"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bid my sorrow flee, And my fair fortune turn again; It wounds my heart now ceaselessly, And burns my breast with bitter pain. Yet never so sweet a song may be As, this still hour, steals through my brain, While verity I muse in vain How clay should her bright beauty clot; O Earth! a brave gem thou dost stain, My own pearl, precious, ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... letters, however, has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of the revered Samuel ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in custom / to come to scole late Nat for to lerne / but for a contenaunce with my felawys / reedy to debate to Iangle and Iape / was set al my plesaunce wherof rebukyd / this was my chevisaunce to forge a lesyng / and therupon to muse whan I trespasyd / ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... I had the distinction of being included in a new edition of Recent and Living Scottish Poets, by Alexander Murdoch, published in 1883. My inclusion was explained on the ground that, "His muse first awoke to conscious effort on Scottish soil," which, though not quite in accordance with fact, was not so wide of the mark that I felt in the least concerned to criticise the statement. I was too much enamoured of the ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... had for ever fallen. If he 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. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... greedily devoured in large quantities, mostly 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 of salt cod, the water supply was ordered unlimited. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... him 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 ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... 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 of country-goers, till it is ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... exquisite productions. After a perusal of this new American idyl, no competent critic will contend that we lack proper themes for poetry in our own land. The "Snow-Bound" will be a sufficient reminder to all cavillers, at home or abroad, that the American Muse need not travel far ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... 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 ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... slipping off his 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 locks in fresh ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... is a symphony. A symphony of San Francisco Bay. Why shouldn't the composers put it into music. We're sick of the song of the huntsman by the brasses, the strings and the wood instruments. With Whitman we exclaim: "Come, Muse, migrate from Aeonia," and come out here to the West, and conserve the symphony of the bay which is ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... 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 ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Paul was striking seven as Aramis, on horseback, dressed as a simple citizen, that is to say, in colored suit, with no distinctive mark about him, except a kind of hunting-knife by his side, passed before the Rue du Petit-Muse, and stopped opposite the Rue des Tourelles, at the gate of the Bastile. Two sentinels were on duty at the gate; they made no difficulty about admitting Aramis, who entered without dismounting, and they pointed out the way he was to go by a long passage with buildings on both ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... old carved cabinet (the pride of a house of this sort), and ready provision of oaten cakes. We then ascended a near hill to the waterfall called Dungeon-Ghyll Force, also a subject touched by Wordsworth's Muse. You wind along a path for a long time, hearing the sound of the falling water, but do not see it till, descending by a ladder the side of the ravine, you come to its very foot. You find yourself then in a deep chasm, bridged ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... O Agrippa, neither undertake these high subjects, nor the destructive wrath of inexorable Achilles, nor the voyages of the crafty Ulysses, nor the cruel house of Pelops: while diffidence, and the Muse who presides over the peaceful lyre, forbid me to diminish the praise of illustrious Caesar, and yours, through defect of genius. Who with sufficient dignity will describe Mars covered with adamantine coat of mail, or Meriones ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... and the stars, too, kindling in the sky, as if but a 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
... herself 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 ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... such news My heart has lain in a golden muse, Picturing him and her, What starry ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... 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 ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... bow to many; Athens still would find The shrines of all she worshipped safe within Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones That crowned Olympus mighty as of old. The god of music rules the Sabbath choir; The lyric muse must leave the sacred nine To help us please the dilettante's ear; Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leave The portals of the temple where we knelt And listened while the god of eloquence (Hermes of ancient days, but now disguised In sable vestments) with that other god Somnus, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to understand the progress of his mind; and "Les Femmes Suliotes" will mark the transition from the first to the second period. Turning from the simple scenes of domestic sorrow, he now sought inspiration in literature. The vigorous and hearty Northern Muse especially won his favor; yet the greatest Italian poet was also his earnest study. Goethe, Schiller, Byron, Dante, all furnished subjects for his pencil. The story of Faust and Margaret took such hold of his imagination that it pursued him for nearly thirty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... 