"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... last paragraph, I would have the reader rather impute that epithet to the compassion in my temper than conceive it to be any declaration of his innocence. Whether he was innocent or not will perhaps appear hereafter; but if the historic muse hath entrusted me with any secrets, I will by no means be guilty of discovering them till ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... gleams the youth's bright falchion: there the muse Lifts her sweet voice: there awful Justice opes Her ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Bramble's advice, they did leave her alone to muse over her ambitious hopes and desires, whilst they, contented and happy with their lowly fate, opened their buds to the bright sunshine, which beams alike upon the ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... they were out of hearing of the other two. "If I were poetically minded I should say that you looked like the Tragic Muse." ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... permit an humble muse, To lay her duteous homage at your feet: Such homage heav'n itself does not refuse, But praise, and pray'rs admits, as ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... would muse; if their grief were the grief of oppression they would wish themselves kings; if their grief were poverty, wish themselves millionaires; if sin, they would wish they were saints or angels; if despised ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... easily be seen, Aubanel writes not, like Roumanille, for his own people alone. His Muse is more ambitious, and seeks to interest by appealing to the sentiments in a language polished with all the art of its sister, the French. There are innumerable exquisite passages scattered through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... grown bleak And uttermost labours, having once o'ersaid All grievous memories on his long life shed, This worst regret to one true heart could speak:— That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek, He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed, His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed, Her hand he kissed, but ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... the time he brooded. His Homeric nonsense alternated with fits of gloom. In spite of his late hours, whether of study or of story-telling, he was an early riser. "He would sit by the fire having uncovered the coals, and muse and ponder and soliloquize."(6) Besides his favorite Shakespeare, he had a fondness for poetry of a very different sort—Byron, for example. And he never tired of a set of stanzas in the minor key beginning: "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... th'affront, and must repair the same; When France shall boast of her, whose conqu'ring eyes Have made the best of English hearts their prize; Have power to alter the decrees of Fate, And change again the counsels of our state. 30 What the prophetic Muse intends, alone To him that feels the secret wound is known. With the sweet sound of this harmonious lay, About the keel delighted dolphins play, Too sure a sign of sea's ensuing rage, Which must anon this royal troop engage; To whom soft sleep seems more secure and sweet, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... forget,' said Scott, and, misled by boyish affection, he deemed it 'just old enough,' 'a noble imitation.'* But the imitation can deceive nobody, and while literary imitators, as far as their efforts have reached us, were impotent to deceive, the popular Muse, of 1714-1730, was not attempting deception. Ballads of the eighteenth century were sarcastic, as in those on Sheriffmuir and in Skirving's amusing ballad on Preston Pans, or were mere doggerel, or were brief ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... came, I believe that I began to muse about Monsieur de Chavannes; but it was only to think that I did not care in the least about him, nor he about me; and that, so far as he was concerned, I had seen no cause to change my decided resolution that I would never marry. All this was, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... "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 times his mazed mind doth wish Some ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of fortune, and their several pursuits in war, politics, commerce, and lucrative arts, they awakened whatever was either good or bad in the natural dispositions of men. Every road to eminence was opened: eloquence, fortitude, military skill, envy, detraction, faction, and treason, even the muse herself, was courted to bestow importance among a ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... Manager, "I will now read you my Five Act Tragedy entitled——" "Hang your tragedies!" will the Manager exclaim, "Give me a farce like 'Dr. Bill,' my boy!" And once more will the poet put his pride and his tragedy in one pocket, and all the money which the Comic Muse will give him in the other. I back the argumentum ad pocketum against the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... a new shepherd late upsprung The which doth all afore him far surpass: Appearing well in that well-tuned song Which late he sung unto a scornful lass. Yet doth his trembling Muse but lowly fly, As daring not too rashly mount on height; And doth her tender plumes as yet but try In love's soft lays, and looser thoughts delight. Then rouse thy feathers quickly, DANIEL, And to what course thou ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... too, shall rear unnumbered domes, Here Shakspeares—Tassos—find more happy homes, Here Homer's fire, and Virgil's polished grace, A sacred charm shall give to many a place. Each shady hill shall be a Muse's haunt— By each pure spring aerial nymphs shall chant— Chant the sweet song to heavenly Liberty— While thundering cataracts peal it to the sea!" She spake no more;—or I too much opprest By wondrous visions, needed welcome rest. And when I waked, the day had now unfurled His rosy banners ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... not least, is AEtion: A gentler Shepherd may nowhere be found; Whose Muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth, like himself, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... many passages of his writings: and many of his Studies, as well as his Scherzos, depict a concentrated exasperation and despair, which are sometimes manifested in bitter irony, sometimes in intolerant hauteur. These dark apostrophes of his muse have attracted less attention, have been less fully understood, than his poems of more tender coloring. The personal character of Chopin had something to do with this general misconception. Kind, courteous, and affable, of tranquil and almost joyous manners, he would not suffer the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... you shall hear to-night! I, who have heard every fine voice in Europe, confidently pledge my respectability that the Ravenswing is equal to them all. She has the graces, sir, of a Venus with the mind of a Muse. She is a siren, sir, without the dangerous qualities of one. She is hallowed, sir, by her misfortunes as by her genius; and I am proud to think that my instructions have been the means of developing the wondrous qualities that ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... across the waves, and trying to descry something that looked like land, or a tree, or anything that seemed familiar and like home. Then they would shake their heads disconsolately and go below, to brood and muse and be an extremely unhappy and forlorn lot of savages. The joy that seized them when at last they came in sight of land, and were assured that we did not intend to keep on sailing till we fell over the edge of the earth, was something ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... abundantly Racke and Rennishe wyne 'til night! On the mountaine satte Apollo, and at his feete satte Calliope, and on every side of the mountaine satte iiii Muses playing on several swete instrumentes, and at their feete Epigrammes and Poyses were written in golden letters, with the which every Muse, accordyng to her propertie, praised the Quene.—"At the conduite in Cornhill there were thre graces set in a throne; afore whom was the spryng of grace continually ronnyng—wine!" At the cross in Chepe, "Master Baker, the recorder, with lowe ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... 'Muse of Green Erin, break thine icy slumbers! Strike once again thy wreathed lyre! Burst forth once more and wake thy tuneful numbers! Kindle ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... modes of trial; we forget the murderer, and see something like a hero. It is curious to observe, that the legislature in Germany, and in England, have found it necessary to interfere as to the representation of Captain Mac Heath and the Robbers; two characters in which the tragic and the comic muse have had powerful effects in exciting imitation. George Barnwell is a hideous representation of the passions, ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... muse dictated nothing more. He was not in the mood for writing. He felt rather more in the mood for supper. His scruples scattered like clouds driven before a brisk North East wind; he put on the frogged surtout, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... the heart of friendship knows Be to your ear conveyed in rustic prose, Lost in the wonders of your Eastern clime, Or rapt in vision to some unborn time, Th' unartful tale might no attention gain; For Friendship knows not, like the Muse, to feign. Forgive her, then, if in this weak essay She tries to emulate thy daring lay, And give to truth and warm affection's glow The charms that from ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... the real thing—from you. Every man to his metier. Yours is to sing of blue skies and west winds, of hay-scented meadows and Watteau-like revellers in a paradise as artificial as a Dutch garden. Take my advice, and keep your muse chained. The other worlds ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and Change! O Change and Time, you come Not knocking at my door, knowing me gone; Here have I dwelt within my heart alone, Watching and waiting, while my muse ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Thus sang the Muse of a great woman years ago; and now, alas! she, who, with constant suffering of her own, was called upon to grieve often for the loss of near and dear ones, has suddenly gone from among us, "and silence, against which we dare ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... would hearken, and enquiringly say, What is the matter with John? They also gave their various opinions of me: but, as I said, sin cooled, and failed, as to his full career. When I went out to seek the bread of life, some of them would follow, and the rest be put into a muse at home. Yea, almost the town, at first, at times would go out to hear at the place where I found good; yea, young and old for a while had some reformation on them; also some of them, perceiving that God had mercy upon me, came crying ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... them he was the creature of the moment; and, driven to and fro by whatever impulse, or whatever passion, caught the caprice of a wild, roving, and all-poetical imagination, Maltravers was, half unconsciously, a poet—a poet of action, and woman was his muse. ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thing be more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according to the precept ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... would sit quietly and muse upon what I had been saying; or, if he thought me not too deeply absorbed in reflection, would ask a question, or say something relative to the subject in hand, which would give me the opportunity ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves; when ev'ry muse And every blooming pleasure wait without, To bless the wildly ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... seemed to know. In fact, Bernice, having trifled with her muse's beau, had said nothing memorable ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... (my honour'd Lord) I was not borne, Audacious vowes, or forraigne legs to use, Nature denyed my outside to adorne, And I, of art to learne outsides refuse. Yet haveing of them both, enough to scorne Silence, & vulgar prayse, this humble muse And her meane favourite; at yo'r comand Chose in this kinde, to kisse your ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... get beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her - but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought that he "woo'd the Muse," to speak in the style of the last century. Even his intimates were ignorant of the fact that he had a skeleton in his cupboard, his Kasidah or distichs. He confided to me his secret when we last met in Western India—I am purposely vague in specifying the place. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... de Colonel Chabert The Muse of the Department The Thirteen The Peasantry Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Country Parson The Magic Skin The Gondreville Mystery The Secrets of a ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... with telling me, he could have wished I had rather turned my thoughts to the comic than the tragic muse; for tragedy was less fashionable, and consequently less profitable both to the house and the author, than comedy or opera. I sighed and answered, it was an ill proof of public taste, when it could receive greater pleasure from the unconnected ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... remarkable that the war of Granada, which is so admirably suited in all its circumstances to poetical purposes, should not have been more frequently commemorated by the epic muse. The only successful attempt in this way, with which I am acquainted, is the "Conquisto di Granata," by the Florentine Girolamo Gratiani, Modena, 1650. The author has taken the license, independently of his machinery, of deviating very freely from the historic track; ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... fraudulent character in the Mabinogi, and although "in his life there was counsel," yet he had a "vicious muse."[375] It is also implied that he is lover of his sister Arianrhod and father of Dylan and Llew—the mythic reflections of a time when such unions, perhaps only in royal houses, were permissible. Instances ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... admitted at all, appear but like the stars of the firmament to the ordinary eye. Those splendid luminaries draw forth perhaps occasionally a transient expression of admiration, when we behold their beauty, or hear of their distances, magnitudes, or properties: now and then too we are led, perhaps, to muse upon their possible uses: but however curious as subjects of speculation, after all, it must be confessed, they twinkle to the common observer with a vain and "idle" lustre; and except in the dreams of the astrologer, have no influence on human happiness, or any concern with the course ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the genius of the nations of modern Europe, and enriched all our poetry by it. Woody Morven, and echoing Sora, and Selma with its silent halls!—we all owe them a debt of gratitude, and when we are unjust enough to forget it, may the Muse forget us! Choose any one of the better passages in Macpherson's Ossian and you can see even at this time of day what an apparition of newness and power such a strain must have been ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Sabbath-school that taught the great mass of the free people of color about all the school knowledge that was allowed them in those days, and hence the consternation which came upon them when they found themselves excluded from the schools of the white churches. Lindsay Muse, who has been the messenger for eighteen Secretaries of the Navy, successively, during fifty-four years, from 1828 to the present time, John Brown, Benjamin M. McCoy, Mr. Smallwood, Mrs. Charlotte ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... in a heavy muse, hearing and not hearing what she said. Charmian bustled about, and made a fire of lightwood, and then kindled her spirit lamp, and made tea, which she brought to Cornelia. "We may as well take it," she said. "We shall not sleep to-night anyway. What ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... a kind of a muse. I have been myself in the fix she looked to be in then—so you forget fur a while where you are, or who is there, whilst you think about something that has been in the back part of your mind fur ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... his transitions, pass to very different things, for some time back a well-known English poet and essayist wrote of the present work that it was redolent of pork, onions, and cheese. To one of his sensitive temperament, with a muse strictly nourished on sugar and water, such gross edibles as pork and cheese and onions were peculiarly offensive. That humble plant the onion, employed to flavour wellnigh every savoury dish, can assuredly ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... accustomed to write poetry to abstain when a happy subject smiles upon his delighted imagination. If he attempted to smother the poetical flame running through his veins it would consume him. I composed my sonnet, keeping the same rhymes as in the original, and, well pleased with my muse, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... one of his sweetest poems, the Dirge in Cymbeline, was inspired by the tragedy of Cymbeline. The verse of Gray, Collins, and the Warton brothers, abounds in verbal reminiscences of Shakspere; but their genius was not allied to his, being exclusively lyrical, and not at all dramatic. The Muse of this romantic school was Fancy rather than Passion. A thoughtful melancholy, a gentle, scholarly pensiveness, the spirit of Milton's Il Penseroso, pervades their poetry. Gray was a fastidious scholar, who produced very little, but that little ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... lights over the swaying foliage; and from beneath the massive branches of trees, there shines out, in bold relief, the marble porticoes and lintels of stately—looking mansions. Such is the calm grandeur of the scene, that one could imagine some Thalia investing it with a poetic charm the gods might muse over. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... had succeeded in getting that play right, what a difference it would have made! He would have been able to do a number of things he had never done, things which he had always desired to do. He had desired above all to travel—to see France and Italy; to linger, to muse in the shadows of the world's past; and after this he had desired marriage, an English wife, an English home, beautiful children, leisure, the society of friends. A successful play would have given him all these things, and now his dream must remain for ever unrealised by him. He ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... verses are which excited my gratitude? I would refer you to the volume itself, but that I have some by heart, and if you like these, you may look out the others for yourself in the book. He addresses the Muse and bids her seek my house on the Esquiline and approach it with great respect:—"But take care that you do not knock at his learned door at a time when you should not. He devotes whole days together to crabbed Minerva, while he prepares for the ears of the Court of the Hundred speeches which posterity ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... me of the prodigious activity of your Muse obliges me to make a somewhat shameful acknowledgment of my relative slowness and idleness. The pupil is far from the master in this as in other points. Nevertheless I think I have made a better use of the last three years than of the preceding ones; for one thing ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... CHOR. Come, Muse, to our Mystical Chorus, O come to the joy of my song, O see on the benches before us that countless and wonderful throng, Where wits by the thousand abide, with more than a Cleophon's pride— On the lips of that foreigner base, of Athens the bane and disgrace, ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... past editions of this work, and they have been many, have elicited the strongest praise here and abroad. The classic poets of every land have valued the praise which rewarded their dedication of the first triumphs of the muse to subjects connected with the cultivation of the soil, to the arts that rendered the breast of our common mother lovely, and wedded the labors which sustain life with the arts that render it happy. The work before us has an established reputation. It is written ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... muse her aid impart, Unskilled in all the terms of art, Nor in harmonious numbers put The deal, the shuffle, and the cut. Go, Tom, and light the ladies up, It must be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... almost unknown in English literature. This lady was the wife of the governor of Massachusetts, and because of her literary tendencies was looked upon by the people of her time as a marvel of womankind. Her contemporaries called her the "tenth muse lately sprung up in America," and one of them, Rev. Nathaniel Ward, was inspired to write an address to her, in which he declares his wonder at her success as a poet, and playfully foretells the consequences if women ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the beardless carle shall listen While I lash him with abuse, Loon at whom our stomachs sicken. Soon shall hear these words of scorn; Far too nice for such base fellows Is the name my bounty gives, Een my muse her help refuses, Making mirth of ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... my thought I held, And yet all thro' it The wires all England over shrill'd, And I never knew it! In a high muse I nurst my news All the forenoon, While England braced her limbs and ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... she had written a sentence to muse again. "I wish she hadn't taken a sort of dislike to Rosamond when she saw her out at Red Top," she said wistfully. "It's so hard to write without putting Rosamond in. She's in almost everything I ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... accomplish her pious design, and the protection of Jesus and His Mother was promised to her. Let us follow them in thought up the steep hill to Assisi—to the church where the relics of the saint, where his mortal remains are laid. Let us descend into the subterranean chapel, pause at every altar, and muse on the records of that astonishing life, the most marvellous perhaps of any which it has ever been permitted to mortal man to live. Let us go with them to the home of his youth, where his confessorship began in childish sufferings ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... and dreamy before our tent and muse on the past and the future, and when most overcome with lassitude, my eyes turned always toward the distant Black Hills. There is a spirit of energy and vigor in mountains, and they impart it to all who approach their presence. At that time I did not know how many ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... were all so pleased with themselves, Clara swallowed her chagrin, and more happily accepted their homage when Sir Henry toasted her as the presiding Muse of ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... rushes breathless o'er the snow-clad floor. Her tongue soft comfort to the mourner speaks, Her silver voice with soft emotion breaks; Round the drear hovel roves her moistened eye, Her graceful bosom heaves the lengthened sigh. "I know thee now—I know that angel frame— O that the muse might dare to breathe thy name: Nor thine alone, but all that sister-band Who scatter gladness o'er a weeping land; Who comfort to the infant sufferer bring, And 'teach with joy the widow's heart to sing.' "For this, no noisy honors fame shall ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... chaste Muse a liberty must take— Start not! still chaster reader—she'll be nice hence- Forward, and there is no great cause to quake; This liberty is a poetic licence, Which some irregularity may make In the design, and as I have a high sense ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... entreated him to think better of my father than to imagine him invincible to argument. I promised to go to him in the morning, and counteract, as much as I could, the effects of my evening conversation. At length he departed, with somewhat renovated spirits, and left me to muse upon the strange events ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... utterly devoid of aesthetic taste, considered all save religious poetry sinful in the extreme; so it was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that Fame could trumpet abroad the advent of "the Tenth Muse," or "the Morning Star of American Poetry," in the person of Anne Bradstreet! Among her poems—which no one ever reads nowadays—is "An Exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz., the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian, and the Beginning ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... chronology is traditional and full of absurdities." Furthermore, nothing is said in the Brahmanas of the Bauddhas—ergo, there were none before "Sandracottus," nor have the Buddhists or Brahmans any right to a history of their own, save the one evoluted by the Western mind. As though the Muse of History had turned her back while events were gliding by, the "historian" confesses his inability to close the immense lacunae between the Indo-Aryan supposed immigration en masse across the Hindoo Kush, and the reign of Asoka. Having ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... behold! it was discovered that there was no cellar door except one in the kitchen, which was truly a strait and narrow way, down a long pair of stairs. Hereupon, as saith John Bunyan, I fell into a muse,—how to get my cisterns into my cellar. In days of chivalry I might have got a knight to make me a breach through the foundation walls, but that was not to be thought of now, and my oil hogsheads standing disconsolately in the yard seemed to reflect no great credit ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... And yet, Saint-Amand cites her as the most beautiful of that group of martyrs who lost their lives in the first heat of the Revolution—as the genius among them by her force, purity, and grace—the brilliant and austere muse in all the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... last spring I ever knew, In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered The hills at Miller's Ford; Just to muse on the apple tree With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, Never to grow in fruit. And there was I with my spirit ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... write you a letter In verse, tho' in prose I could do it much better; The Muse, this cold weather, sleeps up at Parnassus, And leaves us poor poets as stupid as asses. She'll tarry still longer, if she has a warm chamber, A store of old massie, ambrosia, and amber. Dear mother, don't laugh, you may think she is tipsy And I, if ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... closed his adventurous and erratic career and became a domestic and useful member of that little commonwealth, under the watchful influence of the dark-eyed maid of the Loire or of the Seine. Infinite are the chords of the lyre which delights the romantic muse; and these incidents, small and humble as they are, appear to me to be imbued with an indescribable charm, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Muse of History; they dared express their opinions. Genesis, that ancient barrier, did not exist for them. It stands in the way of the modern historian; it involves him in a ceaseless conflict with his own honesty. If he values ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... O heavenly Muse, that not with fading bays Deckest thy brow by the Heliconian spring, But sittest crowned with stars' immortal rays In Heaven, where legions of bright angels sing; Inspire life in my wit, my thoughts upraise, My verse ennoble, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... his soul, And he ran forward and embraced his knees, And clasp'd his hand within his own, and said:— "Oh, by thy father's head! by thine own soul! Art thou not Rustum? speak! art thou not he?" But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling youth, And turn'd away, and spake to his own soul:— "Ah me, I muse what this young fox may mean! False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys. For if I now confess this thing he asks, And hide it not, but say: 'Rustum is here!' He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes, But he will find some pretext not to fight, And praise my fame, and proffer ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the words—remembers to have heard it sung by a Canadian boatman, and he then thought that he had never listened to vocal sounds more truly descriptive of melancholy and regret. Even the young in Canada invoked the Muse in expression of their sympathy, and the following lines were indited by Miss Ann Bruyeres, described as "an extraordinary child of thirteen years old," the daughter of the general's friend, Lieut.-Colonel. Bruyeres, of the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth, Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel's will! Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill: Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill; Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long-deserted shrine Where, save that feeble fountain, all ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... had yet taken form, one is startled to find how little the Japanese written language has changed in the course of so many centuries. Allowing for a few obsolete words, and sundry slight changes of pronunciation, the ordinary Japanese reader to-day can enjoy these early productions of his native muse with about as little difficulty as the English reader finds in studying the poets of the Elizabethan era. Moreover, the refinement and the simple charm of the Many[o]sh[u] compositions have never been surpassed, and seldom equaled, ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... thy voice belong; Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way, To nerve my country with the patriot lay, To teach all men where all their interest lies, How rulers may be just and nations wise: Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee, Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... two steps forward every quarter of an hour. His ear, soothed by the grave and cadenced numbers of the Latin Muse, was deaf to the women's scolding about the monstrous prices of bread and sugar and coffee, candles and soap. In this calm and unruffled mood he reached the threshold of the bakehouse. Behind him, Evariste Gamelin could see over his ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... indulged in one of those pleasantries which now and again we observe in his informal letters, though seldom, if ever, in his serious writings. In the margin, below the canceled passage, he wrote boldly: "Sacrificed to the Muse of ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... rambles Through the green lanes of the country, Where the tangled barberry-bushes Hang their tufts of crimson berries Over stone walls gray with mosses, Pause by some neglected graveyard, For a while to muse, and ponder On a half-effaced inscription, Written with little skill of song-craft, Homely phrases, but each letter Full of hope and yet of heart-break, Full of all the tender pathos Of the Here and the Hereafter; Stay and read ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... holding out her hand, which Mrs. Chumley took, and the other as well, drawing her close and kissing her on the cheek in the simple, natural manner of a mother. Then Mrs. Chumley held her at arms' length, surveying her, and began to muse aloud. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... agreement between the Queen of Hungary and the late Emperor, to decide their pretensions by a single combat; in which case he offered himself as the Bavarian champion; but in this endeavour he also proved unsuccessful. Then turning his attention to the delights of poetry, he became so enamoured of the muse, that he neglected every other consideration, and she as usual gradually conducted him to the author's never-failing goal—a place of rest appointed for all those sinners whom the profane love of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... to sit with Shirley in her panelled parlour, where others came and went, and where he could rarely find a quiet moment to show her the latest production of his fertile muse; he must have her out amongst the pleasant pastures, and lead her by the still waters. Tete-a-tete ramblings she shunned, so he made parties for her to his own grounds, his glorious forest; to remoter scenes—woods ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... MUSIC AND LYRIC POETRY.—It was not until the minds of the Greeks had been elevated by the productions of the epic muse, that the genius of original poets broke loose from the dominion of the epic style, and invented new forms for expressing the emotions of a mind profoundly agitated by passing events; with few innovations in the elegy, but with greater ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... crown the bowl— My pipe and I alone,— I sit and muse with idler views Perchance than I should own:— It might be worse to own the purse Whose glutted bowels gripe In little qualms of stinted alms; And ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Adrienne, gayly, "this affair will arrange itself quite easily. Henceforth, Mr. Poet, you shall draw your inspirations in the midst of good fortune instead of adversity. Sad muse! But first of all, bonds ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... good friend the Conte keeps his muse within tolerable limits! It would not do to quite smother her in verse on her first arrival; and, you know, our good Leandro has rather a special gift that way. Well, get up any kind of dimostrasione you like for the occasion,—it will all ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Beaumont, and thy muse, That unto me dost such religion use! How I do fear myself, that am not worth The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth! At once thou mak'st me happy, and unmak'st; And giving largely to me, more thou takest! What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves? What art is thine, that so thy ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... report of such an event. Here it is used in the sense of the different cantos or "fitts" of the poem, as in the "Gudrun" and other M.H.G. epics. Among the courtly poets it also frequently denotes the source, or is the personification of the muse of poetry. (3) "Kriemhild" is the Upper German form of the Frankish "Grimhild". In the MSS., the name generally appears with a further shifting as "Chriemhilt", as if the initial consonant were Germanic "k". On the various forms of the name, which have never ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... me is given Such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven That often meet me here. I muse on joy that will not cease, Pure spaces clothed in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odors haunt my dreams, And, stricken by an angel's hand, This mortal armor that I wear, This weight and size, this heart and eyes, Are touched, ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... that question! You cannot possibly sit with folded hands. Come, if you like, let us draw, before it has grown completely dark. Perhaps the other muse,—the muse of drawing ... what's her name? I've forgotten ... will be more gracious to me. Where is your album? Do you remember?—my ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... written; they seem not to come from myself, but are the signs of another language which thou hast taught my heart, and which my hand traces rapidly, as at thy dictation. Sometimes, while I write or muse, I could fancy that I heard light wings hovering around me, and saw dim shapes of beauty floating round, and vanishing as they smiled upon me. No unquiet and fearful dream ever comes to me now in sleep, yet sleep and waking are ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Full oft I muse, and hes in thocht How this fals Warld is ay on flocht, Quhair no thing ferme is nor degest; {91a} {91d} And when I haif my mynd all socht, For to be ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... my Muse, what manner times these were, And in those times how stood the state of things, What power this monarch had, what arms they bear, What nations subject, and what friends he brings; From all lands the southern ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... and stonier faces— Some from library windows wan Forth on her gardens, her green spaces, Peer and turn to their books anon. Hence, my Muse, from the green oases Gather ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... passed as a poet by Professor Longfellow; but in Longfellow, with all his scholarly grace and tender feeling, the defect is more apparent than it was in Bryant. Mr. Lowell can overflow with American humor when politics inspire his muse; but in the realm of pure poetry he is no more American than a Newdigate prize-man. Joaquin Miller's verse has fluency and movement and harmony, but as for the thought, his songs of the sierras might as well have been ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... to muse,—perhaps Azalea's worst faults were superficial. If she could be persuaded to amend her style of talk and her gauche manners, perhaps she was of a true fine nature underneath. His Uncle,—so-called,—and his Aunt Amanda, he remembered ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... when the scirocco blows, you will feel as if convalescent from some debilitating fever; in winter, however, this gentle-breathing south-east wind will act more mildly; it will woo you to the country, induce you to sit down in a shady place, smoke, and 'muse.' That incarnate essence of enterprise, business, industry, economy, sharpness, shrewdness, and keenness—that Prometheus whose liver was torn by the vulture of cent per cent—eternally tossing, restless DOOLITTLE, was one day seen ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... generation—there are hundreds of Davids equally ready to take the field against Goliath. And shall I not rejoice, shall I not exult even unto tears?' Her eyes glowed, and the musician was kindled to equal fire. It seemed to him less a girl who was speaking than Truth and Purity and some dead muse of his own. 'The Pale that I left,' she went on, 'was truly a prison. But now—now it will be the forging-place of a regenerated people! Oh, I am counting the days ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... in Mrs. Crabtree with her tawse!" said Rosamond. "But is it right by Raymond to let his wife bring this Yankee muse to talk her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the mood of which I spoke at first—the mood in which one desires to build up and renew—one must not yield oneself to luxurious and pathetic reveries, or allow oneself to muse and wonder in the half-lit region in which one may beat one's wings in vain—the region, I mean, of sad stupefaction as to why the world is so full of broken dreams, shattered hopes, and unfulfilled possibilities. One must rather look round for some little definite failure ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and warned them, 'We shall come now to the wandering blue rocks; my mother warned me of them, Calliope, the immortal muse.' ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... the Governor. "Then the Muse has done well to take herself off, and will do even better not to return. Bishops must have no flirtations with Muses, heavenly or earthly—not that I am now altogether certain that thou wilt ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... neither,' said Bella. 'Not that my life has been lonely, for I could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going on like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners, and Lavvy being spiteful—though of course I am very fond of them both. I wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have no more of what they call character, my dear, than a canary-bird, but I know ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the Lady Mary visited that old hall, to walk in the moonlight, or muse in her favorite window-seat, it was observed that she ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... his early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... had prepared Lord Garrow's tea and cut the leaves of the Revue des Deux Mondes, which he invariably read until he dressed for dinner, she stole away to the further room, where she could play the piano, write letters, muse over novels, or indulge in reverie without fear of interruption. But as she entered it that afternoon its air of peace seemed the bleakness of desolation. A terrible and afflicting grief swept, like an icy breeze, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... happiness more deserved. Even at that early age, I often could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient to make ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... durst aspire To sound a verse, or touch the tuneful lyre. 'Till Bristol's charms dissolv'd the native cold; Bad me survey her eyes, and thence be bold. Thee, lovely Bristol! thee! with pride I chuse, The first, and only subject of my muse; That durst transport me like the bird of Jove, To face th' immortal source of light above! Such are thy kindred beams— So blessings, with a bounteous hand they give, So they ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... and preferred to take his science on faith. In the curious lines called "L'Envoy de Chaucer a Scogan," the poet, while blaming his friend for his want of perseverance in a love-suit, classes himself among "them that be hoar and round of shape," and speaks of himself and his Muse as out of date and rusty. But there seems no sufficient reason for removing the date of the composition of these lines to an earlier year than 1393; and poets as well as other men since Chaucer have spoken of themselves as old and obsolete at ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... "Your theory is that a man ought to be able to return to the Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ceased to ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... and manuscript. This was the skeleton in his closet, his secret sin. It was the scaffolding of his book, which he had been compiling for at least ten years, and to which he had tentatively assigned such different titles as "Notes on Literature," "The Muse on Crutches," "Books and I," and "What a Young Bookseller Ought to Know." It had begun long ago, in the days of his odyssey as a rural book huckster, under the title of "Literature Among the Farmers," but it had branched ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... after making the customary signal for the train to approach, threw his vast frame upon the earth, and seemed to muse on the deep responsibility of his present situation. His sons were not long in arriving; for the cattle no sooner scented the food and water than they quickened their pace, and then succeeded the usual bustle ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... imperturbability of his kindness. His biographers agree as to his never-failing good nature. He was without any of those fits of unrest and temperamental eccentricities which are supposed to be the "sign manual" of the child of the poetic muse. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... vivacity of his dialogue—Addison, whose fame as a poet greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems to have been mere misanthropy; he was a cynic rather than a poet, and his natural dryness and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and Rabelais—Prior, lively, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... "My muse," he explained. "A Parnassian pleasure. Tobacco smoke is the Ichor of mental life. Some men write with a pencil, others with a typewriter, I write with ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... his parts as nurse and warder with grave attention. He sat perspiring in his shirt sleeves, writing at the table whenever for a moment or two he had a spell of rest; and his screed grew rapidly. He was making verse, and it was under the stress of severe circumstances like these that his Muse served ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... inequalities, which she sensibly and very justly denounces. All men of true honour must accept and endorse her verdict. Hood treats the same theme with all the tenderness of his fine sensitive nature, and with all that exquisite harmony which his refined muse had at ready command. HOME LYRICS is a charming little volume of poems, full of ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... mourning! aptly art thou named, For thou hast been the cause of many a tear; For deeds of treacherous strife too justly famed, The Atlantic's charnel—desolate and drear; A thing none love, though wand'ring thousands fear— If for a moment rest the Muse's wing Where through the waves thy sandy wastes appear, 'Tis that she may one strain of horror sing, Wild as the dashing waves that tempests o'er ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... to change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... 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
... thought of Eden fade, Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain— Godlike to muse o'er his own Trade And manlike stand with ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling |
