"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acting in private theatricals with Highnesses and Excellencies. On the whole it seems to have been a peaceful, idle, rather trivial time of sojourn among congenial people. He danced, he strolled, he wrote verses to little Miss Emily; in short, he enjoyed himself as a youngish man may, whether the muse is waiting for him, or some less high-flown customer. "I wish I could give you a good account of my literary labors," he wrote his sister after several months in Dresden, "but I have nothing to report. I am merely seeing, and hearing, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... lookst Into the source and limit of all good, There, where thou markest that which thou dost speak, Thence priz'd of me the more. Glad thou hast made me. Now make intelligent, clearing the doubt Thy speech hath raised in me; for much I muse, How bitter can spring ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... sense, as much as the celebrated lines in Homer about the rolling up and falling down of the stone: Tramp, tramp! splash, splash! is to me perfectly new; and much of the imagery is nature. I should consider this muse of yours (if you carry the intrigue far) more likely to steal your heart from the law than even a wife. I am, Dear Sir, your most obedient, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... for King George the Third. Wasn't it? Well, George is the only king I play. Let it go at that. This circle was the stage, I guess. The kings an' the nobility sat in Flora's Temple. I forget who sculped these statues at the door. They're the Comic and Tragic Muse. But it's a sightly view, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... it under his; and together they went down the veranda steps. Ruth's arm trembled and her step faltered, but he was too far away in thought to be observant. He saw rifts in clouds—sunshine. The future was not so black. All the money he earned—serving McClintock and the muse—could be laid away. Then, in a few years, he and Ruth might fare forth in comfort and security. After five or six years it would not be difficult to hide in Italy or in France. No; the future was not so dark; there was a bit of dawn visible. If this ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... perhaps, too late to await the advent of a Queen of Song from the warm South. The South has had its turn; it has fulfilled its mission; the other end of the balance now comes up. The Northern Muse must sing her lesson to the world. Her fresher, chaster, more intellectual, and (as they only SEEM to some) her colder strains come in due season to recover our souls from the delicious languor of a Music which has been so wholly of the Feelings, that, for the want of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... them, contemplate these columns that seem to wish to bear to heaven the splendid testimony of our nothingness! There, at the right of the main altar, descend the steps that lead to the crypt. There muse on all the kings, the queens, the princes, and princesses, whose bones have been replaced at hazard within these vaults, after their bodies had been, in 1793, cast into a common ditch in the cemetery of the Valois to be consumed by quicklime. ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... farm-buildings, which is said to be the veritable Fountain of Egeria. The temple of the Muses, who were Egeria's counsellors, was close by; and the name of the gate of the city, Porta Capena, was in all likelihood a corruption of Camena, the Latin name for Muse, and was not derived, as some suppose, from the city of Capua. The spot outside the present walls, formerly visited as the haunt of the fabled nymph, before the discovery of the site of the Capena gate fixed its true position—beautiful and romantic as ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... during which the parent seemed to muse on the past, while the child rejoiced in the suspension of questions which harrowed his soul, since those of whom the other spoke had long been the victims of family misfortune. The old man, for the prisoner was aged as well as feeble, turned his look ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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 description ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... pet was Sir Alexander Ball. Concerning Bowyer, Coleridge did not talk much, but chiefly wrote; concerning Bell, he did not write much, but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball, however, he both wrote and talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball blackballed, or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man, who had fallen into one pit called Bell; secondly, falling into another pit called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and intrusion, With some outlandish institution, With Ursine's catechism to muse on, With system's method for confusion, With grounds strong laid of mere illusion: See a new ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... coming of age of one of the late Lords Holland; on a pedestal ornamented by a vase, are inscribed some verses by General Fitzpatrick; another placed by Mrs. Fox to mark a favorite spot where Mr. Fox loved to muse, is enriched by a quotation from the "Flower and the Leaf," concluded ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... even to those who are acquainted, though superficially, with Hibernian composition. The rhymes are, it must be granted, in the generality of such productions, very latitudinarian indeed, and as a veteran votary of the muse once assured me, depend wholly upon the wowls (vowels), as may be seen in the following stanza of the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... guest with food and wine, declaring that ambrosia and nectar were better fitted for her; he toasted her; he praised her; he exhausted his knowledge of mythology in her honour, calling her Melpomene, the tragic Muse, for had she not made men weep with her song that very night? Song, did he say? nay, hymn it was! She was Polyhymnia, singer of sublimity. He named her Philomele, and desired the lute of Orpheus that he might play an accompaniment to her wondrous singing. He asked her in which enchanted ocean ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... degree his work should be regarded as one of poetical conception and design. To this it was not possible to do justice, and in the attempt I have doubtless very often need of the reader's indulgent consideration. My natural respect for the old gentleman's vagaries, with a muse of equivocal character, must be my only excuse whenever the language, without luxuriating into verse, borrows flowers scarcely natural to prose. Truth compels me also to confess, that, with all my pains, I am by no means sure ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... (as to that, who is aware of his own nature?) their companions only understanding that they are different from the rest, more silent, "something odd about them," and apt to go off and meditate and muse in solitude. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... prolific in the birth of great men, producing Holmes, Poe, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Darwin. Holmes was descended from Anne Bradstreet, New England's "Tenth Muse" (p. 39) His father was a Congregational clergyman, preaching at Cambridge when Oliver was born. The family was in comfortable circumstances, and the boy was reared in a cultured atmosphere. In middle age Holmes wrote, "I like books,—I ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... contented with himself, haughtily called to poor Roque—the faithful valet was in a moment ready to lead the way. His master then very composedly returned to his apartments to muse over the adventures of the evening, and form plans for the successful accomplishment of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... ruddy blaze We muse or talk of mighty things, In clarion tone one little phrase Still through the heart's deep echoes rings: 'Our Hearths—our Homes—beyond compare!' Those charmed circles whence there rise The steadfast souls that do and dare, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... at foreign shrines nor strange altars, but ever unwaveringly at the feet of my divine countrywomen. Is it needful that I recross the ocean to bow before the reigning muse? Is it not conceded that the brightest, loveliest planet in Parisian skies, brought all her splendour ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... felt far more sorrow than satisfaction. I wished he had spent his gold on himself and left me poor, for it seemed to me I had need of nothing save the little I earned by my pen—I was content to live an anchorite and dine off a crust for the sake of the divine Muse I worshipped. Fate, however, willed it otherwise,—and though I scarcely cared for the wealth I inherited, it gave me at least one blessing—that of perfect independence. I was free to follow my own chosen vocation, and for a brief wondering while I deemed myself happy, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... hand and wrote in his stead." These poems are all short, and their titles (such as "What Shall It Profit?" "The Sphinx," "If," "To-morrow," "Good Society," "Equality," "Heredity," and so forth) sufficiently indicate that they do not rank among the lighter triflings with the muse. Their abiding sense of an awful and inevitable fate, their keen realisation of the startling contrasts between wealth and poverty, their symbolical grasp on the great realities of life and death, and the consummate skill of the artistic setting are all ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of the most moderate of the conquerors; and uniformly asserted his freedom and dignity in the court of Augustus. The triumph of Messalla was justified by the conquest of Aquitain. As an orator, he disputed the palm of eloquence with Cicero himself. Messalla cultivated every muse, and was the patron of every man of genius. He spent his evenings in philosophic conversation with Horace; assumed his place at table between Delia and Tibullus; and amused his leisure by encouraging the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... ALAR. 'Tis passion makes me grave. I muse upon thy beauty. Thus I'd read My oppressed spirit, for in truth these sounds Jar ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... the village place in the dusk, thinking of this deplorable weakness in men that the Faith is too great for them, and accepting it as an inevitable burden. I continued to muse with my ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger." When Margaret Greylston came across that verse, she closed her Bible, and sat down beside the window to muse. "Ah," she thought, "how true is that saying of the wise man! If I had only from the first given John soft answers, instead of grievous words, we might now have been at peace. I knew his quick temper so well; I should have been more gentle with him." Then she recalled all John's ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... sire; your majesty has graciously permitted me to enter the lists as knight and champion of German literature, and sometimes to defend the German Muse, who stands unnoticed and unknown under the shadow of your throne; while the French lady, with her brilliant attire and painted cheeks, is always welcomed. I beg your majesty to believe that, although this romance may have done some harm, it ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... written in a different vein. It is characterized by graceful playfulness of manner and sentiment, which shows how heartily the amiable authoress can enter into the sympathies and enjoyments of child, and how much she is at home when she engages in lighter dalliance with the muse. We have taken the liberty to print in italics two or three Barrettisms, which however, we believe, are not very reprehensible. On the whole, it is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... you like to change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... be cities who refuse To their own child the honours due, And look ungently on the Muse; But ever shall those cities rue The dry, unyielding, niggard breast, Offering no nourishment, no rest, To that young head which soon shall rise Disdainfully, in might ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... people often muse upon that month Which brought your majesty so near the grave, From that time, thirty weeks had scarce elapsed, Before ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... strenuous time's pedestrian muse Shouts paeans to the earth-born giant, Whose brows Apollo's wreath refuse, Whose strength to Charis is unpliant. Demos distrusts the debonair, Yet Demos found himself disarming To gracious GRANVILLE; unaware Won by the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... that the breach is stormed or the bold word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting an ugly weir in a canoe has exactly as much thought about fame as most commanders going into battle; and yet the action, fall out how it will, is not one of those the muse delights to celebrate. Indeed it is difficult to see why the fellow does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at, unless on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that is why; and I suspect ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poet, GIOVANNI BERCHET, died near the first of January. Born, says the Athenaeum, at Milan, in 1788, he imbibed at an early age that hatred of the rule of Austria which a few years afterwards inspired his muse. It was when the well-known political events of 1821 forced him to leave his country, that his active mind, fervently devoted to the principles of rational liberty, burst forth in those powerful and touching strains which are to this day deeply graven on the heart of every Italian ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... threshold. The sun, already far gone in the west, cast on the white wall a shadow whose sight set his head spinning. He turned hastily round. There at the door stood Selvaggia in a crimson cloak; for the rest, a picture of the Tragic Muse, so woebegone, so white, so ringed ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... never spake again. Fain Aphrodite would have raised his head; But all his thread was spun. So down the stream Went Daphnis: closed the waters o'er a head Dear to the Nine, of nymphs not unbeloved. Now give me goat and cup; that I may milk The one, and pour the other to the Muse. Fare ye well, Muses, o'er and o'er farewell! I'll sing strains lovelier ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... observes, and intensely. He does not analyse, he does not amass his facts; he concentrates. He wrings out quintessences; and when he has distilled his drops of pure spirit he brews his potion. Something of the kind happens to me now, whether verse or prose be the Muse of my devotion. A stray thought, a chance vision, moves me; presently the flame is hissing hot. Everything then at any time observed and stored in the memory which has relation to the fact is fused and in a swimming flux. Anon, as the Children of Israel said to Moses, "There came forth ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 asleep, during bank hours, on a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... would be intolerable in prose is tolerable in the introduction to a poem. See the long interval at the beginning of Paradise Lost between "Of man's first disobedience" and "Sing, heavenly Muse." Compare also the beginning ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... find that thar is ther simplest way o' doin' business. Ef we makes a mistake, an' gits ther wrong galoot, nobody ever kicks up much o' a row over it, fer we're naterally lively over thar, an' we must hev somethin' ter 'muse us ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... over the royal family was boundless; his power was absolute: the treasures, of America were at his command, and he made the most infamous use of them. In short, he had made the Court of Madrid one of those places to which the indignant muse of Juvenal conducts the mother of Britanicus. There is no doubt that Godoy was one of the principal causes of all the misfortunes which have overwhelmed Spain under ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... like to be a tenth Muse, then, Maggie?" said Philip looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the clouds that promises us a bright heaven ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... eyes, and stern, gloomy gaze, was an entirely different person from the gay enthusiastic follower of art, for whom her awakening heart had first throbbed more quickly; this was not the future master, who stood before her mind as a glorious favorite of fortune and the muse, transfigured by joyous creation and lofty success—this defiant giant did not look like an artist. No, no; yonder man no longer resembled the Ulrich, to whom, in the happiest hour of her life, she had so willingly, almost too willingly, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and lustrous of the planets, upon which men have gazed with longing admiration, and designated the emblem of 'all beauty and all love,' should have impressed Milton's poetical imagination with its charming appearance, and stimulated the flow of his captivating muse. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... 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 glossy. Seldom have I seen anything more charming than Madames de Canisy, Maret, and Savary ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... to write you a letter In verse, tho' in prose I could do it much better; The Muse, this cold weather, sleeps up at Parnassus, And leaves us poor poets as stupid as asses. She'll tarry still longer, if she has a warm chamber, A store of old massie, ambrosia, and amber. Dear mother, don't laugh, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... what, we have no doubt, were pleasant paths of classical literature. How inexhaustible are those old wells of Greek and Roman Letters! The world cannot afford to spare them long. They may be less in fashion at one time than another, but their beauty and life-giving powers are perennial. The Muse of English poesy has always been baptized in ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... "July 17th, 1744," the Marriage itself: all done, this last act, and the foregoing ones and the following, with a grandeur and a splendor—unspeakable, we may say, in short. [Helden-Geschichte, ii. 1045-1051.] Fantastic Bielfeld taxes his poor rouged Muse to the utmost, on this occasion; and becomes positively wearisome, chanting the upholsteries of life;—foolish fellow, spoiling his bits of facts withal, by misrecollections, and even by express fictions thrown in as garnish. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... too long, the drooping Muse hath stray'd, And left her debt to Addison unpaid, Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan, And judge, O judge, my bosom by your own. What mourner ever felt poetic fires! Slow comes the verse, that real woe inspires: Grief unaffected suits but ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... II., with a proper discourse of his own. Halley also wrote a set of Latin hexameters in praise of Newton's genius, which he printed at the beginning of the work. The last line of this specimen of Halley's poetic muse may be thus rendered: "Nor mortals nearer ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the sea, wears upon its luminous walls small trace of its long history of blood. As we contemplate its mosques and houses flashing their white profiles into the sky, it is impossible not to muse upon the contrast between its radiant and picturesque aspect and its veritable character as the accomplice of every crime and every baseness known to the Oriental mind. To see that sunny city basking between its green hills, you would hardly think of it as the abode of bandits; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... bear her hath begotten, I think, a child of the spirit that hath never known a mortal birth; and the twain wait for me." And Margaret, knowing not what to say, but feeling that he had seen somewhat high and heavenly, sate in silence; and presently Paul, breaking out of a muse, began to talk of the sweet days of their youth, and of the tender mercies of God. But while he spoke, he suddenly broke off, and held up his hand; and there came a waft of music upon the air. And Paul smiled like a tired child, and lay back in his chair; and as he did so a string ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Beauty, I——" The muse dictated nothing more. He was not in the mood for writing. He felt rather more in the mood for supper. His scruples scattered like clouds driven before a brisk North East wind; he put on the frogged surtout, and carried his reply himself. It was the first time that he had been ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... "Sweet Muse, while thus through heaven's too distant vault, Thy great mind roves—how shall we earn our salt? Though art is not encouraged as of old, She is worth a score of nature; I design To manufacture, from these flowers of thine, A silver ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... in swift Pindaric strains, Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, And drives a jaded Muse, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Nekrassov? Yet Saltykov is the greatest of Russian satirists; Uspensky the greatest story-writer of the lives of the Russian toiling masses; while Nekrassov, "the poet of the people's sorrow," whose muse "of grief and vengeance" has supremely dominated the minds of the Russian educated classes for the last half century, is the sole and rightful heir of his two great