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, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... 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 golden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... strains Your gentle muse has learned to sing, And California's boundless plains Prolong the soft ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... town, Secretary to the Assembly and a very tolerable poet. Keimer also made verses, but they were indifferent ones. He could not be said to write in verse, for his method was to set the lines as they followed from his muse; and as he worked without copy, had but one set of letter cases, and as the elegy would occupy all his types, it was impossible for any one to assist him. I endeavored to put his press in order, which he had not yet used, and of which indeed ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... formed the poet's wreath to wear; And as those eyes of azure hue, One moment lifted, met my view, Gay worlds of starry thoughts appeared In their blue depths serenely sphered. Just then the voice of one unseen, All redolent of Hippocrene, Stole forth so sweetly on the air, I felt the Muse indeed was there, And feel how much her words divine ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... know—the pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when attention is not called away by the calls of society, or the vagaries of the muse. Even in the hour of social mirth, my gaiety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner. All these reasons urge me to go abroad, and to all these reasons I have only one answer—the feelings of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the dark for both and say Amen. Nay, muse not, madam: tis no sencelesse Image, But the true essence of ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... that white and red Which sitting on her cheeks (being Cupid's throne) Is my heart's sovereign: O, when she is dead, This wonder, Beauty, shall be found in none. Now Agripyne's not mine, I vow to be In love with nothing but deformity. O fair Deformity, I muse all eyes Are not enamoured of thee: thou didst never Murder men's hearts, or let them pine like wax, Melting against the sun of thy disdain;[1] Thou art a faithful nurse to Chastity; Thy beauty is not like to Agripyne's, For cares, and age, and sickness, hers ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Muse hath aw'd the stage, And frighten'd wives and children with her rage, Too long Drawcansir roars, Parthenope weeps, While ev'ry lady cries, and critick sleeps With ghosts, rapes, murders, tender hearts they wound, Or else, like thunder, terrify with sound When the skill'd actress ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... draw you a picture of that class of intellect. They have a greed for information, but the information, to satisfy them, must relate to actualities; they have no sympathy with fiction; it is from their impatience of what seems to be that springs their curiosity of what is. Clio is their muse, and she alone. Their whole lust is to gather knowledge through a hole, their whole faculty is to peep. But they are destitute of imagination, and do not lie; in their passion for realities they would esteem it a sacrilege to distort ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... being 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 of the Roman Commonwealth to the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... and Fairy tales 'Neath flaunting pageants fall, And over Pantomime prevails The Muse of Music Hall. Still echoes, wafted through the din, A lilt of one old tune— Of Columbine and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... Eden fade, Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain— Godlike to muse o'er his own Trade And manlike stand with ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... wafted by the current to whatever far bourne might await her. That there should be such things as railway trains and man-made schedules in this world of winds and mystery and the voice of great waters, was hard to believe; hardly worth believing in any case. Better not to think of it: better to muse on her companion, building fire as the first man had built for the first woman, to feed and comfort her in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... does not like 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
... Kinosling talks so intellectually; it's a good thing for Margaret to hear that kind of thing, for a change and, of course, he's very spiritual. He seems very much interested in her." She paused to muse. "I think Margaret likes him; he's so different, too. It's the third time he's dropped in this ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... descending lingered fondly yet about the minarets of the Foundling, and gilded the grassplots of Mecklenburgh Square—Perkins, I say, and Lucy would often sit together in the summer-house of that pleasure-ground, and muse upon the strange coincidences of their life. Lucy was motherless and fatherless; so too was Perkins. If Perkins was brotherless and sisterless, was not Lucy likewise an only child? Perkins was twenty-three: his age and Lucy's ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 new ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... 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 ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... standyng on my lyfe honde The tyme representeth of Reuocacyon And the fourthe standyng on my ryght honde Determyneth the tyme of Reconsylyacyon This is the effecte of thy vysyon Wherfore the nedeth no more theron to muse Hit were but veyne ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... at the front door, with his essays and his prose symphonies and his satirical novel—the satire of a young man is apt to be very bitter—but it was as tightly shut against him as if a publisher and not the muse ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of his almost shipwreck on the wild Atlantic colored more or less the visions of his muse, and influenced the metaphors of ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... 