"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... telling of the delights of lying prostrate within the leafy fastnesses of the forest deep, but I am forced to believe these poets were elsewhere when engaged in inditing their immortal lines. On suitable occasions I have myself indulged in poesy; but I am quite certain I could not court the muse while ants were crawling on my limbs and even invading my garments, as in the present ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... thyself, goddess Muse, daughter of Zeus, tell of the labour and wiles of the Colchian maiden. Surely my soul within me wavers with speechless amazement as I ponder whether I should call it the lovesick grief of mad passion or a panic flight, through which she ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... BOTANIC MUSE! who in this latter age Led by your airy hand the Swedish sage, Bad his keen eye your secret haunts explore On dewy dell, high wood, and winding shore; 35 Say on each leaf how tiny Graces dwell; How laugh the Pleasures ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... silver age, Inspiration is still Grace, but just beginning to be complicated by human artifice. The poet Orpheus perpetually contemplates God, but the Muse is always at his elbow, the symbol of human art is already born; and that great human manifestation of God, Song, brings with ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... passion's fitful hues Or pleasure's reckless breath, For Nature's beauty to thy virgin muse ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of 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
... fix the places of both of them in the scale of good. First in the scale is measure; the second place is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason and wisdom; the fourth, to knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures; and here the Muse says 'Enough.' ...
— Philebus • Plato
... Homer, from his partiality to that poet; Riculphus, archbishop of Mentz, chose the name of Dametas, from an eclogue of Virgil: another member took that of Candidus; Eginhard, the Emperor's biographer, was called Calliopus, from the Muse Calliope; Alcuin received, from his country, the name of Albinus; the archbishop Theodulfe was called Pindar; the abbot Adelard was called Augustine; Charlemagne, as the man of God's own heart, was ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... all regret, the face will shine Upon me while I muse alone; And that dear voice, I once have known, Still speak to me of me ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... neither,' said Bella. 'Not that my life has been lonely, for I could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going on like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners, and Lavvy being spiteful—though of course I am very fond of them both. I wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have no more of what they ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... figure and a finer lover, and it is pleasant after reading the pages in which the authors of these essays trace the career of Dryden's epitome to turn to those volumes of the great Frenchman, to read the account of the duel with de Wardes and invoke a new blessing on the muse of fiction. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... simple story. Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles Through the green lanes of the country, Where the tangled barberry-bushes Hang their tufts of crimson berries Over stone walls gray with mosses, Pause by some neglected graveyard, For awhile to muse, and ponder On a half-effaced inscription, Written with little skill of song-craft, Homely phrases, but each letter Full of hope and yet of heart-break, Full of all the tender pathos Of the Here and the Hereafter,— Stay, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... with kindness and actual thanks; Dumas wrote a preface for her; Madame Recamier obtained her pension; the brilliant Sophie Gay, now Madame Emile de Girardin, wrote of her poetry, "How could one depict better the luxury of grief?" M. Raspail, the austere republican, called her the tenth muse, the muse of virtue; and Sainte-Beuve himself, thinking less of her literary life than of her family life and manifold compassions, terms her the "Mater Dolorosa of poetry." His memoir, however, is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... wistfulness of Pan and Victoria, the kindly humour of Svoermere and Benoni, the autumn-tinted resignation of the Wanderer with the Mute—they follow as the seasons do, each with a charm of its own, yet all deriving from one source. His muse at first is Iselin, the embodiment of adolescent longing, the dream of those "whom delight flies because they give her chase." The hopelessness of his own pursuit fills him with pity for mortals under ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... hast said already; thou hast said that thou didst tell that man, that the lady asked you, whether he knew anything of the business, and thou toldest her, he did not? Now I would know what that business was. [Still he made no answer, but seemed to muse.] ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... stationmaster at Llanidloes, was appointed to the management of this little line. The duties were not particularly arduous, and, in any case, "Ceiriog" was apt to take life with a light heart. Whether he sat in his office or in the cosy corner of some favourite rural inn the muse burned brightly within him, and, from his remote retreat among the hills which look down on the infant Severn, he poured out his soul in poetry, which ranks high in Celtic literature. Welsh verse always suffers ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... brother-in-law. "Dear me, Gregory," she said. "We've had the tragic muse to supper, haven't we. What is the matter, what has been the matter with Madame von ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... oft this vyce doth many one abuse That whan they ar departyd from the daunce On lust and synne contynually they muse Hauynge therin theyr wyll and theyr pleasaunce Than fall they oft to great mysgouernaunce As folys gyuyn to worke vnprofytable So in my shyp they well ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... discourse, my Muse doth here intend, The honor of Saint Patrick to defend, And speake of his adventrous accidents, Of his brave fortunes, and their brave events, That if her pen were made of Cromwell's rump, Yet she should weare ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... In these our blessed Times of Reformation, When Conventicling is so much in Fashion. And yet— That mutinous Tribe less Factions do beget, Than your continual differing in Wit; Your Judgment's (as your Passions) a Disease: Nor Muse nor Miss your Appetite can please; You're grown as nice as queasy Consciences, Whose each Convulsion, when the Spirit moves, Damns every thing that Maggot disapproves. With canting Rule you wou'd the Stage refine, And to dull Method all our Sense confine. With th' Insolence ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the same strain to Lord Grey, he speaks of his "rude rimes, the which a rustic muse did weave, in salvage soil." It is idle to speculate what difference of form the Faery Queen might have received, if the design had been carried out in the peace of England and in the society of London. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Lord with gracious eyes Those heavenly lamps which give the muses light To view my muse with your ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... swelling, gigantic diction, resembles rather the beating of drums and the shouts of battle, than the noble harmony of the trumpets. The elevation and grandeur of his genius would not permit him to speak the language of other men, so that his Muse seemed rather to walk in stilts, than in the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... gentlemen, if I say I think that we have need of a more rigorous scholastic rule; such an asceticism, I mean, as only the hardihood and devotion of the scholar himself can enforce. We live in the sun and on the surface—a thin, plausible, superficial existence, and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our shallow and frivolous way of life, how can greatness ever grow? Come now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners and do chores, and suffer, and weep, ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... the gray old wolf goes to his den to muse over what has sent Joe Woods on a quest ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... of the redeemed, when, having been purified from all evil, it should again become "very good." Here, on these scenes of unrivalled beauty, Southey, and Lovell, and Coleridge, and Cottle have loved to meditate; and the wondrous boy Chatterton fed his muse amid these rare exhibitions of the power and wisdom of the Godhead. A Roman encampment is still visible on the summit of the rocks. We were all sorry, to see such havoc going on among the quarries, where, to use Southey's language on this subject, they are "selling off the ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... parting with me. You see you can't make a mother see that leaving her is for her son's benefit. No,' he said, 'it's gospel truth, there is no love to compare with a mother's;' and he added, 'Though I love the muse, and love and court her as a knight would court his ladye love, I love my mother, who, dear soul, never understood a word of poetry in her life—and sister is almost as bad. But, bless them both, they will be glad enough when I ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... Hungary and the late Emperor, to decide their pretensions by a single combat; in which case he offered himself as the Bavarian champion; but in this endeavour he also proved unsuccessful. Then turning his attention to the delights of poetry, he became so enamoured of the muse, that he neglected every other consideration, and she as usual gradually conducted him to the author's never-failing goal—a place of rest appointed for all those sinners whom the profane love of poesy hath ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Such an attempt of course must have difficulty which no genius could surmount. But he saw and showed the connexion between nature and the affections of the soul. He pierced the emblematic or spiritual character of the visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his shade-loving muse hover over and interpret the lower parts of nature; he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the foul material forms, and has given in epical parables a theory of insanity, of beasts, of unclean ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... upon a model of versification all but obsolete. This rondo, it is unnecessary to conceal, was to be an ode addressed to a young widow by whom he had been captivated, and whom he was anxious to marry, and the tenor of his muse was intended to prove that when once a man has found an object in all respects worthy of his affections, he should love her "in all simplicity." Whether the aphorism were universally true was not very material to the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... prominent facade with a provincial's eye; for despite his travels he was not very familiar with London. Exeter Hall naturally took his mind back to his Uncle Boldero, that great and ardent Nonconformist, and his own godly youth. It was laughable to muse upon what his uncle would say and think, did the old man know that his nephew had run away with a girl, meaning to seduce her in Paris. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... heard by him for a long while together; and coming to a 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 back might be much more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... sketches of the actors of the day.[E] As to the newer plays, Gifford said, "All the fools in the kingdom seem to have exclaimed with one voice, Let us write for the theatre!" Latter-day croakers would have us believe that the Tragic Muse, indignant at the desecration of her English altars, took flight across the ocean, alighting in solemn majesty at the Old Park Theatre of New York, but that she disappeared utterly in the final conflagration of that histrionic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the Vale of Llangollen certainly exceed every idea I had formed of their grandeur, and on my arrival at the inn in the village, the muse ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... love of verse, Dwight announced his rising genius (these are the words of the "Connecticut Magazine and New Haven Gazette") by versions of two odes of Horace, and by "America," a poem after the manner of Pope's "Windsor Forest." At the age of nineteen he invoked the venerable Muse who has been called in as the "Poet's Lucina," since Homer established her professional reputation, and dashed boldly at the epic,—"the greatest work human nature is capable of." His great work was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... and defense. His tenacity to the ideals of his youth is impressively illustrated here. In his own work he has created a new idealism. But let it not be thought that his understanding of tragedy and his sense of human values have changed. The charwoman may, in very truth, be a Muse of tragedy, all grief is of an equal sacredness, and even the incomparable Hassenreuter—wind-bag, chauvinist and consistent Goetheaner—is forced by the essential soundness of his heart to blurt out an admission of the basic ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... A Bachelor's Establishment The Government Clerks Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Muse of the Department Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis Beatrix A Man of Business Gaudissart II. The Unconscious Humorists ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... send to Covent Garden for huge nosegays, and get out the best bottle of Burgundy. We will pass an evening worthy of Horace, and with garlands and libations honour the muse of painting.' ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... be intolerable in prose is tolerable in the introduction to a poem. See the long interval at the beginning of Paradise Lost between "Of man's first disobedience" and "Sing, heavenly Muse." Compare also the beginning of Paradise ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... that the gayety of nations was eclipsed by the death of Garrick, he did not mean that a mere barren amusement had lost one of its professors. When Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, and said he had achieved immortality by putting his name on the hem of her garment, he meant something more than a pretty compliment, for her name can never die. To give genuine and wholesome entertainment is a very large function of the stage, and without that entertainment very many lives would ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... maintained that the richest, the truest, and most natural, if not altogether the most extensive province, had been unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, by a vast superiority, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... King, "Peace to thine eagle-borne Dead nestling, and this honor after death, Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone, Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn, And Lancelot won, methought, ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... your soul could not but know mine that That gave up in your ghost but just now his: As soul is known from soul so is your ghost Known to the Muses by my muse ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... none, words can heap up in [Greek: ia] and [Greek: azei], But mid the verdure of laurels eternally green, and by Castaly's ever pure fountains, There found he all broken and voiceless the pipe that, in rage at these poets profaning, At these now-a-day sons of Marsyas, the noble old Muse ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the horses are ready, and we have further to go," broke in upon the muse of Lebanon. The day's work had to be finished, and time was short; so we rode away to the bitumen pits in the neighbourhood of Cocaba. These are not worked in warm weather, for the people are afraid of the possible effects of their ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the gallery; Glastonbury resumed his labours in the hall, where he was copying an escutcheon; and after hovering a short time restlessly around his tutor, now escaping into the garden that he might muse over Henrietta Temple undisturbed, and now returning for a few minutes to his companion, lest the good Glastonbury should feel mortified by his neglect, Ferdinand broke away altogether and wandered ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... traduction of the Muse I served, I kept going over and over the details of Louise Harman's plan, as the girl beside me had outlined it, bending above the smudgy sketch-book. "To make them think the flight is for Paris," she had urged, "to Paris by way of Lisieux. ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... the unwilling muse; for on the table lay a number of sheets of paper covered with unfortunate verses, which obstinately refused to rhyme. He seemed to have finally abandoned this occupation in despair—flying for refuge to his window, from which he had seen his ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... des The Muse of the Department Eugenie Grandet A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Government Clerks Scenes from a ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... when the chilling hand of death Shall lead me to my house in heaven And to the damp, repulsive earth, In cold embrace, this form be given; Oh, need I ask thee, wilt thou then, Upon each bright and pleasant eve, Seek out the solitary glen, To muse beside my lonely grave? And while fond memory back shall steal, To scenes and days forever fled; Oh, let the veil of love conceal The frailties of ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... first 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 sold by "Lane and Walker, St. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that a man ought to be able to return to the Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... source, quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction, a very commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems now-we mean it only as against the poets thew. There is a growing desire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless, sincere, and although very learned, still learned without art. No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are so. With ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of twenty-two, when a few sounds from the lyre of Malherbe, heard by accident, awoke in him the muse which slept. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... utterances are inscribed in bronze; the poor fellows remain historical and sublime in spite of themselves. And I do not find that all this is done in the ages of barbarism alone; it is still going on, and it molds the history of yesterday to the taste of public opinion—a Muse tyrannical and capricious, which preserves the ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... Fontenoy; the Spanish King admitted them to the Golden Fleece; they defended Maria Theresa. Landen in Flanders and Cremona knew them. A volume were needed to tell of all those swords; more than one Muse has remembered them. It was not disloyalty that drove them forth; their King was gone, they followed, the oak was smitten and brown were the leaves of ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... and returned to this oppressive sod, most unwillingly, so pleasant and enjoyable it was to be a free spirit, and above all to be in such company, notwithstanding the great danger I was in. Now I had no one to comfort me save the Muse, and she was rather moody—scarcely could I get her to bray ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... before I quit this national trait. The English naval muse, which I presume must be a Mermaid, half woman and half fish, has, by her simple and half the time, nonsensical songs, done more for the British flag than all her gunnery, or naval discipline and tactics. This inspiration of the tenth muse, with libations ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... to King James II., with a proper discourse of his own. Halley also wrote a set of Latin hexameters in praise of Newton's genius, which he printed at the beginning of the work. The last line of this specimen of Halley's poetic muse may be thus rendered: "Nor mortals nearer may approach ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... to Mrs. Siddons:—'You see, Madam, wherever you go there are no seats to be got.' Sir Joshua also paid her a fine compliment. 'He never marked his own name [on a picture],' says Northcote, 'except in the instance of Mrs. Siddons's portrait as the Tragic Muse, when he wrote his name upon the hem of her garment. "I could not lose," he said, "the honour this opportunity offered to me for my name going down to posterity on the hem of your garment."' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 246. In Johnson's Works, ed. 1787, xi. 207, we read that 'he said of Mrs. Siddons ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... stories often reprinted from London editions were those moral tales with the sub-title "Cautionary Stories in Verse." Mr. William James used these "Cautionary Verses for Children" as an example of the manner in which "the muse of evangelical protestantism in England, with the mind fixed on the ideas of danger, had at last drifted away from the original gospel of freedom." "Chronic anxiety," Mr. James continued, "marked the earlier part of this [nineteenth] century ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... when it is joyous and salubrious, is a very fine thing; but perpetual work, when it is executed with the temper which more than half the time appears to have been Balzac's, has in it something almost debasing. We constantly feel that his work would have been vastly better if the Muse of "business" had been elbowed away by her larger-browed sister. Balzac himself, doubtless, often felt in the same way; but, on the whole, "business" was what he most cared for. The "Comedie Humaine" represents an immense ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... verse superior shine, Though sensibility grace every line; Though her soft Muse be far above all praise. And female ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... 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 make something ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... with telling me, he could have wished I had rather turned my thoughts to the comic than the tragic muse; for tragedy was less fashionable, and consequently less profitable both to the house and the author, than comedy or opera. I sighed and answered, it was an ill proof of public taste, when it could receive greater pleasure from the unconnected scenes of an opera than from the fable, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... sins rather in too much than in too little invention; it would seem that Kaskel's brain, overflowing with musical ideas, wanted to put them all into this one first child of his muse. This promises well for the future, but it explains, why it lacks the great attraction of Cavalleria with which it has some relation, without imitating it in the least. The hearer's attention is tired by too ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... my mind I muse, O Love, upon thy cruelty, To death I flee, In hope therein the end of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Baillot, Pierre M.F. Baini, Abbate Giuseppe Balfe, Michael William Banck, Carl Baranius, Henrietta Barcinska, Isabella Barezzi, Margarita Bargiel, Madame, mother of Clara Wieck Bargiel, Woldemar Barisani, Doctor Barre, Leonardo Bartalozzi, Madame Beard, John Beatrice (Portinari), Dante's muse Becker, Konstantin J. Beethoven, Ludwig von Behrens, S. Belart, Hans Belderbusch, Count von Bellington, Mrs. Bellini, Vincenzo Belonda, Fraeulein von Bennett, Sterndale Berenclow Beriot, Charles Auguste de Berlioz, Hector Berlioz, Madame Betz, Franz Beyle, Marie Henri ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... it's aye a treasure, My chief, amaist my only pleasure, At hame, a-fiel', at wark, at leisure, The Muse, poor hizzie! Tho' rough an' raploch be her ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... ma's had childern jest as white as snow, and pretty as rosebuds, took after their fathers I s'pose. But I don't believe in a mixin' of the races. And when I see 'em a kissin' the pretty babys, I begun to muse a very little on the feelin's of the indignent South, at havin' a colered girl set in the same car with 'em, or on a bench in the ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... "O for a muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Cromwell like himself Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash'd in like hounds, should ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... over the royal family was boundless; his power was absolute: the treasures, of America were at his command, and he made the most infamous use of them. In short, he had made the Court of Madrid one of those places to which the indignant muse of Juvenal conducts the mother of Britanicus. There is no doubt that Godoy was one of the principal causes of all the misfortunes which have overwhelmed Spain under ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... little girl in the wreath and spangles, styled in the playbill "Miss Juliet Araminta Wife," and the incidents consisted in her various devices to foil the pursuit of the Baron and save her father. Some of these incidents were indebted to the Comic Muse, and kept the audience in a broad laugh. Her arch playfulness here was exquisite. With what vivacity she duped the High Sheriff, who had the commands of his king to take the Bandit alive or dead, into the belief that the very Lawyer ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with Fyne right there in the room? He sat perfectly still, statuesque in homely fashion, after having delivered himself of his effective assent: 'Yes. The convict,' and I, far from indulging in a reminiscent excursion into the past, remained sufficiently in the present to muse in a vague, absent-minded way on the respectable proportions and on the (upon the whole) comely shape of his great pedestrian's calves, for he had thrown one leg over his knee, carelessly, to conceal the trouble of his mind by an air of ease. But all the same the knowledge ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Psyche's lecture, you that talked The trash that made me sick, and almost sad?' 'O trash' he said, 'but with a kernel in it. Should I not call her wise, who made me wise? And learnt? I learnt more from her in a flash, Than in my brainpan were an empty hull, And every Muse tumbled a science in. A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, And round these halls a thousand baby loves Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts, Whence follows many a vacant pang; but O With me, Sir, entered in the bigger boy, The Head of all the golden-shafted ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and disappointed. For the first time she questioned Stefan's generosity, contrasting his indifference with her own absorbed interest in his work. She knew her muse trivial by comparison with his, but she loved it, and ached for the stimulus his praise ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... in the sombre clothes in which he had been accustomed for thirty-five years and more to go down to the shop in Mearns Street. And then a thought came to him which made him discard the grey-striped trousers, sit down on the edge of his bed, and muse. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... sign of my bliss!' shout I, and then 'tis ordain'd. Yet to thee only I lend a voice, as a Muse from ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... book consists of brief biographical commentaries about Beethoven, each followed by sections of quotations attributed to the muse. In these quotes, Beethoven demonstrates his intense preoccupation (or obsession) with thinking artistically and intelligently, and with helping to alleviate man's suffering by providing man with musical artworks that could enlighten him, so as to become educated enough to ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... the other Maskilim that wrote in Hebrew, but more especially of those who 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 to their Christian compatriots." The ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... such work; whiles I'll be able to dash off the verses of a song as fast as I can slip the words doon upon the paper. Whiles, again, I'll seem able never to think of a rhyme at a', and I just have to wait till the muse will visit me again. ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... mornings, in a way that entitles it to its own separate share in the general commemoration. A shadow fell upon this particular morning as from a cloud of danger, that lingered for a moment over our heads, might seem even to muse and hesitate, and then sullenly passed away into distant quarters. It is noticeable that a danger which approaches, but wheels away,—which threatens, but finally forbears to strike,—is more interesting by much on a distant ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... bitterly, dear," he said. "Do not accuse yourself so unjustly. You have done no wrong to me, or to any human being. You have done nothing but good to me, and to every human being in your reach. To me you have been more than tongue can tell—my first friend, my muse, my angel, my inspiration to all that is best, greatest, highest in human life—the goal of all my earthly, all my heavenly aspirations. That I should love you with a pure, single, ardent passion of enthusiasm was natural, was inevitable. But that you, dear, should mistake your ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... I wonder, realise in anything like its full extent the beauty and the glory of our Catholic heritage. Do we think how the Great Mother, the keeper of truth, the guardian of beauty, the muse of learning, the fosterer of progress, has given us gifts in munificent generosity, gifts that sprang from her holy bosom, to enlighten, to cheer, to guide and to help; gifts that she, large, liberal, glorious, could not but give, for she, like ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... that he was always in a gale of spirits; a great deal of the time he brooded. His Homeric nonsense alternated with fits of gloom. In spite of his late hours, whether of study or of story-telling, he was an early riser. "He would sit by the fire having uncovered the coals, and muse and ponder and soliloquize."(6) Besides his favorite Shakespeare, he had a fondness for poetry of a very different sort—Byron, for example. And he never tired of a set of stanzas in the minor key beginning: "Oh, why should the spirit of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... his pockets of pieces of bread, softer than those he used to, carry to the garden, and to put them between my teeth without passing them through his own. From the softness of the bits of bread, and my having seen my poet come out of the monastery, I surmised that his muse, like that of many of his brethren, was a bashful beggar. He walked into the city, and I followed him, intending to take him for my master if he would let me, thinking that the crumbs from his table might serve to support me, since there is no better or ampler ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... been any such, Quaker Hill would have produced artists, great and small, and writers, not a few. There is a consciousness of material for creation, and in certain families the culture which creation presupposes; but something in Quakerism has quieted the muse and banked ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... surrounds both these 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
... 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 ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... renounces her ancient claims, and implores the friendship of Aurora, the goddess of the East. This fabulous machinery, which the genius of Claudian had used and abused, is the constant and miserable resource of the muse of Sidonius.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... we do well to be on our guard against these children of fancy, for they so devote to the Muse all their treasury of sentiment, that we can no more expect them to waste a thought on the plain duties of men, than we can expect the spendthrift, who dazzles the town, 'to fritter away his money in paying his debts.' But all the world are agreed to be indulgent to the infirmities of those ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... types may be classified pretty easily. At bottom they are all of the sultana variety—playthings who occasionally venture into mixing with the serious affairs of life, but then only on pain of being ridiculous (as in the 'Employes,' or the 'Muse du Departement'); but properly confined to their drawing-rooms, with delicate cajoleries for their policy, and cunning instead of intellect. Sometimes they are cold-hearted and selfish, and then they are vicious, making victims of lovers, husbands, or fathers, consuming ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... with earnestness, as if to ascertain whether I was really as unconcerned as I affected to be. Then she seemed to muse, picking the cotton of the spotless counterpane on which she was lying, like one at a loss what ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... As the ingenious gentleman under the influence of the Tragic Muse contrived to dislocate, 'I wish you a good morning, Sir! Thank you, Sir, and I wish you the same,' ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... until the Government found it opportune to take them in hand. The greatest Italian poet and one of the greatest imaginative writers in Europe will now be able to devote himself—if his rather morbid Muse has suffered no injury—to his predestined task. Those—the comparatively few that read—whose acquaintance with this writer's work usually caused them to regret his methods, could not help admiring his personal activities, his genius for leadership and his vital fire during the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... begged him to recite one of his poems; for it appeared this all-accomplished man was beloved of the muse, and twanged the lyre as well as wielded the sword. With much persuasion and many modest apologies, Jules at length consented, took his place upon the rug, thrust one hand into his bosom, turned up his eyes, and, in a tremendous ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... impotent. This, some years hence, our poet's case may prove; But yet, he hopes, he's young enough to love. When forty comes, if e'er he live to see That wretched, fumbling age of poetry, 'Twill be high time to bid his muse adieu:— Well may he please himself, but never you. Till then, he'll do as well as he began, And hopes you will not find him less a man. Think him not duller for this year's delay; He was prepared, the women were away; And men, without their parts, can hardly play. If they, through sickness, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... dingy, the leaden waters motionless, the distant hills rough and austere. Where was that translucent sky, once brilliant as his enamoured fancy; those bowery groves of aromatic fervor wherein he had loved to roam and muse; that river of swift and sparkling light that flowed and flashed like the current of his enchanted hours? All ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... OF STATE: 'Twere well the cares of day to toss aside And welcome evening's quiet with a smile, But we who here in solemn conclave meet Can squander moment few to court the Muse; Stern duty calls, and to each patriot ear 'Tis music sweet, to which he quick responds, Then to the council board let us repair And these the mysteries of ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... muse, gazing questioningly at the whiteness of the altar flowers and those steady tongues of flame, hearing the silence, as of reverent waiting, which dwelt in the place. But, on the other hand, to give, in this her hour of weakness, that which she had refused in the hours of clear-seeing ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... an atmosphere of Indian scents and cigarette smoke, she talked and I made endless notes, while now and then, when she was meditative, her maids sang to an accompaniment of rather melancholy wooden flutes. But whenever I showed a tendency to muse ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... own name, for we are but atoms—but in the name of philology itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and tormented Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, most incurable woes; and speaks to men comfortingly of the beautiful and godlike ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to the beginning of the third book, which we had read in class that morning. "Primus ego in patriam mecum {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} deducam Musas"; "for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country." Cleric had explained to us that "patria" here meant, not a nation or even a province, but the little rural neighborhood on the Mincio where the poet was born. This was not a boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, that he might bring the Muse (but lately come to ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... greatest value it has ever received the name of poet; they demanded that the poet should be a kind of king, or seer. Half seriously, half as a product of mere scholarship, the pagan conception of the muse ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... supposed to be so, from the banks of the Garonne. Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and queenly to adorn her, rich with the spoils of victories not all bought with battle-axe and sword, stately with a pride that had won its just and inalienable majesty from elastic centuries of progress and culture, History, the muse to whom fewest songs were sung, yet whose march was music's sublimest voice, trembled upon the brink of the Dark Ages, and leaped, in her armor, into the abyss of ignorance before her. A poetry the purest, an ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Head of Orpheus. Edward Berge The mourning muse has just chanced upon the severed head of Orpheus which had been cast into the stream by the Thracian maidens; short pieces of marble are left ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... 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 immortalize her trust. But fairer wreaths are due, though never paid, To those who, posted at the shrine of Truth, ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... which she has furnished Dr. Bartlett of her poetic ardour, we are happy to find that neither the Canadian atmosphere nor the circumstances attendant upon the alteration of her name, have dimmed the light of that Muse which, in past years, engaged many of our juvenile hours with pleasure and profit.'—Montreal Gazette, 1833.] Mr. Charles Lindsey has given us, among other works, a life of Wm. Lyon Mackenzie,—with whom he was connected by marriage—valuable for its ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... Muse, so often scorned by me, The hope of sorrow and the balm of care,— Give to me speech and song, that I may be Unchid by grief; grant me such graces rare As other ministering souls may never see Who boast thy laurel, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul, The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll I lay my hand on, and not death estranges My spirit from communion of thy song— These memories and these melodies that throng Veil'd porches of a Muse funereal— These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold As though a hand were in my hand to hold, Or through mine ears a mourning ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... whose immortal fingers did imprint That heavenly path with many a curious dint That runs along his back; but my rude pen Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men, Much less of powerful gods: let it suffice That my slack Muse sings of Leander's eyes; Those orient cheeks and lips, exceeding his That leapt into the water for a kiss Of his own shadow, and, despising many, Died ere he could enjoy the love of any. Had wild Hippolytus Leander seen, Enamour'd of ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... know whether it is meant for a saint or a muse, a goddess or a fate; but to me it is only a beautiful woman, bigger, lovelier, and more imposing than any woman I ever saw," answered Fanny, slowly, trying to express the impression the ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... the rapt poet's step may rove, And yield the muse the day: There Beauty, led by timid Love, May shun the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... a sort of black gloom intended to attract the Muse of Strategy. He was always better at swift action in the open and optimism in the face of visible danger, than at matching wits against something he could not see beginning or ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Muse. AEsthetic Papers, Hawthorne's contributions to. Alcott, Amos Bronson. Aliston, Washington. American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, The, Hawthorne edits. American Monthly Magazine, The; Hawthorne's contributions to; Benjamin writes ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... to yawn, And, lolling backward in his elbow-chair, With an insipid kind of stupid stare, Picking his teeth, twirling his seals about— Churchill, you have a poem coming out: 10 You've my best wishes; but I really fear Your Muse, in general, is too severe; Her spirit seems her interest to oppose, And where she makes one friend, makes twenty foes. C. Your lordship's fears are just; I feel their force, But only feel it as a thing of course. The man whose hardy spirit shall engage To lash, the vices of a guilty ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... We are fairly in the vein Let Us proceed to build the lofty strain. Ho! bid the Muse to enter and salute The burnished toe of Our Imperial boot! Hush! guns! and, ye howitzers, cease your fire! We, WILLIAM, are about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... to every one that approached her. She carried her heart in her hand. Ye, I doubt not, have already reckoned upon the triumph, and counted the advantages. But, if I do not much mistake the divine lessons I am commissioned to deliver, the muse shall tell a ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... "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] With danger; but his heart is full ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... pampered child of genius, of fortune, and the muse; but if Goethe had greater celebrity he never enjoyed half the worldly prosperity of Longfellow. While Emerson was earning a hard livelihood by lecturing in the West, and Whittier was dwelling in a country farm-house, Longfellow occupied one of the most desirable ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... was struck by the fact that nearly all the songs were of an extremely melancholy nature—the chief objects celebrated by the Muse being withered flowers, little coffins, the corpses of sweethearts, last farewells, and hopeless partings on the lonely shore. Tears flow; ladies sigh; voices choke; hearts break; children die; lovers prove untrue. It was tragic, and I confess I could have wept myself—not at the ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... 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 heaven, by the sun's team untrod, Hath took no print of the approaching light, And all the spangled host ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... to await the advent of a Queen of Song from the warm South. The South has had its turn; it has fulfilled its mission; the other end of the balance now comes up. The Northern Muse must sing her lesson to the world. Her fresher, chaster, more intellectual, and (as they only SEEM to some) her colder strains come in due season to recover our souls from the delicious languor of a Music which has been so wholly of the Feelings, that, for the want of some intellectual ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... wand of Muse— Queen Posy's shaft of subtle art— Seared to the distant heights of blue, Past onyx lees that Sunsets dyed, And put to Vellum Couplets' fuse, Sped same to Fate with timid heart, Then shed dim tears in Sorrow's pew, This work's ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... interval of two days before the time agreed upon for the departure of the Pickwickians to Dingley Dell, Mr. Weller sat himself down in a back room at the George and Vulture, after eating an early dinner, to muse on the best way of disposing of his time. It was a remarkably fine day; and he had not turned the matter over in his mind ten minutes, when he was suddenly stricken filial and affectionate; and it occurred to him so strongly that he ought to go down and see his father, and pay his duty ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Society, organized by the vanity of all to the profit of the vanity of each, kindled in me a desire to show myself frank and independent. I murmured, loud enough to be heard by all my neighbors,—"Of a truth, the Country's Muse is not Melpomene!" Madame Emile de Girardin, when Mademoiselle Delphine Gay and in the most brilliant period of her poetical youth, had styled herself "the Country's Muse"; her admirers had adopted the title, and it had remained her poetical ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Kilmarnock," "Luther's Hymn," the grand "Old Hundred," and many other 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 ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... she / sythens I knowe your thought your worde and dede / and here to be one Dyspayre you not / for it auayleth nought Ioye cometh after / whan the payne is gone Conforte yourselfe / and muse not so alone Doubt ye no thynge / but god wyll so agre That at the last / ye ...
— The coforte of louers - The Comfort of Lovers • Stephen Hawes
... so cheerful and gay, Whose words ever fulsomely fall, Oh, pity your friend, who to-day Has become a Society's thrall. Allow me to muse and to sigh, Nor talk of the change that ye find; None once was more happy than I; But, alas! I've left ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... sprawled in silence on their platform, breathing a little deeper when deepest approval stirred them, a little more quickly when her Muse took hold of Maga and thrilled her to expression of the thoughts unknown to people of the dinning walls ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... Pallas sighed, "It will not do; Against the Muse I've sinned, oh!" And her torn rhymes sent flying through Olympus's back window. Then, packing up a peplus clean, She took the shortest path thence, And opened, with a mind serene, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... all men' may be a glorious motto, yet when we view these crimes (and the carved initials which deface so many of our most sacred monuments) we cannot but muse that there are many who should never be free—at least from the restraint of discipline. 'None can love freedom heartily, but good men: the rest ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... performed, in his letters to Godwin; and that his description of Godwin's deportment, of his own feelings, and of the behaviour of the audience on the memorable night that witnessed its utter failure, has bequeathed to us a comedy over which the tragic Muse herself might well ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... much of my service at 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. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... harlot dies. But such as skilfull are, and cunning Dames indeede, By dayly practise doe it well, yea sure they doe exceede. They lay their colours so, as he that is full wise, May easly be deceiu'd therein, if he doe trust his eyes. I not a little muse, what madnesse makes them paint Their faces, waying how they keepe the stooue by meere constraint. For seldome when, vnlesse on Church or marriage day A man shall see the Dames abroade, that are of best aray. The Russie ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... epic poet had now passed and the lyric took its place, making its first appearance, like the epic, in Ionia and the AEgean islands, but finding its most appreciative audience and enthusiastic support in Athens, the coming home of the muse. Song became the prevailing literary demand, and was supplied abundantly by such choice singers as Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Simonides, and others of the soft and cheerful vein, the biting satires of Archilochus, the noble odes ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... all. For who but you were with me in the spirit through all the struggle, helping, supporting, encouraging, until you seemed to me my muse, my soul, my inner and purer and higher self. Dear, I wronged you when I connected your love with this world's pride. I wronged you bitterly, and I have suffered for it ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... transgression from his legitimate ground, as may be seen in his "Holy Family" in the National Gallery. But we doubt if the critique upon his "Mrs Siddons" is quite fair. The chair and the footstool may not be on the cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour reconciling the bodily presence of the muse with the demon and fatal ministers of the drama that attend her. Though Sir Joshua's words are here brought against him, it is without attention to their application in his critique, which condemned their form and character as not historical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... cautious, with no partial aim, My muse e'er sought to blast another's fame."—Lloyd, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... his writings: and many of his Studies, as well as his Scherzos, depict a concentrated exasperation and despair, which are sometimes manifested in bitter irony, sometimes in intolerant hauteur. These dark apostrophes of his muse have attracted less attention, have been less fully understood, than his poems of more tender coloring. The personal character of Chopin had something to do with this general misconception. Kind, courteous, and affable, of tranquil and almost joyous manners, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... happiness; and never was happiness more deserved. Even at that early age, I often could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... had sung against all battles, and again In their high praise and glory; he had called Reviewing "the ungentle craft," and then[559] Became as base a critic as e'er crawled— Fed, paid, and pampered by the very men By whom his muse and morals had been mauled: He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose, And more of both than ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... for the monarch-murder'd soldier's tomb You wove th' unfinish'd wreath of saddest hues; And to that holier chaplet added bloom, Besprinkling it with Jordan's cleansing dews. But lo! your Henderson awakes the Muse— His spirit beckon'd from the mountain's height! You left the plain, and soar'd mid richer views. So Nature mourn'd, when sank the first day's light, With stars, unseen before, spangling ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... have times and seasons when he cannot blossom. Very often it shall happen that his mind will lie fallow between novels or stories for weeks and months at a stretch; when the suggestions of the friendly editor shall fail to fruit in the essays or articles desired; when the muse shall altogether withhold herself, or shall respond only in a feeble dribble of verse which he might sell indeed, but which it would not be good business for him to put on the market. But supposing him to be a very diligent ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... birds. Where are you, brave singers, in this year '68? I know not—you are all scattered. Your guns have ceased their thunder, your voices sound no more. But I think you sometimes remember, as you muse, in these dull years, those gay moonlight nights on the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within;"[66]—whatever is pitiful in the weakness, sublime in the strength, or terrible in the perversion of human intellect, these are the domain of Tragedy. Sibyl and Muse at once, she holds aloft the book of human fate, and is the interpreter of its mysteries. It is not, then, making a mock of the serious sorrows of real life, nor of those human beings who lived, suffered ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... 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 ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... gods almost dead, malign, Starved of their ancient dues, Incense and fruit, fire, blood and wine And an unclean muse. ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... engraver—a restless, unsettled, capricious man, whose life was nothing but an investigation, a transformation, a perpetual battle with his vast genius. As a young man, when he was already famous as a poet, he abandoned the Muse and entered politics; he emigrated with the stadtholder to England, and gave lessons in London to earn a livelihood. He tired of England and went to Germany; bored by German romanticism, he returned to Holland, where Louis Bonaparte overwhelmed him with favors. ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... Or Danish chiefs, enriched by savage spoil, To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine, Reared the huge heap; or, in thy hallowed round, Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line; Or here those kings in solemn state were crowned; Studious to trace thy wondrous origin, We muse on ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... 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 soul to heaven aspire, To fancy, freedom, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... 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 ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... into the garden these warm latter days, and muse. To muse is to sit in the sun, and not think of anything. I am not sure but goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does out of a sweet apple roasted before the fire. The late September and October sun of this latitude is something ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... day. A son of his became a priest, and a famous preacher and writer on religious subjects. Another child, a daughter, took the veil. Lady Rens, who was not clever, although she was at one time almost universally considered to have the face of a muse, shared in the family ardour for the Church, but was far too fond of the world to leave it. While she was very young she met Lord Rens, a Lifeguardsman of twenty-six, who called himself a Protestant, but who was really quite happy without ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... spend the day in Brussels, and he followed them; he still wanted to walk about and muse and ponder, and Brussels is a very nice, gay, and civilized city for such a purpose—a little Paris, with charming streets and shops and a charming arcade, and very good places to eat and drink in, and hear ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier |
