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Muse   Listen
verb
Muse  v. t.  
1.
To think on; to meditate on. "Come, then, expressive Silence, muse his praise."
2.
To wonder at. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... 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

... 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

... sober statement of philosophic truth, and he aroused a hatred of kingship in America which was comic in expression and disastrous in result. It was due to his influence that plain citizens hymned the glories of "Guillotina, the Tenth Muse," and fell down in worship before a Phrygian cap. It was due to his influence that in 1793 the death of Louis XVI. was celebrated throughout the American continent with grotesque symbolism and farcical solemnity. A single instance ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... 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 ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... 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 ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... not muse at me, my most worthy friends; I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing To those that know ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... around them to fire and sword; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease and compliment yourselves in the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... comes in the merry month of June, when all is green and gay, because the poor muse, whose slave the author is, has been more capricious then the love of a queen, and has mysteriously wished to bring forth her fruit in the time of flowers. No one can boast himself master of this fay. At times, when grave thoughts occupy the mind and grieve the brain, comes the jade whispering ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... of him. When Shakespeare invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, he perhaps 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 the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... perpetually illustrated. I wondered, as I stood there, whether Horace Walpole ever thought it worth his while, for the sake of that early friendship which was so rudely broken, to come there, away from the haunts of fashion, or from his plaything villa at Strawberry Hill, to muse for a moment over the grave of one who rated pedigrees and peerages at their just value. Probably my Lord Orford was never guilty of such a piece of sentimentality. He was thinking too much of his pictures and coins and eternal ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... knight—to 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 ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... And I muse as I continue to descend toward the sea. "Her appearance of sadness was not, therefore, on Yves's account. On whose, then?" and the phrase ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... scant notices of the figure that have been preserved the indications are that there was originally only one Sibyl—she was the mythical embodiment of divine revelation, as the muse was the embodiment of intellectual inspiration. At a later time many sibyls came into being; Varro reckons ten and other authors give other numbers. Apparently a process of local differentiation went on; when the idea of the revealer was once established and the historical beginnings of the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... 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 ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... well 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 his ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... powerful, so mighty to aid, So simple in structure, so readily made, A helper so potent in training the young— 'Tis meet that thy praise by the muse should be sung; For though sages may reason, and orators talk, They can ne'er make their mark without blackboard ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway

... is a story dealing, of course, with an abnormal character, in abnormal circumstances. It is a quite original variation on the triangle theme. It has genuine humour, and the conclusion leaves one in a muse. "The Hobbledehoy," translated into French as "Un Adolescent," is, on the whole, Dostoevski's worst novel, which is curious enough, coming at a time when he was doing some of his best work. He wrote this while his ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... 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 Judith ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... place where he thought he heard a great company of fierce opponents (as it were a numerous and influential Deputation, or a prodigious Procession) 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 peril of going ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various

... pause a moment here to bend and muse, With dreamy eyes, on my reflection, where A boat-backed bug drifts on a helpless cruise, Or wildly oars ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley

... trochaic and the 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 them. And he who said that poetic fancies, owing to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... muse on all this of an evening when my baby was in my arms, and his moist, regular breathing fanned my hand. I thought of the happy moments he had already given me, and was grateful to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... 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 from one's glass ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... O muse that swayest the sad Northern Song, Thy right hand full of smiting and of wrong, Thy left hand holding pity; and thy breast Heaving with hope of that so certain rest: Thou, with the grey eyes kind and unafraid, The soft ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... poems, which are not without merit. As a boy he was famous among his companions for his skill in writing humorous verses, but these later specimens of his muse are serious, even melancholy ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln

... and unprejudic'd peruse Each fav'rite modern, ev'n each ancient muse. With all the comic salt and tragic rage The great stupendous genius of our stage, Boast of our island, pride of human-kind, 115 Had faults to which the boxes are not blind. His frailties are to ev'ry gossip known: Yet Milton's pedantries not shock the town. Ne'er be the dupe of Names, however ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen

... chaste Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre None but the noblest passions to inspire, Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line which, dying, he ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... 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 ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... "Well, Son! then will I me oblige, And God of heaven vouch I to record, That, if thou wilt be fully of mine accord, Thou shalt no cause have more thus to muse, But heaviness void, and it refuse. Since he thy good Lord is, I am full sure His grace shall not to thee be denied. Thou wotst well he benign is and demure To sue unto: not is his ghost maistried[352] ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... pored, ballad by ballad, and verse by 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... the country first I came I have lost my former flame: And, methinks, I not inherit, As I did, my ravish'd spirit. If I write a verse or two, 'Tis with very much ado; In regard I want that wine Which should conjure up a line. Yet, though now of Muse bereft, I have still the manners left For to thank you, noble sir, For those gifts you do confer Upon him who only can Be in prose ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... same year 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 ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... Commission in Lunacy 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 ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac

... "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 ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... Marija Berczynskas. Marija was one of those hungry souls who cling with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse. All day long she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was leaving—and she would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words of Faust, "Stay, thou art fair!" Whether it was by beer, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... in the breakers, and as the result of an all-night's struggle with the muse of conventionality Corkey has seven columns ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... the poet, Mr. PENNYLINE, Is inspired by beauteous Aniline, Products chemical and gas-tarry Give the modern Muse new mastery. Mauve may chime with love, and mauver Form a decent rhyme to lover; While (and if not, why not?) mauvest Antiphonetic proves to lovest. (Verse erotic always sports Tricksily with longs and shorts. Verbal votaries of Venus ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various

... 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 patriot, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... feeble Quill; | Well may you rail at what you ape so ill. | With virtuous Women, and all Men of Worth, You're in a state of mortal War by Birth. Nature in all her Atom-Fights ne'er knew Two things so opposite as Them and You. On such your Muse her utmost fury spends, They're slander'd worse than any but your Friends. More years may teach you better; the mean while, If you can't mend your ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... House to see the pictures. I best remember Gainsborough's beautiful Blue Boy, commonly so called, from the color of his dress, and Sir Joshua's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, which everybody knows in engravings. We lunched in clerical company that day, at the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's, with the Archbishop of York, the Reverend Mr. Haweis, and others as guests. I told A—— that she was not sufficiently ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... 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 life's ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... rattle? Ah, yes! Here is the bell-rope. I was about to say that we would have a bowl of coffee. Or rather, I will go into the kitchen myself; I am very good friends with Marianne, the cook; besides, the motto of the house of Bergenheim is liberte, libertas. Coffee is my muse; in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Durrisdeer I have transacted everything at my own time, and to my own fancy, and never a farthing challenged. Even while he was driving me, I had begun to find my heart go out to Mr. Henry; no doubt, partly in pity, he was a man so palpably unhappy. He would fall into a deep muse over our accounts, staring at the page or out of the window; and at those times the look of his face, and the sigh that would break from him, awoke in me strong feelings of curiosity and commiseration. One day, I remember, we were late upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... small work on Corfe Castle, published by a very intelligent resident of Wareham; and we are in hopes that the grey and hoary ruins may call forth the muse of J.F. Pennie, who resides on this wild romantic district, and whom we met ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... have been lucky enough to come up here without a guide or dragoman with a bosom full of ivory-handled revolvers and long knives, you will sit for hours spellbound. The guide tries too hard to give you your money's worth. He will not allow you to muse over these things, which are reasonably real and true, but will tell you the most marvellous stories, which you cannot believe. He will show you the grave of Moses, and I am told that the Scriptures ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... I won to muse With love on thy mysterious ways, With many a fair one to peruse The ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... and subaerial denuding agents has deprived us of an opportunity for closer examination of the habits and idiosyncrasies of this interesting fossil. Into such small compass are compressed the pride and wealth of nations and of centuries. O genus humanum! O tempora! O mores!" Thus will he muse. No democrat! no stump orator will be that Being of the Future, nor anything of human mould. One's imagination may well revel in the thought that Evolution, mighty to conceive and to perform, lias not yet completed her work. What are vertebrates? Even these are transient. ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... 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 many ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Bothwell Bridge. A Cameronian muse was awakened from slumber on this doleful occasion, and gave the following account of the muster of the royal forces, in poetry nearly as melancholy as ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... intenseness of her expression. It is true that her teeth were beyond criticism and her lips were fresh and creamy red—but Mr. Lushington wished she would not do it. The muses are never represented 'biting their lips'; and in his moments of enthusiasm he liked to think that Margaret was his muse. She had thick brown hair that waved naturally, but made no little curls and baby ringlets, such as some young women have, or make. The line of her hair along her forehead and temples, though curved, was rather severe. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... had all the charming difficulty of fixing on the play. The dullest and dreariest of our country Rosciuses were uniformly for comedy; but the fair sex have a leaning to the tragic muse. We had one or two, who would have had no objection to be piquant in Lady Teazle, or petulant in Lady Townley; but we had half a dozen Desdemonas and Ophelias. The soul of an O'Neil was in every one of our party conscious of a pair of good eyes, a tolerable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... 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 head in ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... influence of this plant is frequently alluded to by our elder dramatists; and with one of the greatest of them, Webster—as might be expected from a muse revelling like a ghoul in graves and sepulchres—it is an especial favorite. But none have plunged so deeply into the subject as Sir Thomas Browne. He tears up the fable root and branch. Concerning the danger ensuing from eradication ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... he had lowered the book to muse over a strange sentence that his wandering eye was caught beyond the window by the flash of a falling star of unusual brilliance. It was so bright, indeed, that he crossed the room to look out at the sky, stepping ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... hurried or troubled in this thing. We'll think, and talk things over, and plan. My world is a broader and saner world than yours is, Susan, and when I take you there you will be as honored and as readily accepted as any woman among them all. My wife will set me free—-" he fell into a muse, as they walked along the quiet country road, and Susan, her brain a mad whirl of thoughts, did not interrupt him. "I believe she will set me free," he said, "as soon as she knows that my happiness, and all my life, depend upon it. It can be done; it can be arranged, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... himself the speeches of his spirit, and became so woeful and sorrowful in his cogitations that he thought himself already frying in the hottest flame of hell; and lying in this muse, suddenly there appeared unto him his spirit, demanding what thing so ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... 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 as such by all who witnessed his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Scorn, my Muse, light ivy-leaves Wherewith custom wreathed thy brow: Love a mystic crown conceives And a rhythmic garland weaves: Bind on thee ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... grammarian, Aristophanes, somewhat affectedly exclaimed:—"O Life and Menander! which of you two imitated the other?" In short the form of this species of drama was poetry, the stuff or matter was prose. It was prose rendered delightful by the blandishments and measured motions of the muse. Yet even this was not universal. The mimes of Sophron, so passionately admired by Plato, were written in prose, and were scenes out of real life conducted in dialogue. The exquisite feast of Adonis ({GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON}{GREEK ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... the 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... covers with its mighty shadow the ashes of their martyred forefathers, and the humble sanctuary of their living descendants. You shall count the towns and campaniles on the broad Lombardy. You shall pass glorious days on the top of renowned cathedrals, and sit and muse in the face of the eternal Alps, as the clouds now veil, now reveal, their never-trodden snows. You shall cross the Lagunes, and see the winged lion of St Mark soaring serenely amid the bright domes and the ever calm seas of Venice, where you ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... seventeen years after the publication of the Reliques (1765), and a full quarter century after the appearance of The Bard (1757); but in style they proceed from the age of Pope. For the rest, the Augustan Muse was an utter stranger to the fighting inspiration. Her gait was pedestrian, her purpose didactic, her practice neat and formal: and she prosed of England's greatest captain, the victor of Blenheim, as tamely as himself had been 'a parson in a tye-wig'—himself, and not ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... 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 ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... m'appelle, O ma pauvre Muse! est-ce toi? O ma fleur! o mon immortelle! Seul etre pudique et fidele Ou vive encor l'amour de moi! Oui, te voila, c'est toi, ma blonde, C'est toi, ma maitresse et ma soeur! Et je sens, dans la nuit profonde, De ta robe d'or qui m'inonde Les ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... Pyerides muse si possunt numina fletus Fundere, diuinas atque rigare genas, Galfridi vatis Chaucer crudelia fata Plangite; sit lacrimis abstinuisse nefas. Uos coluit viuens: at vos celebrate sepultum; Reddatur merito gracia digna viro. ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... they spoke harsh words to him; at times they would laugh, at times they would chide, and then set him at nought. So he went to his room to pray for them, as well as to nurse his own grief. He would go, too, into the woods to read and muse, and thus for some ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... carries, announce her nobility. How splendid and commanding her appearance; and with what accuracy is the costume of the age she lived in observed! But Mary did not only possess a most refined taste, she had also to boast of a mind of sensibility. The English muse seems to have inspired her; all her subjects are sad and melancholy; she appears to have designed to melt the hearts of her readers, either by the unfortunate situation of her hero, or by some truly afflicting catastrophe. Thus ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... 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 And I, if a poet, must ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... mournful muse Soft pity to infuse; He sung the Weaver wise and good, By too severe a fate, Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from his high estate, And weltering ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... 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 of the finest ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... then op'ning his beak, In a tone of importance, without hesitation, Directly began a high-sounding oration. "SIR ARGUS, no mortal could e'er have desir'd, More exquisite verses than those you've inspir'd. The Muse has for you, indeed, tried all her art, [p 10] And with envy, no doubt, has fill'd many a heart: I wonder not, then, you are anxious to know From whose pen these strains of sweet harmony flow. 'Tis true, I have chanc'd in my wanderings to meet With some secrets; ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown

... 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, offered her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... 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

... 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, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... He had what the Idiot called a three-ply name—which was Richard Henderson Warren—and he was by profession a poet. Whether it was this that made it necessary for him to board or not, the rewards of the muse being rather slender, was known only to himself, and he showed no disposition to enlighten his fellow-boarders on the subject. His success as a poet Mrs. Pedagog found it hard to gauge; for while the postman left almost daily numerous ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs

... that he has not long since had a piece presented in his own name, and have asked the reason why.[66] This is what he bids us say in reply to your questions; 'tis not without grounds that he has courted the shade, for, in his opinion, nothing is more difficult than to cultivate the comic Muse; many court her, but very few secure her favours. Moreover, he knows that you are fickle by nature and betray your poets when they grow old. What fate befell Magnes,[67] when his hair went white? ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... vague memory of Germanic 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

... 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, would prove the beginning of new ones; for at the best he would only go to Grandpapa ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... to each other, as 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, he shaved every morning, he purchased a crop-eared ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... The following words taken bodily from the Greek or Latin are accented on the penult rather than the antepenult (as analogy would lead us to accent them) because in the original language the penultimate vowel was long: abdo'men, hori'zon, deco'rum, diplo'ma, muse'um, sono'rous, acu'men, bitu'men; and similarly such words as farra'go, etc. We may never be sure just how to accent a large class of names taken from the Latin and Greek without knowing the length of the vowel in the original,—such ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... dead man, with the blood gushing from his nose and mouth; and Catiline, striding across the prostrate body, retired sullenly and slowly to muse on the disappointment of this his most atrocious project, in the darkness and solitude of his own private chamber whither none dared ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... 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 included a good proportion of Indian war narratives and treatises relating to the aborigines. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... his career I have realised bow sad it is that he has bequeathed us no ASQUITH legend. Always reserved and intent, he discouraged Press gossip to such a degree as actually to have turned the key on the Tenth Muse. Everybody else might lunch at the hospitable board in Downing Street, but interviewers had no chance. In vain did the Quexes of this frivolous city hope for even a crumb—there was nothing for them. Mr. ASQUITH came into office, held it, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various

... Russia, as in Western Europe, "a terrible war raged on Parnassus." At first the Government frowned at the innovators, on account of certain revolutionary odes which one of their number had written; but when the Romantic Muse, having turned away from the present as essentially prosaic, went back into the distant past and soared into the region of sublime abstractions, the most keen-eyed Press Censors found no reason to condemn her worship, and the authorities placed almost no restrictions ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... 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

... strange thing if I became a 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, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... nights: when the laughter heard is of a character to render laughter frightful to the ears of men throughout the remainder of their days. But if in these festival hours under the beam of Hecate they are uncontrollable by the Comic Muse, she will not flatter them with her presence during the course of their insane and impious hilarities, whereof a description would out-Brocken Brockens and make Graymalkin and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... swore loud, was unmannerly to those above him, and insolent to those below him. I could not but remark, that it was the same Baseness of Spirit which worked in his Behaviour in both Fortunes: The same little Mind was insolent in Riches, and shameless in Poverty. This Accident made me muse upon the Circumstances of being in Debt in general, and solve in my Mind what Tempers were most apt to fall into this Error of Life, as well as the Misfortune it must needs be to languish under such Pressures. As for my self, my natural ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... were striking their preludes. Probably Mr. Murray was wise in his generation. But it is also likely that many persons, even now, are attached to poetry, though they certainly do not buy contemporary verse. How did the passion come to them? How long did it stay? When did the Muse say good- bye? To myself, as I have remarked, poetry came with Sir Walter Scott, for one read Shakespeare as a child, rather in a kind of dream of fairyland and enchanted isles, than with any distinct consciousness that one was occupied with poetry. Next to Scott, with me, came Longfellow, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... Muse, shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the Infant God? Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain, To welcome Him to this His new abode, Now while the heav'n by the sun's team untrod, Hath took no print of the approaching light, And ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... revived with another happy idea, and assure the Poet that his Work will be translated into a universal language, and that very soon. For which assurance he kisses us again and again, and goes away hugging his Muse. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... On 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 of the Kashmirian women has been ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... are chiefly fugitive pieces collected from magazines and annuals. One or two, referred to in the correspondence with James Montgomery, have been reprinted from the "Rural Muse," and there are a few which, like the Asylum Poems, have not been published before. "Maying; or, Love and Flowers," to which the Editor presumes specially to direct ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... Tragick 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 ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... 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 ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... uncertain thoughts. 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, "Cowley's Walk." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... man of other parts. An artist, he had traced the spinning meridians over desert and sea, following the fluttering wing of the muse till she rewarded his deathless hope by pausing for him in this small Indian town. Expecting to stay a week, he had remained fifteen years, failing to exhaust in that long time a tithe of its form and color. Screened by tropical jungle, a mask of dark palms laced with ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... was not so much a Philistine as to suppose that writing good poetry could be a disgrace to a duke's daughter; but she felt that the house of Ashbourne would be seriously compromised were the critics to find her guilty of writing doggerel; and critics are apt to deal harshly with the titled muse. She remembered Brougham's savage onslaught upon ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... fugit." I turned 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... 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 be such, he, I am certain, as well ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... were she who abode By those red-veined rocks far West, You were the swan-necked one who rode Along the beetling Beeny Crest, And, reining nigh me, Would muse and eye me, While Life unrolled ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy

... days,—the halcyon days of youth,—after the sap was gathered, and the fuel piled high beside the arch, then it was that we sat down by the blazing fire and watched it burn; heaped on the logs, filled up the kettle, and again sat down to muse, or talk, or read. If the wind whistled afar, the boiling-place was in a sheltered nook; if the rain poured down, or the snow-flakes fell without, we were protected by the sugar-house or shed; if the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... will not come out, not while you are here. True, after you have gone, after the fire has burned down and the room is all still—usually near midnight, as I sit and muse alone over the dead or dying fire—true, then the Singing Mouse comes out and asks for its bit of bread; and then it folds its tiny paws and sits up, and turning its bright red eye upon me, half in power and half in beseeching, as of some fading memory of the ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... theme inspire! To woman's love of old, my muse aspire! When her sweet charms were equally bestowed, And fairest of the sex with hopes imbued Of capturing men of wealth and lives of ease, When loveliness at public sale[5] doth please The nobles of the land to wealth bestow Upon ill-favored sisters, maids of woe, Who claimed no beauty, nor had ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... thereof," and, later, on the east, toward Headington Hill and close to Wadham. A trace of them remains in the terrace on the east of the Warden's garden, which did not then exist for Inglesant to walk in, and muse on the problems of ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... habit of thought and expression in less than half a century, that we believe there is not in all America a gentleman who would now venture to read either of these works aloud to a fireside group. Smollett's Muse was free enough herself; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... 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, could very well report his weight and caliber. And this ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... 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 Must ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... "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

... American continent, but it has never been graven in the archives of time. The actors in its bygone scenes have passed away in their shadowy grandeur, leaving but dim footprints here and there to tell us they have been, and cause us to wonder at the mystery which veils their record, and to muse upon the evanescent glory ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... the secret panel was the work of but a minute. Here he paused and listened lest a Wieroo might be visiting the prison in search of him or the other inmate; but no sound came from the gloomy interior. Bradley could not but muse upon the joy of the man on the opposite side when he should drop down to him with food and a new hope for escape. Then he opened the panel and looked into the room. The faint light from the grating ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the question of peace. Oh! Athens! Athens! As for myself, I do not fail to come here before all the rest, and now, finding myself alone, I groan, yawn, stretch, break wind, and know not what to do; I make sketches in the dust, pull out my loose hairs, muse, think of my fields, long for peace, curse town life and regret my dear country home,(11) which never told me to 'buy fuel, vinegar or oil'; there the word 'buy,' which cuts me in two, was unknown; I harvested everything at will. Therefore I have come to the assembly fully prepared to bawl, ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes

... their instinct for the poetry which, more specially in Gaelic-speaking regions, sits in rags by roadside and chimney corner. Irish poetry is not only the tragic voice of the keene; Gaelic had its comic muse as well, a robust virago, of the breed which produced Aristophanes and Rabelais—and Slipper with his gift for epic narrative is a camp-follower of ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... returned to 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 entirely ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... After appearing to muse, Margam added, "It will be necessary, then, that I overcome my scruples. I have only one thing to desire of you. We can work together during your residence here. I am going to show you the book which I have upon my breast, and wish you to ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... large-hearted, liberal Lord of Land, As clear of head as generous of hand, He lived his honourable length of days, A "Duke" whom doughtiest Democrat might praise. "Leader" in truth, though not with gifts of tongue, Full many a "Friend of Man" the muse has sung Unworthier than patrician CAVENDISH. Seeing him pass who may forbear the wish, Would more were like him!—Then the proud command, "Noblesse ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various

... 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

... 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

... eye dropt sense distinct and clear, As any muse's tongue could speak, When from its lid a pearly tear Ran trickling down her ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway

... Court, who had been appointed to our town years ago, almost as soon as the High Court was established. She was tall and had a good figure, and was considered indispensable for the tableaux vivants, and when she represented a fairy or a muse, her face would burn with shame; but she took no part in the plays, and would only look in at rehearsals, on some business, and never enter the hall. And it was evident now that she had only looked in ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... 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

... O muse, thou sing'st no siren strain To him who plows this heaven-domed main! Thy starry eyes look down all-wistful On souls that toy with a ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... England; and subscriptions and subscribers languished till the book died unmourned just when the year 1633 had been caught up with. The "Simple Cobler of Agawam" made a vast sensation with his scurrilous bombs. There were a few volumes of poems printed; one by "the Tenth Muse," Anne Bradstreet, of whose songs pious and cautious John Norton said (and evidently believed what he said too) that if Virgil could have read them he would have condemned his own work to the flames. Michael Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom," ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... Edward, surnamed the 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 ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... 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

... poets glean Scant flowers of thought; the Muse would wean Her myriad nurslings, feeding them On petals plucked from a dry stem. For one small plumule still adrift, The wind-blown dandelion's gift, The fields once blossomy we scour Where the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... calls 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, ...
— 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

... 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 ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... sometimes." She 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 ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various

... jamais mes 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

... considerable period she desired no higher pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab. To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life, and it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston found so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street and ...
— An International Episode • Henry James

... said 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)

... Man Too!" is one of the latest, and greatest, successes of the clever Coster Laureate, Mr. ALBERT CHEVALIER, who, "Funny without being Vulgar," proves that he, the Muse of the Market Cart, and Bard of the Barrow, "Knocks 'em in the Old Kent Road,"—and elsewhere—with well-deserved success. As is ever the case with the works of genuine genius, "liberal applications lie" in his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various

... said about it for the two weeks that led to Grandfather's next Afternoon. Joy was delighted to find that her Muse wasn't asked for, and her grandparents may have been rather pleased at her continuing to behave as she always had, instead of saying curious things about wanting to be like other people. She continued ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... 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 ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... 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,' ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... portraiture, and much dull, pedantic disquisition. In these delineations we now and then meet with a touch of his pencil, which, from its simplicity and vigor, may be called truly Dantesque. Indeed, the Castilian Muse never before ventured on so bold a flight; and, notwithstanding the deformity of the general plan, the obsolete barbarisms of the phraseology, its quaintness and pedantry, notwithstanding the cantering ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... and he then renounced all further hope of opposition—though resisting the instances of his friends that he should flee, and returning for answer, when they asked him on what he relied for protection, "On my old age." Nor did he even think it necessary to repress the inspirations of his Muse. Some verses yet remain, composed seemingly at a moment when the strong hand of the new despot had begun to make itself sorely felt, in which he tells his countrymen—"If ye have endured sorrow from your own baseness of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods. Ye have yourselves ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... mirrors, monograms, flowers, and wreaths, and listened to a concert of vocal and instrumental music, French and German; then they went further into the garden, stopping before a Temple of Glory, where were four handsome women representing Victory, the muse Clio, and Renown; then trumpets sounded, triumphal songs were sung, and perfumes were burning on golden tripods. Then they turned to see a delightful ballet danced on the greensward, with a view of the Palace of Laxenburg—so dear to Marie Louise—in ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... Shelley's "Defence of Poesy," and it is fitted to warm and inspire the poetic heart of the youth of this generation, no less than of that to which it was first addressed. As a close to the lecture Lowell read his beautiful (then unpublished) poem "To the Muse." ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... is one of the most poetical of trees, being consecrated to the Muse by the part which has been assigned it in many a scene of romance, and by its connection with events recorded in Holy Writ. It is invested with a poetical interest by its symbolical representation of sorrow in the pendulous character of its spray, by its fanciful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... 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 loss ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... was the climax of great events in the olden times; and vast assemblies were swayed by the eloquence of the budding sockless statesmen. It was at the old field school "exhibition" that the goddess of liberty always received a broken nose, and the poetic muse a black eye; it was at the old field school "exhibition" that Greece and Rome rose and fell, in seas of gore, about every fifteen minutes in ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... late Mr. J. Roberts (Iuan Wyllt), whose death, as I write these lines, is being recorded in the newspapers. In adjudicating upon the poem, Mr. Roberts said: "In this production we have the traces of a muse of a superior order. The language is chaste and poetic, the versification is clear and melodious, and the mournfully pathetic strain that pervades the whole elegy harmonises well with the sorrowful character of the subject. As regards ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely, been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... short pause, 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 ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... fine tunes of similar character, have floated daily in the air of our city, for months together. I am sure that this choice does not arise from the minstrels themselves having craft enough to select "a mournful muse, soft pity to infuse." It is the kind of music which has been the practice and pleasure of their lives, and it is a fortuitous thing that now, in addition to its natural plaintiveness, the sad necessity of the times lends a tender accompaniment to their simplest melody. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... 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

... even high hills; his only landscape was the flat country watered by the Ouse. On the other hand he is perfectly genuine, thoroughly English, entirely emancipated from false Arcadianism, the yoke of which still sits heavily upon Thomson, whose "muse" moreover is perpetually "wafting" him away from the country and the climate which he knows to countries and climates which he does not know, and which he describes in the style of a prize poem. Cowper's landscapes, too, are peopled with the peasantry of England; Thomson's, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... doubt of it,' said I; and having given orders for dinner, I sat down to muse on the occurrences ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher

... 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

... used a European language. They were deeply interested in whatever marked a step forward in their country's civilization. The opening of a gymnasium in Mitau (1775) was a joyful occasion, which inspired Hurwitz's Hebrew muse, and at the centennial celebration of the surrender of Riga to Peter the Great (July 4, 1810), the craving of the Jewish heart, avowed in a German poem, was expressed "in the name of the local Hebrew community ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... has not attained to this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles. Many are the noble words in which poets speak of the actions which they record, but they do not speak of them by any rules of art, they are inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... Come hither my muse and give me a start, And let me give praise to the one famous art; For it's not an M.P. or a Mayor that I toast, But the ancient Wool-comber, ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright



Words linked to "Muse" :   Melpomene, cogitate, bethink, Thalia, theologize, muser, contemplate, premeditate, theologise, mull, source, Urania, cerebrate, Erato, ruminate, ponder, reflect, study, meditate, speculate, chew over, terpsichore, Euterpe, Clio, seed, think over, calliope, excogitate, introspect, musing, germ, think, Greek deity, consider, puzzle, wonder



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