"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 women, who ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... the Master's feet, until He calls you up higher. Be kind and gentle to your sister Esther." To her Pastor she said: "Preach the Gospel uncolored!" We look upon the sinking form of a dear wife and mother, or brother, or sister, or husband, or friend, and as we sadly muse upon the fact that we held sweet counsel together and walked to the House of God in company; and we softly whisper to the physician is there no hope of recovery? Can you not save that young and precious life, so dear to us, so gentle, so loving, so kind, so sympathetic, so hopeful? ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... William Jones. He labored to this end with a desperate assiduity that perhaps was never surpassed or even equalled. He died hugging the conviction that he had attained it. This little village was his birthplace. Here he wrote his first rhymes, and wooed and won the first inspirations of the muse. His heart, as its last pulses grew weaker and slower, in that far-off heathen land, took on its child-thoughts again and its child- memories; and his last words were about this little, rural hamlet where he was born. A ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the front walk, her mind liltingly repeated the words she had written, and she stepped along in time to the rhythm. It was a fine rhythm. And, as soon as she was relieved from duty, she rushed back to the temporary shrine of the Muse. The words, now, flowed much more easily than at the beginning—one of the first lessons learned by ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... a'e spark o' nature's fire, That's a' the learnin' I desire, Then, though I trudge through dub an' mire, At pleuch or cart, My muse, though homely in attire, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... mooted the same question and was very well pleased not to have it put to the proof. She took the flowers up stairs after breakfast, resolving that they should not be an eye-sore to her friends; placed them in water and sat down to enjoy and muse over them in a very sorrowful mood. She again thought she would take the first opportunity of going home. How strange—out of their abundance of tributary flowers to grudge her this one bunch! To be sure it was ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... 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 ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... except for the strong, the nimble have none.—I ought to tell you what I do, or I ought to have to tell you what I have done. But what can I? the same concession to the levity of the times, the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies. England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near for ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Adrienne, gayly, "this affair will arrange itself quite easily. Henceforth, Mr. Poet, you shall draw your inspirations in the midst of good fortune instead of adversity. Sad muse! But first of all, bonds ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... face will shine Upon me while I muse alone; And that dear voice, I once have known, Still speak to me of ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... no share. The life about them looks towards the future. They point mutely to the past. A tender sentiment clings about them; in their hushed enclosures we breathe a drowsy old-world atmosphere of peace; to linger within their walls, to muse in their graveyards, is to step out of the noisy present into the silence of departed years. In a land where everything is of yesterday, and whose marvellous natural beauties are but rarely touched with the associations of history or charms of romance, these things have a subtle and peculiar power—a ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... visited Kelso and Jedburgh at the Communion season; and gladly complied with an invitation to Ancrum also, that he might witness the hand of the Lord. "Sweet are the spots," he wrote, "where Immanuel has ever shown his glorious power in the conviction and conversion of sinners. The world loves to muse on the scenes where battles were fought and victories won. Should not we love the spots where our great Captain has won his amazing victories? Is not the conversion of a soul more worthy to be spoken of than the taking of Acre?" At Kelso, some will long remember his remarks in visiting a little ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... 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
... the charms of poetry, when we read together the poems of Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus, with what taste did she discern every excellence in them! My feelings were dull compared to hers. She seemed herself to be the muse who had inspired those verses, and had tuned their lyres to infuse into the hearts of mankind the love of wisdom and virtue and the fear of the gods. How beneficent was she, how tender to my people! What care did she take to instruct them in all the finer arts, to relieve the necessities ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... I have said, but it does not move them." And I told her rapidly Mr. Galloway's argument. She fell into a muse. "At the eleventh hour! Nay, too late, too late. Had he been twenty years younger, what a stroke of fortune! Fate bears too ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Jesus paused and seemed to muse; then, with that indulgence which was to illuminate the world, "Tell me, Simon," he inquired, "which was ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... 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 ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... He hasn't made it yet," replied the Idiot. "He hasn't succeeded in his courtship of the Muse, and beyond himself and a few friends ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... as she moved in rhythmic sway to the inspiring music, that she was supported by the strong arm of his distingue- looking brother-in-law, who seemed, he thought, to be paying more homage than usual to the Terpsichorean Muse, and one ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the word, 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 as ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... permits 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 ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... now stands: certainly, except the gigantic towers, the old 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
... the fool arrives at his folly was as dear to him as the ultimate wisdom of the wise. So much, indeed, did the subtle mechanism of mind fascinate him that he despised language, or looked upon it as an incomplete instrument of expression. Rhyme, that exquisite echo which in the Muse's hollow hill creates and answers its own voice; rhyme, which in the hands of the real artist becomes not merely a material element of metrical beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passion also, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... reviewing his literary experience with a somewhat impersonal amusement. He had not poured his soul into his work with a bitter sweat of midnight endeavor as the genius is said to do. He had wooed the muse about as reverently as a battered tramp might fondle an equally battered dog, seeking, without illusion, a ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... The Muse of the Department Eugenie Grandet A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Government Clerks Scenes ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 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 Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... Pope's muse—one may use the old-fashioned word in such a connection—had left the free forest for Will's Coffee-house, and haunted ladies' boudoirs instead of the brakes of the enchanted island. Her wings were clogged with 'gums and pomatums,' and her 'thin essence' ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Chelsea a right fair house, your library, your books, your gallery, and all other necessaries so handsome about you, where you might, in company with me, your wife, your children, and household, be merry, I muse what, in God's name, you mean, here thus fondly to tarry." Having heard her out—preserving his good-humor, he said to her, with a cheerful countenance, "I pray thee, good Mrs. Alice, tell me one thing!" "What is it?" saith she, "Is not this house as ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... but I was nervous and restless, having never slept away from my mother before. I threw on a dressing-gown, and sat down beside the window to watch the moonlit scenery, and to muse on—mamma, wondering if she missed her child, and felt as lonely and depressed as I did. So I fell asleep in my chair, and was awakened suddenly by the touch of an icy hand, and a rasping cough in my ear. I started up. Oh, heavens! I was not alone! Beside me stood the figure of ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... inordinate passions and tyrannical conduct in a parent ... Now, with regard to my comedy is it not just and salutary that the subtilty [sic], pride, insolence, cunning, and the thorough-paced villany [sic] of a backbiting Scotchman should be ridiculed? What a wretched state the Comic Muse and the Stage would be reduced to, were the prohibition of laughing at the corruption and other vices of the age to prevail!"[3] True the Comic Muse, long sick, as Garrick said in his prologue to She Stoops to Conquer, had almost died, though farces ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... and disillusioned young men overshot their mark. Mere health reasserted itself; an inherent repressed vitality sought new channels. Arthur Symons deserted his hectic Muse, Richard Le Gallienne abandoned his preciosity, and the group began to disintegrate. The aesthetic philosophy was wearing thin; it had already begun to fray and reveal its essential shabbiness. Wilde himself possessed the three things ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... certain, my dear girls—— Ah! is that you, nurse? Miss Pauline is better. I was talking about Plato, nurse. The last translation I have been making from his immortal work does not please me; but toil—ceaseless toil—the midnight oil, et cetera, may evoke the spirit of the true Muse, and I may be able to put the matter before the great English thinking public in a way worthy of ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... appalling expiations in fiction—to a slavery in comparison with which his former life was almost freedom. Not since Hawthorne has a novelist built on the New England soil a tragedy of such elevation of mood as this. Freed from the bondage of local color, that myopic muse, Mrs. Wharton here handles her material not so much like a quarryman finding curious stones and calling out about them as like a sculptor setting up his finished work on ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... the muse immortal strains inspire, That high beyond all Greek and Roman fame, Might soar to times unborn, thy purer, ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... should be glad. She takes on at the idea of parting with me. You see you can't make a mother see that leaving her is for her son's benefit. No,' he said, 'it's gospel truth, there is no love to compare with a mother's;' and he added, 'Though I love the muse, and love and court her as a knight would court his ladye love, I love my mother, who, dear soul, never understood a word of poetry in her life—and sister is almost as bad. But, bless them both, they will be glad enough when I come ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... there, making up pills, in a pair of brown holland sleeves of his own manufacture (for Tom was a good seamster, as all travellers should be), whistled Lilliburlero, as of old, the Tom of other days, which Elsley's muse would fain have buried in ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... thou, in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth, Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel's will! Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill: Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill; Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long-deserted ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... appear somewhat paradoxical even to those who are acquainted, though superficially, with Hibernian composition. The rhymes are, it must be granted, in the generality of such productions, very latitudinarian indeed, and as a veteran votary of the muse once assured me, depend wholly upon the wowls (vowels), as may be seen in the following stanza of the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... appearance on the theatre of life. These writers undertook the difficult task of reforming their countrymen, and of laying down a theological and philosophical system[16]. —We are informed by Diogenes Laertius, that Linus, the Father of Grecian Poetry, was the son of Mercury and the Muse Urania, and that he sung of the Generation of the world, of the course of the sun and moon, of the origin of animals, and of the principles of vegetation[17]. He taught, says the same Author, that all things were formed at one time, and that they were jumbled together ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... in a country which has witnessed no great political catastrophes, and in which love invariably leads by a straight and easy road to matrimony. People who spend every day in the week in making money, and the Sunday in going to church, have nothing to invite the muse ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... justice, downcast soul! Muse, and take better heart; Back with thine angel to the field, Good luck shall crown ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... series comes in 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 grieve the brain, comes the jade whispering ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... 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 laurel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... permit the slave trade in the humblest village of his dominions. You think me a fanatic, 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 Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for the English, La Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright, consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... There is a burrow underneath the wall, There is a rabbit everywhere you tread, To-day I heard a rabbit in the hall, The same that sits at evening in my shoes And sings his usefulness, or simply chews; There is no corner sacred to the Muse— And how shall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... 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
... 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 Graeme grieved sincerely for the sorrow of her friend. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... the sun, have "seemed to make his nature tremble: then his eyes flashed, his cheek glowed, his mouth quivered." Peculiarly sensitive, as he is, to external influences, his chief delight is to "think of green fields ... I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known from my infancy." The man who is so soon to "feel the daisies growing over him," takes one of his intensest pleasures in watching the growth of flowers; and now, as an exquisite music, ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... John Donne, a man of justly great respect and authority, who, born in the year 1573, the fifteenth of Queen Elizabeth, died Dean of St. Paul's in the year 1636. But, although even Ben Jonson addresses him as "the delight of Phoebus and each Muse," we are too far beyond the power of his social presence and the influence of his public utterances to feel that admiration of his poems which was so largely expressed during his lifetime. Of many of those that were written in his youth, Izaak Walton says Dr. Donne "wished that his own eyes had ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... us I wonder, realise in anything like its full extent the beauty and the glory of our Catholic heritage. Do we think how the Great Mother, the keeper of truth, the guardian of beauty, the muse of learning, the fosterer of progress, has given us gifts in munificent generosity, gifts that sprang from her holy bosom, to enlighten, to cheer, to guide and to help; gifts that she, large, liberal, glorious, could not but give, for she, like her Lord, is giver and bestower; ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... the charming difficulty of fixing on the play. The dullest and dreariest of our country Rosciuses were uniformly for comedy; but the fair sex have a leaning to the tragic muse. We had one or two, who would have had no objection to be piquant in Lady Teazle, or petulant in Lady Townley; but we had half a dozen Desdemonas and Ophelias. The soul of an O'Neil was in every one of our party conscious of a pair of good eyes, a tolerable shape, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... way to comfort when I thought all the world had forsaken me, I tender my most grateful thanks. His kindness shall be remembered by me while memory holds her seat. Let the throng of uninvited fools who swarmed about us, accept the following sally of the house of correction muse, from the pen, or rather the fork, of a fellow convict. It may ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... life in beautie, forme and hew, As if dead Art 'gainst Nature had conspir'd. Painter, sayes one, thy wife's a pretty woman, I muse such ill-shapt children thou hast got, Yet mak'st such pictures as their likes makes no man, I prethee tell the cause of this thy lot? Quoth he, I paint by day when it is light, And get my children in ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... he took off his hat and saluted the pretty panorama,—Rebecca, with her tall slenderness, her thoughtful brow, the fire of young joy in her face, her fillet of dark braided hair, might have been a young Muse or Sibyl; and the flowery hayrack, with its freight of blooming girlhood, might have been painted as an allegorical picture of The Morning of Life. It all passed him, as he stood under the elms in the old village street where his mother had walked half a century ago, and he was turning ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... author of 'The 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... have!" And Charlie leaned his chin on his hand to muse pensively for a moment over the blindness of one woman who could admire an excellent old uncle more than a dashing ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Even at that early age, I often could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... here—" the elder man suddenly commenced to muse, repeating the phrase again and again. "If we had her here, Astok," he exclaimed fiercely. "Ah, if we but had her here and none knew that she was here! Can you not guess, man? The guilt of Dusar might be for ever buried with her bones," he concluded ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 future ages ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... magnificence—the mighty ruins of its 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 country; to wander among its groves, and say, here Ovid, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... religious convictions, and in some it springs from a preponderance of healthful animal instincts over the higher but more troublesome spiritual parts. The ox chewing the cud in the fresh meadow does not muse upon the past and future, and the gull blown like a foam-flake out against the sunset, does not know the splendour of the sky and sea. Even the savage is not much troubled about the scheme of things. In the beginning he was "torn out of the reeds," and in the end he melts into the Unknown, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... "To the Honourable {349} and Virtuous Lady, the Lady Tasburgh;" from which dedication it appears that these Pastoral Elegies were among the early efforts of his Muse. The author, after making excuses for not having repaid her Ladyship's ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... the outer wall and still deeper pointed ones. It is famed as the resting-place of Saints Ildefonso and Leocadia, whom we have met before. The statue of the latter stands over the door graceful and pensive enough for a heathen muse. The little cloisters leading to the church are burial vaults. On one side lie the canonical dead and on the other the laity, with bright marble tablets and gilt inscriptions. In the court outside I noticed a flat stone marked Ossuarium. The sacristan told me this covered ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... elicit from their 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 ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... breeding and intrusion, With some outlandish institution, With Ursine's catechism to muse on, With system's method for confusion, With grounds strong laid of mere illusion: See ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... Mumble murmuri. Mummy mumo. Munch macxi. Mundane monda. Municipal urba. Munificence malavareco. Munificent malavara. Murder mortigi. Murder mortigo. Murderer mortiganto. Murky malhela, malluma. Murmur murmuri. Muscat wine muskatvino. Muscle muskolo. Muscular muskola. Muse muzo. Muse revi. Museum muzeo. Mushroom fungo. Music muziko. Musical muzika. Musician muzikisto. Music (to play) muziki. Muskrat miogalo. Musket pafilo. Muslin muslino. Mussel mitulo. Must (verb) devas. Must mosto. Mustard mustardo. Mustard plant sinapo. Mustard-plaster ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... now, restrain'd from 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 ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... and wrote her verses, a woman author was almost unknown in English literature. This lady was the wife of the governor of Massachusetts, and because of her literary tendencies was looked upon by the people of her time as a marvel of womankind. Her contemporaries called her the "tenth muse lately sprung up in America," and one of them, Rev. Nathaniel Ward, was inspired to write an address to her, in which he declares his wonder at her success as a poet, and playfully foretells the consequences ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Queen of Hungary and the late Emperor, to decide their pretensions by a single combat; in which case he offered himself as the Bavarian champion; but in this endeavour he also proved unsuccessful. Then turning his attention to the delights of poetry, he became so enamoured of the muse, that he neglected every other consideration, and she as usual gradually conducted him to the author's never-failing goal—a place of rest appointed for all those sinners whom the profane love of poesy hath ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... swarms of literary blow flies will pounce upon the errors with delight, and, buzzing with the ecstasy of infernal joy, endeavour to hum their readers into a belief of the profundity of their critic erudition;—I shall nevertheless, with Churchill, laughingly exclaim—"Perish my muse" ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... a beatific presence made itself sensible, and the Easy Chair recognized the poet's Muse, who had come for him. The poet put the question to her. "Young?" she said. "Why, you and I are always young, silly boy! Get your hat, and come over to Long Island City with me, and see the pussy-willows along the railroad-banks. The mosquitoes are beginning to sing ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... vice-president of the Court, who had been appointed to our town years ago, almost as soon as the High Court was established. She was tall and had a good figure, and was considered indispensable for the tableaux vivants, and when she represented a fairy or a muse, her face would burn with shame; but she took no part in the plays, and would only look in at rehearsals, on some business, and never enter the hall. And it was evident now that she had only looked in for ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Th' historic Muse illumes the maze For ages veil'd in gloomy night, Where empire with meridian blaze Once trod ambition's giddy height: Tho' headlong from the dang'rous steep Its pageants roll'd with wasteful sweep, Her tablet still records ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... his great example in dividing his poem into the four seasons, and he begins, Thomson-like, with an invitation to the Muse:— ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... I'll put all this black stuff out of the way,' said Theodora, grasping her hair with the action of the Tragic Muse. 'I'll put it up in every-day fashion. I wish you would tell me what you do to yours to get ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Thus the muse of the occasion was gradually sinking to the intellectual level of the company—with a consequence unforeseen, therefore ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... 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 this ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... himself to law, the cold and formal Hardwicke had cherished a feeble ambition for literary distinction; and under its influence he wrote a paper that appeared in the Spectator. Blackstone's entrance at the Temple occasioned his metrical 'Farewell' to his muse. In his undergraduate days at Cambridge Lord Chancellor Charles Yorke was a chief contributor to the 'Athenian Letters,' and it would have been well for him had he in after-life given to letters a portion of the time ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... meditate, and drink water, and eat herbs, that I cannot write verses? By Apollo, if I did not spend my days in politics, and my nights in revelry, I should have made Sophocles tremble. But now I never go beyond a little song like this, and never invoke any Muse but Chariclea. But come, Speusippus, sing. You are a professed poet. Let us have some of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... Mrs. Carter, whose "talk was all instruction," or to Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions a la Grecque," and abruptly inquiring, "Madam, did you ever see a fairy's funeral?" "Never, Sir!" responds the startled Muse. "I have," pursues Blake, as calmly as if he were proposing to relate a bon mot which he heard at Lady Middleton's rout last night. "I was walking alone in my garden last night: there was great stillness among the branches and flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... 'that was the will of God.' This he said not in presumption, but in faith and simplicity of heart. So he passed his life in imaging his own ideas, which were sent to his meek soul by no fabled muse, but by that Spirit 'that doth prefer before all temples the upright heart and pure;' and never before or since was earthly material worked up into soul, nor earthly forms refined into spirit, as under the hands of this devout painter. He became sublime through ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... Muse make the man thy theme, for shrewdness famed And genius versatile, who far and wide A Wand'rer, after Ilium overthrown, Discover'd various cities, and the mind And manners learn'd of men, in lands remote. He num'rous woes on Ocean toss'd, endured, Anxious to save himself, and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... third day he found his mind still further changed. He no longer felt that God was in Pall Mall or St. James's Park, whither he resorted to walk and muse. He felt now that God was somewhere about ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... I said, 'O my lady, I am troubled in mind.' She asked me 'for what?' and I answered, 'For the turns of Time and the change of things.' Replied she, 'Well mayst thou be troubled thereat for Time breedeth wonders. But what hast thou seen of such surprises that thou shouldst muse upon them?' Quoth I, 'I was thinking of the whilom owner of this house, for he was my intimate in his lifetime.' Asked she, 'What was his name?'; and I answered, 'Mohammed bin Ali the Jeweller and he was a man of great wealth. Tell me did he leave any children?' ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... last, not least is Aetion; A gentler shepherd[7] may nowhere be found, Whose Muse, full of high thought's invention, ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... Burns, the poet, for her beauty. She inspired his muse when turning the corner of George Street, Edinburgh. The lines addressed to her are to be found in his Poems. She was also a highly-gifted artist. The illustrations in the work called the Stirling Heads are from her pencil. It was published ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Our discursive muse must now take her place in the little britzska in which Clive Newcome and his companions are travelling, and cross the Alps in that vehicle, beholding the snows on St. Gothard, and the beautiful region through which the Ticino rushes on its way to the Lombard ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quell, by changing the metre from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or incantation, no change of place; but present they burn, absent they desire, by day they follow their loves about, by night they serenade them, sober call for them, and drunken sing about them. And he who said that poetic fancies, owing to their vividness, were dreams ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... 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 ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... have him alone, at peace with himself and the world; happy in the contemplation of his beloved muse; jotting down, now and then, the brilliant ideas that flash through his teeming brain; and munching in solitude his homely meal of bread and cheese. In telling us he laid his bread and cheese upon the shelf, he at once shows he ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... circle whom his tale had held in thrall. But he who had required it of him spoke In what we others felt an ill-timed joke: "Well, this is something like!" A girl said, "Don't!" As if it hurt, and he said, "Well, I won't. Go on!" And in a sort of muse our host Said: "I suppose we all expect a ghost Will sometimes come to us. But I doubt if we Are moved by its coming as we thought to be. At any rate, the women were not scared, But, as I said, they simply sat and stared Till the face ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... but yourself, Lucie, would doubt that charms like yours could give inspiration to even the dullest muse?" ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... the river flows far away. Movement of the shore there has of course been, and the Pellena may have considerably changed the direction of its outflow; our author's description being but vague, one can only muse on ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... which will most certainly and most peacefully conduct you to the position which you desire. Turn not aside to bandy epithets with your enemies; stuff your ears, like the princess in the Arabian Nights, against words of insult and wrong; pause not to muse over your condition, or to question your prospects; but toil on ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... the mood of which I spoke at first—the mood in which one desires to build up and renew—one must not yield oneself to luxurious and pathetic reveries, or allow oneself to muse and wonder in the half-lit region in which one may beat one's wings in vain—the region, I mean, of sad stupefaction as to why the world is so full of broken dreams, shattered hopes, and unfulfilled possibilities. One must rather look round for some little definite failure that is ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... moorings, and I sat in my muse, only conscious of that devouring impatience which possessed me; and did not see Dr. Sandford till he was close by my side. Then I was glad; but the deck of that bustling steamer was no place to show how glad. I stood still, with my hand in the doctor's, and ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 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 ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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 order. Otherwise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... a God, but he has his by him. His verse runs like the tap, and his invention as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spiggot. In thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose a-fire together. The press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a six-pence or two in reward of the baser coin his pamphlet. His works would scarce sell for three half-pence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman; ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... took me first; and, taking me first, the contagion was much allayed all the town over. When God made me sigh, they would hearken, and inquiringly say, What's the matter with John? When I went out to seek the bread of life, some of them would follow, and the rest be put into a muse at home. Some of them, perceiving that God had mercy upon me, came crying to him for mercy too.'[24] Can any one, in the face of such language, doubt that he was most eminently 'a brand snatched from the fire'; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sureness of touch, and sound purpose of these make them more appealing with longer acquaintance. On another day take the intermediate group, that is dignified but less austere in theme-such works as Sherry Fry's "Peace," and Berge's "Muse Finding the Head of Orpheus." Studied systematically, there is in this series of statues a broad education in the ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... my love For nations yet unborn, I would remove From our two lives the morn, And muse on loveliness In mine armchair, Content should Time confess How ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... stopped 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 making some ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies me for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe her divine spirit over a scene worthy of a sweeter strain. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... you that talked The trash that made me sick, and almost sad?' 'O trash' he said, 'but with a kernel in it. Should I not call her wise, who made me wise? And learnt? I learnt more from her in a flash, Than in my brainpan were an empty hull, And every Muse tumbled a science in. A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, And round these halls a thousand baby loves Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts, Whence follows many a vacant pang; but O With ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Muse, which has sung only of truth and right, as the highest beauty and noblest art, been consecrated to a better service than to write the songs of praise for these little children, chattels no longer, whom the Saviour, were he now to walk on earth, would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... inspired thought, No gems from the mines of wisdom brought, No flowers of language to deck the page, No borrowed glories of Muse or Sage; But an offering simple and pure we bring, And a wreath of wild roses around it fling; Not culled from the shades of enamelled bowers, But watered by love's own gentle showers. In tones of affection we here would speak; To waken an echo of love we seek; We mingle ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... Muse doth here intend, The honor of Saint Patrick to defend, And speake of his adventrous accidents, Of his brave fortunes, and their brave events, That if her pen were made of Cromwell's rump, Yet she should weare it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... inspired. When he has not 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
... sharpness, and spirit of his satires, you might be led into another mistake, and imagine him an ill-natur'd man, but what my lord Rochester said of lord Dorset, is applicable to him, the best good man with the worst natured muse. As pointed, and severe as he is in his writings, in his temper he had all the softness of the tenderest disposition; gentle and inoffensive to every man in his particular character; he only attacks vice as a public enemy, compassionating the wound ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... makes me grave. I muse upon thy beauty. Thus I'd read My oppressed spirit, for in truth these sounds Jar ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... is there that does not wish the honest muse should rise no more? Goldsmith came next, and shared the same fate. His country curate, the most amiable of men, we heard of ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... faded years, Gathered away a time ago, How could your deaths the fount of tears Have troubled to an overflow? I muse upon the songs I made Beneath the maple's yellow limbs, When down the aisles of thin cold shade Sounded the wild ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Greatson," he said abstractedly, "do not want the real thing—from you. Every man to his metier. Yours is to sing of blue skies and west winds, of hay-scented meadows and Watteau-like revellers in a paradise as artificial as a Dutch garden. Take my advice, and keep your muse chained. The other worlds ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... delightful, that twill raise Wit and Spirit even in the dullest Clod, And in truth, amongst so many heats of Lust and Ambition which usually fire our Citys, I cannot see what retreat, what comfort is left for a chast and sober Muse. ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... "Hymn on the Nativity," "Allegro," "Penseroso," "Comus," a mask, and "Lycidas," an elegy on his friend King, who was drowned in the Irish Sea in 1637, besides much excellent Latin verse; the outbreak of the Civil War recalled him, and silenced his muse for many years; settling in London he took pupils, married in 1643 Mary Powell, and became active as a writer of pamphlets on public questions; his first topic was Church Government, then his wife's desertion ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the Front, Are so manfully doing their "stunt" In searching for news That the Limerick Muse Thus honours ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... poetical genius. He wrote with surprising fluency, and his finest compositions cost him neither trouble nor thought. Shut him up in a room with plenty of stationery, and in twenty-four hours, he would write himself up to the chin in verse. His muse was singularly prolific and her progeny various. He roamed recklessly through the realm of poesy. Every style seemed his—blank verse and rhyme, ode and epic, lyrical and tragical, satiric and elegiac, sacred and profane, sublime and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... said Sir Walter Scott, "that I am one of the Black Hussars of Literature who neither give nor take criticism." Tennyson resented any interference with his muse by writing the now nearly forgotten line about "Musty, crusty Christopher." Byron flew into a rhapsodical passion and wrote ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... I expected to come suddenly upon Diana and her nymphs, or to behold Pan and his satyrs bounding, with whoop and halloo, through the woodland. I would throw myself, during the panting heats of a summer noon, under the shade of some wide-spreading tree, and muse and dream away the hours, in a state of mental intoxication. I drank in the very light of day, as nectar, and my soul seemed to bathe with ecstasy in the deep ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Sir Percival's interposition. He opened the dining-room door, and called out angrily to know what "that infernal noise" meant. The Count instantly got up from the piano. "Ah! if Percival is coming," he said, "harmony and melody are both at an end. The Muse of Music, Miss Halcombe, deserts us in dismay, and I, the fat old minstrel, exhale the rest of my enthusiasm in the open air!" He stalked out into the verandah, put his hands in his pockets, and resumed the Recitativo of Moses, sotto voce, in ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... surroundings gave James little choice but to do; for he could not have offended the sentiment of his people by refusing the boon which was demanded in that Name, however doubtful he might be of the expediency of granting it. "Then the King began to muse," says Boece. He must have been devout indeed to have been able to return to the course of the service with the Islesman before him on his knees, and all that wild half of the kingdom, with its dangerous habits and fierce tribal laws, thus suddenly made visible—a spectre which had often ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and I muse for why and never find the reason, I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun. Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season: Let us endure an ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... deplorable, the general effect of the erection, in its rectangular setting of forest, was excellent. The whole scene was one of peaceful and romantic beauty. Poets might have sat themselves down in that moist and shining spot; and, forgetful of the possibilities of rheumatism, found their muse inspiring ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... Religious 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 to read in the latest edition ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... upon Aubrey De Vere, the beautiful Catholic poet of Ireland, whose name is scarcely known on this side of the Atlantic. This is our loss, though De Vere can never be a popular poet, for his muse lives in the past and breathes ether rather than air. "De Vere is charming both as man and as poet," said Landor enthusiastically, rising as he spoke and leaving the room to return immediately with a small ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... stood to live for ear and sight, Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched. A lureful devil, that in glow-worm light Set languor writhing all its folds, she quenched. But she would muse when neighbours praised her face, Her services, and staunchness to her mate: Knowing by some dim trace, The change might bear a date. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! Thrice beauteous is our sunshine ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... singers, who, whenever he did this, quitted the chorus and rose into the words of the song. At the end of ten minutes they all left off at once, and, after one minute’s interval commenced a second act precisely similar and of equal duration, Okotook continuing to invoke their Muse as before. A third act which followed this varied only in his frequently towards the close throwing his feet up before and clapping his hands together, by which exertion he was thrown into a violent perspiration. He then retired, desiring a young man (who, as we were informed, ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... gold o'erlaid, Wide oped each Argive shrine, And from the altar hallow'd flames arise; Amidst the rites divine, Joying the Muse to aid, Breath'd the brisk pipe its sweet notes to the skies; Accordant to the tuneful strain Swell'd the loud acclaiming voice, Now with Thyestes to rejoice: He, all on fire the glorious prize to gain, With secret love the wife of Atreus won, And thus the shining wonder made his own; Then to ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... to submit a few specimens of the muse of this ancient ANACREON of France; and must necessarily begin with a few of those that are chiefly ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... cottage, where we had spent such happy times, we left the green fields and pleasant trees and proceeded to the town, where, after some difficulty, we found a humble little house which suited our change of fortune. Here we began seriously to muse over what we should do. I proposed making a ferry-boat of my back, and, stationing myself at the waterside near the "Mews," swim across the river with such cats as required to go over and did not like to walk as far as where the boat was accustomed to be. By these means ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... muses, what hath former ages Now left succeeding times to play upon, And what remains unthought on by those sages Where a new muse may try ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... Sir—woman I'd marry, must not mope when alone!—must be able to 'muse herself; must be easily 'mused. That's a great sign, Sir, of an innocent mind, to be tickled with straws. Besides, employments keeps 'em out of harm's way. Second place, should obsarve, if she was very fond of places, your honour—sorry to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... adjust the handkerchief, his patient seemed sunk in a deep muse, his eye veiled, his mouth partly open. The job was yet scarce done, when he sprang to ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Wither are finer than the wood-notes of most of his poetical brethren. The description in the Fourth Eclogue of his Shepherds Hunting (which was composed during his imprisonment in the Marshalsea) of the power of the Muse to extract pleasure from common objects, has been oftener quoted, and is more known, than any part of his writings. Indeed, the whole Eclogue is in a strain so much above not only what himself, but ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... and in their country's cause Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve, Receive proud recompense. We give in charge Their names to the sweet lyre. The Historic Muse, Proud of the treasure, marches with it down To latest times; and Sculpture, in her turn, Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass To guard them, and to immortalize her trust. But fairer wreaths are due—though never paid— To those who, posted at the shrine of Truth, Have ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... in his seat, twitching his beard, and at every couplet looking up expectantly, as if he desired the company to think, that he was counting upon that line as the last; But now, starting to his feet, he exclaimed, "Hold, minstrel! thy muse's drapery is becoming disordered: ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... I am sure I could not see a sprig of any bough of this whole walk of trees, but I should reflect upon her and her severity. She has certainly the finest hand of any woman in the world. You are to know, this was the place wherein I used to muse upon her; and by that custom I can never come into it, but the same tender sentiments revive in my mind, as if I had actually walked with that beautiful creature under these shades. I have been fool ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... as will be welcome in the enemy's camp. Powder for the guns of his people for certain he will want. Strong wines and waters too, for he, like those of his kind, loves to break the prophet's laws. I will leave you now to sleep and muse upon all this. Mayhap you will find some plan or scheme, as you English call it, that will be better than mine; but something of this sort it must be, and ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... have tried to range over the whole field of English Verse from the beginning, or from the Thirteenth Century to this closing year of the Nineteenth, and to choose the best. Nor have I sought in these Islands only, but wheresoever the Muse has followed the tongue which among living tongues she most delights to honour. To bring home and render so great a spoil compendiously has been my capital difficulty. It is for the reader to judge if I have so managed it as to serve those ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... known as the official encyclopaedia resort, Mme. du Deffand dubbing it La Muse de l'Encyclopedie. D'Alembert was the high priest, and it was not long before he was comfortably lodged in the third story of her house, Mlle. de Lespinasse having nursed him through a malignant fever which the poor man had contracted in the wretched place where he lodged. A strange gathering, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... the sad travail of the historic poet has Mr. Fields known. Of the emaciated face, the seedy garment, the collapsed purse, the dog-eared and often rejected manuscript, he has never known, save from well-authenticated tradition. His muse was born in sunshine, and has only been sprinkled with the tears of affection. Every effort has been cheered to the echo, and it is impossible for so genial a fellow to fail of an ample and approving audience for whatever may fall from ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr. |
