had remained her poetical alias. The exclamation ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... into a muse. Her question recurred to her; but it was hardly likely, she felt, that her little companion could enlighten her. Nora was a bright, lively, spirited child, with black eyes and waves of beautiful black hair; neither at rest; sportive energy and enjoyment ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... and Manners. He speaks of Glover's "Leonidas," Cibber's "Careless Husband," the poems of Mason, Gray, the two Whiteheads, "the nervous style, extensive erudition, and superior sense of a Corke; the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feeling of a Lyttelton." "King," he says, "shone unrivalled in Roman eloquence, the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste and ingenuity. Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... first Disobedience | and the Fruit Of that forbidden Tree | whose mortal Taste Brought Death into the World | and all our Woe, With Loss of Eden | 'till one greater Man Restore us | and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heavenly Muse |— ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... for that litle of him, that is left vnto vs, is like the halfe face of a Venus, the other part of the head beyng hidden, the bodie and the rest of the members vnbegon, yet so excellentlie done by Apelles, as all men may stand still to mase and muse vpon it, and no man step forth with any hope to performe the like. His seuen bookes de bello Gallico, and three de bello Ciuili, be written, so wiselie for the matter, so eloquentlie for the tong, that neither his greatest enemies could euer finde the least note of parcialitie ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... would not have concealed his ill-humour in a tub, but would have drunk of this divine liquid, and have directly found the honest man he sought for; it would have made Heraclitus merry; and with what odes would it have inspired the muse of Anacreon! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... months from that date the poem was seven times reissued. This happened without the sanction or the supervision of the luckless author; and from the sale of the book he obtained no profit. Leonora d'Este died upon February 10, 1581. A volume of elegies appeared on this occasion; but Tasso's Muse uttered no sound.[54] He wrote to Panigarola that 'a certain tacit repugnance of his genius' forced him to be mute.[55] His rival Guarini undertook a revised edition of his lyrics in 1582. Tasso had to bear this dubious compliment in ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Inspiration is still Grace, but just beginning to be complicated by human artifice. The poet Orpheus perpetually contemplates God, but the Muse is always at his elbow, the symbol of human art is already born; and that great human manifestation of God, Song, brings ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... a moth beats sidewise And up and over, and tries To skirt the irresistible lure Of the flame that has him sure, My spirit, that is none too strong to-day, Flutters and makes delay,— Pausing to wonder on the perfect lips, Lifting to muse upon the low-drawn hair And each hid radiance there, But powerless to stem the tide-race bright, The vehement peace which drifts it toward the light Where soon—ah, now, with cries Of grief and giving-up unto its gain It shrinks no longer nor denies, But dips Hurriedly home to the exquisite heart ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... direction is perhaps reversed, the skies are more forbidding, the chill is more intense. Only after successive ventures of the same kind is the climax reached, the summit passed, and the vision of sunny plains opened to view. Such experiences are more common to the race than to the individual; the muse of history must note and record them with equanimity, with a buoyancy and hopefulness born of larger knowledge. The movement of civilization in Europe during the latter portion of the eighteenth century was onward and upward, but it was at times not ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... vain,—the all-composing Hour Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power. She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold, Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old! Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires, As one by ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... with longing admiration, and designated the emblem of 'all beauty and all love,' should have impressed Milton's poetical imagination with its charming appearance, and stimulated the flow of his captivating muse. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... dress; From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase, And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays; Then with mosaick art the piece combine, And boast the glitter of each dulcet line: Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse His vigorous sense into the Latian muse; Aspir'd to shine by unreflected light, And with a Roman's ardour think and write. He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire, And, like a master, wak'd the[59] soothing lyre: Horatian strains ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... must have worn in the days of their construction, a very commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems now-we mean it only as against the poets thew. There is a growing desire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless, sincere, and although very learned, still learned without art. No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Thou art the Muse, who far from crowded cities Hauntest the sylvan streams, Playing on pipes of reed the artless ditties That come to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Rondelet discovered that the Garum was made from the fish called Picarel—called Garon by the fishers of Antibes, and Giroli at Venice, both these last names corruptions of the Latin Gerres—then did the two fashionable poets of France, Etienne Dolet and Clement Marot, think it not unworthy of their muse to sing the praises of the sauce which Horace had sung of old. A proud day, too, was it for Pellicier and Rondelet, when wandering somewhere in the marshes of the Camargue, a scent of garlic caught the nostrils of the gentle bishop, and in the lovely pink flowers of the water-germander he recognised ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... proper and delicate way to comfort when I thought all the world had forsaken me, I tender my most grateful thanks. His kindness shall be remembered by me while memory holds her seat. Let the throng of uninvited fools who swarmed about us, accept the following sally of the house of correction muse, from the pen, or rather the fork, of a fellow convict. It ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the other: but let him mark the records of the glorious battles of the Revolution; let him notice the Eagle of Liberty, and all the emblems of Independence, Freedom, and the rights of man; let him muse on the thoughts they awaken, and then behold the actualities of life around him. Suddenly the sharp rap of an auctioneer's hammer startles him, and the loud striking of the hour of twelve will divert his attention to the throng ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Historical Muse! are you sober? Is he, the old Mail-guard, alive, Who probably swigged sound October From flagons, in One, Eight, Three, Five? When PILCH went a-slogging, and CLARKE Was a-studying slow underhand lobs? Hooray for that evergreen spark, ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... against Goliath. And shall I not rejoice, shall I not exult even unto tears?' Her eyes glowed, and the musician was kindled to equal fire. It seemed to him less a girl who was speaking than Truth and Purity and some dead muse of his own. 'The Pale that I left,' she went on, 'was truly a prison. But now—now it will be the forging-place of a regenerated people! Oh, I am counting the days ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... remarkably close soldering. Ursule was whimsical, and displayed at times the shyness, the melancholy, and the transports of a pariah; then she would often break out into nervous fits of laughter, and muse lazily, like a woman unsound both in head and heart. Her eyes, which at times had a scared expression like those of Adelaide, were as limpid as crystal, similar to those of kittens doomed ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... cicerone to admiration; with every sentence he uttered Dauriat rose higher in Lucien's opinion. Politics and literature seemed to converge in Dauriat's shop. He had seen a great poet prostituting his muse to journalism, humiliating Art, as woman was humiliated and prostituted in those shameless galleries without, and the provincial took a terrible lesson to heart. Money! That was the key to every enigma. Lucien realized ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... and mother had left him Ernest dropped asleep over a book which Mrs Jay had given him, and he did not awake till dusk. Then he sat down on a stool in front of the fire, which showed pleasantly in the late January twilight, and began to muse. He felt weak, feeble, ill at ease and unable to see his way out of the innumerable troubles that were before him. Perhaps, he said to himself, he might even die, but this, far from being an end of his troubles, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... imagination, and force of language, would probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot[182]. To apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, containing a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:' but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... effervescence of our meeting had lost a little of its first, fine, carbonated sting, what Elysian hours we did spend over the correspondence of those other two friends, Goethe and Schiller! Passage after passage we would turn back to re-read and muse over. These we would discuss without any of the rancor or dogmatic insistence or one-eyed stubbornness that usually accompany the clash of mental steel on mental steel from a different mill. And without making any one else lose the thread or grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... this subject a good deal of difference of opinion seems to exist, and from Moore's descriptions of the furniture of his terrestrial paradise, which have added so much to the fame of the valley, it appears probable that his "muse," thinking it useless to search abroad for materials which existed in abundance at home, supplied him with what he supposed to be Eastern celestial creations, entirely from his native shores. Vigne, however, says, "I do not think that the beauty ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... belong to the highest flights of poetry; but if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one imagine English poems on port and sherry? or has a Frenchman much to tell us of his Bordeaux, or even of his Burgundy? The reason ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... ere thou sink-thus on thy head Set we our bolder foot; with which we tread Thy malice into earth: so Spite should die, Despised and scorn'd by noble industry. If any muse why I salute the stage, An armed Prologue; know, 'tis a dangerous age: Wherein who writes, had need present his scenes Forty-fold proof against the conjuring means Of base detractors, and illiterate apes, That fill ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... was so obvious that the Prince was struck into a muse, gazing in her face, with his hand still outstretched, and she still holding him by the wrist. 'You!' he said at last. 'How?' And then drawing himself up, 'O madam,' he cried, 'I understand. You must indeed ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that existed between Vetranio and Julia, it is necessary to inform the reader that the lady—although still attractive in appearance—was of an age to muse on her past, rather than to meditate on her future conquests. She had known her eccentric companion from his boyhood, had been once flattered in his verses, and was sensible enough—now that her charms ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... written to Reynolds in February, 1818. Keats says: 'I had an idea that a man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner—let him on a certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, ... and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it, until it becomes stale—but when will it do so? Never! When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... difficult task of reforming their countrymen, and of laying down a theological and philosophical system[16]. —We are informed by Diogenes Laertius, that Linus, the Father of Grecian Poetry, was the son of Mercury and the Muse Urania, and that he sung of the Generation of the world, of the course of the sun and moon, of the origin of animals, and of the principles of vegetation[17]. He taught, says the same Author, that all things were formed at one time, and that they were jumbled together ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... Necessity, a sort of deputy Fate, Wenceslas, a born poet and dreamer, had gone on from conception to execution, and overleaped, without sounding it, the gulf that divides these two hemispheres of Art. To muse, to dream, to conceive of fine works, is a delightful occupation. It is like smoking a magic cigar or leading the life of a courtesan who follows her own fancy. The work then floats in all the grace of infancy, in the mad joy of conception, with the fragrant beauty ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... gipsies sprawled in silence on their platform, breathing a little deeper when deepest approval stirred them, a little more quickly when her Muse took hold of Maga and thrilled her to expression of the thoughts unknown to people of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... walked away from him, her hands clasped behind her, her soft skirt trailing—a pale muse of meditation—meditation in which for once she did not invite him ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tragedy of Cymbeline. The verse of Gray, Collins, and the Warton brothers, abounds in verbal reminiscences of Shakspere; but their genius was not allied to his, being exclusively lyrical, and not at all dramatic. The Muse of this romantic school was Fancy rather than Passion. A thoughtful melancholy, a gentle, scholarly pensiveness, the spirit of Milton's Il Penseroso, pervades their poetry. Gray was a fastidious scholar, who produced very little, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Intention, at present, to make any Defence; but shall submit to a Compromise, which hath been always allowed in this Court in all Prosecutions for Dulness. I do, therefore, solemnly declare to you, Mr. Censor, that I will trouble the World no more with any Children of mine by the same Muse." ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... not. If anybody is to blame, it is the recent writers, who do know the facts, but are unwilling to hurt so fine an heroic figure or to dethrone "one of the demigods of the liberal mythology." Enough to say that the Muse of History has been guilty of one of those practical jokes to which she is too much addicted, in dressing with tragic buskins and muffling in the cloak of a hero of melodrama, and so palming off for earnest on two generations of mankind, the drollest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... day, as day is reckoned on the earth, I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles, Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven, ... And now I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock, To muse upon the strange and solemn things Of this mysterious realm. All day my steps Have been amid the beautiful, the wild, The gloomy, the terrific; crystal founts Almost invisible in their serene And pure transparency, high pillared ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Newport, Rhode Island, there to build (in 1729) the beautiful old place, Whitehall, which is still standing. Hundreds of interested visitors drive every summer to the old house, to take a cup of tea, to muse on the strange story with which the ancient dwelling is connected, and to pay the meed of respectful memory to the eminent philosopher who ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the most poignant emotion of human nature, love. Chesterton, on the other hand, considers that Browning was the finest love poet of the world. It is real love poetry, because it talks about real people, not ideals; it does not muse of the Prince Charming meeting the Fairy Princess, and forget the devoted wife meeting her husband on the villa doorstep with open arms and a nice dinner in the parlour. Sentiment must be based on reality if it is ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... I'll tell ye. 'Tis not vain or fabulous (Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance) What the sage poets, taught by the heavenly Muse, Storied of old in high immortal verse Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles, And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell; For such there be, but unbelief is blind. Within the navel of this hideous wood, 520 Immured in cypress shades, a sorcerer dwells, Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... duly saw the Muse and Lamp in the Museo, the Fra Angelicos, and all the Signorellis. One cannot help thinking that too much fuss is made nowadays about works of art—running after them for their own sakes, exaggerating their importance, and detaching them as objects of study, instead of taking them with ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... hues That thrill through the green! Colours which Greuze Would die to have seen! With thee would De Musset Sweeten his muse; Use, not abuse, Bright little fellow! (The green, not the yellow.) O the taste and the smell! O Never refuse A kiss on the lips ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... too-tender sensibility"; and if the frosts of prudence, the icy chain of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness! At this time the profanation of the word "love" rose to its height; the muse of science condescended to seek admission at the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into the service of virtue than by such a comment on the present ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... certainly as that they both belonged to the strongest champions of German science, the Muse had kissed them in their cradle. Not only their manner of restoring our German legends, but almost all their writings, give evidence of a poetical mode of viewing things, and of an intuition peculiar to the spirit of poetry. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it, he would try to walk himself to a standstill. Unfortunately the head will continue working when the legs are at rest. And when he sat opposite to her at meal-times, Frances Freeland would gaze piercingly at his forehead and muse: 'The dear boy looks much better, but he's getting a little line between his brows—it IS such a pity!' It worried her, too, that the face he was putting on their little holiday together was not quite as full as she could have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... refined and subdivided, as an art, both in degree and kind, in France more than in any other country. The prolific authors in this department, and the variety and richness of invention they display, as well as the permanent attraction of the Comic Muse, are striking peculiarities of the French theatre. No capital affords the material and the audience requisite for such triumphs like Paris; and there is always a play of this kind in vogue there, wherein novelty of combination, significance of dialogue, and artistic felicities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... abandoned. This was the Westphalian student, who, wearied with amusements that were below the level of his acquirements, and suddenly struck with the imposing aspect of the lake and the mountains, had stolen apart to muse on his distant home and the beings most dear to him, under an excitement that suited those morbid sensibilities which he had long encouraged by a very subtle metaphysical system of philosophy. Until now, Maso had paced his lofty post with his eye fixed chiefly on the heavens in ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... English literature. This lady was the wife of the governor of Massachusetts, and because of her literary tendencies was looked upon by the people of her time as a marvel of womankind. Her contemporaries called her the "tenth muse lately sprung up in America," and one of them, Rev. Nathaniel Ward, was inspired to write an address to her, in which he declares his wonder at her success as a poet, and playfully foretells the consequences if women are permitted ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... walked in, but that isn't quite right. He stood in the open door, staring at us, with an expression that would have done credit to the Tragic Muse. I imagine Enoch Arden wore much the same look when he piped the home circle after that prolonged absence of his. Then Dinky-Dunk did a most unpardonable thing. Instead of saying "Howdy!" like a scholar and a gentleman, he backed out ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... satisfied, though she gave no intimation of this, Fanny returned to the seclusion of her own room, to muse on so unexpected a circumstance; and as she mused, the beating of her heart grew quicker. Again she read the letter from Mr. Lyon, and again and again conned it over, until every sentence was imprinted on her memory. She did not reject the view taken by her mother; nay, she even tried ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... Time, which they seldom allow to others, I will hasten to the Times of greater Politeness, and desire that room may be made, and attention given to a Person of no less Wit than Honour, the Earl of Surrey, who at least had all the Elegancy of a gentle Muse, that may deserve the Praises of ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... diamonds. None of his gems are paste, and a few have a perfection, a solidity, and a fire that fit them for a place in that coronet one might fancy made up of the richest of the jewels of the world's music-makers, and fashioned for the very brows of the Muse herself. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... and after trolling out a few Irish melodies, he succeeded in eliciting from them a sympathetic response in the shape of some lively French songs. The result proved most delightful to all concerned; and thereafter the muse of Ireland and the muse of France kept up a perpetual antiphonal song, which beguiled many ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... raw—producing a raging thirst. The water supply was now curtailed to a few bucketsful, but even these few drops of the precious fluid were mostly wasted in the melee for their possession. The majority of the contestants retired disappointed to muse on the comforts of the Sahara Desert, and as the stories about tapping camels recurred to them, suggestive glances were cast at the more fortunate rivals. After a few days, conspicuous for the sparing enjoyment ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... and Virgil of their age. They must, however, have appealed to quite different classes. The plain-spoken, jolly humour, homely, lively, direct tales, vigorous patriotic feeling, and rough-and-tumble metre of Warner's muse, and its heterogeneous accumulation of material—history, tales, theology, antiquities—must have appealed to a lower and wider audience than Spenser's charmed verse. The style is clear, spirited, and pointed, but, as has been said, "with all its force and vivacity ... fancy at times, and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... so, from the banks of the Garonne. Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same time that he highly extolled the epistle to Grammont, he, very naturally, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... for a Newgate execution—but enough of such details; it is the muse of Mr. Crabbe that alone could do them justice. We would say to the great city, in the benedictory spirit of the patriot of Venice,—esto perpetua! Notwithstanding thy manifold "honest knaveries," peace be within thy walls, and plenty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... grow more fond, as they grow impotent. This, some years hence, our poet's case may prove; But yet, he hopes, he's young enough to love. When forty comes, if e'er he live to see That wretched, fumbling age of poetry, 'Twill be high time to bid his muse adieu:— Well may he please himself, but never you. Till then, he'll do as well as he began, And hopes you will not find him less a man. Think him not duller for this year's delay; He was prepared, the women were away; And men, without their parts, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... she would send in Mrs. Crabtree with her tawse!" said Rosamond. "But is it right by Raymond to let his wife bring this Yankee muse to talk her nonsense ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... They ringed the chariot round with a maze of flowers chains. As the car moved, they accompanied it with a dance of unspeakable ease, modesty, grace. A local poet—not Simonides, not Pindar, but some humbler bard—had invoked his muse for the grand occasion. Youths and maidens burst ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... monarch-murder'd soldier's tomb You wove th' unfinish'd wreath of saddest hues; And to that holier chaplet added bloom, Besprinkling it with Jordan's cleansing dews. But lo! your Henderson awakes the Muse— His spirit beckon'd from the mountain's height! You left the plain, and soar'd mid richer views. So Nature mourn'd, when sank the first day's light, With stars, unseen before, spangling ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... so too, not else, you can set the music to it, and let the other follow as English verses. Autumn is my propitious season; I make more verses in it than all the year else." The old song of "O my love Annie's very bonnie," helped the muse of Burns ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the elegant and disillusioned young men overshot their mark. Mere health reasserted itself; an inherent repressed vitality sought new channels. Arthur Symons deserted his hectic Muse, Richard Le Gallienne abandoned his preciosity, and the group began to disintegrate. The aesthetic philosophy was wearing thin; it had already begun to fray and reveal its essential shabbiness. Wilde himself possessed the three things which he said the English would never forgive—youth, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... a Vet'ran Bard Again brings forth;—but yet with labour hard. Nor is it strange, that such a Muse feels pain, When her child starts, like Pallas, from the brain, Arm'd at all points; when bold, she dares engage, With Truth's bright arms, the monsters of the age; When with just aim she points keen Satire's dart, And stabs the foul fiend GAMING ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... of that scene attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies me for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe her divine spirit ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... rays of sunset thy grey turrets gleam, Yet I linger with thee—as to muse o'er a dream, That mournful truths soon will dispel; My pathway winds onward—life's cares to renew, And I feel, as thy towers now fade from my view, 'Tis for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... scope for the truculent passion Of JUVENAL'S masculine muse To flagellate folly and fashion In dress and in manners and views; But we've plenty of prophets and poets; We've few who are sober and sane; We don't want another DE BLOWITZ; We ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... pall; but oh! the Beautiful never does. Figs rot; but oh! the Truthful is eternal. I was born, lady, to grapple with the Lofty and the Ideal. My soul yearns for the Visionary. I stand behind the counter, it is true; but I ponder here upon the deeds of heroes, and muse over the thoughts of sages. What is grocery for one who has ambition? What sweetness hath Muscovada to him who hath tasted of Poesy? The Ideal, lady, I often think, is the true Real, and the Actual, but a visionary hallucination. But pardon ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould; But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the muse's tales seem truly told; Till the sense aches with gazing, to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... been prejudicial to the interests of The Museion; a series of triumphant Helens in Leuce would have turned Rickman aside for ever from the columns of Metropolis; but Jewdwine told himself that he had nothing to fear from the rivalries of the modern Tragic Muse. Rickman the journalist would live; for Rickman the poet had set out on the path ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... dark for both and say Amen. Nay, muse not, madam: tis no sencelesse Image, But the true essence of your ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... first days of seasickness were over, gazing out across the waves, and trying to descry something that looked like land, or a tree, or anything that seemed familiar and like home. Then they would shake their heads disconsolately and go below, to brood and muse and be an extremely unhappy and forlorn lot of savages. The joy that seized them when at last they came in sight of land, and were assured that we did not intend to keep on sailing till we fell over the edge of the earth, ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... the enchantment which romance and poetry have thrown around them. We listen for the tinkling chime of the fairy bells as we pass through the glen of Thomas the Rhymer, almost expecting to see by our side, as we muse on the banks of the goblin stream, the queen of the fairies on her "dapple gray pony." Again, through the cloisters of Melrose Abbey we wander silently and in awe, almost wishing that honest John Boyer would leave us awhile unmolested even by the praises of his master the "shirra," ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... be more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... than any of these was the tribute paid to women by the Minnesinger Henry of Meissen. Declining to single out any one fair Muse, he sang of womankind as a whole, and never ceased to praise their purity, their gentleness, and their nobility. Through his life he was honoured by them with the title of "Frauenlob" (praise of women), and at his death ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... "and I've done others like it. Oh, yes, my muse has been a nouveau riche lady in a Worth gown, my ambition a big red motor-car. I've been a 'scramble a cent, mister' troubadour beckoning from the book-stalls. It was good fun writing those things, and it brought me more money than was good for ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... for the pretty courtesy with which she would answer him, she remained lost in her own thoughts—ever and anon consulting the letter which lay beside her to fall again, it seemed, into a deeper muse; but never a tear glinted between ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... on board he flapped about more helpless than anything I have ever seen, falling into everything he could fall into, biting several of the crew. You know the sonnet in which Baudelaire compares the bird on the wing to the poet with the Muse beside him, and the albatross on deck to the poet in the drawing-room. You remember the sonnet, how the sailors teased the bird ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Should my recreant muse—sometimes apt to refuse The guidance of bit and of bridle— Still blankly demur, spite of whip and spur, Unimpassioned, inconstant, or idle; Only let me puff, puff, till the brain cries, "Enough!" Such excitement is all I'm in lack o', And the poetic vein soon to fancy gives rein, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... stars!" said Adrienne, gayly, "this affair will arrange itself quite easily. Henceforth, Mr. Poet, you shall draw your inspirations in the midst of good fortune instead of adversity. Sad muse! But first of all, bonds shall be given ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... slice, Resolved no nobleman on earth Should overgo him in the price. From which these serious lessons flow:— Fail not your praises to bestow On gods and godlike men. Again, To sell the product of her pain Is not degrading to the Muse. Indeed, her art they do abuse, Who think her wares to use, And yet a liberal pay refuse. Whate'er the great confer upon her, They're honour'd by it while they honour. Of old, Olympus and Parnassus In friendship heaved ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... mourn the vanished beam, and add our mite Of praise in payment of a long delight. 100 Ye Orators! whom yet our councils yield, Mourn for the veteran Hero of your field! The worthy rival of the wondrous Three![102] Whose words were sparks of Immortality! Ye Bards! to whom the Drama's Muse is dear, He was your Master—emulate him here! Ye men of wit and social eloquence![103] He was your brother—bear his ashes hence! While Powers of mind almost of boundless range,[104] Complete in kind, as various ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... many natural objects—but it is not true for all. How fresh these lines from an address to his muse by Wither: ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... mark'd me for her pet; That Phoebus doom'd me, kind indulgent sire! To mount his car, and set the world on fire. Fame's steep ascent by easy flights to win, With a neat pocket volume I'll begin; And dirge, and sonnet, ode, and epigram, Shall show mankind how versatile I am. The buskin'd Muse shall next my pen descry: The boxes from their inmost rows shall sigh; The pit shall weep, the galleries deplore Such moving woes as ne'er were heard before: Enough—I'll leave them in their soft hysterics, Mount, in a brighter blaze, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... I think hostile criticism, fiercely hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against shadows. Swinburne's polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was trying to stem. As for Swinburne's hydrocephalic muse, I do not think Whitman took any interest in it from ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... rigorous scholastic rule; such an asceticism, I mean, as only the hardihood and devotion of the scholar himself can enforce. We live in the sun and on the surface—a thin, plausible, superficial existence, and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our shallow and frivolous way of life, how can greatness ever grow? Come now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners and do chores, ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... pleased and delighted, and although she perfectly realized the king's impatience, tantalizingly prolonged his sufferings by unexpectedly resuming the conversation at the very moment the king, absorbed in his own reflections, began to muse over his secret attachment. Everything seemed to combine—not alone the little teasing attentions of the queen, but also the queen-mother's interruptions—to make the king's position almost insupportable; for he knew not how to control the restless longings of his heart. At first, he complained of ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... known, it would not have been difficult to have assumed, from the rhythmic character of Mr. Ruskin's prose, that he had at one time 'dropped into poetry.' Such a master of rhetoric could hardly have gone through life without wooing the Muse of Song, however temporarily or unsuccessfully. It would not have been natural for him to have done so. And, indeed, it is probable that no great prose rhetorician has failed to pay the same homage to the charm of verbal melody and cadence. In all the most sonorous prose turned out by English authors ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... pray—I can't yet speak— I'm crying now—and have been all the week. "'Tis not alone this mourning suit," good masters: "I've that within"—for which there are no plasters! Pray, would you know the reason why I'm crying? The Comic Muse, long sick, is now a-dying! And if she goes, my tears will never stop; For as a player, I can't squeeze out one drop: I am undone, that's all—shall lose my bread— I'd rather, but that's nothing—lose my head. When the sweet maid is laid upon the bier, Shuter and I shall be chief ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... yet a better right to sing of cider than of wine; but it behooves them to sing better than English Phillips did, else they will do no credit to their Muse. ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... now a very pleasant lord to look on, whatever he might once have been. He was red-faced and blear-eyed, and his nose, partly from the snuff which he took in large quantity, was much injured in shape and colour: a closer description the historical muse declines. His eyes had once been blue, but tobacco, potations, revellings day and night—everything but tears, had washed from them almost all the colour. It added much to the strange unpleasantness of his appearance, that he wore a jet-black wig, so that to the unnatural came the untimely, and enhanced ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... historical than that of Rom'ulus, but the legends respecting it are fewer and partake less of extravagance. Indeed, he had himself discouraged the songs of the bards, by ordering the highest honours to be paid to Tac'ita, the Came'na or Muse of Silence. His memory was best preserved by the religious ceremonies ascribed to him by universal tradition. The later poets loved to dwell on his peaceful virtues, and on the pure affection that existed between ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... to us in haste; away, Leave thy Thespian hollow-arch'd Rock, muse-haunted, Aonian, Drench'd in spray from aloft, the cold Drift ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... relations to Kaethchen, which, indeed, would have been as distasteful to her as to their father. In another letter, addressed to her in the following August, he is not more frank. There he tells her that Annette is now his muse, and that, as Herodotus names the books of his History after the nine muses, so he has given the name of Annette to a collection of twelve poetical pieces, magnificently copied in manuscript.[27] But, he significantly adds, Annette had no more to do with his poetry than the ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... than satisfaction. I wished he had spent his gold on himself and left me poor, for it seemed to me I had need of nothing save the little I earned by my pen—I was content to live an anchorite and dine off a crust for the sake of the divine Muse I worshipped. Fate, however, willed it otherwise,—and though I scarcely cared for the wealth I inherited, it gave me at least one blessing—that of perfect independence. I was free to follow my own chosen vocation, and for a brief wondering while I deemed myself happy, ... happy ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... those he admired in this essay would satisfy his cravings for better things in poetry. But the critic had no adequate knowledge of the way in which genius works. His one desire in these studies of Scandinavian mythology was "to recommend it to the votaries of the Muse, as a machinery admirably constructed for their purpose" (p. 158). He hopes for "a more extensive adoption of the Scandinavian mythology, especially in our epic and lyric compositions" (p. 311). We smile at the notion, to-day, but that very conception of poetry as "machinery" is characteristic ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... is the voice that will not let me rest? I hear it speak. Where is the shore will gratify my quest, Show what I seek? Not yours, weak Muse, to mimic that far voice, With halting tongue; No peace, sweet land, to bid my heart rejoice ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... battle of Rasbach, we should not have left it so disgracefully. The king well knew the unfortunate chevalier for a man as destitute of modesty as merit; when therefore he saw his book upon the mantel-piece of my drawing-room, he said, 'So! you are the inspiring muse of the chevalier de la Morliere; I only warn you, when the day comes for him to be hanged, not to ask me to pardon him." "Be assured," replied I, "that I will never deprive the Place de Greve of one so formed ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... know not what they do. Against him or for him we are all called upon to declare ourselves. There is no neutrality for any single true-born American. If any seek such a position, the stony finger of Dante's awful muse points them to their place in the antechamber of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the royal family was boundless; his power was absolute: the treasures, of America were at his command, and he made the most infamous use of them. In short, he had made the Court of Madrid one of those places to which the indignant muse of Juvenal conducts the mother of Britanicus. There is no doubt that Godoy was one of the principal causes of all the misfortunes which have overwhelmed Spain under so ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70 Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... to me ever since; a bit as well as reins—this is the reason why I have not been a prolific writer. Between one book and the next I am totally forgotten. I found also thus early that one needs a muse. I had made a blunder in not taking Launa into my counsels, say rather into my mind, for I had never once thought of her while writing, nor that she would be my audience. No, I thought only of myself, and the distinction I should win all for myself. Thus experienced, I did not repeat ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... the young girls. If I see you again at Dresden, I will tell you all about it; for I cannot do it justice in writing. How much I am indebted to you for your magnificent poem! I embrace you with the sincerest emotion, returning to your muse the laurels I owe her. God grant that you may be happy. Love him who loves you with ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... was never surpassed or even equalled. He died hugging the conviction that he had attained it. This little village was his birthplace. Here he wrote his first rhymes, and wooed and won the first inspirations of the muse. His heart, as its last pulses grew weaker and slower, in that far-off heathen land, took on its child-thoughts again and its child- memories; and his last words were about this little, rural hamlet where he was born. A beautiful monument has been erected to his memory in the ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?—Is that it? But you'll have to learn again. You are more than a nun: you are a beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. It's astonishing how like a girl you are."—Sir Hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "And however like a nun you've lived—you can't deny that ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... it. Plato preached humility, but there is none in his sermons. His thought is a winged thing, as the thought of a poet ever should be. But in the expression of it he seems smiling, disdainful, indifferent as a statue to the poverties of the heart. That too, perhaps, is as it should be. The high muse wears a radiant peplum. Anxiety is banished from the minds that she haunts. Then, also, if, in the nectar of Plato's speech, compassion is not an ingredient, it may be because, in his violet-crowned ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... reasons. First, to announce his appointment as Select Preacher for the coming Advent at a well-known church in Rome; secondly, to bring to the Contessa's notice a local poet—gifted, but needy—an Orvieto man, whose Muse the clergy had their ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to bethink me," said the ruffian; and raising the flask to his mouth, which he saluted with a long and hearty kiss, he set the empty bottle on the earth, dropped his head on his bosom, and seemed to muse for the purpose of arranging ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... it's aye a treasure, My chief, amaist my only pleasure, At hame, a-fiel', at wark, at leisure, The Muse, poor hizzie! Tho' rough an' raploch be her measure, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... woman, "the weaker vessel"; for neglecting their shops, their fields, their counting-houses, and their interesting families, and wasting their precious time in writing love-tales, "doleful ditties," and "distressful strains," for the magazines; for flirting with the muse, while their wives are wanting shoes, or perpetrating puns, while their children cry for "buns"! Suppose that, pointing every line with wit, I should hold them up to contempt as careless, improvident ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sette som conclusioun, Which scholde be confusioun Unto this knyht, so that the name And of wisdom the hihe fame Toward himself he wolde winne. And thus of al his wit withinne 3090 This king began to studie and muse, What strange matiere he myhte use The knyhtes wittes to confounde; And ate laste he hath it founde, And for the knyht anon he sente, That he schal telle what he mente. Upon thre pointz stod the matiere Of questions, as thou schalt hiere. The ferste point ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... to the French pretty much what Horace had been to Latin poetry. These great writers had, each of them, rescued the lyric muse of their country out of the rude ungracious hands of their old poets. And, as their talents of a good ear, elegant judgment, and correct expression, were the same, they presented her to the public in all the air ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... lowly, humble kind, to be indeed thankful for as all nobility must be, whether it be that of the honest farmer who tills the soil in silence, or that of the gentle Longfellow who cultivates his modest muse in equal quietness. But there is the nobility of the nightingale and the nobility of the eagle; there is the nobility of the lamb and the nobility of the lion; and beside the titanesqueness of Gogol, and Turgenef, and Tolstoy, the nobility of Pushkin, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... and Wilde; and rushing with the hot impulsiveness of youth into the dreadful traps which the traders in vice prepared for them. One's heart bled to see them, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, pursuing the hem of the Muse's robe in brothels ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... would sit quietly and muse upon what I had been saying; or, if he thought me not too deeply absorbed in reflection, would ask a question, or say something relative to the subject in hand, which would give me the opportunity of making some remarks which it gratified ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... example in dividing his poem into the four seasons, and he begins, Thomson-like, with an invitation to the Muse:— ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... better, he had best not do at all; I have not the strong inward call, nor cruel-sweet pangs of parturition, that prove the birth of anything bigger than a mouse. With you the case is different, who have so long been a follower of the Muse, and who have had a kindly, sober, English, wholesome, religious spirit within you that has communicated kindred warmth to many honest souls. Such a creature as Augusta—John's wife—a true Lady, was very fond of your poems: and I think that is no mean praise: a very ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... The titles which he gives his favourite haunts often intimate the bent of his mind—its employment, or its purpose; as PETRARCH called his retreat Linternum, after that of his hero Scipio; and a young poet, from some favourite description in Cowley, called a spot he loved to muse in, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... perhaps, at the head of the weighty class of writers in our language; but going beyond these to the "Areopagitica" of Milton, or even to the powerful prose of Raleigh, you pass the boundary-line, and are touched with the buoyant influences of the Muse. Shakspeare and Plato are lighter than levity; they are lifting forces, and weigh less than nothing. The novelette of the season, or any finest and flimsiest gossamer that is fabricated in our literary looms, compares with "Lear," with "Prometheus Bound," with any supreme work, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... pow-wow around the camp-fire, Sun-tanned and wind-browned, in picturesque raiment, with wisp of the wild hop or trail of the briar Hat-wreathed or button-holed. BURNS should have sung of them; trim-skirted Muse, with punctilious tastes, Were not at home with these waifs from the rookery, pastured at large in free Nature's wild wastes, Bounding, and breathing fresh air, romping, wrestling, and disciplined only to cleanness and order. Otherwise free as the tent-dwelling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... Jesus paused and seemed to muse; then, with that indulgence which was to illuminate the world, "Tell me, Simon," he inquired, "which was ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... Narragansett saw The way-worn travellers round their camp-fire draw, Or heard the plashing of their weary oars. And every place whereon they rested grew Happier for pure and gracious womanhood, And men whose names for stainless honor stood, Founders of States and rulers wise and true. The Muse of history yet shall make amends To those who freedom, peace, and justice taught, Beyond their dark age led the van of thought, And left unforfeited the name of Friends. O mother State, how foiled was thy design The gain was theirs, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... been mine since those events Ruled the pulsation of my daily life: And now they are a vulgar chronicle, And gossiped over by the rudest tongues. A haunting song of old felicities Lured me, scarce consciously, down here to muse Upon my shattered dreams; safe from the roar Of interests in our grim metropolis, The beating heart of England and the world. Not seen by me, since on that wondrous night Her consolation came into my soul; Yet here ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... instruction," or to Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions a la Grecque," and abruptly inquiring, "Madam, did you ever see a fairy's funeral?" "Never, Sir!" responds the startled Muse. "I have," pursues Blake, as calmly as if he were proposing to relate a bon mot which he heard at Lady Middleton's rout last night. "I was walking alone in my garden last night: there was great stillness among the branches and flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... being come thus well nigh to the beginning of May and the weather being very fair, that, having entered into thought of his cruel mistress, he bade all his servants leave him to himself, so he might muse more at his leisure, and wandered on, step by step, lost in melancholy thought, till he came [unwillingly] into the pine-wood. The fifth hour of the day was well nigh past and he had gone a good half mile into ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the only rival with whom Conde had to contend for the favours of that beauty for whom Louis XIV. in his boyish amusements had shown a preference, and which has furnished a theme for some agreeable trifling to the sparkling muse of Benserade. An abbe, named Cambiac, in the service of the house of Conde, balanced for some time the passion to which Nemours had given birth in the bosom of the Duchess de Chatillon, and the jealousy of Nemours failed to expel Cambiac. The Duchess ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... page strikes the note of disenchantment, of escape from the spell of conventionalism and the shores of romance. Colonel Esmond, who tells his own tale, wishes the Muse of History to disrobe, to discard her buskins, and to deliver herself like a ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... last rays of sunset thy grey turrets gleam, Yet I linger with thee—as to muse o'er a dream, That mournful truths soon will dispel; My pathway winds onward—life's cares to renew, And I feel, as thy towers now fade from my view, 'Tis for over—I bid ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... mist that blurs my sight, I regretfully awaken to the here and now. And is it possible, I sorrowfully muse, that all this glory can have fled away?—that more than twenty long, long years are spread between me and that happy night? And is it possible that all the dear old faces —Oh, quit it! quit it! Gather the old scraps up and wad 'em back into ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... would have wonderfully surpass'd himself, if Art had been join'd to Nature. There never was a greater Genius in the World than Virgil: He was one who seems to have been born for this glorious End, that the Roman Muse might exert in him the utmost Force of her Poetry: And his admirable and divine Beauties are manifestly owing to the happy Confederacy of Art and Nature. It was Art that contriv'd that incomparable Design of the AEneis, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... them, contemplate these columns that seem to wish to bear to heaven the splendid testimony of our nothingness! There, at the right of the main altar, descend the steps that lead to the crypt. There muse on all the kings, the queens, the princes, and princesses, whose bones have been replaced at hazard within these vaults, after their bodies had been, in 1793, cast into a common ditch in the cemetery of the Valois to be consumed by quicklime. The great ones of the earth, dispossessed of their ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... own) To Grooms and Hostlers well is known, And often has without disdain In musty Barn and Manger lain, As if it had been only good To be for Birds and Beasts the Food. But now by new-inspired Force, It keeps alive both Man and Horse. Then speak, my Muse, for now I guess E'en what it is thou wouldst express: It is not Barley, Rye, nor Wheat, That can pretend to do the Feat: 'Tis Oates, bare Oates, that is become The Health of England, Bane of Rome, And Wonder of all Christendom. And therefore Oates has well deserv'd To ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... she rhymes with nighty, gezabo! When my Muse sings, to hell with mythology! Come join ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... but it does not move them." And I told her rapidly Mr. Galloway's argument. She fell into a muse. "At the eleventh hour! Nay, too late, too late. Had he been twenty years younger, what a stroke of fortune! Fate bears too hard ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... amazedly—"Nay! ... I might quarrel with my nearest and dearest, but never with thee, Sah-luma! For I know thee for a very prince of poets! ... and would as soon profane the sanctity of the Muse herself, as violate thy ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... when they had got a glass of the punch, their heels showed their mettle, and grannies danced with their oyes, holding out their hands as if they had been spinning with two rocks. I told Colin Mavis, the poet, than an INFARE was a fine subject for his muse; and soon after he indited an excellent ballad under that title, which he projects to publish, with other ditties, by subscription; and I have no doubt a liberal and discerning public will give him all manner ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... it?"—she seemed to muse aloud—"that more than half of life is made up of pretending. It becomes rather a delicate problem—fixing boundary lines. I do admire your gift, Roy. And you're so intensely human. But I confess, I—I am jerked by parts of your theme. Doesn't all this animosity and open vilification ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... management of this little line. The duties were not particularly arduous, and, in any case, "Ceiriog" was apt to take life with a light heart. Whether he sat in his office or in the cosy corner of some favourite rural inn the muse burned brightly within him, and, from his remote retreat among the hills which look down on the infant Severn, he poured out his soul in poetry, which ranks high in Celtic literature. Welsh verse always suffers in translation ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... of his creed, so it is horrid puerility to search the heathen theology for any of those deities who have been long since dethroned from their immortality. Lord Shaftesbury observes, that nothing is more cold than the invocation of a muse by a modern; he might have added, that nothing can be more absurd. A modern may with much more elegance invoke a ballad, as some have thought Homer did, or a mug of ale, with the author of Hudibras; which latter may perhaps have inspired much more poetry, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the eventide flooded the earth with effulgent glory, and each little star began to wonder who I was, to the loftiest turret of his quite commodious castle this dwarf would climb, and muse upon sciology and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... describe her. She 's sad as one long us'd to 't, and she seems Rather to welcome the end of misery Than shun it; a behaviour so noble As gives a majesty to adversity: You may discern the shape of loveliness More perfect in her tears than in her smiles: She will muse for hours together; and her silence, Methinks, expresseth more than if ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... spirit, and occasionally timid vacillation, read a most impressive lesson to aspiring minds infatuated by success, and regardless of moral or religious restraints. O that, in this age of insubordination, selfishness, and enterprise, a poet would arise, animated with Shakespeare's "Muse of fire," embody the events of those seventeen years of wo, and invest the detestable Regicide with the same terrible immortality which marks the murderous Thane in his progress from obedience and honour to supreme power ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... her lips were endowed with such gifts already—not merely of speaking four or five languages—such silent gifts as brought me beside myself. That child-mouth could smile enchantingly with encouraging calmness, could proudly despise, could pout with displeasure, could offer tacit requests, could muse in silent melancholy, could indulge in enthusiastic rapture—could love ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... generation, detached from the fountain-head of Jewish culture, would no more be able to read the "Songs of Zion," and that the poet's rhymes were limited in their appeal to the last handful of the worshippers of the Hebrew Muse: ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... to Dr. May that George's vigil soon became a sound repose on the sofa in the dressing-room; and he was left to read and muse uninterruptedly. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... walked off. I got the Money with much Waiting, but not much other Dimcultie, and took it to Father, who sent twenty Shillings to Ellwood, and gave me five for my Payns. Poor Ellwood! he hath good Leisure to muse now ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... side of the Styx; and retained her antique abhorrence of the spectral dead, etc. etc. She concluded by beseeching him, if he could not desist from haunting her with his ghostly presence, at least to spare her the added misfortune of being be-rhymed by his muse. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... The Muse of this poet is no maiden of such pure and august beauty as enthralls us with admiration of Webster's; she has not the gypsy-brightness and vagrant charm of Dekker's, her wild soft glances and flashing smiles and fading traces of tears; she is no giddy girl, but a strong woman with fine irregular ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... hard; the trees dingy, the leaden waters motionless, the distant hills rough and austere. Where was that translucent sky, once brilliant as his enamoured fancy; those bowery groves of aromatic fervor wherein he had loved to roam and muse; that river of swift and sparkling light that flowed and flashed like the current of his enchanted hours? ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... who all thy perils shared, Thine aged sire, of thee bereft, To muse on all thy courage dared, Is ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... Below me lay the most beautiful landscapes in the world—all the rich scenery that nature, in her best attire, can exhibit. Here were the spots that furnished those delightful themes of which the muse of Denham and Pope made choice. I seemed to view a whole world at once, rich and beautiful beyond conception. At that moment what more could ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... to see my mither— She'll be weel acquant or this, Sair we'll muse at ane anither, 'Tween the ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... la lyre naturelle, La muse des guerets, des sillons et du ble; De peur que son leger sommeil ne soit trouble, Ah, passe vite, ami, ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions oft, to hear her shell, Throng'd around her magic cell, Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, Possest beyond the Muse's painting. 1239 COLLINS: The ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... long forenoon my thought I held, And yet all thro' it The wires all England over shrill'd, And I never knew it! In a high muse I nurst my news All the forenoon, While England braced her limbs and thews To a ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... breeding and intrusion, With some outlandish institution, With Ursine's catechism to muse on, With system's method for confusion, With grounds strong laid of mere illusion: See a ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... yes...." He appeared to muse, and no one disturbed him in the minutes of silence that followed. Finally he looked away ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... heart, to cultivate his taste; that he has time on his hands to plunge into the depths of philosophy, and to soar to the clear empyrean of seraphic morality. The master-statesman—ay, the statesman in the land of the Declaration of Independence, in the halls of national legislation, with the muse of history recording his words as they drop from his lips, with the colossal figure of American Liberty leaning on a column entwined with the emblem of eternity over his head, with the forms of Washington and Lafayette speaking to him from the canvas—turns ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... dream had come to him of a future of creative purpose. He had always wanted to write. Looking back over his University days, he was aware of a formative process which had led towards this end. It was there he had communed with the spirit of a tragic muse. There had been all the traditions of Poe and his tempestuous youth—and Randy, passing the door which had once opened and closed on that dark figure, had felt the thrill of a living personality—of one who spoke ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... carle shall listen While I lash him with abuse, Loon at whom our stomachs sicken. Soon shall hear these words of scorn; Far too nice for such base fellows Is the name my bounty gives, Een my muse her help refuses, Making mirth of ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... the dangers to which a modern artist is exposed is the seduction of his predecessors. The gropings of our muse, the distracted experiments of our architecture, often arise from the attraction of some historical school; we cannot work out our own style because we are hampered by the beauties of so many others. The result is an eclecticism, which, in spite of its great historical ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... of the Danaans and their captains. Now tell me, O Muse, who among them was first and foremost, of warriors alike and horses that followed the sons of Atreus. Of horses they of Pheres' son were far goodliest, those that Eumelos drave, swift as birds, like of coat, like of age, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... his Muse a gravely jocund note in his "Seasons' Comfort." He, too, of the four fellow-versifiers shows the greater aptitude for experiments, though it may perhaps be felt that his touch is nowhere quite so sure, nor his artistic feeling ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... cheerefully I walke with thee, My shoulders from all burdens free. Our native soyle again to see Rich to my selfe I sing, Whil'st care strikes thee, and thy Muse dumb, The heavy weight of thy vast summe, Or what estate in time to come The faithlesse rout may bring. Hee's rich that nothing hath; Hee that In's certaine hand holds his estate, That makes himselfe his constant mate Where need commands ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... Westphalia. As Mainwaring informs us, Handel is compared by the poet (whose name is not given) to Orpheus and indeed exalted above him. "Orpheus," says the Cardinal, "could move rocks and trees, but he could not make them sing; therefore thou art greater than Orpheus, for thou compellest my aged Muse to song." The style of both words and music suggests that the whole cantata was thrown off, as Mainwaring suggests, on the spur of the moment, and this improvisation may well have taken place at one of the Arcadians' garden parties, for there is a well-known account ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... to set the prudence of an Author on a very slippery eminence. The authority of the quarter it proceeds from, would almost communicate to that sentence the stamp of infallibility, if I could regard it as anything but a mere encouragement of my Muse. More than this a deep feeling of my weakness will not let me think it; but if my strength shall ever climb to the height of a masterpiece, I certainly shall have this warm approval of your Excellency alone to thank for ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... any exactitude in the Elder Edda. Indeed only a travesty of the faith of our ancestors has been preserved in Norse literature. The early poet loved allegory, and his imagination rioted among the conceptions of his fertile muse. "His eye was fixed on the mountains till the snowy peaks assumed human features and the giant of the rock or the ice descended with heavy tread; or he would gaze at the splendour of the spring, or of the summer fields, till Freya with the gleaming necklace stepped ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... indication of his profession in the attire of Mr. Tabor, unless the too apparent age of his black felt hat and a neat patch at the elbow of his shiny, old brown overcoat might have been taken as symbols of the sacrifice to his muse which his life had been. He was not a constant attendant of the conclave, and when he came it was usually to listen; indeed, he spoke so seldom that at the sound of his voice they all turned to him ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... solitude I seek, which once, possessed, I fled; now, solitude to me is blessed, Wherein I hearken Love's mysterious lay, And hold with thee communion in my heart. That thou art beautiful, thou who art mine— That with thy beauty, Beauty's soul divine Has filled my soul, I muse upon apart. In the blue dome of Heaven's eternity, Rising I seem upborne ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... it, the idee struck me as bein' sort o' pitiful,—to go to whippin' a ghost. But she didn't seem to notice my remark, for she seemed to be a gazin' upward in a sort of a muse; and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... and his pain, seeing the sun shine on all that gold, and the curious painted galleries under it. He thought it was real solid gold. Real gold laid out on a house roof—and the people all so poor! Findelkind began to muse, and wonder why everybody did not climb up there and take a tile off and be rich? But perhaps it would be wicked. Perhaps God put the roof there with all that gold to prove people. Findelkind ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... building a house," he answered. "Mother said we could 'muse ourselves quietly in the house. This is quiet, isn't it? What's the use of having furniture if a fellow can't ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... thy slumber, pleasure calls, arise, Quit thy half-rural bower, awhile despise The thraldom that consumes thee. We who dwell Far from thy land of smoke, advise thee well. Here Nature's bounteous hand around shall fling, Scenes that thy Muse hath never dar'd to sing. When sickness weigh'd thee down, and strength declin'd; When dread eternity absorb'd thy mind, Flow'd the predicting verse, by gloom o'erspread, That 'Cambrian mountains' thou should'st ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... that his tent was gone. She rubbed her eyes, thinking that she had not seen aright. But, no, there was no mistake. Bramshaw had gone, and had taken all his belongings with him. This was strange, and as she walked along she began to muse as to where he had gone and the purpose of his hasty departure. Had it anything to do with the murder of ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... a femme savante, and ridicules, under the name of Damophile, a character which might have been the model for Moliere's Philaminte. This woman has five or six masters, of whom the least learned teaches astrology. She poses as a Muse, and is always surrounded with books, pencils, and mathematical instruments, while she uses large words in a grave and imperious tone, although she speaks only of little things. After many long conversations ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Some Muse that loved not Troy hath done thee wrong, Homer! who whisper'd thee that Hector fled Thrice round the sacred walls he kept so long; Nay, when he saw his people vanquished Alone he stood for Troy; alone ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... was to think that the discordant labour of the tropical agriculturist was past! This charming morning had settled it all. Tom and Christmas and the "pony dot" would keep the whole plantation as innocent of weeds as the Garden of Eden. Thus to muse in the dim arcade of the jungle absorbing the sounds of the birds, and of the murmuring sea, while a horse did all the work, in holiday humour, was the very bliss of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... purified from all evil, it should again become "very good." Here, on these scenes of unrivalled beauty, Southey, and Lovell, and Coleridge, and Cottle have loved to meditate; and the wondrous boy Chatterton fed his muse amid these rare exhibitions of the power and wisdom of the Godhead. A Roman encampment is still visible on the summit of the rocks. We were all sorry, to see such havoc going on among the quarries, where, to use Southey's language on this subject, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... isle, have really turned up in some numbers. But then the Caithness painted pebbles were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed. The proverbial fence seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science, in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting, in contemplation, on the fence. The strong, the very strong point against authenticity is this: numbers of the disputed objects were found in sites of the early Iron Age. Now such objects, save for a few samples, are ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... Forbear, my Muse, to linger over the scene of that departure! Captain Pond (I say) rode with six pounds of sausages and three puddings dangling at his saddle-bow. The Doctor rode in an ambulance-waggon crammed to the tilt with materials ranging from a stomach-pump to a backgammon-board; appliances ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... jurisprudence was not to be; it was to fulfil a wish of his father's that he consented to the drudgery. A little poem which has been reproduced in leaflet form, Felix and Galathea, is practically his earliest offering to the muse. Like most beginnings of fanatics and realists, it fairly swims and shimmers with idealism. His father dead, a roving existence and a precarious one began for the youthful Frank. He lived by his wits ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... seemed to muse. "Of course, if you were only practiced in witchcraft you could make a wax image of him and then stick pins in it until he ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... that country whence I fled? None but a lover may its beauty know, None but a poet can its rapture sing; And e'en his muse, upborne on Fancy's wing, Will grieve o'er beauties still unnoticed, O'er raptures language is too poor ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... Howard's tomb soft Pity weeps, Bewailing still her favourite's fate; And thence the Muse invokes her aid Of kindred merit ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... burst forth in their presence, and after trolling out a few Irish melodies, he succeeded in eliciting from them a sympathetic response in the shape of some lively French songs. The result proved most delightful to all concerned; and thereafter the muse of Ireland and the muse of France kept up a perpetual antiphonal song, which beguiled many ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... on the lordly crowd I muse, Which haunts the Royal festive hours, The day has come when I've put on The crown ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... time, Poetry and Music were in a very low state of perfection, and as he excelled in both of those arts, it was said that he was the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope; and it was added, that he charmed lions and tigers, and made even the trees sensible of the melodious tones of his lyre. These were mere hyperbolical expressions, which signified the wondrous charms of his eloquence and of his music combined, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... seemed, was not disinclined for a romance with a pretty princess; perhaps he thought that nothing serious would come of it, and that it was a pleasant way enough of passing a summer; or, perhaps, being but twenty-two, he did not think at all, unless to muse on the depth of the blue in Victoria's eyes, and the comely lines of her figure as she rowed on the river. To say truth, Victoria gave him small ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... would have sex and sex-emotions put frankly into the fore-ground of everything, as far as art and letters are concerned. He would take the timid hyperborean Muse of the modern world and bathe her once more in the sun-lit waters of the Heliconian Spring. He would paganize, Latinize and Mediterraneanize the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... The Muse is silent; with a virgin cheek, Bow'd with the blush of shame, she ventures near— She waits the judgment that thy lips may speak, And feels the def'rence, but disowns the fear. Such praise as Virtue gives, 'tis hers to seek— Bright Truth, not tinsel Folly to revere; He only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... he being come thus well nigh to the beginning of May and the weather being very fair, that, having entered into thought of his cruel mistress, he bade all his servants leave him to himself, so he might muse more at his leisure, and wandered on, step by step, lost in melancholy thought, till he came [unwillingly] into the pine-wood. The fifth hour of the day was well nigh past and he had gone a good half mile ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... molested. Providence protected the poor bonito from the cruel sword-fish. This was just and right. Providence next befriended the shipwrecked sailors: they got the bonito. This was also just and right. But in the distribution of mercies the sword-fish himself got overlooked. He now went away; to muse over these subtleties, probably. The men in all the boats seem pretty well; the feeblest of the sick ones (not able for a long time to stand his watch on board the ship) 'is wonderfully recovered.' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... doth the earth reveal Her gracious green and gold; I sit where youth was once, and feel That I am growing old. The lustre from the face of things Is wearing all away; Like one who halts with tired wings, I rest and muse to-day. ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... listen with patience to the praises of a man who so called them. As for the poets, they can take their choice of Emerson's poetical or prose estimate of the great Mystic, but they cannot very well accept both. In "The Test," the Muse says:— ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... because their sweet, inexhaustible converse came to an end? Had they shared the happiness of ameliorating Count Tristan's melancholy state, and seeing him daily improve? And now it was all over: she must resume her old course of life, her temporarily laid aside labors! To muse too long upon departed happiness would unfit her for those. Even the sad joy ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Diry? My muse come playguey neer running away with me, so I had to wistle "down brakes," and slow her up. Now I'll begin to record my doins on your pages, so that, shuld the toes of my boots be applide to the patent bucket early in my useful carreer, the hull ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... truculent passion Of JUVENAL'S masculine muse To flagellate folly and fashion In dress and in manners and views; But we've plenty of prophets and poets; We've few who are sober and sane; We don't want another DE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... Edgar A. "Perry" appeared, an enlisted soldier in the First Artillery at Fort Independence. For two years "Perry" served his country in the sunlight, and Poe, under night's starry cover, roamed through skyey aisles in the service of the Muse and explored "Al Araaf," the abode of those volcanic souls that rush in fatal haste to an earthly heaven, for which they recklessly exchange the heaven of the spirit that might have ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... knowing persons at Nevers declared that Jan Diaz was making fun of the new school, just then bringing out its eccentric verse, full of vitality and imagery, and of brilliant effects produced by defying the Muse under pretext of adapting ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... intensely. He does not analyse, he does not amass his facts; he concentrates. He wrings out quintessences; and when he has distilled his drops of pure spirit he brews his potion. Something of the kind happens to me now, whether verse or prose be the Muse of my devotion. A stray thought, a chance vision, moves me; presently the flame is hissing hot. Everything then at any time observed and stored in the memory which has relation to the fact is fused and in a swimming flux. Anon, as the Children of Israel said to Moses, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... your majesty has graciously permitted me to enter the lists as knight and champion of German literature, and sometimes to defend the German Muse, who stands unnoticed and unknown under the shadow of your throne; while the French lady, with her brilliant attire and painted cheeks, is always welcomed. I beg your majesty to believe that, although this romance may have done some harm, it has, on ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... BOTANIC MUSE! who in this latter age Led by your airy hand the Swedish sage, Bad his keen eye your secret haunts explore On dewy dell, high wood, and winding shore; 35 Say on each leaf how tiny Graces dwell; How laugh the Pleasures in a blossom's bell; How insect Loves arise on cobweb ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... had hitherto produced all the effects of the blindest temerity. If he found his situation full of danger (and I do not deny that it is perilous in the extreme), he must feel that it is also full of glory; and that he is placed on a stage, than which no muse of fire that had ascended the highest heaven of invention could imagine anything more awful and august. It was hoped that, in this swelling scene in which he moved with some of the first potentates of Europe for his fellow-actors, and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... simplest way o' doin' business. Ef we makes a mistake, an' gits ther wrong galoot, nobody ever kicks up much o' a row over it, fer we're naterally lively over thar, an' we must hev somethin' ter 'muse us 'bout ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... life. Here, for an hour, he sat under the limes, drunk with summer breezes and scents, toying with a book, as though he were some "indolent irresponsible reviewer"—some college fellow in vacation—some wooer of an idle muse. Yet dusk that evening would find him once more in the Babel of London. And before him lay the most strenuous, and, as he hoped, the most fruitful passage of his political life. Broadstone, too, was an old man; the Premiership itself could not ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... falls from this ecstasy, look to see an harassed, embittered man. The birds sing as they pick up the corn, but wisdom is not so quickly convertible into meal, and if he cannot feed always on it, let him never seek the Muse. Our poor half-genius vibrates miserably between truth and the dinner-pot, comes back from his apocalypse, and cries for admiration, gold-lace, hair-powder, and wine. That is no apocalypse from which a man returns to whine and beg. Burns complains of Scotland and poverty, Byron of England ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... to submit a few specimens of the muse of this ancient ANACREON of France; and must necessarily begin with a few of those that are chiefly of a ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... good friend the Conte keeps his muse within tolerable limits! It would not do to quite smother her in verse on her first arrival; and, you know, our good Leandro has rather a special gift that way. Well, get up any kind of dimostrasione you like for ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... concert hall, a quorum of painters besieged the artist supply stores for the precious remaining tubes of burntumber and scarletlake, while it was presumed that in traditionally unheated garrets orthodox poets nourished their muse on pencil erasers. But all enthusiasm was individual property, the reaction of single persons with excess adrenalin. No common interests united doctor and stockbroker, steelworker and truckdriver, laborer and laundryman, except common fear of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... attempt to support himself by his pen appears to have been deliberate; we hear nothing of those experiments in counting-houses or lawyers' offices, of which a permanent invocation to the Muse is often the inconsequent sequel. He began to write, and to try and dispose of his writings; and he remained at Salem apparently only because his family, his mother and his two sisters, lived there. His mother had a house, of which during the twelve ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Change and Time, you come Not knocking at my door, knowing me gone; Here have I dwelt within my heart alone, Watching and waiting, while my muse was dumb ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to spend the day in Brussels, and he followed them; he still wanted to walk about and muse and ponder, and Brussels is a very nice, gay, and civilized city for such a purpose—a little Paris, with charming streets and shops and a charming arcade, and very good places to eat and drink in, and hear ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... by the fire and sing, Pussy can climb a tree, Or play with a silly old cork and string To 'muse herself, not me. But I like Binkie, my dog, because He knows how to behave; So, Binkie's the same as the First Friend was, And I am the Man in ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... M. Souverain all the legends of the places we were passing, and as he himself "courtisait la Muse," he listened with rapt attention, so as to be able to treat the subjects in French verse. "This country is a mine for a ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... I will; I am no muse. Listen to your inspiration comfortably, Ribalta," replied, with a laugh, he whom the vendor of old books received with such original unconstraint. He was evidently accustomed to the eccentricities of the strange merchant. In Rome—for this scene took place ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the muse—she saw it upward rise, Though marked by none but quick poetic eyes; (So Home's great founder to the heavens withdrew, To Proculus alone confessed to view); A sudden star it shot through liquid air, And drew behind ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... of the Catholic Church, where the erring could obtain indulgence by fifteen days of devotion. Yet the very break in the usual life of audiences and journeys must have been grateful to the tired ambassador. He began to muse on the poetic aims of his first youth and the work which was to make Beatrice's name immortal. Some lines of the new poem were written in the Latin tongue, then held the finest language for expressing a great subject. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... slopes of these very mountains, which looked very promising for gold but diamonds! Was it possible? Choosing a spot among the rocks where he was somewhat sheltered from the sun and could command a view of the little pool and its approaches, he sat down to muse over the story and to await the chance of a possible shot. A couple of hours passed. The stillness and intense heat combined to make him drowsy, and he woke with a start to find he had been dreaming of diamonds as big as tennis balls. "Bad sportsman," ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... retreat from the bustle of the world, has been so often repeated, that it is now considered as a truth, from which there can be no appeal. Milton, it is true, wrote his Paradise Lost in a small house near Bunhill Fields; and Dryden courted the muse in the hurry and dissipation of a town life. But neither of them fixed his residence by choice. Pope grew immortal on the banks of the Thames. But though the country seems to be the seat of contemplation, two great writers have ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... remains of its statues and triumphal columns, conveying to the mind mournful images of the fallen fates of those who had for ages been its proud possessors; where the Mantuan bard first caught inspiration from the deathless muse; where Tully charmed the listening throng, whilst defending with mild persuasion the arts and the sciences he loved, and condemning in terrible denunciations the mad ambition that threatened the destruction of his country; to wander among ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... far up the flood, Until I find the palace of the King. There will I enter in among them all, And no man there will dare to mock at me; But there the fine Gawain will wonder at me, And there the great Sir Lancelot muse at me; Gawain, who bad a thousand farewells to me, Lancelot, who coldly went, nor bad me one: And there the King will know me and my love, And there the Queen herself will pity me, And all the gentle court will welcome me, And after my long ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... on the occasion by Mr. John Sharpe, of Kirkstead, {8b} which I here give. The rural muse was somewhat unclassical in those days, and versions vary, but it was in the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... with passion's fitful hues Or pleasure's reckless breath, For Nature's beauty to thy virgin muse Was solemnized by death. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of Jean Goujon, whose exquisite work we see now and again in these chateaux, that some writer has said, that the muse of Ronsard whispered in the ear of the French sculptor, and thus Goujon's masterpieces were poems of Ronsard translated in marble. It is a rather pretty fancy, but Lydia and I cannot remember its author. Walter says that he can understand why the Counts of Blois built their castle here, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... they do but feign a God, but he has his by him. His verse runs like the tap, and his invention as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spigot. In thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose a-fire together. The press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a sixpence or two in reward of the baser coin his pamphlet. His works would scarce sell for three half-pence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... quickly as possible—as quick as lightning—and say whether such a thing is practicable. Herr Kapellmeister B. praised you up to the skies to me, and he is right; well may he esteem himself happy who has the privilege of enjoying your muse, your genius, and all your splendid endowments and talents;—it is thus I feel. Be this as it may, those around can only call themselves your fellow-creatures [Nebenmann], whereas I alone have a right to claim the honored ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... and turned her head to the wall—not to sleep, but to muse on those fiery, dark-brown eyes that had looked such mysterious meanings into hers, and that thrilling deep-toned voice that had breathed such sweet praise in her ears. And so musing, Nora fell asleep, and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... such a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?—Is that it? But you'll have to learn again. You are more than a nun: you are a beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. It's astonishing how like a girl you are."—Sir Hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "And however like a nun you've lived—you can't ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Until Pope took his muse to market, poetry, apart from the drama, had no direct commercial value, or one too small to be ranked as a motive for publication. None the less, the age loved distinction and appreciated wit, and to be ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... to live in the world according to the Christian law of restraint and moderation, and of those who yearn to live in God. With Augustin the choice is made. He will never more look back. These Dialogues at Cassicium are his supreme farewell to the pagan Muse. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... in sconces round the walls of the room, in which a short time since we saw some of our friends celebrating the orgies of Bacchus, gave quite sufficient light for the votaries of the nimble-footed muse to see their partners, mind their steps, and not come in too rude collision with one another. Quadrilles succeeded waltzes, and waltzes quadrilles, with most unceasing energy; and no one dreamt of giving way to fatigue, or supposed that it was at all desirable to sit down for a single dance. From ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... hand, he would, perhaps, receive the manifest evidences they exhibit of constant reference and delighted re- perusal, as some sort of amende honorable for the unfairness of which we were guilty when we were less conversant with the higher inspirations of his muse. To Mr. Coleridge, and others of our originals, we must also do a tardy act of justice, by declaring that our burlesque of their peculiarities has never blinded us to those beauties and talents which are beyond the reach ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... influence on the "Gondibert," as it has come down to us; for, discouraged and ridiculed, our adventurer never finished his voyage of discovery. He who had so nobly vindicated the freedom of the British Muse from the meanness of imitation, and clearly defined what such a narrative as he intended should be, "a perfect glass of nature, which gives us a familiar and easy view of ourselves," did not yet perceive that there is no reason why a poetical narrative should ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... emotion of human nature, love. Chesterton, on the other hand, considers that Browning was the finest love poet of the world. It is real love poetry, because it talks about real people, not ideals; it does not muse of the Prince Charming meeting the Fairy Princess, and forget the devoted wife meeting her husband on the villa doorstep with open arms and a nice dinner in the parlour. Sentiment must be based on reality if it is to have worth. This is the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... of Antibes, and Giroli at Venice, both these last names corruptions of the Latin Gerres—then did the two fashionable poets of France, Etienne Dolet and Clement Marot, think it not unworthy of their muse to sing the praises of the sauce which Horace had sung of old. A proud day, too, was it for Pellicier and Rondelet, when wandering somewhere in the marshes of the Camargue, a scent of garlic caught the nostrils of the gentle bishop, and in the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... part, left much to myself, especially in the mornings, I began to muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful that I was, the happiness of home ceased to content me. I heard afar the roar of the great world, and roved ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... increased the old dreaminess that we always tried to combat, and he seems less able than before to turn his mind into any channel but the one immediately before him. He is most loving when roused, but infinitely more inclined to fall off into a muse. I am afraid you must have had a troublesome charge in him, judging by the uproar Harry makes about the difficulty of getting him safe from Paddington. It is good to see him and Harry together—the old schoolboy ways ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see the boot hath swich travayle, Of my conning, that unnethe I it stere: This see clepe I the tempestous matere 5 Of desespeyr that Troilus was inne: But now of hope the calendes biginne. O lady myn, that called art Cleo, Thou be my speed fro this forth, and my muse, To ryme wel this book, til I have do; 10 Me nedeth here noon other art to use. For-why to every lovere I me excuse, That of no sentement I this endyte, But out of Latin in ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... at your paper? Still sitting at editors' feet? (Clay feet!) Oh, why do you muse on their views of the news, When breezes are sweet in the street? There's a bit of cloud flying by in the sky. Tomorrow 'twill be far away. There's a slip of a girl, see her dance to my song! Tomorrow she'll be old and gray. Come along! There's music and sunshine ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... scapegoats leave our flock, And the rest sit silent and count the clock, Since forced to muse the appointed time On these precious facts and truths sublime, Let us fitly employ it, under our breath, In saying Ben Ezra's Song ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... will allow him. He makes music of so grave and stately a beauty that one begins to wonder at all the critics who have found fault with his rhythms—from Ben Jonson, who said that "for not keeping accent, Donne deserved hanging," down to Coleridge, who declared that his "muse on dromedary trots," and described him as "rhyme's sturdy cripple." Coleridge's quatrain on Donne is, without doubt, an unequalled masterpiece of epigrammatic criticism. But Donne rode no dromedary. In his ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... policy of improving on his father's rakish Muse was the frequent endorsement of the beautiful and harmless practice of kissing. The kiss is mentioned some forty-eight times in the present work, and in the nine hundred untranslated Rubaiyat, two hundred and ten more kisses occur, making a grand total of ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... transfuse into other tongues and idioms, never fails to touch the heart, and excite enthusiastic feelings. The plan of 'The Modern Scottish Minstrel' restricts us to a period less favourable to the inspirations of the Celtic muse than remoter times. If it is asked, What could be gained by recurring to a more distant period? or what this unlettered people have really to shew for their bardic pretensions? we answer, that there is extant a large and genuine collection of Highland minstrelsy, ranging over a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... distinguished by the crabbed wit of the so-called "metaphysical poets," whose manner was in fashion when the Puritans left England; the manner of Donne and Cowley, and those darlings of the New English muse, the Emblems of Quarles and the Divine Week of Du Bartas, as translated by Sylvester. The Magnalia contains a number of these things in Latin and English, and is itself well bolstered with complimentary introductions in meter by the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... but too well, For I heard when Venus' dove In her ear did softly tell That kisses were the seals of love: O muse not then though it be so, Kisses make men loath ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... Olive began to muse again. Then she said timidly, "I wonder why, with all your love for Art, you yourself did ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... variety delights, Descend awhile from Windsor's heights, And in this hovel deign to tread, Quitting the castle for the shed; Such were the muse's favourite haunts, From care secluded and from wants. What nature needs this but can give, Could we as nature dictates live; For see, on this plain board at noon Are placed a platter and a spoon, Which, though they mark no gorgeous treat, Suggest 'tis reasonable to eat. What though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... country? Where is the country? That is the puzzle. In our youth, we knew many a quiet village, many a fine beach, many a sheltered bay, where one might wander, or swim, or muse, or rusticate in any way he chose. The village has grown into a town; the beach is lined with villas; the bay swarms with vessels, and its shores with population. Every eligible spot on the coast becomes the resort ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... and Aaron's [3] letters. I was a little disappointed that you did not send an acrostic; but I still entertain some secret hope that the muse (who, you say, has taken her flight) will shortly return, and, by a new and stricter intimacy, more than repay the pains of this momentary absence. Your happiness, Matt., is really almost the only present thing I can contemplate with any satisfaction; though I, like other fools, view futurity ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... fortune, and their several pursuits in war, politics, commerce, and lucrative arts, they awakened whatever was either good or bad in the natural dispositions of men. Every road to eminence was opened: eloquence, fortitude, military skill, envy, detraction, faction, and treason, even the muse herself, was courted to bestow importance among a busy, acute, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... the midst of worldly cares and annoyances, in alternate abundance and poverty, deceived by pretended friendship, or persecuted by open enmity. The obstacles which Mozart surmounted in establishing the immortality of his muse, leave those without excuse who plead other occupations and the necessity of gaining a livelihood as an excuse for want of success in the art. Where the creative faculty has been bestowed, it will not be repressed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... now his former crazes He utterly eschews; The world on which he gazes Has lost its hectic hues; No more a bard crepuscular Who writes in script minuscular, He only woos the muscular And military Muse. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... the occasion of the burning of the Theatre Royal in Sydney, we were favoured with the presence in our midst of artists who rarely, if ever before, had quitted the metropolitan stage. But our "jeune premier" in one sense has eclipsed every darling of the tragic or the comic muse. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... TABLETS Different Destinies The Animating Principle Two Descriptions of Action Difference of Station Worth and the Worthy The Moral Force Participation To—— The Present Generation To the Muse The Learned Workman The Duty of All A Problem The Peculiar Ideal To Mystics The Key The Observer Wisdom and Prudence The Agreement Political Precept Majestas Populi The Difficult Union To a World-Reformer My Antipathy Astronomical Writings The Best State To Astronomers ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... something sorted with his wish. Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed; For what I will, I will, and there an end. I am resolv'd that thou shalt spend some time With Valentinus in the Emperor's court: What maintenance he from his friends receives, Like exhibition thou shalt have from me. To-morrow be in readiness ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... fancy, that the breach is stormed or the bold word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting an ugly weir in a canoe has exactly as much thought about fame as most commanders going into battle; and yet the action, fall out how it will, is not one of those the muse delights to celebrate. Indeed it is difficult to see why the fellow does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at, unless on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that is why; and I suspect it is at ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up the village place in the dusk, thinking of this deplorable weakness in men that the Faith is too great for them, and accepting it as an inevitable burden. I continued to muse with my eyes ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... meant the larger share of it for him or them who should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects or even the merits of the character that he wore in Stratford, when he had left mankind so much to muse upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from incurring any part of the anathema in requital for ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hymns was then sung—Mr. Wright's muse having been apparently prolific in the past year, no less than six hymns on the list being written by himself during those twelve months. It is much to be hoped that these poetical and aesthetical proclivities will not deaden his practical energies. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... seem to have escaped his Lynx-like vigilance. Let the object be what it would (especially if it related to poetry) let the volume be great or small, or contain good, bad, or indifferent warblings of the muse—his insatiable craving had "stomach for them all." We may consider his collection as the fountain head of those copious streams which, after fructifying the libraries of many bibliomaniacs in the first half ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... is this. What numbers of young men, gifted with great imitative quickness, who, having, by virtue of this, arrived at fine words and figures of speech, set off on their nimble rhetorical Pegasus, keep well out of the Muse's reach ever after! How many go conspicuously through life, snapping their smart percussion-caps upon empty barrels, because, forsooth, powder and ball do not come of themselves, and it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... the Vale of Llangollen certainly exceed every idea I had formed of their grandeur, and on my arrival at the inn in the village, the muse embodied the following ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... mournfully into the past—it comes not again; wisely improve the present—it is thine; and go forward to meet the shadowy future, without fear, and with a manly heart!" This then was the spot where Paul Flemming came in loneliness and sorrow to muse over what he had lost, and these were the words whose truth and eloquence strengthened and consoled him, "as if the unknown tenant of the grave had opened his lips of dust and spoken those words of consolation his soul needed." I sat down and mused a long time, for there was ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... Aspires not beyond a small Second Edition)— One half the whole cost of the paper and printing, I've managed, to scrape up, this year past, by stinting My own little wants in gloves, ribands, and shoes, Thus defrauding the toilet to fit out the Muse! ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the Muse, And her divine employment;— The blameless Muse who trains her sons For ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... favourites with the tragic muse we do not dare to attempt any description of Eleanor's face when she first heard the name of Mrs Slope pronounced as that which would or should or might at some time appertain to herself. The look, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... instant Jesus paused and seemed to muse; then, with that indulgence which was to illuminate the world, "Tell me, Simon," he inquired, "which was the ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... suffice to sit with Shirley in her panelled parlour, where others came and went, and where he could rarely find a quiet moment to show her the latest production of his fertile muse; he must have her out amongst the pleasant pastures, and lead her by the still waters. Tete-a-tete ramblings she shunned, so he made parties for her to his own grounds, his glorious forest; to remoter scenes—woods severed by the Wharfe, vales watered ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... not get beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her - but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Marchioness." He composed several pieces, madrigals and sonnets, under the genial influence of this exchange of thoughts. It was a period at which his old love of versifying revived with singular activity. Other friends, like Tommaso Cavalieri, Luigi del Riccio, and afterwards Vasari, enticed his Muse to frequent utterance. Those he wrote for the Marchioness were distributed in manuscript among his private friends, and found their way into the first edition of his collected poems. But it is a mistake to suppose that she was the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... o'er the snow-clad floor. Her tongue soft comfort to the mourner speaks, Her silver voice with soft emotion breaks; Round the drear hovel roves her moistened eye, Her graceful bosom heaves the lengthened sigh. "I know thee now—I know that angel frame— O that the muse might dare to breathe thy name: Nor thine alone, but all that sister-band Who scatter gladness o'er a weeping land; Who comfort to the infant sufferer bring, And 'teach with joy the widow's heart to sing.' "For this, no noisy honors fame shall give, In your own breasts your gentle ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... great scene of the Haunted Poet, is tremendous. You discover him in bed, too much visited by the Muse to sleep, and reading his manuscripts aloud to himself, after the manner of poets when they cannot find other listeners. He is alarmed by various ghostly noises in the house, and is often obliged to get up and examine the dark corners of the room, and to look ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Even at that early age, I often could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... like a dream, is dreamt the recollection of human things already changed and ever changing. The remembrance of the interesting country through which I have been travelling shall abide by me always; for, encouraged by the desire to speak and muse, as I do now, of the hardy, freely happy, and contented sons of its mountains, I first learned that no greater blessing could be granted than a life of honourable industry, and that, pine who might beneath the infliction of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... from the Court of the French Usurper, or from the pensioners of autocratic bounty. Your patient labours and forbearance in your country's cause, while thus assailed, have won for you, sir, our sincere respect, and another wreath at the hand of the Muse ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... in beautie, forme and hew, As if dead Art 'gainst Nature had conspir'd. Painter, sayes one, thy wife's a pretty woman, I muse such ill-shapt children thou hast got, Yet mak'st such pictures as their likes makes no man, I prethee tell the cause of this thy lot? Quoth he, I paint by day when it is light, And get my children in ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... apricots and pruning his essays,—the statesman, the ambassador no more; but the philosopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier at St. James's as at Shene; where, in place of kings and fair ladies, he pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty; or walks a minuet with the Epic Muse; or dallies by the south wall with ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sea, wears upon its luminous walls small trace of its long history of blood. As we contemplate its mosques and houses flashing their white profiles into the sky, it is impossible not to muse upon the contrast between its radiant and picturesque aspect and its veritable character as the accomplice of every crime and every baseness known to the Oriental mind. To see that sunny city basking between its green hills, you would hardly think of it as the abode of bandits; yet two powerful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... of Evelyn which for two years had held its place above my armchair, I turned its face to the wall when I rose in the morning. But at night it beamed ever upon me, becoming as the months passed, the one thing to hold to and muse over when the world grew a little noisy in my ears and the never ceasing conflict of the ages beat a trifle too ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... Thus did she muse, gazing questioningly at the whiteness of the altar flowers and those steady tongues of flame, hearing the silence, as of reverent waiting, which dwelt in the place. But, on the other hand, to give, in this her hour of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... examined each phrase and word with the minutest critical care before pronouncing their verdict. As might be expected, the poetry produced in those circumstances is of a more or less artificial type, and is wanting in the spontaneous vigour of the earlier essays of the Japanese muse. Conceits, acrostics, and untranslatable word-plays hold much too prominent a place, but for perfection of form the poems of this time are unrivalled. It is no doubt to this quality that the great popularity ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... plan is warm in my imagination, and, that I may give my whole time to it, I now am eager to dispatch an edition of Cato. Marcus Aper interposed: And are you, indeed, so enamoured of your dramatic muse, as to renounce your oratorical character, and the honours of your profession, in order to sacrifice your time, I think it was lately to Medea, and now to Thyestes? Your friends, in the mean time, expect your patronage; the colonies [b] invoke your aid, and the municipal cities invite you ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Come, Muse, migrate—from Greece and Ionia, Cross out, please, those immensely overpaid accounts, That matter of Troy and Achilles' wrath, and Aeneas', Odysseus' wanderings, Placard "Removed" and "To Let" on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... faces, and, as a rule, I guessed aright. This faded, crumpled, vaporous beauty, I conceived, was a German—such a German, somehow, as I had seen imagined in literature. Was she not a friend of poets, a correspondent of philosophers, a muse, a priestess of aesthetics—something in the way of a Bettina, a Rahel? My conjectures, however, were speedily merged in wonderment as to what my diffident friend was making of her. She caught his eye at last, and raising an ungloved ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... sweeter Harmony refines, Than Numbers flowing thro' the Muse's Lines; What Beauty ne'er could melt, thy Touches fire, And raise a Musick that can Love inspire; Soul-thrilling Accents all our Senses wound, And strike with Softness, whilst they charm with Sound! When thy Count pleads, what Fair his Suit can fly? Or when thy Nymph laments, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... epic poetry, rests for a moment the long trumpet whose epic strains are wont to stir the courage of men. Polymnia, the muse of sacred poetry, leans upon the lyre whose vibrant strings thrill the gentler ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... spirit still present to me, My best thoughts, my country, still linger with thee; My fond heart beats quick, and my dim eyes run o'er, When I muse on the last glance I gave to thy shore. The chill mists of night round thy white cliffs were curl'd, But I felt there was no spot like thee in the world— No home to which memory so fondly would turn, No thought that within ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... three feet by four, Where door is window, window door, 70 Saloop a hump-back'd cobler drink; "With him the muse shall sit and think;" He shall in sentimental strain, That negroes are oppress'd, complain. What mutters the decrepit creature? 75 ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... engaged myself to provide the Duke of Cornwall's with a play to succeed it. At the moment of signing the contract my bosom's lord had sat lightly on its throne, for I felt my head to be humming with ideas. But affluence, or the air of the Cromwell Road, seemed uncongenial to the Muse. ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to muse, for his brow lowered, and he made no answer. Legard threw himself back, overcome with his own excitement, and wept like a child. The stranger, who imagined himself above the indulgence of emotion (vain man!), woke from his revery at this burst of passion. He gazed at first (I grieve to ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... burn brighter, than in those of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem? Not a name meets thee, that has not belonged to a hero! If thou grievest to find all dissimilar but the name; yet mayest thou still muse, contemplative, over the tomb and ashes of him, whom thy mind has shadowed forth, as a noble light in ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... scarcely knowing how to grasp my own meaning, and give it a tangible shape in words; and yet it is concerning this very expression of our thoughts in words that I wish to speak. As I muse things fall more into their proper places, and, little fit for the task as my confession pronounces me to be, I will try to make clear that ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... her face, which was but of a little model, and yet proportionable to her body; her eyes black and full of loveliness and sweetness, her eyebrows small and even, as if drawn with a pencil, a very little, pretty, well-shaped mouth, which sometimes (especially when in a muse or study) she would draw up into an incredible little compass; her hair a sad chestnut; her complexion brown, but clear, with a fresh colour in her cheeks, a loveliness in her looks inexpressible; and by her whole composure was so beautiful a sweet creature at her ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... Daily News has a very prosy simile: "A dog, of any sense or self-respect, with a tin-kettle tied to his tail, acutely feels the misery and degradation of the music he is compelled to make. What the tin-kettle is to the dog, the yearly Ode is to the muse. The board, if you please, but not the annoyance and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... exerted his highest genius in depicting the frightful scene described by him, when Ugolino perished of hunger in the tower of Pisa. Alfieri, Metastasio, Corneille, Lope de Vega, and all the great masters of the tragic muse, have sought in his works the germs of their finest conceptions. The first of these tragedians marked two-thirds of the Inferno and Paradiso as worthy of being committed to memory. Modern novelists have found in his prolific mind the storehouse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... breakfast the next morning; but after little more than a nominal presentation of herself there, she escaped from Rose's looks and words of comment and innuendo and regained her own room. And there she sat down in the window to muse, having carefully locked out Clam. She had reason. Clam would certainly have decided that her mistress 'wanted fixing,' if she could have watched the glowing intent eyes with which Elizabeth was ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... represent the usual Andante, the Tempo di Menuetto, the familiar "Scherzo" and, as the two movements thus interpreted seemed rather paltry, and none of the usual effects could be got with them, our musicians came to regard the entire symphony as a sort of accidental hors d'oeuvre of Beethoven's muse—who, after the exertions with the A major symphony had chosen "to take things rather easily." Accordingly after the Allegretto Scherzando, the time of which is invariably "dragged" somewhat, the Tempo di Minuetto is universally served ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... a fanatic to-night, for you read history not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocian for the Greek, and Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, and John Brown the ripe fruit of our noonday, then, dipping ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... bridegroom in the ballad of "The Mistletoe Bough," and with more success. Madame Ling was reading a novel at home. Mr. Carlyle has quoted Tobias Smollett as to the undesirability of giving the historical muse that latitude which is not uncommon in France, and we prefer to leave the tale of Ling's where Mr. Carlyle left ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... but he has his by him. His verse runs like the tap, and his invention as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spiggot. In thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose a-fire together. The press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a six-pence or two in reward of the baser coin his pamphlet. His works would scarce sell for three half-pence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman; ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... why, among so many men of talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth? Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... again midnight. My fire burns cheerfully; the room is filled with my old friend's sober voice; and I am left to muse upon the story we have just ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... our amusement at the ghastly drollery of the two delvers with a shock of horror. That the unconscious Hamlet should stumble on this grave of all others, that it should be here that he should pause to muse humorously on death and decay,—all this prepares us for the revulsion of passion in the next scene, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and even in old text. Then I sketched out a rough design for an ornamental heading, with a wreath of flowers encircling the words "To Zozzy," and beneath this work of Art I inscribed the effort of my muse, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... wand of Muse— Queen Posy's shaft of subtle art— Seared to the distant heights of blue, Past onyx lees that Sunsets dyed, And put to Vellum Couplets' fuse, Sped same to Fate with timid heart, Then shed dim tears in Sorrow's pew, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... that blurs my sight, I regretfully awaken to the here and now. And is it possible, I sorrowfully muse, that all this glory can have fled away?—that more than twenty long, long years are spread between me and that happy night? And is it possible that all the dear old faces —Oh, quit it! quit it! Gather the old scraps up and wad 'em ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... scrap with an easy air. "Miss Morrison's handwriting, I think." He held it up before him and read aloud, "'I love my love with an H because he is Handsome.' This appears to be a confidence of Miss Morrison to her Muse. Whom do you think she refers ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Bryant was considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies. Who now reads "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America," "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America," "The Day of Doom," "M'Fingal," or "The Columbiad?" Skipping a generation from Barlow's death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest period was the centre: Halleck, Pierpont, Sprague, Drake, Dana, Percival, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... when I talk," answered he, "and get through a great deal of work; then I give over: but you prose, and muse, and sigh, and prose again." ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... As I muse, the remembrance of a great city comes back to me,—a city walled up to the sky and roaring like the sea. The memory of that roar returns first; then the vision defines: a chasm, which is a street, between mountains, which are houses. I am tired, because I have ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... picture things otherwise. I never thought of thanking her, or of asking myself, "Is she also happy? Is she also contented?" Often on some pretext or another I would leave my lessons and run to her room, where, sitting down, I would begin to muse aloud as though she were not there. She was forever mending something, or tidying the shelves which lined her room, or marking linen, so that she took no heed of the nonsense which I talked—how that I meant to become a general, to marry a beautiful woman, to buy a chestnut horse, to, ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... moment a beatific presence made itself sensible, and the Easy Chair recognized the poet's Muse, who had come for him. The poet put the question to her. "Young?" she said. "Why, you and I are always young, silly boy! Get your hat, and come over to Long Island City with me, and see the pussy-willows along the railroad-banks. The mosquitoes are beginning ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Mr. Frederick Tennyson's fame has been eclipsed by the Laureate's; and there was little chance of a hearing for the author of the Martyr'd Souldier when James Shirley was at work. From the address To the Courteous Reader, it would seem that Henry Shirley did not seek for popularity: "his Muse," we are told, was "seldome seene abroad." Evidently he was not a professional playwright. In his attempts to gain the ear of the groundlings he is often coarse without being comic; and sometimes (a less pardonable fault) he is tedious. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... which this branch was also brought. It is a painting in encaustic, and has been used as a door for his oven by the contadino who dug it up—yet it remains a marvel of genius. The subject is a female head—a muse, or perhaps only a portrait; the delicacy and mellowness of the flesh tints equal those of Raphael or Leonardo, and a lock of hair lying across her breast is so exquisitely painted that it seems to move with her breath. The features are of the large-eyed regular Greek type, womanly dignity ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... she knows it but too well, For I heard when Venus' dove In her ear did softly tell That kisses were the seals of love: O muse not then though it be so, Kisses make men ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... the poet in person is the relater. But he hides his own personality in that of the Muse he invokes; and offers himself to his auditors as the Voice only by which she speaks. She, the Muse, is thought to be throughout a faithful recorder; for she is supposed to have access to know all; and however marvellous may be the narrations, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... pathetic, sometimes sarcastic, and not seldom sublime. And we have here an additional proof, that a true poetic Spirit, in whatever Breast it inhabits, will create Thoughts, Language, and Numbers, worthy of the Muse, however unfavourable the occupation ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... but, like the College Tribe, Take not that Physick which their Rules prescribe. I scorn to praise a plodding, formal Fool, Insipidly correct, and dull by Rule: Homer, with all his Nodding, I would chuse, Before the more exact Sicilian Muse. Who'd not be Dryden; tho' his Faults are great, Sooner than our Laborious Laureat? Not but a decent Neatness, I confess, In Writing is requir'd, as well as Dress. Yet still in both the unaffected Air Will always please the Witty and ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... moment from the gravity of the historic muse, we might conjure up the picture of this festival, we would invoke the imagination of the reader to that sacred ground decorated with the profusest triumphs of Grecian art—all Greece assembled from her continent, her ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... evening, sunny, soft, and still, The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill, To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour, Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower; Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell, Emerging gently from the leafy dell, By fancy plann'd; ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... and banal sitting-room they sat down on either side the fire. Constance put a little shawl round her shoulders, pushed her spectacles into her grey hair, folded her hands, and sighed an enormous sigh: "Oh, dear!" She was the tragic muse, aged, and in ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... gates with gold o'erlaid, Wide oped each Argive shrine, And from the altar hallow'd flames arise; Amidst the rites divine, Joying the Muse to aid, Breath'd the brisk pipe its sweet notes to the skies; Accordant to the tuneful strain Swell'd the loud acclaiming voice, Now with Thyestes to rejoice: He, all on fire the glorious prize to gain, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... poet's step may rove, And yield the muse the day; There beauty led by timid love May shun the ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of his mother, ob. 1637. At Horton were composed, or inspired, Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus and others of his nominally minor but really sweetest and most enjoyable poems. In this retirement the Muse paid him her earliest visits, before he had thrown himself away on politics or Canaanitish mythology. Peeping in upon his handsome young face in its ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... our own name, for we are but atoms—but in the name of philology itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and tormented Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, most incurable woes; and speaks to men ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... example was imitated by Bologna and Pisa, and the commentators, if they performed but little service to literature, augmented the veneration which beheld a sacred or moral allegory in all the images of his mystic muse. His birth and his infancy were discovered to have been distinguished above those of ordinary men: the author of the Decameron, his earliest biographer, relates that his mother was warned in a dream of the importance of her pregnancy: and it was found, by others, that at ten years of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... travellers round their camp-fire draw, Or heard the plashing of their weary oars. And every place whereon they rested grew Happier for pure and gracious womanhood, And men whose names for stainless honor stood, Founders of States and rulers wise and true. The Muse of history yet shall make amends To those who freedom, peace, and justice taught, Beyond their dark age led the van of thought, And left unforfeited the name of Friends. O mother State, how foiled was thy design The gain was theirs, the loss ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... startled while I sat in my muse to hear a footstep coming. A steady, regular footstep; no light trip of children; and the hands were in the field, and this was not a step like any of them. My first thought was, the overseer's come to spy me out. The ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... common; there is nothing particularly new or exceptional in the style or the arrangement of the scenes; it is not so much a parody or a mock-heroic, as an heroic work inspired with comic irony. It is not a new kind of Saga, it is the old Saga itself put to the ordeal by the Comic Muse, and proving its temper under the severest ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... walk himself to a standstill. Unfortunately the head will continue working when the legs are at rest. And when he sat opposite to her at meal-times, Frances Freeland would gaze piercingly at his forehead and muse: 'The dear boy looks much better, but he's getting a little line between his brows—it IS such a pity!' It worried her, too, that the face he was putting on their little holiday together was not quite as full as she could have wished—though the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Danish chiefs, enriched by savage spoil, To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine, Reared the huge heap; or, in thy hallowed round, Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line; Or here those kings in solemn state were crowned; Studious to trace thy wondrous origin, We muse on many ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... be the model of historical narrative to the writers of Rome; but the circumstances of the times, aided perhaps by the splendid exertion of genius in other departments of literature, suggested a new resource, which promised not only to animate, but embellish the future productions of the historic Muse. This innovation consisted in an attempt to penetrate the human heart, and explore in its innermost recesses the sentiments and secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. By connecting moral effects with their probable internal and external causes, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... were thrown together daily in the drab little house by the river. Now a boy and a girl thrown together commonly make the speaking donkeys of comedy. Yet one never may be sure that they may not be the dumb struggling creatures of the tragic muse. Heaven knows Margaret Mueller was funny enough in her capers. For she related her antics—her grand pouts, her elaborate condescensions, her crass coquetry and her hidings and seekings—into what she called a "case." In the only wisdom she knew, to open a flirtation was to have a "case." ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... shall by-and-by develop a rivalry like that of the Italian cities, and that the difficulty of fame beyond our own village may make us more content with doing than desirous of the name of it. For, after all, History herself is for the most part but the Muse of Little Peddlington, and Athens raised the heaviest crop of laurels yet recorded on a few acres of rock, without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... father assented. "I declare," he added, after a moment's muse, "I felt sorry for the feller settin' up there alone, with nobody to do for him but that old thing he's got in. She can't cook any more than—" He desisted for want of a comparison, and said: "Such ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and classical numbers may promise themselves much gratification from the muse of Brooks, while the many-stringed harp of his lady, the Norna of the Courier Harp, which none but she can touch, has ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... This reputation he had maintained against all comers till he met the man now closeted with him. He envied the King his poetic talent, and would fain have outdone him in the art of poesy. But even with Clement Marot's help he had been utterly unable to woo the fickle muse. He had so stored his mind, however, that his sovereign, the brilliant Marguerite de Nevarre, and the master intellect of that age, Rabelais, all delighted in his society; and on account of his ability ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... them in the scale of good. First in the scale is measure; the second place is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason and wisdom; the fourth, to knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures; and here the Muse says 'Enough.' ...
— Philebus • Plato
... bear the tumult and noise of London. I sighed for solitude, that I might muse over your remembrance undisturbed. I came here yesterday. It is the home of my childhood. I am surrounded on all sides by the scenes and images consecrated by the fresh recollections of my unsullied years. They are not changed. The seasons which ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Modesty is to keep a man from writing an epic poem at all but, if he will have that impudence, why then he had better have the courage to plunge into the Castalian stream, like Virgil and Lucan, not crawl in funking and holding on by the Muse's apron-string. But—excuse me —quorsum haec tam putida tendunt? What have the Latin poets to do with this modern's sanity ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... He appeared to muse, and no one disturbed him in the minutes of silence that followed. Finally ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... my chaste Muse a liberty must take— Start not! still chaster reader—she'll be nice hence- Forward, and there is no great cause to quake; This liberty is a poetic licence, Which some irregularity may make In the design, and as I have a high sense Of Aristotle and the Rules, 't is fit To ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... sail. Receive a stranger's praise; nor, Britain, thou Forbid these wreaths to grace thy Hero's brow, Nor scorn the tribute of a foreign song, For Virtue's sons to every land belong: And shall the Gallic Muse disdain to pay The meed of worth, when Louis leads the way? But what avail'd, that twice thou daredst to try The frost-bound sea, and twice the burning sky, That by winds, waves, and every realm revered, Safe, only safe, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... here that Tom Towers lived, and cultivated with eminent success the tenth Muse who now governs the periodical press. But let it not be supposed that his chambers were such, or so comfortless, as are frequently the gaunt abodes of legal aspirants. Four chairs, a half-filled deal book-case ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... youth, how will ye dare to slight "The Muse, to whom Pierian streams belong? "Will ye not smile on poets, and delight, "More than all golden gifts, in gift of song? "Did not some song empurple Nisus' hair, "And bid young Pelops' ivory shoulder glow? "That youth the Muses praise, is he not fair, "Long as the stars shall ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... choice of metaphors, a pleasing note. At present Mr. Le Gallienne's muse seems to devote herself entirely to the worship of books, and Mr. Le Gallienne himself is steeped in literary traditions, making Keats his model and seeking to reproduce something of Keats's richness and affluence of imagery. He is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... age, Its spell a void, its charm a vacancy. Rosy Romance, thou owest many a page, Ay, many that erst grew beneath mine eye, To what was once the loved reality Of this true fairy-land; but I refuse To deck with Art's fantastic wizardry A haunt of Trade. Mine is not Mammon's Muse, She will not sing for hire of Soaps, or Silks, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... of the Vale of Llangollen certainly exceed every idea I had formed of their grandeur, and on my arrival at the inn in the village, the muse embodied the following ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... and inglorious occupation of growing turnips and potatoes, and could talk of nothing meaner than hypocausts and thermae. So we, like the farmer, slight the really beautiful Early Gothic "Liebfrauenkirche" and roam and muse for hours about the ruins of the Amphitheatre, the Roman Baths, the ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... was the roofe adorn'd: but for the bed, The which those sacred limmes encanaped, I could say much: yet poised with her selfe, That gorgeous worke did seeme but drossy pelfe. All-conquering Loue inspire my weaker Muse, And with thy iocund smiles daigne to infuse Heauen-prompted praises to my vntaught story, That I may write her worth, and tell thy glory. Vpon her backe she lay (o heauenly blisse!); Smiling like Ioue, being couzend of a kisse; The enuious pillow, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... once o'ersaid All grievous memories on his long life shed, This worst regret to one true heart could speak:— That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek, He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed, His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed, Her hand he kissed, but not her brow ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... handewerkes doynge / ye may make your bodyes dayly wery & crucyfyed. And therby make your spyrytes the more quycke and apte to the seruyce of our lorde in confusyon of your enemye and encreace of glorye. Beware to be Inquysytyf / or to muse on hyghe maters and subtyll. And leue them to worldely people / and to clerkes / for otymes the letter may hurte you Thynke euer [that] ye had leuer dye than ones to passe the clausures or bodes of your monasterye. Yf ye haue a faythfull & a ...
— A Ryght Profytable Treatyse Compendiously Drawen Out Of Many and Dyvers Wrytynges Of Holy Men • Thomas Betson
... Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same time that he highly extolled the epistle ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Rabelais is doing nothing more than parody—is, indeed, doing little more than simply follow the traditions of Romance—Amiles and Jourdains, Guy and Rembrun, and many others. But some of us regard plot as at best a full-dress garment, at the absence of which the good-natured God or Muse of fiction is quite willing to wink. Character, if seldom elaborately presented, except in the case of Panurge, is showered, in scraps and sketches, all over the book, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her - but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There is here some ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... back to the beginning of the third book, which we had read in class that morning. "Primus ego in patriam mecum {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} deducam Musas"; "for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country." Cleric had explained to us that "patria" here meant, not a nation or even a province, but the little rural neighborhood on the Mincio where the poet was born. This was not a boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, that he might bring the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... France, where Madame Deshoulires soon became a conspicuous personage at the court of Louis XIV. and in literary society. She won the friendship and admiration of the most eminent literary men of the age—some of her more zealous flatterers even going so far as to style her the tenth muse and the French Calliope. Her poems were very numerous, and included specimens of nearly all the minor forms, odes, eclogues, idylls, elegies, chansons, ballads, madrigals, &c. Of these the idylls alone, and only some of them, have stood the test of time, the others being ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... have done no wrong to me, or to any human being. You have done nothing but good to me, and to every human being in your reach. To me you have been more than tongue can tell—my first friend, my muse, my angel, my inspiration to all that is best, greatest, highest in human life—the goal of all my earthly, all my heavenly aspirations. That I should love you with a pure, single, ardent passion of enthusiasm was natural, was inevitable. But that you, dear, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion which ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... am not quite certain why he delayed so long. Perhaps he had waited until his gift of song had matured so that the offering might be worthy of the shrine, or perhaps because he had exhausted all other exalted subjects for his muse, but anyhow, he sent Miss Varley an ode on her birthday. This day was pretty generally known amongst ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give utterance to the grandest conceptions with all that sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the Grecian Muse rolls forth her ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... the vulgar expires; but, Muse immortal, thou bearest Those whom thou lovest, who ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Writers for the Stage labour under, besides 'tis observable, that an obsequious prolifick Muse generally meets with a worse Reception than a petulant inanimate Author; and when a Poet has finished his Labours, so that he has brought his Play upon the Stage, the best Performance has oftentimes the worst Success, ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... tua merce, santo Collegio delle Muse, io non mi trovo Tanto per voi, ch'io possa ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... earnestness, as if to ascertain whether I was really as unconcerned as I affected to be. Then she seemed to muse, picking the cotton of the spotless counterpane on which she was lying, like one at a loss ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... to change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... in recalling the brilliant winter of 1804-5, says, in her Memoirs: "One especially impressive beauty, particularly in the ball-room, was Madame de Canisy, I have often compared her to a muse. It would be impossible for a single face to present a fuller combination of charms than hers: she possessed regular features, a delightful expression, an attractive smile; her hair was silky and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... full rapture of the redeemed soul. We cannot comprehend here, fully, but the mind is overwhelmed when we contemplate the revelations of the Gospel, "Come then expressive silence, muse His praise." ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... seen the inspired schoolmaster who has beneath his hands the wretched verses of a dull pupil. For awhile he attempts to reduce to reason and prosody the futile efforts of the scholar, but anon he lays aside in disgust the distasteful task, and turning his eyes upwards to the Muse who has ever been faithful, he dashes off a few genial lines of warm poetry. The happy juvenile, with wondering pen, copies the work, and the parent's heart rejoices over the prize which his child has won. So was it now with Robinson. What could he do with ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... The fool is happy that he knows no more; The rich is happy in the plenty given, The poor contents him with the care of Heaven. See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing, The sot a hero, lunatic a king; The starving chemist in his golden views Supremely blest, the poet in his muse. See some strange comfort every state attend, And pride bestowed on all, a common friend; See some fit passion every age supply, Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die. Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... whose rich mine of wit we here behold As porcelain earth, more precious, 'cause more old; Who, like an aged oak, so long hath stood, And art religion now as well as food: Though thy grey Muse grew up with elder times, And our deceased grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes; Yet we can sing thee too, and make the lays Which deck thy brow look fresher with thy praise. * * * * * Though these, your happy births, have silent past ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... high-sounding tirades embodied the noblest of political creeds; and even the soberer judgment of statesmen and men of affairs was captivated by the grandeur of his verse and the heroic audacity of his theme. For the first time in centuries the Italian Muse spoke with the voice of a man; and every man's heart in Italy ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... though banned at the Front, Are so manfully doing their "stunt" In searching for news That the Limerick Muse Thus honours ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... "My muse unto a Child I may compare, Who sees the riches of some famous Fair, He feeds his eyes but understanding lacks, To comprehend the worth of all those knacks; The glittering plate and Jewels he admires, The Hats and Fans, the Plumes and Ladies' tires, And thousand ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... existence with childlike, all-believing, Homeric eyes. That creative vision which of old peopled Olympus still peoples the world for her, beholding gods where the skeptic, critical eye sees only a medical doctor and a sick woman. So is she stamped a true child of the Muse, descended on the one side from Memory, or superficial fact, but on the other from Zeus, the soul of fact; and being gifted to discern the divine halo on the brows of humanity, she rightly obtains ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Tragic Muse has long forgot to please With Shakespeare's nature or with Fletcher's ease: No passion mov'd, thro' five long acts you sit, Charm'd with the poet's language or his wit. Fine things are said, no matter whence they fall; Each single character ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... And many rivers taking under hand Into his waters, as he passeth downe, The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Rowne. Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit, My mother Cambridge, whom as with a Crowne He doth adorne, and is adorn'd of it With many a gentle Muse, ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... with the thought that his employer had placed so much confidence in him. He wanted to write a poem, but circumstances forbade his signaling to his muse. On his way to the bunk-house he hesitated and retraced his steps to the ranch office. Corliss told him to come in. He approached his employer deferentially as though about to ask ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Gregory or Peter might have been observed coming down the staircase with a missive from Hamlet. Juliet had detected his gift for verse, and insisted, rather capriciously, on having all his replies in that shape. Hamlet humored her, though he was often hard put to it; for the Muse is a coy immortal, and will not always come when she is wanted. Sometimes he was forced to fall back upon previous efforts, as when he translated these lines into ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... fellow turning to Mrs. Carter, whose "talk was all instruction," or to Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions a la Grecque," and abruptly inquiring, "Madam, did you ever see a fairy's funeral?" "Never, Sir!" responds the startled Muse. "I have," pursues Blake, as calmly as if he were proposing to relate a bon mot which he heard at Lady Middleton's rout last night. "I was walking alone in my garden last night: there was great stillness among the branches and flowers, and more than common sweetness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... MUSE. Give me a kiss, my poet, take thy lyre; The buds are bursting on the wild sweet-briar. To-night the Spring is born—the breeze takes fire. Expectant of the dawn behold the thrush, Perched on the fresh branch of the first green bush; Give me a kiss, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... form the words, "Poulet, my little Poulet," as if she were talking to him, and she would cease to muse, and try for hours to write in the air the letters which formed her son's name, with her outstretched finger. Slowly she traced them before the fire, fancying she could see them, and, thinking she had made a mistake, she began the word over and over ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... its futile, violent, and weak experiments: "Law, the rectitude of humanity," says Mr Coventry Patmore, "should be the poet's only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been the subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse's will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the greatest poets have been those the modulus of whose verse has been most variously and ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... contagion was much allayed all the town over. When God made me sigh, they would hearken, and inquiringly say, What's the matter with John? When I went out to seek the bread of life, some of them would follow, and the rest be put into a muse at home. Some of them, perceiving that God had mercy upon me, came crying to him for mercy too.'[24] Can any one, in the face of such language, doubt that he was most eminently 'a brand snatched from the fire'; a pitchy burning brand, known and seen ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her long to muse. Sitting down beside her for the first time, he told her the plan he had been turning over in his mind for their one ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... consists of brief biographical commentaries about Beethoven, each followed by sections of quotations attributed to the muse. In these quotes, Beethoven demonstrates his intense preoccupation (or obsession) with thinking artistically and intelligently, and with helping to alleviate man's suffering by providing man with musical artworks ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... at this dinner, it was difficult to remember that he was not really a talker. The natural reserve of his nature made it sometimes impossible for him to express himself in ordinary intercourse. He never truly made a confidant of anybody except his Muse. ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... the minstrel to Guarine, "that my muse would find a tender part at last. Dost thou remember the bull-fight we saw in Spain? A thousand little darts perplexed and annoyed the noble animal, ere he received the last deadly thrust from the lance ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... perhaps in those furious days which preceded the Crimean War that the noble personal qualities with which Mr. Cobden was endowed shone out most clearly. When all England, from the thunder of the "Times" to the quiet Muse of Tennyson, was enlisted for war, Cobden took his stand, and refused to bow to the tempest. In a moment the nation seemed to forget the services of years, and Cobden, denounced as a "Peace-at-any-price man," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... rashness of my conduct, and entreated him to think better of my father than to imagine him invincible to argument. I promised to go to him in the morning, and counteract, as much as I could, the effects of my evening conversation. At length he departed, with somewhat renovated spirits, and left me to muse upon the strange events of ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... the same strain to Lord Grey, he speaks of his "rude rimes, the which a rustic muse did weave, in salvage soil." It is idle to speculate what difference of form the Faery Queen might have received, if the design had been carried out in the peace of England and in the society of London. But it is certain that the scene of trouble and danger in which ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... quit this national trait. The English naval muse, which I presume must be a Mermaid, half woman and half fish, has, by her simple and half the time, nonsensical songs, done more for the British flag than all her gunnery, or naval discipline and tactics. This inspiration of the tenth muse, with libations of grog, have actually made the English ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... fruit of warlike deeds, The soldier bleed, the soldier bleeds, Calliope crowns heroic deeds, With immortality. From mere oblivion I reclaim The soldier's name, the soldier's name And write it on the roll of fame, The muse ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... preserve as much dignity as they can in their situation; but this situation is so artificial in itself, that it is impossible to give lustre to it. None of the actions of the Austrian government in favor of French interests can be attributed to any thing but fear; and this new muse ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... warned them: "We shall come now to the wandering blue rocks; my mother warned me of them, Calliope, the immortal muse." ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... a couple of handkerchiefs; and, were it not that he has divined my inmost feelings, the mere sight of these handkerchiefs would be enough to make me treat the whole thing as ridiculous. The secret exchange of presents between us," she went on to muse, "fills me also with fears; and the thought that those tears, which I am ever so fond of shedding to myself, are of no avail, drives me likewise to blush ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... little way beyond; and, mingling reveries of heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... entry with the other monarchs, but came only in the afternoon to Leipsic, where he remained scarcely an hour. He then returned to Rotha.—Beitzke, vol. ii.] The emperor took that presented to him, and pressed it with a quick and graceful movement on Blucher's head. "I represent the Muse of History," he said, "and crown 'Marshal ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... not least is Aetion; A gentler shepherd[7] may nowhere be found, Whose Muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... early age, I often could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Confessor: and shortlie therevpon as it had beene falne into a resiluation, came to extreame ruine by the inuasion and conquest of the Normans: as after by Gods good helpe and fauorable assistance it shall appeare. So that it would make a diligent and marking reader both muse and moorne, to see how variable the state of this kingdome hath beene, & thereby to fall into a consideration of the frailtie and vncerteintie of this mortall life, which is no more free from securitie, than a ship on the sea in tempestuous weather. For as the casualties wherewith ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... the ingenious gentleman under the influence of the Tragic Muse contrived to dislocate, 'I wish you a good morning, Sir! Thank you, Sir, and I wish you the same,' into ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... have piped erst so long with pain That all mine oaten reeds been rent and wore, And my poor Muse hath spent her spared store, Yet little good hath got, and much less gain. Such pleasaunce makes the grasshopper so poor, And ligge so layd[115] when winter doth her strain. The dapper ditties that I wont devise, To feed youth's fancy, and the flocking ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... how shall these things change? Shall childish galleries That deemed you once Apollo's minister, Say, "Garn, old monkey!" Shall colossal salaries Reward the Muse and not the dulcimer? Not gleaming eyeballs, not the soul illuminate? Shall old faiths falter and Antonio's heart Sicken the while he churns, and chilly ruminate, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... herbs, that I cannot write verses? By Apollo, if I did not spend my days in politics, and my nights in revelry, I should have made Sophocles tremble. But now I never go beyond a little song like this, and never invoke any Muse but Chariclea. But come, Speusippus, sing. You are a professed poet. Let us have some ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... should have in man. Drinking songs and table songs do not belong to the highest flights of poetry; but if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one imagine English poems on port and sherry? or has a Frenchman much to tell us of his Bordeaux, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... get down millions of words a minute. But when they have got the job apparently done, they simmer away to nothing. They perform mysterious rites with ink-eraser. They scratch feebly with knives. They hold up to the light, they tittivate, they muse and they adorn. It is not the slightest use intimating that you do not care twopence whether there are typographic errors or not—the expert typist treats you with the scorn that the expert always does treat the layman with. At such junctures it is an advantage if the typist ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... thought of Eden fade, Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain— Godlike to muse o'er his own Trade And ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... gushes from Parnassus' hill, And by the bright Pierian spring She shall receive an offering From every youth who pipes a strain Beside his flocks upon the plain. But I, the first, this very day, Will tune for her my humble lay, Invoking this new Muse to render My oaten reed more sweet and tender, Within its vibrant hollows wake Such dulcet voices for her sake As, curved hand at straining ear, I long have stood and sought to hear Borne with the warm midsummer ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the poet, for her beauty. She inspired his muse when turning the corner of George Street, Edinburgh. The lines addressed to her are to be found in his Poems. She was also a highly-gifted artist. The illustrations in the work called the Stirling Heads are from her pencil. It ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... suddenly to Jacobus: "Here! Put some chicken and salad on that plate." He obeyed without raising his eyes. I carried it with a knife and fork and a serviette out on the verandah. The garden was one mass of gloom, like a cemetery of flowers buried in the darkness, and she, in the chair, seemed to muse mournfully over the extinction of light and colour. Only whiffs of heavy scent passed like wandering, fragrant souls of that departed multitude of blossoms. I talked volubly, jocularly, persuasively, tenderly; ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... his long hair and blew it about his face till he became an equestrian personification of the frenzied muse. I had become acquainted with his trick of setting words to the music of quaint rhymes; but Father ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Theocritus,—nothing very serious,—wrote a strange poem that stands in dignity and depth of purpose far above anything in his model. This was the Fourth Eclogue of his Bucolics, called the Pollio. In it he invokes the "Sicilian Muse" to inspire him to loftier strains; and proceeds to sing of the coming of a new cycle, the return of a better age, to be ushered in, supposedly, by a 'child' born ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the woman's full habit of speech was strong upon her and that one might no longer muse upon a caught trout—even one to weigh well up toward four pounds. So I remembered that I was supposed ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... aerial pow'r, E'en Wisdom calls me to her bow'r; My songs her leisure hours beguile, And teach her holy lip to smile. And, when the Muse, with thoughtful care, Has woven chaplets for her hair, I let her, with her myrtles, twine, Full many a fragrant ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... discourse, my Muse doth here intend, The honor of Saint Patrick to defend, And speake of his adventrous accidents, Of his brave fortunes, and their brave events, That if her pen were made of Cromwell's rump, Yet she should weare it to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... the fair-tressed lotus of Chaeremon mixed with the gilliflower of Phaedimus, and the round ox-eye of Antagoras, and the wine-loving fresh-blown wild thyme of Theodorides, and the bean-blossoms of Phanias, and many newly- scriptured shoots of others; and with them also even from his own Muse some early white violets. But to my friends I give thanks; and the sweet-languaged garland of the Muses is ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... hatred against Napoleon Bonaparte. Again and again he invoked the Muse against the world conqueror. Thus he wrote to Landor in 1814: "For five years I have been preaching the policy, the duty, the necessity of declaring Bonaparte under the ban of human nature." Under this stress of feeling he wrote his great "Ode During the Negotiations for Peace." It ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... tottering as he is, it was the height of insanity. Down he dropped on his bended knees before the object of his love; out he poured his touching addresses, lisped in the blandest, most persuasive tones; and what was his answer? Scoffs, laughs, kicks, rejection! Even Johnny Russell's muse availed not, though it deserved a better fate. It gained him a wife, but could not win the electors. Our readers will discover the genius of the witty author of "Don Carlos" in the address, which, though rejected, we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... STATE: 'Twere well the cares of day to toss aside And welcome evening's quiet with a smile, But we who here in solemn conclave meet Can squander moment few to court the Muse; Stern duty calls, and to each patriot ear 'Tis music sweet, to which he quick responds, Then to the council board let us repair And these the mysteries ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... said Chet. "They could open the ports and ram those snaky heads inside to feed." He seemed to muse for a moment upon what might have come ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... settle himself to tasks for some time terribly neglected, with a sense that after all it was rather a relief not to be sitting so close to Sir Dominick Ferrand, who had become dreadfully distracting; at the very moment at which he habitually addressed his preliminary invocation to the muse, he was agitated by the arrival of a telegram which proved to be an urgent request from Mr. Locket that he would immediately come down and see him. This represented, for poor Baron, whose funds were very low, another morning sacrificed, but somehow ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... last paragraph, I would have the reader rather impute that epithet to the compassion in my temper than conceive it to be any declaration of his innocence. Whether he was innocent or not will perhaps appear hereafter; but if the historic muse hath entrusted me with any secrets, I will by no means be guilty of discovering them till ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... gleams the youth's bright falchion: there the muse Lifts her sweet voice: there awful Justice opes Her ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Bramble's advice, they did leave her alone to muse over her ambitious hopes and desires, whilst they, contented and happy with their lowly fate, opened their buds to the bright sunshine, which beams alike upon the ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... they were out of hearing of the other two. "If I were poetically minded I should say that you looked like the Tragic Muse." ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... permit an humble muse, To lay her duteous homage at your feet: Such homage heav'n itself does not refuse, But praise, and pray'rs admits, as ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... would muse; if their grief were the grief of oppression they would wish themselves kings; if their grief were poverty, wish themselves millionaires; if sin, they would wish they were saints or angels; if despised ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... easily be seen, Aubanel writes not, like Roumanille, for his own people alone. His Muse is more ambitious, and seeks to interest by appealing to the sentiments in a language polished with all the art of its sister, the French. There are innumerable exquisite passages scattered through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... grown bleak And uttermost labours, having once o'ersaid All grievous memories on his long life shed, This worst regret to one true heart could speak:— That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek, He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed, His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed, Her hand he kissed, but ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... the time he brooded. His Homeric nonsense alternated with fits of gloom. In spite of his late hours, whether of study or of story-telling, he was an early riser. "He would sit by the fire having uncovered the coals, and muse and ponder and soliloquize."(6) Besides his favorite Shakespeare, he had a fondness for poetry of a very different sort—Byron, for example. And he never tired of a set of stanzas in the minor key beginning: "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... th'affront, and must repair the same; When France shall boast of her, whose conqu'ring eyes Have made the best of English hearts their prize; Have power to alter the decrees of Fate, And change again the counsels of our state. 30 What the prophetic Muse intends, alone To him that feels the secret wound is known. With the sweet sound of this harmonious lay, About the keel delighted dolphins play, Too sure a sign of sea's ensuing rage, Which must anon this royal troop engage; To whom soft sleep seems more secure and sweet, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... forget,' said Scott, and, misled by boyish affection, he deemed it 'just old enough,' 'a noble imitation.'* But the imitation can deceive nobody, and while literary imitators, as far as their efforts have reached us, were impotent to deceive, the popular Muse, of 1714-1730, was not attempting deception. Ballads of the eighteenth century were sarcastic, as in those on Sheriffmuir and in Skirving's amusing ballad on Preston Pans, or were mere doggerel, or were brief ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... came, I believe that I began to muse about Monsieur de Chavannes; but it was only to think that I did not care in the least about him, nor he about me; and that, so far as he was concerned, I had seen no cause to change my decided resolution that I would never marry. All this was, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... of fortune, and their several pursuits in war, politics, commerce, and lucrative arts, they awakened whatever was either good or bad in the natural dispositions of men. Every road to eminence was opened: eloquence, fortitude, military skill, envy, detraction, faction, and treason, even the muse herself, was courted to bestow importance among a ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... Manager, "I will now read you my Five Act Tragedy entitled——" "Hang your tragedies!" will the Manager exclaim, "Give me a farce like 'Dr. Bill,' my boy!" And once more will the poet put his pride and his tragedy in one pocket, and all the money which the Comic Muse will give him in the other. I back the argumentum ad pocketum against the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... a new shepherd late upsprung The which doth all afore him far surpass: Appearing well in that well-tuned song Which late he sung unto a scornful lass. Yet doth his trembling Muse but lowly fly, As daring not too rashly mount on height; And doth her tender plumes as yet but try In love's soft lays, and looser thoughts delight. Then rouse thy feathers quickly, DANIEL, And to what course thou ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... too, shall rear unnumbered domes, Here Shakspeares—Tassos—find more happy homes, Here Homer's fire, and Virgil's polished grace, A sacred charm shall give to many a place. Each shady hill shall be a Muse's haunt— By each pure spring aerial nymphs shall chant— Chant the sweet song to heavenly Liberty— While thundering cataracts peal it to the sea!" She spake no more;—or I too much opprest By wondrous visions, needed welcome rest. And when I waked, the day had now unfurled His rosy banners ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... not least, is AEtion: A gentler Shepherd may nowhere be found; Whose Muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth, like himself, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... many passages of his writings: and many of his Studies, as well as his Scherzos, depict a concentrated exasperation and despair, which are sometimes manifested in bitter irony, sometimes in intolerant hauteur. These dark apostrophes of his muse have attracted less attention, have been less fully understood, than his poems of more tender coloring. The personal character of Chopin had something to do with this general misconception. Kind, courteous, and affable, of tranquil and almost joyous manners, he would not suffer the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... you shall hear to-night! I, who have heard every fine voice in Europe, confidently pledge my respectability that the Ravenswing is equal to them all. She has the graces, sir, of a Venus with the mind of a Muse. She is a siren, sir, without the dangerous qualities of one. She is hallowed, sir, by her misfortunes as by her genius; and I am proud to think that my instructions have been the means of developing the wondrous qualities that ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... across the waves, and trying to descry something that looked like land, or a tree, or anything that seemed familiar and like home. Then they would shake their heads disconsolately and go below, to brood and muse and be an extremely unhappy and forlorn lot of savages. The joy that seized them when at last they came in sight of land, and were assured that we did not intend to keep on sailing till we fell over the edge of the earth, was something ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... abundantly Racke and Rennishe wyne 'til night! On the mountaine satte Apollo, and at his feete satte Calliope, and on every side of the mountaine satte iiii Muses playing on several swete instrumentes, and at their feete Epigrammes and Poyses were written in golden letters, with the which every Muse, accordyng to her propertie, praised the Quene.—"At the conduite in Cornhill there were thre graces set in a throne; afore whom was the spryng of grace continually ronnyng—wine!" At the cross in Chepe, "Master Baker, the recorder, with lowe ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... 'Muse of Green Erin, break thine icy slumbers! Strike once again thy wreathed lyre! Burst forth once more and wake thy tuneful numbers! Kindle ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... modes of trial; we forget the murderer, and see something like a hero. It is curious to observe, that the legislature in Germany, and in England, have found it necessary to interfere as to the representation of Captain Mac Heath and the Robbers; two characters in which the tragic and the comic muse have had powerful effects in exciting imitation. George Barnwell is a hideous representation of the passions, ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... the real thing—from you. Every man to his metier. Yours is to sing of blue skies and west winds, of hay-scented meadows and Watteau-like revellers in a paradise as artificial as a Dutch garden. Take my advice, and keep your muse chained. The other worlds ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Thus sang the Muse of a great woman years ago; and now, alas! she, who, with constant suffering of her own, was called upon to grieve often for the loss of near and dear ones, has suddenly gone from among us, "and silence, against which we dare ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... would hearken, and enquiringly say, What is the matter with John? They also gave their various opinions of me: but, as I said, sin cooled, and failed, as to his full career. When I went out to seek the bread of life, some of them would follow, and the rest be put into a muse at home. Yea, almost the town, at first, at times would go out to hear at the place where I found good; yea, young and old for a while had some reformation on them; also some of them, perceiving that God had mercy upon me, came crying ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... them he was the creature of the moment; and, driven to and fro by whatever impulse, or whatever passion, caught the caprice of a wild, roving, and all-poetical imagination, Maltravers was, half unconsciously, a poet—a poet of action, and woman was his muse. ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thing be more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according to the precept ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves; when ev'ry muse And every blooming pleasure wait without, To bless the wildly ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... seemed to know. In fact, Bernice, having trifled with her muse's beau, had said nothing memorable ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... (my honour'd Lord) I was not borne, Audacious vowes, or forraigne legs to use, Nature denyed my outside to adorne, And I, of art to learne outsides refuse. Yet haveing of them both, enough to scorne Silence, & vulgar prayse, this humble muse And her meane favourite; at yo'r comand Chose in this kinde, to kisse your ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... get beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her - but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought that he "woo'd the Muse," to speak in the style of the last century. Even his intimates were ignorant of the fact that he had a skeleton in his cupboard, his Kasidah or distichs. He confided to me his secret when we last met in Western India—I am purposely vague in specifying the place. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... de Colonel Chabert The Muse of the Department The Thirteen The Peasantry Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Country Parson The Magic Skin The Gondreville Mystery The Secrets of a ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... with telling me, he could have wished I had rather turned my thoughts to the comic than the tragic muse; for tragedy was less fashionable, and consequently less profitable both to the house and the author, than comedy or opera. I sighed and answered, it was an ill proof of public taste, when it could receive greater pleasure from the unconnected ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... remarkable that the war of Granada, which is so admirably suited in all its circumstances to poetical purposes, should not have been more frequently commemorated by the epic muse. The only successful attempt in this way, with which I am acquainted, is the "Conquisto di Granata," by the Florentine Girolamo Gratiani, Modena, 1650. The author has taken the license, independently of his machinery, of deviating very freely from the historic track; ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... fraudulent character in the Mabinogi, and although "in his life there was counsel," yet he had a "vicious muse."[375] It is also implied that he is lover of his sister Arianrhod and father of Dylan and Llew—the mythic reflections of a time when such unions, perhaps only in royal houses, were permissible. Instances ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... admitted at all, appear but like the stars of the firmament to the ordinary eye. Those splendid luminaries draw forth perhaps occasionally a transient expression of admiration, when we behold their beauty, or hear of their distances, magnitudes, or properties: now and then too we are led, perhaps, to muse upon their possible uses: but however curious as subjects of speculation, after all, it must be confessed, they twinkle to the common observer with a vain and "idle" lustre; and except in the dreams of the astrologer, have no influence on human happiness, or any concern with the course ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the genius of the nations of modern Europe, and enriched all our poetry by it. Woody Morven, and echoing Sora, and Selma with its silent halls!—we all owe them a debt of gratitude, and when we are unjust enough to forget it, may the Muse forget us! Choose any one of the better passages in Macpherson's Ossian and you can see even at this time of day what an apparition of newness and power such a strain must have been ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Sabbath-school that taught the great mass of the free people of color about all the school knowledge that was allowed them in those days, and hence the consternation which came upon them when they found themselves excluded from the schools of the white churches. Lindsay Muse, who has been the messenger for eighteen Secretaries of the Navy, successively, during fifty-four years, from 1828 to the present time, John Brown, Benjamin M. McCoy, Mr. Smallwood, Mrs. Charlotte ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... in a heavy muse, hearing and not hearing what she said. Charmian bustled about, and made a fire of lightwood, and then kindled her spirit lamp, and made tea, which she brought to Cornelia. "We may as well take it," she said. "We shall not sleep to-night anyway. What ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... a kind of a muse. I have been myself in the fix she looked to be in then—so you forget fur a while where you are, or who is there, whilst you think about something that has been in the back part of your mind fur ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... his transitions, pass to very different things, for some time back a well-known English poet and essayist wrote of the present work that it was redolent of pork, onions, and cheese. To one of his sensitive temperament, with a muse strictly nourished on sugar and water, such gross edibles as pork and cheese and onions were peculiarly offensive. That humble plant the onion, employed to flavour wellnigh every savoury dish, can assuredly ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... accustomed to write poetry to abstain when a happy subject smiles upon his delighted imagination. If he attempted to smother the poetical flame running through his veins it would consume him. I composed my sonnet, keeping the same rhymes as in the original, and, well pleased with my muse, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... one of his sweetest poems, the Dirge in Cymbeline, was inspired by the tragedy of Cymbeline. The verse of Gray, Collins, and the Warton brothers, abounds in verbal reminiscences of Shakspere; but their genius was not allied to his, being exclusively lyrical, and not at all dramatic. The Muse of this romantic school was Fancy rather than Passion. A thoughtful melancholy, a gentle, scholarly pensiveness, the spirit of Milton's Il Penseroso, pervades their poetry. Gray was a fastidious scholar, who produced very little, but that little ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... lights over the swaying foliage; and from beneath the massive branches of trees, there shines out, in bold relief, the marble porticoes and lintels of stately—looking mansions. Such is the calm grandeur of the scene, that one could imagine some Thalia investing it with a poetic charm the gods might muse over. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... had succeeded in getting that play right, what a difference it would have made! He would have been able to do a number of things he had never done, things which he had always desired to do. He had desired above all to travel—to see France and Italy; to linger, to muse in the shadows of the world's past; and after this he had desired marriage, an English wife, an English home, beautiful children, leisure, the society of friends. A successful play would have given him all these things, and now his dream must remain for ever unrealised by him. He ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... verses are which excited my gratitude? I would refer you to the volume itself, but that I have some by heart, and if you like these, you may look out the others for yourself in the book. He addresses the Muse and bids her seek my house on the Esquiline and approach it with great respect:—"But take care that you do not knock at his learned door at a time when you should not. He devotes whole days together to crabbed Minerva, while he prepares for the ears of the Court of the Hundred speeches which posterity ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... me of the prodigious activity of your Muse obliges me to make a somewhat shameful acknowledgment of my relative slowness and idleness. The pupil is far from the master in this as in other points. Nevertheless I think I have made a better use of the last three years than of the preceding ones; for one thing ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... CHOR. Come, Muse, to our Mystical Chorus, O come to the joy of my song, O see on the benches before us that countless and wonderful throng, Where wits by the thousand abide, with more than a Cleophon's pride— On the lips of that foreigner base, of Athens the bane and disgrace, ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... past editions of this work, and they have been many, have elicited the strongest praise here and abroad. The classic poets of every land have valued the praise which rewarded their dedication of the first triumphs of the muse to subjects connected with the cultivation of the soil, to the arts that rendered the breast of our common mother lovely, and wedded the labors which sustain life with the arts that render it happy. The work before us has an established reputation. It is written ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... almost unknown in English literature. This lady was the wife of the governor of Massachusetts, and because of her literary tendencies was looked upon by the people of her time as a marvel of womankind. Her contemporaries called her the "tenth muse lately sprung up in America," and one of them, Rev. Nathaniel Ward, was inspired to write an address to her, in which he declares his wonder at her success as a poet, and playfully foretells the consequences if women ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the beardless carle shall listen While I lash him with abuse, Loon at whom our stomachs sicken. Soon shall hear these words of scorn; Far too nice for such base fellows Is the name my bounty gives, Een my muse her help refuses, Making mirth of ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... my thought I held, And yet all thro' it The wires all England over shrill'd, And I never knew it! In a high muse I nurst my news All the forenoon, While England braced her limbs and ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... she had written a sentence to muse again. "I wish she hadn't taken a sort of dislike to Rosamond when she saw her out at Red Top," she said wistfully. "It's so hard to write without putting Rosamond in. She's in almost everything I ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... accomplish her pious design, and the protection of Jesus and His Mother was promised to her. Let us follow them in thought up the steep hill to Assisi—to the church where the relics of the saint, where his mortal remains are laid. Let us descend into the subterranean chapel, pause at every altar, and muse on the records of that astonishing life, the most marvellous perhaps of any which it has ever been permitted to mortal man to live. Let us go with them to the home of his youth, where his confessorship began in childish sufferings ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... and dreamy before our tent and muse on the past and the future, and when most overcome with lassitude, my eyes turned always toward the distant Black Hills. There is a spirit of energy and vigor in mountains, and they impart it to all who approach their presence. At that time I did not know how many ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... were all so pleased with themselves, Clara swallowed her chagrin, and more happily accepted their homage when Sir Henry toasted her as the presiding Muse of ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... rushes breathless o'er the snow-clad floor. Her tongue soft comfort to the mourner speaks, Her silver voice with soft emotion breaks; Round the drear hovel roves her moistened eye, Her graceful bosom heaves the lengthened sigh. "I know thee now—I know that angel frame— O that the muse might dare to breathe thy name: Nor thine alone, but all that sister-band Who scatter gladness o'er a weeping land; Who comfort to the infant sufferer bring, And 'teach with joy the widow's heart to sing.' "For this, no noisy honors fame shall ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... chaste Muse a liberty must take— Start not! still chaster reader—she'll be nice hence- Forward, and there is no great cause to quake; This liberty is a poetic licence, Which some irregularity may make In the design, and as I have a high sense ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... entreated him to think better of my father than to imagine him invincible to argument. I promised to go to him in the morning, and counteract, as much as I could, the effects of my evening conversation. At length he departed, with somewhat renovated spirits, and left me to muse upon the strange events ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... utterly devoid of aesthetic taste, considered all save religious poetry sinful in the extreme; so it was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that Fame could trumpet abroad the advent of "the Tenth Muse," or "the Morning Star of American Poetry," in the person of Anne Bradstreet! Among her poems—which no one ever reads nowadays—is "An Exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz., the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian, and the Beginning ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... chronology is traditional and full of absurdities." Furthermore, nothing is said in the Brahmanas of the Bauddhas—ergo, there were none before "Sandracottus," nor have the Buddhists or Brahmans any right to a history of their own, save the one evoluted by the Western mind. As though the Muse of History had turned her back while events were gliding by, the "historian" confesses his inability to close the immense lacunae between the Indo-Aryan supposed immigration en masse across the Hindoo Kush, and the reign of Asoka. Having ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... behold! it was discovered that there was no cellar door except one in the kitchen, which was truly a strait and narrow way, down a long pair of stairs. Hereupon, as saith John Bunyan, I fell into a muse,—how to get my cisterns into my cellar. In days of chivalry I might have got a knight to make me a breach through the foundation walls, but that was not to be thought of now, and my oil hogsheads standing disconsolately in the yard seemed to reflect no great credit ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... And yet, Saint-Amand cites her as the most beautiful of that group of martyrs who lost their lives in the first heat of the Revolution—as the genius among them by her force, purity, and grace—the brilliant and austere muse in all the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... last spring I ever knew, In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered The hills at Miller's Ford; Just to muse on the apple tree With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, Never to grow in fruit. And there was I with my spirit ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... write you a letter In verse, tho' in prose I could do it much better; The Muse, this cold weather, sleeps up at Parnassus, And leaves us poor poets as stupid as asses. She'll tarry still longer, if she has a warm chamber, A store of old massie, ambrosia, and amber. Dear mother, don't laugh, you may think she is tipsy And I, if ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... closed his adventurous and erratic career and became a domestic and useful member of that little commonwealth, under the watchful influence of the dark-eyed maid of the Loire or of the Seine. Infinite are the chords of the lyre which delights the romantic muse; and these incidents, small and humble as they are, appear to me to be imbued with an indescribable charm, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... O heavenly Muse, that not with fading bays Deckest thy brow by the Heliconian spring, But sittest crowned with stars' immortal rays In Heaven, where legions of bright angels sing; Inspire life in my wit, my thoughts upraise, My verse ennoble, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... his soul, And he ran forward and embraced his knees, And clasp'd his hand within his own, and said:— "Oh, by thy father's head! by thine own soul! Art thou not Rustum? speak! art thou not he?" But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling youth, And turn'd away, and spake to his own soul:— "Ah me, I muse what this young fox may mean! False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys. For if I now confess this thing he asks, And hide it not, but say: 'Rustum is here!' He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes, But he will find some pretext not to fight, And praise my fame, and proffer ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the words—remembers to have heard it sung by a Canadian boatman, and he then thought that he had never listened to vocal sounds more truly descriptive of melancholy and regret. Even the young in Canada invoked the Muse in expression of their sympathy, and the following lines were indited by Miss Ann Bruyeres, described as "an extraordinary child of thirteen years old," the daughter of the general's friend, Lieut.-Colonel. Bruyeres, of the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth, Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel's will! Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill: Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill; Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long-deserted shrine Where, save that feeble fountain, all ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... had yet taken form, one is startled to find how little the Japanese written language has changed in the course of so many centuries. Allowing for a few obsolete words, and sundry slight changes of pronunciation, the ordinary Japanese reader to-day can enjoy these early productions of his native muse with about as little difficulty as the English reader finds in studying the poets of the Elizabethan era. Moreover, the refinement and the simple charm of the Many[o]sh[u] compositions have never been surpassed, and seldom equaled, ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... thy voice belong; Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way, To nerve my country with the patriot lay, To teach all men where all their interest lies, How rulers may be just and nations wise: Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee, Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... two steps forward every quarter of an hour. His ear, soothed by the grave and cadenced numbers of the Latin Muse, was deaf to the women's scolding about the monstrous prices of bread and sugar and coffee, candles and soap. In this calm and unruffled mood he reached the threshold of the bakehouse. Behind him, Evariste Gamelin could see over his ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... indulged in one of those pleasantries which now and again we observe in his informal letters, though seldom, if ever, in his serious writings. In the margin, below the canceled passage, he wrote boldly: "Sacrificed to the Muse of ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... rambles Through the green lanes of the country, Where the tangled barberry-bushes Hang their tufts of crimson berries Over stone walls gray with mosses, Pause by some neglected graveyard, For a while to muse, and ponder On a half-effaced inscription, Written with little skill of song-craft, Homely phrases, but each letter Full of hope and yet of heart-break, Full of all the tender pathos Of the Here and the Hereafter; Stay and read ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... holding out her hand, which Mrs. Chumley took, and the other as well, drawing her close and kissing her on the cheek in the simple, natural manner of a mother. Then Mrs. Chumley held her at arms' length, surveying her, and began to muse aloud. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... agreement between the Queen of Hungary and the late Emperor, to decide their pretensions by a single combat; in which case he offered himself as the Bavarian champion; but in this endeavour he also proved unsuccessful. Then turning his attention to the delights of poetry, he became so enamoured of the muse, that he neglected every other consideration, and she as usual gradually conducted him to the author's never-failing goal—a place of rest appointed for all those sinners whom the profane love of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... to sit with Shirley in her panelled parlour, where others came and went, and where he could rarely find a quiet moment to show her the latest production of his fertile muse; he must have her out amongst the pleasant pastures, and lead her by the still waters. Tete-a-tete ramblings she shunned, so he made parties for her to his own grounds, his glorious forest; to remoter scenes—woods ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... MUSIC AND LYRIC POETRY.—It was not until the minds of the Greeks had been elevated by the productions of the epic muse, that the genius of original poets broke loose from the dominion of the epic style, and invented new forms for expressing the emotions of a mind profoundly agitated by passing events; with few innovations in the elegy, but with greater ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... crown the bowl— My pipe and I alone,— I sit and muse with idler views Perchance than I should own:— It might be worse to own the purse Whose glutted bowels gripe In little qualms of stinted alms; And ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Adrienne, gayly, "this affair will arrange itself quite easily. Henceforth, Mr. Poet, you shall draw your inspirations in the midst of good fortune instead of adversity. Sad muse! But first of all, bonds ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Beaumont, and thy muse, That unto me dost such religion use! How I do fear myself, that am not worth The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth! At once thou mak'st me happy, and unmak'st; And giving largely to me, more thou takest! What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves? What art is thine, that so thy ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... report of such an event. Here it is used in the sense of the different cantos or "fitts" of the poem, as in the "Gudrun" and other M.H.G. epics. Among the courtly poets it also frequently denotes the source, or is the personification of the muse of poetry. (3) "Kriemhild" is the Upper German form of the Frankish "Grimhild". In the MSS., the name generally appears with a further shifting as "Chriemhilt", as if the initial consonant were Germanic "k". On the various forms of the name, which have never ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... me is given Such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven That often meet me here. I muse on joy that will not cease, Pure spaces clothed in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odors haunt my dreams, And, stricken by an angel's hand, This mortal armor that I wear, This weight and size, this heart and eyes, Are touched, ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... that question! You cannot possibly sit with folded hands. Come, if you like, let us draw, before it has grown completely dark. Perhaps the other muse,—the muse of drawing ... what's her name? I've forgotten ... will be more gracious to me. Where is your album? Do you remember?—my ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... written; they seem not to come from myself, but are the signs of another language which thou hast taught my heart, and which my hand traces rapidly, as at thy dictation. Sometimes, while I write or muse, I could fancy that I heard light wings hovering around me, and saw dim shapes of beauty floating round, and vanishing as they smiled upon me. No unquiet and fearful dream ever comes to me now in sleep, yet sleep and waking are ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Full oft I muse, and hes in thocht How this fals Warld is ay on flocht, Quhair no thing ferme is nor degest; {91a} {91d} And when I haif my mynd all socht, For to be ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... my Muse, what manner times these were, And in those times how stood the state of things, What power this monarch had, what arms they bear, What nations subject, and what friends he brings; From all lands the southern ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... and stonier faces— Some from library windows wan Forth on her gardens, her green spaces, Peer and turn to their books anon. Hence, my Muse, from the green oases Gather ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... passed as a poet by Professor Longfellow; but in Longfellow, with all his scholarly grace and tender feeling, the defect is more apparent than it was in Bryant. Mr. Lowell can overflow with American humor when politics inspire his muse; but in the realm of pure poetry he is no more American than a Newdigate prize-man. Joaquin Miller's verse has fluency and movement and harmony, but as for the thought, his songs of the sierras might as well have been ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... when the scirocco blows, you will feel as if convalescent from some debilitating fever; in winter, however, this gentle-breathing south-east wind will act more mildly; it will woo you to the country, induce you to sit down in a shady place, smoke, and 'muse.' That incarnate essence of enterprise, business, industry, economy, sharpness, shrewdness, and keenness—that Prometheus whose liver was torn by the vulture of cent per cent—eternally tossing, restless DOOLITTLE, was one day seen ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... generation—there are hundreds of Davids equally ready to take the field against Goliath. And shall I not rejoice, shall I not exult even unto tears?' Her eyes glowed, and the musician was kindled to equal fire. It seemed to him less a girl who was speaking than Truth and Purity and some dead muse of his own. 'The Pale that I left,' she went on, 'was truly a prison. But now—now it will be the forging-place of a regenerated people! Oh, I am counting the days ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... in Mrs. Crabtree with her tawse!" said Rosamond. "But is it right by Raymond to let his wife bring this Yankee muse to talk her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the mood of which I spoke at first—the mood in which one desires to build up and renew—one must not yield oneself to luxurious and pathetic reveries, or allow oneself to muse and wonder in the half-lit region in which one may beat one's wings in vain—the region, I mean, of sad stupefaction as to why the world is so full of broken dreams, shattered hopes, and unfulfilled possibilities. One must rather look round for some little definite failure ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and warned them, 'We shall come now to the wandering blue rocks; my mother warned me of them, Calliope, the immortal muse.' ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... the Governor. "Then the Muse has done well to take herself off, and will do even better not to return. Bishops must have no flirtations with Muses, heavenly or earthly—not that I am now altogether certain that thou wilt ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... neither,' said Bella. 'Not that my life has been lonely, for I could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going on like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners, and Lavvy being spiteful—though of course I am very fond of them both. I wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have no more of what they call character, my dear, than a canary-bird, but I know ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the Lady Mary visited that old hall, to walk in the moonlight, or muse in her favorite window-seat, it was observed that she ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... his early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... had prepared Lord Garrow's tea and cut the leaves of the Revue des Deux Mondes, which he invariably read until he dressed for dinner, she stole away to the further room, where she could play the piano, write letters, muse over novels, or indulge in reverie without fear of interruption. But as she entered it that afternoon its air of peace seemed the bleakness of desolation. A terrible and afflicting grief swept, like an icy breeze, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... happiness more deserved. Even at that early age, I often could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient to make ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... durst aspire To sound a verse, or touch the tuneful lyre. 'Till Bristol's charms dissolv'd the native cold; Bad me survey her eyes, and thence be bold. Thee, lovely Bristol! thee! with pride I chuse, The first, and only subject of my muse; That durst transport me like the bird of Jove, To face th' immortal source of light above! Such are thy kindred beams— So blessings, with a bounteous hand they give, So they ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... and preferred to take his science on faith. In the curious lines called "L'Envoy de Chaucer a Scogan," the poet, while blaming his friend for his want of perseverance in a love-suit, classes himself among "them that be hoar and round of shape," and speaks of himself and his Muse as out of date and rusty. But there seems no sufficient reason for removing the date of the composition of these lines to an earlier year than 1393; and poets as well as other men since Chaucer have spoken of themselves as old and obsolete at ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... and manuscript. This was the skeleton in his closet, his secret sin. It was the scaffolding of his book, which he had been compiling for at least ten years, and to which he had tentatively assigned such different titles as "Notes on Literature," "The Muse on Crutches," "Books and I," and "What a Young Bookseller Ought to Know." It had begun long ago, in the days of his odyssey as a rural book huckster, under the title of "Literature Among the Farmers," but it had branched ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... after making the customary signal for the train to approach, threw his vast frame upon the earth, and seemed to muse on the deep responsibility of his present situation. His sons were not long in arriving; for the cattle no sooner scented the food and water than they quickened their pace, and then succeeded the usual bustle ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... imperturbability of his kindness. His biographers agree as to his never-failing good nature. He was without any of those fits of unrest and temperamental eccentricities which are supposed to be the "sign manual" of the child of the poetic muse. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... vivacity of his dialogue—Addison, whose fame as a poet greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems to have been mere misanthropy; he was a cynic rather than a poet, and his natural dryness and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and Rabelais—Prior, lively, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... his parts as nurse and warder with grave attention. He sat perspiring in his shirt sleeves, writing at the table whenever for a moment or two he had a spell of rest; and his screed grew rapidly. He was making verse, and it was under the stress of severe circumstances like these that his Muse served ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... inequalities, which she sensibly and very justly denounces. All men of true honour must accept and endorse her verdict. Hood treats the same theme with all the tenderness of his fine sensitive nature, and with all that exquisite harmony which his refined muse had at ready command. HOME LYRICS is a charming little volume of poems, full of ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... fair-tressed lotus of Chaeremon mixed with the gilliflower of Phaedimus, and the round ox-eye of Antagoras, and the wine-loving fresh-blown wild thyme of Theodorides, and the bean-blossoms of Phanias, and many newly- scriptured shoots of others; and with them also even from his own Muse some early white violets. But to my friends I give thanks; and the sweet-languaged garland of the Muses is ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... acting in private theatricals with Highnesses and Excellencies. On the whole it seems to have been a peaceful, idle, rather trivial time of sojourn among congenial people. He danced, he strolled, he wrote verses to little Miss Emily; in short, he enjoyed himself as a youngish man may, whether the muse is waiting for him, or some less high-flown customer. "I wish I could give you a good account of my literary labors," he wrote his sister after several months in Dresden, "but I have nothing to report. I am merely seeing, and hearing, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... lookst Into the source and limit of all good, There, where thou markest that which thou dost speak, Thence priz'd of me the more. Glad thou hast made me. Now make intelligent, clearing the doubt Thy speech hath raised in me; for much I muse, How bitter can spring ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... sense, as much as the celebrated lines in Homer about the rolling up and falling down of the stone: Tramp, tramp! splash, splash! is to me perfectly new; and much of the imagery is nature. I should consider this muse of yours (if you carry the intrigue far) more likely to steal your heart from the law than even a wife. I am, Dear Sir, your most obedient, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... for King George the Third. Wasn't it? Well, George is the only king I play. Let it go at that. This circle was the stage, I guess. The kings an' the nobility sat in Flora's Temple. I forget who sculped these statues at the door. They're the Comic and Tragic Muse. But it's a sightly view, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... it under his; and together they went down the veranda steps. Ruth's arm trembled and her step faltered, but he was too far away in thought to be observant. He saw rifts in clouds—sunshine. The future was not so black. All the money he earned—serving McClintock and the muse—could be laid away. Then, in a few years, he and Ruth might fare forth in comfort and security. After five or six years it would not be difficult to hide in Italy or in France. No; the future was not so dark; there was a bit of dawn visible. If this ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... perhaps, too late to await the advent of a Queen of Song from the warm South. The South has had its turn; it has fulfilled its mission; the other end of the balance now comes up. The Northern Muse must sing her lesson to the world. Her fresher, chaster, more intellectual, and (as they only SEEM to some) her colder strains come in due season to recover our souls from the delicious languor of a Music which has been so wholly of the Feelings, that, for the want of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... farm-buildings, which is said to be the veritable Fountain of Egeria. The temple of the Muses, who were Egeria's counsellors, was close by; and the name of the gate of the city, Porta Capena, was in all likelihood a corruption of Camena, the Latin name for Muse, and was not derived, as some suppose, from the city of Capua. The spot outside the present walls, formerly visited as the haunt of the fabled nymph, before the discovery of the site of the Capena gate fixed its true position—beautiful and romantic as ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... during which the parent seemed to muse on the past, while the child rejoiced in the suspension of questions which harrowed his soul, since those of whom the other spoke had long been the victims of family misfortune. The old man, for the prisoner was aged as well as feeble, turned his look ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... more than parody—is, indeed, doing little more than simply follow the traditions of Romance—Amiles and Jourdains, Guy and Rembrun, and many others. But some of us regard plot as at best a full-dress garment, at the absence of which the good-natured God or Muse of fiction is quite willing to wink. Character, if seldom elaborately presented, except in the case of Panurge, is showered, in scraps and sketches, all over the book, and description ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... pet was Sir Alexander Ball. Concerning Bowyer, Coleridge did not talk much, but chiefly wrote; concerning Bell, he did not write much, but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball, however, he both wrote and talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball blackballed, or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man, who had fallen into one pit called Bell; secondly, falling into another pit called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and intrusion, With some outlandish institution, With Ursine's catechism to muse on, With system's method for confusion, With grounds strong laid of mere illusion: See a new ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... coming of age of one of the late Lords Holland; on a pedestal ornamented by a vase, are inscribed some verses by General Fitzpatrick; another placed by Mrs. Fox to mark a favorite spot where Mr. Fox loved to muse, is enriched by a quotation from the "Flower and the Leaf," concluded ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... even to those who are acquainted, though superficially, with Hibernian composition. The rhymes are, it must be granted, in the generality of such productions, very latitudinarian indeed, and as a veteran votary of the muse once assured me, depend wholly upon the wowls (vowels), as may be seen in the following stanza of the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... guest with food and wine, declaring that ambrosia and nectar were better fitted for her; he toasted her; he praised her; he exhausted his knowledge of mythology in her honour, calling her Melpomene, the tragic Muse, for had she not made men weep with her song that very night? Song, did he say? nay, hymn it was! She was Polyhymnia, singer of sublimity. He named her Philomele, and desired the lute of Orpheus that he might play an accompaniment to her wondrous singing. He asked her in which enchanted ocean ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... degree his work should be regarded as one of poetical conception and design. To this it was not possible to do justice, and in the attempt I have doubtless very often need of the reader's indulgent consideration. My natural respect for the old gentleman's vagaries, with a muse of equivocal character, must be my only excuse whenever the language, without luxuriating into verse, borrows flowers scarcely natural to prose. Truth compels me also to confess, that, with all my pains, I am by no means sure ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... (as to that, who is aware of his own nature?) their companions only understanding that they are different from the rest, more silent, "something odd about them," and apt to go off and meditate and muse in solitude. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... prolific in the birth of great men, producing Holmes, Poe, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Darwin. Holmes was descended from Anne Bradstreet, New England's "Tenth Muse" (p. 39) His father was a Congregational clergyman, preaching at Cambridge when Oliver was born. The family was in comfortable circumstances, and the boy was reared in a cultured atmosphere. In middle age Holmes wrote, "I like books,—I ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... contented with himself, haughtily called to poor Roque—the faithful valet was in a moment ready to lead the way. His master then very composedly returned to his apartments to muse over the adventures of the evening, and form plans for the successful accomplishment of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... ruddy blaze We muse or talk of mighty things, In clarion tone one little phrase Still through the heart's deep echoes rings: 'Our Hearths—our Homes—beyond compare!' Those charmed circles whence there rise The steadfast souls that do and dare, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... at foreign shrines nor strange altars, but ever unwaveringly at the feet of my divine countrywomen. Is it needful that I recross the ocean to bow before the reigning muse? Is it not conceded that the brightest, loveliest planet in Parisian skies, brought all her splendour ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... felt far more sorrow than satisfaction. I wished he had spent his gold on himself and left me poor, for it seemed to me I had need of nothing save the little I earned by my pen—I was content to live an anchorite and dine off a crust for the sake of the divine Muse I worshipped. Fate, however, willed it otherwise,—and though I scarcely cared for the wealth I inherited, it gave me at least one blessing—that of perfect independence. I was free to follow my own chosen vocation, and for a brief wondering while I deemed myself happy, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... hand and wrote in his stead." These poems are all short, and their titles (such as "What Shall It Profit?" "The Sphinx," "If," "To-morrow," "Good Society," "Equality," "Heredity," and so forth) sufficiently indicate that they do not rank among the lighter triflings with the muse. Their abiding sense of an awful and inevitable fate, their keen realisation of the startling contrasts between wealth and poverty, their symbolical grasp on the great realities of life and death, and the consummate skill of the artistic setting are all ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of the most moderate of the conquerors; and uniformly asserted his freedom and dignity in the court of Augustus. The triumph of Messalla was justified by the conquest of Aquitain. As an orator, he disputed the palm of eloquence with Cicero himself. Messalla cultivated every muse, and was the patron of every man of genius. He spent his evenings in philosophic conversation with Horace; assumed his place at table between Delia and Tibullus; and amused his leisure by encouraging the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... ALAR. 'Tis passion makes me grave. I muse upon thy beauty. Thus I'd read My oppressed spirit, for in truth these sounds Jar ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... how will ye dare to slight "The Muse, to whom Pierian streams belong? "Will ye not smile on poets, and delight, "More than all golden gifts, in gift of song? "Did not some song empurple Nisus' hair, "And bid young Pelops' ivory shoulder glow? "That youth ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... the village place in the dusk, thinking of this deplorable weakness in men that the Faith is too great for them, and accepting it as an inevitable burden. I continued to muse with my ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger." When Margaret Greylston came across that verse, she closed her Bible, and sat down beside the window to muse. "Ah," she thought, "how true is that saying of the wise man! If I had only from the first given John soft answers, instead of grievous words, we might now have been at peace. I knew his quick temper so well; I should have been more gentle with him." Then she recalled all John's ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... with childlike, all-believing, Homeric eyes. That creative vision which of old peopled Olympus still peoples the world for her, beholding gods where the skeptic, critical eye sees only a medical doctor and a sick woman. So is she stamped a true child of the Muse, descended on the one side from Memory, or superficial fact, but on the other from Zeus, the soul of fact; and being gifted to discern the divine halo on the brows of humanity, she rightly obtains the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... sire; your majesty has graciously permitted me to enter the lists as knight and champion of German literature, and sometimes to defend the German Muse, who stands unnoticed and unknown under the shadow of your throne; while the French lady, with her brilliant attire and painted cheeks, is always welcomed. I beg your majesty to believe that, although this romance may have done some harm, it ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... written in a different vein. It is characterized by graceful playfulness of manner and sentiment, which shows how heartily the amiable authoress can enter into the sympathies and enjoyments of child, and how much she is at home when she engages in lighter dalliance with the muse. We have taken the liberty to print in italics two or three Barrettisms, which however, we believe, are not very reprehensible. On the whole, it is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... you like to change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... be cities who refuse To their own child the honours due, And look ungently on the Muse; But ever shall those cities rue The dry, unyielding, niggard breast, Offering no nourishment, no rest, To that young head which soon shall rise Disdainfully, in might ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... people often muse upon that month Which brought your majesty so near the grave, From that time, thirty weeks had scarce elapsed, Before ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... strenuous time's pedestrian muse Shouts paeans to the earth-born giant, Whose brows Apollo's wreath refuse, Whose strength to Charis is unpliant. Demos distrusts the debonair, Yet Demos found himself disarming To gracious GRANVILLE; unaware Won by the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... that the breach is stormed or the bold word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting an ugly weir in a canoe has exactly as much thought about fame as most commanders going into battle; and yet the action, fall out how it will, is not one of those the muse delights to celebrate. Indeed it is difficult to see why the fellow does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at, unless on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that is why; and I suspect ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poet, GIOVANNI BERCHET, died near the first of January. Born, says the Athenaeum, at Milan, in 1788, he imbibed at an early age that hatred of the rule of Austria which a few years afterwards inspired his muse. It was when the well-known political events of 1821 forced him to leave his country, that his active mind, fervently devoted to the principles of rational liberty, burst forth in those powerful and touching strains which are to this day deeply graven on the heart of every Italian ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... threshold. The sun, already far gone in the west, cast on the white wall a shadow whose sight set his head spinning. He turned hastily round. There at the door stood Selvaggia in a crimson cloak; for the rest, a picture of the Tragic Muse, so woebegone, so white, so ringed ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... never spake again. Fain Aphrodite would have raised his head; But all his thread was spun. So down the stream Went Daphnis: closed the waters o'er a head Dear to the Nine, of nymphs not unbeloved. Now give me goat and cup; that I may milk The one, and pour the other to the Muse. Fare ye well, Muses, o'er and o'er farewell! I'll sing strains lovelier ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... observes, and intensely. He does not analyse, he does not amass his facts; he concentrates. He wrings out quintessences; and when he has distilled his drops of pure spirit he brews his potion. Something of the kind happens to me now, whether verse or prose be the Muse of my devotion. A stray thought, a chance vision, moves me; presently the flame is hissing hot. Everything then at any time observed and stored in the memory which has relation to the fact is fused and in a swimming flux. Anon, as the Children of Israel said to Moses, "There came forth ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... scirocco blows, you will feel as if convalescent from some debilitating fever; in winter, however, this gentle-breathing south-east wind will act more mildly; it will woo you to the country, induce you to sit down in a shady place, smoke, and 'muse.' That incarnate essence of enterprise, business, industry, economy, sharpness, shrewdness, and keenness—that Prometheus whose liver was torn by the vulture of cent per cent—eternally tossing, restless DOOLITTLE, was one day seen asleep, during bank hours, on a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... would be intolerable in prose is tolerable in the introduction to a poem. See the long interval at the beginning of Paradise Lost between "Of man's first disobedience" and "Sing, heavenly Muse." Compare also the beginning ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... find that thar is ther simplest way o' doin' business. Ef we makes a mistake, an' gits ther wrong galoot, nobody ever kicks up much o' a row over it, fer we're naterally lively over thar, an' we must hev somethin' ter 'muse us ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... over the royal family was boundless; his power was absolute: the treasures, of America were at his command, and he made the most infamous use of them. In short, he had made the Court of Madrid one of those places to which the indignant muse of Juvenal conducts the mother of Britanicus. There is no doubt that Godoy was one of the principal causes of all the misfortunes which have overwhelmed Spain under ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... like to be a tenth Muse, then, Maggie?" said Philip looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the clouds that promises us a bright heaven ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... eyes, and stern, gloomy gaze, was an entirely different person from the gay enthusiastic follower of art, for whom her awakening heart had first throbbed more quickly; this was not the future master, who stood before her mind as a glorious favorite of fortune and the muse, transfigured by joyous creation and lofty success—this defiant giant did not look like an artist. No, no; yonder man no longer resembled the Ulrich, to whom, in the happiest hour of her life, she had so willingly, almost too willingly, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and lustrous of the planets, upon which men have gazed with longing admiration, and designated the emblem of 'all beauty and all love,' should have impressed Milton's poetical imagination with its charming appearance, and stimulated the flow of his captivating muse. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... to write you a letter In verse, tho' in prose I could do it much better; The Muse, this cold weather, sleeps up at Parnassus, And leaves us poor poets as stupid as asses. She'll tarry still longer, if she has a warm chamber, A store of old massie, ambrosia, and amber. Dear mother, don't laugh, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... what, we have no doubt, were pleasant paths of classical literature. How inexhaustible are those old wells of Greek and Roman Letters! The world cannot afford to spare them long. They may be less in fashion at one time than another, but their beauty and life-giving powers are perennial. The Muse of English poesy has always been baptized in ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... "July 17th, 1744," the Marriage itself: all done, this last act, and the foregoing ones and the following, with a grandeur and a splendor—unspeakable, we may say, in short. [Helden-Geschichte, ii. 1045-1051.] Fantastic Bielfeld taxes his poor rouged Muse to the utmost, on this occasion; and becomes positively wearisome, chanting the upholsteries of life;—foolish fellow, spoiling his bits of facts withal, by misrecollections, and even by express fictions thrown in as garnish. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... too long, the drooping Muse hath stray'd, And left her debt to Addison unpaid, Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan, And judge, O judge, my bosom by your own. What mourner ever felt poetic fires! Slow comes the verse, that real woe inspires: Grief unaffected suits but ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... II., with a proper discourse of his own. Halley also wrote a set of Latin hexameters in praise of Newton's genius, which he printed at the beginning of the work. The last line of this specimen of Halley's poetic muse may be thus rendered: "Nor mortals nearer ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the sea, wears upon its luminous walls small trace of its long history of blood. As we contemplate its mosques and houses flashing their white profiles into the sky, it is impossible not to muse upon the contrast between its radiant and picturesque aspect and its veritable character as the accomplice of every crime and every baseness known to the Oriental mind. To see that sunny city basking between its green hills, you would hardly think of it as the abode of bandits; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... bear her hath begotten, I think, a child of the spirit that hath never known a mortal birth; and the twain wait for me." And Margaret, knowing not what to say, but feeling that he had seen somewhat high and heavenly, sate in silence; and presently Paul, breaking out of a muse, began to talk of the sweet days of their youth, and of the tender mercies of God. But while he spoke, he suddenly broke off, and held up his hand; and there came a waft of music upon the air. And Paul smiled like a tired child, and lay back in his chair; and as he did so a string ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Beauty, I——" The muse dictated nothing more. He was not in the mood for writing. He felt rather more in the mood for supper. His scruples scattered like clouds driven before a brisk North East wind; he put on the frogged surtout, and carried his reply himself. It was the first time that he had been ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... "Sweet Muse, while thus through heaven's too distant vault, Thy great mind roves—how shall we earn our salt? Though art is not encouraged as of old, She is worth a score of nature; I design To manufacture, from these flowers of thine, A silver ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... in swift Pindaric strains, Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, And drives a jaded Muse, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Nekrassov? Yet Saltykov is the greatest of Russian satirists; Uspensky the greatest story-writer of the lives of the Russian toiling masses; while Nekrassov, "the poet of the people's sorrow," whose muse "of grief and vengeance" has supremely dominated the minds of the Russian educated classes for the last half century, is the sole and rightful heir of his two great predecessors, Pushkin ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit and muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys—a kind of horse—and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged laddies dream, as well as boys in socks. The Standing Stone is in the dyke that separates the hill from a ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... pieces, or trodden down like mire in the streets. This frightful sight was seen, and these dreadful noises were heard by him for several miles together; and, coming to a place where he thought he heard a company of fiends coming forward to meet him, he stopped, and began to muse what he had best to do. Sometimes he had half a thought to go back; then again he thought he might be half way through the valley; he remembered also how he had already vanquished many a danger, and that the danger of going back might be much more than for ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... thoughts of this aged man, mine adversary, for it would seem unto me that his stature is like unto mine, and that I behold about him the tokens that my mother recounted unto me. And my heart goeth out toward him, and I muse if it be Rustem, my father. For it behoveth me not to combat him. Wherefore, I beseech thee, tell unto ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... that sacred island dwelt A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt; At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored. Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont, And in those meads where sometime she might haunt, Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse, Though Fancy's casket were unlock'd to choose. 20 Ah, what a world of love was at her feet! So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat Burnt from his winged heels to either ear, That from a whiteness, as the lily clear, Blush'd into roses 'mid his golden hair, Fallen in jealous ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... stand at the rail, after the first days of seasickness were over, gazing out across the waves, and trying to descry something that looked like land, or a tree, or anything that seemed familiar and like home. Then they would shake their heads disconsolately and go below, to brood and muse and be an extremely unhappy and forlorn lot of savages. The joy that seized them when at last they came in sight of land, and were assured that we did not intend to keep on sailing till we fell over the edge of the earth, ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... ravines, which changed hourly in color, from the opalescent tints of the dawn, through the garish spectrum of daylight to the deep purple shadows of the sunset, to the crepuscular opalescence again. Under any other conditions, she would have been content to sit and muse alone with her grief—and Hugh. He was constantly present in her thoughts. It was as though his spirit hovered near. She seemed to hear him speak, to feel the touch of his hand upon her brow, soothing ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... woman," he thought, as he walked toward the Bayswater Road, looking for a hansom. "Just the sort to save a man trouble, and get full value out of a sovereign." He continued to muse on the wonderful discovery he had made of a woman perfectly planned, according to man's ideal—sweet, yielding, tenderly sympathetic, willing and capable to ward off all annoyances from her master, full of feeling for his troubles, and not to be moved by her own to sad looks, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... imperturbably, patting him kindly on the shoulder. "My dear fellow, passion burns out, inspiration runs to seed. Some fine day every artist finds himself sitting face to face with his lump of clay, with his empty canvas, with his sheet of blank paper, waiting in vain for the revelation to be made, for the Muse to descend. He must learn to do without the Muse! When the fickle jade forgets the way to your studio, don't waste any time in tearing your hair and meditating on suicide. Come round and see me, and I will show you how ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... said Adrienne, gayly, "this affair will arrange itself quite easily. Henceforth, Mr. Poet, you shall draw your inspirations in the midst of good fortune instead of adversity. Sad muse! But first of all, bonds shall be given ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... taste of the poet, The Miller's Daughter was greatly altered before 1842. It is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of Tennyson's domestic English idylls, poems with conspicuous beauties, but not without sacrifices to that Muse of the home affections on whom Sir Barnes Newcome delivered his famous lecture. The seventh stanza perhaps hardly deserved to be altered, as it is, so as to bring in "minnows" where "fish" had been the reading, and where "trout" would best recall an English chalk stream. To the angler ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... hiding the small ear. The graceful cloak, with its touches of sable on a main fabric of soft white, hid the ugly dress; its ample folds heightened the natural dignity of the young form and long limbs, lent them a stately and muse-like charm. Mrs. Burgoyne and Miss Manisty looked at each other, then at Miss Foster. Both of them had the same curious feeling, as though a veil were being drawn away from something they were just ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whom my Muse these notes intendeth; Which now my breast o'ercharged to music lendeth? To you! to you! all song of praise is due: Only in you my song begins ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... bathing-dress and standing naked to the sea. Captain Vyell was towelled under the eyes of Port Nassau, and flesh-brushed until he glowed (it may be) as healthily as did the cheeks of those who spied on him. On this question the Muse declines to take sides. For certain his naked body, after these ministrations, glowed delicious within the bath-gown as he mounted again to his Olympian chamber. There he allowed Manasseh to wash out his ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... by side, the jockey and Sir John Discuss the important point of six to one; For, O my Muse! the deep-felt bliss how dear—How great the pride to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... wyne 'til night! On the mountaine satte Apollo, and at his feete satte Calliope, and on every side of the mountaine satte iiii Muses playing on several swete instrumentes, and at their feete Epigrammes and Poyses were written in golden letters, with the which every Muse, accordyng to her propertie, praised the Quene.—"At the conduite in Cornhill there were thre graces set in a throne; afore whom was the spryng of grace continually ronnyng—wine!" At the cross in Chepe, "Master Baker, the ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption—no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sails, and if I were not relating actual occurrences I should certainly be run ashore. As it is, sleep may invigorate and bring back my memory. When relating facts it is not necessary to call on any muse, or fast, or roam into a shady bower, where so many have found their thoughts. When relating facts, fancy is hot required to soar untrodden heights where thought has seldom reached; but too freely come back all the weary days, the toils, fears and vexations of my early life in Michigan, ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... Lincoln," and McKenzie's "The Young Franklin," noting how the dignity, sureness of touch, and sound purpose of these make them more appealing with longer acquaintance. On another day take the intermediate group, that is dignified but less austere in theme-such works as Sherry Fry's "Peace," and Berge's "Muse Finding the Head of Orpheus." Studied systematically, there is in this series of statues a broad education ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... has put forth some fine conceptions, and composed one admirable tragedy; Sheridan sketched some brilliant satires; Miss Baillie delineated the passions with epic power; and genius of the highest order in our times, that of Byron and Bulwer, has endeavoured to revive the tragic muse in these islands. But the first declared that he wrote his dramatic pieces with no design whatever to their representation, but merely as a vehicle of noble sentiments in dialogue of verse; and the second is too successful as a novelist to put forth his strength in dramatic poetry, or train ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Angouleme, Duchesse d'Alencon through her first marriage, and Queen of Navarre through her second, she was called Marguerite d'Angouleme, Marguerite of Navarre, of Valois, Marguerite de France, Marguerite des Princesses, the Fourth Grace, and the Tenth Muse. A most appreciative and just account of her life is given by M. Saint-Amand, which will be followed in the main outline ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... most of his life; and was lately head-clerk of the wealthy merchant, John Jacob Astor, who left him a handsome annuity. This was increased by Mr. Astor's son and heir, a man of well-known liberality; so that between the two there is a chance of the poet's being enabled to 'meditate the tuneful Muse' for the remainder of his days free from all ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... terrace of her father's palace She may stroll and muse alone, may smile or sigh alone, Letting thoughts and eyes go wandering over hills and valleys To-day her father's, and one day ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... affords new proof of the unimportance of your subject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. In general, what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to grandees? Yet in the "Divan" you would not skip them, since his muse seldom supports ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Baroni family cared was the foreign manager, young, generous, and speculative, whom they had evidently without intention already pleased, and whose good opinion they resolved to-night entirely to secure. And in this they perfectly succeeded. Josephine was a tragic muse; all of them, even to little Carlotta, performed as if their destiny depended on the die. Baroni would not permit the children's box to be carried round to-night, as he thought it an unfair tax on the generous stranger, whom he did not the less please by this well-bred ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... marvel that a gentleman, and a gallant officer, can find no other subject for his muse, in these times of trial, than in such beastly invocations to that notorious follower of the camp, the filthy Elizabeth Flanagan. Methinks the goddess of Liberty could furnish a more noble inspiration, and the sufferings of your ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... which Carlo filled out with his harp, she again put her hand into the urn and drew out a new theme; again the inspiration seemed to pass over her, and the holy Whitsuntide of her muse to be renewed. Constantly more and more stormily resounded the plaudits of her hearers; it was like a continued thunder of enthusiasm, a real salvo of joy. It animated Corilla to new improvisations; she again and again recurred to the urn, drawing forth new themes, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... "Sing, Muse, of the man of much wandering who travelled right far after sacking sacred Troy, and saw the cities of many men and knew their ways. Many a sorrow he suffered on the sea, trying to win a return home for himself and his comrades; yet he could not for all his longing, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... but came only in the afternoon to Leipsic, where he remained scarcely an hour. He then returned to Rotha.—Beitzke, vol. ii.] The emperor took that presented to him, and pressed it with a quick and graceful movement on Blucher's head. "I represent the Muse of History," he said, "and crown 'Marshal Forward' ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... to the skeleton. They separated unwillingly, each thinking only of the other's safety and comfort. The girl knew she was not wanted because the man wished to spare her some unpleasant experience. She obeyed him with a sigh, and sat down, not to sleep, but to muse, as girls will, round-eyed, wistful, with the angelic fantasy ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... the Tragic Muse. Painted in 1783 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1784. The original work was bought by M. de Calonne for 800 guineas, and finally came into the possession of the Marquis of Westminster, in whose family it has since remained. It is in the ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Terpsichore, is dance and song. Now comes Apollo with his quiver full of arrows. He is the god of the hunt and twin brother to Diana, the goddess of hunt; also he is god of music and poetry. No. 6 is Polyhymnia, muse of hymn-music; No. 7, Euterpe, is song poetry; No. 8, Thalia, is comedy, and No. 9, Urania, ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... way that I may live—to take every impulse that comes—to be watching, watching—to dare always and instantly, to hesitate, to put off never, to seize the skirt of my muse whenever it shimmers before me. So I make myself a habit, a routine, a discipline; and so each day I have new power. So each day I feel myself, I bare my arms, I walk erect, exulting—I ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... Diodati—and I muse to tell the tale— This stubborn I, that Love was wont despise And make a laughter of his snares, unwise, Am fallen—where honest feet will sometimes fail. Not golden tresses, not a cheek vermeil, Dazzle me thus; but, in a new-world guise, A foreign ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... tinsel phrase, And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays; Then with mosaick art the piece combine, And boast the glitter of each dulcet line: Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse His vigorous sense into the Latian muse; Aspir'd to shine by unreflected light, And with a Roman's ardour think and write. He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire, And, like a master, wak'd the[59] soothing lyre: Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim, While ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... I muse and listen all alone, When stormy winds are high, And think I hear his tender tone, And call, but no reply; And so I've done these four long years, Without a friend or home, Yet every dream of hope is vain,— ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... speaking, of three divisions—the landing at Carthage, the Sicilian visit to Acestes, and the final campaign of Italy—and the two first of these have no bearing at all upon the third, and even that third is incomplete. Whatever homage we may be compelled to pay to the sweetness of Virgil's muse, and his marvellous power of melody, this at least is undeniable, that in inventive genius he falls immeasurably short of the Greek, and that his scenes of action are at once both tinselled and tame. One magnificent exception, it is true, we are bound to make from such a censure. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... gift, the natural incommunicable power, without the ambition, others have the ambition but no other gift from any Muse. This class is the more numerous, but the smallest class of all has both the power and the will to excel in letters. The desire to write, the love of letters may shew itself in childhood, in boyhood, or youth, and mean nothing at all, a mere harvest of barren blossom without fragrance or fruit. Or, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... grateful thanks. His kindness shall be remembered by me while memory holds her seat. Let the throng of uninvited fools who swarmed about us, accept the following sally of the house of correction muse, from the pen, or rather the fork, of a fellow convict. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... clergyman's "Broom Merchant," can be worthily placed by its side. But this nobility is of the lowly, humble kind, to be indeed thankful for as all nobility must be, whether it be that of the honest farmer who tills the soil in silence, or that of the gentle Longfellow who cultivates his modest muse in equal quietness. But there is the nobility of the nightingale and the nobility of the eagle; there is the nobility of the lamb and the nobility of the lion; and beside the titanesqueness of Gogol, and Turgenef, and Tolstoy, the nobility of Pushkin, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... lines be any length they wanted to be, to fit the sense or the length of what he had to say. He once said to me that if anything of his was remembered he thought it would be his poem,Lo, the Summer Girl. His muse often took the direction of satire, but it was always good-natured even when it hit the hardest. He had in his makeup much of the detached philosopher, like Cervantes ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... I love to muse there till it kind o' seems Ez ef the world went eddyin' off in dreams. The Northwest wind thet twitches at my baird Blows out o' sturdier days not easy scared, An' the same moon thet this December shines Starts out the tents an' booths o' Putnam's lines; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... multitudes of young and old, For whose regale the mighty monarch slew Two beeves, twelve sheep, and twice four fatted brawns. They slay'd them first, then busily their task 70 Administ'ring, prepared the joyous feast. And now the herald came, leading with care The tuneful bard; dear to the muse was he, Who yet appointed him both good and ill; Took from him sight, but gave him strains divine. For him, Pontonoues in the midst disposed An argent-studded throne, thrusting it close To a tall column, where he hung his lyre Above his head, and taught ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... face, which was but of a little model, and yet proportionable to her body; her eyes black and full of loveliness and sweetness, her eyebrows small and even, as if drawn with a pencil, a very little, pretty, well-shaped mouth, which sometimes (especially when in a muse or study) she would draw up into an incredible little compass; her hair a sad chestnut; her complexion brown, but clear, with a fresh colour in her cheeks, a loveliness in her looks inexpressible; and by her whole composure was so beautiful ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... downcast soul! Muse, and take better heart; Back with thine angel to the field, Good luck ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... was a social revelation to him, and the sunny afternoon was not altogether thrown away, for they carelessly rambled over the proud old town together, doing all the sights. They visited the stately National Monument, the Jardin Anglais, the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, the Muse'e Foy, the Botanic Gardens, and the Athende. He gazed upon the fresh face of the rebellious young American social mutineer with an increasing wonder as they wandered alone on the Promenade des Bastions, and was simply astounded when he vainly ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... with a little wit, Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ: Because the Muse has peopled Caledon With Panthers, Bears, and Wolves, and beasts unknown, As if we were not stock'd with monsters of our own. Let AEsop answer, who has set to view Such kinds as Greece and Phrygia never knew; And mother Hubbard,[118] in her homely dress, Has sharply blamed a British ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... French side now, but across the Spluegen, through Switzerland, his genius touched him again, as had happened in those high regions three years before on the road to Italy. But this time it was not in the guise of the Latin Muse, who then drew from him such artful and pathetic poetical meditations about his past life and pious vows for the future;—it was something much more subtle and ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... universal neglect. The poetry that ordinarily circulates among a people is poetry of a secondary and conventional sort that propagates established ideas in trite metaphors. Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public. Plato's quarrel was not so much with poetic art as with ancient myth and emotional laxity: he was preaching a crusade against the established church. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... effect which his public performance on the pianoforte had created at Vienna, Mozart forgot all the fears he had expressed previously to his journey to Paris; thought no more that teaching would interfere with the higher vocation of his muse; and was content to become the fashionable performer, teacher, and pianoforte composer of the day. This mode of life for a time had its temptations and its success; and he hoped that he might still better assist his father at Vienna than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the Gerusalemme Liberata, the masterpiece of the immortal Torquato Tasso! But the brutal-minded booksellers scorn the fruit of my vigils, and in the empyrean the Muse veils her face so as not to witness the ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... this resolution which shut the flying scenery from his gaze, which drew fine lines about the corners of his firm lips, and set his face to such a look of dominant strength as made the high spirited American girl muse thoughtfully and brought a touch of colour to the face of the pseudo Countess which was not due to ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Strain of those Times, composed a whole Volume of Poems in Praise of his Mistress, whom he calls Rosalinde. I never yet could meet with this Collection; but whenever I do, I am persuaded, I shall find many of our Author's Canzonets on this Subject to be Scraps of the Doctor's amorous Muse: as, perhaps, those by Biron too, and the other Lovers in Love's Labour's lost, ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... have him alone, at peace with himself and the world; happy in the contemplation of his beloved muse; jotting down, now and then, the brilliant ideas that flash through his teeming brain; and munching in solitude his homely meal of bread and cheese. In telling us he laid his bread and cheese upon the shelf, he at once shows he had left his parental abode, and the ministering and watchful ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... able now condignly to relate how Pantagruel did demean himself against the three hundred giants! O my Muse, my Calliope, my Thalia, inspire me at this time, restore unto me my spirits; for this is the logical bridge of asses! Here is the pitfall, here is the difficulty, to have ability enough to express the horrible ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... purpose. I am ashamed to compute how many hours and days these chores consume for me. I had it fully in my heart to write at large leisure in noble mornings opened by prayer or by readings of Plato or whomsoever else is dearest to the Morning Muse, a chapter on Poetry, for which all readings, all studies, are but preparation; but now it is July, and my chapter is rudest beginnings. Yet when I go out of doors in the summer night, and see how high the stars are, I am persuaded that there is time enough, here ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... continue to live in the world according to the Christian law of restraint and moderation, and of those who yearn to live in God. With Augustin the choice is made. He will never more look back. These Dialogues at Cassicium are his supreme farewell to the pagan Muse. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... what was then called taste, built, and planted, and begot children, till the whole caravan were forced to go abroad to retrieve. Alas! Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scuderi, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. The captain's fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virt'u; and that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced bouts-rim'es as a new discovery. They hold a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or incantation, no change of place; but present they burn, absent they desire, by day they follow their loves about, by night they serenade them, sober call for them, and drunken sing about ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... your rambles Through the green lanes of the country, Where the tangled barberry-bushes Hang their tufts of crimson berries Over stone walls gray with mosses, Pause by some neglected graveyard, For a while to muse, and ponder On a half-effaced inscription, Written with little skill of song-craft, Homely phrases, but each letter Full of hope and yet of heart-break, Full of all the tender pathos Of the Here and the Hereafter; Stay and read this rude inscription, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... called "L'Envoy de Chaucer a Scogan," the poet, while blaming his friend for his want of perseverance in a love-suit, classes himself among "them that be hoar and round of shape," and speaks of himself and his Muse as out of date and rusty. But there seems no sufficient reason for removing the date of the composition of these lines to an earlier year than 1393; and poets as well as other men since Chaucer have spoken of themselves as old and obsolete at fifty. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons: otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... page of a scientific text-book. No woman even in the poetry had caused him to vibrate in the untouched heart-chords like this unexpected star in the firmament of beer fumes and tobacco smoke! But it was not joyous to muse upon this vision for he had no doubt that she marked a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... in this fashion in her box, when Jenny Fagette came to join her there; Jenny Fagette, slender and fragile, the incarnation of Alfred de Musset's Muse, who at night wore out her eyes of periwinkle-blue by scribbling society notes and fashion articles. A mediocre actress, but a clever and wonderfully energetic woman, she was Nanteuil's most intimate friend. They recognized in each other remarkable ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... Sicily and Syracuse were disturbed by civil and foreign wars, wars of citizens against citizens, of Greeks against Carthaginians, and against the fierce 'men of Mars,' the banded mercenaries who possessed themselves of Messana. But this was not matter for his joyous Muse - ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... a better right to sing of cider than of wine; but it behooves them to sing better than English Phillips did, else they will do no credit to their Muse. ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... clearing away the supper, he took a heavy cudgel and went out. He walked straight away from the house, and then, when he knew that his figure could no longer be seen in the twilight, he made a circuit, and, entering the shrubbery, crept along close to the wall of the Muse, until within two or three yards of the window. Having made sure that at present, at any rate, no one was near, he moved out a step or two ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... chain of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness! At this time the profanation of the word "love" rose to its height; the muse of science condescended to seek admission at the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... extraordinary man had inconsistencies and unexpected lapses—lapses into flat veracity. Lyon recognised what Sir David had told him, that his aberrations came in fits or periods—that he would sometimes keep the truce of God for a month at a time. The muse breathed upon him at her pleasure; she often left him alone. He would neglect the finest openings and then set sail in the teeth of the breeze. As a general thing he affirmed the false rather than denied the true; yet this proportion ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... maidens, so cheerful and gay, Whose words ever fulsomely fall, Oh, pity your friend, who to-day Has become a Society's thrall. Allow me to muse and to sigh, Nor talk of the change that ye find; None once was more happy than I; But, alas! I've left ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden, 505 How wilt thou prove thy worth?" Then joy and sleep Together fled; my soul was deeply laden, And to the shore I went to muse and weep; But as I moved, over my heart did creep A joy less soft, but more profound and strong 510 Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep The path of the sea-shore: that Spirit's tongue Seemed whispering in my heart, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... met his bunter Muse And, as they quaff'd the fiery juice, Droll Nature stamp'd each lucky hit ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... people which can endure such fluting and piping among them is not likely soon to have its modest ear pleased by aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song. Perhaps I am then led on into meditation respecting the spiritual nature of the Tenth Muse, who invented this gracious instrument, and guides its modulation by stokers' fingers; meditation, also, as to the influence of her invention amidst the other parts of the Parnassian melody of English education. Then it cannot but occur to me to inquire how far this modern "pneuma," Steam, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... earlier Drusus, as he hurried to and fro transmitting orders for his general, might have been fain to draw aside and muse on the strangeness of the night scene. The sky was clear, as almost always in a land where a thunder-storm is often as rare as an eclipse; the stars twinkled out of heavens of soft blackness; the crescent of a new moon hung like a silvered bow out over the harbour, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... pious design, and the protection of Jesus and His Mother was promised to her. Let us follow them in thought up the steep hill to Assisi—to the church where the relics of the saint, where his mortal remains are laid. Let us descend into the subterranean chapel, pause at every altar, and muse on the records of that astonishing life, the most marvellous perhaps of any which it has ever been permitted to mortal man to live. Let us go with them to the home of his youth, where his confessorship began in childish sufferings for the sake of Christ. ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... that doth this month or two avail To somewhat soothe my Muse's anxious care. For certain minds at certain stories rail, Certain poor jests, which nought but trifles are. If I with deference their lessons hail, What would they more? Be you more prone to spare, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... breathe where Gilead sheds her balm; I love to walk on Jordan's banks of palm; I love to wet my foot in Hermon's dews; I love the promptings of Isaiah's muse; In Carmel's paly grots I'll court repose, And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... Browning's poetry lacks passion and the most poignant emotion of human nature, love. Chesterton, on the other hand, considers that Browning was the finest love poet of the world. It is real love poetry, because it talks about real people, not ideals; it does not muse of the Prince Charming meeting the Fairy Princess, and forget the devoted wife meeting her husband on the villa doorstep with open arms and a nice dinner in the parlour. Sentiment must be based on reality if it is to have worth. This is the strong point, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... AND LYRIC POETRY.—It was not until the minds of the Greeks had been elevated by the productions of the epic muse, that the genius of original poets broke loose from the dominion of the epic style, and invented new forms for expressing the emotions of a mind profoundly agitated by passing events; with few innovations in the elegy, but with greater boldness in the iambic metre. In these two forms, Greek ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... write luxuriously is not the same thing as to live so, but a new and worse offence. It implies an intellectual defect also, the not perceiving that the present corrupt condition of human nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to perpetuate) is a temporary or superficial state. The good word lasts forever: the impure word can only buoy itself in the gross gas that now envelops us, and will sink altogether to ground as that works itself clear in the everlasting ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was sent out of the colony for the scandal of Merrymount, but satire itself remained religious in Ward's Simple Cobbler of Agawam (1647). Poetry was represented in Anne Bradstreet's (1612-1672) The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America (1650), and was continued by a succession of doggerel writers, mostly ministers or schoolmasters, Noyes, Oakes, Folger, Tompson, Byles and others. The world of books also ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of that well-appointed villa whence a reader can see the City near at hand—if among more serious poems there be any room for the wanton Muse of Comedy, you may place these seven little books I send you even in ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... winding-gravel walk through them with an edging of shrubs, in what they call the modern taste, and in short, has designed the three lanes to walk in again—and now is forced to shut them out again by a wall, for there was not a Muse could walk there but she was spied by every country fellow that went by with a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... (inquiry) 461 invention &c. (imagination) 515. thoughtfulness &c. adj. V. think, reflect, cogitate, excogitate[obs3], consider, deliberate; bestow thought upon, bestow consideration upon; speculate, contemplate, meditate, ponder, muse, dream, ruminate; brood over, con over; animadvert, study; bend -, apply mind &c. (attend) 457; digest, discuss, hammer at, weigh, perpend; realize, appreciate; fancy &c. (imagine) 515; trow[obs3]. take into consideration; take counsel &c. (be advised) 695; commune ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Morality's our Muse And the drawers she wears are made Of the stoutest leather—Oh! Do not wrong my ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the Muse,— Nothing refuse." ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... healthy, gentle energy of the flower, instinctively rejecting what is not fit for it, with no need of disdain to dig a gulf between it and the lower forms of creation. Her office to man is that of the muse, inspiring him to all good thoughts and deeds. The passions that sometimes agitate these maidens of his verso are the surprises of noble hearts unprepared for evil; and even their mistakes cannot cost bitter tears to ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
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