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More "Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left it so disgracefully. The king well knew the unfortunate chevalier for a man as destitute of modesty as merit; when therefore he saw his book upon the mantel-piece of my drawing-room, he said, 'So! you are the inspiring muse of the chevalier de la Morliere; I only warn you, when the day comes for him to be hanged, not to ask me to pardon him." "Be assured," replied I, "that I will never deprive the Place de Greve of one so formed to do honour to it." ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... in my dream that Christian was in a muse a while. To whom also Hopeful added these words: "Be of good cheer; ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... detached from the fountain-head of Jewish culture, would no more be able to read the "Songs of Zion," and that the poet's rhymes were limited in their appeal to the last handful of the worshippers of the Hebrew Muse: ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... the presidio he sat down on the balcony that overlooked the patio outside his room. There was nobody about and he began to muse. It was rash to take things for granted, but he thought he had been made the subject of three experiments. Somebody had put a gold onza in the Indian jar; Olsen had tried to find out if he was ambitious; ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... style of VILLON and MAROT as vulgar, and sought nobility, elevation, and distinction. To this end it renewed its vocabulary by wholesale borrowing and adaptation from the Latin, much enriching the language, though giving color to the charge of Boileau that RONSARD'S muse "en ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... ancient. There is no lament in any classical writer for the barbarians. The New Zealanders say that the land will depart from their children; the Australians are vanishing; the Tasmanians have vanished. If anything like this had happened in antiquity, the classical moralists would have been sure to muse over it; for it is just the large solemn kind of fact that suited them. On the contrary, in Gaul, in Spain, in Sicily—everywhere that we know of—the barbarian endured the contact of the Roman, and the Roman allied himself to the barbarian. Modern ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... forbid that we should say that it completes the circle of his powers. On the contrary, it gives us hope of broader effort in new fields of thought and forms of art. But it brings the development of his Muse and of his Creed to a positive and definite point. It enables us to claim one who has been hitherto regarded as belonging to a merely speculative and peirastic school as the willing and deliberate champion of vital Christianity, and of an orthodoxy the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... 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 girded By the flesh half dead, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... Miss Mac-Ivor's society was extremely limited. Her most intimate friend had been Rose Bradwardine, to whom she was much attached; and when seen together, they would have afforded an artist two admirable subjects for the gay and the melancholy muse. Indeed Rose was so tenderly watched by her father, and her circle of wishes was so limited, that none arose but what he was willing to gratify, and scarce any which did not come within the compass of his power. With ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... hurried or troubled in this thing. We'll think, and talk things over, and plan. My world is a broader and saner world than yours is, Susan, and when I take you there you will be as honored and as readily accepted as any woman among them all. My wife will set me free—-" he fell into a muse, as they walked along the quiet country road, and Susan, her brain a mad whirl of thoughts, did not interrupt him. "I believe she will set me free," he said, "as soon as she knows that my happiness, and all my life, depend upon it. It can be done; it can be arranged, surely. You ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... knowledge of the Gaelic tongue, to forge the originals. In 1807, eleven years after his death, these were at last published. The progress of genuine Celtic scholarship during the succeeding century did the rest; and the old blind bard rejoined the mists and vapors which were the inspiration of his Muse. {78} The poems of Ossian are only one, though perhaps the most signal, instance of the forgeries which prevailed like an epidemic at the time of the Romantic Revival. Some of these, like Ireland's Shakespeare forgeries, were little better than cold-blooded mercenary ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... "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
... all solitary, with the exception of her mute companion, and it was observed that she never, in a single instance, was known to traverse any spot over which she and Osborne had not walked together. Here she would linger, and pause, and muse, and address Ariel, as if the beautiful creature were capable of comprehending ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and the gray old wolf goes to his den to muse over what has sent Joe Woods on a quest for ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... "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 ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... suffice 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 severed by the Wharfe, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... 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
... not change a thousand times a day? Sloth is of all things the most fanciful— 120 And moves more parasangs in its intents Than generals in their marches, when they seek To leave their foe at fault.—Why dost thou muse? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... desiring to entertain the King, Queen, and court at his mansion of Vaux-le-Vicomte, asked for a comedy at the hands of the Palais-Royal company, who had discovered the secret of pleasing the Grand Monarque. Moliere had but a fortnight's notice; and he was expected, moreover, to accommodate his muse to various prescribed ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... observation. Then he 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 ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... my wits to work one morning after an evening of delight, and found the muse complaisant. My fancy spouted like a fountain, the rhymes swam in the water like gilded or silver fishes, so tame you had but to dip in your fingers and take your pick, while allusion and simile crowded so thickly about me that I should have needed an epic rather than my legal fourteen lines ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... BOTANIC MUSE! who in this latter age Led by your airy hand the Swedish sage, Bad his keen eye your secret haunts explore On dewy dell, high wood, and winding shore; 35 Say on each leaf how tiny Graces dwell; How laugh the Pleasures in a blossom's bell; How ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... composed a great deal for my own amusement. I wrote both prose and verse, and verse in a great many metres; but it was soon borne in upon me—conclusively after I had been beaten for the Prize Poem[50]—that the Muse of Poetry was not mine. In prose, I was more successful. My work for The Harrovian gave me constant practice, and I twice won the School-Prize for an English Essay. In writing, I indulged to the full my taste for resonant and rolling sound; and my style was ludicrously rhetorical. ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... fusion of the two natures, but rather a juxtaposition, a remarkably close soldering. Ursule was whimsical, and displayed at times the shyness, the melancholy, and the transports of a pariah; then she would often break out into nervous fits of laughter, and muse lazily, like a woman unsound both in head and heart. Her eyes, which at times had a scared expression like those of Adelaide, were as limpid as crystal, similar to those of kittens ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... comes ashore in the breakers, and as the result of an all-night's struggle with the muse of conventionality Corkey has seven ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... with the laughter, until at last her cough began to interrupt the bursts, and between laughing and coughing the old lady involuntarily spluttered all over my face. Humiliated, and full of disgust, I escaped rapidly thence to my mother's room, where I washed myself with soap and water, and began to muse on the lady ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... with her thin nose in the air. Dorothy clung to her, and they reached the house together. It so happened that the story of the attack had been told to Dorothy's father, and Sir Walter was getting a little fun at the expense of Johnnie and his wrestlings with the muse of poetry. A lively, good-humoured sally, at the moment when Dorothy's trembling limbs carried her over the threshold, evoked a peal of stentorian laughter from Master Morgan's capacious lungs. The tearful maid stood bewildered for an instant, then a roar from all ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... poor Amy Robsart passed there, and the scene between her, Leicester, and the queen, when that prince of villains, Varney, claims her as his wife. But in spite of the romantic and historical associations belonging to the place, I do not think it would have "inspired my muse." ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... muse beside the rolling waves; We ponder on the grassy hill; We linger by the new-piled graves, And find that star is shining still. God in his great design hath spread, Unnumber'd rays to lead afar; They beam the brightest ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... city has no claim to praise for wide streets, fine houses, porticos, or symmetrical squares; probably, the architects of the Middle Ages destroyed its perfect plan, and swept away most of the beauties and grandeur which inspired the muse ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... riding back from one of these visits—it had been (if the Muse will smile and condescend) to buy a packet of hairpins—when, half-way up the village street, she spied a horseman approaching. An instant later ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... novelist, and his poetry is said by competent critics to be very good; but the public looks with a more kindly eye upon his novels, and as their author cannot afford to disdain contemporary profit and reputation, he has been obliged rather to show the cold shoulder to the Muse. Theuriet's appearance in letters and his popularity are, I think, to be taken as a sign that a healthy change is going on in the taste of French readers. His books, consciously or unconsciously, are a protest against the system in which young girls are brought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... And thou wert bound to me In the long-vanished eld eternally! In the dark troubled tablets which enroll The past my Muse beheld this blessed scroll,— 'One with thy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to say a prayer to the Muse; but I can't remember what it is. No matter. Multiplication Table comes next. Mother says it's just the same thing in India that it is ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... "It is very curious." He said in a kind of muse, "I don't know just where I was." Then he began again, "Oh, yes! It was at the ceremony—down there in the library. Some of the country people came in; I suppose they thought they ought, and I suppose ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... poet should bore us to death with fiddle-faddle minutia of natural objects in preference to that study of the insignificant creature Man, in his relations to his species, to which Mr. Pope limited the range of his inferior muse; and who, practising as he preached, wrote some very nice verses, to which the Lake school and its successors are largely indebted. My Mr. Bowles has exercised his faculty upon Man, and has a powerful inborn gift in that line which only requires ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... And let me dream of those rose-scented bowers That lapped my soul in youth's enchanted East! It needs no demon-essence of Hasheesh To flash that sunrise glory in my eyes!— It needs no Flora to bring back those flowers— No gay Apollo to sound liquid reeds— No muse to consecrate the hills and streams— No God or oracle within those groves To render sacred all the emerald glooms: For here dwelt such bright angels as attend The innocent ways of youth's unsullied ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... to muse. "Of course, if you were only practiced in witchcraft you could make a wax image of him and then stick pins in it until he curled ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... weary days, besieged him close, Even to the gates and inlets of his life! But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm, And with a natural gladness, he maintained The citadel unconquered, and in joy Was strong to follow the delightful muse." ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... the First African Presbyterian Church of the country. Others to occupy the pulpit as supplies and pastors were Benjamin T. Tanner, subsequently a bishop of the A. M. E. Church, William B. Evans, Henry Highland Garnet, J. H. Muse, J. Sella Martin, John B. Reeves, during his connection with Howard University, Dr. Septimus Tustin, George Van Deurs, a Swede, and John Brown, a Scotchman. The last mentioned incumbent was succeeded by the Rev. Francis J. Grimke, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... forthwith taken down and read. I can withdraw or change nothing, nor make the least correction. I must therefore be all the more careful in what I say before you, and that too with regard to more than one form of composition. For there is greater variety in the works of my muse than in all the elaborate achievements of Hippias. If you will give me your best attention I will explain what I mean with greater ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... Deipnosophists was all but ready. All through a golden summer and a quiet Long Vacation it had been maturing, and on the first night of the October term he arranged his piles of notes about him, set a quire of clean manuscript paper on his table, dipped pen in inkpot, and began to muse on the ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... statuesque in homely fashion, after having delivered himself of his effective assent: 'Yes. The convict,' and I, far from indulging in a reminiscent excursion into the past, remained sufficiently in the present to muse in a vague, absent-minded way on the respectable proportions and on the (upon the whole) comely shape of his great pedestrian's calves, for he had thrown one leg over his knee, carelessly, to conceal the trouble of his mind by an air of ease. But all the same the knowledge ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... be expected that these many republics, monarchies, aristocracies, or whatever form they may take, will long remain at peace with each other? Ask the muse who presides over the pages of history how often has her pen been called upon to record the circumstance of separate nations, of the same blood and antecedents, lying quietly and peaceably beside each other. Family quarrels are proverbially the most bitter of all on earth, and family hatreds the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... thus, my love! as on the midway slope Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon, Whilst through my half-closed eye-lids I behold The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main, And tranquil muse upon tranquillity; Full many a thought uncalled and undetained, And many idle flitting phantasies, Traverse my indolent and passive brain, As wild and various as the random gales That swell and ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... of its road, lashed on by that hard woman, the personification of Necessity, a sort of deputy Fate, Wenceslas, a born poet and dreamer, had gone on from conception to execution, and overleaped, without sounding it, the gulf that divides these two hemispheres of Art. To muse, to dream, to conceive of fine works, is a delightful occupation. It is like smoking a magic cigar or leading the life of a courtesan who follows her own fancy. The work then floats in all the grace of infancy, in the mad joy of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... not for us, O plaintive elegist, Thine epicedial tone of sad farewell To joy in wisdom and to thought in youth! Our western Muse would keep her tryst With sunrise, not with sunset, and foretell In boyhood's bliss the dawn ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Victoria, the kindly humour of Svoermere and Benoni, the autumn-tinted resignation of the Wanderer with the Mute—they follow as the seasons do, each with a charm of its own, yet all deriving from one source. His muse at first is Iselin, the embodiment of adolescent longing, the dream of those "whom delight flies because they give her chase." The hopelessness of his own pursuit fills him with pity for mortals under ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... dream, he had been lured by the crystal murmur of a spring up a steep path. There, beneath a laurel-tree, he had beheld—and from her hand had received upon his brow water from the sacred fount,—a woman of a beauty grave and sublime: the Muse ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... world a secret yet. Whether the nymph to please her swain Talks in a high romantic strain; Or whether he at last descends To act with less seraphic ends; Or, to compound the business, whether They temper love and books together, Must never to mankind be told, Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold." ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... clear that humour is a characteristic of the English folk. The legends are not of a very romantic kind, and the maerchen are often humorous in character. So that a certain air of unromance is given by such a collection as that we are here considering. The English folk-muse wears homespun and plods afoot, albeit with a cheerful smile and a ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... time to pass; My youth has days of its lifetime yet; If you only knocked at the door, alas, My heart would open the door, Musette! Still at your name must my sad heart beat; Ah Muse, ah maiden of faithlessness! Return for a moment, and deign to eat The bread that pleasure was wont ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... as a fervent worker in diamonds. None of his gems are paste, and a few have a perfection, a solidity, and a fire that fit them for a place in that coronet one might fancy made up of the richest of the jewels of the world's music-makers, and fashioned for the very brows of the Muse herself. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... Diable! how My thoughts were dressed when I was young But tempus fugit! see them now Half clad in rags of every tongue! O philoi, fratres, chers amis! I dare not court the youthful Muse, For fear her sharp response should be, "Papa ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... and his wrongs,—he presented himself in no other aspect than that of a stern, haughty misanthrope, self-banished from the fellowship of men, and, most of all, from that of Englishmen. The more genial and beautiful inspirations of his muse were, in this point of view, looked upon but as lucid intervals between the paroxysms of an inherent malignancy of nature; and even the laughing effusions of his wit and humour got credit for no other aim than that which Swift boasted of, as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... just mentioned. As he now reached the Batenkill, where the stream, here first beginning to find a more peaceful flow, after its headlong descent from the Green Mountains, intersected the road, he suddenly paused and began to muse, with the air of one who has been struck by some new thought tending to divert him from his settled purposes; and, slowly passing on to the bridge, which, after the rude construction of the times, had been thrown across ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... losing half The fleeting moments of too short a life, Total extinction of th' enlighten'd soul! Or else, to feverish vanity alive, Wilder'd and tossing through distemper'd dreams? Who would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves, when every Muse And every blooming pleasure wait without, To bless the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... The Muse of China has not disdained to warble harmonious numbers in praise of her favorite beverage. There is a celebrated ballad on tea-picking, in thirty stanzas, sung by a young woman who goes from home early in the day to work, and lightens her labors with song. I give a few of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... The cruel comic muse, who makes our serious suffering ridiculous, had drawn aside the last curtain. Flora felt the laughter rising in her throat, the tears in ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... beyond criticism and her lips were fresh and creamy red—but Mr. Lushington wished she would not do it. The muses are never represented 'biting their lips'; and in his moments of enthusiasm he liked to think that Margaret was his muse. She had thick brown hair that waved naturally, but made no little curls and baby ringlets, such as some young women have, or make. The line of her hair along her forehead and temples, though curved, was rather severe. She had been fair when a little ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... in sleep had passed she did a great deal of languid, undisturbed thinking. She seemed detached from her life, and it passed before her, not poignantly, but merely as something to look upon, quietly muse about. Soon she would step back into it, but now she was resting from it, simply viewing it as an interesting thing which ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... to spend the day in Brussels, and he followed them; he still wanted to walk about and muse and ponder, and Brussels is a very nice, gay, and civilized city for such a purpose—a little Paris, with charming streets and shops and a charming arcade, and very good places to eat and drink in, and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... all regret, the face will shine Upon me while I muse alone; And that dear voice, I once have known, Still speak to me of me ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... James's latchkey was very highly polished and the lock well oiled, he never succeeded in opening his door at the first attempt. It was a capricious door. You could not be sure of opening it any more than Beau Brummel could be sure of tying his cravat. It was a muse that had to ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... there was in the Universe, and after every mortal thing in their ideal Paradise, was done and said and thought by electricity, they could imagine as further necessary to human happiness, they would probably muse for awhile, and ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... not, he was not the only devout poet who, in the early times, with sacred reverence believed the wonders the inspiring muse gave him as from God. It is not clear from the Biblical record that Adam was imagined the first man. On the contrary, the statement that Cain was afraid that those who met him would kill him, also that he went to the land of Nod and took a wife and builded a city, implies that there ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... effort has blown all the wind out of my 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 ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... ardour of the bridegroom in the ballad of "The Mistletoe Bough," and with more success. Madame Ling was reading a novel at home. Mr. Carlyle has quoted Tobias Smollett as to the undesirability of giving the historical muse that latitude which is not uncommon in France, and we prefer to leave the tale of Ling's where Mr. Carlyle left that of Brynhild's ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... after him! Do you hear me? Now look out!" And the Judge rang the bell for the servant, scolded her for not lighting the gas that no one had before wished lighted, and stormed out of the room, leaving his wife to follow him, and his daughter to drop again into her chair and muse over the pleasant prospect for after-life lying ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... recollect our evening rambles last year upon the hill of pines? and the dark valley where we used to muse in the twilight? I remember we often fancied the scene like Valombrosa; and vowed, if ever an occasion offered, to visit that deep retirement. I had put off the execution of this pilgrimage from day to day till the warm weather was gone; and the Florentines ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... 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
... down on the hosts of each clime, While the warriors hand to hand were— Gaul—Austrian and Muscovite heroes sublime, And—(Muse of Fitzgerald arise with a rhyme!) A quantity of Landwehr![37] Gladness was there, For the men of all might and the monarchs of earth, 50 There met for the wolf and the worm to make mirth, And a feast for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... had Lycambes on earth living been The time thou wast, his death had been all one; Had he but mov'd thy tartest Muse to spleen Unto the fork he had as surely gone: For why? there lived not that man, I think, Us'd better or more ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the chapters relating to General Pepe's imprisonment, are as amusing as any romance. More than once did he and his fellow-captive muse over an escape, and ponder its possibilities. These were very remote. At last they devised a plan, which they thought would ensure their transfer to a less rigorous confinement, whence they might find means of flight. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... it?" Ballantyne repeated. "I ask myself that," and he took the photograph out of Thresk's hands and sat in a sort of muse, staring at it. Then he turned it over and took the edge between his forefinger and his thumb, hesitating whether he would not even at this moment tear it into strips and have done with it. But in the end he cast it upon the table as he had ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... you thought, had drew my Pen On Virtue, see I fight for her agen; Wherefore, I hope my Foes will all excuse Th' Extravagance of a Repenting Muse; Pardon whate'er she has too boldly said, She only acted then in Masquerade; But now the Vizard's off, She's chang'd her Scene, And turns a Modest, Civil Girl agen; Let some admire the Fops whose Talent lie Inventing dull, insipid Blasphemy; I swear I cannot with those Terms dispence, ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... dancing, according to classic mythology, were presided over by nine goddesses, or Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, "Muse-mother," as Mrs. Browning terms her. The history of woman as a poet has yet to be written, but to her in the early ages poetry owed much of its development and its beauty. Mr. Vance has remarked that "among many of the lowest races the only love-dances in vogue are those performed ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... without, But the breeze which over my garden steals Brings from it merely a distant shout Or the echo light of passing wheels; In its din and drive I have now no share, As I muse in my ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... brother-in-law. "Dear me, Gregory," she said. "We've had the tragic muse to supper, haven't we. What is the matter, what has been the matter with Madame von ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and resolved into finer and lovelier truth the purity which completes it as the fragrance completes the rose. That's what they call idealism; the word's vastly abused, but the thing is good. It's my own creed, at any rate. Lovely Madonna, model at once and muse, I call you to witness that I too am ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... the hip Both of their sound and rotten sheep: For wits, that carry low or wide, 635 Must be aim'd higher, or beside The mark, which else they ne'er come nigh, But when they take their aim awry. But I do wonder you should choose This way t' attack me with your Muse, 640 As one cut out to pass your tricks on, With fulhams of poetic fiction: I rather hop'd I should no more Hear from you o' th' gallanting score: For hard dry-bastings us'd to prove 645 The readiest remedies of love; Next a dry-diet: but if those fail, Yet this uneasy loop-hol'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions; We have his own authority also for the muse having 'dictated' to him the 'unpremeditated song'. And let this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... thought! 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, More kind than they; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... sort," he returned laughing. "But you must not make fun of my sweet mistress from Parnassus; it kept me sane and cool to woo my reluctant Muse. At times she frowned, and then I set my teeth hard and worked like a navvy; but when she smiled my pen seemed to fly in the sunlight, and I ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... words taken bodily from the Greek or Latin are accented on the penult rather than the antepenult (as analogy would lead us to accent them) because in the original language the penultimate vowel was long: abdo'men, hori'zon, deco'rum, diplo'ma, muse'um, sono'rous, acu'men, bitu'men; and similarly such words as farra'go, etc. We may never be sure just how to accent a large class of names taken from the Latin and Greek without knowing the length of the vowel in the original,—such ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... the midst of the knot of political celebrities. Lousteau performed the part of cicerone to admiration; with every sentence he uttered Dauriat rose higher in Lucien's opinion. Politics and literature seemed to converge in Dauriat's shop. He had seen a great poet prostituting his muse to journalism, humiliating Art, as woman was humiliated and prostituted in those shameless galleries without, and the provincial took a terrible lesson to heart. Money! That was the key to every enigma. Lucien realized the fact that he was unknown and alone, and that ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... reproached the style of the inspired record. A third came vauntingly forward with his geographical discoveries and scientific data, and reared the accommodation-theory so many more stories higher than Semler had left it that it almost threatened to fall of its own weight. Strange that the poetic Muse should lend her inspiration to such unholy purposes; but in the poetry of that day there was but little of the Christian element, and he need not be greatly skilled in classic verse who concludes that the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Muse hath aw'd the stage, And frighten'd wives and children with her rage, Too long Drawcansir roars, Parthenope weeps, While ev'ry lady cries, and critick sleeps With ghosts, rapes, murders, tender hearts they wound, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... 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, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... 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
... a mournful muse Soft pity to infuse; He sung the Weaver wise and good, By too severe a fate, Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from his high estate, And weltering ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... I feel as if I ought to go home and write verses or smart paragraphs for the society papers after drinking your tea, it is so inspiring. Addison ought to have drunk just such tea before writing one of his Spectators, but unfortunately his muse required old port." ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... deal of nonsense written and uttered about poetry. In an age when verses are more noisily and fluently circulated than ever before, it might seem absurd to plead in the Muse's defence. Yet poetry and the things poets love are pitifully weak to-day. In essence, poetry is the love of life—not mere brutish tenacity of sensation, but a passion for all the honesties that make life free and generous and clean. For two thousand years poets have mocked and taunted ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... having a good time, and where once they celebrated the birthday of one of them with a gaiety which would have penetrated, if anything could, the shining chill of the hostelry. In the evening we heard them in the billiard-room below lifting their voices in the lays of our college muse, and waking to ecstasy the living piano in the strains of our national ragtime. They were never intrusively cheerful; one might remain, in spite of them, as dispirited as the place would have one; but as far as the genius loci would let me, I liked ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... to Germany in the spring of 1890 to engage singers and select a repertory he carried with him a definite policy, formulated by the directors, which was the fruit of a sentimental passion for the amiable Italian muse and a spirit of thrift. Italian opera under their own management seeming still impracticable because of its expensiveness, the directors conceived what they thought would prove to be a happy compromise; they would continue to give ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sight. "Shall we ever get through saying 'good-bye'? When will these departures cease?" thought I, as I turned from the gate. But I was given no time to muse, for a most amazing clamor arose from a gateway a little higher up the road, and glancing in that direction, I saw old father Poupard leading his horse and cart into the open. He was followed by his wife and daughter-in-law, two brawny peasant women, who were loudly lamenting ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... you in 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 landscape there is ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... meruaile Helen at my course, Which holds not colour with the time, nor does The ministration, and required office On my particular. Prepar'd I was not For such a businesse, therefore am I found So much vnsetled: This driues me to intreate you, That presently you take your way for home, And rather muse then aske why I intreate you, For my respects are better then they seeme, And my appointments haue in them a neede Greater then shewes it selfe at the first view, To you that know them not. This to my mother, 'Twill be two daies ere ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... time, not on the 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 grand: the Praise ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... very thirsty; nor have I ever met any one who found real pleasure in a statue when he had toothache. There is something to be said for the theory of the sceptical bishop in Browning's poem, that the soul is only free to muse of lofty things ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... hunting-ground. A Dunbar had Hawthornden's autograph, and a set of tall classic folios bore the handwriting of George Buchanan. Lord Kames, Hume, and a score of others had dedicated works to lairds of Etterick, and the Haystouns themselves had deigned at times to court the Muse. Lewis's own special books-college prizes, a few modern authors, some well-thumbed poets, and a row in half a dozen languages on some matters of diplomatic interest-were crowded into a little oak bookcase which had once graced his college rooms. Thither Wratislaw ultimately turned, dipping, ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... sage of huge renown, To Twick'nam bow'rs retir'd, enjoys his wealth, His malice and his muse: in grottoes cool, And cover'd arbours, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... had it not. And, in such things as he doth openly, he may bestow somewhat more liberally upon himself in his house after some manner of the world, lest he should give other folk occasion to marvel and muse and talk of his manner and misreport him for a hypocrite. And therein, between God and him, he may truly protest and testify, as did the good queen Hester, that he doth it not for any desire thereof in the satisfying of his own pleasure, but would with as good will ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... 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 this her hour of weakness, that which she had ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of the many volumes of verse upon our table is the collection of poems by Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt.[28] Mrs. Piatt's muse is often thoughtful, but in all that she has given us, of which much is attractive in form and suggestive in substance, these lines that follow are the most valuable. They refer to the altar which Paul found at ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... us to the past. Memory then opens for us a volume that no eye but God's and ours can read;—memories of neglect, of sin, of deep secrets that our hearts have hidden in their innermost folds. Such experiences sometimes there are when we muse upon the external universe; when we reflect upon the vastness of creation, the littleness of human effort, the transciency of human relations; when our souls are drawn away from all ordinary communions, and we feel that we are drifting before an almighty will, bound to ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... sea, from camp, from court, And by a tempest blown into a port, I raise my thoughts to muse of higher things, And echo arms and loves ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... Fame thy noble bosom fires, Nor vain the hope thy ardent mind inspires; In British breasts whilst Purity remains, Whilst Liberty her blessed abode retains, Still shall the muse of History proclaim To ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Drawers gyrate as before. It was for "The Cabarus" then, and her Muscadins and Money-changers, that we fought? It was for Balls in flesh-coloured drawers that we took Feudalism by the beard, and did, and dared, shedding our blood like water? Expressive Silence, muse thou their praise!— ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... old days,—the halcyon days of youth,—after the sap was gathered, and the fuel piled high beside the arch, then it was that we sat down by the blazing fire and watched it burn; heaped on the logs, filled up the kettle, and again sat down to muse, or talk, or read. If the wind whistled afar, the boiling-place was in a sheltered nook; if the rain poured down, or the snow-flakes fell without, we were protected by the sugar-house or shed; if the day was cold the fire was warm; and the heart of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... passionate, are more tender than others; and often, when I walk at this time in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight, and hear those airs played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me and my dear companion (as I must always call her), I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us for ever. How it happened the reader will understand from what remains of this ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... day is reckoned on the earth, I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles, Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven, ... And now I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock, To muse upon the strange and solemn things Of this mysterious realm. All day my steps Have been amid the beautiful, the wild, The gloomy, the terrific; crystal founts Almost invisible in their serene And pure transparency, high pillared domes With stars and flowers, all fretted like the halls Of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... carried out. More than this, I can almost promise you that I shall succeed." And then he went to fetch a bottle, in which he had some choice old rye. While he was away, M. Riel, who was alone—for all were absent in the fields, and his comrade had been abroad since the grey dawn—began to muse in ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... 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 ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... now to strike the lyre, That mute and torn so long has lain; And yet I cannot wake the strain, Nor will the Muse one note inspire! Coldly it shakes in accents dire, As if my soul itself to wring, And when its sound seems but to fling A jest at its own low lament; So in sad isolation pent, My soul can neither ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... 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 was dumb ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... achievements, was the real defendant. He was married to a woman with a great literary reputation as a poet and writer who was idolized by the populace for her passionate advocacy of Ireland's claim to self-government; "Speranza" was regarded by the Irish people as a sort of Irish Muse. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... purposes. Her dancing had hitherto been done either at children's parties, or as a sort of supplemental amusement to the evening tea-gatherings at Hampton or Hampton Court. She had never yet seen the muse worshipped with the premeditated ceremony of banished carpets, chalked floors, and hired musicians. Her heart consequently beat high as she made her way upstairs, linked arm-in-arm with ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... various institutions and habits of society, are independent of religion and may exist without it.' These were the words of his youth, but they expressed his latest convictions. I would add, that the muse of Tennyson never reached a higher strain than when it embodied the sentiment ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... polished and the lock well oiled, he never succeeded in opening his door at the first attempt. It was a capricious door. You could not be sure of opening it any more than Beau Brummel could be sure of tying his cravat. It was a muse that had ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... 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 to ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... her own love for the same art, she used to assure me that she possessed, by proxy, that other half of myself which I still dedicated to the Muse. ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... A spirited cross of romantic and grand, All templars and minstrels and ladies and pages, And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land; But, ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster, The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf, And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster, When Middle-Age stares from one's glass ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sensibilities become osseous, receives at their hand some signal outrage, or, which in effect is much the same, some of his kin have, or some friend. Now, nature all around him by her solitudes wooing or bidding him muse upon this matter, he accordingly does so, till the thought develops such attraction, that much as straggling vapors troop from all sides to a storm-cloud, so straggling thoughts of other outrages troop to the nucleus ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the author of "Songs of Two Worlds" and "The Epic of Hades." As the Rev. Elvet Lewis writes of him: "Here at once we meet the true artist lost in his art. His humour is as playful as if the hand of a stern fate had never struck him on the face. His muse can laugh and make others laugh, or it can weep and make others weep." A specimen is given of one of his best known poems, "An Ode on the Day of Judgment," reproducing, as far as my powers have permitted, its final and internal rhymes ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... Tom his legal studies Most soberly pursues, Poor Ned must pass his mornings A-dawdling with the Muse: While Tom frequents his banker, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... graces, her fascinating cunning, and all her picturesqueness. He knew nothing yet of his passion, nor did he think he could not bear to lose her until he went from the stuffy cottage towards his studio thinking of his portrait of her. He wanted to muse on the little eyes as he had rendered them. He saw the faults in the drawing hardly at all, and his pain softened and almost ceased when he took up the violin, but when he put it down the flow of subjective emotion ceased, and he stared on the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. [Greek: Menin haeide theha ... Handra moi hennepe, Moysa.]—Surely the dear fellow might remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he does remember, and is only ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 blyth ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... that bank, 'that mossy bank where the violets grow,' my dear Henry, and muse there in sober sadness, while I face the dragon in her den." And saying these words, I galloped off without further discussion. I had not gone far before he overtook me; and quoting the words of Andrew Fairservice in "Rob Roy," which we had been reading lately, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... a young man, who had been bred a hair-dresser, but who experienced, as he believed, the secret visitations of the Muse, and became inspired. "With sad civility, and aching head," I perused no fewer than six comedies from the pen of this aspiring genius, in no page of which I could discern any glimmering of poetry or wit, or in reality could form a guess what it was that the writer intended ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... be allowed to muse gently for several hours, inaccessible to the ambient air, and on the even and persevering heat of charcoal in the furnace or stove. After having lulled itself in its own exudations, and the dissolution of its auxiliaries, it may appear at table with a powerful ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... may 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
... his Italian admirers, the main qualities of the 'Orfeo' as a composition may be traced in this rough copy. Of dramatic power, of that mastery over the deeper springs of human nature which distinguished the first effort of the English muse in Marlowe's plays, there is but little. A certain adaptation of the language to the characters, as in the rudeness of Thyrsis when contrasted with the rustic elegance of Aristaeus, a touch of simple feeling ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... 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 severed by the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... true," answered Anne, looking like the muse of tragedy. "Mrs. Lynde called on her way from Carmody to tell me. Oh, it is simply dreadful! What is the use of trying ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and he aroused a hatred of kingship in America which was comic in expression and disastrous in result. It was due to his influence that plain citizens hymned the glories of "Guillotina, the Tenth Muse," and fell down in worship before a Phrygian cap. It was due to his influence that in 1793 the death of Louis XVI. was celebrated throughout the American continent with grotesque symbolism and farcical solemnity. A single instance is enough to prove the malign effect of Jefferson's ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Mark Twain is still American, still frolicsome, extravagant, and audacious; but it is riper now and richer, and it has taken unto itself other qualities existing only in germ in these firstlings of his muse. The sketches in the 'Jumping Frog' and the letters which made up the 'Innocents Abroad' are "comic copy," as the phrase is in newspaper offices—comic copy not altogether unlike what John Phoenix had written and Artemus Ward,—better indeed than the work of these newspaper ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... you recollect our evening rambles last year upon the hill of pines? and the dark valley where we used to muse in the twilight? I remember we often fancied the scene like Valombrosa; and vowed, if ever an occasion offered, to visit that deep retirement. I had put off the execution of this pilgrimage from day to day till the warm weather was gone; ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Cottage Muse,' was also my neighbour and friend at Todrigg, during the summer part of the year; and even at this hour I feel delight in recalling to memory the happy harmony of thought and feeling that blended with and enhanced the genial ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... between them. Well, the effect of it for Strether was an abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his own tendency to temporise. Where was that taking him anyway? It was one of the quiet instants that sometimes settle more matters than the outbreaks dear to the historic muse. The only qualification of the quietness was the synthetic "Oh hang it!" into which Strether's share of the silence soundlessly flowered. It represented, this mute ejaculation, a final impulse to burn his ships. These ships, to the historic ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... who now was expiring to speak, Twirl'd his ebony tongue, and then op'ning his beak, In a tone of importance, without hesitation, Directly began a high-sounding oration. "SIR ARGUS, no mortal could e'er have desir'd, More exquisite verses than those you've inspir'd. The Muse has for you, indeed, tried all her art, [p 10] And with envy, no doubt, has fill'd many a heart: I wonder not, then, you are anxious to know From whose pen these strains of sweet harmony flow. 'Tis true, I have chanc'd in my wanderings to meet With ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... them worked gloomily at a sonnet inspired by the girl he had met the day before while his mother thought he was eating his patent food. The girl, it seemed, could not inspire much, for beyond the fourth line his muse refused to go; and he was beginning to be unable to stop himself from an angry railing at the restrictions the sonnet form forces upon poets who love to be vague, which would immediately have concentrated ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... town, divers stately bishops, courtiers, and men of quality, whose carriages exceeded one hundred in number, to Westminster Abbey. Here the Poet was laid at rest beside Geoffrey Chaucer, and not far removed from gentle Spenser, whose words had first inspired his happy muse. ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... legitimate ground, as may be seen in his "Holy Family" in the National Gallery. But we doubt if the critique upon his "Mrs Siddons" is quite fair. The chair and the footstool may not be on the cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour reconciling the bodily presence of the muse with the demon and fatal ministers of the drama that attend her. Though Sir Joshua's words are here brought against him, it is without attention to their application in his critique, which condemned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... motor-bicycling mask, And prayed to his Muse; and whilst he prayed (So Heaven is kind to those that ask) Like a maenad flushed from the wine-god's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... companion, I awoke from my sleep, and returned with the utmost reluctance to my sluggish clod, thinking how noble and delightful it was to be a free spirit, to wander about in angelic company, quite secure, though seemingly in the midst of peril. I had now nothing to console me, save the Muse, and she being half angry, would do nothing more than bleat to me the ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... theory is that a man ought to be able to return to the Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies. Who now reads "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America," "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America," "The Day of Doom," "M'Fingal," or "The Columbiad?" Skipping a generation from Barlow's death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest period was ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... from which the physiological Muse recoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers while they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there are occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passage in my book that the Muse is inclined to put her white hands before her eyes so as ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... bound to find points of contact. Of all the Russians now successfully writing I am the lightest and most frivolous; I am looked upon doubtfully; to speak the language of the poets, I have loved my pure Muse but I have not respected her; I have been unfaithful to her and often took her to places that were not fit for her to go to. But you are serious, strong, and faithful. The difference between us is great, as you see, but nevertheless when I ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... daughter. Yonder you see my latter muse for whose dear sake I spin romances. I do not mean that she takes any lively interest in them. That is not to be expected, since she cannot read or write. Ask her about the poet we were discussing, and I very much fear Judith ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Fourth (Tragic), composed in 1816, foreshadows the real Schubert and is occasionally heard to-day. But the immortal ones are the B minor and the C major, the latter composed in 1828 (the last year of his life) and never heard by its author.[180] Of this work Schumann said that "a tenth Muse had been added to the nine of Beethoven." This symphony is specially characterized by the incorporation of Hungarian types of melody, particularly in the first and in the last movement. It is indeed a storehouse of beauty, but the "high ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... would send 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 nonsense in ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... behind, A selfish, sordid, money-getting kind, Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls. I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire, That mindest me of many a pleasure gone, Of merriest days, of love and Islington, Kindling anew the flames of past desire; And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on, To the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... sunny, soft, and still, The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill, To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour, Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower; Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell, Emerging gently from the leafy dell, By fancy plann'd; as once th' inventive maid ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... of Abrantes, 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, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... 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 ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... always able to write. The different properties that Father accumulated in his lifetime were alone enough to take all his time were it not for his happy nature and wonderful faculty of being able to put them aside when the muse nudged ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Was theirs; old sea-beat Cornwall's granite cliffs, And purple hills of Cambria; northward thence Strathclyde, from towered Carnegia's winding Dee To Morecombe's shining sands, and those fair vales, Since loved by every muse, where silver meres Slept in the embrace of yew-clad mountain walls; With tracts of midland Britain and the East. Remained the memory of the greatness lost; The Druid circles of the olden age; The ash-strewn cities radiant late with arts Extinct this ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... fils upp the rimes Of these our last depraued times: And soe much lust by wanton layes Dispersed is; that beautie strayes Into darke corners wheere vnseen, 5 Too many sadd berefts haue been. Aduance my muse to blaze[1] that face Wheere beautie sits enthroand in grace. The eye though bright, and quicke to moue, Daignes not a cast to wanton loue. 10 A comely ffront not husht in hayre, Nor face be-patcht to make it fayre. The lipps and cheekes though seemely ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... the concert hall, a quorum of painters besieged the artist supply stores for the precious remaining tubes of burntumber and scarletlake, while it was presumed that in traditionally unheated garrets orthodox poets nourished their muse on pencil erasers. But all enthusiasm was individual property, the reaction of single persons with excess adrenalin. No common interests united doctor and stockbroker, steelworker and truckdriver, laborer and laundryman, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... said Velasco with irony: "My dear Kapellmeister, I am not as those who would serve Art with a bottle of champagne under each arm. I want no fumes in my brain and no clod between my fingers when I meet the Muse face to face." ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... the ravages of love and war—he evolved his magic verse. Truly no scene could be more inspiring, no motive more sublime, for even we humble humdrum matter-of-fact Englishwomen felt almost inspired to tempt the poet's muse. But happily no—our friends are spared—the passion ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... heathen had given the Christian rabble a check at the very moment when the carruca came up, and falling on the foe who had mocked and insulted their most sacred treasure, began a furious fray. Quite close to the young lovers a heathen cut down a Christian who was carrying the besmirched head of a Muse. Dada clung in terror to Marcus, who was beginning to be seriously alarmed for her when, looking round for aid or refuge, he caught sight of his brother forcing his way through the throng, and gesticulating vehemently. The farmer was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 it is at least ten per cent. of why Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in his money, ladder-dancers,[183] rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakespeare's heroes, and Jonson's humorists. When the seat of wit was thus mortgaged, without equity of redemption, an architect[184] arose, who has built the muse a new palace, but secured her no retinue; so that instead of action there, we have been put off by song and dance. This latter help of sound has also begun to fail for want of voices; therefore the palace has since been ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... and delighted, and although she perfectly realized the king's impatience, tantalizingly prolonged his sufferings by unexpectedly resuming the conversation at the very moment the king, absorbed in his own reflections, began to muse over his secret attachment. Everything seemed to combine—not alone the little teasing attentions of the queen, but also the queen-mother's interruptions—to make the king's position almost insupportable; for he knew not how to control the restless longings of his heart. At ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said it, the idee struck me as bein' sort o' pitiful,—to go to whippin' a ghost. But she didn't seem to notice my remark, for she seemed to be a gazin' upward in a sort of a muse; and she says,— ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... would I leave thee, Cinyras, untold, Liguria's chief, nor, though a few were thine, Cupavo. Emblem of his sire of old, The swan's white feathers on his helmet shine, Thy fault, O Love. When Cycnus, left to pine For Phaethon, the poplar shades among, Soothed his sad passion with the Muse divine, Old age with hoary plumage round him clung; Starward he soared from earth and, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... 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 ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... 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 ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... things yet I was desirous to have amended if I could, concerning the manner of handling this my subject, for which I must apologise, deprecari, and upon better advice give the friendly reader notice: it was not mine intent to prostitute my muse in English, or to divulge secreta Minervae, but to have exposed this more contract in Latin, if I could have got it printed. Any scurrile pamphlet is welcome to our mercenary stationers ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Lord of Land, As clear of head as generous of hand, He lived his honourable length of days, A "Duke" whom doughtiest Democrat might praise. "Leader" in truth, though not with gifts of tongue, Full many a "Friend of Man" the muse has sung Unworthier than patrician CAVENDISH. Seeing him pass who may forbear the wish, Would more were like him!—Then the proud command, "Noblesse oblige" e'en ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely, been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o'er steeps ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... concord begets wealth, Hip Wo speaks to you of brotherly love and harmony, Tin Yuk means a jewel from Heaven, Wa Yun is the fountain of flowers, while Man Li suggests thousands of profits. Other of the signs relate to the muse. They do not at all reveal the business carried on within. The butcher, for example, has over his shop such elegant phrases as Great Concord, Constant Faith, Abounding Virtue. There are many pawn-brokers who ply their vocation assiduously. They ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... 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 his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... is, who on the tragic scene Will now appear—but in the fearless bands Whom his command alone could sway, and whom His spirit fired, you may his shadow see, Until the bashful Muse shall dare to bring Himself before you in a living form; For power it was that bore his heart astray His Camp, alone, elucidates ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... BARABAS. O, muse not at it; 'tis the Hebrews' guise, That maidens new-betroth'd should weep a while: Trouble her not; sweet Lodowick, depart: She is thy wife, and thou ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... not muse at me, my most worthy friends; I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing To those that ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... Could wit borrow a feather From Cupid's own pinion, 'tis doubtfullish whether A "mot" might be made which should happily hit The "gold" of desert; and Love, aided by Wit, Though equal to eloquent passion's fine glow, Might both be struck mute by the Muse of Dumb-Show. That "actions speak louder than words" we all knew; But now we may add, "and more gracefully, too." Performances fine Punch has praised in his day, But how few take the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... relief to Dr. May that George's vigil soon became a sound repose on the sofa in the dressing-room; and he was left to read and muse uninterruptedly. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... account of all the Muse-possest, That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times Have spent their noble rage in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to retire with kindness and actual thanks; Dumas wrote a preface for her; Madame Recamier obtained her pension; the brilliant Sophie Gay, now Madame Emile de Girardin, wrote of her poetry, "How could one depict better the luxury of grief?" M. Raspail, the austere republican, called her the tenth muse, the muse of virtue; and Sainte-Beuve himself, thinking less of her literary life than of her family life and manifold compassions, terms her the "Mater Dolorosa of poetry." His memoir, however, is valuable for its own grace as much as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse." ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... 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, familiar, and amusing—Rowe, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Thyrsis himself had judged "The Higher Cannibalism" and repudiated it. It was born of his pain and weakness, and it was not the work he had come into the world to do. So at the end he had placed a poem, which told of a visit from his muse, after the fashion of Musset's "Nuits"; the muse had been sad and silent, and in the end the poet had torn up the product of his hours of despair, and had renewed his faith ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Easter all the world seemed to be flocking to that solemn festival of the Catholic Church, where the erring could obtain indulgence by fifteen days of devotion. Yet the very break in the usual life of audiences and journeys must have been grateful to the tired ambassador. He began to muse on the poetic aims of his first youth and the work which was to make Beatrice's name immortal. Some lines of the new poem were written in the Latin tongue, then held the finest language for expressing a great subject. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Anne Bradstreet, known as quite a pretentious writer, came to Boston with her husband, Simon Bradstreet, Governor of Massachusetts. Her first work was entitled "The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America." The first edition was published in London in 1650, and the first Boston edition was published in 1678. If Mrs. Bradstreet loved praise, she was fortunate in her time and position. It would ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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. ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... dream, nor fancy theme, Brown Labour's muse would sing; Her stately mien and russet sheen Demand a stronger wing, Long ages since, the sage, the prince, The man of lordly brow, All honour gave that army brave, The Soldiers of the Plough. Kind heaven speed ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... indeed, fearfully changed, is earth! Alas! poor desolated heart, what more remains for thee? (A sad and solitary wreck on life's tempestuous sea)— What but to feel, destroying Time, indeed, has roughly past And blighted fairest dreams of bliss, oh! too, too fair to last; What but to muse on perished joys to which sad memory clings, While pleasure's wrecked and ruined hopes, a mournful band, she brings, Death's trophies, which proclaim his shaft at treasured bliss he threw, And oh! which mournfully disclose ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... he so candidly betrayed would surely whet his appetite for the afternoon walk. That walk she did not mean to miss; one glance at the bills on her writing-table was enough to recall its necessity. But meanwhile she had the morning to herself, and could muse pleasantly on the disposal of its hours. She was familiar enough with the habits of Bellomont to know that she was likely to have a free field till luncheon. She had seen the Wetheralls, the Trenor girls and Lady Cressida packed safely into the omnibus; Judy Trenor was ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... can the 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
... is very lively. We scarcely get, in all our post-collegiate life, a chance to sit and muse. We go through sensations, experiences, and incongruities, which stir a sense of fun. A man reads (I notice) in his seminary, St. Leo, Ad Flaeirmum, and makes his first pastoral call on a woman who proudly brings out her first baby for him to see. Ad Flaeirmum ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... France. Shakespeare does not in this instance, as in Pericles and the Winter's Tale, assign a distinct individuality to the Chorus. For the figure of Time, under the semblance of an aged man, which has been heretofore presented, will now be substituted Clio, the muse of History. Thus, without violating consistency, an opportunity is afforded to Mrs. Charles Kean, which the play does not otherwise supply, of participating in this, the concluding revival ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... 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: ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart, To make mankind in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold: For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage, Commanding tears to stream through every age. Tyrants no more their savage nature kept, And foes to virtue wondered how ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... at him now! In solemn robes and wraps, A two-legged drama on his own collapse! And she, the limp-skirt slattern, with the shoes Heel-trodden, that squeak and clatter in her traces, This is the winged maid who was his Muse And escort to the kingdom of the graces! Of all that fire this puff of smoke's the end! Sic transit gloria ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... old guide had told me that awfully sad story he stopped the camel I was riding on and went back to fix the baggage that was coming off another camel, and I had an opportunity to muse over his story while he was gone. I remember saying to myself, "Why did he reserve that story for his 'particular friends'?" There seemed to be no beginning, no middle, no end, nothing to it. That was the first story I had ever heard told in my life, and ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... until the sons of kings were inspired with a true love of philosophy. Whether in the infinity of past time there has been, or is in some distant land, or ever will be hereafter, an ideal such as we have described, we stoutly maintain that there has been, is, and will be such a state whenever the Muse of philosophy rules. Will you say that the world is of another mind? O, my friend, do not revile the world! They will soon change their opinion if they are gently entreated, and are taught the true nature of the philosopher. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Gaining that calm serenity and height Of colour wanted, as the solemn night Steals forward thou shalt sweetly fall asleep For ever and for ever; I shall weep A day and night large tears upon thy face, Laying thee then beneath a rose-red place Where I may muse and dedicate and dream Volumes of poesy of thee; and deem It happiness to know that thou art far From any base desires as that fair star Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. Death takes but little, yea, thy death has given Me that ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... sins rather in too much than in too little invention; it would seem that Kaskel's brain, overflowing with musical ideas, wanted to put them all into this one first child of his muse. This promises well for the future, but it explains, why it lacks the great attraction of Cavalleria with which it has some relation, without imitating it in the least. The hearer's attention is tired by too much and divided by lack of unity. Nevertheless ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... said, when the lines to somebody or something were sent to the editor, I was in a perfect fever. I could hardly wait for Wednesday to come, the day on which the paper was to be issued—the paper which was to be the medium of the first acquaintance of my muse with ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... have seldom resorted to the vague and the unreal as sources of effect. They have not used dread and horror alone, but only in combination with other qualities, as means of subjugating the fancies of their readers. The loftiest muse has ever a household and fireside charm about her. Mr. Poe's secret lies mainly in the skill with which he has employed the strange fascination of mystery and terror. In this his success is so great and striking as to deserve the name of art, not artifice. We cannot ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... him with alert ears and eyes, for she saw that the old ruler was brooding over some matter of grave import, and she drew her own inference. Only when planning to wage war on an alien tribe or plotting against the Jamestown settlers did he so mope and muse and fail to respond to her overtures. Late one evening, when she saw two of his loyal warriors steal to his side, in order to hear their conversation better she climbed a near-by tree and listened to their muttered words. Her suspicions were confirmed. There ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... for a muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... hunger and weather. Picture them—CALLOT'S free brush might have managed it—gathered in pow-wow around the camp-fire, Sun-tanned and wind-browned, in picturesque raiment, with wisp of the wild hop or trail of the briar Hat-wreathed or button-holed. BURNS should have sung of them; trim-skirted Muse, with punctilious tastes, Were not at home with these waifs from the rookery, pastured at large in free Nature's wild wastes, Bounding, and breathing fresh air, romping, wrestling, and disciplined only to cleanness and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... who were are here no more, For me to love, or love me. I listen, and I seem to hear A favorite voice to greet me; But yet I know that none are near, Save stranger forms, to meet me. I'll sit me down,—for I have not Sat here since first I started To run life's race,—and on this spot Will muse of the departed. Then I was young, and on my brow The rays of hope were shining; But Time hath there his imprint now, That tells of life's declining. How great the change!-though I can see Full many a thing I cherished- Yet, since beneath yon old oak ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... for in none do I remember of ever being accused of an immoral action; nor with all my propensity to rhyme have I been charged with a neglect of duty. I therefore hope, sir, that if some of the fruits of my humble muse be destined to see the light, and should not be thought worthy of commendation, no person of a beneficent disposition will regret any little encouragement given to an old servant under such ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... but wherever the English language is spoken, his fame is cherished and his verse repeated. Nor is the delight inspired by his works limited to the language in which they were written. All over the continent of Europe, among the nations whose language is of Latin and Celtic origin, his muse inspires deep interest and pleasure. His extraordinary oriental poem, "Lalla Rookh," has been translated into Persian, and delights the literary sons of Iran as it erst thrilled the imagination and heart of all persons of poetic temperament in the British Isles. In the city of Dublin, a statue ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... dead men's legacies to the living, where the Hours and the Seasons frolic beside the Maries at the Sepulchre, and Adonis bares his lovely limbs, in nowise ashamed because S. Jerome and S. Mark are there; to study and muse, and wonder and be still, and be full of the peace which passes all understanding, because the earth is lovely as Adonis is, and life is yet unspent; to come out of the sacred light, half golden, and half dusky, and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... other good or evil, no truth or falsehood. But that which has truth must be judged of by the standard of truth, and therefore imitation and proportion are to be judged of by their truth alone. 'Certainly.' And as music is imitative, it is not to be judged by the criterion of pleasure, and the Muse whom we seek is the muse not of pleasure but of truth, for imitation has a truth. 'Doubtless.' And if so, the judge must know what is being imitated before he decides on the quality of the imitation, and he who does not know what is true will not know what ...
— Laws • Plato
... repetition of certain words, that are echoes to the 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... speculators for the voice of your time, nor imagine that you precede your generation because you stand alone. He dreamed of far-away glory, and his flatterers told him his dreams were prophetic. He saw across the seas the mirage of a great Latin empire in the West, and beheld the Muse of history inscribing his name beside that of his great kinsman as the restorer of the political and commercial equilibrium of the world, as well as the benefactor who had thrown El Dorado open to civilization. With the faith of ignorance, he proposed to share ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... that for the past fortnight I have been writing a medico-chirurgical epic for a celebrated dentist, who has hired my inspiration at fifteen sous the dozen lines, about half the price of oysters? However, I do not blush; rather than let my muse remain idle, I would willingly put a railway guide into verse. When one has a lyre it is meant to be made use of. And then Mimi has a burning thirst ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... MacDowell's serious illness has deeply affected me. Permit me therefore to express to you my own and my wife's sincerest sympathy for you. I am a great admirer of MacDowell's Muse, and would regard it as a severe blow if his best creative period should be so hastily broken off. From all that I hear of your husband, his qualities as a man are as remarkable as his qualities as an artist. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... attained to this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles. Many are the noble words in which poets speak of the actions which they record, but they do not speak of them by any rules of art, they are inspired to utter that to which the Muse ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... That incomparable catalogue! Inspired by the Muse of Parody, we might go on to the pages of "Who's Who," and even, with an eye to the obdurate republic, to "Who's Who in America," and make the most delightful and extensive arrangements. Now where shall we put this most excellent man? ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of Mulla I found deep contentment. Under the dark alders did I muse and meditate. Innocent hopes were my gravest cares, and my playfullest fancy was with kindly wishes. Ah! surely of all cruelties the worst is to extinguish our kindness. Mine is gone: I love the people and the land no longer. My ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of defeat to find reasons for still looking hopefully to the future, the learned Mrs. Gallilee lowered herself to the intellectual level of the most ignorant servant in the house. The modern Muse of Science unconsciously opened her mind to the vulgar belief in luck. She said to herself, as her kitchen-maid might have said, We will see what comes ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... John should devote all that money he proposes to make by the aid of his familiar spirit—the ghost of Narcisse—to the building of a temple in honour of the tenth muse, the muse of cookery," said Mrs. Sinclair; "and what do you think, Sir John, of a name I dreamt of last night for your sauce, 'The New Century Sauce'? How ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... COURTED the Muse as a stripling, Immured in a Bloomsbury flat, And yearned for the kudos of KIPLING For fees that were frequent and fat; But editors, far from discerning The worth of the pearls that I placed At their feet, had a way of returning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... there's something lacking in them," snapped Miss Mallowcoid, looking as unlike a poetical muse as it ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... both silent, and she seemed to have followed his devious thought in the same muse, for when he spoke again she did not reproach him with an equal inconsequence. "I don't know whether I could write a novel, and, besides, I think the drama is the supreme literary form. It stands on its own feet. It doesn't ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... was the sister of my grandfather Charaxus, and is called the tenth muse or the Lesbian swan. I suppose then, your friend Gyges speaks ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he says:—'Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book."' Tom ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Nello, "else I have shaved the venerable Demetrio Calcondila to little purpose; but pardon me, I am lost in wonder: your Italian is better than his, though he has been in Italy forty years—better even than that of the accomplished Marullo, who may be said to have married the Italic Muse in more senses than one, since he has married our learned and ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... MUSE! who in this latter age Led by your airy hand the Swedish sage, Bad his keen eye your secret haunts explore On dewy dell, high wood, and winding shore; 35 Say on each leaf how tiny Graces dwell; How laugh the Pleasures ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... times to put on their worst clothes, to sprinkle ashes on their heads; and, assembling in crowds in the public squares, to shed tears and bitterly to upbraid the muse who ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... telescope will not resolve, and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs. The cooeperation is involuntary, and is put upon us by the Genius of Life, who reserves this as a part of his prerogative. 'Tis fine for us to talk: we sit and muse, and are serene, and complete; but the moment we meet with anybody, each becomes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... she was at the study door. Through the leaves of the tall screen I saw her trail in, a figure of beauty in her white satin dress and sombre purple cloak, her dark hair wreathed with a fillet of emerald laurel leaves that gave her face the look of some tragic muse of long ago. "I know Jim White," she hurried on, "and he knows me well enough to be sure I'm here for nothing wrong! I'm not afraid of him. It's you ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... obtained the same tribute. The second of these Highland favourites could not make his manly countenance, or stalwart arm, visible in hall, barge, or battle,[19] without exciting the enthusiastic strain of the enamoured muse of one sex, or of the admiring minstrel of the other. In this department of poetry, some of the best proficients were women. Of these Mary M'Leod, the contemporary of Ian Lom, is one of the most musical and elegant. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... these was the tribute paid to women by the Minnesinger Henry of Meissen. Declining to single out any one fair Muse, he sang of womankind as a whole, and never ceased to praise their purity, their gentleness, and their nobility. Through his life he was honoured by them with the title of "Frauenlob" (praise of women), and at his death they marched in the funeral procession, and each threw ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... of Vidocq's Memoirs (4 vol., 1828-9), says of this and the following renderings from the French that they "with all their faults and all their errors, are to be added to the list of the translator's sins, who would apologise to the Muse did he but know which of the nine presides over Slang poetry." The original of "On the Prigging ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Musings one perhaps of the most pleasing of all Coleridge's earlier productions. But it shares with the poems shortly to be noticed what may be called the autobiographic charm. The fresh natural emotion of a young and brilliant mind is eternally interesting, and Coleridge's youthful Muse, with a frankness of self- disclosure which is not the less winning because at times it provokes a smile, confides to us even the history of her most temporary moods. It is, for instance, at once amusing and captivating ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Mr. PENNYLINE, Is inspired by beauteous Aniline, Products chemical and gas-tarry Give the modern Muse new mastery. Mauve may chime with love, and mauver Form a decent rhyme to lover; While (and if not, why not?) mauvest Antiphonetic proves to lovest. (Verse erotic always sports Tricksily with longs and shorts. Verbal votaries of Venus Are an arbitrary genus, And as arrogant ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... the country or the folks living hereabouts—only Whitmore: and Whitmore you won't meet, and your name you won't tell, nor where you come from—only that you've been swimming. 'Swimming,' good Lord! You didn't swim from France, I take it." He flicked his whip and fell into a muse. "And I'm a Justice of the Peace, and the Lord knows what I'm compounding with." He mused again. "Tell you what I'll do," he exclaimed; "I'll take you up to Lydia's as I promised. If Whitmore's there, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of inspiration is thoroughly Greek, reminding one of Plato's 'muse-inspired madman' and of what Sophocles is related to have said to Aeschylus; 'Thou, Aeschylus, always dost the right thing—but unconsciously ([Greek: all' ouk eidos ge]).' Thus it was also with Goethe. All intellectual hobbies and shibboleths, all this endless wearisome discussion and ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. [Greek: Menin haeide theha ... Handra moi hennepe, Moysa.]—Surely the dear fellow might remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he does remember, and is only bringing it up against ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thinges, so vnheard of, so meruaylous, & of such Importance. Well: as you will. I haue forewarned you. I haue done the part of a frende: I haue discharged my Duety toward God: for my small Talent, at hys most mercyfull handes receiued. To this Science, doth the Science Alnirangiat, great Seruice. Muse nothyng of this name. I chaunge not the name, so vsed, and in Print published by other: beyng a name, propre to the Science. Vnder this, commeth Ars Sintrillia, by Artephius, briefly written. But the chief Science, ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... months, in the unkind abuse Of grave astrology, to the bane of men, Casting the scope of men's nativities, And having found aught worthy in their fortune, Kill, or precipitate them in the sea, And boast, he can mock fate. Nay, muse not: these Are far from ends of evil, scarce degrees. He hath his slaughter-house at Capreae; Where he doth study murder, as an art; And they are dearest in his grace, that can Devise the deepest tortures. Thither, too, He hath his boys, and beauteous girls ta'en up Out of our noblest houses, the ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... honnete homme de Rheims que j'appellois par plaisanterie mon Papa: ce que j'ai de meilleur dans mon porte-feuille, ce sont des chansons pour mon mari; comme je l'aime parfaitement mon coeur m'a servi de muse: mais cette tendresse toujours si delicieuse aux interesses ne peut plaire a ceux qui ne le sont pas. Quand j'auri l'honneur de vous revoir, Madame, je vous communiquerai mon recueil, et vous jugerez. Recevez les hommages respectueux de mon mari, et daignezfaire agreer nos voeux a Mons. ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... warm-hearted and generally placable—except in the case of James Anthony Froude. The feud between Freeman and Froude was, of course, a standing dish in the educated world of half a century ago. It may be argued that the Muse of History has not decided the quarrel quite according to justice; that Clio has shown herself something of a jade in the matter, as easily influenced by fair externals as a certain Helen was long ago. How many people now read the Norman Conquest— except the few scholars who devote themselves ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... five, in this still place, At this point of time, at this point in space. —My guests parade my new-penned ink, Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink. 'God's humblest, they!' I muse. Yet why? They know Earth-secrets ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Colonel, he ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only awoke occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing. On each of these occasions he showed a gratitude and kind courtesy that endeared him to me beyond expression. "Champdivers, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... With beef, pork, mutton of each sort More than my pen can make report; Pig, swan, goose, rabbits, partridge, teal, With legs and loins and breasts of veal: But above all the minced pies Must mention'd be in any wise, Or else my Muse were much to blame, Since they from Christmas take their name. With these, or any one of these, A man may dine well if he please; Yet this must well be understood,— Though one of these be singly good, Yet more the merrier is the best As well of dishes as of guest. But the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Say, heavenly muse, shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the infant God? Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain, To welcome Him to this His new abode— Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod, Hath took no print of the approaching light, And all the spangled ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... 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
... wand of Muse— Queen Posy's shaft of subtle art— Seared to the distant heights of blue, Past onyx lees that Sunsets dyed, And put to Vellum Couplets' fuse, Sped same to Fate with timid heart, Then shed dim tears in Sorrow's pew, This work's ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... performed, in his letters to Godwin; and that his description of Godwin's deportment, of his own feelings, and of the behaviour of the audience on the memorable night that witnessed its utter failure, has bequeathed to us a comedy over which the tragic Muse herself ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... calumniation, and likewise hast lamented the damage to my good name. Finally, thine indignation blazed forth against fortune; thou hast complained of the unfairness with which thy merits have been recompensed. Last of all thy frantic muse framed a prayer that the peace which reigns in heaven might rule earth also. But since a throng of tumultuous passions hath assailed thy soul, since thou art distraught with anger, pain, and grief, strong remedies are not proper for thee in this thy present ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... Thus I muse as I watch with a reverent eye The New Generation sweep steadily by, And judge him an ass or a born Silly Billy Who'd barter the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... me, Gregory," she said. "We've had the tragic muse to supper, haven't we. What is the matter, what has been the matter with Madame von ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... answer 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 ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... besetting cares, And set me straight to gather as I walk'd A field-flower nosegay. Plentiful the choice; And, in few moments, of all hues I held A glowing handful. In a few moments more Where are they? Dropping as I went along Unheeded on my path, and I was gone— Wandering again in muse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Nor ever more with spurted feet shall tread I' the winepresses of song; nought's truly lost That moulds to sprout forth gain: now I have on me The high Phoebean priesthood, and that craves An unrash utterance; not with flaunted hem May the Muse enter in behind the veil, Nor, though we hold the sacred dances good, Shall the holy Virgins maenadize: ruled lips Befit a votaress Muse. Thence with no mutable, nor no gelid love, I keep, O Earth, thy worship, Though life slow, and the sobering Genius change To a lamp his gusty torch. ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... to cheer the humblest home! And both were so happy, so all in all to each other, as they left that barren threshold! And the priest felt all this, as, melancholy and envious, he turned from the door in that November day, to find himself thoroughly alone. He now began seriously to muse upon those fancied blessings which men wearied with celibacy see springing, heavenward, behind the altar. A few weeks afterwards a notable change was visible in the good man's exterior. He became more careful of his dress, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the conceit and humour of the situation. With the utmost dignity, and with the quizzical, pinched brow of the labouring muse, halting ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... 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 ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... of letters, however, has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sirs, I pray—I can't yet speak— I'm crying now—and have been all the week. "'Tis not alone this mourning suit," good masters: "I've that within"—for which there are no plasters! Pray, would you know the reason why I'm crying? The Comic Muse, long sick, is now a-dying! And if she goes, my tears will never stop; For as a player, I can't squeeze out one drop: I am undone, that's all—shall lose my bread— I'd rather, but that's nothing—lose my head. When the sweet maid is laid upon the bier, Shuter ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... work, but also to muse and dream while working. In the air was something that invited, almost demanded reverie. Upon the fields there might lie many a mortgage, but who at such a time could worry over the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... we have come. (introducing Mimi) This is Mimi, The merry flower girl; And now she's come to join us. Our party is completed— For I shall play the poet, While she's the muse incarnate. Forth from my brain flow songs of passion, As, at her touch the pretty buds blow; As in the soul awaketh ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... affection. He was not now a very pleasant lord to look on, whatever he might once have been. He was red-faced and blear-eyed, and his nose, partly from the snuff which he took in large quantity, was much injured in shape and colour: a closer description the historical muse declines. His eyes had once been blue, but tobacco, potations, revellings day and night—everything but tears, had washed from them almost all the colour. It added much to the strange unpleasantness of his appearance, that he wore a jet-black ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... may be said to end. Yet a poet, whether he will or no, is shaped by his early surroundings. In some verses by Mr. C. W. Dalmon called "The Sussex Muse," I find the influence of Shelley's surroundings on his ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... allowed to enjoy being ill in their own way, without being persecuted by their friends and their friends' doctors, pet remedies and religions." On the whole, I may quite safely recommend these two hundred and fifty pleasantly written and delightfully printed pages to readers who like to muse quietly on the elementary principles of love and life without risking the surprise of startling or revolutionary lines of thought. There is nothing peculiarly good or bad in the many comic illustrations by ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... myself, who own it, when thou 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 up, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Christmas—but there is nothing like verse to clear the mind, heat the blood, and make very humble the heart. Rouse thee, Muse! ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... He had been working, in his curious way, All through the night; and, in the morning greyness Went down to chapel, leaving on his desk A lighted candle. You can imagine it,— A sadly sloven altar to his Muse, Littered with papers, cups, and greasy plates Of untouched food. I am told that he would eat His Monday's breakfast, sir, on Tuesday morning, Such was his absent way! When he returned, He found that ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... plume! Could wit borrow a feather From Cupid's own pinion, 'tis doubtfullish whether A "mot" might be made which should happily hit The "gold" of desert; and Love, aided by Wit, Though equal to eloquent passion's fine glow, Might both be struck mute by the Muse of Dumb-Show. That "actions speak louder than words" we all knew; But now we may add, "and more gracefully, too." Performances fine Punch has praised in his day, But how few take the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... to listen to his words, could not help remarking with what brightened eyes he continued to speak and muse. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... in pursuit, and dreams as to possibilities; you keep looking round to be satisfied that the gaff is ready to hand, and everything in the boat shipshape for action. As it was after luncheon to-day, you think of anything but a fish taking hold; you swish on monotonously and mechanically; you muse of friends at home and abroad, of the sport you enjoyed yesterday or the day before, of chances lost, perhaps even of your general career through either a well-ordered or misspent life as the case may happen to be; and then, hey ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... a dead man, with the blood gushing from his nose and mouth; and Catiline, striding across the prostrate body, retired sullenly and slowly to muse on the disappointment of this his most atrocious project, in the darkness and solitude of his own private chamber whither ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... little to record, but it would not be safe to conclude that this subject always furnished a secure field for literary activity. However, the successes of the writers of fiction and plays in our own times might console the Muse for any indignities which her followers have suffered ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well report his weight and calibre. And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the trinkets, that the fair adorn, But who can count the spangles of the morn? What pencil can pourtray this splendid mart. This vast, stupendous wilderness of art? Where fancy sports, in all her rainbow hues, And beauty's radiant forms perplex the muse. The boundless theme transcends poetic lays,— Let plain historic truth record ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... should have in man. Drinking songs and table songs do not belong to the highest flights of poetry; but if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one imagine English poems on port and sherry? or has a Frenchman much to tell us of his Bordeaux, or even of his Burgundy? ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... lays Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise? Can neither injuries of time, nor age, Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage? Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote; Grief chilled his breast, and checked his rising thought; Pensive and sad, his drooping Muse betrays The Roman genius in its last decays. Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possess'd, And second youth is kindled in thy breast; 10 Thou mak'st the beauties of the Romans known, And England boasts of riches not her own; Thy lines have heightened Virgil's majesty, And Horace ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... hard to find what he'd say next. I doubt whether the conviction, which was then strong on his mind, that Meg was listening at the keyhole to every word that passed, at all assisted him in the operation. At last, some Muse came to his aid, and he ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... I hadde in custom / to come to scole late Nat for to lerne / but for a contenaunce with my felawys / reedy to debate to Iangle and Iape / was set al my plesaunce wherof rebukyd / this was my chevisaunce to forge a lesyng / and therupon to muse whan I trespasyd / ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... if Paris had now to decide between the goddesses, he certainly would have awarded you the golden apple," exclaimed the first muse, who never let an opportunity slip to display her knowledge ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... of Jean Goujon, whose exquisite work we see now and again in these chateaux, that some writer has said, that the muse of Ronsard whispered in the ear of the French sculptor, and thus Goujon's masterpieces were poems of Ronsard translated in marble. It is a rather pretty fancy, but Lydia and I cannot remember its author. Walter says that he can understand why the Counts of Blois built their castle here, as this ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... of that day that the good men won. And, sitting, a Muse upon her mythical mountain, her decision must needs be one from which we may not appeal: and yet I wonder if she is ever bribed. Certainly the shrewd sense of Morano erred for once; for those for whom he had predicted victory, because ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... quest, though, is simpler of Roc's egg or Sangreal, Easier to fashion a flying machine, Than for my Muse to fake up (forgive Cockney slang) real Readable rhymes in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... friends, 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 ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 poetical ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... elevated thought. As we looked upwards, there was some object that appeared to mingle with the clouds, to form a part of their company, to linger, mute and motionless like them, in that breathless blue, as if feeling the influence of the hour. It was not a white-winged bird that had stolen away to muse in the solitudes of air: it was nothing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... witnessed, was prepared to admit this, and left the disciple of the dramatic Muse to himself and the lamp-post, and secretly hoped when the performance of the Comedians came off he might get ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... ear may be offended by the "barbarous adjunct of rhyme," and by the solecisms and false quantities which sometimes occur, "et alia multa damna atque outragia," others may be amused with these emulations of the cloistered muse of the Middle Ages. The witty author of Whistlecraft has shown that he had a true relish for them, and has successfully tried his hand, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... often a vein of comedy in their lives. If we could transport ourselves to Miller's Hotel, Westminster Bridge, on a certain afternoon in the early spring of 1811, we should behold a scene apparently swayed entirely by the Comic Muse. The member for Shoreham, Mr. Timothy Shelley, a handsome, consequential gentleman of middle age, who piques himself on his enlightened opinions, is expecting two guests to dinner—his eldest son, and his son's friend, T. J. Hogg, who have ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... a Muse, or, according to another account, daughters of Phorkys. They failed to care for Persephone when Pluto seized her to carry her off, and Demeter took revenge by transforming them into monsters ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... from the past, live out each stage of life to its fullest and realize in himself all its manifold tendencies. Echoes only of the vaster, richer life of the remote past of the race they must remain, but just these are the murmurings of the only muse that can save from the omnipresent dangers of precocity. Thus we not only rescue from the danger of loss, but utilize for further psychic growth the results of the higher heredity, which are the most precious and potential things on earth. So, too, in our urbanized hothouse life, that tends to ripen ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... son-in-law,(74) Mr. Ellis, has hacked and hewed these groves, wriggled a 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
... however, is not applicable to art, for art and science are not coextensive; nay, to some extent, are even inimical to each other. Indeed, to call a work of art purely and simply "scientific," is tantamount to saying that it is dry and uninspired by the muse. In dwelling so long on this point my object was not so much to elucidate Liszt's meaning as Chopin's character ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... WILL approve'd his strains; And thought his Legend made as good a figure As naturalizing a dull German's brains, Which beget issues in the Heliconian stews, Upon a profligate Tenth Muse, In all the gloomy ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... But the muse was timorous as a chicken. The metaphor is entirely metaphorical. Jones had no faith in the wanton. He believed in regular hours, in silence and no interruptions. No intrusions of any kind. A letter was an intrusion, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... when his friend T. Hayward was collecting, for his "British Muse," the most exquisite commonplaces of our old English dramatists, a compilation which must not be confounded with ordinary ones, Oldys not only assisted in the labour, but drew up a curious introduction with a knowledge and love of the subject which none but himself possessed. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 was dumb ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dear, and gentlemen. I thought not to be here to-day: But I'm a slave, and therefore, when My muse commands, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... indeed, even were they not, they would be still useless. We have determined on the thing, and the sooner we set about it the better. The night wanes, and I have much to see to before daylight. To-morrow I must sleep—sleep—" and for a moment Rivers seemed to muse upon the word sleep, which he thrice repeated; then suddenly proceeding, as if no pause had taken place, he abruptly placed his hand upon the shoulder of Munro, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the effervescence of our meeting had lost a little of its first, fine, carbonated sting, what Elysian hours we did spend over the correspondence of those other two friends, Goethe and Schiller! Passage after passage we would turn back to re-read and muse over. These we would discuss without any of the rancor or dogmatic insistence or one-eyed stubbornness that usually accompany the clash of mental steel on mental steel from a different mill. And without making any ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... duly saw the Muse and Lamp in the Museo, the Fra Angelicos, and all the Signorellis. One cannot help thinking that too much fuss is made nowadays about works of art—running after them for their own sakes, exaggerating their importance, and detaching them as objects of study, instead ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... from your soul could not but know mine that That gave up in your ghost but just now his: As soul is known from soul so is your ghost Known to the Muses by my muse that's yours. ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... 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
... about a room in which every chair was half turned round and every face turned smilingly to mine. I can even remember what I was saying at the moment; but after twenty years, the embers of shame are still alive; and I prefer to give your imagination the cue, by simply mentioning that my muse was the patriotic. It had been my design to adjourn for coffee in the company of some of these new friends; but I was no sooner on the sidewalk than I found myself unaccountably alone. The circumstance scarce surprised ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... with a great literary reputation as a poet and writer who was idolized by the populace for her passionate advocacy of Ireland's claim to self-government; "Speranza" was regarded by the Irish people as a sort of Irish Muse. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... my most grateful thanks. His kindness shall be remembered by me while memory holds her seat. Let the throng of uninvited fools who swarmed about us, accept the following sally of the house of correction muse, from the pen, or rather the fork, of a fellow convict. It ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Mr. Diry? My muse come playguey neer running away with me, so I had to wistle "down brakes," and slow her up. Now I'll begin to record my doins on your pages, so that, shuld the toes of my boots be applide to the patent bucket early in my useful carreer, the hull wurld'll kno wot a treassure socieaty has lost. ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... rolling worlds, the great first cause explore, To fix the aeras of recorded time, And live in ev'ry age and ev'ry clime; Record the chiefs, who propt their country's cause; Who founded empires, and establish'd laws; To learn whate'er the sage, with virtue fraught, Whate'er the muse of moral wisdom taught. These were your quarry; these to you were known, And the world's ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Jesus. As I muse, and, thinking, Grow amazed—bewildered with a strange delight, My faith is roused, my spirit seemeth drinking A foretaste ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... value), no great prize, but the poem entitled Mr. Robert Hericke: his farwell unto Poetrie (not printed in Hesperides, but extant in more than one manuscript version) shows that the poet was not unaware of the responsibilities of his profession. "But unto me," he says to his Muse: ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... I shall begin to dread a reconciliation; and must be forced to muse for a contrivance or two to prevent it, and to avoid mischief. For that (as I have told honest Joseph Leman) is a great point ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... meantime, which he emphasised by lugubriously clearing his throat. Except for the pretty courtesy with which she would answer him, she remained lost in her own thoughts—ever and anon consulting the letter which lay beside her to fall again, it seemed, into a deeper muse; but never a tear glinted ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... oration and a poem. The latter was prepared at very short notice, and had particular reference to the visit of the illustrious hero and philanthropist, Lafayette. It purported to be the vision of the Genius of Liberty. It was a felicitous effort of the poetic muse. The gradual but certain dissolution of ancient despotic systems was predicted, as by the spirit of inspiration; and the blessings and joys of well regulated freedom were described with a masterly pencil, as extending and spreading in all parts of the civilized world. It was ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... Nothing has a finer effect than the repetition of certain words, that are echoes to the 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 you?" he asked. "Inn? yes, there's the Blue Chequers, but I 'm afraid you 'll find it shut. They 're early people, I 'm glad to say"; and his eyes seemed to muse over the proper fold for these damp sheep. "Are you Oxford men, by any chance?" he asked, as if that might throw some light upon the matter. "Of Mary's? Really! I'm of Paul's myself. Ladyman—Billington Ladyman; you might remember ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... like Goldsmith, a person who spends much time in taverns and coffee-houses, where one can study every conceivable shade of character, I took my friend's letter up town with me, and sat down to muse over it and a tankard of ale. It was a cosy bar, cosier than the Cheshire Cheese, if more modern; I sank back in a deep lounge and watched the world ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... not 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) ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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' in ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... work of driving dull care away would be impossible within the space at our command. But we cannot end without recognition of the exhilarating extravaganzas of "George A. Birmingham" (Canon Hannay), the freakish and elfin muse of James Stephens, and the coruscating wit of F.P. Dunne, the famous Irish-American humorist, whose "Mr. Dooley" is a household word on both sides of ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... '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
... Music began to be the principal employment of my youth. Thus early acquainted with the Lovely Muse, who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, she won my love, and, as I oft have felt, gave me hers in return. I have now completed my eleventh year; and my Muse, in the hours consecrated to her, oft whispers to me, 'Try for once, and write down the harmonies in thy soul!'—'Eleven years!' thought I,—'and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... garden decorations undertaken was the Grotto of Thetis, a green alcove beautified by exquisite marbles and a fountain that stirred the muse of La Fontaine to sing. This graceful conceit, dominated by Apollo seated among the nymphs of Venus, was destroyed when Mansard built the north wing of the palace; the groups were removed to adorn other sites. While the vast pleasure-house was in course of ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... geese, or making clothes for her sisters and brothers out of some finery which d'Urberville had given her, and she had put by with contempt. Apply to him she would not. But she would often clasp her hands behind her head and muse when she was supposed to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... English graziers, to prove themselves men of fiery passions, it is not to a man like me you should come. I could tell you some tricks of my own trade, perhaps, and a queer story or two of estates that have been lost and recovered. But, to tell you the truth, I think you might do with your Muse of Fiction, as you call her, as many an honest man does with his own ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... painting to be greater than that of poetry in making greater effects and in having more force and vehemence whether to move mind and soul to joy and laughter, or to sorrow and tears, with more effective eloquence. But let the muse Calliope be the judge in this matter, for I will be content ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... thousand of my readers also are), I must here confess that generally I walk about the churchyard, thinking and feeling nothing very particular. I do not believe that ordinary people, when worried by some little care, or pressed down by some little sorrow, have only to go and muse in a churchyard in order to feel how trivial and transient such cares and sorrows are, and how very little they ought to vex us. To commonplace mortals, it is the sunshine within the breast that does most to brighten; ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... how shall these things change? Shall childish galleries That deemed you once Apollo's minister, Say, "Garn, old monkey!" Shall colossal salaries Reward the Muse and not the dulcimer? Not gleaming eyeballs, not the soul illuminate? Shall old faiths falter and Antonio's heart Sicken the while he churns, and chilly ruminate, "This is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... Grande Which even now had made his fierce renown Terrible to all lonely ships of Spain. E'en now, indeed, that poet of Portugal, Lope de Vega, filled with this new fear Began to meditate his epic muse Till, like a cry of panic from his lips, He shrilled the faint Dragontea forth, wherein Drake is that Dragon of the Apocalypse, The dread Antagonist of God ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... 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 and avocations ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... scapegoats leave our flock, And the rest sit silent and count the clock, Since forced to muse the appointed time On these precious facts and truths sublime, Let us fitly employ it, under our breath, In saying Ben Ezra's Song ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... it shall happen that his mind will lie fallow between novels or stories for weeks and months at a stretch; when the suggestions of the friendly editor shall fail to fruit in the essays or articles desired; when the muse shall altogether withhold herself, or shall respond only in a feeble dribble of verse which he might sell indeed, but which it would not be good business for him to put on the market. But supposing him to be a very diligent and continuous worker, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... save the world the trouble of some of its futile, violent, and weak experiments: "Law, the rectitude of humanity," says Mr Coventry Patmore, "should be the poet's only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been the subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse's will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the greatest poets have been those the modulus of whose verse has been ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... however we may represent it. It is part of the spirit within us, and we find it in everything around us. It is the veil of "Isis" which science, her worshipper, is ever trying to lift, but cannot. The muse of Inspiration pours forth her melodious voice, like the nightingale, in the darkness and the shady covert. We listen to her song with entranced ears; a few whose spirits are "finely touched," try to repeat it; but who has ever seen her; the soul that animates, the spirit that inspires! ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... women could be fair, and yet not fond, Or that their love were firm, not fickle still, I would not marvel that they make men bond By service long to purchase their good will; But when I see how frail those creatures are, I muse that men forget ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... he was not the only devout poet who, in the early times, with sacred reverence believed the wonders the inspiring muse gave him as from God. It is not clear from the Biblical record that Adam was imagined the first man. On the contrary, the statement that Cain was afraid that those who met him would kill him, also ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... intervals of sermon-writing, of epigrams, elegies, eulogistic verses, and similar grave trifles distinguished by the crabbed wit of the so-called "metaphysical poets," whose manner was in fashion when the Puritans left England; the manner of Donne and Cowley, and those darlings of the New-English muse, the Emblems of Quarles and the Divine Week of Du Bartas, as translated by Sylvester. The Magnalia contains a number of these things in Latin and English, and is itself well bolstered with complimentary introductions in meter by the author's ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... (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 with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in a number of streets, in the Rue de l'Etoile, the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue du Temple, the Rue Vielle-duTemple, the Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, the Rue Folie-Mericourt, the Quai aux Fleurs, the Rue du Petit-Muse, the Rue du Normandie, the Rue Pont-Aux-Biches, the Rue des Marais, the Faubourg Saint-Martin, the Rue Notre Dame des-Victoires, the Faubourg Montmartre, the Rue Grange-Bateliere, in the Champs-Elysees, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... this book confines me to satire; and in that an author of your own quality, whose ashes I will not disturb, has given you all the commendation which his self- sufficiency could afford to any man—"The best good man, with the worst-natured muse." In that character, methinks, I am reading Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare; an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric: where good nature—the most godlike commendation of a man—is only attributed ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... in opposition was Thomas Morton's satirical New English Canaan (1637), whose author was sent out of the colony for the scandal of Merrymount, but satire itself remained religious in Ward's Simple Cobbler of Agawam (1647). Poetry was represented in Anne Bradstreet's (1612-1672) The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America (1650), and was continued by a succession of doggerel writers, mostly ministers or schoolmasters, Noyes, Oakes, Folger, Tompson, Byles and others. The world of books also included a good proportion of Indian war narratives and treatises relating to the aborigines. The ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... drawn on board he flapped about more helpless than anything I have ever seen, falling into everything he could fall into, biting several of the crew. You know the sonnet in which Baudelaire compares the bird on the wing to the poet with the Muse beside him, and the albatross on deck to the poet in the drawing-room. You remember the sonnet, how the sailors teased the bird with their short ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... or unworthy of our high vocation, our immortality, and nearness unto, nay communion with God? The idea is only suggested: let a man muse at midnight, and look up at the heavens hanging over all; let him see, with Rosse and Herschell, that, multiply power as you will, unexhausted still and inexhaustible appear the myriads of worlds unknown. Yea, there is space enow for infinite reward; yea, let every grain ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was skilful in compliments. When he painted his famous picture of Mrs. Siddons as the "Tragic Muse" he put his name on the border of her garment. The actress went near the picture to examine it, and when she saw the name she smiled. The artist said: "I could not lose the opportunity of sending my name to posterity on the hem ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... mysteries from which the physiological Muse recoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers while they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there are occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passage in my book that the Muse ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the gallant and the good From Tyler down to Thistlewood, My muse the trophies grateful sings, The deeds of Miller and of Ings; She sings of all who, soon or late, Have burst Subjection's iron chain, Have seal'd the bloody despot's fate, Or cleft a peer or priest ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... Esther were then called in to help him in the purchase of a carpet, a folding-bed, an old sofa, and a few chairs. A carpenter got to work on the bookshelves, and in a fortnight's time still another habitation had been built for the Muse,—a habitation from which she was not destined to remove again, till she and Angel and Henry all moved into one house together,—a removal which was, as yet, too far off to ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... that for a considerable period she desired no higher pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab. To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life, and it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston found so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... then, she was very beautiful. In the autumn of that year we became great friends; and through her influence I began to see beyond the portals of the mansions of the rich. Matthew Prior's Chloes and Sir John Suckling's Euphelias lost their charms. Henceforth my muse's name became Phyllis. I took her to the opera when I didn't know where I was going to breakfast on the morrow. I sent her roses and went without tobacco, a privation of which woman ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... make for herself occupation, there was still space in which to muse and to torment herself with her thoughts. Whilst her hands were engaged she craved for leisure in which to think; when unemployed, the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... querulous sounds, that, as some one has happily expressed it, "one was almost tempted to ask what ailed it." A traveller was moving slowly up the side of the river, and ever and anon stopping, as if to muse over some particular object. It was Elliot. He had returned from Greenland, and, in disguise, had come to the place of his birth—to the dwelling of his mother and his sister; he had heard that his mother was ill—that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... to be alone to muse of things in your dreamy way, but my love, it is better not to do so, it only makes things harder to bear. Try to banish disagreeable subjects as much as possible, that is my maxim. But I cannot refuse you anything just now, so after ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... succession of kindly and learned men to the public service through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it finally died out with Constance de Theis, Princesse de Salm, who was known under the Directory and the Empire in Paris as the 'Muse of Reason,' and the 'Boileau of Women,' and with her nephew, the last Baron de Theis, one of the most charming of men, and one of the most conscientious and accurate of archaeologists and collectors. The baron died in 1874. The 'objets d'art et de haute curiosite,' brought ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... thing he had not got himself into a worse scrape at Mellor. Good heavens! in what plight would a man stand—a man with his career to make—who had given Marcella Boyce claims upon him! As well entangle oneself with the Tragic Muse at once as with that stormy, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the thought he looked again to her. She was sitting there drooped into a muse. He saw a tear fall, and his heart flared hot. He saw for the first time that one of her shoulders was quite uncovered, one arm bare, he could see one of her small breasts; dimly, because it had become almost dark ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material. The husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.' An impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life. She could only recover her equanimity by assuring ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Addison; wit and simplicity are their common attributes: but the style of Swift is supported by manly original vigour; that of Addison is adorned by the female graces of elegance and mildness. The old reproach, that no British altars had been raised to the muse of history, was recently disproved by the first performances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts. I will assume the presumption of saying, that I was not unworthy to read them: nor will I disguise my different feelings in the ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... the character of the man, with those peculiarities that were to make of him so original a writer, and little did Marivaux imagine that in the coquette of Limoges he "had seen the living and faithful image of his Muse,"[14] with all its archness, coquettishness, and ingenuity in style and expression. Marivaux had much of the feminine in his nature,—a rare intuition, a marked finesse in observation, an extreme sensitiveness with regard to his own and others' ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... from the banks of the Garonne. Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... it, and the cureless vulgarity and nauseousness with which the whole subject appears to be invested. In opposition to so many obstacles and dissuasives, this great man yielded to the impulse of his muse, and obtained an immortality to which no other action of his life would have entitled him. It is with unaffected regret that we are compelled to state, that, to procure a sight of this celebrated poem, we have ransacked our libraries without the least success. How painful is the reflection, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... words the too-affected sound,— "Here the sense flags, and your expression's bound, Your fancy tires, and your discourse grows vain; Your term's improper;—make it just and plain." Thus 'tis a faithful friend will freedom use. But authors partial to their darling muse Think to protect it they have just pretense, And at your friendly counsel take offense. "Said you of this, that the expression's flat? Your servant, sir, you must excuse me that," He answers you. "This word has here no grace, Pray leave it ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... longer spoke but gravely of the studies hanging in the dining-room. Art was returning into their lives, and it made her muse. When she saw him go off with his bag, his portable easel, and his sunshade, it often happened that she flung herself ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Jean Goujon, whose exquisite work we see now and again in these chateaux, that some writer has said, that the muse of Ronsard whispered in the ear of the French sculptor, and thus Goujon's masterpieces were poems of Ronsard translated in marble. It is a rather pretty fancy, but Lydia and I cannot remember its author. Walter says ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... hurrying curtain thumped the platform. Vona had leaped, risking her life, and was able to dodge under the descending pole. For a moment, sick with horror and unutterable woe, she stood there alone against the tawdry curtain, as wide-eyed and white-faced as Tragedy's muse. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... began to muse, "it doesn't take long for the most polished man—not that I ever was ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... the Great, even as, in later years, a chance question on the part of Elwood led to his writing 'Paradise Regained.' [Footnote: Thou hast said much of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found? He made no answer, but sat some time in a muse. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... other bards, who have sported in lyric poetry, and acquired the applause of their fellow-citizens. Candidates for literary fame appeared even in the higher sphere of life, embellished by the nervous style, superior sense, and extensive erudition of a Corke; by the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feelings of a Lyttleton. King shone unrivalled in Roman eloquence. Even the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste and ingenuity. Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier in learning and critical ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... fell, like a dead man, with the blood gushing from his nose and mouth; and Catiline, striding across the prostrate body, retired sullenly and slowly to muse on the disappointment of this his most atrocious project, in the darkness and solitude of his own private chamber whither none dared ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... his policy of improving on his father's rakish Muse was the frequent endorsement of the beautiful and harmless practice of kissing. The kiss is mentioned some forty-eight times in the present work, and in the nine hundred untranslated Rubaiyat, two hundred and ten more kisses occur, making a grand total of two hundred ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... his chaste Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre None but the noblest passions to inspire, Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line which, dying, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... playne (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
... I talk," answered he, "and get through a great deal of work; then I give over: but you prose, and muse, and sigh, and prose again." ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... old places. The voice of the guide and the company beneath had a hushed and muffled sound; and when I rustled the ivy leaves, or, in trying to break off a branch, loosened some fragment of stone, the sound affected me with a startling distinctness. I could not but inly muse and wonder on the life these old monks and abbots led, shrined up here as they were in ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... finding "no end in wandering mazes lost," much rather as a sober truth caught from the invisible world, than as merely an ingenious fancy. The late Robert Montgomery has rather unhappily chosen Satan as one of the themes of his muse; and in his long poem, designated in its second title "Intellect without God," he has set that personage a-reasoning in a style which, I fear, more completely demonstrates the absence of God than the presence of intellect. It has, however, sometimes occurred to me, that a poet of the larger calibre, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... 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
... in prison, Keep them here at heart unseen, Till my muse again rehearses Long years hence, and in my verses You shall meet them rearisen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and makes them the words of the Reason. The Imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world. Shakspeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is upper-most in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... less with the wildest surmise Do I muse on the bountiful dish Of sensation purveyed for the wise And the foolish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... cultivated this rhetorical art. When writing failed, however, acting rose, and the admirable performances of Aesopus and Roscius did much to keep alive an interest in the old works. Varius and Pollio seem for a moment to have revived the tragic muse under Augustus, but their works had probably nothing in common with this early but interesting drama; and in Imperial times tragedy became more and more confused with rhetoric, until delineation of character ceased to be an object, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... call me banish'd, I will ne'er refuse A name expressive of the lot I chuse. 20 I would that exiled to the Pontic shore, Rome's hapless bard7 had suffer'd nothing more! He then had equall'd even Homer's lays, And, Virgil! thou hadst won but second praise. For here I woo the Muse with no control, And here my books—my life—absorb me whole. Here too I visit, or to smile, or weep, The winding theatre's majestic sweep; The grave or gay colloquial scene recruits My spirits spent in Learning's long ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... is not doing so well of late. Kitty has not attended a meeting in months, and I often wonder where we may look for another Poet, Philosopher, and Friend—unless you will come back! Father did not tell me where you had been or what you intended to do, but I hope you have not given up the Muse. To encourage you I will send down a book, now and then, and you may send me a poem. Is it a ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... are," said Will. The humming stopped. I saw poor Spenser, a shy gentle soul, With haunted eyes like starlit forest pools, Smuggling his cantos under his cloak again. "There's verse enough, no doubt," Bacon went on, "But English is no language for the Muse. Whom would you call our best? There's Gabriel Harvey, And Edward, Earl of Oxford. Then there's Dyer, And Doctor Golding; while, for tragedy, Thomas, Lord Buckhurst, hath a lofty vein. And, in a lighter prettier vein, why, Will, There ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... course of complaisance. She was still comparatively an outsider here, her life with Lady Petherwin having been passed chiefly in alternations between English watering-places and continental towns. However, it was too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that from first to last Ethelberta never discovered from the Belmaines whether her proposal had been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly were they practised in sustaining that ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... no fit polish can my verse attain, Not mine is strength to try the task sublime: My genius, measuring its power to climb, From such attempt doth prudently refrain. Full oft I oped my lips to chant thy name; Then in mid utterance the lay was lost: But say what muse can dare so bold a flight? Full oft I strove in measure to indite; But ah, the pen, the hand, the vein I boast, At once were vanquish'd by ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... who had been bred a hair-dresser, but who experienced, as he believed, the secret visitations of the Muse, and became inspired. "With sad civility, and aching head," I perused no fewer than six comedies from the pen of this aspiring genius, in no page of which I could discern any glimmering of poetry or wit, or in reality could form ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... and discriminating judgment, never over-stepping the bounds of courtesy, never exaggerating a defect or concealing a beauty. A talk might be raised about the inconsistency with a former tone; but if the fact was made apparent that the later effusions of a tender and melodious, but shallow Muse, were but dilutions, ever more watery and insipid, of the first sweet and abundant flow, was the critic or the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... irresistible feelings," "the too-tender sensibility"; and if the frosts of prudence, the icy 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 into the service of virtue than ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... great events in the olden times; and vast assemblies were swayed by the eloquence of the budding sockless statesmen. It was at the old field school "exhibition" that the goddess of liberty always received a broken nose, and the poetic muse a black eye; it was at the old field school "exhibition" that Greece and Rome rose and fell, in seas of gore, about every fifteen ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... existence with childlike, all-believing, Homeric eyes. That creative vision which of old peopled Olympus still peoples the world for her, beholding gods where the skeptic, critical eye sees only a medical doctor and a sick woman. So is she stamped a true child of the Muse, descended on the one side from Memory, or superficial fact, but on the other from Zeus, the soul of fact; and being gifted to discern the divine halo on the brows of humanity, she rightly obtains ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... combinations new and important inferences; and in this process might almost rival in originality the creations of the poet and the artist. But if the processes of science are necessarily slow, they are sure. There is no retrograde movement in her domain. Arts may fade, the Muse become dumb, a moral lethargy may lock up the faculties of a nation. the nation itself may pass away and leave only the memory of its existence but the stores of science it has garnered up will endure for ever. As other nations come upon the stage, and new forms of civilization ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... itched for the abandoned brush while his thumb crooked longingly for the discarded palette. Here was a subject fit for his Muse, a Jeanne d'Arc whose soul was beaming from her luminous eyes. Not that maid of visions and fought fields, but as she hung flame-tortured in the open square of Rouen. No peasant soul this, rather a royal maiden burning on the altars of her country. Awkward and ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... your soul could not but know mine that That gave up in your ghost but just now his: As soul is known from soul so is your ghost Known to the Muses by my muse that's yours. ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... reason of the starres, Hence Plato fecht his deepe Philosophy: And heere in Heauenly knowledg they excell. Antho. More then most faire, another Heauen to me, The starres where on Ile gaze shalbe thy face, 860 Thy morall deedes my sweete Philosophy, Venus the muse whose ayde I must implore: O let me profit in this study best, For Beauties scholler I am now prefest. Lord. See how this faire Egiptian Sorceres, Enchantes these Noble warriars man-like mindes, And melts their hearts in loue and wantones. Caes. Most glorious Queene, whose cheerefull ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... Slaughter to a Throne, And shut the Gates of Mercy on Mankind, The struggling Pangs of conscious Truth to hide, To quench the Blushes of ingenuous Shame, Or heap the Shrine of Luxury and Pride With Incense, kindled at the Muse's Flame. Far from the madding Crowd's ignoble Strife, Their sober Wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd Vale of Life They kept the noiseless Tenor of their Way. Yet ev'n these Bones from Insult to protect ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... the front door, with his essays and his prose symphonies and his satirical novel—the satire of a young man is apt to be very bitter—but it was as tightly shut against him as if a publisher and not the muse of literature ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... singular as in the beauty of her 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 a sweet creature at her marriage as not many did parallel, ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... "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
... 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 thews ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... that a man ought to be able to return to the Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ceased ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... his years, and Wordsworth and Shelley became his prime favorites. His contributions to the "Eton Miscellany" were various, sometimes in prose and now and then in verse. A poet by nature, he could not resist the Muse's influence, and he expressed a genuine emotion, oftentimes elegantly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... a poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... 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 this calf." ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... sat awhile in a muse, she asked me if there was not a place of Scripture which said Peter was at a tanner's house. I told her there was such a Scripture, and directed her where ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... 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 poetical talents of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... forsaken me, I tender my most grateful thanks. His kindness shall be remembered by me while memory holds her seat. Let the throng of uninvited fools who swarmed about us, accept the following sally of the house of correction muse, from the pen, or rather the fork, of a fellow convict. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... notices of the figure that have been preserved the indications are that there was originally only one Sibyl—she was the mythical embodiment of divine revelation, as the muse was the embodiment of intellectual inspiration. At a later time many sibyls came into being; Varro reckons ten and other authors give other numbers. Apparently a process of local differentiation went on; when ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... the vain expectation that fame would attend my labours, and my country be my pride. How have I been treated? I need only refer you to the critiques of last month, and you will acquit me of unreasonable instability. When I leave England,—adieu to the muse for ever,—I will never publish another line while I exist, and even those manuscripts now finished ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... the Tragick Muse hath aw'd the stage, And frighten'd wives and children with her rage, Too long Drawcansir roars, Parthenope weeps, While ev'ry lady cries, and critick sleeps With ghosts, rapes, murders, tender hearts they wound, Or else, like thunder, terrify with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... his great scene of the Haunted Poet, is tremendous. You discover him in bed, too much visited by the Muse to sleep, and reading his manuscripts aloud to himself, after the manner of poets when they cannot find other listeners. He is alarmed by various ghostly noises in the house, and is often obliged to get up and examine the dark corners of the room, and to look under the bed. When at last the spectral ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... various proofs of religion; but he dwells with peculiar complacency on the Sibylline verses, and the fourth eclogue of Virgil. Forty years before the birth of Christ, the Mantuan bard, as if inspired by the celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated, with all the pomp of oriental metaphor, the return of the Virgin, the fall of the serpent, the approaching birth of a godlike child, the offspring of the great Jupiter, who should expiate the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... O, muse not at it; 'tis the Hebrews' guise, That maidens new-betroth'd should weep a while: Trouble her not; sweet Lodowick, depart: She is thy wife, and thou ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... auditor of the Official Accounts of Iceland, and got married. During the ten ensuing years I was buried under an avalanche of accounts and official documents and could hardly hold my head up above the waters. The wings of my soul drooped with exhaustion. My dramatic muse awakened several times, but I could not receive her visits. At last, in 1890, I began to write "Skipit sekkur" [The Ship is Sinking,—a naturalistic drama], parts of which I rewrote seven times; so badly had I treated my muse that she began to work ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... more passionate, are more tender than others; and often, when I walk at this time in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight, and hear those airs played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me and my dear companion (as I must always call her), I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us for ever. How it happened the reader will understand from what remains ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... in tragedy, Who lives that never knew The honey of the Attic Bee Was gather'd from thy dew? He of the tragic muse, Whose praises bards rehearse: What power but thine could e'er diffuse Such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... its merchandise; I barter curl for curl upon that mart, And from my poet's forehead to my heart Receive this lock which outweighs argosies,— As purply black, as erst to Pindar's eyes The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart The nine white Muse-brows. For this counterpart, ... The bay-crown's shade, Beloved, I surmise, Still lingers on thy curl, it is so black! Thus, with a fillet of smooth-kissing breath, I tie the shadows safe from gliding ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... great noyse still, and as I heare Charing Crosse shall haue a new coat too: but in the meane time while so many monuments are raised, either to the honour of the dead, or else for the profit and pleasure of the lyuing: Dic mihi musa virum, I pray Muse and shew me the man, who ioynes with that euer zealous, reuerend, learned Deane in founding a Colledge for a Societie of writers against the superstitious Idolatries of the Romane Synagogue, the which happily might be like the [ec]Tower ...
— An Exposition of the Last Psalme • John Boys
... remember the time past; I muse upon all thy works: yea, I exercise myself in the works of ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... with quick, keen eyes. And thus he presently whispered Robin who, laughing slyly, made signal to his followers, whereupon, by ones and twos they stole silently away until there none remained save only Sir Pertinax who, wrestling with his muse, stared aloft under knitted brows, all unknowing, and presently brake ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Christian Religion. The time he could spare from this literary occupation he devoted to preaching in the neighboring cities, and especially at Angouleme. A vine, beneath which he loved to recline and muse, may still be seen; it was for a long time called "Calvin's vine." He was still living on the last bounties of a church which he had renounced, and which he called "a stepmother and a prostitute"; and on the presents ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... fragile and dainty; and though her cheek lacks bloom, the lines are soft and graceful, and the face pensive and poetic. The mouth is small and well curved, and the air of repose that rests upon the imaginative brow resembles the Muse of Meditation. The serenity that is uniformly spread over her unique countenance is in strong contrast to the animated, vivacious features of her cousin. Celina's head is fashioned after a classic model, and the mass of amber-hued hair which crowns it might ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... until the Government found it opportune to take them in hand. The greatest Italian poet and one of the greatest imaginative writers in Europe will now be able to devote himself—if his rather morbid Muse has suffered no injury—to his predestined task. Those—the comparatively few that read—whose acquaintance with this writer's work usually caused them to regret his methods, could not help admiring his personal activities, his genius for leadership and his vital fire during ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... voice that will not let me rest? I hear it speak. Where is the shore will gratify my quest, Show what I seek? Not yours, weak Muse, to mimic that far voice, With halting tongue; No peace, sweet land, to bid my heart ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... 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
... upon with love and joy, was dull and hard; the trees dingy, the leaden waters motionless, the distant hills rough and austere. Where was that translucent sky, once brilliant as his enamoured fancy; those bowery groves of aromatic fervor wherein he had loved to roam and muse; that river of swift and sparkling light that flowed and flashed like the current of his enchanted hours? All vanished—as ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... gray Who blew the pibroch ere the battle lowered, Then pitched his tent upon the balmy beach? "Snow-bound," I ween, among his native hills. And where the master hand that swept the lyre Till wrinkled critics cried "Excelsior"? Gathering the "Aftermath" in frosted fields. Then, timid Muse, no longer shake thy wings For airy realms and fold again in fear; A broken flight is better than no flight; Be thine the task, as best you may, to sing The deeds of one who sleeps at Gettysburg Among the thousands ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... in spirit still present to me, My best thoughts, my country, still linger with thee; My fond heart beats quick, and my dim eyes run o'er, When I muse on the last glance I gave to thy shore. The chill mists of night round thy white cliffs were curl'd, But I felt there was no spot like thee in the world— No home to which memory so fondly would turn, No thought that within me so madly ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... door at muse I stand, My restive sponge and towel in my hand. Thus to await you, Jimmy, is not strange, But as I wait I mark a woeful change. Time was when wrathfully I should have heard Loud jubilation mock my hope deferred; For who, first in the bathroom, fit and young, Would, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... to "Magna sed Apta," both saddened by this deplorable misadventure, to muse and talk and marvel over these wonders; penetrated to the very heart's core by a dim sense of some vast, mysterious power, latent in the sub-consciousness of man—unheard of, undreamed of as yet, but linking him with ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the merry month of June, when all is green and gay, because the poor muse, whose slave the author is, has been more capricious then the love of a queen, and has mysteriously wished to bring forth her fruit in the time of flowers. No one can boast himself master of this fay. At times, when grave thoughts occupy the mind and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... heavenly muse, shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the infant God? Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain, To welcome Him to this His new abode— Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod, Hath took no print of the approaching light, And all the spangled host keep ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... 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)
... arterward," boastingly declared the man in leather breeches. "We 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 'bout ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... such times to put on their worst clothes, to sprinkle ashes on their heads; and, assembling in crowds in the public squares, to shed tears and bitterly to upbraid the muse who had ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of Fame thy noble bosom fires, Nor vain the hope thy ardent mind inspires; In British breasts whilst Purity remains, Whilst Liberty her blessed abode retains, Still shall the muse of History proclaim To ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve, and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs. The cooeperation is involuntary, and is put upon us by the Genius of Life, who reserves this as a part of his prerogative. 'Tis fine for us to talk: we sit and muse, and are serene, and complete; but the moment we meet with anybody, each ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... 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
... first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God, I thence Invoke thy aid ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the leaders of the Danaans and their captains. Now tell me, O Muse, who among them was first and foremost, of warriors alike and horses that followed the sons of Atreus. Of horses they of Pheres' son were far goodliest, those that Eumelos drave, swift as birds, like of coat, like of age, matched to the measure ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... desired that in some 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 ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of no age of people. The dirtiest Hindoo sings to his fetish the songs of the Brahmin muse, with as keen a relish as the most devout Christian does the hymns of Dr. WATTS. Melody comes of Heaven, and is a gift vouchsafed to all generations, and all kinds of men. In proof of this, let us adduce a single extract from the great epic ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... suggest that Sir John should devote all that money he proposes to make by the aid of his familiar spirit—the ghost of Narcisse—to the building of a temple in honour of the tenth muse, the muse of cookery," said Mrs. Sinclair; "and what do you think, Sir John, of a name I dreamt of last night for your sauce, 'The New Century Sauce'? How will ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... on that bank, 'that mossy bank where the violets grow,' my dear Henry, and muse there in sober sadness, while I face the dragon in her den." And saying these words, I galloped off without further discussion. I had not gone far before he overtook me; and quoting the words of Andrew Fairservice in "Rob Roy," which we had ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... that boat of cypress wood, Now here, now there, as by the current borne. Nor rest nor sleep comes in my troubled mood; I suffer as when painful wound has torn The shrinking body. Thus I dwell forlorn, And aimless muse, my thoughts of sorrow full. I might with wine refresh my spirit worn; I might go forth, and, sauntering try to cool The fever of my heart; but ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... he not change a thousand times a day? Sloth is of all things the most fanciful— 120 And moves more parasangs in its intents Than generals in their marches, when they seek To leave their foe at fault.—Why dost thou muse? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... informed, could compose only when he was surrounded by smoking fowls and Bologna sausages; their fumes seemed to inflame his imagination, to feed his muse; his brain was stimulated first through his nose and then through his stomach. When Gluck wrote music he betook himself to the open fields, accompanied by at least two bottles of champagne. Salieri told Michael Kelly that a comic ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... to the writings of Swift and Addison; wit and simplicity are their common attributes: but the style of Swift is supported by manly original vigour; that of Addison is adorned by the female graces of elegance and mildness. The old reproach, that no British altars had been raised to the muse of history, was recently disproved by the first performances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts. I will assume the presumption of saying, that I was not unworthy to read them: nor will I disguise my different feelings ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... coffin, foliated lancets, fragments of old stained glass and some remains of ancient frescoes. The rectory is a good specimen of Elizabethan building. West Grinstead House, once the home of the Carylls, friends of Pope, "This verse to Caryl, Muse, is due," Rape of the Lock. The poem is said to have been written under the shade of "Pope's ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... till Martial thou hast well survey'd, Or Owen's wit with Jonson's learning weighed, Forbeare with thanklesse censure to accuse My writ of errour, or condemne my Muse." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... fishers of Antibes, and Giroli at Venice, both these last names corruptions of the Latin Gerres—then did the two fashionable poets of France, Etienne Dolet and Clement Marot, think it not unworthy of their muse to sing the praises of the sauce which Horace had sung of old. A proud day, too, was it for Pellicier and Rondelet, when wandering somewhere in the marshes of the Camargue, a scent of garlic caught the nostrils of the gentle bishop, and in the lovely pink flowers of the water-germander ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... artist who cared not a straw for either. I then made use of some more Greek words, and told them how painting was one of the Nine Muses, and one of the most independent creatures alive, inspiring whom she pleased, and asking leave of nobody; that I should be quite unworthy of the favours of the Muse if, on the present occasion, I did not recommend them a man whom I considered to be a much greater master of the heroic than myself; and that, with regard to the money being spent in the city, I had no doubt that they would not weigh for a moment such a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... ground), for the post brought it him open in his hands. The contents whereof were, that he must prepare for a change of life, for his Master was not willing that he should be so far from him any longer. At this Mr. Stand-fast was put into a muse. Nay, said the messenger, you need not doubt of the truth of my message, for here is a token of the truth thereof, "Thy wheel is broken at the cistern." Then he called to him Mr. Great-heart, who was their guide, and said unto him, Sir, although it was not my hap to be much in your good company ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... stained with the reproach of violating the truce; their defeat was basely avenged by the assassination, before the church door, of an innocent boy and his two servants. Yet the victorious Colonna, with an annual colleague, was declared senator of Rome during the term of five years. And the muse of Petrarch inspired a wish, a hope, a prediction, that the generous youth, the son of his venerable hero, would restore Rome and Italy to their pristine glory; that his justice would extirpate the wolves and lions, the serpents and bears, who labored to subvert the eternal ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... it is most sweet to muse Upon the days gone by; to act in thought Past seasons o'er, and be again a child; To sit in fancy on the turf-clad slope, Down which the child would roll; to pluck gay flowers, Make posies in the sun, which the child's hand, (Childhood offended soon, soon ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Dunbar had Hawthornden's autograph, and a set of tall classic folios bore the handwriting of George Buchanan. Lord Kames, Hume, and a score of others had dedicated works to lairds of Etterick, and the Haystouns themselves had deigned at times to court the Muse. Lewis's own special books-college prizes, a few modern authors, some well-thumbed poets, and a row in half a dozen languages on some matters of diplomatic interest-were crowded into a little oak bookcase which had once graced his college rooms. Thither Wratislaw ultimately turned, dipping, ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... conversation or in prose. Though alas! even our prose writings, nay even the style of our more set discourses, strive to be in the fashion, and trick themselves out in the soiled and over-worn finery of the meretricious muse. It is true that of late a great improvement in this respect is observable in our most popular writers. But it is equally true, that this recurrence to plain sense and genuine mother English is far from being general; and that the composition ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... last days of my frantic folly, memory brought Pauline before me, as it brings the scenes of our childhood, and made me pause to muse over past delicious moments that softened my heart. I sometimes saw her, the adorable girl who sat quietly sewing at my table, wrapped in her meditations; the faint light from my window fell upon her and was reflected back in ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... heard the funeral dirge of the ocean, But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, "Despair not?" Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence. Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer's footsteps;— Not through each devious path, each changeful year of existence; But as a traveller follows a streamlet's course through the valley: Far from its margin at times, and seeing the gleam of its water Here and there, in some open space, and at intervals only; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... God compassionates Mankind, thy muse, my friend, rehearses— Compassion for the sins of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... year: it is dated, or supposed to be so, from the banks of the Garonne. Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same time that he highly extolled the epistle to Grammont, he, very naturally, seemed anxious ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... their usefulness. Nor can any one be so blind as not to perceive this—any so stolid as not to understand it—any so perverse as not to acknowledge how sacred Theology has been contaminated by those notorious idiots, and the celestial Muse treated with profanity. Vile and shameless souls (says Luther) for the sake of gain, like flies to a milk-pail, crowd round the tables of the nobility in expectation of a church living, any office, or honour, and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... upon 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 ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... born October 16, 1777, in Coventry, Tolland County, Connecticut. When not yet four years old, he tells us, one day while at play he "suddenly fell into a muse about God and those places called heaven and hell." Once he killed a bird and was horrified for days at the act. Later he won a lottery prize of nine shillings and experienced untold remorse. An illness at the age of twelve gave him the shortness of breath from which he suffered more ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... 'Tis he illumes the nubibustic West With the true "Light of Asia"—or, at least, Such simulacrum of the effulgent East As shineth from a homemade Chinese lantern. No HAFIZ he, or SAADI, yet he can turn Authentic Sanscrit to—Telegraphese, And make the Muse a moon-faced Japanese. Leaderesque love of gentle gush and "Caps.," Is blent in him with fondness for the Japs. "Wah! wah! futtee!—wah! wah, gooroo!" he cried, And twanged his tinkling orient ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... "For Whom Do I Labor?" [1] It seemed to him that the rising generation, detached from the fountain-head of Jewish culture, would no more be able to read the "Songs of Zion," and that the poet's rhymes were limited in their appeal to the last handful of the worshippers of the Hebrew Muse: ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Talks in a high romantic strain; Or whether he at last descends To act with less seraphic ends; Or, to compound the business, whether They temper love and books together, Must never to mankind be told, Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold." ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... him! Do you hear me? Now look out!" And the Judge rang the bell for the servant, scolded her for not lighting the gas that no one had before wished lighted, and stormed out of the room, leaving his wife to follow him, and his daughter to drop again into her chair and muse over the pleasant prospect for after-life lying ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... circle about Mrs. Pedagog's breakfast-table. He had what the Idiot called a three-ply name—which was Richard Henderson Warren—and he was by profession a poet. Whether it was this that made it necessary for him to board or not, the rewards of the muse being rather slender, was known only to himself, and he showed no disposition to enlighten his fellow-boarders on the subject. His success as a poet Mrs. Pedagog found it hard to gauge; for while the postman left almost daily numerous letters, the envelopes ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... my laurels, to Worthing, on the Sussex coast; to which place you will address (to be left at the post office) your next epistle. By the enclosure of a second gingle of rhyme, you will probably conceive my muse to be vastly prolific; her inserted production was brought forth a few years ago, and found by accident on Thursday among some old papers. I have recopied it, and, adding the proper date, request it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... do love thee, 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 ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... for us, O plaintive elegist, Thine epicedial tone of sad farewell To joy in wisdom and to thought in youth! Our western Muse would keep her tryst With sunrise, not with sunset, and foretell In boyhood's bliss the dawn of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... plaister sort, for that too thicke her face the harlot dies. But such as skilfull are, and cunning Dames indeede, By dayly practise doe it well, yea sure they doe exceede. They lay their colours so, as he that is full wise, May easly be deceiu'd therein, if he doe trust his eyes. I not a little muse, what madnesse makes them paint Their faces, waying how they keepe the stooue by meere constraint. For seldome when, vnlesse on Church or marriage day A man shall see the Dames abroade, that are of best aray. The Russie meanes to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... bring rest and quiet to any mind not preternaturally active. A more charming place could not have been devised, for a half-dreamy and lazy student of either sex to sit down in an easy chair with a pleasant book, read and muse until the flickering of the sunshine and the shadows on the floor began to be blended with the type of the page, and then fall away to the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart, To make mankind in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold: For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage, Commanding tears to stream through every age. Tyrants no more their savage nature kept, And foes to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... again he tried to catch Judith's eye, but her glance never once met his. Her great, wide eyes had a far-away look as if they saw some tragedy, the shadow of which would never fall from her. She was, indeed, the tragic muse in her floating white drapery, the tragic muse whose grief is too deep for tears. He watched her as she swept towards him in the figure of the dance, the head thrown back, slightly foreshortened, the mouth smiling with the smile that knows all things, the eyes holy wells ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... do little more than try to set them a standard of thought," he would muse, as he looked out from the altar over the camellia-like faces of his adult children when he conducted his simple Sunday services. "I can only strive to point out the better things of this life—to tell them of the wonders of invention, of art, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... arise from the soil and air." Berkeley entertained the same feeling. Writing to Pope from Leghorn, and alluding to some half-formed design he had heard him mention of visiting Italy, he continues: "What might we not expect from a muse that sings so well in the bleak climate of England, if she felt the same warm sun, and breathed the same air with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... stood near it, or even lay on its lid, care should be had to avoid any allusion to the chest itself. Habit had rendered this so easy, and so much a matter of course, that it was only quite recently the girl had began even to muse on the singularity of the circumstance. But there had never been sufficient intimacy between Hutter and his eldest daughter to invite confidence. At times he was kind, but in general, with her more especially, he was stern and morose. Least of all had his authority ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... carried her heart in her hand. Ye, I doubt not, have already reckoned upon the triumph, and counted the advantages. But, if I do not much mistake the divine lessons I am commissioned to deliver, the muse shall tell a very ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... their flowing store Dispense like casual alms the careless ore; Through throngs of men their lonely way they go, Let fall their costly thoughts, nor seem to know.— Not mine the rich and showering hand, that strews The facile largess of a stintless Muse. A fitful presence, seldom tarrying long, Capriciously she touches me to song— Then leaves me to lament her flight in vain, And wonder ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... slice, Resolved no nobleman on earth Should overgo him in the price. From which these serious lessons flow:— Fail not your praises to bestow On gods and godlike men. Again, To sell the product of her pain Is not degrading to the Muse. Indeed, her art they do abuse, Who think her wares to use, And yet a liberal pay refuse. Whate'er the great confer upon her, They're honour'd by it while they honour. Of old, Olympus and Parnassus In friendship ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the drab little house by the river. Now a boy and a girl thrown together commonly make the speaking donkeys of comedy. Yet one never may be sure that they may not be the dumb struggling creatures of the tragic muse. Heaven knows Margaret Mueller was funny enough in her capers. For she related her antics—her grand pouts, her elaborate condescensions, her crass coquetry and her hidings and seekings—into what she called a "case." In the only wisdom she knew, to ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... for both and say Amen. Nay, muse not, madam: tis no sencelesse Image, But the true essence ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... "The muse must be partial to red hair," said Amanda. And though Kitty sniffed insultedly at this insinuation, her bright head was soon bent over a pad beside Blue Bonnet's, and after much chewing of their pencils and shrieks of laughter at impossible rhymes, the two ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... the beauties of nature acted powerfully in developing his poetical genius. To this period he refers in the final canto of Eugene Oneguine (st. v.), when enumerating the various influences which had contributed to the formation of his Muse: ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... (1747-1794).—Poetess, was of good Cumberland family, and received the sobriquet of "The Muse of Cumberland." Her poems, which were not collected until 1842, depict Cumbrian life and manners with truth and vivacity. She also wrote some fine songs in the Scottish dialect, including "Ye shall walk in Silk Attire," and "What ails ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... and discreet people; this low Roman populace even venture to call me a coquette, only because I constantly need a new glow, and because I constantly seek new emotions and new inspirations for my muse." ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... there are poets and poets, poets sociable and poets very unsociable. Wordsworth made the country, but Lamb made the town; and there is quite a band of poets nowadays who share his distaste for mountains, and take London for their muse. If you'll promise not to cry again, I'll recall some lines by a friend of mine which were written for town-tastes like ours. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... distrusted and hated as Sunderland. But the people were determined to be pleased. All Northamptonshire crowded to kiss the royal hand in that fine gallery which had been embellished by the pencil of Vandyke and made classical by the muse of Waller; and the Earl tried to conciliate his neighbours by feasting them at eight tables, all blazing with plate. From Althorpe the King proceeded to Stamford. The Earl of Exeter, whose princely seat was, and still is, one of the great sights of England, had never ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hitherto dwelt only on the cheering and the joyous features of her faith; her mind loved to muse on the legends of saints and angels and the glories of paradise, which, with a secret buoyancy, she hoped to be the lot of every one she saw. The mind of the Mother Theresa was of the same elevated cast, and the terrors on which Jocunda dwelt with such homely force of language ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... 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. So that, beyond the general impression, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... party—an office, however honourable, that is no sinecure since it obliges me to write rhymed eulogies or diatribes on Dolgelly, Tan-y-Bulch, Gyn-y-Coed, Llanrychwyn, and other Welsh hamlets whose names offer breakneck fences to the Muse. ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ALAR. 'Tis passion makes me grave. I muse upon thy beauty. Thus I'd read My oppressed spirit, for in truth these sounds Jar on ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... resolved into finer and lovelier truth the purity which completes it as the fragrance completes the rose. That's what they call idealism; the word's vastly abused, but the thing is good. It's my own creed, at any rate. Lovely Madonna, model at once and muse, I call you to witness that I too am ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... say a prayer to the Muse; but I can't remember what it is. No matter. Multiplication Table comes next. Mother says it's just the same thing in India ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... room in which every chair was half turned round and every face turned smilingly to mine. I can even remember what I was saying at the moment; but after twenty years the embers of shame are still alive, and I prefer to give your imagination the cue by simply mentioning that my muse was the patriotic. It had been my design to adjourn for coffee in the company of some of these new friends; but I was no sooner on the side-walk than I found myself unaccountably alone. The circumstance scarce surprised me at the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... life, Total extinction of th' enlighten'd soul! Or else, to feverish vanity alive, Wilder'd and tossing through distemper'd dreams? Who would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves, when every Muse And every blooming pleasure wait without, To bless the wildly devious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... let him muse. The exhorter, he reflected, having picked up the trail and opened the cry—trail which the headlong twins had so witlessly overrun—these older dogs were on it hot; trail of the Gilmores and "Harriet." Somewhere ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... terrestrial, and the source Whence human pleasures flow, sing, Heavenly Muse, Of sparkling juices, of th' enlivening grape, Whose quick'ning taste adds vigour to the soul. Whose sov'reign power revives decaying Nature, And thaws the frozen blood of hoary age, A kindly warmth diffusing—youthful fires Gild his ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... only 'Academe,' My sole 'Gymnasium,' are my woods and bowers; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream; And the Nymphs bring me baskets full of flowers, Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream; And thus my Muse escapeth your town-hours And town-disdains; and I eschew your bites, Judges of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... rhyme! it's aye a treasure, My chief, amaist my only pleasure, At hame, a-fiel', at wark, at leisure, The Muse, poor hizzie! Tho' rough an' raploch be her ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... still the wish remained. So let me hence that I may pass at last Beyond the poplar and far up the flood, Until I find the palace of the King. There will I enter in among them all, And no man there will dare to mock at me; But there the fine Gawain will wonder at me, And there the great Sir Lancelot muse at me; Gawain, who bad a thousand farewells to me, Lancelot, who coldly went, nor bad me one: And there the King will know me and my love, And there the Queen herself will pity me, And all the gentle court will welcome me, And after my long voyage I ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... unworthy of the honor which was conferred upon him; but it seems a terrible cheapening of the laurel to place it annually upon the brows of a herd of deedless striplings, standing upon the threshold of their careers. Tegner was but nineteen years of age when the Muse, contrary to her habit, gave him the crown without the dust, generously rewarding him in advance of performance. But he came very near forfeiting the fruits of all his fair fame by participating in a hostile demonstration ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... miles away. His dwelling-place, surrounded with palmetto trees, was little more than a rough shelter. Diotti arose at daylight, and after a simple repast, betook himself to practise. Hour after hour he would let his muse run riot with his fingers. Lovingly he wooed the strings with plaintive song, then conquering and triumphant would be his theme. But neither satisfied him. The vague dream of a melody more beautiful than ever man had heard dwelt hauntingly on the borders of his imagination, but was ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... finished his education who is not well acquainted with my teazing machine. In fact it has had a great influence on the literature of this country. For the ode to my teazing machine, which is generally regarded as the most finished production of the English lyric muse——" ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... 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
... darkened the air, shot from the Court of the French Usurper, or from the pensioners of autocratic bounty. Your patient labours and forbearance in your country's cause, while thus assailed, have won for you, sir, our sincere respect, and another wreath at the hand of the Muse of History. ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... wish 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 tuneful ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... hair—they could strut and caper and fling bombastic insults at the authorities in Rome, until the Government found it opportune to take them in hand. The greatest Italian poet and one of the greatest imaginative writers in Europe will now be able to devote himself—if his rather morbid Muse has suffered no injury—to his predestined task. Those—the comparatively few that read—whose acquaintance with this writer's work usually caused them to regret his methods, could not help admiring ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... our ears? Pedestrian Muse of GAY, Had you foreseen the London of to-day, How had you shuddered with ashamed surprise At "swinging signs" which now offend our eyes! Long have Advertisement's obtrusive arts Pervaded our huge maze of malls and marts; But now the "swinging signs" of ogre Trade, Even the smoke-veiled ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... that a benefactor had arisen from the grave to save us. Oh, it was a touching superstition, monsieur, and although I did not myself believe it, I would not for the world have destroyed my father's faith. How often did he muse over it and pronounce the name of a dear friend—a friend lost to him forever; and on his death-bed, when the near approach of eternity seemed to have illumined his mind with supernatural light, this thought, which ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... juxtaposition, a remarkably close soldering. Ursule was whimsical, and displayed at times the shyness, the melancholy, and the transports of a pariah; then she would often break out into nervous fits of laughter, and muse lazily, like a woman unsound both in head and heart. Her eyes, which at times had a scared expression like those of Adelaide, were as limpid as crystal, similar to those of kittens doomed ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... modern popular drama—had progressed through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of this comedy, or tragedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be called, and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature's and the Great Muse's mockery of these poor mimics, come interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be described at all (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems to this hour to have left little but a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)—and yet partially to be described as I ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... do not 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 day ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them out of sight. "Shall we ever get through saying 'good-bye'? When will these departures cease?" thought I, as I turned from the gate. But I was given no time to muse, for a most amazing clamor arose from a gateway a little higher up the road, and glancing in that direction, I saw old father Poupard leading his horse and cart into the open. He was followed by his wife and daughter-in-law, two brawny peasant ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... 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 it is—was only the nymphaeum of ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... flaring o'er the way, Invites each passing stranger that can pay; Where Calvert's butt, and Parsons' black champagne, Regale the drabs and bloods of Drury-lane; There in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug, 5 The Muse found Scroggen stretch'd beneath a rug; A window, patch'd with paper, lent a ray, That dimly show'd the state in which he lay; The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread; The humid wall with paltry pictures spread: 10 The royal game of goose was there in view, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... expedition. The president being quoted as authority, the agent of the executive thought it useless to hold the argument any longer, and backed out. The gentlemen of the police knew nothing of bush-fighting, and might have exclaimed with the muse in Romeo, 'Is this poultice for ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... 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, for our critic, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... the epic poet had now passed and the lyric took its place, making its first appearance, like the epic, in Ionia and the AEgean islands, but finding its most appreciative audience and enthusiastic support in Athens, the coming home of the muse. Song became the prevailing literary demand, and was supplied abundantly by such choice singers as Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Simonides, and others of the soft and cheerful vein, the biting satires of Archilochus, the noble odes ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... dans la vallee,' 'Ursule Mirouet,' 'Pierrette,' 'Le Cure de Tours,' 'La Rabouilleuse,' 'La Vielle fille' (The Old Maid), 'Le Cabinet des antiques' (The Cabinet of Antiques), 'L'Illustre Gaudissart' (The Illustrious Gaudissart), and 'La Muse du departement' (The Departmental Muse). Of these 'Eugenie Grandet' is of course easily first in interest, pathos, and power. The character of old Grandet, the miserly father, is presented to us with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... liege can make. His titles and castles shall be restored, equal possessions to those thou hast lost assigned to thee, and all my guerdon (if I can so negotiate) as all my ambition, his daughter's hand. Muse on this, and for the peace and weal of the realm so limit all thy schemes, my lord ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... daignez me departir Les fruits d'une Muse divine, O roi! je ne puis consentir Que, sans daigner m'en avertir, Vous alliez prendre medecine. Je suis votre malade-ne, Et sur la casse et le sene, J'ai des notions non communes. Nous sommes de mene metier; Faut-il de moi vous defier, Et cacher ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... might have been observed coming down the staircase with a missive from Hamlet. Juliet had detected his gift for verse, and insisted, rather capriciously, on having all his replies in that shape. Hamlet humored her, though he was often hard put to it; for the Muse is a coy immortal, and will not always come when she is wanted. Sometimes he was forced to fall back upon previous efforts, as when he translated these lines ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... said the adroit artist, "are of no particular nation; and may our Muse never deign me her prize, but it is my greatest pleasure to compare them, as existing in the uncultivated savage of the north, and when they are found in the darling of an enlightened people, who has added the height of gymnastic skill to the most distinguished natural qualities, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... chief and principalle, Callyd of Londone, the chirche cathedralle, Whiche oughte of resone the devys for[222] to excuse, To alle tho that wolde agen it frowne or muse. And fro that castelle the kyng forth gan hym dresse, Toward Poules chief chirche of this citee; And at the[223] Conduyt he[224] light ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... farwell unto Poetrie (not printed in Hesperides, but extant in more than one manuscript version) shows that the poet was not unaware of the responsibilities of his profession. "But unto me," he says to his Muse: ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... record that, when a boy of twelve years of age, he had met "Glorious John", though the succession could be passed on otherwise through Congreve, one of the most polished of English satirical writers, whom Dryden complimented as "one whom every muse and grace adorn", while to him also Pope dedicated his translation of the Iliad.[14] Bolingbroke, furthermore, was the friend and patron of Pope, while the witty St. John, in turn, was bound by ties of friendship to Mallet, ...
— English Satires • Various
... grand and sublime. A young woman has a thousand distractions; these women have none. No longer have they self-love, pettiness, or vanity; their love—it is the Loire at its mouth, it is vast, it is swelled by all the illusions, all the affluents of life, and this is why—but my muse is dumb," he added, observing the ecstatic attitude of Mademoiselle des Touches, who was pressing Calyste's hand with all her strength, perhaps to thank him for having been the occasion of such a moment, of ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... always wondered why, after Mr. Longfellow wrote "The Building of a Ship," some one did not exercise his muse upon a house. I never attempted poetry myself, except upon my first baby, and even those verses I transcribed with my left hand, so they might not betray me to the editor of the Bartley Conservator, to whom I sent them, and by whom they ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... himself which had come into collision with the sharp edge of a concertina. "Clear away that coil of hose and take a seat on the packing-case yonder. That's right; and now let's talk." He puffed for a moment and appeared to muse. "Seems to me, Glasson, you're in the devil of a ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... surprised that this was so. It would be well however at this juncture to recapitulate, and in part to expand those remarks, in order to show more clearly how Lyly's dramatic bent was formed. Seats of learning, as we shall see presently, had long before the days of Lyly favoured the comic muse, and Oxford was no exception to this rule. Anthony a Wood tells us how Richard Edwardes in 1566 produced at that University his play Palamon and Arcite, and how her Majesty "laughed heartily thereat and gave the author great thanks ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... by the Thames; I've seen it oft through beechen stems In leafy Summer weather; We've moored the punt its lawns beside Where peacocks strut in flaunting pride, The Muse and I together. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... deposited the end of a sarcophagus ornamented with a Bacchus reclining on a satyr; a bust of Julius Caesar; a sepulchral cippus; and a Greek stele. On the case are a head found near Rome, probably of Mercury: and the bust of a Muse crowned ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... incomparable catalogue! Inspired by the Muse of Parody, we might go on to the pages of "Who's Who," and even, with an eye to the obdurate republic, to "Who's Who in America," and make the most delightful and extensive arrangements. Now where shall we put this most excellent man? And ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... doubt of it,' said I; and having given orders for dinner, I sat down to muse on the ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... exclaimed:—"O Life and Menander! which of you two imitated the other?" In short the form of this species of drama was poetry; the stuff or matter was prose. It was prose rendered delightful by the blandishments and measured motions of the muse. Yet even this was not universal. The mimes of Sophron, so passionately admired by Plato, were written in prose, and were scenes out of real life conducted in dialogue. The exquisite Feast of Adonis ([Greek (transliterated): Surakousiai ae Ad'oniazousai]) in Theocritus, we are ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... life. He writes verses and sings them. He opens a barber's shop of his own, marries, and brings his young bride home. "Two angels," he says, "took up their abode with me." His newly-wedded wife was one, and the other was his rustic Muse—the angel ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... awful lottery With a gruesome lot of blanks, And I wish the Editor hadn't slips That are printed "Declined with Thanks." For it's rather hard On a starving bard When his last trump card Is played, and he wishes himself bisected When his Muse's lays come back—rejected! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... the midnight hidden, Clothed round with the strength of night And mysteries of things forbidden For all but the one most bright Muse? ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... not, thou, to whom the indulgent Muse Vouchsafes a portion of celestial fire; Nor blame the partial fates, if they refuse The imperial banquet, and the rich attire. Know thine own worth, and reverence the lyre. Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined? No; let thy ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... connection with Sussex may be said to end. Yet a poet, whether he will or no, is shaped by his early surroundings. In some verses by Mr. C. W. Dalmon called "The Sussex Muse," I find the influence of Shelley's surroundings on his mind ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... foresee that this country is destined to undergo great and rapid changes. Those that more properly belong to history, history will doubtless attempt to record, and probably with the questionable veracity and prejudice that are apt to influence the labours of that particular muse; but there is little hope that any traces of American society, in its more familiar aspects, will be preserved among us, through any of the agencies usually employed for such purposes. Without a stage, in a national point of view at least, with scarcely such a thing as a book of memoirs ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... pathos than in either; for his best piece is an elegy on Barbara Middleton, the sweetest song of the kind ever written. From his being born on the banks of the brook Ceiriog, and from the flowing melody of his awen or muse, his countrymen were in the habit of calling him Eos ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... you?" he asked. "Inn? yes, there's the Blue Chequers, but I 'm afraid you 'll find it shut. They 're early people, I 'm glad to say"; and his eyes seemed to muse over the proper fold for these damp sheep. "Are you Oxford men, by any chance?" he asked, as if that might throw some light upon the matter. "Of Mary's? Really! I'm of Paul's myself. Ladyman—Billington Ladyman; you might remember my youngest brother. I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... point of age, he found the young man "just the kind of a fellow to have around;" while Bert, in turn, held his senior in profound esteem—looked up to him, in fact, and in even his eccentricities strove to pattern after him. And so it was, when summer days were dull and tedious, these two could muse and doze the hours away together; and when the nights were long, and dark, and deep, and beautiful, they could drift out in the noon-light of the stars, and with "the soft complaining flute" and "warbling ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... for red men, in youth or early manhood, ere the sensibilities become osseous, receives at their hand some signal outrage, or, which in effect is much the same, some of his kin have, or some friend. Now, nature all around him by her solitudes wooing or bidding him muse upon this matter, he accordingly does so, till the thought develops such attraction, that much as straggling vapors troop from all sides to a storm-cloud, so straggling thoughts of other outrages troop to the nucleus ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... reflection binds us to the past. Memory then opens for us a volume that no eye but God's and ours can read;—memories of neglect, of sin, of deep secrets that our hearts have hidden in their innermost folds. Such experiences sometimes there are when we muse upon the external universe; when we reflect upon the vastness of creation, the littleness of human effort, the transciency of human relations; when our souls are drawn away from all ordinary communions, and we feel that we are ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... such things find plenty of fault with St. Paul's; and even I could see that its bigness was a little prosy, that it suggested the historic rather than the poetic muse; yet, for all that, I could never look at it without a profound emotion. Viewed coolly and critically, it might seem like a vast specimen of Episcopalianism in architecture. Miltonic in its grandeur and proportions, and Miltonic in its prosiness and mongrel classicism also, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... that felt the wand of Muse— Queen Posy's shaft of subtle art— Seared to the distant heights of blue, Past onyx lees that Sunsets dyed, And put to Vellum Couplets' fuse, Sped same to Fate with timid heart, Then shed dim tears in Sorrow's pew, This ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... necessity of nature, which disappears before the mind. Such is the ideal of human beauty according to which the antique conceptions were formed, and we see it in the divine forms of a Niobe, of the Apollo Belvedere, in the winged Genius of the Borghese, and in the Muse of the Barberini palace. There, where grace and dignity are united, we experience by turns attraction and repulsion; attraction as spiritual creatures, and repulsion ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... direction is perhaps reversed, the skies are more forbidding, the chill is more intense. Only after successive ventures of the same kind is the climax reached, the summit passed, and the vision of sunny plains opened to view. Such experiences are more common to the race than to the individual; the muse of history must note and record them with equanimity, with a buoyancy and hopefulness born of larger knowledge. The movement of civilization in Europe during the latter portion of the eighteenth century was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... not had time to pass; My youth has days of its lifetime yet; If you only knocked at the door, alas, My heart would open the door, Musette! Still at your name must my sad heart beat; Ah Muse, ah maiden of faithlessness! Return for a moment, and deign to eat The bread that ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... with the tragic muse, we do not dare to attempt any description of Eleanor's face when she first heard the name of Mrs. Slope pronounced as that which would or should or might at some time appertain to herself. The look, such as it was, Dr. Grantly did not soon forget. For a moment or two she could find ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... all his efforts and the key to many difficulties in his former writings. Heaven forbid that we should say that it completes the circle of his powers. On the contrary, it gives us hope of broader effort in new fields of thought and forms of art. But it brings the development of his Muse and of his Creed to a positive and definite point. It enables us to claim one who has been hitherto regarded as belonging to a merely speculative and peirastic school as the willing and deliberate champion of vital Christianity, and of an ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... art, whether a muse, or by what other name soever thou choosest to be called, who presidest over biography, and hast inspired all the writers of lives in these our times: thou who didst infuse such wonderful humour into the pen of immortal Gulliver; ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions 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 A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... his legal studies Most soberly pursues, Poor Ned must pass his mornings A-dawdling with the Muse: While Tom frequents his banker, Young Ned ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the heart of Corydon, that he should not be put out of his farm, that putting off his shepherd's bonnet, he did her all the reverence that he might. But all this while sate Montanus in a muse, thinking of the cruelty of his Phoebe, whom he wooed long, but was in no hope to win. Ganymede, who still had the remembrance of Rosader in his thoughts, took delight to see the poor shepherd passionate, laughing at Love, that in all his ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... 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
... Which sitting on her cheeks (being Cupid's throne) Is my heart's sovereign: O, when she is dead, This wonder, Beauty, shall be found in none. Now Agripyne's not mine, I vow to be In love with nothing but deformity. O fair Deformity, I muse all eyes Are not enamoured of thee: thou didst never Murder men's hearts, or let them pine like wax, Melting against the sun of thy disdain;[1] Thou art a faithful nurse to Chastity; Thy beauty is not like to Agripyne's, For cares, and age, and sickness, hers deface, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 from my ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... within us burn'd The light of song—the poet-spell had bound us; Even in infancy there flitted round us Two Muses, whose sweet glamour soon we learn'd. Even then I loved applause—that vain delusion!— Thou sang'st but for thy Muse, and for thy heart; I squander'd gifts and life with rash profusion, Thou cherishedst thy gifts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Edgar A. "Perry" appeared, an enlisted soldier in the First Artillery at Fort Independence. For two years "Perry" served his country in the sunlight, and Poe, under night's starry cover, roamed through skyey aisles in the service of the Muse and explored "Al Araaf," the abode of those volcanic souls that rush in fatal haste to an earthly heaven, for which they recklessly exchange the heaven of the spirit ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... of them in the scale of good. First in the scale is measure; the second place is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason and wisdom; the fourth, to knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures; and here the Muse says 'Enough.' ...
— Philebus • Plato
... and word with the minutest critical care before pronouncing their verdict. As might be expected, the poetry produced in those circumstances is of a more or less artificial type, and is wanting in the spontaneous vigour of the earlier essays of the Japanese muse. Conceits, acrostics, and untranslatable word-plays hold much too prominent a place, but for perfection of form the poems of this time are unrivalled. It is no doubt to this quality that the great popularity of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... for the children of his school. He used to take them to this room during school time for a little a-muse-ment. He man-aged each child as he found best. Some he could persuade to be good. Some he shamed into being good. But this was very dif-fer-ent from the cruel beatings that other teachers of ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... life of her could not see that he paid her any beyond what he had for the others or for his dinner. He joined Pierson at her side, and made no effort to oust him. He did not flatter her by recalling Lancelot; he seemed rather to muse out loud. James with his coat-tails to the fire was quite at his ease—and when Urquhart offered to drive her down to Westgate for the half-term (which she herself mentioned), it was James who said, "Capital! That will be jolly for you." "But ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the royal family was boundless; his power was absolute: the treasures, of America were at his command, and he made the most infamous use of them. In short, he had made the Court of Madrid one of those places to which the indignant muse of Juvenal conducts the mother of Britanicus. There is no doubt that Godoy was one of the principal causes of all the misfortunes which have overwhelmed Spain under so ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... poetry, and acquired the applause of their fellow-citizens. Candidates for literary fame appeared even in the higher sphere of life, embellished by the nervous style, superior sense, and extensive erudition of a Corke; by the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feelings of a Lyttleton. King shone unrivalled in Roman eloquence. Even the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste and ingenuity. Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier in learning and critical knowledge; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... by Sir Frederick Wigan, Bart., in memory of his brother-in-law, Arthur Cecil Blunt. It is a triplet, and displays in its central light an allegorical figure of "Poetry," supported by Shakespeare and Spenser in the lights on either hand. Above the Muse the sacred Dove is hovering, symbolical of the divine inspiration which we may presume guided the poets in their work, and at the base is a quotation from Wisdom, viii, 4 (Vulgate): "Doctrix disciplinae Dei, et electrix ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... singleness of heart that I could not picture things otherwise. I never thought of thanking her, or of asking myself, "Is she also happy? Is she also contented?" Often on some pretext or another I would leave my lessons and run to her room, where, sitting down, I would begin to muse aloud as though she were not there. She was forever mending something, or tidying the shelves which lined her room, or marking linen, so that she took no heed of the nonsense which I talked—how that I meant to become ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... expected that these many republics, monarchies, aristocracies, or whatever form they may take, will long remain at peace with each other? Ask the muse who presides over the pages of history how often has her pen been called upon to record the circumstance of separate nations, of the same blood and antecedents, lying quietly and peaceably beside each other. Family ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... posed and draped with that delightful grace of which Praxiteles was master, and with which he seems to have inspired his pupils The execution, however, is not quite faultless, as witness the distortion in the right lower leg of the seated Muse in Fig. l55—otherwise an ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... schoolboys, and their youthful enjoyment was quite contagious. People turned to look at them, and it was evident that, if they didn't see, they heard, as they never missed a point—probably knew it all by heart. Then came a recitation by Mlle. Moreno, who looked and spoke like a tragic muse the remorse and suffering of Phedre. The end of the performance—the two last acts of Berenice—was enchanting. Mme. Bartet looked charming in her floating blue draperies, and was the incarnation of the resigned, poetic, loving woman; Paul Mounet was a grand, sombre, passionate Titus, torn ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... shoes and now at my home-spun stockings. Once only, when he had ventured to look a little higher, our eyes met; and no thief taken with a hand in a man's pocket could have shown more lively signals of distress. This set me in a muse, whether his timidity arose from too long a disuse of any human company; and whether perhaps, upon a little trial, it might pass off, and my uncle change into an altogether different man. From this I was awakened by ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... nor imagine that you precede your generation because you stand alone. He dreamed of far-away glory, and his flatterers told him his dreams were prophetic. He saw across the seas the mirage of a great Latin empire in the West, and beheld the Muse of history inscribing his name beside that of his great kinsman as the restorer of the political and commercial equilibrium of the world, as well as the benefactor who had thrown El Dorado open to civilization. With the faith of ignorance, he proposed to share ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... it's impossible. I may die with you, starve with you, or be damned with your works. But to live, even three days, the life of a play, I no more expect it than to be canonised for a muse after ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... dress; From playful Ovid cull the 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 Sky's wild rocks ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... provisions from the town miles away. His dwelling-place, surrounded with palmetto trees, was little more than a rough shelter. Diotti arose at daylight, and after a simple repast, betook himself to practise. Hour after hour he would let his muse run riot with his fingers. Lovingly he wooed the strings with plaintive song, then conquering and triumphant would be his theme. But neither satisfied him. The vague dream of a melody more beautiful than ever man had heard dwelt ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... such unusual interest to his society, so that no friend of his can forget that figure of Fleeming coming charged with some new discovery: it is this that makes his character so difficult to represent. Our fathers, upon some difficult theme, would invoke the Muse; I can but appeal to the imagination of the reader. When I dwell upon some one thing, he must bear in mind it was only one of a score; that the unweariable brain was teeming at the very time with other thoughts; that the good heart had left ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though the deed of blood be veiled in night, "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Fair, blighted flower! The muse, that weeps thy doom, Rears o'er thy sleeping dust ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... tenderness, cling within their hearts to all the lost privileges of love they must by tradition affect to despise. My prayer for the little lamb that was I presented no aspect of incongruity to my uncle; it left him silent and solemnly abstracted: the man being cast into a heavy muse upon its content, his head fallen over his breast, as was his habit, and his great gray brows drawn down. How still the night—how cold and clear: how unfeeling in this frosty calm and silence, save, afar, where the little stars winked their kindly cognizance ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... most prominent and ardent English Catholics of his day. A son of his became a priest, and a famous preacher and writer on religious subjects. Another child, a daughter, took the veil. Lady Rens, who was not clever, although she was at one time almost universally considered to have the face of a muse, shared in the family ardour for the Church, but was far too fond of the world to leave it. While she was very young she met Lord Rens, a Lifeguardsman of twenty-six, who called himself a Protestant, but who was really quite happy without any faith. He fell ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... his Muse a gravely jocund note in his "Seasons' Comfort." He, too, of the four fellow-versifiers shows the greater aptitude for experiments, though it may perhaps be felt that his touch is nowhere quite so sure, nor his artistic feeling so direct ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... since Taine's exaltation of it, has often been taken as a Balzacian quintessence), and Autre etude de femme, yet another rehandling of earlier work. In 1843 came the introduction of the completed Sur Catherine de Medicis, Honorine and La Muse du departement (almost as often reconstructed as La Femme de trente ans), with Comment aiment les jeunes filles (a similar rehandling intended to start the collected Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes), and a further instalment of Illusions perdues, Les ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... pursuit, like us, who, wanting capacity for momentous views, make serious study of what is only the transitory occupation of a genius. Had the court of the first Charles been peaceful, how agreeably had the prince's congenial propensity flattered and confirmed the inclination of his uncle! How the muse of arts would have repaid the patronage of the monarch, when, for his first artist, she would have presented him with his nephew! How different a figure did the same prince make in a reign of dissimilar complexion! The philosophic warrior, who could relax himself ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 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 by one whose labors ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... speaking, he 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 of ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... yet come to the age of sentiment, but now and then she reached forward a little and surveyed its possibilities, and now she paused awhile to muse upon the subject of her aunt's spinsterhood. Not for long, however; she decided that Aunt Mary must have had excellent reasons of her own for remaining single, and returned to the more pressing problem of how to get Dick ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... at me, with earnestness, as if to ascertain whether I was really as unconcerned as I affected to be. Then she seemed to muse, picking the cotton of the spotless counterpane on which she was lying, like one at a loss what to ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... denunciations of Great Britain, so thickly strewn through these carmina non prius audita of the Congressional muse, we are sure they will excite no feeling in our readers but that of pity and contempt, and that comment upon them is unnecessary. The jealousy of foreign nations towards the arts and arms of his country, is ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... days when Dryden held office no Laureate has been appointed so distinctly pre-eminent above all his contemporaries, so truly the king of the poets, as he upon whose brows now rests the Laureate crown. Dryden's grandeur was sullied, his muse was venal, and his life was vicious; still in his keeping the office acquired a certain dignity; after his death it declined into the depths of depredation, and each succeeding dullard dimmed its failing lustre. The first ray of hope for its revival sprang ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... for ever and ever for this boon," he answered; and Bertram went back to his room, to lie awake and muse over what had befallen till the dawn broke and his brothers awoke to ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... descending lingered fondly yet about the minarets of the Foundling, and gilded the grassplots of Mecklenburgh Square—Perkins, I say, and Lucy would often sit together in the summer-house of that pleasure-ground, and muse upon the strange coincidences of their life. Lucy was motherless and fatherless; so too was Perkins. If Perkins was brotherless and sisterless, was not Lucy likewise an only child? Perkins was twenty-three: his age and Lucy's united, ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Two were rather intricate financial lures which Average Jones was able to dispose of by a mere "Don't." The third was a Spiritualist announcement behind which lurked a shrewd plot to entrap a senile millionaire into a marriage with the medium. These having been settled, the expert was free to muse upon a paragraph which had appeared in all the important New York morning papers ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... beauties." Mother's curse. kiss. land. night. "Mother's son." Mother's soul. spirit. tears. "Mothers." "Mothers, little." Mother-in-law. Mountain-mother. Mourning. Mouse. Mouth. Mud-mother. Mud-pies. "Mulberry Bush." Mumbo-jumbo. Mummies. Mundfaul. Muscari. Muse-mother. Music. Musician (child). Mustard. Mut (Maut). Mutilations. Mutterbiene. Mutterbirke. Mutterblume. Mutterboden. Mutteresel. Muttergefilde. Muttergrund. Mutterhase. Mutterhaus. Mutterhimmel. Mutter Holle. Mutterholz. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... tell,' I remarked. 'Would you rather explain it as magic? Or as the work of fairies? Or do you believe in ghosts? Your muse has fascinated you, you mystic!' And I laughed and trilled a line from 'The Mascot,' which we had seen the evening before at ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the exclusive birthright of no age of people. The dirtiest Hindoo sings to his fetish the songs of the Brahmin muse, with as keen a relish as the most devout Christian does the hymns of Dr. WATTS. Melody comes of Heaven, and is a gift vouchsafed to all generations, and all kinds of men. In proof of this, let us adduce a single extract from the great epic of the Hawaiian poet, POPPOOFI, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... And I muse as I continue to descend toward the sea. "Her appearance of sadness was not, therefore, on Yves's account. On whose, then?" and the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... mine since those events Ruled the pulsation of my daily life: And now they are a vulgar chronicle, And gossiped over by the rudest tongues. A haunting song of old felicities Lured me, scarce consciously, down here to muse Upon my shattered dreams; safe from the roar Of interests in our grim metropolis, The beating heart of England and the world. Not seen by me, since on that wondrous night Her consolation came into my soul; ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... the mind with a vision of pomp and magnificence, which it is pleasanter to contemplate, as it were, from afar, massed together in that general survey, than to examine part by part. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Carlyle agree in exalting that ode of Klopstock's, in which he represents the Muse of Britain and the Muse of Germany running a race. The piece seems to me more rhetorical than strictly poetical; and if the younger Muse's power of keeping up the race depends on productions of this sort, I would not give a penny for her chance, at least if the contest ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... An engine so powerful, so mighty to aid, So simple in structure, so readily made, A helper so potent in training the young— 'Tis meet that thy praise by the muse should be sung; For though sages may reason, and orators talk, They can ne'er make their mark ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... no heed of it. By and by, to drive off his fit, they spoke harsh words to him; at times they would laugh, at times they would chide, and then set him at nought. So he went to his room to pray for them, as well as to nurse his own grief. He would go, too, into the woods to read and muse, and thus for some weeks ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... 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 ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... in a muse, she asked me if there was not a place of Scripture which said Peter was at a tanner's house. I told her there was such a Scripture, and directed her where to ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... "Yet while I muse, it seems quite plain That as I am I can't complain, For Tom and Jack—they both confess— Adore me. So I rather guess I'd wish I were a girl again, Were ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... nothing of the epigrammatist in him, and his finest lines all seem to have come by accident, or at any rate without effort. [27] His excessive reverence for the Alexandrines Callimachus and Philetas, has cramped his muse. With infinitely more poetic fervour than either, he has made them his only models, and to attain their reputation is the summit of his ambition. It is from respect to their practice that he has loaded his poems with pedantic erudition; in the very midst of passionate pleading ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Rustick Satyr, now no more Abuse, In rude Unskilful Strains, thy Tuneful Muse; No more let Envy lash thy true-bred Steed, Nor cross thy easy, just, and prudent Speed: Who dext'rously doth bear or loose the Rein, To climb each lofty Hill, or scour the Plain: With proper Weight and Force thy Courses run; Where ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... dire compact; The watchful Irish took them in the fact. Of riding armed; O traitorous overt act! With each of them an ancient Pistol sided, Against the statute in that case provided. But, why was such a host of swearers pressed? Their succour was ill husbandry at best. Bayes's crowned muse, by sovereign right of satire, Without desert, can dub a man a traitor; And tories, without troubling law or reason, By loyal instinct can ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... rear. Kenealy was charmingly equipped, and lent the party a luster. If he did not contribute much to the conversation, he did not interrupt it, for the ladies talked through him as if he had been a column of red air. Sing, muse, how often Kenealy said "yaas" that afternoon; on second thoughts, don't. I can weary my readers without celestial aid: Toot! toot! toot! went a cheerful horn, and the mail-coach came into sight round a corner, and rolled rapidly toward them. Lucy looked ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... a place sacred to the Muse; she inspired (really to a considerable extent) Tennant's vernacular poem "Anster Fair"; and I have there waited upon her myself with much devotion. This was when I came as a young man to glean engineering experience from the building of the breakwater. What I gleaned, I am sure I do not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in our own name, for we are but atoms—but in the name of philology itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and tormented Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, most incurable woes; and speaks to men comfortingly of the beautiful and godlike ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... high. When the world roars, and flames the startled sky, In its own adamant it rests secure, As free from chance and malice ever found, And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse, As it is loyal to each manly thing And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse. Only in that part is it not so sound Where Love hath set ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... shall these things change? Shall childish galleries That deemed you once Apollo's minister, Say, "Garn, old monkey!" Shall colossal salaries Reward the Muse and not the dulcimer? Not gleaming eyeballs, not the soul illuminate? Shall old faiths falter and Antonio's heart Sicken the while he churns, and chilly ruminate, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... Villa San Giorgio, most of all in the society of its graceful chatelaine, I had my fill of poetry and the other ornamental arts. Wit, love, philosophy, literature, bric-a-brac, religion—each had its petit- maitre, and each its sparkling Muse. It was before the day of Arcadia and shepherdesses, those flowers of our more jaded years; women were still called divine, but it was very possible, or we used to think it so, to discuss matters which you did not ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 and avocations ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... lead them, holding a lyre in his hands, and playing sweetly as he stepped high and featly. So the Cretans followed him to Pytho, marching in time as they chanted the Ie Paean after the manner of the Cretan paean-singers and of those in whose hearts the heavenly Muse has put sweet-voiced song. With tireless feet they approached the ridge and straightway came to Parnassus and the lovely place where they were to dwell honoured by many men. There Apollo brought them and showed them his most ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... pity the night poor Amy Robsart passed there, and the scene between her, Leicester, and the queen, when that prince of villains, Varney, claims her as his wife. But in spite of the romantic and historical associations belonging to the place, I do not think it would have "inspired my muse." ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... disobedience And the fruit of that forbidden tree Whose mortal taste brought death into the world, And all our woe, With loss of Eden, Till one greater Man restore us And regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, That on the secret top of Horeb Or of Sinai Didst ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... had now to decide between the goddesses, he certainly would have awarded you the golden apple," exclaimed the first muse, who never let an opportunity slip to display her ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... her cheeks (being Cupid's throne) Is my heart's sovereign: O, when she is dead, This wonder, Beauty, shall be found in none. Now Agripyne's not mine, I vow to be In love with nothing but deformity. O fair Deformity, I muse all eyes Are not enamoured of thee: thou didst never Murder men's hearts, or let them pine like wax, Melting against the sun of thy disdain;[1] Thou art a faithful nurse to Chastity; Thy beauty is not like to Agripyne's, For cares, and age, and sickness, hers deface, But thine's eternal: O Deformity, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... first cause explore, To fix the aeras of recorded time, And live in ev'ry age and ev'ry clime; Record the chiefs, who propt their country's cause; Who founded empires, and establish'd laws; To learn whate'er the sage, with virtue fraught, Whate'er the muse of moral wisdom taught. These were your quarry; these to you were known, And the world's ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... the Colonel, he ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only awoke occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing. On each of these occasions he showed a gratitude and kind courtesy that endeared him to me beyond expression. 'Champdivers, my lad, your health!' ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clever adolescence, whom Chatterton certainly mocked bitterly enough in satires which he wrote apparently for his own private satisfaction, but whom he nevertheless took considerable pains to conciliate as being men of substance who could lend books and now and then reward the Muse with five shillings. For Burgum the poet invented, and pretended to derive from numerous authorities (some of which are wholly imaginary), a magnificent pedigree showing him descended from a Simon de Seyncte Lyse alias ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... certain grotesque humor in Thor's adventures, which is missed in his mythologic counterpart of the South, Hercules. It is the old rich "world-humor" of the North, genial and broad, which still lives in the creations of the later Teutonic Muse. The dints which Thor made on the mountain-skull of Skrymir were types and forerunners of the later feats of the Teutonic race, performed on the rough, shaggy, wilderness face of this Western hemisphere, channelling it with watery highways, tunnelling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... 'Tis not vain or fabulous (Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance) What the sage poets, taught by the heavenly Muse, Storied of old in high immortal verse Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles, And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell; For such there be, but unbelief is blind. Within the navel of this hideous ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... 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 ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... temples and palaces, and the mutilated remains of its statues and triumphal columns, conveying to the mind mournful images of the fallen fates of those who had for ages been its proud possessors; where the Mantuan bard first caught inspiration from the deathless muse; where Tully charmed the listening throng, whilst defending with mild persuasion the arts and the sciences he loved, and condemning in terrible denunciations the mad ambition that threatened the destruction of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... am very thirsty; nor have I ever met any one who found real pleasure in a statue when he had toothache. There is something to be said for the theory of the sceptical bishop in Browning's poem, that the soul is only free to muse of lofty things ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... contemptuously at the creature of his thoughts. What an idle ambition was the author's! How far beneath him was the practice of that childish art! With his hand closing on his first brief, he felt himself a man at last; and the muse who presides over the police romance, a lady presumably of French extraction, fled his neighbourhood, and returned to join the dance round the springs of ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... piece frum de mainest house. Thar was one brick chimbly an' one dirt one to hit, an' a great big wide po'ch 'cross de front of de house. I 'member Mis Nancy an' white folks 'ud set out thar of an evenin' an' mek us li'l cullud chullun dance an' sing an' cut capers fer to 'muse 'em. Den dey had a trough, built 'bout lak a pig trough, an' dey would mek de cook bake a gre't big slab er co'n bread an' put hit in de trough an' po' milk or lasses over hit, an' tu'n us li'l cullud chullun loose on hit. An' I'se tell'n y' as much of hit went in our hair ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... may come while we are alone in the darkness, under the stars, or while we walk by ourselves or in a crowd, or while we sit and muse. It may come upon the sinking ship or in the tumult of the battle. There is no saying when it may not come to us. . . . But after it has come our lives are changed, God is with us and there is no more doubt of God. Thereafter ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... melancholy glee To think where once my fancy strayed, I muse on what the years may be Whose coming tales are all unsaid, Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid Within their shadowed niches, grow By grim degrees to pick and spade, As one by ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the Man who with ennobling pride Beholds not his own nature? where is he Who but with deep amazement awe allied Must muse the mysteries of the human mind, The miniature of Deity. For Man the vernal clouds descending Shower down their fertilizing rain, For Man the ripen'd harvest bending Waves with soft murmur o'er the plenteous plain. He spreads the sail on high, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... fail thee not, I trust that I shall again proclaim in song a sweeter glory yet, and find thereto in words a ready way, when to the fair-shining hill of Kronos I am come. Her strongest-winged dart my Muse hath yet in store. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... because, secondly, the power of depicting graphically what they are in the daily habit of seeing, is not in them, not having been cultivated by study and practice; and thirdly, not being stimulated to literary activity by that Muse of the imperative mood, Necessity, they find more pleasure in having these things brought under their eyes, results of the mental toil and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... one 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 laugh—I am ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... the shadow of 'Talbot's tower,' we might prefer to muse historically, and gather up our memories of facts connected with the place; but we are treading again upon 'the footsteps of the Conqueror,' and must pay for our indiscretion. From the moment we approach the precincts of the castle, we are pounced upon by the inevitable spider (in this instance, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... fanatic to-night, for you read history not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocian for the Greek, and Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, and John Brown the ripe fruit of our noonday, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... 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 this her hour of weakness, that which she had refused in the hours of clear-seeing strength;—to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... sacrifice in order to admire it more, and greatly rejoiced in being able to give full admiration to one whom she had learnt to love so heartily as Caroline. Such a triumph over natural timidity and feebleness of character was indeed a great and gallant thing, and Marian used to muse and wonder at it in her solitary hours. There was still much to suffer externally as well as internally; there was the return of letters and presents, with all their associations; there was the feeling of the pain and offence given ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the poet had applied his Muse to describe the living representative of the noble House he could justly have bestowed upon him a much greater meed of praise. It is a rare conjunction to find one who is born great, seek also to achieve greatness; ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... No. 4, Melpomene, is tragedy; No. 5, 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
... of kindly and learned men to the public service through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it finally died out with Constance de Theis, Princesse de Salm, who was known under the Directory and the Empire in Paris as the 'Muse of Reason,' and the 'Boileau of Women,' and with her nephew, the last Baron de Theis, one of the most charming of men, and one of the most conscientious and accurate of archaeologists and collectors. The baron died in 1874. The 'objets ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... heart beats quick; my body's force is gone, Thinking, dear Prince, on this which thou hast said, Pointing along the paths. What! robbed of realm, Stripped of thy wealth, bare, famished, parched with thirst, Thus shall I leave thee in the untrodden wood? Ah, no! While thou dost muse on dear days fled, Hungry and weeping, I in this wild waste Will charm thy griefs away, solacing thee. The wisest doctors say, 'In every woe No better physic is than wifely love,' And, Nala, I will make it true to ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... left alone to muse on the uncertainly of all things, and to tell herself over and over again, how vain it was to set the heart on any earthly good. "Poor Janet!" well might her father say; and amid her own sorrow ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... we have ready to hand a refuge from the clash of wits or the small talk of the day amid the solemn beauties of our venerable minster, whose silvern chimes daily 'knoll us to prayer,' and in the shady walks of whose tranquil graveyard we muse with softened heart, and ever and anon with moistened eye, upon the memorials of the young, the beautiful, the aged, the wise, and ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... with telling me, he could have wished I had rather turned my thoughts to the comic than the tragic muse; for tragedy was less fashionable, and consequently less profitable both to the house and the author, than comedy or opera. I sighed and answered, it was an ill proof of public taste, when it could receive greater pleasure from the unconnected scenes of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... line. He has not finished his play, the actors have not learnt their parts, and the king is impatient at being kept waiting. Moliere is perplexed, and, not knowing what to do, he decides to go to sleep. The Muse appears to him, styles him "the light of the people," and brings to him all the ghosts of the great poets before him. AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare all declare to him that, in their time, they had ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... speeches of Gladstone in the Midlothian campaign, dealing with politics in the light of eternal principles. Legislation was developed through the "judgments" of priestly oracles. Poetry lighted her flames at the altar. Philosophy busied itself with ethics. The Muse of History was the Spirit of Holiness. The nation's ambitions were aspirations. Her heroes grew to be saints. The divine became to her, not the true or the beautiful, but the good. She evidently had, as Matthew Arnold said of John Wesley, "a ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... the chillness of death pervaded the sacred apartment; but on great occasions, when the sun was allowed to penetrate the thirty-two tiny panes of glass in each window, and a blaze was lighted in the fire-place, Miss Hollis would look in as she went upstairs, and muse a moment over the pathetic little romance of rags, the story of two lives worked into a bouquet of old-fashioned posies, whose gay tints were brought out by a setting of sombre threads. Existence had gone so quietly in this remote corner of the world that all ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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
... ground, as may be seen in his "Holy Family" in the National Gallery. But we doubt if the critique upon his "Mrs Siddons" is quite fair. The chair and the footstool may not be on the cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour reconciling the bodily presence of the muse with the demon and fatal ministers of the drama that attend her. Though Sir Joshua's words are here brought against him, it is without attention to their application in his critique, which condemned their form and character as not historical nor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... that his son-in-law contemplated maintaining a household on the earnings of his Muse was still matter for pleasantry between the pair; and one of the humours of their first weeks together had consisted in picturing themselves as a primeval couple setting forth across a virgin continent and subsisting on the adjectives ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... times, and past, with evils be snared, They shall not last: with cithern silent Muse, Apollo wakes, and ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... I will; I am no muse. Listen to your inspiration comfortably, Ribalta," replied, with a laugh, he whom the vendor of old books received with such original unconstraint. He was evidently accustomed to the eccentricities of the strange merchant. In Rome—for this scene took place ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... is very hard to define; but it seems to arise from a kind of innate sympathy with the moods and humors of those she loves. If one is gay, there is a cheerful ring in her silver laugh that seems gladness itself; if one is sad, and creeps away into a corner to bury one's head in one's hand and muse, by and by, and just at the right moment, when one has mused one's fill, and the heart wants something to refresh and restore it, one feels two innocent arms round one's neck, looks up, and lo! Blanche's soft eyes, full of wistful, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... melancholy smile, but it disappeared at once, and she seemed to muse in silence, with no very pleasant thought on her mind. Twice or thrice I thought she wished to speak to me, but if so she changed ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... whether a muse, or by what other name soever thou choosest to be called, who presidest over biography, and hast inspired all the writers of lives in these our times: thou who didst infuse such wonderful humour into the pen of immortal Gulliver; who hast ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... touch and commune with each other. In his rapt verses we feel some of that mystic thrill felt by a devotee in the open sanctuary of the Almighty. No man ever interpreted Nature in such inspired strains as William Wordsworth. What supremely delights the lover of scenery is that this poet's muse can overwrap the exact and detailed knowledge of Nature with a superb mantle of idealistic glory. He saw and understood the harmony of Nature's forms and colours through all the seasons: at the quiet ingleside he meditated on what he had ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... later either Gregory or Peter might have been observed coming down the staircase with a missive from Hamlet. Juliet had detected his gift for verse, and insisted, rather capriciously, on having all his replies in that shape. Hamlet humored her, though he was often hard put to it; for the Muse is a coy immortal, and will not always come when she is wanted. Sometimes he was forced to fall back upon previous efforts, as when he translated these ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... strut and caper and fling bombastic insults at the authorities in Rome, until the Government found it opportune to take them in hand. The greatest Italian poet and one of the greatest imaginative writers in Europe will now be able to devote himself—if his rather morbid Muse has suffered no injury—to his predestined task. Those—the comparatively few that read—whose acquaintance with this writer's work usually caused them to regret his methods, could not help admiring his personal activities, his genius for leadership and his vital fire during ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... I 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 country a ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... JOHN BRADBURY, the Muse shall fill my strain To sing thy praises; thou hadst spent thy time Not idly, nor hadst lived thy life in vain, Unfitted for the guerdon of my rhyme. For lo, the Funds went sudden crashing down, And men grew pale with monetary fear, And in the toppling mart The stoutest ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... Granta! They set the blood glowing, Your verse-grinder's galloping lines, There seems rare inspiration in Rowing! The Muse, who politely declines To patronise pessimist twitters, Has smiled on these stanzas, which smack Of health, honest zeal, foaming "bitters," And vigour of brain and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... in a grey hour you sit by the fireside with a few of your friends and lock the door against the uproar of Europe, and escape in thought to happier times, and muse and dream ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... desired no higher pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab. To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life, and it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston found so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street and Regent ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... guilt-laden conscience and of a sense of justice. These dim emotions, however, were drowned by a more powerful sentiment: his newly awakened love of life, the primal feeling of self-preservation, which seized him all the harder the more he began to muse about the possibility of having to lose a life which offered so much that was worth living for. An inner voice called to him: "Thou shalt not die! ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... editor, besides the stanzas we have quoted, has contributed indeed less than other editors, in similar works, and much less than we could wish, for we are sincere admirers of his plaintive muse. His preface should be read with due attention, for it is calculated to set the public right on the fate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... are at leisure and feel a little dull, I advise you to take up some of our good-natured writers, such as Dr. Moore, Goldsmith, Coleman, Cervantes, Don Quixote, Smollett's novels, or the pleasant and airy productions of the muse. These I have always found a powerful anti-splenetic; and, although I am not a professed physician, I will venture to prescribe to you in this instance with all the confidence of Hippocrates. The whole system of nostrums from that arch-quack, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... find credit in these latter days, If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase: What Chaucer, Spenser, did, we scarce refuse To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer muse. If you can add a little, say why not, As well as William Pitt and Walter Scott, Since they, by force of rhyme, and force of lungs, Enrich'd our island's ill-united tongues? 'Tis then, and shall be, lawful to present Reforms in writing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... send 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
... retained her antique abhorrence of the spectral dead, etc. etc. She concluded by beseeching him, if he could not desist from haunting her with his ghostly presence, at least to spare her the added misfortune of being be-rhymed by his muse. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp tone, 'Is that poetry, Sir?—Is it Pindar?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, there is here a great deal of what is called poetry.' Then, turning to me, the poet cried, 'My muse has not been long upon the town, and (pointing to the Ode) it trembles under the hand of the great critick.' Johnson, in a tone of displeasure, asked him, 'Why do you praise Anson?' I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question. He proceeded, 'Here is an errour, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... to Dr. May that George's vigil soon became a sound repose on the sofa in the dressing-room; and he was left to read and muse uninterruptedly. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... cautious not to dare beyond his tried strength, more especially in designing a subject of several figures. His true genius as alone conspicuous in those where much of the portrait was admissible; and such was his "Tragic Muse," a strictly historical picture: was it equally discernible in his "Nativity" for the window in New College Chapel? We think not. There is nothing in his "Nativity" that has not been better done by others; yet, as a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... sends me a couple of handkerchiefs; and, were it not that he has divined my inmost feelings, the mere sight of these handkerchiefs would be enough to make me treat the whole thing as ridiculous. The secret exchange of presents between us," she went on to muse, "fills me also with fears; and the thought that those tears, which I am ever so fond of shedding to myself, are of no avail, drives me likewise to blush ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Shall I muse on noble pictures, turn the poet's stirring page, And grow base and mean in action, petty ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and excitement, to his mother's joy and pride; while Charles merited her wrath by too much of his habitual and paternal quietude, particularly when he withdrew his forces altogether from the loud domestic fray, by retreating up-stairs to cogitate and muse, perhaps to make a calming prayer or two about all these matters of importance. As for Mrs. Tracy herself, she was even now, within the first hour of that news, busily engaged in collecting cosmetics, trinkets, blonde lace, and other female finery, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... cause, our suit and trial o'er, The worthy serjeant need appear no more: In pleasing I a different client choose, He served the Poet—I would serve the Muse. Like him, I'll try to merit your applause, A female counsel in a female's cause. Look on this form—where humour, quaint and sly, Dimples the cheek, and points the beaming eye; Where gay invention seems to boast ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... part of an unpublished poem, by Coleridge, whose Muse so often tantalizes with fragments which indicate her powers, while the manner in which she flings them from her betrays her caprice, yet whose unfinished sketches display more talent than the laboured ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... though the muse her Homer thrones High above all the immortal quire; Nor Pindar's raptures she disowns, Nor hides the plaintive Caean lyre; Alcaeus strikes the tyrant soul with dread, Nor yet is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... danced in his boots ("and glad he could so get away"), he was hardly in worse heart or trim than a seventeenth century author here and there whose original seriousness or work-a-day piety would have been content to go plodding flat-foot or halting, as the muse might naturally incline with him, but whom the tune, the grace, and gallantry of the time beckoned to tread a perpetual measure. Lovelace was a dancer of genius; nay, he danced to rest his wings, for he was winged, ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... staff, as I have said, I often muse thus, when some object recalls the memory of one and another who have finished their course and been gathered to their fathers. In every city and village, wherever there is human life, with its evil passions and good ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... flower-laden. To our left towered the great viaduct, over which the train rolls, depositing its passengers far, far above the tops of the houses, far above the tallest steeple. It was a very striking picture, and H.C. shouted for joy and felt the muse rekindling within him. Upon all shone the glorious sun, above all was the glorious sky, blue, liquid and almost tangible, as only foreign skies can be. The fatigues of yesterday, the terrible adventures of the past night, all were forgotten. Nay, that midnight ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... poet, for her beauty. She inspired his muse when turning the corner of George Street, Edinburgh. The lines addressed to her are to be found in his Poems. She was also a highly-gifted artist. The illustrations in the work called the Stirling Heads are from her pencil. It was ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... 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 interest ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... said the minstrel to Guarine, "that my muse would find a tender part at last. Dost thou remember the bull-fight we saw in Spain? A thousand little darts perplexed and annoyed the noble animal, ere he received the last deadly thrust from the lance ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... des The Muse of the Department Eugenie Grandet A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Government Clerks Scenes from a ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... except the occasional cruel throbbings in her bosom, looked pleased and delighted, and although she perfectly realized the king's impatience, tantalizingly prolonged his sufferings by unexpectedly resuming the conversation at the very moment the king, absorbed in his own reflections, began to muse over his secret attachment. Everything seemed to combine—not alone the little teasing attentions of the queen, but also the queen-mother's interruptions—to make the king's position almost insupportable; for he knew not how to control the restless longings ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that to Chaucer, and not to Gower, should be applied the flattering appellation of "the father of our poetry;" though, as Johnson says, he was the first of our authors who can be said to have written English. To Chaucer, however, are we indebted for the first effort to emancipate the British muse from the ridiculous trammels of French diction, with which, till his time, it had been the fashion to interlard and obscure the English language. Gower, on the contrary, from a close intimacy with the French and Latin poets, found it easier to follow the beaten ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... quaintly and sly Takes his tea, Cayenne pepper, and cold apple-pie. Some gaze on the Cygnets that glide like a dream, And bend down to admire their fair forms in the stream; Some laugh at their fancies, or muse on a flower, And all are delighted, so happy the hour. Wouldst thou gaze with emotions far purer than mirth On one of the fairest creations of earth, Go at even, and breathe the pure breath of the breeze, From the seat by the Lake, 'neath those ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... 'The Muse must out,'" continued Joy defiantly. "Or would you rather I didn't have ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... fit polish can my verse attain, Not mine is strength to try the task sublime: My genius, measuring its power to climb, From such attempt doth prudently refrain. Full oft I oped my lips to chant thy name; Then in mid utterance the lay was lost: But say what muse can dare so bold a flight? Full oft I strove in measure to indite; But ah, the pen, the hand, the vein I boast, At once were vanquish'd by the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... where is it to be found? Plays don't grow on bushes, even in this agricultural district. And I have yet to discover any dramatists hereabouts, unless"—jocularly—"you are a Tom Taylor or a Tom Robertson in disguise. Are you sure you have never courted the divine muse? Men of position have frequently been ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Brunswick, who embraced Catholicism on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter with the emperor Charles VI., are equally bad. Lauremberg's satires, written A.D. 1564, are excellent. He said with great truth that the French had deprived the German muse of her nose and had patched on another quite unsuited to her German ears. Moscherosch (Philander von Sittewald) wrote an admirable and cutting satire upon the manners of the age, and Greifenson von Hirschfeld is worthy of mention as the author of the first historical romance that gives an accurate ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... casts, which his father carried out and sold; but as he increased in skill, he chose his subjects from popular songs and ballads, such as "Young Roger came tapping at Dolly's window," "My name is Jack Hall," "I am a bold shoemaker, from Belfast Town I came," and other productions of the mendicant muse. The copies of pictures and casts were commonly sold for three half-crowns each; the original sketches—some of them a little free in posture, and not over delicately handled, were framed and disposed of for any sum from two to five ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... several of the British Colonies. The stamps of British East Africa bear a flaming sun and the legend "light and liberty," typical of the light of civilization and progress now dawning upon that part of the world. And on one of the late issues of Portugal is a beautiful allegory of the muse of history watching Da Gama's ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... Louis XIV. and in literary society. She won the friendship and admiration of the most eminent literary men of the age—some of her more zealous flatterers even going so far as to style her the tenth muse and the French Calliope. Her poems were very numerous, and included specimens of nearly all the minor forms, odes, eclogues, idylls, elegies, chansons, ballads, madrigals, &c. Of these the idylls alone, and only some of them, have stood the test of time, the others ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... sicknesse, by excesse, being lead, With faint weake hands holding his pained head. Thus was the roofe adorn'd: but for the bed, The which those sacred limmes encanaped, I could say much: yet poised with her selfe, That gorgeous worke did seeme but drossy pelfe. All-conquering Loue inspire my weaker Muse, And with thy iocund smiles daigne to infuse Heauen-prompted praises to my vntaught story, That I may write her worth, and tell thy glory. Vpon her backe she lay (o heauenly blisse!); Smiling like Ioue, being couzend of ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... irons in the fire and was always able to write. The different properties that Father accumulated in his lifetime were alone enough to take all his time were it not for his happy nature and wonderful faculty of being able to put them aside when the muse nudged his elbow. ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Emperor, to decide their pretensions by a single combat; in which case he offered himself as the Bavarian champion; but in this endeavour he also proved unsuccessful. Then turning his attention to the delights of poetry, he became so enamoured of the muse, that he neglected every other consideration, and she as usual gradually conducted him to the author's never-failing goal—a place of rest appointed for all those sinners whom the profane love of poesy ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and run away with the Capting, and they're off to Gretney Green!" We would devote a chapter to describe the emotions of Mrs. Firkin, did not the passions of her mistresses occupy our genteeler muse. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... produced works of sweeter minstrelsy and greater historical value than the fabliaux, Romans, and Chansons de gestes of their brethren on the continent. The conquest itself became a grand theme for their muse. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... applicable to art, for art and science are not coextensive; nay, to some extent, are even inimical to each other. Indeed, to call a work of art purely and simply "scientific," is tantamount to saying that it is dry and uninspired by the muse. In dwelling so long on this point my object was not so much to elucidate Liszt's meaning as Chopin's ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... vacillation, read a most impressive lesson to aspiring minds infatuated by success, and regardless of moral or religious restraints. O that, in this age of insubordination, selfishness, and enterprise, a poet would arise, animated with Shakespeare's "Muse of fire," embody the events of those seventeen years of wo, and invest the detestable Regicide with the same terrible immortality which marks the murderous Thane in his progress from obedience and honour to ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... dream that they talked more in their sleep at this time than ever they did in all their journey; and being in a muse thereabout, the gardener said even to me: Wherefore musest thou at the matter? It is the nature of the fruit of the grapes of these vineyards to go down so sweetly, as to cause the lips of them that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... I muse upon the distant town In many a dreamy mood. Above my head the sunbeams crown The graveyard's giant rood. The lupin blooms among the tombs. The ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... operation that the doctor had perceived from the very first moment was necessary. After a long talk with him, perhaps, my pen stops. I pause: and when I pause I know the inspiration has gone. As the ancients would say, the Muse or the God has departed and dictates no more. I fling aside the paper and look at my watch. Several hours passed in the hospital, but I'll go round to the club now. And I go. I know Tomkins is dead. It only ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... poetry of the Jews is clearly traceable to the service of religion. To celebrate the praises of God, to decorate his worship, and give force to devout sentiments, was the employment of the Hebrew Muse." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... hath begun; He follow till I die. Ile hear no Truce, Wrong gets no Grave in me: Abuse pell-mell encounter with abuse; Write he again, Ile write eternally; Who feeds Revenge, hath found an endless Muse. If Death ere made his black Dart of a Pen, My Pen his special Bayly shall become: Somewhat Ile be reputed of 'mongst men, By striking of this Dunce or dead or dumb: Await the World the Tragedy of Wrath, What next I paint shall tread ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions oft, to hear her shell, Thronged around her magic cell, Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, Possessed beyond the Muse's painting: By turns they felt the glowing mind Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined,— Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired, Filled with fury, rapt, inspired, From the supporting myrtles round ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... youth's bright falchion: there the muse Lifts her sweet voice: there awful Justice opes ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the fam'd sisters never 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 create, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... plum-porridge, furmity; With beef, pork, mutton of each sort More than my pen can make report; Pig, swan, goose, rabbits, partridge, teal, With legs and loins and breasts of veal: But above all the minced pies Must mention'd be in any wise, Or else my Muse were much to blame, Since they from Christmas take their name. With these, or any one of these, A man may dine well if he please; Yet this must well be understood,— Though one of these be singly good, Yet more the merrier is the best As well of dishes as of guest. But ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... hope: And yet this Grain (as all must own) To Grooms and Hostlers well is known, And often has without disdain In musty Barn and Manger lain, As if it had been only good To be for Birds and Beasts the Food. But now by new-inspired Force, It keeps alive both Man and Horse. Then speak, my Muse, for now I guess E'en what it is thou wouldst express: It is not Barley, Rye, nor Wheat, That can pretend to do the Feat: 'Tis Oates, bare Oates, that is become The Health of England, Bane of Rome, And Wonder of all Christendom. And therefore Oates ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... he would sit and muse, his head in his hand, his well-rounded legs stretched toward the fire, his white, shapely fingers tapping the arms of his chair—each click so many telegraphic records of ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a life of incorrigible idleness; they have no need to maintain themselves; they just eat, and sit, and muse; everything is supplied to them, including their yellow robe and betel nut. Their religion ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... his career I have realised bow sad it is that he has bequeathed us no ASQUITH legend. Always reserved and intent, he discouraged Press gossip to such a degree as actually to have turned the key on the Tenth Muse. Everybody else might lunch at the hospitable board in Downing Street, but interviewers had no chance. In vain did the Quexes of this frivolous city hope for even a crumb—there was nothing for them. Mr. ASQUITH came into office, held it, and left it without a single concession to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70 Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... beauties of the Vale of Llangollen certainly exceed every idea I had formed of their grandeur, and on my arrival at the inn in the village, the muse embodied the following ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... write, I swear it—she, my faery, my Muse, my Egeria, she to whom I desired to look up in adoration to the last drawing ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... bother me? I wish you would bother me, and re-bother me, and talk to me and at me; for what can give me more pleasure? I swear that no muse-stricken rhymester ever reads his own last poem with more delight than I do what you write to me about matters public or private, town or country. Here now is a letter from you full of pleasant matter, but with this dash of the ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... treasure the future may enshrine in Canadian literature, and however deserving may be the claims of the volumes of verse that have already appeared from the native press, I am bold to claim for these productions of Mrs. MacLean's muse a high place in the national collection and a warm corner in the ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... how My thoughts were dressed when I was young But tempus fugit! see them now Half clad in rags of every tongue! O philoi, fratres, chers amis! I dare not court the youthful Muse, For fear her sharp response should be, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... us'd to 't, and she seems Rather to welcome the end of misery Than shun it; a behaviour so noble As gives a majesty to adversity: You may discern the shape of loveliness More perfect in her tears than in her smiles: She will muse for hours together; and her silence, Methinks, expresseth more than if ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... prudence, the icy 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 into the service of virtue than by such a comment on the present paragraph ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... to return from the donjon, than D'Artagnan placed himself in ambuscade close to the Rue du Petit-Muse, so as to see every one who might leave the gates of the Bastille. After he had spent an hour on the look-out from the "Golden Portcullis," under the pent-house of which he could keep himself a little in the shade, D'Artagnan observed a soldier ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... piano stood open, and there was music, and "tables piled with books," and flowers everywhere. The hostess was in a pearl satin gown with flowing train, and sat by a round table reading aloud from poems of Mr. Browning, when the poet himself was announced, "and as she read, in her wonderful muse-like way, he walked in." All the lively company were half laughing and half protesting, and Mrs. Kemble, with her regal air, called him to her side, to submit to him some disputed point, which he evaded. Mrs. Sartoris had a story, with which she amused ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... those of any singer of ancient or modern times; how his brief life had been but a series of triumphs, petted by the greatest kings, sung by the most famous poets, and finally, adds Father Prosdocimo, "courted (if the grave Muse of history may incline her ear to the gossip of gallantry) by the most charming nymphs, even of the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... starting, he would bite his fingers to ascertain whether the scene was reality or a dream. Finally, giving vent to a piteous sigh, while a tear ran down his stained cheek, he placed his elbows upon his knees, and, bending forward, seemed to muse over some event of the past, which the jewel before him ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... hopes in pursuit, and dreams as to possibilities; you keep looking round to be satisfied that the gaff is ready to hand, and everything in the boat shipshape for action. As it was after luncheon to-day, you think of anything but a fish taking hold; you swish on monotonously and mechanically; you muse of friends at home and abroad, of the sport you enjoyed yesterday or the day before, of chances lost, perhaps even of your general career through either a well-ordered or misspent life as the case ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... my father, and seemed to muse upon it for a moment while he eyed her paternally. "A very good name, O Princess, and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the rose and carnation-bud's fragrance, 'mongst wonder-flowers' fated! As false at heart As glitter-wave, She held toward him her billowy hair, Where all the ocean's freshness breathes. And lily so red and lily so white Confidingly muse ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... of an epic poem, and 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 was the passion which gives pleasure ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... unto Poetrie (not printed in Hesperides, but extant in more than one manuscript version) shows that the poet was not unaware of the responsibilities of his profession. "But unto me," he says to his Muse: ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... fame he despatched his brother Theodorus to Olympia, with orders to repeat there in public, some verses in his name, in competition with some other poets for the poetical prize: the people, however, had too much taste to endure them, and rewarded his muse with groans and hisses. At Athens, however, he had better success; for he obtained the prize there for a composition which he sent in his name, but which was chiefly written by Antiphon, the son of Sophocles, whom he put to death ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... see my mither— She'll be weel acquant or this, Sair we'll muse at ane anither, 'Tween the auld word an' ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... our Muse And the drawers she wears are made Of the stoutest leather—Oh! Do not wrong ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... the ride of Richard Bullen! Sing, O Muse of chivalrous men! the sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery of low churls, the fearsome ride and grewsome perils of the Flower of Simpson's Bar! Alack! she is dainty, this Muse! She will have none of this bucking brute and swaggering, ragged ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the children of his school. He used to take them to this room during school time for a little a-muse-ment. He man-aged each child as he found best. Some he could persuade to be good. Some he shamed into being good. But this was very dif-fer-ent from the cruel beatings that other teachers of that time gave ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... O gall of all good heartes! To see that vertue should dispised bee 450 Of him that first was raisde for vertuous parts, And now, broad spreading like an aged tree, Lets none shoot up that nigh him planted bee. O let the man of whom the Muse is scorned, Nor alive nor dead, be of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... everything at my own time, and to my own fancy, and never a farthing challenged. Even while he was driving me, I had begun to find my heart go out to Mr. Henry; no doubt, partly in pity, he was a man so palpably unhappy. He would fall into a deep muse over our accounts, staring at the page or out of the window; and at those times the look of his face, and the sigh that would break from him, awoke in me strong feelings of curiosity and commiseration. One day, I remember, we were late upon some business in the steward's room. This room is in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that Sir John should devote all that money he proposes to make by the aid of his familiar spirit—the ghost of Narcisse—to the building of a temple in honour of the tenth muse, the muse of cookery," said Mrs. Sinclair; "and what do you think, Sir John, of a name I dreamt of last night for your sauce, 'The New Century Sauce'? ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... mounds, perchance, cover the resting-places of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax, Hector, and many other heroes who may have served their country as faithfully as these, though their names do not live in the page of history. How gladly would I have trodden the plain, there to muse on the legends which in my youth had already awakened in me such deep and awe-struck interest, and had first aroused the wish to visit these lands—a desire now partially fulfilled! But we flew by with relentless rapidity. The whole region is deserted ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... The old scholar to whom Clerambault had sent a copy of his poems did not fail to congratulate him politely, praising his great talent, but he did not say that this was his finest work; he even urged him, "after having offered his tribute to the warlike Muse, to produce now a work of pure imagination detached from the present." What could he mean? When an artist submits his work for your approval, is it proper to say to him: "I should prefer to read another one quite different from this?" This was a fresh sign ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... Anglo-Saxon race, Whose words have won the hearts of young and old; So free from cant, and yet replete with grace, Or prose or verse it glows like burnished gold; Thy muse is ever loyal to the truth, And those who know thee best ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... though last not least, is Aetion; A gentler shepheard may nowhere be found; Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention, Doth like himselfe ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in their regular sequences of association. No wonder the ancients made the poetical impulse wholly external. [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. Goddess,—Muse,—divine afflatus, —something outside always. I never wrote any verses worth reading. I can't. I am too stupid. If I ever copied any that were worth reading, I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... preferred his plighted troth to the commands and menaces of the dead is an ancestor worth disputing. But the Campbells must rest content: they have the broad lands and the broad page of history; this appanage must be denied them; for between the name of Cameron and that of Campbell, the muse ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brilliancy to my mother's salons. Wits, authors, poets, artists, statesmen, whose words could change the fate of Europe, were proud to call the marquise friend. I am an old man now, and you must forgive an old man's prosiness; but a little sadness comes into my thoughts when I muse on the past. How many of those illustrious souls, then so full of life and power, remain? And I, long exiled from all I cherished, how have I progressed? No, no, Eugene; not even to you would I complain. ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... Army at Bothwell Bridge. A Cameronian muse was awakened from slumber on this doleful occasion, and gave the following account of the muster of the royal forces, in poetry nearly ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... content so strongly as you made her seem to do; she speaks of the state of life to which her catechumen "shall" be, not "has" been, called; and thus makes it possible for a dean to resolve to be content with a bishopric, and a bishop to muse upon the complete satisfaction with which he would grasp an archbishop's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... quickly to restore warmth I muse upon my eccentric friend, and cannot help asking myself this question: Did he really replace the gilded image of the god Mercurius with the rest of the treasures? He seemed to do so; and yet I could not testify to the ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... judges who examined each phrase and word with the minutest critical care before pronouncing their verdict. As might be expected, the poetry produced in those circumstances is of a more or less artificial type, and is wanting in the spontaneous vigour of the earlier essays of the Japanese muse. Conceits, acrostics, and untranslatable word-plays hold much too prominent a place, but for perfection of form the poems of this time are unrivalled. It is no doubt to this quality that the great popularity of the Kokin-shu is due. Sei Shonagon, writing in the early years of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... 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 busy, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well report his weight and calibre. And this made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... 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 ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... wound up with a gigantic figure, in which the muse of Chancery was represented as mounted upon a golden car, and dispensing from her outstretched hands all sorts of fruits, and flowers, and blessings on humanity;—and having thus brought his noble poem ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... 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 ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... down to breakfast the next morning; but after little more than a nominal presentation of herself there, she escaped from Rose's looks and words of comment and innuendo and regained her own room. And there she sat down in the window to muse, having carefully locked out Clam. She had reason. Clam would certainly have decided that her mistress 'wanted fixing,' if she could have watched the glowing intent eyes with which Elizabeth was going deep into ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... inclinations somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material. The husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.' An impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life. She could only recover her ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... infantile or animal picture-thinking. If the school is slowly becoming speechless in this sense, if it is lapsing in all departments toward busy work and losing silence, repose, the power of logical thought, and even that of meditation, which is the muse of originality, this is perhaps the gravest of all these types of decay. If the child has no resources in solitude, can not think without the visual provocation, is losing subjective life, enthusiasm for public, social, ethical questions, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... a fervent worker in diamonds. None of his gems are paste, and a few have a perfection, a solidity, and a fire that fit them for a place in that coronet one might fancy made up of the richest of the jewels of the world's music-makers, and fashioned for the very brows of the Muse herself. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... breeches. "We 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 'bout ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... on her, I thought she looked like a personification of her lovely namesake, the glorious creation of Byron's muse. Her beautiful chestnut hair was unfortunately (in compliance with the custom of the country) tinged with a reddish dye. It was combed to the nape of the neck, and a red woolen band was closely twisted round it, so that the most ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... last had Robin's heart possest, And many a time disturb'd his nightly rest. Full oft' returning from the loosen'd plough, He slack'd his pace, and knit his thoughtful brow; And oft' ere half his thresher's talk was o'er, Would muse, with arms across, at cooling door: His mind thus bent, with downcast eyes he stood, And leant upon his flail in thoughtful mood. His soul o'er many a soft rememb'rance ran, And, mutt'ring ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... Celtic genius into contact with 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 to ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... much to be regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of language, would probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot[182]. To apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, containing a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:' but the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... whose exquisite work we see now and again in these chateaux, that some writer has said, that the muse of Ronsard whispered in the ear of the French sculptor, and thus Goujon's masterpieces were poems of Ronsard translated in marble. It is a rather pretty fancy, but Lydia and I cannot remember its author. Walter says that he can understand why the Counts of Blois built their castle here, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... a poem in hexameter verse, in good Greek, addressed to King Ptolemy, in which he calls, not only upon Apollo and the Muse, but, like a true Egyptian, upon Hermes, from whose darkly worded writings he had gained his knowledge. He says that the king's greatness might have been foretold from the places of Mars and the Sun at the time of his birth, and that his marriage with his sister Arsinoe arose from the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and cheek, almost 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 beginning ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whispered speech; Eating the lotus, day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray; To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; To muse and brood and live again in memory, With those old faces of our infancy Heaped over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... One noble writer Spelling treated with rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or equally insignificant reason. I myself, one of the three survivors before referred to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest son of the Muse. Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment. Bailey, an American writer, "who made long since a happy snatch at fame," which must have been snatched away from him by envious time, for I cannot identify him; Thatcher, who died early, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... humanity, and makes them the words of the Reason. The Imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world. Shakspeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is upper-most in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... material for a colour-sonnet here, with these subdued grey tones, those dull coppery-greens, and the glowing reds of the conical caps of those towers. I ought—but I don't. I fancy that half-engagement to MAUD TROTTER must have, scared away the Muse. I wonder if PODBURY has really gone yet? (Here a thump on the back disposes of any doubt as to this.) Er—so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... them. They soon die quietly of 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. For naturalistic deities he wished to substitute moral symbols; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... durst assert the juster ancient Cause And have restored Wits Fundamental Laws. Such was the Muse, whose Rules and Practice tell, Natures chief ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... passion makes me grave. I muse upon thy beauty. Thus I'd read My oppressed spirit, for in truth these sounds ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... characteristic of the man. A servant rushes in to say that the house is on fire; but the scholar answers, 'Tell my wife: you know that I never interfere with the household.' He was married twice over, he used to say, to the Muse of philology as well as to a mortal wife; but he confessed that he would never have got far with the first, if the second had not commanded in the library, always ready to look out passages and to hand ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... peaceful, forgittin' his enthusiasm, while I, who took it calm at the time, kep awake to muse on the glory of ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... have a bowl of coffee. Or rather, I will go into the kitchen myself; I am very good friends with Marianne, the cook; besides, the motto of the house of Bergenheim is liberte, libertas. Coffee is my muse; in this respect, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... her; Madame Recamier obtained her pension; the brilliant Sophie Gay, now Madame Emile de Girardin, wrote of her poetry, "How could one depict better the luxury of grief?" M. Raspail, the austere republican, called her the tenth muse, the muse of virtue; and Sainte-Beuve himself, thinking less of her literary life than of her family life and manifold compassions, terms her the "Mater Dolorosa of poetry." His memoir, however, is valuable for its own grace as much as for the modest sweetness of its subject: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... dark for both and say Amen. Nay, muse not, madam: tis no sencelesse Image, But the true essence of your ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... given him, they had hung round him a real mantle of purple velvet embroidered with gold. By his side, and seated on a globe, was a tall female form dressed in white, with an open book in one hand, and in the other a wand, pointing towards the portrait. This figure was to represent the Muse of History:—may she one day cast a glance of friendly retrospection on the prototype of her pictured companion! A body of cavalry followed the car, and the carriages of the most distinguished inhabitants of the place closed the procession. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... not picture things otherwise. I never thought of thanking her, or of asking myself, "Is she also happy? Is she also contented?" Often on some pretext or another I would leave my lessons and run to her room, where, sitting down, I would begin to muse aloud as though she were not there. She was forever mending something, or tidying the shelves which lined her room, or marking linen, so that she took no heed of the nonsense which I talked—how that I meant to become a general, to marry a beautiful woman, to buy a chestnut ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... his time, Poetry and Music were in a very low state of perfection, and as he excelled in both of those arts, it was said that he was the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope; and it was added, that he charmed lions and tigers, and made even the trees sensible of the melodious tones of his lyre. These were mere hyperbolical expressions, which signified the wondrous charms of his eloquence and of his ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of the Iconoclasts, says,—"The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but these Catholic images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy of taste and genius." Such comparisons mistake ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... for high, Mr. Diry? My muse come playguey neer running away with me, so I had to wistle "down brakes," and slow her up. Now I'll begin to record my doins on your pages, so that, shuld the toes of my boots be applide to the patent bucket early in my useful carreer, the hull wurld'll kno wot a treassure ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... the lordly crowd I muse, Which haunts the Royal festive hours, The day has come when I've put on The ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... was not the only devout poet who, in the early times, with sacred reverence believed the wonders the inspiring muse gave him as from God. It is not clear from the Biblical record that Adam was imagined the first man. On the contrary, the statement that Cain was afraid that those who met him would kill him, also that he went ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor. Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from this art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession, as well as a rich reversion, and that the Muse has a promise of both lives,—of this, and of that which ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... wreath. The 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. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} prima fugit." I turned back to the beginning of the third book, which we had read in class that morning. "Primus ego in patriam mecum {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} deducam Musas"; "for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country." Cleric had explained to us that "patria" here meant, not a nation or even a province, but the little rural neighborhood on the Mincio where the poet was born. This was not a boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... had said it, the idee struck me as bein' sort o' pitiful,—to go to whippin' a ghost. But she didn't seem to notice my remark, for she seemed to be a gazin' upward in a sort of a muse; and she says,— ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... place to her purpose, and to make the interest and effectiveness of her work the paramount object. But critics have lashed her out of these erratic ways, and she is now become the meek hand maid of Clio, creeping obediently in the track of the greater Muse, and never venturing on more than colouring and working up the grand outlines that her mistress has left undefined. Thus, in the present tale, though it would have been far more convenient not to have spread the story over such ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only awoke occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing. On each of these occasions he showed a gratitude and kind courtesy that endeared him to me beyond expression. "Champdivers, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cesare Borgia. We there listen to the complaint of Roma, who had set all her hopes on the Spanish Popes, Calixtus III and Alexander VI, and who saw her promised deliverer in Cesare. His history is related down to the catastrophe of 1503. The poet then asks the Muse what were the counsels of the gods at that moment, and Erato tells how, upon Olympus, Pallas took the part of the Spaniards, Venus of the Italians, how both then embrace the knees of Jupiter, how thereupon ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... 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 by ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... It seemed to him that the rising generation, detached from the fountain-head of Jewish culture, would no more be able to read the "Songs of Zion," and that the poet's rhymes were limited in their appeal to the last handful of the worshippers of the Hebrew Muse: ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... 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 not cry, aches round us like a strong ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... young friends, 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
... 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 are for ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Cockpit stage Gives it a soul from her immortal rage, I hear the Muse's birds with full delight Sing where the birds of Mars were wont ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... a licence which they use As th' ancient priviledge of their free Muse; Yet whether this be leave enough for me To write, great Bard, an Eulogie for thee: Or whether to commend thy Worke, will stand Both with the Lawes of Verse and of the Land, Were to put doubts might ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... not 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with the thought that his employer had placed so much confidence in him. He wanted to write a poem, but circumstances forbade his signaling to his muse. On his way to the bunk-house he hesitated and retraced his steps to the ranch office. Corliss told him to come in. He approached his employer deferentially as though about to ask ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
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