"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... exerted his highest genius in depicting the frightful scene described by him, when Ugolino perished of hunger in the tower of Pisa. Alfieri, Metastasio, Corneille, Lope de Vega, and all the great masters of the tragic muse, have sought in his works the germs of their finest conceptions. The first of these tragedians marked two-thirds of the Inferno and Paradiso as worthy of being committed to memory. Modern novelists have found in his prolific mind the storehouse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... breakfast the next morning; but after little more than a nominal presentation of herself there, she escaped from Rose's looks and words of comment and innuendo and regained her own room. And there she sat down in the window to muse, having carefully locked out Clam. She had reason. Clam would certainly have decided that her mistress 'wanted fixing,' if she could have watched the glowing intent eyes with which Elizabeth was ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... represent the usual Andante, the Tempo di Menuetto, the familiar "Scherzo" and, as the two movements thus interpreted seemed rather paltry, and none of the usual effects could be got with them, our musicians came to regard the entire symphony as a sort of accidental hors d'oeuvre of Beethoven's muse—who, after the exertions with the A major symphony had chosen "to take things rather easily." Accordingly after the Allegretto Scherzando, the time of which is invariably "dragged" somewhat, the Tempo di Minuetto is universally served ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... a fanatic to-night, for you read history not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocian for the Greek, and Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, and John Brown the ripe fruit of our noonday, then, dipping ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... bridegroom in the ballad of "The Mistletoe Bough," and with more success. Madame Ling was reading a novel at home. Mr. Carlyle has quoted Tobias Smollett as to the undesirability of giving the historical muse that latitude which is not uncommon in France, and we prefer to leave the tale of Ling's where Mr. Carlyle left ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... but he has his by him. His verse runs like the tap, and his invention as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spiggot. In thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose a-fire together. The press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a six-pence or two in reward of the baser coin his pamphlet. His works would scarce sell for three half-pence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman; ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... why, among so many men of talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth? Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... again midnight. My fire burns cheerfully; the room is filled with my old friend's sober voice; and I am left to muse upon the story we have just ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... our amusement at the ghastly drollery of the two delvers with a shock of horror. That the unconscious Hamlet should stumble on this grave of all others, that it should be here that he should pause to muse humorously on death and decay,—all this prepares us for the revulsion of passion in the next scene, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and even in old text. Then I sketched out a rough design for an ornamental heading, with a wreath of flowers encircling the words "To Zozzy," and beneath this work of Art I inscribed the effort of my muse, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... wand of Muse— Queen Posy's shaft of subtle art— Seared to the distant heights of blue, Past onyx lees that Sunsets dyed, And put to Vellum Couplets' fuse, Sped same to Fate with timid heart, Then shed dim tears in Sorrow's pew, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... that blurs my sight, I regretfully awaken to the here and now. And is it possible, I sorrowfully muse, that all this glory can have fled away?—that more than twenty long, long years are spread between me and that happy night? And is it possible that all the dear old faces —Oh, quit it! quit it! Gather the old scraps up and wad 'em ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... scrap with an easy air. "Miss Morrison's handwriting, I think." He held it up before him and read aloud, "'I love my love with an H because he is Handsome.' This appears to be a confidence of Miss Morrison to her Muse. Whom do you think she refers ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Bryant was considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies. Who now reads "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America," "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America," "The Day of Doom," "M'Fingal," or "The Columbiad?" Skipping a generation from Barlow's death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest period was the centre: Halleck, Pierpont, Sprague, Drake, Dana, Percival, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... when I talk," answered he, "and get through a great deal of work; then I give over: but you prose, and muse, and sigh, and prose again." ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... As I muse, the remembrance of a great city comes back to me,—a city walled up to the sky and roaring like the sea. The memory of that roar returns first; then the vision defines: a chasm, which is a street, between mountains, which are houses. I am tired, because I have ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... picture things otherwise. I never thought of thanking her, or of asking myself, "Is she also happy? Is she also contented?" Often on some pretext or another I would leave my lessons and run to her room, where, sitting down, I would begin to muse aloud as though she were not there. She was forever mending something, or tidying the shelves which lined her room, or marking linen, so that she took no heed of the nonsense which I talked—how that I meant to become a general, to marry a beautiful woman, to buy a chestnut horse, to, ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... moment a beatific presence made itself sensible, and the Easy Chair recognized the poet's Muse, who had come for him. The poet put the question to her. "Young?" she said. "Why, you and I are always young, silly boy! Get your hat, and come over to Long Island City with me, and see the pussy-willows along the railroad-banks. The mosquitoes are beginning ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Mr. Frederick Tennyson's fame has been eclipsed by the Laureate's; and there was little chance of a hearing for the author of the Martyr'd Souldier when James Shirley was at work. From the address To the Courteous Reader, it would seem that Henry Shirley did not seek for popularity: "his Muse," we are told, was "seldome seene abroad." Evidently he was not a professional playwright. In his attempts to gain the ear of the groundlings he is often coarse without being comic; and sometimes (a less pardonable fault) he is tedious. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... which this branch was also brought. It is a painting in encaustic, and has been used as a door for his oven by the contadino who dug it up—yet it remains a marvel of genius. The subject is a female head—a muse, or perhaps only a portrait; the delicacy and mellowness of the flesh tints equal those of Raphael or Leonardo, and a lock of hair lying across her breast is so exquisitely painted that it seems to move with her breath. The features are of the large-eyed regular Greek type, womanly dignity ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... she knows it but too well, For I heard when Venus' dove In her ear did softly tell That kisses were the seals of love: O muse not then though it be so, Kisses make men ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... the poet in person is the relater. But he hides his own personality in that of the Muse he invokes; and offers himself to his auditors as the Voice only by which she speaks. She, the Muse, is thought to be throughout a faithful recorder; for she is supposed to have access to know all; and however marvellous may be the narrations, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... pathetic, sometimes sarcastic, and not seldom sublime. And we have here an additional proof, that a true poetic Spirit, in whatever Breast it inhabits, will create Thoughts, Language, and Numbers, worthy of the Muse, however unfavourable the occupation ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... but, like the College Tribe, Take not that Physick which their Rules prescribe. I scorn to praise a plodding, formal Fool, Insipidly correct, and dull by Rule: Homer, with all his Nodding, I would chuse, Before the more exact Sicilian Muse. Who'd not be Dryden; tho' his Faults are great, Sooner than our Laborious Laureat? Not but a decent Neatness, I confess, In Writing is requir'd, as well as Dress. Yet still in both the unaffected Air Will always please the Witty and ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... moment from the gravity of the historic muse, we might conjure up the picture of this festival, we would invoke the imagination of the reader to that sacred ground decorated with the profusest triumphs of Grecian art—all Greece assembled from her continent, her ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... evening, sunny, soft, and still, The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill, To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour, Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower; Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell, Emerging gently from the leafy dell, By fancy plann'd; ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... and banal sitting-room they sat down on either side the fire. Constance put a little shawl round her shoulders, pushed her spectacles into her grey hair, folded her hands, and sighed an enormous sigh: "Oh, dear!" She was the tragic muse, aged, and in ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... gates with gold o'erlaid, Wide oped each Argive shrine, And from the altar hallow'd flames arise; Amidst the rites divine, Joying the Muse to aid, Breath'd the brisk pipe its sweet notes to the skies; Accordant to the tuneful strain Swell'd the loud acclaiming voice, Now with Thyestes to rejoice: He, all on fire the glorious prize to gain, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... his Muse a gravely jocund note in his "Seasons' Comfort." He, too, of the four fellow-versifiers shows the greater aptitude for experiments, though it may perhaps be felt that his touch is nowhere quite so sure, nor his artistic feeling so direct ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... poet's step may rove, And yield the muse the day; There beauty led by timid love May shun the ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of his mother, ob. 1637. At Horton were composed, or inspired, Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus and others of his nominally minor but really sweetest and most enjoyable poems. In this retirement the Muse paid him her earliest visits, before he had thrown himself away on politics or Canaanitish mythology. Peeping in upon his handsome young face in its ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... our own name, for we are but atoms—but in the name of philology itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and tormented Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, most incurable woes; and speaks to men ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... be more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according to the ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... example was imitated by Bologna and Pisa, and the commentators, if they performed but little service to literature, augmented the veneration which beheld a sacred or moral allegory in all the images of his mystic muse. His birth and his infancy were discovered to have been distinguished above those of ordinary men: the author of the Decameron, his earliest biographer, relates that his mother was warned in a dream of the importance of her pregnancy: and it was found, by others, that at ten years of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... travellers round their camp-fire draw, Or heard the plashing of their weary oars. And every place whereon they rested grew Happier for pure and gracious womanhood, And men whose names for stainless honor stood, Founders of States and rulers wise and true. The Muse of history yet shall make amends To those who freedom, peace, and justice taught, Beyond their dark age led the van of thought, And left unforfeited the name of Friends. O mother State, how foiled was thy design The gain was theirs, the loss ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... startled while I sat in my muse to hear a footstep coming. A steady, regular footstep; no light trip of children; and the hands were in the field, and this was not a step like any of them. My first thought was, the overseer's come to spy me out. The ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... common; there is nothing particularly new or exceptional in the style or the arrangement of the scenes; it is not so much a parody or a mock-heroic, as an heroic work inspired with comic irony. It is not a new kind of Saga, it is the old Saga itself put to the ordeal by the Comic Muse, and proving its temper under the severest ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... walk himself to a standstill. Unfortunately the head will continue working when the legs are at rest. And when he sat opposite to her at meal-times, Frances Freeland would gaze piercingly at his forehead and muse: 'The dear boy looks much better, but he's getting a little line between his brows—it IS such a pity!' It worried her, too, that the face he was putting on their little holiday together was not quite as full as she could have wished—though the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Danish chiefs, enriched by savage spoil, To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine, Reared the huge heap; or, in thy hallowed round, Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line; Or here those kings in solemn state were crowned; Studious to trace thy wondrous origin, We muse on many ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... be the model of historical narrative to the writers of Rome; but the circumstances of the times, aided perhaps by the splendid exertion of genius in other departments of literature, suggested a new resource, which promised not only to animate, but embellish the future productions of the historic Muse. This innovation consisted in an attempt to penetrate the human heart, and explore in its innermost recesses the sentiments and secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. By connecting moral effects with their probable internal and external causes, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... were thrown together daily in the drab little house by the river. Now a boy and a girl thrown together commonly make the speaking donkeys of comedy. Yet one never may be sure that they may not be the dumb struggling creatures of the tragic muse. Heaven knows Margaret Mueller was funny enough in her capers. For she related her antics—her grand pouts, her elaborate condescensions, her crass coquetry and her hidings and seekings—into what she called a "case." In the only wisdom she knew, to open a flirtation was to have a "case." ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... shall by-and-by develop a rivalry like that of the Italian cities, and that the difficulty of fame beyond our own village may make us more content with doing than desirous of the name of it. For, after all, History herself is for the most part but the Muse of Little Peddlington, and Athens raised the heaviest crop of laurels yet recorded on a few acres of rock, without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... father assented. "I declare," he added, after a moment's muse, "I felt sorry for the feller settin' up there alone, with nobody to do for him but that old thing he's got in. She can't cook any more than—" He desisted for want of a comparison, and said: "Such ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and classical numbers may promise themselves much gratification from the muse of Brooks, while the many-stringed harp of his lady, the Norna of the Courier Harp, which none but she can touch, has ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... burn brighter, than in those of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem? Not a name meets thee, that has not belonged to a hero! If thou grievest to find all dissimilar but the name; yet mayest thou still muse, contemplative, over the tomb and ashes of him, whom thy mind has shadowed forth, as a noble light in ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... This reputation he had maintained against all comers till he met the man now closeted with him. He envied the King his poetic talent, and would fain have outdone him in the art of poesy. But even with Clement Marot's help he had been utterly unable to woo the fickle muse. He had so stored his mind, however, that his sovereign, the brilliant Marguerite de Nevarre, and the master intellect of that age, Rabelais, all delighted in his society; and on account of his ability ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... them in the scale of good. First in the scale is measure; the second place is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason and wisdom; the fourth, to knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures; and here the Muse says 'Enough.' ...
— Philebus • Plato
... bear the tumult and noise of London. I sighed for solitude, that I might muse over your remembrance undisturbed. I came here yesterday. It is the home of my childhood. I am surrounded on all sides by the scenes and images consecrated by the fresh recollections of my unsullied years. They are not changed. The seasons which ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Modesty is to keep a man from writing an epic poem at all but, if he will have that impudence, why then he had better have the courage to plunge into the Castalian stream, like Virgil and Lucan, not crawl in funking and holding on by the Muse's apron-string. But—excuse me —quorsum haec tam putida tendunt? What have the Latin poets to do with this modern's sanity ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... He appeared to muse, and no one disturbed him in the minutes of silence that followed. Finally ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... my chaste Muse a liberty must take— Start not! still chaster reader—she'll be nice hence- Forward, and there is no great cause to quake; This liberty is a poetic licence, Which some irregularity may make In the design, and as I have a high sense Of Aristotle and the Rules, 't is fit To ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... that existed between Vetranio and Julia, it is necessary to inform the reader that the lady—although still attractive in appearance—was of an age to muse on her past, rather than to meditate on her future conquests. She had known her eccentric companion from his boyhood, had been once flattered in his verses, and was sensible enough—now that her charms were on the wane—to be as content with the friendship of the senator as she had formerly ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... The Muse gave special charge His learning should be deep and large,— * * * * * His flesh should feel, his eyes should read Every maxim of dreadful need. * * * * * By want and pain God screeneth him Till his ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... sail. Receive a stranger's praise; nor, Britain, thou Forbid these wreaths to grace thy Hero's brow, Nor scorn the tribute of a foreign song, For Virtue's sons to every land belong: And shall the Gallic Muse disdain to pay The meed of worth, when Louis leads the way? But what avail'd, that twice thou daredst to try The frost-bound sea, and twice the burning sky, That by winds, waves, and every realm revered, Safe, only safe, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... here that Tom Towers lived, and cultivated with eminent success the tenth Muse who now governs the periodical press. But let it not be supposed that his chambers were such, or so comfortless, as are frequently the gaunt abodes of legal aspirants. Four chairs, a half-filled deal book-case ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... youth, how will ye dare to slight "The Muse, to whom Pierian streams belong? "Will ye not smile on poets, and delight, "More than all golden gifts, in gift of song? "Did not some song empurple Nisus' hair, "And bid young Pelops' ivory shoulder glow? "That youth the Muses praise, is he not fair, "Long as the stars shall ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... choice of metaphors, a pleasing note. At present Mr. Le Gallienne's muse seems to devote herself entirely to the worship of books, and Mr. Le Gallienne himself is steeped in literary traditions, making Keats his model and seeking to reproduce something of Keats's richness and affluence of imagery. He is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... age, Its spell a void, its charm a vacancy. Rosy Romance, thou owest many a page, Ay, many that erst grew beneath mine eye, To what was once the loved reality Of this true fairy-land; but I refuse To deck with Art's fantastic wizardry A haunt of Trade. Mine is not Mammon's Muse, She will not sing for hire of Soaps, or Silks, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... of the Vale of Llangollen certainly exceed every idea I had formed of their grandeur, and on my arrival at the inn in the village, the muse embodied the following ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... and inglorious occupation of growing turnips and potatoes, and could talk of nothing meaner than hypocausts and thermae. So we, like the farmer, slight the really beautiful Early Gothic "Liebfrauenkirche" and roam and muse for hours about the ruins of the Amphitheatre, the Roman Baths, the ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... was the roofe adorn'd: but for the bed, The which those sacred limmes encanaped, I could say much: yet poised with her selfe, That gorgeous worke did seeme but drossy pelfe. All-conquering Loue inspire my weaker Muse, And with thy iocund smiles daigne to infuse Heauen-prompted praises to my vntaught story, That I may write her worth, and tell thy glory. Vpon her backe she lay (o heauenly blisse!); Smiling like Ioue, being couzend of a kisse; The enuious pillow, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... once o'ersaid All grievous memories on his long life shed, This worst regret to one true heart could speak:— That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek, He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed, His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed, Her hand he kissed, but not her brow ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... handewerkes doynge / ye may make your bodyes dayly wery & crucyfyed. And therby make your spyrytes the more quycke and apte to the seruyce of our lorde in confusyon of your enemye and encreace of glorye. Beware to be Inquysytyf / or to muse on hyghe maters and subtyll. And leue them to worldely people / and to clerkes / for otymes the letter may hurte you Thynke euer [that] ye had leuer dye than ones to passe the clausures or bodes of your monasterye. Yf ye haue a faythfull & a ...
— A Ryght Profytable Treatyse Compendiously Drawen Out Of Many and Dyvers Wrytynges Of Holy Men • Thomas Betson
... Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same time that he highly extolled the epistle ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Rabelais is doing nothing more than parody—is, indeed, doing little more than simply follow the traditions of Romance—Amiles and Jourdains, Guy and Rembrun, and many others. But some of us regard plot as at best a full-dress garment, at the absence of which the good-natured God or Muse of fiction is quite willing to wink. Character, if seldom elaborately presented, except in the case of Panurge, is showered, in scraps and sketches, all over the book, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her - but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There is here some ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... back to the beginning of the third book, which we had read in class that morning. "Primus ego in patriam mecum {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} deducam Musas"; "for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country." Cleric had explained to us that "patria" here meant, not a nation or even a province, but the little rural neighborhood on the Mincio where the poet was born. This was not a boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, that he might bring the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... France, where Madame Deshoulires soon became a conspicuous personage at the court of Louis XIV. and in literary society. She won the friendship and admiration of the most eminent literary men of the age—some of her more zealous flatterers even going so far as to style her the tenth muse and the French Calliope. Her poems were very numerous, and included specimens of nearly all the minor forms, odes, eclogues, idylls, elegies, chansons, ballads, madrigals, &c. Of these the idylls alone, and only some of them, have stood the test of time, the others being ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... have done no wrong to me, or to any human being. You have done nothing but good to me, and to every human being in your reach. To me you have been more than tongue can tell—my first friend, my muse, my angel, my inspiration to all that is best, greatest, highest in human life—the goal of all my earthly, all my heavenly aspirations. That I should love you with a pure, single, ardent passion of enthusiasm was natural, was inevitable. But that you, dear, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion which ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... am not quite certain why he delayed so long. Perhaps he had waited until his gift of song had matured so that the offering might be worthy of the shrine, or perhaps because he had exhausted all other exalted subjects for his muse, but anyhow, he sent Miss Varley an ode on her birthday. This day was pretty generally known amongst ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give utterance to the grandest conceptions with all that sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the Grecian Muse rolls forth her ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... the vulgar expires; but, Muse immortal, thou bearest Those whom thou lovest, who ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Writers for the Stage labour under, besides 'tis observable, that an obsequious prolifick Muse generally meets with a worse Reception than a petulant inanimate Author; and when a Poet has finished his Labours, so that he has brought his Play upon the Stage, the best Performance has oftentimes the worst Success, ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... tua merce, santo Collegio delle Muse, io non mi trovo Tanto per voi, ch'io possa ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... earnestness, as if to ascertain whether I was really as unconcerned as I affected to be. Then she seemed to muse, picking the cotton of the spotless counterpane on which she was lying, like one at a loss ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... to change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... in recalling the brilliant winter of 1804-5, says, in her Memoirs: "One especially impressive beauty, particularly in the ball-room, was Madame de Canisy, I have often compared her to a muse. It would be impossible for a single face to present a fuller combination of charms than hers: she possessed regular features, a delightful expression, an attractive smile; her hair was silky and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... full rapture of the redeemed soul. We cannot comprehend here, fully, but the mind is overwhelmed when we contemplate the revelations of the Gospel, "Come then expressive silence, muse His praise." ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... seen the inspired schoolmaster who has beneath his hands the wretched verses of a dull pupil. For awhile he attempts to reduce to reason and prosody the futile efforts of the scholar, but anon he lays aside in disgust the distasteful task, and turning his eyes upwards to the Muse who has ever been faithful, he dashes off a few genial lines of warm poetry. The happy juvenile, with wondering pen, copies the work, and the parent's heart rejoices over the prize which his child has won. So was it now with Robinson. What could he do with ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... The fool is happy that he knows no more; The rich is happy in the plenty given, The poor contents him with the care of Heaven. See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing, The sot a hero, lunatic a king; The starving chemist in his golden views Supremely blest, the poet in his muse. See some strange comfort every state attend, And pride bestowed on all, a common friend; See some fit passion every age supply, Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die. Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... whose rich mine of wit we here behold As porcelain earth, more precious, 'cause more old; Who, like an aged oak, so long hath stood, And art religion now as well as food: Though thy grey Muse grew up with elder times, And our deceased grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes; Yet we can sing thee too, and make the lays Which deck thy brow look fresher with thy praise. * * * * * Though these, your happy births, have silent past ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... high-sounding tirades embodied the noblest of political creeds; and even the soberer judgment of statesmen and men of affairs was captivated by the grandeur of his verse and the heroic audacity of his theme. For the first time in centuries the Italian Muse spoke with the voice of a man; and every man's heart in Italy ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... though banned at the Front, Are so manfully doing their "stunt" In searching for news That the Limerick Muse Thus honours ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... "My muse unto a Child I may compare, Who sees the riches of some famous Fair, He feeds his eyes but understanding lacks, To comprehend the worth of all those knacks; The glittering plate and Jewels he admires, The Hats and Fans, the Plumes and Ladies' tires, And thousand ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... existence with childlike, all-believing, Homeric eyes. That creative vision which of old peopled Olympus still peoples the world for her, beholding gods where the skeptic, critical eye sees only a medical doctor and a sick woman. So is she stamped a true child of the Muse, descended on the one side from Memory, or superficial fact, but on the other from Zeus, the soul of fact; and being gifted to discern the divine halo on the brows of humanity, she rightly obtains ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Tragic Muse has long forgot to please With Shakespeare's nature or with Fletcher's ease: No passion mov'd, thro' five long acts you sit, Charm'd with the poet's language or his wit. Fine things are said, no matter whence they fall; Each single character ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... And many rivers taking under hand Into his waters, as he passeth downe, The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Rowne. Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit, My mother Cambridge, whom as with a Crowne He doth adorne, and is adorn'd of it With many a gentle Muse, ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... with the thought that his employer had placed so much confidence in him. He wanted to write a poem, but circumstances forbade his signaling to his muse. On his way to the bunk-house he hesitated and retraced his steps to the ranch office. Corliss told him to come in. He approached his employer deferentially as though about to ask ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Gregory or Peter might have been observed coming down the staircase with a missive from Hamlet. Juliet had detected his gift for verse, and insisted, rather capriciously, on having all his replies in that shape. Hamlet humored her, though he was often hard put to it; for the Muse is a coy immortal, and will not always come when she is wanted. Sometimes he was forced to fall back upon previous efforts, as when he translated these lines into ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... fellow turning to Mrs. Carter, whose "talk was all instruction," or to Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions a la Grecque," and abruptly inquiring, "Madam, did you ever see a fairy's funeral?" "Never, Sir!" responds the startled Muse. "I have," pursues Blake, as calmly as if he were proposing to relate a bon mot which he heard at Lady Middleton's rout last night. "I was walking alone in my garden last night: there was great stillness among the branches and flowers, and more than common sweetness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... MUSE. Give me a kiss, my poet, take thy lyre; The buds are bursting on the wild sweet-briar. To-night the Spring is born—the breeze takes fire. Expectant of the dawn behold the thrush, Perched on the fresh branch of the first green bush; Give me a kiss, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... form the words, "Poulet, my little Poulet," as if she were talking to him, and she would cease to muse, and try for hours to write in the air the letters which formed her son's name, with her outstretched finger. Slowly she traced them before the fire, fancying she could see them, and, thinking she had made a mistake, she began the word over and over ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... its futile, violent, and weak experiments: "Law, the rectitude of humanity," says Mr Coventry Patmore, "should be the poet's only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been the subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse's will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the greatest poets have been those the modulus of whose verse has been most variously and ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... contagion was much allayed all the town over. When God made me sigh, they would hearken, and inquiringly say, What's the matter with John? When I went out to seek the bread of life, some of them would follow, and the rest be put into a muse at home. Some of them, perceiving that God had mercy upon me, came crying to him for mercy too.'[24] Can any one, in the face of such language, doubt that he was most eminently 'a brand snatched from the fire'; a pitchy burning brand, known and seen ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her long to muse. Sitting down beside her for the first time, he told her the plan he had been turning over in his mind for their one ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... consists of brief biographical commentaries about Beethoven, each followed by sections of quotations attributed to the muse. In these quotes, Beethoven demonstrates his intense preoccupation (or obsession) with thinking artistically and intelligently, and with helping to alleviate man's suffering by providing man with musical artworks ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... at this dinner, it was difficult to remember that he was not really a talker. The natural reserve of his nature made it sometimes impossible for him to express himself in ordinary intercourse. He never truly made a confidant of anybody except his Muse. ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... the minstrel to Guarine, "that my muse would find a tender part at last. Dost thou remember the bull-fight we saw in Spain? A thousand little darts perplexed and annoyed the noble animal, ere he received the last deadly thrust from the lance ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... perhaps in those furious days which preceded the Crimean War that the noble personal qualities with which Mr. Cobden was endowed shone out most clearly. When all England, from the thunder of the "Times" to the quiet Muse of Tennyson, was enlisted for war, Cobden took his stand, and refused to bow to the tempest. In a moment the nation seemed to forget the services of years, and Cobden, denounced as a "Peace-at-any-price man," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... rashness of my conduct, and entreated him to think better of my father than to imagine him invincible to argument. I promised to go to him in the morning, and counteract, as much as I could, the effects of my evening conversation. At length he departed, with somewhat renovated spirits, and left me to muse upon the strange events of ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... the same strain to Lord Grey, he speaks of his "rude rimes, the which a rustic muse did weave, in salvage soil." It is idle to speculate what difference of form the Faery Queen might have received, if the design had been carried out in the peace of England and in the society of London. But it is certain that the scene of trouble and danger in which ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... quit this national trait. The English naval muse, which I presume must be a Mermaid, half woman and half fish, has, by her simple and half the time, nonsensical songs, done more for the British flag than all her gunnery, or naval discipline and tactics. This inspiration of the tenth muse, with libations of grog, have actually made the English ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... fruit of warlike deeds, The soldier bleed, the soldier bleeds, Calliope crowns heroic deeds, With immortality. From mere oblivion I reclaim The soldier's name, the soldier's name And write it on the roll of fame, The muse ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... preserve as much dignity as they can in their situation; but this situation is so artificial in itself, that it is impossible to give lustre to it. None of the actions of the Austrian government in favor of French interests can be attributed to any thing but fear; and this new muse ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... warned them: "We shall come now to the wandering blue rocks; my mother warned me of them, Calliope, the immortal muse." ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... a couple of handkerchiefs; and, were it not that he has divined my inmost feelings, the mere sight of these handkerchiefs would be enough to make me treat the whole thing as ridiculous. The secret exchange of presents between us," she went on to muse, "fills me also with fears; and the thought that those tears, which I am ever so fond of shedding to myself, are of no avail, drives me likewise to blush ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... little way beyond; and, mingling reveries of heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... entry with the other monarchs, but came only in the afternoon to Leipsic, where he remained scarcely an hour. He then returned to Rotha.—Beitzke, vol. ii.] The emperor took that presented to him, and pressed it with a quick and graceful movement on Blucher's head. "I represent the Muse of History," he said, "and crown 'Marshal ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... not least is Aetion; A gentler shepherd[7] may nowhere be found, Whose Muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... early age, I often could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Confessor: and shortlie therevpon as it had beene falne into a resiluation, came to extreame ruine by the inuasion and conquest of the Normans: as after by Gods good helpe and fauorable assistance it shall appeare. So that it would make a diligent and marking reader both muse and moorne, to see how variable the state of this kingdome hath beene, & thereby to fall into a consideration of the frailtie and vncerteintie of this mortall life, which is no more free from securitie, than a ship on the sea in tempestuous weather. For as the casualties wherewith ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... the ingenious gentleman under the influence of the Tragic Muse contrived to dislocate, 'I wish you a good morning, Sir! Thank you, Sir, and I wish you the same,' into ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... have piped erst so long with pain That all mine oaten reeds been rent and wore, And my poor Muse hath spent her spared store, Yet little good hath got, and much less gain. Such pleasaunce makes the grasshopper so poor, And ligge so layd[115] when winter doth her strain. The dapper ditties that I wont devise, To feed youth's fancy, and the flocking ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... how shall these things change? Shall childish galleries That deemed you once Apollo's minister, Say, "Garn, old monkey!" Shall colossal salaries Reward the Muse and not the dulcimer? Not gleaming eyeballs, not the soul illuminate? Shall old faiths falter and Antonio's heart Sicken the while he churns, and chilly ruminate, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... herbs, that I cannot write verses? By Apollo, if I did not spend my days in politics, and my nights in revelry, I should have made Sophocles tremble. But now I never go beyond a little song like this, and never invoke any Muse but Chariclea. But come, Speusippus, sing. You are a professed poet. Let us have some ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... should have in man. Drinking songs and table songs do not belong to the highest flights of poetry; but if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one imagine English poems on port and sherry? or has a Frenchman much to tell us of his Bordeaux, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... get down millions of words a minute. But when they have got the job apparently done, they simmer away to nothing. They perform mysterious rites with ink-eraser. They scratch feebly with knives. They hold up to the light, they tittivate, they muse and they adorn. It is not the slightest use intimating that you do not care twopence whether there are typographic errors or not—the expert typist treats you with the scorn that the expert always does treat the layman with. At such junctures it is an advantage if the typist ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... generation, detached from the fountain-head of Jewish culture, would no more be able to read the "Songs of Zion," and that the poet's rhymes were limited in their appeal to the last handful of the worshippers of the Hebrew Muse: ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... thought of Eden fade, Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain— Godlike to muse o'er his own Trade And ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... gushes from Parnassus' hill, And by the bright Pierian spring She shall receive an offering From every youth who pipes a strain Beside his flocks upon the plain. But I, the first, this very day, Will tune for her my humble lay, Invoking this new Muse to render My oaten reed more sweet and tender, Within its vibrant hollows wake Such dulcet voices for her sake As, curved hand at straining ear, I long have stood and sought to hear Borne with the warm midsummer ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... voice—they had had a "call." The talent is the call, and if a man fails to do his work in a masterly way, make sure he has mistaken a lazy wish for a divine passion. There is a difference between loving the muse and lusting after her. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... the poet, for her beauty. She inspired his muse when turning the corner of George Street, Edinburgh. The lines addressed to her are to be found in his Poems. She was also a highly-gifted artist. The illustrations in the work called the Stirling Heads are from her pencil. It ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... suddenly to Jacobus: "Here! Put some chicken and salad on that plate." He obeyed without raising his eyes. I carried it with a knife and fork and a serviette out on the verandah. The garden was one mass of gloom, like a cemetery of flowers buried in the darkness, and she, in the chair, seemed to muse mournfully over the extinction of light and colour. Only whiffs of heavy scent passed like wandering, fragrant souls of that departed multitude of blossoms. I talked volubly, jocularly, persuasively, tenderly; ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... his long hair and blew it about his face till he became an equestrian personification of the frenzied muse. I had become acquainted with his trick of setting words to the music of quaint rhymes; but Father ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Theocritus,—nothing very serious,—wrote a strange poem that stands in dignity and depth of purpose far above anything in his model. This was the Fourth Eclogue of his Bucolics, called the Pollio. In it he invokes the "Sicilian Muse" to inspire him to loftier strains; and proceeds to sing of the coming of a new cycle, the return of a better age, to be ushered in, supposedly, by a 'child' born ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the woman's full habit of speech was strong upon her and that one might no longer muse upon a caught trout—even one to weigh well up toward four pounds. So I remembered that I was supposed ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... proper and delicate way to comfort when I thought all the world had forsaken me, I tender my most grateful thanks. His kindness shall be remembered by me while memory holds her seat. Let the throng of uninvited fools who swarmed about us, accept the following sally of the house of correction muse, from the pen, or rather the fork, of a fellow convict. It may ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... aerial pow'r, E'en Wisdom calls me to her bow'r; My songs her leisure hours beguile, And teach her holy lip to smile. And, when the Muse, with thoughtful care, Has woven chaplets for her hair, I let her, with her myrtles, twine, Full many a fragrant ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... discourse, my Muse doth here intend, The honor of Saint Patrick to defend, And speake of his adventrous accidents, Of his brave fortunes, and their brave events, That if her pen were made of Cromwell's rump, Yet she should weare it to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... the fair-tressed lotus of Chaeremon mixed with the gilliflower of Phaedimus, and the round ox-eye of Antagoras, and the wine-loving fresh-blown wild thyme of Theodorides, and the bean-blossoms of Phanias, and many newly- scriptured shoots of others; and with them also even from his own Muse some early white violets. But to my friends I give thanks; and the sweet-languaged garland of the Muses is ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... intensely. He does not analyse, he does not amass his facts; he concentrates. He wrings out quintessences; and when he has distilled his drops of pure spirit he brews his potion. Something of the kind happens to me now, whether verse or prose be the Muse of my devotion. A stray thought, a chance vision, moves me; presently the flame is hissing hot. Everything then at any time observed and stored in the memory which has relation to the fact is fused and in a swimming ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... hatred against Napoleon Bonaparte. Again and again he invoked the Muse against the world conqueror. Thus he wrote to Landor in 1814: "For five years I have been preaching the policy, the duty, the necessity of declaring Bonaparte under the ban of human nature." Under this stress of feeling he wrote his great "Ode During the Negotiations for Peace." It ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... tottering as he is, it was the height of insanity. Down he dropped on his bended knees before the object of his love; out he poured his touching addresses, lisped in the blandest, most persuasive tones; and what was his answer? Scoffs, laughs, kicks, rejection! Even Johnny Russell's muse availed not, though it deserved a better fate. It gained him a wife, but could not win the electors. Our readers will discover the genius of the witty author of "Don Carlos" in the address, which, though rejected, we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... of Jean Goujon, whose exquisite work we see now and again in these chateaux, that some writer has said, that the muse of Ronsard whispered in the ear of the French sculptor, and thus Goujon's masterpieces were poems of Ronsard translated in marble. It is a rather pretty fancy, but Lydia and I cannot remember its author. Walter says that he can understand ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... STATE: 'Twere well the cares of day to toss aside And welcome evening's quiet with a smile, But we who here in solemn conclave meet Can squander moment few to court the Muse; Stern duty calls, and to each patriot ear 'Tis music sweet, to which he quick responds, Then to the council board let us repair And these the mysteries ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... said Chet. "They could open the ports and ram those snaky heads inside to feed." He seemed to muse for a moment upon what might have come ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... settle himself to tasks for some time terribly neglected, with a sense that after all it was rather a relief not to be sitting so close to Sir Dominick Ferrand, who had become dreadfully distracting; at the very moment at which he habitually addressed his preliminary invocation to the muse, he was agitated by the arrival of a telegram which proved to be an urgent request from Mr. Locket that he would immediately come down and see him. This represented, for poor Baron, whose funds were very low, another morning sacrificed, but somehow ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James |