predecessors, Pushkin ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit and muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys—a kind of horse—and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged laddies dream, as well as boys in socks. The Standing Stone is in the dyke that separates the hill from a ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... pieces, or trodden down like mire in the streets. This frightful sight was seen, and these dreadful noises were heard by him for several miles together; and, coming to a place where he thought he heard a company of fiends coming forward to meet him, he stopped, and began to muse what he had best to do. Sometimes he had half a thought to go back; then again he thought he might be half way through the valley; he remembered also how he had already vanquished many a danger, and that the danger of going back might be much more than for ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... thoughts of this aged man, mine adversary, for it would seem unto me that his stature is like unto mine, and that I behold about him the tokens that my mother recounted unto me. And my heart goeth out toward him, and I muse if it be Rustem, my father. For it behoveth me not to combat him. Wherefore, I beseech thee, tell unto ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... that sacred island dwelt A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt; At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored. Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont, And in those meads where sometime she might haunt, Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse, Though Fancy's casket were unlock'd to choose. 20 Ah, what a world of love was at her feet! So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat Burnt from his winged heels to either ear, That from a whiteness, as the lily clear, Blush'd into roses 'mid his golden hair, Fallen in jealous ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... stand at the rail, after the first days of seasickness were over, gazing out 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, ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... can muse in a crowd all day, On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving; Unless you can die when the dream is past— Oh, ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... ravines, which changed hourly in color, from the opalescent tints of the dawn, through the garish spectrum of daylight to the deep purple shadows of the sunset, to the crepuscular opalescence again. Under any other conditions, she would have been content to sit and muse alone with her grief—and Hugh. He was constantly present in her thoughts. It was as though his spirit hovered near. She seemed to hear him speak, to feel the touch of his hand upon her brow, soothing ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... it, the idee struck me as bein' sort o' pitiful,—to go to whippin' a ghost. But she didn't seem to notice my remark, for she seemed to be a gazin' upward in a sort of a muse; and she says,— ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... woman," he thought, as he walked toward the Bayswater Road, looking for a hansom. "Just the sort to save a man trouble, and get full value out of a sovereign." He continued to muse on the wonderful discovery he had made of a woman perfectly planned, according to man's ideal—sweet, yielding, tenderly sympathetic, willing and capable to ward off all annoyances from her master, full of feeling for his troubles, and not to be moved by her own to sad looks, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... imperturbably, patting him kindly on the shoulder. "My dear fellow, passion burns out, inspiration runs to seed. Some fine day every artist finds himself sitting face to face with his lump of clay, with his empty canvas, with his sheet of blank paper, waiting in vain for the revelation to be made, for the Muse to descend. He must learn to do without the Muse! When the fickle jade forgets the way to your studio, don't waste any time in tearing your hair and meditating on suicide. Come round and see me, and I will show you how ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... said Adrienne, gayly, "this affair will arrange itself quite easily. Henceforth, Mr. Poet, you shall draw your inspirations in the midst of good fortune instead of adversity. Sad muse! But first of all, bonds shall be given ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... taste of the poet, The Miller's Daughter was greatly altered before 1842. It is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of Tennyson's domestic English idylls, poems with conspicuous beauties, but not without sacrifices to that Muse of the home affections on whom Sir Barnes Newcome delivered his famous lecture. The seventh stanza perhaps hardly deserved to be altered, as it is, so as to bring in "minnows" where "fish" had been the reading, and where "trout" would best recall an English chalk stream. To the angler ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... hiding the small ear. The graceful cloak, with its touches of sable on a main fabric of soft white, hid the ugly dress; its ample folds heightened the natural dignity of the young form and long limbs, lent them a stately and muse-like charm. Mrs. Burgoyne and Miss Manisty looked at each other, then at Miss Foster. Both of them had the same curious feeling, as though a veil were being drawn away from something they were just ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whom my Muse these notes intendeth; Which now my breast o'ercharged to music lendeth? To you! to you! all song of praise is due: Only in you my song begins ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... bathing-dress and standing naked to the sea. Captain Vyell was towelled under the eyes of Port Nassau, and flesh-brushed until he glowed (it may be) as healthily as did the cheeks of those who spied on him. On this question the Muse declines to take sides. For certain his naked body, after these ministrations, glowed delicious within the bath-gown as he mounted again to his Olympian chamber. There he allowed Manasseh to wash out his ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and his pain, seeing the sun shine on all that gold and the curious painted galleries under it. He thought it was real, solid gold. Real gold laid out on a house-roof, and the people all so poor! Findelkind began to muse, and wonder why everybody did not climb up there and take a tile off and be rich. But perhaps it would be wicked. Perhaps God put the roof there with all that gold to prove people. Findelkind got bewildered. If God did such a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... by side, the jockey and Sir John Discuss the important point of six to one; For, O my Muse! the deep-felt bliss how dear—How great the pride to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... 