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 ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... or that He reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some secret scourge which shall by her come unto England, it is hard to be known but yet much to be feared." Thus Edmund Spenser 340 years ago, whose muse drew profit from an Irish estate (one of the first fruits of empire) and who being a poet had imagination to perceive that a day of payment must some day be called and that the first robbed might be the ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... as I began to hope she might remain and become my muse. You always vanish—and generally ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... no doubt of it,' said I; and having given orders for dinner, I sat down to muse on ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... excuse, The book, the pencil, or the muse; Something to give, to sing, to say, Some modern tale, some ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... been formed a comely person, In the court of Ceridwen I have done penance; Though little I was seen, placidly received, I was great on the floor of the place to where I was led; I have been a prized defence, the sweet muse the cause, And by law without speech I have been liberated By a smiling black old hag, when irritated Dreadful her claim when pursued: I have fled with vigour, I have fled as a frog, I have fled in the semblance of a crow, scarcely finding rest; I have fled vehemently, I have ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... thee, 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
... drudge, in swift Pindaric strains, Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, And drives a jaded Muse, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 Holland was ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... date in that Southern region, and of her own heart saying "Kiss Augustine!" and she would peer out between the shutters at the stars sparkling over the Camargue, or look down where the ground fell away beyond an old, old wall, and nobody walked in the winter night, and muse on her nineteenth birthday coming, and sigh with the thought that she would be old before any one had loved her; and of how Madame was looking ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... doubtfullish whether A "mot" might be made which should happily hit The "gold" of desert; and Love, aided by Wit, Though equal to eloquent passion's fine glow, Might both be struck mute by the Muse of Dumb-Show. That "actions speak louder than words" we all knew; But now we may add, "and more gracefully, too." Performances fine Punch has praised in his day, But how few take the pas of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... class poet, and had worried the official muse on Presentation Day to the utterance of some four hundred lines filled with allusions to Alma Mater, Friendship's Altar, the Elms of Yale, etc. His piece on that occasion had been "pronounced, by a well-known literary gentleman who ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... years prior to this, Beethoven's muse had been silent for the most part. No important work since the completion of the Eighth Symphony had been achieved, with the exception of the sonatas mentioned in a previous chapter. This was owing to the various lawsuits in which he found himself involved. ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... seemed to steal over him; his voice became deep and melancholy, and the first syllables which he uttered showed this Proteus recalled to himself, and tamed by two words. "Hapless existence!" he exclaimed; then pausing, seemed to muse, and after a while continued, "'tis but too true; comedian or tragedian, all for me is an affair of acting and costume; so it has been hitherto, and such it is likely to continue. How fatiguing and how petty it is to pose—always to pose, in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... urba. Munificence malavareco. Munificent malavara. Murder mortigi. Murder mortigo. Murderer mortiganto. Murky malhela, malluma. Murmur murmuri. Muscat wine muskatvino. Muscle muskolo. Muscular muskola. Muse muzo. Muse revi. Museum muzeo. Mushroom fungo. Music muziko. Musical muzika. Musician muzikisto. Music (to play) muziki. Muskrat miogalo. Musket pafilo. Muslin muslino. Mussel mitulo. Must (verb) devas. Must mosto. Mustard mustardo. Mustard plant sinapo. Mustard-plaster ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Eden fade, Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain, Godlike to muse o'er his own trade And manlike stand ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... 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
... he wrote a poem De Suo Consulatu, in three Books: ad Att. i. 19, 10, 'poema exspectato, ne quod genus a me ipso laudis meae praetermittatur.' A long passage from Book ii., spoken by the Muse Urania, is recited by Q. Cicero in De Div. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... two maiden aunts, The engraving and the singing muse, Follow, through all my favourite haunts, My devious traces ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that Parsonage by the Muse forgot; The partial bard admires his native spot; Smit with its beauties, loved, as yet a child, (Unconscious why) its scapes grotesque and wild. High on a mound th' exalted garden stands, Beneath, deep valleys, scooped by Nature's hand. A Cobham here, exulting in his art, Might ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... and took the armchair that Doris offered her, fronting the open window and the summer scene. Her face would have suited the Muse of Mirth, if any Muse is ever forty years of age. The small, up-turned nose and full red lips were always smiling; so were the eyes; and the fair skin and still golden hair, the plump figure and gay dress of flower-sprigged muslin, were all in ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... Hollister continued to muse on this after Lawanne went away. He thought Lawanne's summing up a trifle severe. Nevertheless it was a pretty clear statement of fact. Bland certainly seemed above working either for money or to secure a reasonable degree of comfort for himself and his wife. He sat ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... entirely devoted to her husband and children as to be a stranger to all these intrigues; but she was more or less connected with the persons who seconded the Coadjutor's projects, and consequently with the Duchess de Chevreuse. An article in the "Muse Historique" of Loret shows how intimate was the connection of Madame de Sevigne with that Duchess. In the month of July, 1850, on returning from a promenade in the Cours, then the fashionable drive among the highest society, the Marquis and Marchioness ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... that my Muse 'gainst Priscian avers, He, only he, WERE my parishioners; Yea, and ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... principles and then to lose their places. The county constituencies and many conservative boroughs were truly reported to be sick of the man who had promised marvels as 'looming in the future,' and then like a bad jockey had brought the horse upon its knees. Speculative minds cannot but be tempted to muse upon the difference that the supersession by Lord Palmerston of this extraordinary genius at that moment might have made, both to the career of Disraeli himself, and to the nation of which he one day became for a space the supreme ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... The Muse of History is surely now-a-days too disdainful of all information that does not reach her signed and countersigned. In biography, at least, it must be a mistake to accept none but documentary evidence, since ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... earlier productions. But it shares with the poems shortly to be noticed what may be called the autobiographic charm. The fresh natural emotion of a young and brilliant mind is eternally interesting, and Coleridge's youthful Muse, with a frankness of self- disclosure which is not the less winning because at times it provokes a smile, confides to us even the history of her most temporary moods. It is, for instance, at once amusing and captivating to read in the ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... convinced him that the girl's nature was cast in a large mould. Sellers was anxious to report his discoveries to Hawkins; so he took his leave, saying that if the two "young devotees of the colored Muse" thought they could manage without him, he would go and look after his affairs. The artist said to himself, "I think he is a little eccentric, perhaps, but that is all." He reproached himself for having injuriously judged a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... great concert-hall, an ideal female figure, in his own style, who was raising a pair of snuffers to a taper; and he was extraordinarily delighted when he was able to cause a dispute on the question, whether this singular muse meant to snuff the light or to extinguish it? when he roguishly allowed all sorts of bantering ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... 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, such as it was, Dr Grantly did not soon forget. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... dear to all the lovers of Scott and Burns, through 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... Sussex may be said to end. Yet a poet, whether he will or no, is shaped by his early surroundings. In some verses by Mr. C. W. Dalmon called "The Sussex Muse," I find the influence of Shelley's surroundings ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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 repent ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... water, holding plough or harrow drawn by an amphibious creature called a carabao or water-buffalo, burying by hand in the mire the roots of young rice plants, or applying as a fertiliser the ordure and garbage of the city. Such unpoetic toils never could have inspired the georgic muse of Vergil ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... did; and yet I am sure I could not see a Sprig of any Bough of this whole Walk of Trees, but I should reflect upon her and her Severity. She has certainly the finest Hand of any Woman in the World. You are to know this was the Place wherein I used to muse upon her; and by that Custom I can never come into it, but the same tender Sentiments revive in my Mind, as if I had actually walked with that Beautiful Creature under these Shades. I have been Fool enough to carve ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... too, good Reader, should, as now without miracle Muse Clio enables us—take our station also on some coign of vantage; and glance momentarily over this Procession, and this Life-sea; with far other eyes than the rest do, namely with prophetic? We can mount, and stand there, without fear ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... not, thou, to whom the indulgent Muse Vouchsafes a portion of celestial fire; Nor blame the partial fates, if they refuse The imperial banquet, and the rich attire. Know thine own worth, and reverence the lyre. Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined? No; let thy heaven-taught ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... for the priesthood, but like many another had been driven by the feelings and sympathies engendered by Italy's political struggles to abandon the tonsure for the sake of joining the "patriot" cause. His muse was of the drawing-room school and calibre. But he wrote very many charming little poems breathing the warmest aspirations of the somewhat extreme gauche of that day, especially some stornelli after the Tuscan fashion, which met with a very wide and warm acceptance. I remember one extremely ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... gleams the youth's bright falchion: there the muse Lifts her sweet voice: there awful Justice opes ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... and in their country's cause Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve, Receive proud recompense. We give in charge Their names to the sweet lyre. The Historic Muse, Proud of the treasure, marches with it down To latest times; and Sculpture, in her turn, Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass To guard them, and to immortalize her trust. But fairer wreaths are due—though never paid— To those who, posted at ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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 of bills ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... sorts of ways, till it gets dark, and a great drought falls upon the members of the conversazione. Then, if the mermaids are anywhere near us, they may smell the fragrant fumes which tell of sacrifice to Bacchus, and may hear, shortly afterwards, the muse of song invoked by cheerful topers. Thus the dark hours roll on jovial till the soft influences of sleep descend upon the tuneful choir, and the cabin receives its lodgers for ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... "Muse dis-moi, comment en ces moments Chasot brilla, faisant voler des tetes, De maints uhlans faisant de vrais squelettes, Et des hussards, devant lui s'echappant, Fandant les uns, les autres transpercant, Et, maniant sa flamberge tranchante, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... best, when we look back on them, how much of the understanding of them, and the drawing of all its sweetness out of each event in them, is entrusted to memory! And how negligent of a great means of happiness and strength we are, if we do not often muse on 'all the way by which God the Lord has led us these many years in the wilderness'! It is needful for Christian progress to 'forget the things that are behind,' and not to let them limit our expectations nor prescribe our methods, but it is quite as needful to remember our past, or rather ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the alferez's house closed? Where was the masculine face and the flannel shirt of the Medusa or Muse of the Civil Guard while the procession was passing? Could she have understood how unpleasant was the sight of the swelling veins of her forehead, filled, it seemed, not with blood but with vinegar and bile; of her large cigar, that ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... 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
... Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the Infant God? Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein, To welcom him to this his new abode, Now while the Heav'n by the Suns team untrod, Hath took no print of the approching light, 20 And all the spangled host ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... lunar lady of Notts are supposed to have been the first twitter of his muse, he has said himself, "My first dash into poetry was as early as 1800. It was the ebullition of a passion for my first cousin, Margaret Parker. I was then about twelve, she rather older, perhaps a year." And it is curious to remark, that in his description of this beautiful girl there is the same ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... advertisement. It was possible, upon the one hand, to depict the sober pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire, blond-headed urchins and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was possible (and he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse) to set forth the charms of an existence somewhat wider in its range or, boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan. So long did the artist waver between these two views, that, before he arrived ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... 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 that ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Epos, 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, they are accepted with undoubting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... beautiful and charming daughter of Madame Sophie Gay, was called "the tenth muse" by her friends, who admired the sonorous original verses which she recited as a young girl in her mother's salon. She became, in June, 1831, the wife of Emile de Girardin, the founder of the Presse. Possessing in her youth, a bellezza ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... 'Talbot's tower,' we might prefer to muse historically, and gather up our memories of facts connected with the place; but we are treading again upon 'the footsteps of the Conqueror,' and must pay for our indiscretion. From the moment we approach the precincts of the castle, we ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... time among the inedited episodes of Lavengro, was a real one, although his true name (Parkerson) is given somewhat veiled, as usual with Mr. Borrow. He seems to have been the poet-laureate of farmers, corn-merchants, drovers and publicans, selling his muse to the highest bidder, at first in printed sheets of eight pages, and subsequently gathered into pamphlets of thirty or more pages which he offered for one or two shillings each. They were printed by R. Walker, "near the Duke's Palace, Norwich," and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of each sort More than my pen can make report; Pig, swan, goose, rabbits, partridge, teal, With legs and loins and breasts of veal: But above all the minced pies Must mention'd be in any wise, Or else my Muse were much to blame, Since they from Christmas take their name. With these, or any one of these, A man may dine well if he please; Yet this must well be understood,— Though one of these be singly good, Yet more the merrier is the best As well of dishes as of guest. But the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... 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 ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "Not hurt yourself, I hope?" he asked, as the Doctor rubbed that part of himself which had come into collision with the sharp edge of a concertina. "Clear away that coil of hose and take a seat on the packing-case yonder. That's right; and now let's talk." He puffed for a moment and appeared to muse. "Seems to me, Glasson, you're in the devil of a hurry to catch ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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
... 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, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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, or even of his Burgundy? The reason that the poetry of wine is unknown in ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... 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 toward them. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... of Mr. Prior, one of the most amiable English poets, whom you saw Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary at Paris in 1712. I also designed to have given you some idea of the Lord Roscommon's and the Lord Dorset's muse; but I find that to do this I should be obliged to write a large volume, and that, after much pains and trouble, you would have but an imperfect idea of all those works. Poetry is a kind of music in which a man should have some knowledge before he pretends to judge of it. When I give ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... 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, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... tell us? I hope you don't believe me jealous! But yet, methinks, I feel it true; And really yours is budding too— Nay,—now I cannot stir my foot; It feels as if 'twere taking root.' Description would but tire my muse; In short, they both ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... who with ennobling pride Beholds not his own nature? where is he Who but with deep amazement awe allied Must muse the mysteries of the human mind, The miniature of Deity. For Man the vernal clouds descending Shower down their fertilizing rain, For Man the ripen'd harvest bending Waves with soft murmur o'er the plenteous plain. He spreads the sail on high, The rude gale ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... albeit the gift be all too meane, Too meane an offring for thine ivorie shrine; Yet must thy beautie my just blame susteane, Since it is mortall, but thyselfe divine. Then, noble ladie, take in gentle worth This new-borne babe, which here my muse brings forth. ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... you up higher. Be kind and gentle to your sister Esther." To her Pastor she said: "Preach the Gospel uncolored!" We look upon the sinking form of a dear wife and mother, or brother, or sister, or husband, or friend, and as we sadly muse upon the fact that we held sweet counsel together and walked to the House of God in company; and we softly whisper to the physician is there no hope of recovery? Can you not save that young and precious life, so dear to us, so gentle, so loving, so kind, so sympathetic, so hopeful? ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... and many fascinating accomplishments, the mistress of a great establishment, very beautiful, and, although she had been married some years, still young, the celebrated wife of Lord Monteagle found herself the centre of a circle alike powerful, brilliant, and refined. She was the Muse of the Whig party, at whose shrine every man of wit and fashion was proud to offer his flattering incense; and her house became not merely the favourite scene of their social pleasures, but the sacred, temple of their political rites; here many a ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Utopian-dreaming gentry what, after they had secured for their world all the electricity there was in the Universe, and after every mortal thing in their ideal Paradise, was done and said and thought by electricity, they could imagine as further necessary to human happiness, they would probably muse for awhile, and ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... Must buy his ancestors a 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 ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... of animal spirits. Her walks, too, were now all solitary, with the exception of her mute companion, and it was observed that she never, in a single instance, was known to traverse any spot over which she and Osborne had not walked together. Here she would linger, and pause, and muse, and address Ariel, as if the beautiful creature were capable of comprehending the tenor ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... pantheism, may she not be the woman whom he would have loved and preferred to all others, and does she not also exceedingly well represent the very genius of the artist? As she is his Madonna, she might easily be his Muse. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... 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, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... been train'd, nor aim'd at more: Near the fam'd sisters never 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 create, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... 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 ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... garments of the Muse," which you abandon with strict generosity, make a show and please almost everywhere. Her sensual charm is not unknown to me; yet I think I may say that it was given me to lay hold of a higher and a pure ideal, and to vow to it my whole endeavors for many years ...
— 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
... 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 our ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... milk drank in small love for red men, in youth or early manhood, ere the sensibilities become osseous, receives at their hand some signal outrage, or, which in effect is much the same, some of his kin have, or some friend. Now, nature all around him by her solitudes wooing or bidding him muse upon this matter, he accordingly does so, till the thought develops such attraction, that much as straggling vapors troop from all sides to a storm-cloud, so straggling thoughts of other outrages troop to the nucleus thought, assimilate with it, and swell it. At last, taking counsel with ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... laughter rewarded this attempt on the life of the tragic muse. But when the schoolmaster, perched aloft, affecting a peuking voice (a strangely unnecessary artistic ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... various proofs of religion; but he dwells with peculiar complacency on the Sibylline verses, and the fourth eclogue of Virgil. Forty years before the birth of Christ, the Mantuan bard, as if inspired by the celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated, with all the pomp of oriental metaphor, the return of the Virgin, the fall of the serpent, the approaching birth of a godlike child, the offspring of the great Jupiter, who should expiate the guilt of human kind, and govern the peaceful universe ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... mind it is most sweet to muse Upon the days gone by; to act in thought Past seasons o'er, and be again a child; To sit in fancy on the turf-clad slope, Down which the child would roll; to pluck gay flowers, Make posies in the sun, which the child's hand, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... cause of it all. And then, she was very beautiful. In the autumn of that year we became great friends; and through her influence I began to see beyond the portals of the mansions of the rich. Matthew Prior's Chloes and Sir John Suckling's Euphelias lost their charms. Henceforth my muse's name became Phyllis. I took her to the opera when I didn't know where I was going to breakfast on the morrow. I sent her roses and went without tobacco, a privation ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... 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
... 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 ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... a bu'sive, e lope'ment a cu'men pe ru'sal ex po'nent ac cu'sant pur su'ant he ro'ic al lure'ment re fus'al pro mo'tive a muse'ment sul phu'ric de tach'ment es tab'lish at tend'ant dog mat'ic fa nat'ic as sem'blage dra mat'ic fan tas'tic ap pend'ant ec stat'ic gi gan'tic in tes'tate e las'tic in ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... he was only Mr. Booth, an eccentric old man of moderate means, who liked to muse, read, and play with children. He had no callers, no friends; he went to the city every day and came back at night. He talked but little, he was absent-minded, he smoked and thought and smiled and muttered to himself. He never went to church; but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... wine. All he says is false—the book he has just read, the play he is writing, the woman who loves him,...he buys a packet of bonbons in the streets and eats them, and it is false. An exquisite artist; physically and spiritually he is art; he is the muse herself, or rather, he is one of the minions of the muse. Passing from flower to flower he goes, his whole nature pulsing with butterfly voluptuousness. He has written poems as good as Hugo, as good as Leconte de Lisle, as good as Banville, as good as Baudelaire, as good as Gautier, as good as Coppée; ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... 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
... seemed 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 ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Jesus paused and seemed to muse; then, with that indulgence which was to illuminate the world, "Tell me, Simon," he inquired, "which ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... things was based, seemed to me then both strong and practical; a little ahead of my time perhaps, but far from crude or unformed. As I see it now, my creed was rather a protest against indifference, a demand for some measure of activity in social economy. That my muse was socialistic seems to me now to have been mainly accidental, but so it was, and its nutriment had been drawn largely from such sources as Carpenter's Civilization: its Cause and Cure, in addition to the standard works ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... I Labor?" [1] It seemed to him that the rising 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
... the benevolent work of driving dull care away would be impossible within the space at our command. But we cannot end without recognition of the exhilarating extravaganzas of "George A. Birmingham" (Canon Hannay), the freakish and elfin muse of James Stephens, and the coruscating wit of F.P. Dunne, the famous Irish-American humorist, whose "Mr. Dooley" is a household word on both sides ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... 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 ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... daughters of the Titans—if the respectable gentlemen had daughters. I confess to doing more than half the talking, but as to the laugh that follows, not a bit. Last night I thought they would go wild, and I too laughed myself into silent convulsions, when I recited an early effusion of my poetic muse for their edification. Miriam made the bedstead prance, fairly, while Anna's laugh sounded like a bull of Bashan with his ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Oh, rustic Muse of such varied note, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, I sing with you in the groves and on the mountain tops, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx.(10) I poured forth sacred strains from my golden throat in honour of the god Pan,(11) tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, from the top of the thickly leaved ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... the further corners of the saloon there is a plaster statue representing the Muse of Comedy, in the opposite corner a companion figure of Dancing. In the wall on the left, the grate hidden by flowers, is a fireplace with a fender-stool before it, and on either side of the fireplace there is a capacious and ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... form under which the muse may be said to have visited and inspired Andersen. He ought to have been exclusively the poet of children and of childhood. He ought never to have seen, or dreamed, of an Apollo six feet high, looking sublime, and sending forth dreadful arrows from the far-resounding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... 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
... 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
... 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, which appeals to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... company," Kelso assured him. "Nature guards her best men with some sort of singularity not attractive to others. Often she makes them odious with conceit or deformity or dumbness or garrulity. Dante was such a poor talker that no one would ever ask him to dinner. If it had not been so I presume his muse would have been sadly crippled by indigestion. If you had been a good dancer and a lady's favorite I wonder if you would have studied Kirkham and Burns and Shakespeare and Blackstone and Starkie, and the science of surveying ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... must be allowed to muse gently for several hours, inaccessible to the ambient air, and on the even and persevering heat of charcoal in the furnace or stove. After having lulled itself in its own exudations, and the dissolution of its auxiliaries, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... 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 ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... abstractedly, "do not want 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 are for ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Fate—not fate in a physical sense, but in the sense of the binding thread that connects thought with thought and conclusions with their premises. Where, then, is our freedom? What do you love? Painting? Poetry? Music? The muses are their fates. Whoso loves them is free. Logic is the muse of Thought." ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... He was not 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 ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... In sporting literature—a tenth muse, exclusively indigenous to England—the same observation holds good tenfold. Some of our most perfect topographical sketches have been the work of sportsmen. Old Izaak Walton, and his friend Cotton, of Dovedale, whose names will last as long as their rivers, have been followed ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... him; but it seems a terrible cheapening of the laurel to place it annually upon the brows of a herd of deedless striplings, standing upon the threshold of their careers. Tegner was but nineteen years of age when the Muse, contrary to her habit, gave him the crown without the dust, generously rewarding him in advance of performance. But he came very near forfeiting the fruits of all his fair fame by participating in a hostile demonstration in front of the house of the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... They soon die quietly of 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. For naturalistic deities he wished to substitute moral symbols; for the joys ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... darkened the air, shot 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
... religion! Maid divine, Pardon a muse so mean as mine, Who in her rough imperfect line Thus dares to name thee. To stigmatise false friends of thine ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun |