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 ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption—no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sails, and if I were not relating actual occurrences I should certainly be run ashore. As it is, sleep may invigorate and bring back my memory. When relating facts it is not necessary to call on any muse, or fast, or roam into a shady bower, where so many have found their thoughts. When relating facts, fancy is hot required to soar untrodden heights where thought has seldom reached; but too freely come back all the weary days, the toils, fears and vexations of my early life in Michigan, ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... Lincoln," and McKenzie's "The Young Franklin," noting how the dignity, sureness of touch, and sound purpose of these make them more appealing with longer acquaintance. On another day take the intermediate group, that is dignified but less austere in theme-such works as Sherry Fry's "Peace," and Berge's "Muse Finding the Head of Orpheus." Studied systematically, there is in this series of statues a broad education ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... has put forth some fine conceptions, and composed one admirable tragedy; Sheridan sketched some brilliant satires; Miss Baillie delineated the passions with epic power; and genius of the highest order in our times, that of Byron and Bulwer, has endeavoured to revive the tragic muse in these islands. But the first declared that he wrote his dramatic pieces with no design whatever to their representation, but merely as a vehicle of noble sentiments in dialogue of verse; and the second is too successful as a novelist to put forth his strength in dramatic poetry, or train ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Angouleme, Duchesse d'Alencon through her first marriage, and Queen of Navarre through her second, she was called Marguerite d'Angouleme, Marguerite of Navarre, of Valois, Marguerite de France, Marguerite des Princesses, the Fourth Grace, and the Tenth Muse. A most appreciative and just account of her life is given by M. Saint-Amand, which will be followed in the main outline ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... most of his life; and was lately head-clerk of the wealthy merchant, John Jacob Astor, who left him a handsome annuity. This was increased by Mr. Astor's son and heir, a man of well-known liberality; so that between the two there is a chance of the poet's being enabled to 'meditate the tuneful Muse' for the remainder of his days free from all ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... terrace of her father's palace She may stroll and muse alone, may smile or sigh alone, Letting thoughts and eyes go wandering over hills and valleys To-day her father's, and one day ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... affords new proof of the unimportance of your subject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. In general, what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to grandees? Yet in the "Divan" you would not skip them, since his muse seldom supports ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Baroni family cared was the foreign manager, young, generous, and speculative, whom they had evidently without intention already pleased, and whose good opinion they resolved to-night entirely to secure. And in this they perfectly succeeded. Josephine was a tragic muse; all of them, even to little Carlotta, performed as if their destiny depended on the die. Baroni would not permit the children's box to be carried round to-night, as he thought it an unfair tax on the generous stranger, whom he did not the less please by this well-bred ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... marvel that a gentleman, and a gallant officer, can find no other subject for his muse, in these times of trial, than in such beastly invocations to that notorious follower of the camp, the filthy Elizabeth Flanagan. Methinks the goddess of Liberty could furnish a more noble inspiration, and the sufferings of your ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... which Carlo filled out with his harp, she again put her hand into the urn and drew out a new theme; again the inspiration seemed to pass over her, and the holy Whitsuntide of her muse to be renewed. Constantly more and more stormily resounded the plaudits of her hearers; it was like a continued thunder of enthusiasm, a real salvo of joy. It animated Corilla to new improvisations; she again and again recurred to the urn, drawing forth new themes, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... "Sing, Muse, of the man of much wandering who travelled right far after sacking sacred Troy, and saw the cities of many men and knew their ways. Many a sorrow he suffered on the sea, trying to win a return home for himself and his comrades; yet he could not for all his longing, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... 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 Forward' ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... to the skeleton. They separated unwillingly, each thinking only of the other's safety and comfort. The girl knew she was not wanted because the man wished to spare her some unpleasant experience. She obeyed him with a sigh, and sat down, not to sleep, but to muse, as girls will, round-eyed, wistful, with the angelic fantasy ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... the Tragic Muse. Painted in 1783 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1784. The original work was bought by M. de Calonne for 800 guineas, and finally came into the possession of the Marquis of Westminster, in whose family it has since remained. It is in the ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Terpsichore, is dance and song. Now comes Apollo with his quiver full of arrows. He is the god of the hunt and twin brother to Diana, the goddess of hunt; also he is god of music and poetry. No. 6 is Polyhymnia, muse of hymn-music; No. 7, Euterpe, is song poetry; No. 8, Thalia, is comedy, and No. 9, Urania, ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... way that I may live—to take every impulse that comes—to be watching, watching—to dare always and instantly, to hesitate, to put off never, to seize the skirt of my muse whenever it shimmers before me. So I make myself a habit, a routine, a discipline; and so each day I have new power. So each day I feel myself, I bare my arms, I walk erect, exulting—I ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... Diodati—and I muse to tell the tale— This stubborn I, that Love was wont despise And make a laughter of his snares, unwise, Am fallen—where honest feet will sometimes fail. Not golden tresses, not a cheek vermeil, Dazzle me thus; but, in a new-world guise, A foreign ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... tinsel phrase, And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays; Then with mosaick art the piece combine, And boast the glitter of each dulcet line: Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse His vigorous sense into the Latian muse; Aspir'd to shine by unreflected light, And with a Roman's ardour think and write. He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire, And, like a master, wak'd the[59] soothing lyre: Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim, While ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... I muse and listen all alone, When stormy winds are high, And think I hear his tender tone, And call, but no reply; And so I've done these four long years, Without a friend or home, Yet every dream of hope is vain,— ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... speaking, of three divisions—the landing at Carthage, the Sicilian visit to Acestes, and the final campaign of Italy—and the two first of these have no bearing at all upon the third, and even that third is incomplete. Whatever homage we may be compelled to pay to the sweetness of Virgil's muse, and his marvellous power of melody, this at least is undeniable, that in inventive genius he falls immeasurably short of the Greek, and that his scenes of action are at once both tinselled and tame. One magnificent exception, it is true, we are bound to make from such a censure. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... gift, the natural incommunicable power, without the ambition, others have the ambition but no other gift from any Muse. This class is the more numerous, but the smallest class of all has both the power and the will to excel in letters. The desire to write, the love of letters may shew itself in childhood, in boyhood, or youth, and mean nothing at all, a mere harvest of barren blossom without fragrance or fruit. Or, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... 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. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... clergyman's "Broom Merchant," can be worthily placed by its side. But this nobility is of the lowly, humble kind, to be indeed thankful for as all nobility must be, whether it be that of the honest farmer who tills the soil in silence, or that of the gentle Longfellow who cultivates his modest muse in equal quietness. But there is the nobility of the nightingale and the nobility of the eagle; there is the nobility of the lamb and the nobility of the lion; and beside the titanesqueness of Gogol, and Turgenef, and Tolstoy, the nobility of Pushkin, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... lines be any length they wanted to be, to fit the sense or the length of what he had to say. He once said to me that if anything of his was remembered he thought it would be his poem,Lo, the Summer Girl. His muse often took the direction of satire, but it was always good-natured even when it hit the hardest. He had in his makeup much of the detached philosopher, like Cervantes ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Thus did she muse, gazing questioningly at the whiteness of the altar flowers and those steady tongues of flame, hearing the silence, as of reverent waiting, which dwelt in the place. But, on the other hand, to give, in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... I love to muse there till it kind o' seems Ez ef the world went eddyin' off in dreams. The Northwest wind thet twitches at my baird Blows out o' sturdier days not easy scared, An' the same moon thet this December shines Starts out the tents an' booths o' Putnam's lines; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... multitudes of young and old, For whose regale the mighty monarch slew Two beeves, twelve sheep, and twice four fatted brawns. They slay'd them first, then busily their task 70 Administ'ring, prepared the joyous feast. And now the herald came, leading with care The tuneful bard; dear to the muse was he, Who yet appointed him both good and ill; Took from him sight, but gave him strains divine. For him, Pontonoues in the midst disposed An argent-studded throne, thrusting it close To a tall column, where he hung his lyre Above his head, and taught ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... Muse, shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the Infant God? Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein, To welcom him to this his new abode, Now while the Heav'n by the Suns team untrod, Hath took no print of the approching light, 20 And all the spangled host keep ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... face, which was but of a little model, and yet proportionable to her body; her eyes black and full of loveliness and sweetness, her eyebrows small and even, as if drawn with a pencil, a very little, pretty, well-shaped mouth, which sometimes (especially when in a muse or study) she would draw up into an incredible little compass; her hair a sad chestnut; her complexion brown, but clear, with a fresh colour in her cheeks, a loveliness in her looks inexpressible; and by her whole composure was so beautiful ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... downcast soul! Muse, and take better heart; Back with thine angel to the field, Good luck ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... was a social revelation to him, and the sunny afternoon was not altogether thrown away, for they carelessly rambled over the proud old town together, doing all the sights. They visited the stately National Monument, the Jardin Anglais, the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, the Muse'e Foy, the Botanic Gardens, and the Athende. He gazed upon the fresh face of the rebellious young American social mutineer with an increasing wonder as they wandered alone on the Promenade des Bastions, and was simply astounded when he vainly ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... with a little wit, Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ: Because the Muse has peopled Caledon With Panthers, Bears, and Wolves, and beasts unknown, As if we were not stock'd with monsters of our own. Let AEsop answer, who has set to view Such kinds as Greece and Phrygia never knew; And mother Hubbard,[118] in her homely dress, Has sharply blamed a British ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... French side now, but across the Spluegen, through Switzerland, his genius touched him again, as had happened in those high regions three years before on the road to Italy. But this time it was not in the guise of the Latin Muse, who then drew from him such artful and pathetic poetical meditations about his past life and pious vows for the future;—it was something much more subtle and ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... universal neglect. The poetry that ordinarily circulates among a people is poetry of a secondary and conventional sort that propagates established ideas in trite metaphors. Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public. Plato's quarrel was not so much with poetic art as with ancient myth and emotional laxity: he was preaching a crusade against the established church. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... effect which his public performance on the pianoforte had created at Vienna, Mozart forgot all the fears he had expressed previously to his journey to Paris; thought no more that teaching would interfere with the higher vocation of his muse; and was content to become the fashionable performer, teacher, and pianoforte composer of the day. This mode of life for a time had its temptations and its success; and he hoped that he might still better assist his father at Vienna than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the Gerusalemme Liberata, the masterpiece of the immortal Torquato Tasso! But the brutal-minded booksellers scorn the fruit of my vigils, and in the empyrean the Muse veils her face so as not to witness the ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... this resolution which shut the flying scenery from his gaze, which drew fine lines about the corners of his firm lips, and set his face to such a look of dominant strength as made the high spirited American girl muse thoughtfully and brought a touch of colour to the face of the pseudo Countess which was not due to ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Strain of those Times, composed a whole Volume of Poems in Praise of his Mistress, whom he calls Rosalinde. I never yet could meet with this Collection; but whenever I do, I am persuaded, I shall find many of our Author's Canzonets on this Subject to be Scraps of the Doctor's amorous Muse: as, perhaps, those by Biron too, and the other Lovers in Love's Labour's lost, ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... have him alone, at peace with himself and the world; happy in the contemplation of his beloved muse; jotting down, now and then, the brilliant ideas that flash through his teeming brain; and munching in solitude his homely meal of bread and cheese. In telling us he laid his bread and cheese upon the shelf, he at once shows he had left his parental abode, and the ministering and watchful ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... able now condignly to relate how Pantagruel did demean himself against the three hundred giants! O my Muse, my Calliope, my Thalia, inspire me at this time, restore unto me my spirits; for this is the logical bridge of asses! Here is the pitfall, here is the difficulty, to have ability enough to express the horrible ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... purpose. I am ashamed to compute how many hours and days these chores consume for me. I had it fully in my heart to write at large leisure in noble mornings opened by prayer or by readings of Plato or whomsoever else is dearest to the Morning Muse, a chapter on Poetry, for which all readings, all studies, are but preparation; but now it is July, and my chapter is rudest beginnings. Yet when I go out of doors in the summer night, and see how high the stars are, I am persuaded that there is time enough, here ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... cheerefully I walke with thee, My shoulders from all burdens free. Our native soyle again to see Rich to my selfe I sing, Whil'st care strikes thee, and thy Muse dumb, The heavy weight of thy vast summe, Or what estate in time to come The faithlesse rout may bring. Hee's rich that nothing hath; Hee that In's certaine hand holds his estate, That makes himselfe his constant mate Where need commands ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... continue to live in the world according to the Christian law of restraint and moderation, and of those who yearn to live in God. With Augustin the choice is made. He will never more look back. These Dialogues at Cassicium are his supreme farewell to the pagan Muse. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... what was then called taste, built, and planted, and begot children, till the whole caravan were forced to go abroad to retrieve. Alas! Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scuderi, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. The captain's fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virt'u; and that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced bouts-rim'es as a new discovery. They hold a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or incantation, no change of place; but present they burn, absent they desire, by day they follow their loves about, by night they serenade them, sober call for them, and drunken sing about ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... your rambles Through the green lanes of the country, Where the tangled barberry-bushes Hang their tufts of crimson berries Over stone walls gray with mosses, Pause by some neglected graveyard, For 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 this rude inscription, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... 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 work, which make us ready to believe in the figurative comparison ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... 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 fifty. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons: otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... page of a scientific text-book. No woman even in the poetry had caused him to vibrate in the untouched heart-chords like this unexpected star in the firmament of beer fumes and tobacco smoke! But it was not joyous to muse upon this vision for he had no doubt that she marked a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... in this fashion in her box, when Jenny Fagette came to join her there; Jenny Fagette, slender and fragile, the incarnation of Alfred de Musset's Muse, who at night wore out her eyes of periwinkle-blue by scribbling society notes and fashion articles. A mediocre actress, but a clever and wonderfully energetic woman, she was Nanteuil's most intimate friend. They recognized in each other remarkable ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... Sicily and Syracuse were disturbed by civil and foreign wars, wars of citizens against citizens, of Greeks against Carthaginians, and against the fierce 'men of Mars,' the banded mercenaries who possessed themselves of Messana. But this was not matter for his joyous Muse - ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... a better right to sing of cider than of wine; but it behooves them to sing better than English Phillips did, else they will do no credit to their Muse. ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... clearing away the supper, he took a heavy cudgel and went out. He walked straight away from the house, and then, when he knew that his figure could no longer be seen in the twilight, he made a circuit, and, entering the shrubbery, crept along close to the wall of the Muse, until within two or three yards of the window. Having made sure that at present, at any rate, no one was near, he moved out a step or two ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... chain of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness! At this time the profanation of the word "love" rose to its height; the muse of science condescended to seek admission at the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... extraordinary man had inconsistencies and unexpected lapses—lapses into flat veracity. Lyon recognised what Sir David had told him, that his aberrations came in fits or periods—that he would sometimes keep the truce of God for a month at a time. The muse breathed upon him at her pleasure; she often left him alone. He would neglect the finest openings and then set sail in the teeth of the breeze. As a general thing he affirmed the false rather than denied the true; yet this proportion ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... maidens, so cheerful and gay, Whose words ever fulsomely fall, Oh, pity your friend, who to-day Has become a Society's thrall. Allow me to muse and to sigh, Nor talk of the change that ye find; None once was more happy than I; But, alas! I've left ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden, 505 How wilt thou prove thy worth?" Then joy and sleep Together fled; my soul was deeply laden, And to the shore I went to muse and weep; But as I moved, over my heart did creep A joy less soft, but more profound and strong 510 Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep The path of the sea-shore: that Spirit's tongue Seemed whispering in my heart, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... met his bunter Muse And, as they quaff'd the fiery juice, Droll Nature stamp'd each lucky hit ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... people which can endure such fluting and piping among them is not likely soon to have its modest ear pleased by aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song. Perhaps I am then led on into meditation respecting the spiritual nature of the Tenth Muse, who invented this gracious instrument, and guides its modulation by stokers' fingers; meditation, also, as to the influence of her invention amidst the other parts of the Parnassian melody of English education. Then it cannot but occur to me to inquire how far this modern "pneuma," Steam, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... earlier Drusus, as he hurried to and fro transmitting orders for his general, might have been fain to draw aside and muse on the strangeness of the night scene. The sky was clear, as almost always in a land where a thunder-storm is often as rare as an eclipse; the stars twinkled out of heavens of soft blackness; the crescent of a new moon hung like a silvered bow out over the harbour, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... pious design, and the protection of Jesus and His Mother was promised to her. Let us follow them in thought up the steep hill to Assisi—to the church where the relics of the saint, where his mortal remains are laid. Let us descend into the subterranean chapel, pause at every altar, and muse on the records of that astonishing life, the most marvellous perhaps of any which it has ever been permitted to mortal man to live. Let us go with them to the home of his youth, where his confessorship began in childish sufferings for the sake of Christ. ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... that doth this month or two avail To somewhat soothe my Muse's anxious care. For certain minds at certain stories rail, Certain poor jests, which nought but trifles are. If I with deference their lessons hail, What would they more? Be you more prone to spare, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and mother had left him Ernest dropped asleep over a book which Mrs Jay had given him, and he did not awake till dusk. Then he sat down on a stool in front of the fire, which showed pleasantly in the late January twilight, and began to muse. He felt weak, feeble, ill at ease and unable to see his way out of the innumerable troubles that were before him. Perhaps, he said to himself, he might even die, but this, far from being an end of his troubles, would prove the beginning of new ones; for at the best he would only go to Grandpapa ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... breathe where Gilead sheds her balm; I love to walk on Jordan's banks of palm; I love to wet my foot in Hermon's dews; I love the promptings of Isaiah's muse; In Carmel's paly grots I'll court repose, And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... Browning's poetry lacks passion and the most poignant emotion of human nature, love. Chesterton, on the other hand, considers that Browning was the finest love poet of the world. It is real love poetry, because it talks about real people, not ideals; it does not muse of the Prince Charming meeting the Fairy Princess, and forget the devoted wife meeting her husband on the villa doorstep with open arms and a nice dinner in the parlour. Sentiment must be based on reality if it is to have worth. This is the strong point, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... 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 boldness in the iambic metre. In these two forms, Greek ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... write luxuriously is not the same thing as to live so, but a new and worse offence. It implies an intellectual defect also, the not perceiving that the present corrupt condition of human nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to perpetuate) is a temporary or superficial state. The good word lasts forever: the impure word can only buoy itself in the gross gas that now envelops us, and will sink altogether to ground as that works itself clear in the everlasting ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was sent out of the colony for the scandal of Merrymount, but satire itself remained religious in Ward's Simple Cobbler of Agawam (1647). Poetry was represented in Anne Bradstreet's (1612-1672) The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America (1650), and was continued by a succession of doggerel writers, mostly ministers or schoolmasters, Noyes, Oakes, Folger, Tompson, Byles and others. The world of books also ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of that well-appointed villa whence a reader can see the City near at hand—if among more serious poems there be any room for the wanton Muse of Comedy, you may place these seven little books I send you even in ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... isle, have really turned up in some numbers. But then the Caithness painted pebbles were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed. The proverbial fence seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science, in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting, in contemplation, on the fence. The strong, the very strong point against authenticity is this: numbers of the disputed objects were found in sites of the early Iron Age. Now such objects, save for a few ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... winding-gravel walk through them with an edging of shrubs, in what they call the modern taste, and in short, has designed the three lanes to walk in again—and now is forced to shut them out again by a wall, for there was not a Muse could walk there but she was spied by every country fellow that went by with a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... (inquiry) 461 invention &c. (imagination) 515. thoughtfulness &c. adj. V. think, reflect, cogitate, excogitate[obs3], consider, deliberate; bestow thought upon, bestow consideration upon; speculate, contemplate, meditate, ponder, muse, dream, ruminate; brood over, con over; animadvert, study; bend -, apply mind &c. (attend) 457; digest, discuss, hammer at, weigh, perpend; realize, appreciate; fancy &c. (imagine) 515; trow[obs3]. take into consideration; take counsel &c. (be advised) 695; commune ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Morality's our Muse And the drawers she wears are made Of the stoutest leather—Oh! Do not wrong my ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the Muse,— Nothing refuse." ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... healthy, gentle energy of the flower, instinctively rejecting what is not fit for it, with no need of disdain to dig a gulf between it and the lower forms of creation. Her office to man is that of the muse, inspiring him to all good thoughts and deeds. The passions that sometimes agitate these maidens of his verso are the surprises of noble hearts unprepared for evil; and even their mistakes cannot cost bitter tears to ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli |
