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More "Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be accomplished; one thirsts for soul, spirit, and actual life. Ah! composing is a misery, and the pitiful children of my Muse appear to me often like foundlings in a hospital, wandering about only ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... a dedication, "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 ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... 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 wig, so ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... bride, the Muse! young, gay, Radiant, adorn'd outside; a hidden ground Of thought and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... every vulgar paper to rehearse? O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me Worthy perusal stand against thy sight; For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, When thou thyself dost give invention light? Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth Than those old nine which rhymers invocate; And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth Eternal numbers ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... time a very general public opinion maintained anti-slavery propagandism, pushing it henceforth more powerfully than ever, as well as, through broader modes of utterance and action, more successfully. Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, each enlisted his muse in the crusade. Wendell Phillips's tongue was a flaming sword. Clergymen, politicians, and other people entirely conservative in most things, felt free to join the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and the stars, too, kindling in the sky, as if but a little way beyond; and, mingling reveries of heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tumble down into the sky; Such are the ways ill-guided mortals go To judge of things above by things below. Disjointing shapes as in the fairy land of dreams, Or images that sink in streams; No wonder, then, we talk amiss Of truth, and what, or where it is; Say, Muse, for thou, if any, know'st, Since the bright essence fled, where ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... 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 ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... well-appointed villa whence a reader can see the City near at hand—if among more serious poems there be any room for the wanton Muse of Comedy, you may place these seven little books I send you even ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... Olive began to muse again. Then she said timidly, "I wonder why, with all your love for Art, you yourself did ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... 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
... 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 rejoice Your ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... lamented Sir James Macdonald 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. Her chief, The M'Leod, was the grand theme of her inspiration. Dora Brown[20] ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... 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 ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... that, like an irritable man in a crowd, he resents those inconveniences to which men of equanimity submit, not as a matter of choice, indeed, but as a point of necessity. The greater correctness of this piece may be owing to the lapse of nine months (an unusual term of repose for the muse of Moliere) betwixt the appearance of "L'Amour Medecin" and that of the "Misanthrope." Yet this chef-d'oeuvre was at first coldly received by the Parisian audience, and to render it more attractive, Moliere was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... hastily this sincere effort of a maiden muse. Here was a sense of rhythm, and an effort in the direction of rhyme; here was an honest transcript of an occurrence of daily life, told with a certain idealizing expression, recognizing the existence of impulses, mysterious instincts, impelling us even in the selection ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hidden, Vainly 'mid Arts and the Past seeking one life to forget? Ah, fair shadow, scarce seen, go forth! for anon he shall follow,— He that beheld thee, anon, whither thou leadest must go! Go, and the wise, loving Muse, she also will follow and find thee! She, should she linger in Rome, ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... in Rome, in summer, when the scirocco blows, you will feel as if convalescent from some debilitating fever; in winter, however, this gentle-breathing south-east wind will act more mildly; it will woo you to the country, induce you to sit down in a shady place, smoke, and 'muse.' That incarnate essence of enterprise, business, industry, economy, sharpness, shrewdness, and keenness—that Prometheus whose liver was torn by the vulture of cent per cent—eternally tossing, restless DOOLITTLE, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... grieve 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 heaven-taught soul to heaven ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... 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 into life with the appointment ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... she stalked on 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 ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... pleasure at Margaret's sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks. He had hit on the right thing, evidently. Young people wanted young people; didn't he remember well enough—here he fell into a muse again, and said "Rose!" to himself two or three times. Perhaps he was thinking of ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... walks, I had been able to muse upon the pleasure that there would be in the friendship of the Duchesse de Guermantes, in fishing for trout, in drifting by myself in a boat on the Vivonne; and, greedy for happiness, I asked nothing more from life, in such moments, than that it should ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... to the Muse of History (whose name I forget and you never knew) to help me in the description of this ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... storm these younkers, O tongue wi' stormy ecstasy My Muse that knows Our deeds and theirs, how when at sea Their navies swooped upon The Medes at Artemision— Gods for their courage, did they strike Wrenching a triumph frae their foes; While at Thermopylae Leonidas' army stood: wild-boars they were like ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... 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 ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... the one source, quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction, a very commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems now-we mean it only as against the poets thew. There is a growing desire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless, sincere, and although very learned, still learned without art. No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the first to flee. "Optima dies {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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... carle shall listen While I lash him with abuse, Loon at whom our stomachs sicken. Soon shall hear these words of scorn; Far too nice for such base fellows Is the name my bounty gives, Een my muse her help refuses, Making ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... 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 me at the time, much less now; but I was somewhat ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... 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 ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... was little chance of a hearing for the author of the Martyr'd Souldier when James Shirley was at work. From the address To the Courteous Reader, it would seem that Henry Shirley did not seek for popularity: "his Muse," we are told, was "seldome seene abroad." Evidently he was not a professional playwright. In his attempts to gain the ear of the groundlings he is often coarse without being comic; and sometimes (a less pardonable fault) he is tedious. But in the person ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... led him 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 hear ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... bee Is reluctant to turn from the lily although The lily may obviously wish he would go And leave her to muse in the sunlight alone. Yet when the rose calls him, his sorrow, I own, Has its recompense. So from delight to delight I fly with my wings ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a reputation of which this work will form the coronal 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. The work before us has ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 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 upon his ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... pockets of pieces of bread, softer than those he used to, carry to the garden, and to put them between my teeth without passing them through his own. From the softness of the bits of bread, and my having seen my poet come out of the monastery, I surmised that his muse, like that of many of his brethren, was a bashful beggar. He walked into the city, and I followed him, intending to take him for my master if he would let me, thinking that the crumbs from his table might serve to support ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... down scarcely knowing how to grasp my own meaning, and give it a tangible shape in words; and yet it is concerning this very expression of our thoughts in words that I wish to speak. As I muse things fall more into their proper places, and, little fit for the task as my confession pronounces me to be, I will try to make clear that ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... CHOR. Come, Muse, to our Mystical Chorus, O come to the joy of my song, O see on the benches before us that countless and wonderful throng, Where wits by the thousand abide, with more than a Cleophon's pride— On the lips of that foreigner base, of Athens the bane and disgrace, There is shrieking, ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... did imprint That heavenly path with many a curious dint That runs along his back; but my rude pen Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men, Much less of powerful gods: let it suffice That my slack Muse sings of Leander's eyes; Those orient cheeks and lips, exceeding his That leapt into the water for a kiss Of his own shadow, and, despising many, Died ere he could enjoy the love of any. Had wild Hippolytus Leander seen, Enamour'd of his beauty had he been: ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... false—the book he has just read, the play he is writing, the woman who loves him,...he buys a packet of bonbons in the streets and eats them, and it is false. An exquisite artist; physically and spiritually he is art; he is the muse herself, or rather, he is one of the minions of the muse. Passing from flower to flower he goes, his whole nature pulsing with butterfly voluptuousness. He has written poems as good as Hugo, as good as Leconte de Lisle, as good as Banville, as good as Baudelaire, as ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... spot for a poet to muse in! How he could roll his azure eyes and comb out his locks with his lily-white taper fingers, and gaze into space for a word to rhyme! How he would wrinkle his lofty brow, compress his cupidon upper lip, and unloose his neglige necktie, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... invention of the Dithyramb. This was a choral song and dance in honour of the god Dionysus, and is of great interest in the history of poetry, since it was the germ from which sprung at a later time the magnificent productions of the tragic Muse ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... monster, ere thou sink-thus on thy head Set we our bolder foot; with which we tread Thy malice into earth: so Spite should die, Despised and scorn'd by noble industry. If any muse why I salute the stage, An armed Prologue; know, 'tis a dangerous age: Wherein who writes, had need present his scenes Forty-fold proof against the conjuring means Of base detractors, and illiterate apes, That fill up rooms in fair and formal shapes. 'Gainst these, have we put on this forced defence: ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... all gone. Ragged bits of green, mingled with dull brown tracery of vine and tendril, lay back upon the background of earth, but of purple there was no trace. In the hush of the night, the Weaver came back, to muse sadly over what had been and, perhaps, to dream of what ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... not least is Aetion; A gentler shepherd[7] may nowhere be found, Whose Muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... And, so as not to have to think of it, he would try to walk himself to a standstill. Unfortunately the head will continue working when the legs are at rest. And when he sat opposite to her at meal-times, Frances Freeland would gaze piercingly at his forehead and muse: 'The dear boy looks much better, but he's getting a little line between his brows—it IS such a pity!' It worried her, too, that the face he was putting on their little holiday together was not quite as full as she could have wished—though the last thing in the world she could tolerate were really ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that he had written a poem which he would recite at Zeze's anniversary dinner. The date for this was but a few days distant, and ever since the poet's announcement the whole family had taken to teasing the old maid, christening her "the muse of inspiration," and asking her when the wedding would ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... people, there is not much of the feeling of spring in any of our books. The muse of our poets is wise rather than joyous. There is no excess or extravagance or unruliness in her. There are spring sounds ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... delights of lying prostrate within the leafy fastnesses of the forest deep, but I am forced to believe these poets were elsewhere when engaged in inditing their immortal lines. On suitable occasions I have myself indulged in poesy; but I am quite certain I could not court the muse while ants were crawling on my limbs and even invading my garments, as in the present instance. ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... contrived—albeit whose shoes she still failed—to get into. And so, with a conscience void of offence, she was preparing herself to find out, what so many of us already know, that playing even with the muse's fire is playing with fire, all ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... that Raffael touched, or Angelo planned:— As these may keep what memory else might lose, So may this photograph of verse impart An image, though without the native hues Of Calderon's fire, and yet with Calderon's art, Of what thou lovest through a kindred muse That sings in heaven, yet nestles in ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... intellect of Louis's great engineering forefathers, the Stevensons, was not, like his, tuneful: though his father was imaginative, diverting himself with daydreams; and his uncle, Alan Stevenson, the builder of Skerryvore, yielded to the fascinations of the religious Muse. A volume of verse was the pledge of this dalliance. His mother, who gave him her gay indifference to discomfort and readiness for travel, also read to him, in his childhood, much good literature; for not till he was eight years of age was he an unreluctant reader—which is strange. The whole ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... muse to tell the tale— This stubborn I, that Love was wont despise And make a laughter of his snares, unwise, Am fallen—where honest feet will sometimes fail. Not golden tresses, not a cheek vermeil, ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... 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, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... observe here the dash of an indignant pen, and a substituted for e. But now the rhyme is spoiled. Gentle Muse, thou art sacrificed by the ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... 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
... who do things. They had heard the voice—they had had a "call." The talent is the call, and if a man fails to do his work in a masterly way, make sure he has mistaken a lazy wish for a divine passion. There is a difference between loving the muse ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... every Line stood in the same Place, every Page a like Number of Lines, every Line a like Number of Words; if a Word was mis-spelt in one, it was mis-spelt also in all, nay, that if there was a Blot in one, it was alike in all; they began again to muse, how this should be? in a Word, the learned Divines not being able to comprehend the Thing (and that was always sufficient) concluded it must be the Devil, that it was done by Magick and Witchcraft, and that in short, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow Som fresh and fruitfull showers upon my sun-burn'd brain: But words came halting forth ... Biting my trewand pen, beating myselfe for spite: 'Foole!' said my Muse to me, 'looke in thy ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... farm-buildings, which is said to be the veritable Fountain of Egeria. The temple of the Muses, who were Egeria's counsellors, was close by; and the name of the gate of the city, Porta Capena, was in all likelihood a corruption of Camena, the Latin name for Muse, and was not derived, as some suppose, from the city of Capua. The spot outside the present walls, formerly visited as the haunt of the fabled nymph, before the discovery of the site of the Capena gate fixed its true position—beautiful and romantic as it is—was only the nymphaeum of some Roman ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Aphrodite would have raised his head; But all his thread was spun. So down the stream Went Daphnis: closed the waters o'er a head Dear to the Nine, of nymphs not unbeloved. Now give me goat and cup; that I may milk The one, and pour the other to the Muse. Fare ye well, Muses, o'er and o'er farewell! I'll sing strains lovelier ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... 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 complete divorce between ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... That flattery is the nurse of crimes. Friendship, which seldom nears a throne, Is by her voice of censure known. To one in your exalted station A courtier is a dedication; But I dare not to dedicate My verse e'en unto royal state. My muse is sacred, and must teach Truths which they slur in courtly speech. But I need not to hide the praise, Or veil the thoughts, a nation pays; We in your youth and virtues trace The dawnings of your royal race; Discern the promptings of your breast, Discern you succour the distrest, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... meditating strictly the unwilling muse; for on the table lay a number of sheets of paper covered with unfortunate verses, which obstinately refused to rhyme. He seemed to have finally abandoned this occupation in despair—flying for refuge to his window, from which he had seen his friend ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... the boot hath swich travayle, Of my conning, that unnethe I it stere: This see clepe I the tempestous matere 5 Of desespeyr that Troilus was inne: But now of hope the calendes biginne. O lady myn, that called art Cleo, Thou be my speed fro this forth, and my muse, To ryme wel this book, til I have do; 10 Me nedeth here noon other art to use. For-why to every lovere I me excuse, That of no sentement I this endyte, But out of Latin in my ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... literature have not done justice to the great influence which the poetry of the Danes has had upon our early national muse. I have little doubt but that to that source may be traced the minstrelsy of our borders, and the Scottish Lowlands; while, even in the central counties, the example and exertions of Canute must have ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the only king I play. Let it go at that. This circle was the stage, I guess. The kings an' the nobility sat in Flora's Temple. I forget who sculped these statues at the door. They're the Comic and Tragic Muse. But it's a sightly view, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... her head, Lapp'd in a turban fancy-bred, Just like a love-apple huge and red, Some Mussul-womanish mystery; But whatever she meant To represent, She talked like the Muse of History. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... against the effeminacy and frivolity of the Parisian. One of the most significant episodes in the discussion is the lengthy criticism on the immortal Misanthrope of Moliere. Rousseau admits it for the masterpiece of the comic muse, though with characteristic perversity he insists that the hero is not misanthropic enough, nor truly misanthropic at all, because he flies into rage at small things affecting himself, instead of at ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Encouragers of Art and Learning. Least of all should the relation which the illustrious founder of this order sustains to the later development be omitted in any such history,—'the prince and mirror of all chivalry,' the patron of the young English Muse, whose untimely fate keeps its date for ever green, and fills the air of this new 'Helicon' with immortal lamentations. The shining foundations of that so splendid monument of the later Elizabethan genius, which has paralyzed and confounded all our criticism, were laid here. The extraordinary facilities ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... 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 ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... I used to muse on all this of an evening when my baby was in my arms, and his moist, regular breathing fanned my hand. I thought of the happy moments he had already given me, and was grateful to him ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... quit this national trait. The English naval muse, which I presume must be a Mermaid, half woman and half fish, has, by her simple and half the time, nonsensical songs, done more for the British flag than all her gunnery, or naval discipline and tactics. This inspiration of the tenth muse, with libations of grog, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... versification, and even Governor Bradford had interspersed his severer cares with visions of softer strains. Anne Dudley, the wife of Governor Bradstreet, with her eight children, had found time for study and writing, and about 1650 had a volume of verse published in London entitled "The Tenth Muse. Several poems compiled with a great variety of wit and learning. By an American Gentlewoman." And she makes this protest ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Styx; and 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
... the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than 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, ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... binding. The following 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 words, for example, as Mede'a, Posi'don (more ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... 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 say ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... the name of—of the person authorized to claim Sophy as his child, you will not mention it to Lady Montfort. I am hot sure if ever she heard that name, but she may have done so, and—and—" he paused a moment, and seemed to muse; then went on, not concluding his sentence. "You are so good to me, Mr. Morley, that I wish to confide in you as far as I can. Now, you see, I am already an old man, and my chief object is to raise up a friend for Sophy when I am gone,—a friend in her own sex, sir. Oh, you cannot guess how ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... worked to learn to dance. Whatever the reason—whether it was the memory of Ingmar's weird dancing, or the anticipation of attending a regular dance—her thoughts became light and airy. She managed to keep just a little behind the others, that she might muse undisturbed. She had made up quite little story about how the trees had come by their ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... 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 ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... was no indication of his profession in the attire of Mr. Tabor, unless the too apparent age of his black felt hat and a neat patch at the elbow of his shiny, old brown overcoat might have been taken as symbols of the sacrifice to his muse which his life had been. He was not a constant attendant of the conclave, and when he came it was usually to listen; indeed, he spoke so seldom that at the sound of his voice they all turned to him ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Hollister continued to muse on this after Lawanne went away. He thought Lawanne's summing up a trifle severe. Nevertheless it was a pretty clear statement of fact. Bland certainly seemed above working either for money or to secure a reasonable degree of comfort for himself and his wife. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 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
... plain, And oped the gloomy grove to glare of day, Awe-stricken gazed, and spared the sacred fane! One stone of all its circle now remains, Saved from the modern Goth's destructive hand; And by its side I muse: and Fancy reigns; And giant oaks on Pennial waving stand; With snowy robe and flowing bears sweep bye The aged Druid-train beneath ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... character, she played her part ill there. The sort of talent and facility she had displayed in early days, were not the least like what is called out in the social world by the desire to please and to shine. Her excitement had been muse-like, that of the improvisatrice, whose kindling fancy seeks to create an atmosphere round it, and makes the chain through which to set free its electric sparks. That had been a time of wild and ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... works of Xenophon, an Athenian who is sometimes called the "Attic Muse," from the simplicity and beauty of his style, the best known and the most pleasing are the Anab'asis, the Memorabil'ia of Socrates, and the Cyropedi'a, a political romance. He was born about 443 B.C. The best English translation of his works is ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... 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 no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... difficult soever to transfuse into other tongues and idioms, never fails to touch the heart, and excite enthusiastic feelings. The plan of 'The Modern Scottish Minstrel' restricts us to a period less favourable to the inspirations of the Celtic muse than remoter times. If it is asked, What could be gained by recurring to a more distant period? or what this unlettered people have really to shew for their bardic pretensions? we answer, that there is extant a large and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Change! O Change and Time, you come Not knocking at my door, knowing me gone; Here have I dwelt within my heart alone, Watching and waiting, while my muse ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... altogether the most extensive province, had been unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, by a vast superiority, the most glorious ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 hour ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... has lately given astounding proof of his style and taste, which roused irresistible merriment in musical circles. He was then given the friendly advice rather to devote himself to composition. But the latest products of his muse have shown that this advice, though well-meant, was bad. Herr Krafft should certainly devote himself ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... in Latin! Blest a hundredfold The tie of sword and lyre; the selfsame laurel Binds them in friendship. I was born beneath A northern sky, but yet the Latin muse To me is a familiar voice; I love The blossoms of Parnassus, I believe The prophecies of singers. Not in vain The ecstasy boils in their flaming breast; Action is hallowed, being glorified Beforehand ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... a garcon in the hotel livery brought up a card, and, Continental etiquette made it quite en regle for Monsieur von Ibn to be ushered into the dainty little salon which the Schweizerhof permitted Rosina to enjoy (for a consideration), and there muse in company with his own violets, while he waited and turned his cane over and over ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... 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. Meantime the mournful Queen of Love Led but a weary life above. She ventures now to leave the skies, Grown by Vanessa's conduct wise: For though by one perverse event Pallas had cross'd her first intent; Though her design was not obtain'd: Yet had she much experience gain'd, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... you like to change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... hold on a little strand o' human wisdom," said Tumm, breaking a heavy muse, "an' hangs his whole weight to it," he added, with care, "he've no cause t' agitate hisself with surprise ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... giving a long 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. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... descending to those little Points, Conceits, and Turns of Wit with which many of our modern Lyricks are so miserably infected. Her Soul seems to have been made up of Love and Poetry; She felt the Passion in all its Warmth, and described it in all its Symptoms. She is called by ancient Authors the Tenth Muse; and by Plutarch is compared to Cacus the Son of Vulcan, who breathed out nothing but Flame. I do not know, by the Character that is given of her Works, whether it is not for the Benefit of Mankind that they are lost. They were filled with such bewitching Tenderness and Rapture, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... occasionally timid 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 supreme ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and dissipated their moral energies, Bryant held steadily to his daily task. His life in town was sternly ascetic, but he allowed himself long walks in the country, and he continued to meditate a somewhat thankless Muse. In 1832 he visited his brothers on the Illinois prairies, and stopped one day to chat with a "tall awkward uncouth lad" of racy conversational powers, who was leading his company of volunteers ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... to Rio 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 ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... for a ball or two you let me smite you, Running amok with dashing bat and bold, My Muse shall have instructions to requite ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... discontent with the prevailing order of things was based, seemed to me then both strong and practical; a little ahead of my time perhaps, but far from crude or unformed. As I see it now, my creed was rather a protest against indifference, a demand for some measure of activity in social economy. That my muse was socialistic seems to me now to have been mainly accidental, but so it was, and its nutriment had been drawn largely from such sources as Carpenter's Civilization: its Cause and Cure, in addition to the standard works ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... thoughts were fixed upon her friend; and I cannot write a line without having before me the monument she has left me. Oh! that she could also have endowed my pen with her graces and her virtue!—Methinks, at least, I hear her say—'That stern muse that looks at you, is History, whose awful duty it is to determine the opinion of posterity. That fickle deity that hovers o'er the globe, is Fame, who condescended to entertain us a moment about you; she brought me ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... not less natural than agreeable. Its grand divisions correspond, moreover, with those of time; the contemplation of the present is Comedy—mirth for the most part being connected with the present only—and the past and the future are the dominions of the Tragic muse. ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... appropriated to himself the most beautiful characteristics of Sanskrit poetry, its tender love for the objects of nature, for flowers and animals and the similes and metaphors inspired thereby, and he invests them with all the grace and charm peculiar to his muse. Some of his finest verses owe their inspiration to the lotus; and in that famous poem "Die Lotosblume aengstigt,"—so beautifully set to music by Schumann—the favorite flower of India's poets may be said to have found its aesthetic apotheosis. As ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... turned at the door. And he carried with him, to muse over in the depths of his outraged heart once more, the mystery of that still and desperate smile. Any woman could have solved it for him. Any, except, possibly, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... war inevitable, and he accordingly made ready for the future by preparing his brother for the career of a soldier, so far as it could be done. He brought to Mount Vernon two old companions-in-arms of the Carthagena time, Adjutant Muse, a Virginian, and Jacob Van Braam, a Dutch soldier of fortune. The former instructed Washington in the art of war, tactics, and the manual of arms, the latter in fencing and the sword exercise. At the same time Lawrence Washington procured for his brother, then only nineteen ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... will come, the trees will wave As when we saw them last, But thou wilt linger by my grave, And muse upon the past. ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... of literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author makes at one place from extravagant bombast; he communicates the latest efforts of his muse, and tries, one regrets to say, to get more credit for precocity and originality than fairly belongs to him; he accidentally alludes to his dog that he may bring in a translation from the Odyssey, quote Plutarch, and introduce ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... observed in my breast What sharp conflicts disquiet her so sore, That heavy sleep cannot procure her rest, But fearful dreams present her evermore Most hideous sights her quiet to molest; That starting oft therewith, she doth awake, To muse upon those fancies which torment Her thoughtful heart with horror, that doth make Her cold chill sweat break forth incontinent From her weak limbs. And while the quiet night Gives others rest, she, turning to and fro, Doth wish for day: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... a sort of black gloom intended to attract the Muse of Strategy. He was always better at swift action in the open and optimism in the face of visible danger, than at matching wits against something he could not ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... without their own perturbations and heart troubles, even in the deep seclusion of their lonely home, may be judged by some extracts from a poem written by Emily, who never confided anything to any friend but her own sombre muse. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... (Osmia), with collecting brushes on their abdomen that receive the pollen as it falls. Abundant cleistogamous flowers (see blue violets and white wood sorrel) are borne on the runners late in the season. Bryant, whose botanical lore did not always keep step with his Muse, wrote of the yellow violet as the first spring flower, because he found it "by the snowbank's edges cold," one April day, when the hepaticas about his home at Roslyn, Long Island, had doubtless been in ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Oh, my Ludovicka, I recognize your love in this, and I thank you, and am proud of it that my betrothed belongs to the genial, the intellectual, and the elect. Oh, you are not merely my destined bride, you are my muse, my goddess, and in humility I bow my head before you, and I kiss the hem of your robe, beloved mistress, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... spring I ever knew, In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered The hills at Miller's Ford; Just to muse on the apple tree With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, Never to grow in fruit. And there was I with my spirit girded By the flesh half dead, the senses numb ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... 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 ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... were thrown together daily in the drab little house by the river. Now a boy and a girl thrown together commonly make the speaking donkeys of comedy. Yet one never may be sure that they may not be the dumb struggling creatures of the tragic muse. Heaven knows Margaret Mueller was funny enough in her capers. For she related her antics—her grand pouts, her elaborate condescensions, her crass coquetry and her hidings and seekings—into what she called a "case." In ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... must look for the classic novel dealing with painters and their painting, Manette Salomon, by Goncourt. Henry James has written several delightful tales, such as The Liar, The Real Thing, The Tragic Muse, in which artists appear. But it is the particular psychological problem involved rather than theories of art or personalities that steer Mr. James's cunning pen. We all remember the woman who destroyed a portrait of her husband which seemed to reveal his moral ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... 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
... this etheric change has some effect upon light. The funeral pyre of Brighton is still blazing, and there is a very distant patch of scarlet in the western sky, which may mean trouble at Arundel or Chichester, possibly even at Portsmouth. I sit and muse and make an occasional note. There is a sweet melancholy in the air. Youth and beauty and chivalry and love—is this to be the end of it all? The starlit earth looks a dreamland of gentle peace. Who would imagine it as the terrible Golgotha strewn with the bodies of the human race? Suddenly, ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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; ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... I 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; ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... meet for the lonely muse, fit habitations for the poet's rich imaginings! not as they are most glorious in their natural scenery—whether the youthful May is covering their rugged brows with the bright tender verdure of the tasseled larch, and the yet brighter green of maple, mountain ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... 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
... but, had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give utterance to the grandest conceptions with all that sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the Grecian Muse rolls forth her ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... likes and 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 equanimity by assuring herself that some, ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... course 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 ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... too late to await the advent of a Queen of Song from the warm South. The South has had its turn; it has fulfilled its mission; the other end of the balance now comes up. The Northern Muse must sing her lesson to the world. Her fresher, chaster, more intellectual, and (as they only SEEM to some) her colder strains come in due season to recover our souls from the delicious languor of a Music which has been so wholly of the Feelings, that, for the want of some intellectual tonic and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... may be seen in many figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged around the walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of these subordinate compositions show power of conception ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... 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 deep peace and immaculate ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... after making the customary signal for the train to approach, threw his vast frame upon the earth, and seemed to muse on the deep responsibility of his present situation. His sons were not long in arriving; for the cattle no sooner scented the food and water than they quickened their pace, and then succeeded the usual bustle ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... would have raised his head; But all his thread was spun. So down the stream Went Daphnis: closed the waters o'er a head Dear to the Nine, of nymphs not unbeloved. Now give me goat and cup; that I may milk The one, and pour the other to the Muse. Fare ye well, Muses, o'er and o'er farewell! I'll sing strains lovelier yet ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... Petition, by Miss Aikin, is a chef-d'oeuvre. Miss Benger has published some historical works of great interest, which place her in the same line with Miss Aikin. Lastly, there is Helen Maria Williams, whose muse, half English, half French, has published poems, sonnets, and other pieces of verse, besides several political and historical works. This superior woman, at the same time that she gave birth, under the influence of sensibility and fancy, to works of inspiration, portrayed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... 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) at the autumnal; ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... Strickland. From the specimen with which she has furnished Dr. Bartlett of her poetic ardour, we are happy to find that neither the Canadian atmosphere nor the circumstances attendant upon the alteration of her name, have dimmed the light of that Muse which, in past years, engaged many of our juvenile hours with pleasure and profit.'—Montreal Gazette, 1833.] Mr. Charles Lindsey has given us, among other works, a life of Wm. Lyon Mackenzie,—with ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... that entitles it to its own separate share in the general commemoration. A shadow fell upon this particular morning as from a cloud of danger, that lingered for a moment over our heads, might seem even to muse and hesitate, and then sullenly passed away into distant quarters. It is noticeable that a danger which approaches, but wheels away,—which threatens, but finally forbears to strike,—is more interesting ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... caravan of such things 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
... fire. "Figs pall; but oh! the Beautiful never does. Figs rot; but oh! the Truthful is eternal. I was born, lady, to grapple with the Lofty and the Ideal. My soul yearns for the Visionary. I stand behind the counter, it is true; but I ponder here upon the deeds of heroes, and muse over the thoughts of sages. What is grocery for one who has ambition? What sweetness hath Muscovada to him who hath tasted of Poesy? The Ideal, lady, I often think, is the true Real, and the Actual, but a visionary hallucination. But pardon ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and charming daughter of Madame Sophie Gay, was called "the tenth muse" by her friends, who admired the sonorous original verses which she recited as a young girl in her mother's salon. She became, in June, 1831, the wife of Emile de Girardin, the founder of the Presse. Possessing in her youth, a bellezza ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... 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 on that trail the captain's son would ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Swedenborg's mind is its theologic determination. Nothing with him has the liberality of universal wisdom, but we are always in a church. That Hebrew muse, which taught the lore of right and wrong to man, had the same excess of influence for him, it has had for the nations. The mode, as well as the essence, was sacred. Palestine is ever the more valuable as a chapter in universal history, and ever the less an available element ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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
... comfort to the mourner speaks, Her silver voice with soft emotion breaks; Round the drear hovel roves her moistened eye, Her graceful bosom heaves the lengthened sigh. "I know thee now—I know that angel frame— O that the muse might dare to breathe thy name: Nor thine alone, but all that sister-band Who scatter gladness o'er a weeping land; Who comfort to the infant sufferer bring, And 'teach with joy the widow's heart to sing.' "For this, no noisy honors fame ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... Muse, we see, disdained not the name, nor refused it the hospitality of the boards; and parents took no shame to give it to their daughters. Tragedy goes further and speaks of the fly in high terms of praise, as ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... prepared Lord Garrow's tea and cut the leaves of the Revue des Deux Mondes, which he invariably read until he dressed for dinner, she stole away to the further room, where she could play the piano, write letters, muse over novels, or indulge in reverie without fear of interruption. But as she entered it that afternoon its air of peace seemed the bleakness of desolation. A terrible and afflicting grief swept, like an icy breeze, through her heart, and, whether from actual physical ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the second 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 ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... make sufficient allowance for their prejudices and imperfections. I probably expected too much from men. And some of the reforms which I proposed might at the time be impracticable. I was accustomed to muse very much on the teachings of Christ and His Apostles, and to image to myself a state of things in the Church which, though very desirable, was probably unattainable, except through many slow preliminary changes. I wished for ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Lewis! Monk or Bard, Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou; Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... AEolian island of Lesbos was the hearth and home of the earlier lyric poets. Among the earliest of the Lesbian singers was the poetess Sappho, whom the Greeks exalted to a place next to Homer. Plato calls her the Tenth Muse. Although her fame endures, her poetry, except ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... actions of the successive heads, and sings his own lyricks as an opiate to the chief, when indisposed for sleep; but poets are not equally esteemed and honored in all countries. I happened to be a witness of the dishonour done to the muse, at the house of one of the chiefs, where two of these bards were set at a good distance, at the lower end of a long table, with a parcel of Highlanders of no extraordinary appearance, over a cup ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... redress the faults that 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 Virgil ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... things in poetry. But the critic had no adequate knowledge of the way in which genius works. His one desire in these studies of Scandinavian mythology was "to recommend it to the votaries of the Muse, as a machinery admirably constructed for their purpose" (p. 158). He hopes for "a more extensive adoption of the Scandinavian mythology, especially in our epic and lyric compositions" (p. 311). We ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... meet we 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
... sultry street, and it is delightful to pass in a few moments from the noisy, shadeless thoroughfare, where you see only mean gateways and the gable-ends of edifices, to a cool, grateful, calm place of rest and refreshment, where you can muse and meditate in ease and luxury, and feel at every moment the rich breeze from the river. In two or three instances, a light wooden bridge leads to the platform, close to which, and almost out of it, one or two large and noble trees ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... had 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 an "order" for ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... the muse and peace adores, Forgetting glory, love, and gold, Again thy ever flowery shores Soon, Salgir! joyful shall behold; The bard shall wind thy rocky ways Filled with fond sympathies, shall view Tauride's bright skies ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... 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, he shaved every morning, he purchased a crop-eared ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... boys roused both the lookers-on from their muse; but they stood still again at the first notes of a hymn—as Mr. Linden's deep voice began, and the young choir with ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... day, as 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 ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... eye; for despite his travels he was not very familiar with London. Exeter Hall naturally took his mind back to his Uncle Boldero, that great and ardent Nonconformist, and his own godly youth. It was laughable to muse upon what his uncle would say and think, did the old man know that his nephew had run away with a girl, meaning to seduce her in Paris. It was ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... on the plains of Troy. Awake, my Muse, awake! be thine the joy To sing of deeds as dauntless and as brave As e'er lent luster to a warrior's grave. Sing of that noble soldier, nobler man, Dear to the heart of each American. Sound forth his praise from sea to listening sea— Greece her Achilles claimed, ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 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 ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... God, afraid of me; Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne, Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone. O sacred weapon! left for Truth's defence, Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence! To all but heaven-directed hands denied, The Muse may give thee, but the gods must guide: Reverent I touch thee, but with honest zeal, To rouse the watchmen of the public weal, To Virtue's work provoke the tardy Hall And goad the prelate slumb'ring in his stall. Ye tinsel ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... slow drudge, in swift Pindaric strains, Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, And drives a jaded Muse, whipt with ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... distant, 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
... you can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behooving and unbehooving; Unless you can DIE when the ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... crowd, At work I muse to you aloud; Thought on my anvil softens, glows, And I forget our art has foes; For life, the mother of beauty, seems A joyous sleep with waking dreams. Then the toy armoury of the brain Opining, judging, looks as vain As trowels silver gilt for use Of mayors and kings, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... frequent preparations for a Newgate execution—but enough of such details; it is the muse of Mr. Crabbe that alone could do them justice. We would say to the great city, in the benedictory spirit of the patriot of Venice,—esto perpetua! Notwithstanding thy manifold "honest knaveries," peace be within thy walls, and plenty pervade thy palaces, that thou mayest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... some difficulty to contend with the hebetude of his intellect, and the meanness of his subject. With him "lowliness is young ambition's ladder:" but he finds it a toil to climb in this way the steep of Fame. His homely Muse can hardly raise her wing from the ground, nor spread her hidden glories to the sun. He has "no figures nor no fantasies, which busy passion draws in the brains of men:" neither the gorgeous machinery of mythologic lore, nor the splendid colours of poetic ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... 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 ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... territory and putting all around them to fire and sword; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease and compliment yourselves ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... The Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman 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 ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... stanzas have no bearing upon one another; they consist of four or seven lines, but in either case each contains its definite sentiment; so that one verse may be a complete song, or the singer may continue as long as the muse prompts and his subject's charms occasion. The Spanish song is like a barbaric necklace in which all manner of different stones are strung upon a single cord, without thought for their ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... this sincere effort of a maiden muse. Here was a sense of rhythm, and an effort in the direction of rhyme; here was an honest transcript of an occurrence of daily life, told with a certain idealizing expression, recognizing the existence of impulses, mysterious instincts, impelling ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... as yet 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
... thing be more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according to the ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... 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 virtue wondered ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... to compose an ode especially for the occasion. It would evidently have been effective to welcome the hero, to glorify his deed, and to point the moral in a few original verses; but, unhappily, the muse was froward, which was singular, since the elite of Little Primpton had unimpeachable morals, ideals of the most approved character, and principles enough to build a church with; nor was an acquaintance with literature wanting. They all read the daily ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... more deserved. Even at that early age, I often could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the simple Bard, Who wrote the little song, And to his Muse, who laboured hard To help the work along. Health to the Candid Friend also Who had his word to say, And to the kindly G.P.O. That sped ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... at Arnold's short note. "My dear Irene"—"In haste, but ever yours." These lines did not tempt her to muse. Yet Arnold was ceaselessly in her mind. She wished to see him, and at the same time feared his coming. As for the house, it occupied her thoughts with only a flitting vagueness. Why so much solicitude about the house? In any decent quarter of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... many weeks before Robert was writing home, explaining that lawyers were men who get good people into trouble, and bad folks out; and as for himself he had decided to cut the business and fling himself into the arms of the Muse. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Land. For lawless and ungovern'd, had the Age The Nine wild Sisters seen run mad with Rage, Debaucht to Savages, till his keen Pen Brought their long banisht Reason back again, Driven by his Satyres into Natures Fence, And lasht the idle Rovers into Sense. Nay, his sly Muse, in Style Prophetick, wrot The whole Intrigue of Israels Ethnick Plot; Form'd strange Battalions, in stupendious-wise, Whole Camps in Masquerade, and Armies in disguise. Amiel, whose generous Gallantry, whilst Fame Shall have a Tongue, shall never ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... upon the sweet-voiced Muse's shining wings, yet again with wreaths from Pytho and choice wreaths from Alpheos from the Olympian games entwine his hand, and bring honour ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... live in the world according to the Christian law of restraint and moderation, and of those who yearn to live in God. With Augustin the choice is made. He will never more look back. These Dialogues at Cassicium are his supreme farewell to the pagan Muse. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... apparently more her mother's joy, and each day bound to that mother by, if possible, more ardent love. She had never again experienced those uneasy thoughts which at times had haunted her from her infancy; separated from her mother, indeed, scarcely for an hour together, she had no time to muse. Her studies each day becoming more various and interesting, and pursued with so gifted and charming a companion, entirely engrossed her; even the exercise that was her relaxation was participated by Lady Annabel; and the mother ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... said Adrienne, gayly, "this affair will arrange itself quite easily. Henceforth, Mr. Poet, you shall draw your inspirations in the midst of good fortune instead of adversity. Sad muse! But first of all, bonds shall be ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... thoughts and dancing feelings. A poet would be certain to have often seen this happy crowd, and to desire to trick them out in song. So Browning does in his poem, In a Gondola. The two lovers, with the dark shadow of fate brooding over them, sing and muse and speak alternately, imaging in swift and rival pictures made by fancy their deep-set love; playing with its changes, creating new worlds in which to place it, but always returning to its isolated ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... book consists of brief biographical commentaries about Beethoven, each followed by sections of quotations attributed to the muse. In these quotes, Beethoven demonstrates his intense preoccupation (or obsession) with thinking artistically and intelligently, and with helping to alleviate man's suffering by providing man with musical artworks that could enlighten him, so ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... but I request you, that are here privileged to soar aloft with the Muse, to fix your minds upon one point in this flight. Let not the heat and dust of the ensuing fray divert your attention from the magnanimity of Beer. It will be vindicated in the end but be worthy of your seat beside the Muse, who alone of us all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and he began to muse. 'I have heard of that name before. Is it possible,' thought he, 'that my visit to Bethany should have led ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... peculiarly familiar. The judgment of Orderic and of William of Malmesbury confirms the impression of Hildebrand. But the Normans have been their own witnesses, the cathedrals which they raised from the Seine to the Tyne are epics in stone, inspired by no earthly muse, fit emblems of the rock-like endurance and ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Williams, I know—but he laughs so much! Of course there isn't any comparison. Mr. Kinosling talks so intellectually; it's a good thing for Margaret to hear that kind of thing, for a change and, of course, he's very spiritual. He seems very much interested in her." She paused to muse. "I think Margaret likes him; he's so different, too. It's the third time he's dropped in this week, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... 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 ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... against the rugged trunk of her elm, gazed down the long shaded avenue, and appeared to muse. Here and there, the sun, finding a way through the green cloud of leaves, a visible fillet of light in the dim atmosphere, dappled the brown earth with rose. In her white frock, her dark hair loose about her brow, a faint colour in her cheeks, her dark eyes musing, musing ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit and muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys—a kind of horse—and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged laddies dream, as well as boys in socks. ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Marija was one of those hungry souls who cling with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse. All day long she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was leaving—and she would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words of Faust, "Stay, thou art fair!" Whether it was by beer, or by shouting, or by music, or by motion, she meant ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Lawrence surprised him by the inquiry, "George, how would you like to take lessons in the manual exercise of Adjutant Muse?" ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... 'Dante has raised love far above mere earthly passion to a religion, which can worship the pure and the spiritual rather than the mere beauty of the bodily presence. This breathes in much of Philip's later verse. You know how he says he obeyed the muse, who bid him "look in his heart, and write, rather than go outside for models of construction." That great work—great work of yours and Sir Philip, the Arcadia—teams with beauties, and Pamela is the embodiment ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... with doubt the bosom heaves. The heart for Grecian sorrows grieves, And pines to see them fail. Such critics sometimes court the muse, And I perchance the rhymes peruse, Then heaves the breast ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... needlework. But she found it difficult to fix her attention on it. Every now and then, she would leave her needle stuck across its seam, let the work drop to her lap, and, with eyes turned vaguely up the valley, fall, apparently, into a muse. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... of the innumerable pockets of the desk, an elegant ruby-tipped pen, and six charming little gilt blank books, marked "My Books," which Mrs. Fitzroy might fill, he said, (he is an Oxford man, and very polite,) "with the delightful productions of her Muse." Besides these books, there was pink paper, paper with crimson edges, lace paper, all stamped with R. F. T. (Rosa Fitzroy Timmins) and the hand and battle-axe, the crest of the Timminses (and borne at Ascalon by Roaldus de Timmins, a crusader, who is now buried in the Temple ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... gentleman's library is complete without it; but I never read. My days, my nights, are filled, Bella, with thoughts of you. Yes,' continued he, seating himself upon the sofa by her side, and passing his arm about her throbbing waist, 'yes, you are my muse—my only volume. You are the inspiration of the poetical trifles that I send to the weekly newspapers, and which I may say, without vanity, are considered equal to Mrs. Sigourney's. Without you, life were indeed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... nor creeping Gain, Dare the Muse's walk to stain, 10 While bright-eyed Science watches round: Hence, away! 'tis ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... intolerable sense 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
... his long hair and blew it about his face till he became an equestrian personification of the frenzied muse. I had become acquainted with his trick of setting words to the music of quaint rhymes; but ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... silence of them all are beautiful and eloquent with 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 ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... 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
... carry us around Cape Horn to California. She was receiving on board the necessary stores for the long voyage, and for service after our arrival there. Lieutenant-Commander Theodorus Bailey was in command of the vessel, Lieutenant William H. Macomb executive officer, and Passed-Midshipmen Muse, Spotts, and J. W. A. Nicholson, were the watch-officers; Wilson purser, and Abernethy surgeon. The latter was caterer of the mess, and we all made an advance of cash for him to lay in the necessary mess-stores. To enable us to prepare for so long a voyage and for an indefinite sojourn ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... rely entirely upon their own Muse, but borrow from Ovid, Propertius, or Virgil, when they recall sentiments in those writers which express their feelings. Sometimes it is a tag, or a line, or a couplet which is taken, but the borrowings are woven into the context with some skill. The poet above who is under compulsion ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... of the acute financial crisis in the Mattel family, Papa Claude had revived amazingly, and was once more wearing a rose in his buttonhole and courting the Muse. He and Harold Phipps spent several afternoons a week working on their play, which they hoped to get fully blocked out before the latter left the service and returned to his ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... and constantly keep at 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 ...
— 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
... Zola himself displays in some of his transitions, pass to very different things, for some time back a well-known English poet and essayist wrote of the present work that it was redolent of pork, onions, and cheese. To one of his sensitive temperament, with a muse strictly nourished on sugar and water, such gross edibles as pork and cheese and onions were peculiarly offensive. That humble plant the onion, employed to flavour wellnigh every savoury dish, can assuredly need no defence; in most European countries, too, cheese has long been ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Siddons as the Tragic Muse. Painted in 1783 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1784. The original work was bought by M. de Calonne for 800 guineas, and finally came into the possession of the Marquis of Westminster, in whose family it has since remained. ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... exposed me to the scorn of a people whom I wished to respect. Below me lay the most beautiful landscapes in the world—all the rich scenery that nature, in her best attire, can exhibit. Here were the spots that furnished those delightful themes of which the muse of Denham and Pope made choice. I seemed to view a whole world at once, rich and beautiful beyond conception. At that moment what more could ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... 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
... 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. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... came, I believe that I began to muse about Monsieur de Chavannes; but it was only to think that I did not care in the least about him, nor he about me; and that, so far as he was concerned, I had seen no cause to change my decided resolution that I would never marry. All this was, perhaps, in reality, the best of proofs ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... being come thus well nigh to the beginning of May and the weather being very fair, that, having entered into thought of his cruel mistress, he bade all his servants leave him to himself, so he might muse more at his leisure, and wandered on, step by step, lost in melancholy thought, till he came [unwillingly] into the pine-wood. The fifth hour of the day was well nigh past and he had gone a good ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Handley-Page. They get down millions of words a minute. But when they have got the job apparently done, they simmer away to nothing. They perform mysterious rites with ink-eraser. They scratch feebly with knives. They hold up to the light, they tittivate, they muse and they adorn. It is not the slightest use intimating that you do not care twopence whether there are typographic errors or not—the expert typist treats you with the scorn that the expert always does treat ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... with varied style Thy Muse may, like those feathery tribes which spring From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle To that hoar pile which still its ruin shows: In whose small vaults a pigmy-folk is found, Whose bones the delver with his spade upthrows, And culls them, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... was immortal while the past was dead. As Dorothy thought these things and sweetly blushed to think them, you would have been reminded of a rose, if her blue eyes had not made you remember violets, or by their clear, true, tranquil depths led you away to muse ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... TABLETS Different Destinies The Animating Principle Two Descriptions of Action Difference of Station Worth and the Worthy The Moral Force Participation To—— The Present Generation To the Muse The Learned Workman The Duty of All A Problem The Peculiar Ideal To Mystics The Key The Observer Wisdom and Prudence The Agreement Political Precept Majestas Populi The Difficult Union To a World-Reformer My Antipathy ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the tumult and noise of London. I sighed for solitude, that I might muse over your remembrance undisturbed. I came here yesterday. It is the home of my childhood. I am surrounded on all sides by the scenes and images consecrated by the fresh recollections of my unsullied years. They are not changed. The seasons which ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 was ...
— 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)
... at Bologna, on the 16th of August, after a courtship of 16 years, to Mademoiselle Olympe Bearrien of Paris. It may change the turn of his muse. ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... of the religious Muse in the English tongue has greater diversity of criticism been displayed or more extraordinary or varied judgment been rendered than upon Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalms. A world of testimony could be adduced to fortify any view which one chose ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... capital," said the marquis, "and as to money matters, you can arrange them to suit yourself. I should not think of bargaining with the votaries of Thalia—a muse so highly favoured by Apollo, and as eagerly sought after, and enthusiastically applauded, at the court of his most gracious majesty as in town and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... 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. Several Chinese triumphal arches crossed the streets, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... 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 heaved ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... and dismissed me. I slowly ascended a third- class carriage, which was filled with abominable tobacco-smoke that seemed like the fogs of Acheron at the entrance to Hades. I now had the leisure to muse about the riddle of human existence, and about its ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... accept, with feelings of great obligation, the flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the very grand and tremendous drama of 'Cain.'[*] I may be partial to it, and you will allow I have cause; but I do not know that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings. He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground. Some part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers, whose line will be adopted by others out of affectation ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the poet in person is the relater. But he hides his own personality in that of the Muse he invokes; and offers himself to his auditors as the Voice only by which she speaks. She, the Muse, is thought to be throughout a faithful recorder; for she is supposed to have access to know all; and however marvellous may be the narrations, they are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... 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
... nature, too arbitrary in their influence, to acknowledge any restraints upon that expression, which glows or weeps with emotions that gush freely and freshly from the heart. With this persuasion, we can also forgive the muse who, in her fervor, is sometimes forgetful of ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... 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 remarks which it gratified me ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... was classical, like a Muse, with her dark silky hair just streaked with grey, looped away behind her ears; while Miss Henrietta, the younger, had ringlets and large eyes and ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... supported upon a tripod, the fragments being held together by a band of gold filigree. This remarkable object of antiquity, which is of extraordinary beauty of material and workmanship, furnishes a theme over which the antiquaries love to muse and wrangle. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the hillside where the torn web lay, its bloom and beauty all gone. Ragged bits of green, mingled with dull brown tracery of vine and tendril, lay back upon the background of earth, but of purple there was no trace. In the hush of the night, the Weaver came back, to muse sadly over what had been and, perhaps, to dream ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... stationmaster at Llanidloes, was appointed to the management of this little line. The duties were not particularly arduous, and, in any case, "Ceiriog" was apt to take life with a light heart. Whether he sat in his office or in the cosy corner of some favourite rural inn the muse burned brightly within him, and, from his remote retreat among the hills which look down on the infant Severn, he poured out his soul in poetry, which ranks high in Celtic literature. Welsh verse always suffers in translation into the more cumbrous English, ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... devoted to pursuits for which he did not care a rap. He once dreamt 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
... 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 ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... When she was able to shake off the almost Oriental torpor, in which for hours together she would muse, she became another creature: she loved walking; she was tall, with a fine length of leg, and a strong, supple figure, and she looked like a Diana of Primatice.—Most often they would go to one of the villas, left ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... vanity of all to the profit of the vanity of each, kindled in me a desire to show myself frank and independent. I murmured, loud enough to be heard by all my neighbors,—"Of a truth, the Country's Muse is not Melpomene!" Madame Emile de Girardin, when Mademoiselle Delphine Gay and in the most brilliant period of her poetical youth, had styled herself "the Country's Muse"; her admirers had adopted the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of my life. Whether in the star which, as I now write, shines in upon me, and which a romance, still unsubdued, has often dreamed to be the bright prophet of my fate, something of future adventure, suffering, or excitement is yet predestined to me; or whether life will muse itself away in the solitudes which surround the home of my past childhood and the scene of my present retreat,—creates within me but slight food for anticipation or conjecture. I have exhausted the sources of those feelings which flow, whether through the channels of anxiety or ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... many-headed throng. But shou'd I paint The language, humours, custom of the place, Together with all curts'ys, lowly bows, And compliments extern, 'twould swell my page Beyond its limits due. Suffice it then For my prophetic muse to say, 'So long As fashion rides upon the wings of time, While tea and cream, and butter'd rolls can please, While rival beaux and jealous belles exist, So long, White Conduit House, shall ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Ink, and don't attempt to use That Subtle Touch which Editors refuse; Better be jocund at two cents a word Than, starving, court an ill-requited Muse! ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... 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. The ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... 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 his ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 till ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... reward of opposition to the tenets of the day. There are few more comfortless sights, than such a cemetery: it looks as if those by whom it is occupied regarded death as eternal sleep, and thought that the memory of man should terminate with the close of his life. However unlettered the muse, however hackneyed the rhyme, however misapplied the text, it is consolatory to see them employed. Man dwells with a melancholy satisfaction upon the tomb-stones of his relations and friends, and not of them alone, but of all whom he has known or ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... and afterwards reproduced him with such richness of sympathy, such magic of enlarging invention that he has become, so to speak, the symbol of laughter throughout the world, for men of all races the true Comic Muse. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... scenes like these my Muse would fain withdraw: To Taff's still Valley be my footsteps led, Where happy Unions 'neath the shield of Law Heave bricks bisected at the Blackleg's head: In those calm shades my desultory oat Of Taxed ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... since Adam first made it to Eve." She eyed him in silence for a second time, deriding his sighs with a smile: then "There is a rhyme in my mind," she cried, "about moons and lovers," and she began to declaim, half muse, half minx, some lines that had pleased her, to tease ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... prudent man, Plessis," replied the lady: "bid the girl take a light to my chamber; I will go there and muse—not that I fear their seeing me; but the Lady Helen, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... dropt sense distinct and clear, As any muse's tongue could speak, When from its lid a pearly tear Ran ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... Bard, the simple Bard, Who wrote the little song, And to his Muse, who laboured hard To help the work along. Health to the Candid Friend also Who had his word to say, And to the kindly G.P.O. That sped it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... banned at the Front, Are so manfully doing their "stunt" In searching for news That the Limerick Muse Thus honours their skill in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... choose a subject of which I knew something. Wonderful discovery, which has been of use to me ever since; a bit as well as reins—this is the reason why I have not been a prolific writer. Between one book and the next I am totally forgotten. I found also thus early that one needs a muse. I had made a blunder in not taking Launa into my counsels, say rather into my mind, for I had never once thought of her while writing, nor that she would be my audience. No, I thought only of myself, and the distinction I should win all for myself. Thus ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... simple poems of mine have been favorites with general readers. The unintelligible ones are always preferred, I observe, by extracters, compilers, and ladies and gentlemen who write to tell me that I'm a muse. The very Corn Law Leaguers in the North used to leave your 'Seagulls' to fly where they could, and clap hands over mysteries of iniquity. Dearest Miss Mitford—for the rest, don't mistake what I write to you sometimes—don't fancy that I undervalue ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... formed a comely person, In the court of Ceridwen I have done penance; Though little I was seen, placidly received, I was great on the floor of the place to where I was led; I have been a prized defence, the sweet muse the cause, And by law without speech I have been liberated By a smiling black old hag, when irritated Dreadful her claim when pursued: I have fled with vigour, I have fled as a frog, I have fled in the semblance ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... a play-room 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
... believed 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, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Occidentals, who seldom muse, to whom contemplation is waste of time, do not enjoy the oneness with nature shared by these Polynesians with the sacred Commoner whose beatitudes were to bring anarchy upon the Roman world, and destroy the effects of the philosophies of the ablest minds of Greece. The ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... me 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, May ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... be a tenth Muse, then, Maggie?" said Philip looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the clouds that promises us a bright ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... 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, he shaved every morning, he purchased ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to her memory the imperishable tribute of his heart in a long poem made up of ten parts. The ninth part is inscribed, "Elegy on my Muse, the truly honored Lady Venetia Digby, who, living, gave me leave to call her so." These ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... daily in the drab little house by the river. Now a boy and a girl thrown together commonly make the speaking donkeys of comedy. Yet one never may be sure that they may not be the dumb struggling creatures of the tragic muse. Heaven knows Margaret Mueller was funny enough in her capers. For she related her antics—her grand pouts, her elaborate condescensions, her crass coquetry and her hidings and seekings—into what she called a "case." In the only wisdom she knew, to open a flirtation was to have a "case." So Margaret ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... can 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 ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... such a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?—Is that it? But you'll have to learn again. You are more than a nun: you are a beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. It's astonishing how like a girl you are."—Sir Hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "And however like a nun you've lived—you can't deny that ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "Well may you muse and writhe under the tortures of your guilty acts," continued Ella, in the same bitter tone; "for you have much to answer ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... 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 order. Otherwise free as the tent-dwelling Arabs, or outlaws ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... softer whispers among the osiers, that bowed upon the banks below, was a kind of music more in unison with her feelings. It did not vibrate on the chords of unhappy memory, but was soothing to the heart as the voice of Pity. She continued to muse, unconscious of the gloom of evening, and that the sun's last light trembled on the heights above, and would probably have remained so much longer, if a sudden footstep, without the building, had not alarmed ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... thinking of how he had worked to learn to dance. Whatever the reason—whether it was the memory of Ingmar's weird dancing, or the anticipation of attending a regular dance—her thoughts became light and airy. She managed to keep just a little behind the others, that she might muse undisturbed. She had made up quite little story about how the trees had come by ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Lamb also discussed the play, before it was 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
... 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 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... we have these trivial parliamentary forms?" demanded the Tragic Muse, as McCall called her. "Away with all worn-out garments of a degraded Past! Shall the rebellious serf of man still wear ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... they would muse; if their grief were the grief of oppression they would wish themselves kings; if their grief were poverty, wish themselves millionaires; if sin, they would wish they were saints or angels; if despised love, that ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... farmer who after he had found a Roman villa on his farm gave up the bucolic and inglorious occupation of growing turnips and potatoes, and could talk of nothing meaner than hypocausts and thermae. So we, like the farmer, slight the really beautiful Early Gothic "Liebfrauenkirche" and roam and muse for hours about the ruins of the Amphitheatre, the Roman Baths, the Roman Palace ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... this fashion in her box, when Jenny Fagette came to join her there; Jenny Fagette, slender and fragile, the incarnation of Alfred de Musset's Muse, who at night wore out her eyes of periwinkle-blue by scribbling society notes and fashion articles. A mediocre actress, but a clever and wonderfully energetic woman, she was Nanteuil's most intimate friend. They recognized in each other remarkable qualities, qualities which ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... rubbed that part of 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 hurry to ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Aubanel writes not, like Roumanille, for his own people alone. His Muse is more ambitious, and seeks to interest by appealing to the sentiments in a language polished with all the art of its sister, the French. There are innumerable exquisite passages scattered through the work, which make us ready to believe in the figurative comparison of the prefacer, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... the beardless carle shall listen While I lash him with abuse, Loon at whom our stomachs sicken. Soon shall hear these words of scorn; Far too nice for such base fellows Is the name my bounty gives, Een my muse her help refuses, Making mirth of ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... STATE: 'Twere well the cares of day to toss aside And welcome evening's quiet with a smile, But we who here in solemn conclave meet Can squander moment few to court the Muse; Stern duty calls, and to each patriot ear 'Tis music sweet, to which he quick responds, Then to the council board let us repair And these the ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... slightly—an eager, gifted fellow, of late years a strong High Churchman, and well known in a certain group as the friend of Mrs. Armagh, that muse—fragile, austere, and beautiful—of several great men, and great Christians, among the older generation. Mrs. Alcot had her own intimates, generally men; but she tired of them and changed them often. Mr. Alcot spent part of every ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... very year, in a poem composed in honor of his own Consulship. The lines are not in themselves grand, but the spirit of them is magnificent: "Stick to the good cause which in your early youth you chose for yourself, and be true to the party you have made your own." "Should I doubt when the muse herself has so written," he says, alluding to the name of Calliope, given to this third book of his. Then he adds a line of Homer, very excellent for the occasion:[239] "No augury for the future can be better for you than that which bids you serve your ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... lifted, met my view, Gay worlds of starry thoughts appeared In their blue depths serenely sphered. Just then the voice of one unseen, All redolent of Hippocrene, Stole forth so sweetly on the air, I felt the Muse indeed was there, And feel how much her words divine Must ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... bottom, and stick there? The perpetual tragedy of literary history, in especial, is this. What numbers of young men, gifted with great imitative quickness, who, having, by virtue of this, arrived at fine words and figures of speech, set off on their nimble rhetorical Pegasus, keep well out of the Muse's reach ever after! How many go conspicuously through life, snapping their smart percussion-caps upon empty barrels, because, forsooth, powder and ball do not come of themselves, and it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... intrusion, With some outlandish institution, With Ursine's catechism to muse on, With system's method for confusion, With grounds strong laid of mere illusion: See a new ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... spaces between their suggestions by the intermixture 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 ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... 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
... was free of him. She had given him to himself. She wept sometimes with tiredness and helplessness. But he was a husband. And she seemed, in the child that was coming, to forget. It seemed to make her warm and drowsy. She lapsed into a long muse, indistinct, warm, vague, unwilling to be taken out of her vagueness. And she rested ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... all Marija Berczynskas. Marija was one of those hungry souls who cling with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse. All day long she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was leaving—and she would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words of Faust, "Stay, thou art fair!" Whether it was by beer, or by shouting, or by music, or by motion, she meant that it should not go. And she would go ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Learning, too, shall rear unnumbered domes, Here Shakspeares—Tassos—find more happy homes, Here Homer's fire, and Virgil's polished grace, A sacred charm shall give to many a place. Each shady hill shall be a Muse's haunt— By each pure spring aerial nymphs shall chant— Chant the sweet song to heavenly Liberty— While thundering cataracts peal it to the sea!" She spake no more;—or I too much opprest By wondrous visions, needed welcome rest. And when I waked, the day had now unfurled His rosy banners ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... formed the fable of a tragedy on that subject: the plan is warm in my imagination, and, that I may give my whole time to it, I now am eager to dispatch an edition of Cato. Marcus Aper interposed: And are you, indeed, so enamoured of your dramatic muse, as to renounce your oratorical character, and the honours of your profession, in order to sacrifice your time, I think it was lately to Medea, and now to Thyestes? Your friends, in the mean time, expect your patronage; the colonies ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... my mouth, my muse, my pen, and all, Be prest to serve at each good subject's call." Cynthia's "Revels," ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... difference lies; it is in the substance polished. In politeness, in delicacy, they have as a people no peers. Art has been their mistress, though science has never been their master. Perhaps for this very reason that art, not science, has been the Muse they courted, the result has been all the more widespread. For culture there is not the attainment of the few, but the common property of the people. If the peaks of intellect rise less eminent, the plateau of general elevation stands higher. But little ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... 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
... since no Muse hath been so bold, Or of the later, or the old, Those elvish secrets to unfold, Which lie from others' reading, My active Muse to light shall bring The Court of that proud Fairy King, And tell there of the ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... 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 ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... steeks, And lusty lasses at the dighting tire: What bangs fu' leal the e'enings coming cauld, And gars snaw-tappit winter freeze in vain, Gars dowie mortals look baith blythe and bauld, Nor fley'd wi' a' the poortith o' the plain; Begin, my Muse, and chant ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... conversation with his mistress; so he merely scratched his head, and thought 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 ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... He continued to muse on the sight of Pembroke Somerset, which had conjured up ten thousand fond and distressing recollections; and with impatient anxiety, determining to watch till the performance was over, he thought of inquiring his friend's address of the servants; but ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... where are they all, Your grand three-deckers, deep-chested and tall, That should crush the waves under canvas piles, And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles? There's gray in your beard, the years turn foes, While you muse in your arm-chair and toast ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... to say though my triumphant Muse Seemeth to vant as in got victorie, And with puissant stroke the head to bruize Of her stiff so, and daze his phantasie, Captive his reason, dead each facultie: Yet in her self so strong a force withstands That of her self afraid, ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... not tempt? My father he may make, but I must match; Segasto loves, but Amadine must like, Where likes her best; compulsion is a thrall: No, no, the hearty choice is all in all, The shepherd's virtue Amadine esteems. But, what, me thinks my shepherd is not come. I muse at that, the hour is sure at hand: Well here ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... you know it all. For who but you were with me in the spirit through all the struggle, helping, supporting, encouraging, until you seemed to me my muse, my soul, my inner and purer and higher self. Dear, I wronged you when I connected your love with this world's pride. I wronged you bitterly, and I have suffered for ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Manor 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... feet—resting on a famous battlement, that had withstood 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 was ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... panel was the work of but a minute. Here he paused and listened lest a Wieroo might be visiting the prison in search of him or the other inmate; but no sound came from the gloomy interior. Bradley could not but muse upon the joy of the man on the opposite side when he should drop down to him with food and a new hope for escape. Then he opened the panel and looked into the room. The faint light from the grating above revealed the pile of rags in one corner; but the man lay ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... have perished. If not in a narrative form, the case would have come forward in the drama. Puritanical sanctity, in collision with the ordinary interests of life, and with its militant propensities, offered too striking a field for the Satiric Muse, in any case, to have passed in total neglect. The impulse was too strong for repression—it was a volcanic agency, that, by some opening or, other, must have worked a way for itself to the upper air. Yet ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 styles ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... school of the French language; and is refined and subdivided, as an art, both in degree and kind, in France more than in any other country. The prolific authors in this department, and the variety and richness of invention they display, as well as the permanent attraction of the Comic Muse, are striking peculiarities of the French theatre. No capital affords the material and the audience requisite for such triumphs like Paris; and there is always a play of this kind in vogue there, wherein novelty of combination, significance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the free people of color about all the school knowledge that was allowed them in those days, and hence the consternation which came upon them when they found themselves excluded from the schools of the white churches. Lindsay Muse, who has been the messenger for eighteen Secretaries of the Navy, successively, during fifty-four years, from 1828 to the present time, John Brown, Benjamin M. McCoy, Mr. Smallwood, Mrs. Charlotte Norris, afterward wife of Rev. Eli Nugent, and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... retired and pleasant, where Calvin commenced his most serious work, Institutes of the 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... in their presence, and after trolling out a few Irish melodies, he succeeded in eliciting from them a sympathetic response in the shape of some lively French songs. The result proved most delightful to all concerned; and thereafter the muse of Ireland and the muse of France kept up a perpetual antiphonal song, which ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... soul, And he ran forward and embraced his knees, And clasp'd his hand within his own, and said:— "Oh, by thy father's head! by thine own soul! Art thou not Rustum? speak! art thou not he?" But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling youth, And turn'd away, and spake to his own soul:— "Ah me, I muse what this young fox may mean! False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys. For if I now confess this thing he asks, And hide it not, but say: 'Rustum is here!' He will not yield indeed, nor quit our ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in a transport of rage; "the time will come, when, if you do not sue for life, you will for death, and at my hands; and till then will I forego my revenge for your insolence now. And let me tell you one thing further, that you may muse upon it in my absence. I will raise an army, ere many months are over, and march upon the frontiers of Kentucky; and by all the powers of good and evil, I swear again to get possession of the girl you love, but whom I now hate—hate as the arch-fiend hates Heaven—and she shall thenceforth ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... such jewels as the exploring mind Brings from the caves of knowledge, buy my ransom From those twin jailers of the daring heart— Low birth and iron fortune. For thee I grew A midnight student o'er the dreams of sages. For thee I sought to borrow from each grace, And every muse, such attributes as lend Ideal charms to love. I thought of thee, And passion taught me poesy—of thee, And on the painter's canvas grew the life Of beauty! Art became the shadow Of the dear starlight ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... 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 ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... once or twice he said to himself with a passing smile that it was a good 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
... the garden these warm latter days, and muse. To muse is to sit in the sun, and not think of anything. I am not sure but goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does out of a sweet apple roasted before the fire. The late September and October sun of this latitude is something like the sun of extreme Lower Italy: you can ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... but whatever in such nationalities tends toward enlightenment and freedom is American. Let us not, therefore, confirm ourselves in a false and ignoble conception of our meaning and mission in the world. Let us not carry into the temple of the Muse the jealousies, the prejudice, the ignorance, the selfishness of our "Senate" and "Representatives," strangely so called! Let us not refuse to breathe the air of Heaven, lest there be something European or Asian in it. If we cannot have a national literature in the narrow, geographical ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 by such a comment on the present paragraph ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... that a man ought to be able to return to the Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ceased to ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... scarcely knowing how to grasp my own meaning, and give it a tangible shape in words; and yet it is concerning this very expression of our thoughts in words that I wish to speak. As I muse things fall more into their proper places, and, little fit for the task as my confession pronounces me to be, I will try to make clear that ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... far off the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revelers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamor drowned Both harp and voice, nor could the Muse defend Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores; For thou art heavenly, she an empty ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... 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; ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Picarel—called Garon by the 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
... closed his adventurous and erratic career and became a domestic and useful member of that little commonwealth, under the watchful influence of the dark-eyed maid of the Loire or of the Seine. Infinite are the chords of the lyre which delights the romantic muse; and these incidents, small and humble as they are, appear to me to be imbued with an indescribable charm, which appeals to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment Cousin Pons The Muse ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... Five Act Tragedy entitled——" "Hang your tragedies!" will the Manager exclaim, "Give me a farce like 'Dr. Bill,' my boy!" And once more will the poet put his pride and his tragedy in one pocket, and all the money which the Comic Muse will give him in the other. I back the argumentum ad pocketum against the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... it was such a small collection, his book- lover's instinct compelled him to look at it. His eyes fell upon a Religio Medici, and he opened it hastily. On the fly-leaf was written "Mary Leighton, from R. L." He had just time, before its owner entered, to replace it and to muse for an instant. ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... public performance on the pianoforte had created at Vienna, Mozart forgot all the fears he had expressed previously to his journey to Paris; thought no more that teaching would interfere with the higher vocation of his muse; and was content to become the fashionable performer, teacher, and pianoforte composer of the day. This mode of life for a time had its temptations and its success; and he hoped that he might still better assist his father at Vienna than at Salzburg, as he was at intervals able to remit to him sums ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... masters of imagination 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 call his ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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, ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... ceased eating. Again he appeared to muse as intently as was possible, for one of his circumscribed intellects. But shaking his head in the negative, he silently resumed the grateful office ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... is introduced for some reason which made Mr. Darwin think it worth while to go out of his way to introduce it. It has no fitness in its connection with Hermann Muller's book, for what little Hermann Muller says about teleology at all is to condemn it; why then should Mr. Darwin muse here of all places in the world about the interest attaching to design in organism? Neither has the passage any connection with the rest of the preface. There is not another word about design, and even here Mr. Darwin seems mainly anxious to face both ways, and pat design as it were ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... 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, so also was the news of the day. These things he considered, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... performance of airs or metres composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair and heavenly love—the love of Urania the fair and heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those who are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and of preserving their love; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must be used with circumspection that the pleasure be enjoyed, ...
— Symposium • Plato
... greedily devoured in large quantities, mostly raw—producing a raging thirst. The water supply was now curtailed to a few bucketsful, but even these few drops of the precious fluid were mostly wasted in the melee for their possession. The majority of the contestants retired disappointed to muse on the comforts of the Sahara Desert, and as the stories about tapping camels recurred to them, suggestive glances were cast at the more fortunate rivals. After a few days, conspicuous for the sparing enjoyment of salt cod, the water supply was ordered unlimited. An immediate 'corner' ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... Carlo filled out with his harp, she again put her hand into the urn and drew out a new theme; again the inspiration seemed to pass over her, and the holy Whitsuntide of her muse to be renewed. Constantly more and more stormily resounded the plaudits of her hearers; it was like a continued thunder of enthusiasm, a real salvo of joy. It animated Corilla to new improvisations; she again and again recurred to the urn, drawing ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... grievous disappointment I experienced at being compelled to return. It was something, even by this short distance, to precede my companions in the exciting work of discovery—to tread alone the solitary glades upon which, till now, no native of the civilized West had set his foot—and to muse in solemn and unbroken silence upon the ultimate results of the work to which the last few days had been devoted—to mark the gradual but certain progression of civilization and christianity—and to breathe forth, unwitnessed ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... to you, my dear friend. I have had some ideas seething in my brain since the morning that only wait to soar up to God on the wings of song, but I wished to see you. Good-bye; I must ask forgiveness of the Muse. We shall meet at dinner to-night—but no wine; at any rate, none for me. I ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... never to enter it again on his own initiative; for, as will be seen, his share in "Henry VIII." was small. Comedy was for the moment in his heart. Perhaps it was a relief to him, after the strenuous time he had passed through, to pass to his lighter muse and express himself in the brightest vein that could not bear misinterpretation. He turned to an Italian author, probably Ariosto, for a part of "Much Ado about Nothing," but he drew the least vital part ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... 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 pas of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... and Aaron's [3] letters. I was a little disappointed that you did not send an acrostic; but I still entertain some secret hope that the muse (who, you say, has taken her flight) will shortly return, and, by a new and stricter intimacy, more than repay the pains of this momentary absence. Your happiness, Matt., is really almost the only present thing I can contemplate with any ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... 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 ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... "The 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
... of Cumberland, Mrs. Yates, the actress, sat to Romney for a picture of the 'Tragic Muse.' Of course, this work was completely eclipsed by Reynolds's 'Tragic Muse,' painted some thirteen years later. Notwithstanding the demerits of the President's picture, the plagiarism of the pose and draperies from Michael Angelo's ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of som melodious tear. Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring, Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, So may som gentle Muse With lucky words favour my destin'd Urn, And as he passes turn, And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd. For we were nurst upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill. Together both, ere the high Lawns appear'd Under the opening eye-lids of the morn, We ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... 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 ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... very rare edition. The bust of Moliere occupies the centre, and portraits of the great actor, as Sganarelle and Mascarille (of the "Precieuses Ridicules"), stand on either side. In the second volume are Moliere, and his wife Armande, crowned by the muse Thalia. A catalogue which contains such exact reproductions of rare and authentic portraits, is itself a work of art, and serviceable to the student. When the shop of a bookseller, with a promising catalogue which arrives over night, is not too far distant, bibliophiles have been ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... wistfulness of Pan and 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 the same spell, and he steps aside to be a ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... 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 music combined, which he employed in cultivating ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... he who all thy perils shared, Thine aged sire, of thee bereft, To muse on all thy ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... that to enjoy the tranquil scenery of Laleham, and the sports of the stream that waters its park, we would willingly forego all the cares of state, and leave its plots and counterplots to more ambitious minds. We could sit by the waters of Laleham, and sing with the muse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... good-brother of her own in Aberlady, whose last sickness and demise she was describing at extraordinary length. Sometimes it was merely dull, sometimes both dull and awful, for she talked with unction. The upshot was that I fell in a deep muse, looking forth of the window on the road, and scarce marking what I saw. Presently, had any been looking, they might have seen me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... elicit from other quarters similar contributions; indeed, any memorial of the friend of Charles Lamb must be precious to the Muse. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... least alarmed. Nay—the thought actually irritated me. Strangely enough, the decision of the question as to whether this were a ghost or Rogojin did not, for some reason or other, interest me nearly so much as it ought to have done;—I think I began to muse about something altogether different. For instance, I began to wonder why Rogojin, who had been in dressing—gown and slippers when I saw him at home, had now put on a dress-coat and white waistcoat and tie? I also thought ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... beasts for the entertainment of the multitude, as in former days; and had John Keats, or even poor Henry Kirke White, written and published fifty years later, they would never have perished by the critic's pen. Yet the same malignant assault which crushed their tender muse was the only thing which could amuse the latent powers of a far greater genius; and had not Byron been as cruelly attacked by the Edinburgh, he would never have given 'Childe Harold' to the world. The ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the room? He sat perfectly still, 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 was in ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... that Pan loved Pindar and his verses; and for the Muse's sake, Hesiod and Archilochus were honoured after their deaths; while Sophokles during his life is said, by a legend which remains current at the present day, to have become the friend of Aesculapius, and on his death ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... or did they smile When she crooned to still your cries, She, a muse in human guise, Who forsook her ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... midnight wave; The cheerless moon sinks in the western sky; Reigns breezeless silence!—in her ocean cave The mermaid rests, while her fond lover nigh, Marks the pale star-beams as they fall from high. Gilding with tremulous light her couch of sleep. Why smile incred'lous? the rapt Muse's eye Through earth's dark caves, o'er heaven's fair plains, can sweep, Can range its hidden cell, where toils the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... until he has been 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
... 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 a kisse; The enuious pillow, which did beare her head, Was with it selfe ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... loosed." For 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 ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... 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
... marvellous adventures of John Smith,—so happily and suggestively described as the "fugitive slave" who was "the founder of Virginia." The notes on the credibility and authenticity of the narrations connected with his name are admirable. In reading these two chapters, one must muse upon the wilderness trampings and the ocean perils of the keen-set and all-enduring men who furnished the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... want 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 luncheon I will go home, and will ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit and muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys—a kind of horse—and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged laddies dream, as well as boys in socks. The Standing Stone is in the dyke that separates the ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... 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 the ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... 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, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... 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 with an Austrian ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... which are the hills of Moab. If you have been lucky enough to come up here without a guide or dragoman with a bosom full of ivory-handled revolvers and long knives, you will sit for hours spellbound. The guide tries too hard to give you your money's worth. He will not allow you to muse over these things, which are reasonably real and true, but will tell you the most marvellous stories, which you cannot believe. He will show you the grave of Moses, and I am told that the Scriptures say, "No ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... organizing itself; it maps out its own structure in what may be called a General Introduction. Herein lies a significant difference between it and the Iliad, which has simply an Invocation to the Muse, and then leaps into the thick of the action. The Iliad, accordingly, does not formulate its own organization, which fact has been one cause of the frequent assaults upon its unity. Still the architectonic principle is powerful in the Iliad, though ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... 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, he ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... comers till he met the man now closeted with him. He envied the King his poetic talent, and would fain have outdone him in the art of poesy. But even with Clement Marot's help he had been utterly unable to woo the fickle muse. He had so stored his mind, however, that his sovereign, the brilliant Marguerite de Nevarre, and the master intellect of that age, Rabelais, all delighted in his society; and on account of his ability ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... sit in a corner to muse and write in rhymes that you are all my world. It is heroic to hug one's sorrow and determine not to be consoled. But a fresh face peeps across my door and raises its eyes to my eyes. I cannot but wipe away my tears and change the tune of my ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... vain, an empty one, And shall I rue it ere the day is done? Will hope revive betimes? Or must I stand For evermore outside the fairyland Of thy good will? Alas! my place is here, To muse and moan and sigh and shed my tear, My paltry tear for one who loves me not, And would not mourn for ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... ordinary Pains in her Education," he declares, with the same hasty petulance that characterised that previous outburst in the preface to David Simple, that indeed he "will trouble the World no more with any children of mine by the same Muse." Two months later the Gentleman's Magazine prints a spirited appeal against this resolution. "His fair heroine's nose has in my opinion been too severely handled by some modern critics," [4] writes Criticulus, after a passage of warm ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... old fisherman and his son, who brought supplies of 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 hauntingly on the borders of his imagination, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... would the muse immortal strains inspire, That high beyond all Greek and Roman fame, Might soar to times unborn, ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... in grave council sits the sage; There burns the youth's resistless rage To hurl the quiv'ring lance; The Muse with glory crowns their arms, And Melody exerts her charms, And ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... o'clock in the evening, when the light feet of the happy dancers had already been active for some hour or so in the worship of their favourite muse, that Robinson was standing up with his arm round his fair one's waist, immediately opposite to the door of entrance. His right arm still embraced her slight girdle, whilst with his left hand he wiped the perspiration from his brow. She leaned against him palpitating, for the ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... engraver—a restless, unsettled, capricious man, whose life was nothing but an investigation, a transformation, a perpetual battle with his vast genius. As a young man, when he was already famous as a poet, he abandoned the Muse and entered politics; he emigrated with the stadtholder to England, and gave lessons in London to earn a livelihood. He tired of England and went to Germany; bored by German romanticism, he returned to Holland, where Louis Bonaparte overwhelmed him ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... silence fell upon him 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 between her ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... 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
... 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
... The following 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
... to 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
... 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... in the first part of the so-called story. The rest is moralizing. In the second part, Euphues comes to England with a friend, who falls in love twice, and finally marries; but again there is more moralizing than story. Euphues returns to Athens and retires to the mountains to muse ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... correct performance of airs or metres composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair and heavenly love—the love of Urania the fair and heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those who are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and of preserving their love; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must be used with circumspection that the pleasure ...
— Symposium • Plato
... "Muse! prophetess! you speak aright," said the high-spirited Cardinal, with unwonted energy; "and your voice is like that of the Fame I dreamed of in my youth. Speak on, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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
... we went, One first, the other following his steps, As minor friars journeying on their road. The present fray had turn'd my thoughts to muse Upon old Aesop's fable, where he told What fate unto the mouse and frog befell. For language hath not sounds more like in sense, Than are these chances, if the origin And end of each be heedfully compar'd. And as one thought bursts from another forth, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... 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 with ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... supposed was what they called armour. And there was another called The Arabian Knights, a close-printed thing difficult to read by the winter fire, full of wilder doings than any she could imagine for herself; but beautiful, too, and delicious to muse over, though Tom, when she read a chapter to him, had condemned it as a pack of lies.... Clearly there was a world somewhere, perhaps outside America altogether, far more wonderful than even the magnificence ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... sire; your majesty has graciously permitted me to enter the lists as knight and champion of German literature, and sometimes to defend the German Muse, who stands unnoticed and unknown under the shadow of your throne; while the French lady, with her brilliant attire and painted cheeks, is always welcomed. I beg your majesty to believe that, although this romance may have done some harm, it has, on ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the prefect allowed to proceed to their arrest. Michael and Constantine were then dragged by the feet as far as the Sigma, above S. Mary Peribleptos (Soulou Monastir), and after having their eyes burnt out were banished to different monasteries, to muse on the vanity of human greatness ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against shadows. Swinburne's polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was trying to stem. As for Swinburne's hydrocephalic muse, I do not think Whitman took any interest in it from ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... 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
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... so cheerful and gay, Whose words ever fulsomely fall, Oh, pity your friend, who to-day Has become a Society's thrall. Allow me to muse and to sigh, Nor talk of the change that ye find; None once was more happy than I; But, alas! I've ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... 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 ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... course, 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. But perhaps ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... be his days in quiet spent: Here let him meditate the Muse: Baronial Halls were only meant ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... have him alone, at peace with himself and the world; happy in the contemplation of his beloved muse; jotting down, now and then, the brilliant ideas that flash through his teeming brain; and munching in solitude his homely meal of bread and cheese. In telling us he laid his bread and cheese upon the shelf, he at once shows he had left his parental abode, and the ministering ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... the sun, because their sweet, inexhaustible converse came to an end? Had they shared the happiness of ameliorating Count Tristan's melancholy state, and seeing him daily improve? And now it was all over: she must resume her old course of life, her temporarily laid aside labors! To muse too long upon departed happiness would unfit her for those. Even the sad joy of ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... successful. I cannot, for instance, enjoy the finest kinds of poetry when I 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
... maturer taste of the poet, The Miller's Daughter was greatly altered before 1842. It is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of Tennyson's domestic English idylls, poems with conspicuous beauties, but not without sacrifices to that Muse of the home affections on whom Sir Barnes Newcome delivered his famous lecture. The seventh stanza perhaps hardly deserved to be altered, as it is, so as to bring in "minnows" where "fish" had been the reading, and where "trout" would best recall an English chalk stream. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... 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 New for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... the temples meet for the lonely muse, fit habitations for the poet's rich imaginings! not as they are most glorious in their natural scenery—whether the youthful May is covering their rugged brows with the bright tender verdure of the tasseled larch, and the yet brighter ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... severed by leagues and years, Bring cradles into touch with biers; So that the far-off Consequence appear Prompt at the heel of foregone Cause.— The PRIME, that willed ere wareness was, Whose Brain perchance is Space, whose Thought its laws, Which we as threads and streams discern, We may but muse on, never learn. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... a letter to the editor, Who thank'd me duly by return of post— I'm for a handsome article his creditor; Yet if my gentle Muse he please to roast, And break a promise after having made it her, Denying the receipt of what it cost, And smear his page with gall instead of honey, All I can say ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... All these scruples are late; and, 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 ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... in the island Master Benoist was faithful, the muse that presides over this history declines to reveal: perhaps he was an impartial traitor to both. It became presently clear that, in any case, his lameness was little more than a feint. During that same night he made a rope ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... 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 upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... against Napoleon Bonaparte. Again and again he invoked the Muse against the world conqueror. Thus he wrote to Landor in 1814: "For five years I have been preaching the policy, the duty, the necessity of declaring Bonaparte under the ban of human nature." Under this stress of feeling he wrote his great ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Oh! Muse, thine aid afford to me, Inspire my Ideality; Thou who, benign, in days of yore, Didst heavenly inspiration pour On him, who luckily for us Sang Propria Quae Maribus; Teach me to sound on quiv'ring lyre, Prosodial strains in notes of fire; Words' ends shall be my theme ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... 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 Ever comely, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of mourning! aptly art thou named, For thou hast been the cause of many a tear; For deeds of treacherous strife too justly famed, The Atlantic's charnel—desolate and drear; A thing none love, though wand'ring thousands fear— If for a moment rest the Muse's wing Where through the waves thy sandy wastes appear, 'Tis that she may one strain of horror sing, Wild as the dashing waves that ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... 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'; a pitchy burning brand, known and seen as such by all who witnessed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fell into a muse. Her question recurred to her; but it was hardly likely, she felt, that her little companion could enlighten her. Nora was a bright, lively, spirited child, with black eyes and waves of beautiful black hair; neither at rest; sportive energy and enjoyment ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... when I am drawing," he said, and his slate was often so filled with designs, that the sums were jostled into the narrowest possible space, while his Latin grammar was similarly adorned. There sat the Muse in full beauty, enthroned upon Parnassus, close to musa musae; magister had a wig, and dominus a great rod; while the extraordinary physiognomies round facies faciei would have been worthy of any collection of caricatures. Moreover the illustrations of the verb amo ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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 ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... objects that occasionally 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
... 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
... returned to the skeleton. They separated unwillingly, each thinking only of the other's safety and comfort. The girl knew she was not wanted because the man wished to spare her some unpleasant experience. She obeyed him with a sigh, and sat down, not to sleep, but to muse, as girls will, round-eyed, wistful, with the angelic fantasy of youth ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... gone, and every thing now looked gloomy and black. Now no more felicitation or congratulation, on account of the rapid sales of the public lands; no more of this most decisive proof of national prosperity and happiness. The executive Muse takes up a melancholy strain. She sings of monopolies, of speculation, of worthless paper, of loss both of land and money, of the multiplication of banks, and the danger of paper issues; and the end of the canto, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... advice, they did leave her alone to muse over her ambitious hopes and desires, whilst they, contented and happy with their lowly fate, opened their buds to the bright sunshine, which beams alike upon ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... 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 in a common grave. The story of his life I bid you tell As it was ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... tops are rare!— OUR tops are spun with coils of care, Our DUMPS are no delight!— The Elgin marbles are but tame, And 'tis at best a sorry game To fly the Muse's kite! ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... first part of his famous "Reisebilder." Heine's lyrics, by their unwonted grace and sprightliness, captivated German readers. Some of his songs, like that of the "Lorelei" or "Thou Art Like a Flower," soon became German folksongs. More characteristic, perhaps, of Heine's light muse ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... gleams the youth's bright falchion: there the muse Lifts her sweet voice: there awful Justice opes ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... in the alferez's house closed? Where was the masculine face and the flannel shirt of the Medusa or Muse of the Civil Guard while the procession was passing? Could she have understood how unpleasant was the sight of the swelling veins of her forehead, filled, it seemed, not with blood but with vinegar and bile; of her large cigar, that worthy ornament of her red ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... I have piped erst so long with pain That all mine oaten reeds been rent and wore, And my poor Muse hath spent her spared store, Yet little good hath got, and much less gain. Such pleasaunce makes the grasshopper so poor, And ligge so layd[115] when winter doth her strain. The dapper ditties that I wont devise, To feed youth's fancy, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... visit to the Library and Museum, where we gaze enthralled at the original pair of pigeon-blue trousers with which Mr. Bookham Pryce made his sensational debut on the Lincoln course in the spring of 1894. We might linger here a moment to muse over the simple beginnings of great men, but time is pressing and we are all agog ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... sparkle like diamonds of the purest water. The student was in raptures, and after a brief survey of the garden, he cast a longing eye upon the woods which he so much wished to penetrate. On he walked, stopping occasionally to muse on the enchanting scene around him, when all at once he espied, on the lofty branches of an ash, a cuckoo! At the sight of this splendid bird, our Parisian sportsman felt his heart pit-a-pat and jump like a girl's ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Margaret and Grant were thrown together daily in the drab little house by the river. Now a boy and a girl thrown together commonly make the speaking donkeys of comedy. Yet one never may be sure that they may not be the dumb struggling creatures of the tragic muse. Heaven knows Margaret Mueller was funny enough in her capers. For she related her antics—her grand pouts, her elaborate condescensions, her crass coquetry and her hidings and seekings—into what she called a "case." In the only wisdom she knew, to open ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... 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
... in the regular 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 complete ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... 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 franais parlait grec ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... to ask my friend whether he thought it expressed a more wild calamity to shoot a Dean or to be a Dean. But he only turned up his coat collar, and I felt that for him the muse had folded her ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 blisful Seat, Sing Heavenly Muse— ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to follow in all its details the famous match of which I was that day spectator. My muse has other things to sing of besides rallies and charges, scrimmages and drop kicks, touch-downs and passings. To me the game was chiefly interesting as it was interesting to Jim Halliday and Charlie Newcome; but as during ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... on "fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," and 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 ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... all men' may be a glorious motto, yet when we view these crimes (and the carved initials which deface so many of our most sacred monuments) we cannot but muse that there are many who should never be free—at least from the restraint of discipline. 'None can love freedom heartily, but good men: the rest ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... she announced. "That is all there is left in life for me, now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me. In school I can look at her and muse over ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home 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 ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... gained by it. His rhyming jests, his quatrains, couplets, acrostics, epigrams, and songs, which were sometimes rather risky, though they had a certain coarsely witty quality, were often quoted. He was wont to sing the mysteries of digestion: the Muse of the Loire districts is fain to blow her trumpet like the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... get beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her - but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There is here ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was not the only rival with whom Conde had to contend for the favours of that beauty for whom Louis XIV. in his boyish amusements had shown a preference, and which has furnished a theme for some agreeable trifling to the sparkling muse of Benserade. An abbe, named Cambiac, in the service of the house of Conde, balanced for some time the passion to which Nemours had given birth in the bosom of the Duchess de Chatillon, and the jealousy of Nemours failed ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... 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
... musing—as such a day makes one muse. I was thinking, Mrs. Barclay, what use I could ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... 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 of the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of old, Seeking from clamour of arms in the Past and the Arts to be hidden, Vainly 'mid Arts and the Past seeking one life to forget? Ah, fair shadow, scarce seen, go forth! for anon he shall follow,— He that beheld thee, anon, whither thou leadest must go! Go, and the wise, loving Muse, she also will follow and find thee! She, should she linger in Rome, were not ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... appeared to muse, and no one disturbed him in the minutes of silence that followed. Finally he looked away ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... sublime in spite of themselves. And I do not find that all this is done in the ages of barbarism alone; it is still going on, and it molds the history of yesterday to the taste of public opinion—a Muse tyrannical and capricious, which preserves the general purport and ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... displays in some of his transitions, pass to very different things, for some time back a well-known English poet and essayist wrote of the present work that it was redolent of pork, onions, and cheese. To one of his sensitive temperament, with a muse strictly nourished on sugar and water, such gross edibles as pork and cheese and onions were peculiarly offensive. That humble plant the onion, employed to flavour wellnigh every savoury dish, can assuredly need no defence; in most European countries, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... them to fire and sword; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You gentlemen of England, who live at home at ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Somerset began to muse on the probability or otherwise of the backsliding Baptist and this young lady resulting in one and the same person; and almost without knowing it he found himself deeply hoping for such a unity. The object of his inspection ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... again alone to muse bitterly upon our plight. Still I scanned the street, hoping for a sight of Cousin Egbert, who, I fancied, would be informed as to the wretched details. Instead, now, I saw the Honourable George. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... laughter heard is of a character to render laughter frightful to the ears of men throughout the remainder of their days. But if in these festival hours under the beam of Hecate they are uncontrollable by the Comic Muse, she will not flatter them with her presence during the course of their insane and impious hilarities, whereof a description would out-Brocken Brockens and make Graymalkin and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... months from that date the poem was seven times reissued. This happened without the sanction or the supervision of the luckless author; and from the sale of the book he obtained no profit. Leonora d'Este died upon February 10, 1581. A volume of elegies appeared on this occasion; but Tasso's Muse uttered no sound.[54] He wrote to Panigarola that 'a certain tacit repugnance of his genius' forced him to be mute.[55] His rival Guarini undertook a revised edition of his lyrics in 1582. Tasso ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... maintained against all comers till he met the man now closeted with him. He envied the King his poetic talent, and would fain have outdone him in the art of poesy. But even with Clement Marot's help he had been utterly unable to woo the fickle muse. He had so stored his mind, however, that his sovereign, the brilliant Marguerite de Nevarre, and the master intellect of that age, Rabelais, all delighted in his society; and on account of his ability in so many directions, and his evident ambition, ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... government united, to redress the faults that 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... see you again at Dresden, I will tell you all about it; for I cannot do it justice in writing. How much I am indebted to you for your magnificent poem! I embrace you with the sincerest emotion, returning to your muse the laurels I owe her. God grant that you may be happy. Love him who loves you with ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... 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 its important ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction a very commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems now—we mean it only as against the poets then. There is a growing desire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless, sincere and although very learned, still learned without art. No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are so. With ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... o'er good King Magnus' bier, The people's tears, were all sincere: Even they to whom he riches gave Carried him heavily to the grave. All hearts were struck at the king's end; His house-thralls wept as for a friend; His court-men oft alone would muse, As pondering o'er ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... long while together; and coming to a place where he thought he heard a great company of fierce opponents (as it were a numerous and influential Deputation, or a prodigious Procession) coming forward to meet him, he stopped, and began to muse what he had best to do. Sometimes he had half a thought to go back; then again he thought he might be half-way through the Valley. He remembered, also, how he had already vanquished many a danger, and that the peril of going back might be much more than to go forward. So he resolved to go ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... gift, which Achilles obtained, and Alexander envied, of a poet worthy to celebrate the actions of heroes has been enjoyed by Stilicho, in a much higher degree than might have been expected from the declining state of genius, and of art. The muse of Claudian, [17] devoted to his service, was always prepared to stigmatize his adversaries, Rufinus, or Eutropius, with eternal infamy; or to paint, in the most splendid colors, the victories and virtues ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... liberal 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 Mobs ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... deep-set eyes, and stern, gloomy gaze, was an entirely different person from the gay enthusiastic follower of art, for whom her awakening heart had first throbbed more quickly; this was not the future master, who stood before her mind as a glorious favorite of fortune and the muse, transfigured by joyous creation and lofty success—this defiant giant did not look like an artist. No, no; yonder man no longer resembled the Ulrich, to whom, in the happiest hour of her life, she had so willingly, almost too willingly, offered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and cooking his own game, noting in his diary soils, minerals, and locations, and making maps which are models of nice and accurate draughtsmanship; the incipient soldier, studying tactics under Adjutant Muse, and taking lessons in broadsword fence from the old soldier of fortune, Jacob Van Braam; the major and adjutant-general of the Virginia frontier forces at nineteen:—we seem to see him yet as here he ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... left alone, turned the book several times in his hand with a doubting air, then placing it at a little distance before him, leaned his head on his elbow, and began to muse. ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... 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 ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... 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, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... claim; His virtues pass'd from Earth to Heaven, Yet still exist in deathless fame;— His pencil to thy pen assign'd To charm, instruct, and grace mankind!— And Oh! could but my humble strains To thy impressive skill aspire, The Muse that faintly now sustains Thy worth, would make poetic fire, And glowing high, with fervid name, Would graft her honors on ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... comprehended in nine books, to each of which is prefixed the name of a Muse; the first is called Clio, the second Euterpe, and so on. A modern poet, I have been told, the ingenious Mr. Aaron Hill, improved upon this thought, and christened (if we may properly so call it), not his books, but his daughters ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... you staid thus long? Young Crackby and his friend are newly up And have bin with us. My sister has had The modest bout with them: 'tis such a wench. Are you a sleepe? why doe you not looke up? What muse you on? ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... exactitude in the Elder Edda. Indeed only a travesty of the faith of our ancestors has been preserved in Norse literature. The early poet loved allegory, and his imagination rioted among the conceptions of his fertile muse. "His eye was fixed on the mountains till the snowy peaks assumed human features and the giant of the rock or the ice descended with heavy tread; or he would gaze at the splendour of the spring, or of the summer fields, till Freya with the gleaming necklace stepped ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... cheerfully engaged myself to provide the Duke of Cornwall's with a play to succeed it. At the moment of signing the contract my bosom's lord had sat lightly on its throne, for I felt my head to be humming with ideas. But affluence, or the air of the Cromwell Road, seemed uncongenial to the Muse. ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... those who would set artists in the way they should go. In this essay he gives them a piece of his mind, and he does it so well and so gaily that it is a pleasure to be scolded. First, he has a few words with "une dame, que Gerome fit heritiere de ses uniformes et qui devint la muse d'un geometre-arpenteur de certaine recente ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... limited knack for improvisation; and he had once sketched out, rather haltingly, a few simple songs. Yet, all the same, another reservoir, one of uncertain depth and capacity, was opening up for him at an age when opening-up was the continuing and dominating feature of one's days—a muse was stirring the vibrant air about him; and I gathered, after two or three certain visits to his house, that he had embarked on some composition or other of an ambitious and comprehensive nature: a cantata, possibly, or even some higher flight. As he had never domesticated musical ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... very faithfuly answering their authours intent. Others haue also written with much facillitie, but more commendably perchance if they had not written so much nor so popularly. But last in recitall and first in degree is the Queene our soueraigne Lady, whose learned, delicate, noble Muse, easily surmounteth all the rest that haue written before her time or since, for sence, sweetnesse and subtillitie, be it in Ode, Elegie, Epigram, or any other kinde of poeme Heroick or Lyricke, wherein it shall please her Maiestie to employ her penne, euen by as much ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... 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 to conduct His ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... bent with age, feebly tugging at a pair of oars. Trailing behind the crazy boat, another figure might be distinguished—I forbear further description, Margaret: I may grow old, but not you; please stay as you are always. Anyhow, the people will flock to the shore. Ha! the Muse! the afflatus descends. ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... sail'st who sailed with me, Though now thou climbest loftier mounts, And fairer rivers dost ascend, Be thou my Muse, my Brother—. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... 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 sunshine of those departed days. I rejoice to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... I was obliged to lop away from the bulk of the following poem just sufficient for their requirements. I have always declaimed, from a physical point of view, against the pernicious influence of light-lacing, and this being so, it was not likely I could go at once and mentally encase my delicate muse, for a permanency, in a straight waistcoat, at the behest of any committee in the world. What would she have thought of me? If, therefore, the committee, or any member of it, should by chance observe that the "Death of Saul," as I now produce it, is of a more comprehensive ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... 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
... tell me of the prodigious activity of your Muse obliges me to make a somewhat shameful acknowledgment of my relative slowness and idleness. The pupil is far from the master in this as in other points. Nevertheless I think I have made a better use of the last three years ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... conversant with the poetry of nature, or of man's condition in this stage of suffering—the duties of an arduous profession are exclusive of those dreamy moods of the mind, which have little in common with the doings of every-day life; yet, on this occasion, I felt all the inspiration of the sad muse; and, were I to endeavour to account for it, I could only seek for the cause in the aspect of the night, and the unusual nature of the vocation, operating, at the moment, on a mind loosened from the cares of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... at experience, old Time's fruit, hateful to the palate of youth! for which season only hath it any nourishment! Experience! You know Coleridge's capital simile?—Mournful you call it? Well! all wisdom is mournful. 'Tis therefore, coz, that the wise do love the Comic Muse. Their own high food would kill them. You shall find great poets, rare philosophers, night after night on the broad grin before a row of yellow lights and mouthing masks. Why? Because all's dark ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... perfectly still, 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 ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... friend, a kinder friend has no man: Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; Left him, to muse on the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... burial of Patroclus, and under the helmet of Marcus Livius Stolo, the military tribune who fights with the Istrians, lurks none other than the Homeric Ajax; the reader is not even spared the Homeric invocation of the Muse. The epic machinery is fully set agoing; after the battle of Cannae, for instance, Juno in a full council of the gods pardons the Romans, and Jupiter after obtaining the consent of his wife promises them a final victory over the Carthaginians. Nor do the "Annals" fail to betray the neological ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... but, like the College Tribe, Take not that Physick which their Rules prescribe. I scorn to praise a plodding, formal Fool, Insipidly correct, and dull by Rule: Homer, with all his Nodding, I would chuse, Before the more exact Sicilian Muse. Who'd not be Dryden; tho' his Faults are great, Sooner than our Laborious Laureat? Not but a decent Neatness, I confess, In Writing is requir'd, as well as Dress. Yet still in both the unaffected Air Will always please the ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... 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 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sound no other sound can tame; Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, Thou art the path of that unresting sound— Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange 35 To muse on my own separate fantasy, My own, my human mind, which passively Now renders and receives fast influencings, Holding an unremitting interchange With the clear universe of things around; 40 One legion of wild thoughts, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... learn astronomy, and preferred to take his science on faith. In the curious lines called "L'Envoy de Chaucer a Scogan," the poet, while blaming his friend for his want of perseverance in a love-suit, classes himself among "them that be hoar and round of shape," and speaks of himself and his Muse as out of date and rusty. But there seems no sufficient reason for removing the date of the composition of these lines to an earlier year than 1393; and poets as well as other men since Chaucer have spoken of themselves as old and ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... keep the ball going smartly in all sorts of ways, till it gets dark, and a great drought falls upon the members of the conversazione. Then, if the mermaids are anywhere near us, they may smell the fragrant fumes which tell of sacrifice to Bacchus, and may hear, shortly afterwards, the muse of song invoked by cheerful topers. Thus the dark hours roll on jovial till the soft influences of sleep descend upon the tuneful choir, and the cabin receives its lodgers ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... of rattling rhymes, London hath changed with process of the times. Aurora now may "throw her faire Fresh-quilted colours through the aire," But our conditions atmospheric Are not as in the days of HERRICK. Nathless the Muse to-day may see Flora at urban revelry. See how the goddess trippeth from the West, Fragrant, though something fashionably drest; The Season waketh at her tread, Art lifteth a long-drooping head; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk. But since I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing when their ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Record, O Muse! and let the record stand, That, when Bellona ravaged half the land, When even these groves, from bloody fields afar, Oft shook and shuddered at the sounds of war, When the drum drowned the music of the flail, And midnight marches broke the peace of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for what? Thorpe, as this question put itself in his mind, halted before a shop-window full of soft-hued silk fabrics, to muse upon an answer. The delicate tints and surfaces of what was before his eyes seemed somehow to connect themselves with the subject. Plowden himself was delicately-tinted and refined of texture. Vindictiveness was too plain and coarse an emotion ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... 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 ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... 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, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... in sight of the promontory of Sunium, where the Greek Muse, in an awful vision, came to me, and said in a patronising way, "Why, my dear" (she always, the old spinster, adopts this high and mighty tone)—"Why, my dear, are you not charmed to be in this famous neighbourhood, in this land of poets ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the 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 virtue ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... brought him to the Goldenes Dachl. He forgot his hunger and his pain, seeing the sun shine on all that gold and the curious painted galleries under it. He thought it was real, solid gold. Real gold laid out on a house-roof, and the people all so poor! Findelkind began to muse, and wonder why everybody did not climb up there and take a tile off and be rich. But perhaps it would be wicked. Perhaps God put the roof there with all that gold to prove people. Findelkind got bewildered. If God did such a thing, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... raised a 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
... Tree of which I fain would sing, If the kind Muse her Aid would bring, Is Arbor Vitae; but in brief, By ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... lead-poisoning. There was no indication of his profession in the attire of Mr. Tabor, unless the too apparent age of his black felt hat and a neat patch at the elbow of his shiny, old brown overcoat might have been taken as symbols of the sacrifice to his muse which his life had been. He was not a constant attendant of the conclave, and when he came it was usually to listen; indeed, he spoke so seldom that at the sound of his voice they all turned to him ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Pity weeps, Bewailing still her favourite's fate; And thence the Muse invokes her aid Of ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... exquisite perfection to which this branch was also brought. It is a painting in encaustic, and has been used as a door for his oven by the contadino who dug it up—yet it remains a marvel of genius. The subject is a female head—a muse, or perhaps only a portrait; the delicacy and mellowness of the flesh tints equal those of Raphael or Leonardo, and a lock of hair lying across her breast is so exquisitely painted that it seems to move with her breath. The features are of the large-eyed regular ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... 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 seen and heard, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Utopian-dreaming gentry what, after they had secured for their world all the electricity 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 then reply, ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... de The Firm of Nucingen Father Goriot Pierrette Cesar Birotteau A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a Princess A Man of Business Cousin Betty The Muse of the Department The ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... was coming along I was musing with myself," said Standfast. You understand what it is to come along musing with yourself, do you not, my brethren? "I will muse on the work of Thy hands," says the Psalmist. And again, "While I was musing the fire burned." Well, Standfast was much given to musing, just as David was. Each several pilgrim has his own way of occupying himself on the road; but Standfast ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... but was not. If anybody is to blame, it is the recent writers, who do know the facts, but are unwilling to hurt so fine an heroic figure or to dethrone "one of the demigods of the liberal mythology." Enough to say that the Muse of History has been guilty of one of those practical jokes to which she is too much addicted, in dressing with tragic buskins and muffling in the cloak of a hero of melodrama, and so palming off for earnest on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... indignation, thought he had discovered a celebrated brother of the lyre appropriating his ewe lamb in a flagrant plagiarism. There was at least one man who had the opportunity of being acquainted with the productions of his unappreciated muse—the printer. To him, accordingly, he appealed for confirmation of his suspicions, demanding if he did not see in the two productions a similarity that in some places even approached identity. The referee turned over page after page with the scrupulous attention of one whose acuteness ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... 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 music combined, which he employed in cultivating ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Juvenal, but, had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give utterance to the grandest conceptions with all that sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the Grecian Muse rolls ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... pleased with themselves, Clara swallowed her chagrin, and more happily accepted their homage when Sir Henry toasted her as the presiding Muse of the Imperium. ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... bluntly, for 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
... they did leave her alone to muse over her ambitious hopes and desires, whilst they, contented and happy with their lowly fate, opened their buds to the bright sunshine, which beams alike upon the high ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... 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 many ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... 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
... Only musing—as such a day makes one muse. I was thinking, Mrs. Barclay, what use I could make ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... 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 ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... ground out daily by the publishing mills for the gallery-gods. It is to France that we must look for the classic novel dealing with painters and their painting, Manette Salomon, by Goncourt. Henry James has written several delightful tales, such as The Liar, The Real Thing, The Tragic Muse, in which artists appear. But it is the particular psychological problem involved rather than theories of art or personalities that steer Mr. James's cunning pen. We all remember the woman who destroyed a portrait of her husband which seemed to reveal his moral ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... 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
... sewynge / or other handewerkes doynge / ye may make your bodyes dayly wery & crucyfyed. And therby make your spyrytes the more quycke and apte to the seruyce of our lorde in confusyon of your enemye and encreace of glorye. Beware to be Inquysytyf / or to muse on hyghe maters and subtyll. And leue them to worldely people / and to clerkes / for otymes the letter may hurte you Thynke euer [that] ye had leuer dye than ones to passe the clausures or bodes of your monasterye. Yf ye haue ...
— A Ryght Profytable Treatyse Compendiously Drawen Out Of Many and Dyvers Wrytynges Of Holy Men • Thomas Betson
... graceful boat and skimmed easily over the water. Now it was my time to wonder and to muse over the changes that had come—to dream as I looked at her, as she sat, trailing her hand in the water, her hand, my hand, though she had not let me take it to help her into the boat. With her a swamp would have been attractive, but here we were in a paradise. ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... "divine art" with all kinds of routine ordinances, and regulated the length of lines and number of syllables which each "poem" (?) should contain, so magisterially that they reduced it to a mathematical precision, and might class it among the "exact sciences." Before this august tribunal the muse of Sachs appeared, his poem was read, its lines were measured, its syllables counted, and he was admitted to the honour of being an acknowledged master of song. From that hour till his death, he cobbled and sang to the wonderful amusement of the good citizens; and when seventy-seven years ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... 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
... Walters own day and generation he had one considerable imitator in Galt, whose 'Andrew Wylie of that Ilk' and 'The Entail' can still afford pleasure to the reader. Then for a time the fiction of Scottish character went moribund. The prose Muse of the North was silent, or spoke in ineffectual accents. After a long interregnum came George Macdonald, unconsciously paving the way for the mob of northern gentlemen who now write with ease. He brought to his ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... as there would be in praising the ten thousand and one stanzas written by that wonderful and very eccentric bard, Richard Yeadon, who has sung of so many springs and watering places as to dry up his own muse. He is likewise something of a dabbler at reviewing novels, but they must be largely sprinkled with murders, and have plots strong enough to carry anything but the clergy. All other critics are to him great bores; but, like them, he has a price for his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... your majesty has graciously permitted me to enter the lists as knight and champion of German literature, and sometimes to defend the German Muse, who stands unnoticed and unknown under the shadow of your throne; while the French lady, with her brilliant attire and painted cheeks, is always welcomed. I beg your majesty to believe that, although ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... began lazily to turn the pages, smiling to himself the while at the paradoxes of life. Here, for an hour, he sat under the limes, drunk with summer breezes and scents, toying with a book, as though he were some "indolent irresponsible reviewer"—some college fellow in vacation—some wooer of an idle muse. Yet dusk that evening would find him once more in the Babel of London. And before him lay the most strenuous, and, as he hoped, the most fruitful passage of his political life. Broadstone, too, was an old man; the Premiership itself could ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... doctor, theologian, antiquary, jurisconsult, designer, engraver—a restless, unsettled, capricious man, whose life was nothing but an investigation, a transformation, a perpetual battle with his vast genius. As a young man, when he was already famous as a poet, he abandoned the Muse and entered politics; he emigrated with the stadtholder to England, and gave lessons in London to earn a livelihood. He tired of England and went to Germany; bored by German romanticism, he returned to Holland, where Louis Bonaparte overwhelmed him with favors. When Louis left the throne, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... flame of chivalry burn brighter, than in those of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem? Not a name meets thee, that has not belonged to a hero! If thou grievest to find all dissimilar but the name; yet mayest thou still muse, contemplative, over the tomb and ashes of him, whom thy mind has shadowed forth, as a noble light ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... adventurous and erratic career and became a domestic and useful member of that little commonwealth, under the watchful influence of the dark-eyed maid of the Loire or of the Seine. Infinite are the chords of the lyre which delights the romantic muse; and these incidents, small and humble as they are, appear to me to be imbued with an indescribable charm, which appeals to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... between them as escort. Reginald hovered on the 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, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... of 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. He is a complete Personality, with an unusually ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... happy child, the worst of them an amusement rather than a grief to the onlookers; a world that scarcely needed hope in its eager life of adventure and love, amidst the sunlit blossoming meadows, and green woods, and white begilded manor-houses. A kindly and human muse is Chaucer's, nevertheless, interested in and amused by all life, but of her very nature devoid of strong aspirations for the future; and that all the more, since, though the strong devotion and fierce piety of the ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... Vienna, I felt the plot breaking out on me, very much as the measles do, at a most inopportune time for everybody concerned, and my secretary, more wide-awake than you'd imagine by looking at him, urged me to coddle the muse while she was willing and not to put her off till an evil day, as frequently I am in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory). They presided over song, and prompted the memory. They were nine in number, to each of whom was assigned the presidence over some particular department of literature, art, or science. Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, Clio of history, Euterpe of lyric poetry, Melpomene of tragedy, Terpsichore of choral dance and song, Erato of love poetry, Polyhymnia of sacred poetry, Urania of astronomy, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Muideartach, and the lamented Sir James Macdonald 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. Her chief, The M'Leod, was the grand theme of her inspiration. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... like a dream, is dreamt the recollection of human things already changed and ever changing. The remembrance of the interesting country through which I have been travelling shall abide by me always; for, encouraged by the desire to speak and muse, as I do now, of the hardy, freely happy, and contented sons of its mountains, I first learned that no greater blessing could be granted than a life of honourable industry, and that, pine who might beneath the infliction of mental or bodily exertion, I had known the exalted destiny ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... a gentler and more humane type; and after giving a long 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 ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... 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 ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... this Cara knew nothing; yet she could not help seeing that her husband was troubled, and this caused her to muse on what she had done with increasing uneasiness. She no longer took any pleasure in the thoughts of new parlour carpets. But it was too late, now, to retrace her steps of error. The carpets were already in the hands ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... thought I held, And yet all thro' it The wires all England over shrill'd, And I never knew it! In a high muse I nurst my news All the forenoon, While England braced her limbs and ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... tender, and the natural sublime from affectation and fustian. "To this," he said, "I am convinced that I owe much of my critic craft, such as it is." His mother, too, unconsciously led him in the ways of the muse: she loved to recite or sing to him a strange, but clever ballad, called "the Life and Age of Man:" this strain of piety and imagination was in his mind when he wrote ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of 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 ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... too, and saw little beside fifty fog-blinded tourists, five-and-twenty dripping ponies, and five hundred empty porter-bottles; wherefrom they returned, as do many, disgusted, and with great colds in their heads. But most they loved to scramble up the crags of Dinas Emrys, and muse over the ruins of the old tower, "where Merlin taught Vortigern the courses of the stars;" till the stars set and rose as they had done for Merlin and his pupil, behind the four great peaks of Aran, Siabod, Cnicht, and Hebog, which point ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... if you are in Rome, in summer, when the scirocco blows, you will feel as if convalescent from some debilitating fever; in winter, however, this gentle-breathing south-east wind will act more mildly; it will woo you to the country, induce you to sit down in a shady place, smoke, and 'muse.' That incarnate essence of enterprise, business, industry, economy, sharpness, shrewdness, and keenness—that Prometheus whose liver was torn by the vulture of cent per cent—eternally tossing, restless DOOLITTLE, was one day seen asleep, during bank hours, on a seat in the Villa ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... alone 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 ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... wind-lute's airy strains Your gentle muse has learned to sing, And California's boundless plains Prolong ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... would I woo the joys of Quiet, I see no more the country's riot, But the comparatively still Environment of Ludgate Hill. There, 'mongst the pigeons of St. Paul's, I muse melodious madrigals, Or loiter where the waters sport 'Mid the cool joys of Fountain Court, Where, undisturbed by sharp "Pip, pip!" My nimble numbers lightly trip, And country peace I find again In Chancery ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... which Carlo filled out with his harp, she again put her hand into the urn and drew out a new theme; again the inspiration seemed to pass over her, and the holy Whitsuntide of her muse to be renewed. Constantly more and more stormily resounded the plaudits of her hearers; it was like a continued thunder of enthusiasm, a real salvo of joy. It animated Corilla to new improvisations; she again and again recurred to the urn, drawing forth new themes, and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... 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 by such a comment ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the monarch-murder'd soldier's tomb You wove th' unfinish'd wreath of saddest hues; And to that holier chaplet added bloom, Besprinkling it with Jordan's cleansing dews. But lo! your Henderson awakes the Muse— His spirit beckon'd from the mountain's height! You left the plain, and soar'd mid richer views. So Nature mourn'd, when sank the first day's light, With stars, unseen before, spangling her ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... 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 Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... know, you want 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 ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... vigorous and queenly to adorn her, rich with the spoils of victories not all bought with battle-axe and sword, stately with a pride that had won its just and inalienable majesty from elastic centuries of progress and culture, History, the muse to whom fewest songs were sung, yet whose march was music's sublimest voice, trembled upon the brink of the Dark Ages, and leaped, in her armor, into the abyss of ignorance before her. A poetry the purest, an art the noblest, a religion deeply symbolical, a freedom bold ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the cold dew of heaven Lay on the humbler graves around, what time The pale moon gazed upon the turfy mounds, Pensive, as though like me, in lonely muse, Twere brooding on the dead inhumed beneath. There while with him, the holy man of Uz, O'er human destiny I sympathised, Counting the long, long periods prophecy Decrees to roll, ere the great day arrives Of resurrection, oft the blue-eyed Spring Had ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... nothing like verse to clear the mind, heat the blood, and make very humble the heart. Rouse thee, Muse! ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... 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 for declining to praise some of his verses. Conscious, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... memory to our grandfathers and grandmothers—we are writing of those personages—glided on the air from coral lips, and made the spring more bright; and many gallant hearts were there enslaved, and sighed whenever they heard sung again those joyous or sad ditties of the Scottish muse. ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... 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? The reason that the poetry of wine is unknown ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... 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
... moost 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 and ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... must leave the parties most concerned in the events of our brief story—Richard Lawson to fill up the term of his imprisonment in the penitentiary; and Mr. Acres to muse, in painful abstraction, over the ruin his thoughtlessness had wrought—the ruin of an immortal soul—the corruption of a fellow creature, born to become an angel of heaven, but changed by his agency into a fit subject for the abodes of evil ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... his head, and thought 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 ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... "I will now read you my Five Act Tragedy entitled——" "Hang your tragedies!" will the Manager exclaim, "Give me a farce like 'Dr. Bill,' my boy!" And once more will the poet put his pride and his tragedy in one pocket, and all the money which the Comic Muse will give him in the other. I back the argumentum ad pocketum ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... and sheltered by various dishes with spirit-lamps burning beneath 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 his mother's attention ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... ivy-grown church is inscribed to the memory of his mother, ob. 1637. At Horton were composed, or inspired, Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus and others of his nominally minor but really sweetest and most enjoyable poems. In this retirement the Muse paid him her earliest visits, before he had thrown himself away on politics or Canaanitish mythology. Peeping in upon his handsome young face in its golden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Newton and Bacon. This extraordinary subject had even when at school, engaged the greater part of my thoughts. Often have I left my fellows at play, and stolen to some distant part of the churchyard, to muse and commune with myself, not without a boyish hope that some kind tenant of the tomb would reveal to me his mighty secret. Void of fear, I have implored the presence of spirits under the cloud of night. The feeling that filled my mind was an enthusiasm, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... work there. If I get this Lady As ten to one I shall, I was ne're denied yet, I will live wondrous honestly; walk before her Gravely and demurely And then instruct my family; you are sad, What do you muse ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... 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
... soon your ill-placed confidence repay, Commence your lords, and govern or betray. [z]By numbers here from shame or censure free, All crimes are safe, but hated poverty. This, only this, the rigid law pursues, This, only this, provokes the snarling muse. The sober trader at a tatter'd cloak Wakes from his dream, and labours for a joke; With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. [aa]Of all the griefs, that harass the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... invoked thee for my Muse And found such fair assistance in my verse As every alien pen hath got my use And under thee ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... resists every temptation, to which many of his contemporaries succumb, to steal easy applause by relying blindly on the talent of the singers. On the contrary, he demands that his virtuosi, even the most famous of them, shall subordinate themselves to the lofty inspiration of his Muse. He attains this result by the simplicity and truth he knows how to ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... or Bard, Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou; Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... 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. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the garden, and to put them between my teeth without passing them through his own. From the softness of the bits of bread, and my having seen my poet come out of the monastery, I surmised that his muse, like that of many of his brethren, was a bashful beggar. He walked into the city, and I followed him, intending to take him for my master if he would let me, thinking that the crumbs from his table might ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... much to myself, especially in the mornings, I began to muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful that I was, the happiness of home ceased to content me. I heard afar the roar of the great world, and roved ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... he had lowered the book to muse over a strange sentence that his wandering eye was caught beyond the window by the flash of a falling star of unusual brilliance. It was so bright, indeed, that he crossed the room to look out at the sky, stepping very softly, ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... Ah! Muse, you dare not claim A nobler man than he, Nor nobler man hath less of blame, Nor blameless man hath purer name, Nor purer name hath grander fame, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... mind—its employment, or its purpose; as PETRARCH called his retreat Linternum, after that of his hero Scipio; and a young poet, from some favourite description in Cowley, called a spot he loved to muse in, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 its wiles In amorous hint, and ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... he began to muse, "it doesn't take long for the most polished man—not that I ever ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... his knees below were loosed." For 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 a ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... gallantries of the ball-room. After supper dancing recommenced, and the hilarity of the evening reached its highest pitch when half a dozen sailors, dressed in turbans made of flags (one of them a lady with the face of the tragic muse), came forward and danced the cancan, with a gravity and decorum that would have greatly edified what Gavarni calls "la ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... poets usually began their poems by invoking the aid of the Muse. Homer does this in the very first line of the Iliad, the word for word translation of which is: "O goddess, sing the wrath of Achilles, ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... 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 upon ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt, his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... his bunter Muse And, as they quaff'd the fiery juice, Droll Nature stamp'd each lucky hit ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... shreds of Virgil's 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 ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... 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 ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... for talk that afternoon. She wanted to be alone to muse on things. As the train took the road for the second stage, she drew her horse back among the sage and let the file of wagons pass her. She saw hope gleaming in Leff's eye, and killed it with a stony glance, then called to her father that she was going to ride behind. David was hunting in ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Femmes Suliotes" will mark the transition from the first to the second period. Turning from the simple scenes of domestic sorrow, he now sought inspiration in literature. The vigorous and hearty Northern Muse especially won his favor; yet the greatest Italian poet was also his earnest study. Goethe, Schiller, Byron, Dante, all furnished subjects for his pencil. The story of Faust and Margaret took such hold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... available, so PUNCH must try His unofficial pen. My tablets, TOBY! This heat's enough to give you hydrophoby! Talk about Dog-days! Is that nectar iced? Then just one gulp! It beats the highest priced And creamiest champagne. Now, silence, Dog, And let me give my lagging Muse a jog! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... While flitting sea-fowl round me cry, Across the rolling, dashing roar, I'll westward turn my wistful eye: Happy thou Indian grove, I'll say, Where now my Nancy's path may be! While through thy sweets she loves to stray, Oh! tell me, does she muse on me?' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... the Muse hath said in praise of thee, "That cheers but not inebriates"; and Byron Hath called thy sister "Queen of Tears", Bohea! And he, Anacreon of Rome's age of iron, Says, how untruly "Quis non potius te." While coffee, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... 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, ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... died not on the plains of Troy. Awake, my Muse, awake! be thine the joy To sing of deeds as dauntless and as brave As e'er lent luster to a warrior's grave. Sing of that noble soldier, nobler man, Dear to the heart of each American. Sound forth his praise ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 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
... beauty is to blame; Love gave th'affront, and must repair the same; When France shall boast of her, whose conqu'ring eyes Have made the best of English hearts their prize; Have power to alter the decrees of Fate, And change again the counsels of our state. 30 What the prophetic Muse intends, alone To him that feels the secret wound is known. With the sweet sound of this harmonious lay, About the keel delighted dolphins play, Too sure a sign of sea's ensuing rage, Which must anon ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... knighted for his 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
... One moment lifted, met my view, Gay worlds of starry thoughts appeared In their blue depths serenely sphered. Just then the voice of one unseen, All redolent of Hippocrene, Stole forth so sweetly on the air, I felt the Muse indeed was there, And feel how much her words divine ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... you compose aloft and not below. No wonder if your muse's bantlings halt. Again, those rags and cloak right tragical, The very garb for sketching beggars in! But sweet Euripides, a boon, I pray thee. Give me the moving rags of some old play; I've a long speech to make before the Chorus, And if I ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... "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 ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... pink roses, soothed the eye; the design was a lattice, through which the flowers grew. An oval mirror hung lengthwise above the white marble chimney piece, and the Louis XV. clock was a charming composition of two figures. A Muse in a simple attitude leaned a little to the left in order to strike the lyre placed above the dial; on the other side, a Cupid listened attentive for the sound of the hour, presumably his hour. There was a little ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... on the 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 ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... something. Wonderful discovery, which has been of use to me ever since; a bit as well as reins—this is the reason why I have not been a prolific writer. Between one book and the next I am totally forgotten. I found also thus early that one needs a muse. I had made a blunder in not taking Launa into my counsels, say rather into my mind, for I had never once thought of her while writing, nor that she would be my audience. No, I thought only of myself, and the distinction I should win all for myself. Thus experienced, I did not repeat ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... took her up. "He must lump it—that's what he must do! Your mother was right about him—I mean your real one. He has no strength. No—none at all." She seemed more profoundly to muse. "He might have had some even with HER—I mean with her ladyship. He's just a poor sunk slave," she ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Advertisement, the tenth Muse. AEsthetic Papers, Hawthorne's contributions to. Alcott, Amos Bronson. Aliston, Washington. American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, The, Hawthorne edits. American Monthly Magazine, The; Hawthorne's contributions ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... entreated him to think better of my father than to imagine him invincible to argument. I promised to go to him in the morning, and counteract, as much as I could, the effects of my evening conversation. At length he departed, with somewhat renovated spirits, and left me to muse upon the strange ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... 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 ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... condescends to give a short chapter on Literature and Manners. He speaks of Glover's "Leonidas," Cibber's "Careless Husband," the poems of Mason, Gray, the two Whiteheads, "the nervous style, extensive erudition, and superior sense of a Corke; the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feeling of a Lyttelton." "King," he says, "shone unrivalled in Roman eloquence, the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste and ingenuity. Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier in learning and critical knowledge; Mrs. Lennox signalized ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now, how oft soe'er the task Of truant verse hath lightened graver care, From Muse or Sylvan was he wont to ask, In phrase poetic, inspiration fair; Careless he gave his numbers to the air, They came unsought for, if applauses came: Nor for himself prefers he now the prayer; Let but his verse ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... through 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 Some frail Memorial still erected ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... sayings, written down in his diary on the evenings of the very days of battle with the barbarians on the Danube or in Hungarian marshes! Think of a man, O ye Napoleons, ye conquerors, who can thus muse and meditate in his silent tent, and by the light of his solitary lamp, after a day of carnage and of victory! Think of such a man,—not master of a little barbaric island or a half-established throne ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... sucked all color from the thing to inform that thick hair's insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons: otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would have wished ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... some fathers have a sad little calendar in their hearts' cupboards where they keep track of the things that might have been. "October fifth," they muse. "Why, it's Ned's birthday! He'd have been twenty-one to-day if he'd lived. He'd have voted this year. December twenty-third? Alice would have been coming home from boarding-school to-day if—July fourth? Humph! How Harry loved the fireworks! But he'd be a Senator now and invited ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... words! who 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 till he ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 doomed to die ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... 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
... intentions towards his guest, he gave him to understand that the interview was at an end, at the same time intimating how seldom it was that he dealt so generously with a young writer. Borrow then rose from the table and passed out of the house, leaving his host to muse, as was his custom on Sunday afternoons, "on the magnificence of nature and the moral ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... 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
... clothes basket and went into an adjoining room, leaving Kintchin to muse alone. He heard the low whistle of a backwoodsman's improvised tune, and looking up, saw a man leaning against the door-facing. To the old negro the new comer was not a stranger. Once that big foot had kicked him out of the road, and lying in his ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... 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 hard on us, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... But mine, in 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
... to write you a letter In verse, tho' in prose I could do it much better; The Muse, this cold weather, sleeps up at Parnassus, And leaves us poor poets as stupid as asses. She'll tarry still longer, if she has a warm chamber, A store of old massie, ambrosia, and amber. Dear mother, don't laugh, you may think she is tipsy And I, if a poet, must drink like a gipsy. Suppose ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... was so obvious that the Prince was struck into a muse, gazing in her face, with his hand still outstretched, and she still holding him by the wrist. 'You!' he said at last. 'How?' And then drawing himself up, 'O madam,' he cried, 'I understand. You must indeed think ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden, 505 How wilt thou prove thy worth?" Then joy and sleep Together fled; my soul was deeply laden, And to the shore I went to muse and weep; But as I moved, over my heart did creep A joy less soft, but more profound and strong 510 Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep The path of the sea-shore: that Spirit's tongue Seemed whispering in my heart, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a bu'sive, e lope'ment a cu'men pe ru'sal ex po'nent ac cu'sant pur su'ant he ro'ic al lure'ment re fus'al pro mo'tive a muse'ment sul phu'ric de tach'ment es tab'lish at tend'ant dog mat'ic fa nat'ic as sem'blage dra mat'ic fan tas'tic ap pend'ant ec stat'ic gi gan'tic in tes'tate e las'tic in ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... all Our 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 ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... 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 are for the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Roman when he urged his way, That led to triumph, through the neighbouring plain, And oped the gloomy grove to glare of day, Awe-stricken gazed, and spared the sacred fane! One stone of all its circle now remains, Saved from the modern Goth's destructive hand; And by its side I muse: and Fancy reigns; And giant oaks on Pennial waving stand; With snowy robe and flowing bears sweep bye The aged Druid-train ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... a young man with musical talents and a decided taste for painting, has come down to us. Certain it is that, during all of this time of varied occupation as a watch-maker and a soldier, he must have been courting the poetic Muse. There are some who speculate, without authority, on his having been a theatre-goer, and having become inspired as a playwright by the work of the American Company, in Philadelphia; especially by the good work of Douglass. Because of insufficient evidence, that is a question which remains unproven. ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... not sound as if either man had aught to do with them. They were an expression by the tragic muse herself. Coleman's jaw fell and he looked glassily at the professor. He said: "Yes!" But already his blood was leaping as his ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Eugenia sat with her hand on her forehead, in a musing attitude. Had she been reverting to her former studies, and thrown herself into the finest conceivable posture of the tragic muse, her appearance would not have been half so beautiful and affecting. I thought she was praying, and I think so still. The tears ran in silence down her face; I kissed them off, and ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... greatest value it has ever received the name of poet; they demanded that the poet should be a kind of king, or seer. Half seriously, half as a product of mere scholarship, the pagan conception of the muse and ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... gift, the natural incommunicable power, without the ambition, others have the ambition but no other gift from any Muse. This class is the more numerous, but the smallest class of all has both the power and the will to excel in letters. The desire to write, the love of letters may shew itself in childhood, in boyhood, or youth, and mean nothing at all, a mere harvest of barren blossom ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... 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
... which hung quivering on each bending blade of grass, sparkle like diamonds of the purest water. The student was in raptures, and after a brief survey of the garden, he cast a longing eye upon the woods which he so much wished to penetrate. On he walked, stopping occasionally to muse on the enchanting scene around him, when all at once he espied, on the lofty branches of an ash, a cuckoo! At the sight of this splendid bird, our Parisian sportsman felt his heart pit-a-pat and jump like a girl's in love; and without stopping any longer to admire the marvels of ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... intermarriages, and cousins to the sixth remove: Thou shalt kiss the hand of Royalty, and lo! in next morning's papers, Side by side with rumours of wars, and stories of shipwrecks and sieges, Shall appear thy name, and the minutiae of thy head-dress and petticoat, For an enraptured public to muse upon ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... 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 and vexations of my early life in Michigan, ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... reject. With regard to my leaving off versifying [1] you have said so many pretty things, so many fine compliments, Ingeniously decked out in the garb of sincerity, and undoubtedly springing from a present feeling somewhat like sincerity, that you might melt the most un-muse-ical soul, did you not (now for a Rowland compliment for your profusion of Olivers),—did you not in your very epistle, by the many pretty fancies and profusion of heart displayed in it, dissuade and discourage me from attempting anything ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Lord! Music by a Knight! Just the thing in which Democrats delight. When the hearty praise Bursts from Yankee lips, "Pass and blush the news Over glowing ships;" What are "glowing ships"? That I've never guessed, "Pass the happy news, Blush it thro' the West;" This I simply quote From the poet's muse; Hang me if I know How you "blush the news"! Anyhow, you do, If the lines will scan, "Till the red man dance," Do you think he can? "And the red man's babe Leap beyond the sea." Active sort of child, Surely, that must be! "Blush from West to East," Blush from left to right, "Till ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... verse, all had gone to water; and in a fling of pain and disappointment, which is surely noble with the nobility of a viking, he would rather stoop to borrow than to accept money for these last and inadequate efforts of his muse. And this desperate abnegation rises at times near to the height of madness; as when he pretended that he had not written, but only found and published, his immortal "Auld Lang Syne." In the same spirit he became more scrupulous as an artist; he was doing so little, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... artist, is apt to have times and seasons when he cannot blossom. Very often 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 so happy as to have fallen on a theme ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stern, gloomy gaze, was an entirely different person from the gay enthusiastic follower of art, for whom her awakening heart had first throbbed more quickly; this was not the future master, who stood before her mind as a glorious favorite of fortune and the muse, transfigured by joyous creation and lofty success—this defiant giant did not look like an artist. No, no; yonder man no longer resembled the Ulrich, to whom, in the happiest hour of her life, she had so willingly, almost too willingly, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... speaking, 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 ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... little caravan of such things 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
... deceived. With a view to extend his 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, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... removed at once the whole burthen of cares which weighed him to the ground, and, while giving him a maintenance for his family, with a comfortable home, would yet have left him abundant time to attend to the inspirations of the muse. Clare himself perceived this very clearly, and once or twice started with the intention of laying his case before the marquis in person, explaining his whole situation, his hopes, troubles, and fears. But each time he approached ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... often looked 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
... 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 |— ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... 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 bitter ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... lore; Or Danish chiefs, enriched by savage spoil, To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine, Reared the huge heap; or, in thy hallowed round, Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line; Or here those kings in solemn state were crowned; Studious to trace thy wondrous origin, We muse on many an ancient ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... 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 call his materials the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... you still hold back, whether your "independence" still stands erect, or has fallen on its knees, or is sitting down comfortably, which would indeed be serious. Can you suppose that the incidents of your married life are without interest for me? I muse at times over all that you have said to me. Often when, at the Opera, I seem absorbed in watching the pirouetting dancers, I am saying to myself, "It is half-past nine, perhaps she is in bed. What is she about? Is she happy? Is she alone with ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... stars and belts which he displayed when he unbuttoned the long black overcoat which enclosed him tightly. Never was he seen without his hands behind him, and the poet Holger Drachmann started a theory that as Ibsen could do nothing in the world but write, the Muse tied his wrists together at the small of his back whenever they were not actually engaged in composition. His regularity in all habits, his mechanical ways, were the subject of much amusement. He must sit day after day in the same chair, at the same table, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... these trivial parliamentary forms?" demanded the Tragic Muse, as McCall called her. "Away with all worn-out garments of a degraded Past! Shall the rebellious serf of man ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... and practical; a little ahead of my time perhaps, but far from crude or unformed. As I see it now, my creed was rather a protest against indifference, a demand for some measure of activity in social economy. That my muse was socialistic seems to me now to have been mainly accidental, but so it was, and its nutriment had been drawn largely from such sources as Carpenter's Civilization: its Cause and Cure, in addition to the standard works ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... 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 ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Poems are chiefly fugitive pieces collected from magazines and annuals. One or two, referred to in the correspondence with James Montgomery, have been reprinted from the "Rural Muse," and there are a few which, like the Asylum Poems, have not been published before. "Maying; or, Love and Flowers," to which the Editor presumes specially to direct attention, is one ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... handsome stranger, and Rauch, struck by her great beauty, inquires of his friend who may be this fair, sweet Muse, who gives to the marbles the tongue of eloquence, who, young and lovely as an antique Venus, seems already as ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... 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
... vigour of their youth is spent, Still grow more fond, as they grow impotent. This, some years hence, our poet's case may prove; But yet, he hopes, he's young enough to love. When forty comes, if e'er he live to see That wretched, fumbling age of poetry, 'Twill be high time to bid his muse adieu:— Well may he please himself, but never you. Till then, he'll do as well as he began, And hopes you will not find him less a man. Think him not duller for this year's delay; He was prepared, the women were away; And men, without ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... temptation, to which many of his contemporaries succumb, to steal easy applause by relying blindly on the talent of the singers. On the contrary, he demands that his virtuosi, even the most famous of them, shall subordinate themselves to the lofty inspiration of his Muse. He attains this result by the simplicity and truth he knows how to ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... maintained its existence in spite of provincial indifference. Some knowing persons at Nevers declared that Jan Diaz was making fun of the new school, just then bringing out its eccentric verse, full of vitality and imagery, and of brilliant effects produced by defying the Muse under pretext of adapting German, ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment Scenes from a Courtesan's Life A Daughter of Eve Beatrix The Muse of the Department Cousin Betty A Prince of Bohemia A Man ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... that would be intolerable in prose is tolerable in the introduction to a poem. See the long interval at the beginning of Paradise Lost between "Of man's first disobedience" and "Sing, heavenly Muse." Compare also the beginning of Paradise ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... further account of Sancerre, but she was not over curious to learn the sequel of that adventure; she was so much taken up with what had just passed, that she could hardly conceal the embarrassment she was in. When she was at liberty to muse upon it, she plainly saw she was mistaken, when she thought she was indifferent as to the Duke de Nemours; what he had said to her had made all the impression he could desire, and had entirely convinced her ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... wake the crystal spring To the voice of prophecy? By the lost Eurydice, Summon'd from the shadowy throng, As the muse-son's magic song— By the Colchian's awful charms, When ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... maintained that the richest, the truest, and most natural, if not altogether the most extensive province, had been unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... new proof of the unimportance of your subject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. In general, what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to grandees? Yet in the "Divan" you would not skip them, since his muse seldom supports him better. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Exeter Hall, and examined its prominent facade with a provincial's eye; for despite his travels he was not very familiar with London. Exeter Hall naturally took his mind back to his Uncle Boldero, that great and ardent Nonconformist, and his own godly youth. It was laughable to muse upon what his uncle would say and think, did the old man know that his nephew had run away with a girl, meaning to seduce her in Paris. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... and less disposed to unmeaning revelry, than most of those whom he had just abandoned. This was the Westphalian student, who, wearied with amusements that were below the level of his acquirements, and suddenly struck with the imposing aspect of the lake and the mountains, had stolen apart to muse on his distant home and the beings most dear to him, under an excitement that suited those morbid sensibilities which he had long encouraged by a very subtle metaphysical system of philosophy. Until now, Maso had paced his lofty post with his eye fixed ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... after another. I break the promise of a former page, and am obliged to describe the youthful days of more than one person who is to take a share in this story. Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth him. But of this be sure—she is as inexorable as Truth. We must tell our tale as she imparts it to us, and go on or turn ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lie beneath the cypresses, near the dust of the "Adonais" of his muse, under Roman ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... away from morning till night at a work entitled "Sublime Impressions of a Geographer in the Argentine Pampas," and they could hear him repeating elegant periods aloud before committing them to the white pages of his day-book; and more than once, unfaithful to Clio, the muse of history, he invoked in his transports the divine Calliope, the muse ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... 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 enough to carve her name on the bark of several of these trees; so unhappy is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... 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 ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Held in a muse, she leaned against the donkey; the moments slipped by. She lost all count of time. Her eyes stared emptily at some sunny flicker, some dappled pattern of leaf work; her ears were filled with the forest drone, the mysterious murmur made up of so many nameless instruments that ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... 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 ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... entertainment of the multitude, as in former days; and had John Keats, or even poor Henry Kirke White, written and published fifty years later, they would never have perished by the critic's pen. Yet the same malignant assault which crushed their tender muse was the only thing which could amuse the latent powers of a far greater genius; and had not Byron been as cruelly attacked by the Edinburgh, he would never have given 'Childe Harold' to the world. The authorship ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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, observing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... of Saltykov, Uspensky, or Nekrassov? Yet Saltykov is the greatest of Russian satirists; Uspensky the greatest story-writer of the lives of the Russian toiling masses; while Nekrassov, "the poet of the people's sorrow," whose muse "of grief and vengeance" has supremely dominated the minds of the Russian educated classes for the last half century, is the sole and rightful heir of his two great predecessors, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... affection and 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 a general, to marry a beautiful woman, to buy a chestnut horse, to, build myself ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... friend, amiable, clever, and devoted, is a possession more valuable than parks and palaces; and without such a muse few men can succeed ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... "Nor 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 one ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nomad life passed amid 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
... 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 supreme ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... warn me. But not of this; in no nightmare dream could I have conceived this unimaginable peril. Ah, me! ah, me!" She sat down at the untasted meal, and strove to eat. "I must be strong, for Richard's sake," she murmured. But she soon laid down her knife and fork to muse again. "This Trevethick is a hard, stern man, I see. There is no hope in his mercy. The only path of safety is that which the lawyer pointed out; but will this puling girl have the heart and head to tread it? Will she ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... 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
... whose strong reality Outshines our fairyland; in shape and hues More beautiful than our fantastic sky, And the strange constellations which the Muse O'er her wild universe ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... 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 Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Pushkin at the Lyceum, must be mentioned the elegant poet, the Baron Delvig, whose early death was so irreparable a loss to Russian literature, and must be considered as the severest personal bereavement suffered by Pushkin—"his brother," as he affectionately calls him, in the muse as in their fate. Nor must we forget Admiral Matiushkin, a distinguished seaman now living, and commanding the Russian squadron in the Black Sea. We could specify a number of other names, all of more or less note in their own country, though the reputation of many of them has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... it would seem that this poem was called forth by the Earl's bounty to its author. "My muse devorst from deeper (the Rawl. MS. reads deepest) care, presents thee with a wanton elegie;" and further on, the dedication promises "better lines" which should "ere long" be penned in "honour" of his noble patron. This promise is renewed in ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... but 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, ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... house," he answered. "Mother said we could 'muse ourselves quietly in the house. This is quiet, isn't it? What's the use of having furniture if a fellow can't ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the great Christian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated, came to earth, 'crowned with flowers culled in Paradise.' ('L'aurea testa Di rose colte in Paradiso infiora.' Tasso, "Ger. Lib." ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Stands at the top of the tree; And I muse in my bed on the reasons that led To the hoisting of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way, To nerve my country with the patriot lay, To teach all men where all their interest lies, How rulers may be just and nations wise: Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee, Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... design, the colouring, the structure, and the ornamentation of that momentous piece of apparel. No; there was much indeed to be done before she came to this; and as the poet, to whom I have already alluded, first invokes his muse, and then brings his smaller events gradually out upon his stage, so did Miss Grantly with sacred fervour ask her mother's aid, and then prepare her list of all those articles of underclothing which must be the substratum ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... hourly in color, from the opalescent tints of the dawn, through the garish spectrum of daylight to the deep purple shadows of the sunset, to the crepuscular opalescence again. Under any other conditions, she would have been content to sit and muse alone with her grief—and Hugh. He was constantly present in her thoughts. It was as though his spirit hovered near. She seemed to hear him speak, to feel the touch of his hand upon her brow, soothing her anguish, praying her to wait and be patient. ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... could not make the pace. That was Gresson's business. I think I was a little nettled, till I cheered myself by another interpretation. She might be anxious for my safety, she might want to see me again, anyhow the mere sending of the message showed I was not forgotten. I was in a pleasant muse as I breasted the hill, keeping discreetly in the cover of the many gullies. At the top I looked down on Ranna ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... before Bryant was considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies. Who now reads "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America," "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America," "The Day of Doom," "M'Fingal," or "The Columbiad?" Skipping a generation from Barlow's death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... 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, the Rue Jacob, the Rue de Tournon, the ancient gothic sewer still cynically displayed its ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... could remember nothing except the face which alone stood out clear and distinct. Several times during the day he had been on the point of transferring his impressions to paper, but he always deferred action, preferring to muse upon the beautiful vision he had seen and to dream of meeting her again. She must still be in the city, he reasoned, and should he go away now his chance of finding her would be lost forever. That he would find ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... and gay, Whose words ever fulsomely fall, Oh, pity your friend, who to-day Has become a Society's thrall. Allow me to muse and to sigh, Nor talk of the change that ye find; None once was more happy than I; But, alas! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... 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 ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... drive him to the Park, a telescope to show him the stars; he has but to pause at a corner and buy a journal which will place him au courant with the events of the world, or listen to an organ-grinder, and think himself at the opera. This temple is free for him to enter and "muse till the fire burns"; on yonder bookseller's counter is an epitome of the wisdom of ages; there he may buy a nosegay to propitiate his lady-love, or a sewing-machine to beguile his womankind, and here a crimson balloon or spring rocking-horse, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... through which the dancers trooped in couples. Again and 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, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... 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
... be a glorious motto, yet when we view these crimes (and the carved initials which deface so many of our most sacred monuments) we cannot but muse that there are many who should never be free—at least from the restraint of discipline. 'None can love freedom heartily, but good men: the rest love ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... the Latins who followed in their footsteps, as fit only for pedestrian purposes." It is more probable that, as regards prose-fiction, they did not realize that they were called upon to explain the omission of the tenth muse. Her exclusion was based on no reasoned principle, but was due to a sensuous art-instinct: the Greeks felt that the unnatural limitations of the poetic medium were more in keeping with the unnatural[10] brevity ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... adopted other names. Angelbert was called Homer, from his partiality to that poet; Riculphus, archbishop of Mentz, chose the name of Dametas, from an eclogue of Virgil: another member took that of Candidus; Eginhard, the Emperor's biographer, was called Calliopus, from the Muse Calliope; Alcuin received, from his country, the name of Albinus; the archbishop Theodulfe was called Pindar; the abbot Adelard was called Augustine; Charlemagne, as the man of God's own heart, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... Essay-writing formed a regular part of our work in school and pupil-room, and I 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 ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... 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
... of Acheloos and 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 half ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... enter. Many people complain of the mosquito in New Jersey, when he can so easily be shut out of the family circle by nets over all the doors and windows. I had a long piazza, encased in netting, where paterfamilias, with his pipe, could muse and gaze ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... 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 direct ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... patience merited. He knows that I know his wife's history, and though she has no shame, he has some. I had the satisfaction to leave him blushing with anger, and I supported the character of the comic muse a full hour afterwards, to convince him that all their combined malice would fail to break my spirit in public: what I suffer in private is known ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... 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 his ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... of his style may be seen in many figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged around the walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of these subordinate compositions show power of conception or vigour ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Angelico, Bartolommeo, and others of that day—were creating their wonderful works which Vittoria must have seen and enjoyed during this tour. Raphael, whose death had occurred in 1520, Vittoria had, doubtless, known; but whether it was she who was the original of the Muse in his great picture of "Parnassus," as is alleged, is ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... was Sir Alexander Ball. Concerning Bowyer, Coleridge did not talk much, but chiefly wrote; concerning Bell, he did not write much, but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball, however, he both wrote and talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball blackballed, or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man, who had fallen into one pit called Bell; secondly, falling into another pit called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a muse. Her question recurred to her; but it was hardly likely, she felt, that her little companion could enlighten her. Nora was a bright, lively, spirited child, with black eyes and waves of beautiful black hair; neither at rest; sportive ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... abashed and disappointed. For the first time she questioned Stefan's generosity, contrasting his indifference with her own absorbed interest in his work. She knew her muse trivial by comparison with his, but she loved it, and ached for the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... "The Young Franklin," noting how the dignity, sureness of touch, and sound purpose of these make them more appealing with longer acquaintance. On another day take the intermediate group, that is dignified but less austere in theme-such works as Sherry Fry's "Peace," and Berge's "Muse Finding the Head of Orpheus." Studied systematically, there is in this series of statues a broad education in the appreciation ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... a fair excuse, The book, the pencil, or the muse; Something to give, to sing, to say, Some modern tale, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... camp-fire draw, Or heard the plashing of their weary oars. And every place whereon they rested grew Happier for pure and gracious womanhood, And men whose names for stainless honor stood, Founders of States and rulers wise and true. The Muse of history yet shall make amends To those who freedom, peace, and justice taught, Beyond their dark age led the van of thought, And left unforfeited the name of Friends. O mother State, how foiled was thy design The gain was theirs, the loss ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... reflected where that dark pool lies: It is not hope, for life makes no amends, And hope and I are long no longer friends: It is a ghost out of another Spring It needs but little for its comforting— That I should hold your hand and see your face And muse a little in this quiet place, Where, through the silence, I can hear you sigh And feel you sadden, O Virgin Mystery, And know my thought has in your thought begot Sadness, its child, and that ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... and some fathers have a sad little calendar in their hearts' cupboards where they keep track of the things that might have been. "October fifth," they muse. "Why, it's Ned's birthday! He'd have been twenty-one to-day if he'd lived. He'd have voted this year. December twenty-third? Alice would have been coming home from boarding-school to-day if—July fourth? Humph! How Harry loved the fireworks! ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the acute financial crisis in the Mattel family, Papa Claude had revived amazingly, and was once more wearing a rose in his buttonhole and courting the Muse. He and Harold Phipps spent several afternoons a week working on their play, which they hoped to get fully blocked out before the latter left the service and returned to ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... away, the Muse, Mademoiselle Rabuteau, enters and declaims the salutation addressed by Louis Gallet to the City of Béziers. At its conclusion ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... and right. Providence next befriended the shipwrecked sailors: they got the bonito. This was also just and right. But in the distribution of mercies the sword-fish himself got overlooked. He now went away; to muse over these subtleties, probably. The men in all the boats seem pretty well; the feeblest of the sick ones (not able for a long time to stand his watch on board the ship) 'is wonderfully recovered.' This is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his determined spirit, and occasionally timid 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 supreme power and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... burns somewhere I come by. I muse at how its being puts blissful back With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black, Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye. By that window what task what fingers ply, I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... with smiles thy face make sweet, And let thy wail be stilled, To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat Her promise half fulfilled. The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks still, No sound thereof hath died; Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal will Shall yet be satisfied. The years are slow, the vision tarrieth ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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
... the time will come and that it is not far off when we will have a negro poet from the South. He will set the magnificent splendor of the "Sunny South" to music. His muse will touch the lyre, and you will hear the sweet murmur of the stream, the rippling waters, and we shall see the beauty of that country as it was never seen before. It will come; and after him other ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... moderate of the conquerors; and uniformly asserted his freedom and dignity in the court of Augustus. The triumph of Messalla was justified by the conquest of Aquitain. As an orator, he disputed the palm of eloquence with Cicero himself. Messalla cultivated every muse, and was the patron of every man of genius. He spent his evenings in philosophic conversation with Horace; assumed his place at table between Delia and Tibullus; and amused his leisure by encouraging the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions oft, to hear her shell, Throng'd around her magic cell, Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, Possest beyond the Muse's painting. 1239 COLLINS: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... man, with a parcel under his arm, who passed you just then, is an artist, and his home is in the attic of that tall house from which you saw him pass out. It is a cheerless place, indeed, and hardly the home for a devotee of the Muse; but the artist is a philosopher, and he flatters himself that if the world has not given him a share of its good things, it has at least freed him from its restraints, and so long as he has the necessaries of life and a lot of jolly ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... 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
... in many a mouldering heap," and the "rugged elms" are outside the inclosure, but their outstretched arms overspread many a "narrow cell and frail memorial," where the "rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep," and where also "their name and years are spelt by th' unlettered muse." A singular error in spelling the name of one of those humble persons, was however committed by the poet himself in his "Long Story," very pardonable in him, however, as the party was then alive; but that the error should have been perpetuated in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... 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 consideration against ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... daughter of the 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
... 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
... nothing else to do,—his History of England and his compilations for a Latin Dictionary,—Phillips adds, "But the highth of his noble fancy and invention began now to be seriously and mainly employed in a subject worthy of such a muse: viz. a Heroic Poem, entitled Paradise Lost, the noblest," &c. In this passage, however, Phillips is throwing together, in 1694, all his recollections of the four years of his uncle's life between Aug. 1655 and Aug. 1659; and Aubrey's earlier information ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... 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; ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... on 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
... thus they would muse; if their grief were the grief of oppression they would wish themselves kings; if their grief were poverty, wish themselves millionaires; if sin, they would wish they were saints or angels; if despised love, that they were some much-courted Adonis ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... muzzle, and tortuosity of tail, that curled like a head of celery in a salad-bowl, bespoke his Dutch extraction. Yow! yow! yow! continued the brute—a chorus in which Flo instantly joined. Sooth to say, pug had more reason to express his dissatisfaction than was given him by the muse of Simpkinson; the other only barked for company. Scarcely had the poetess got through her first stanza, when Tom Ingoldsby, in the enthusiasm of the moment, became so lost in the material world, that, in his abstraction, he unwarily laid his hand on the cock of the ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... on learning 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 which Ralph was to trap for his epic. On this ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... are you up to? There's something going on that I don't understand. The whole air here tonight has been charged with electricity. Leslie sits like the muse of tragedy; Owen Ford jokes and laughs on the surface, and watches Leslie with the eyes of his soul. You seem all the time to be bursting with some suppressed excitement. Own up. What secret have you been ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 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 volume of De Vere's poems published at Oxford in 1843. "Here are his poems given to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... ordinary eye. Those splendid luminaries draw forth perhaps occasionally a transient expression of admiration, when we behold their beauty, or hear of their distances, magnitudes, or properties: now and then too we are led, perhaps, to muse upon their possible uses: but however curious as subjects of speculation, after all, it must be confessed, they twinkle to the common observer with a vain and "idle" lustre; and except in the dreams of the astrologer, have no influence on human happiness, or any concern with the course ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... 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 ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... 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
... warlike actions of the successive heads, and sings his own lyricks as an opiate to the chief, when indisposed for sleep; but poets are not equally esteemed and honored in all countries. I happened to be a witness of the dishonour done to the muse, at the house of one of the chiefs, where two of these bards were set at a good distance, at the lower end of a long table, with a parcel of Highlanders of no extraordinary appearance, over a cup of ale. Poor inspiration! ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... his way to introduce it. It has no fitness in its connection with Hermann Muller's book, for what little Hermann Muller says about teleology at all is to condemn it; why, then, should Mr. Darwin muse here of all places in the world about the interest attaching to design in organism? Neither has the passage any connection with the rest of the preface. There is not another word about design, and even here Mr. Darwin seems mainly anxious to face both ways, and pat design as it were on ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, though, as my father says, the lines are very strong, and worthy of Pope and The Dunciad. But I was so much prejudiced against the whole by the first lines I opened upon about the "paralytic muse" of the man who had been his guardian, and is his relation, and to whom he had dedicated his first poems, that I could not relish his wit. He may have great talents, but I am sure he has neither ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Our purpose is an essay in romance: An old-world story where such old-world facts As hate and love and death, through four swift acts— Not without gleams and glances, hints and cues, From the dear bright eyes of the Comic Muse!— So shine and sound that, as we fondly deem, They may persuade you to accept our dream: Our own invention, mainly—though we take, Somewhat for art but most for interest's sake One for our hero who goes ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... certain to have often seen this happy crowd, and to desire to trick them out in song. So Browning does in his poem, In a Gondola. The two lovers, with the dark shadow of fate brooding over them, sing and muse and speak alternately, imaging in swift and rival pictures made by fancy their deep-set love; playing with its changes, creating new worlds in which to place it, but always returning to its isolated individuality; recalling how it began, the room where it reached its aim, the pictures, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... write luxuriously is not the same thing as to live so, but a new and worse offence. It implies an intellectual defect also, the not perceiving that the present corrupt condition of human nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to perpetuate) is a temporary or superficial state. The good word lasts forever: the impure word can only buoy itself in the gross gas that now envelops us, and will sink altogether to ground as that works itself clear in the everlasting ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... glooms! Ye forests hail! ye solitary woods! Love-whispering groves and silver-streaming floods! Ye meads, that aromatic sweets exhale! Ye birds, and all ye sylvan beauties hail! Oh how I long with you to spend my days, Invoke the muse, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... were not without their own perturbations and heart troubles, even in the deep seclusion of their lonely home, may be judged by some extracts from a poem written by Emily, who never confided anything to any friend but her own sombre muse. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... is based on his other poems, and although his dramas have conduced scarcely at all to his fame, he did play a principal part in this department of literary work. Dryden made haste to answer the call, and his venal muse wrote to please the town. The names of many of his plays and personages are foreign; but their vitality is purely English. Of his first play, The Duke of Guise, which was unsuccessful, he tells us: "I undertook this as the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... figures of Muses. The latter are 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 ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... a yellow samovar on a table near the window, and the master of the house himself in skull-cap and dressing-gown, with a brilliant streak of sunlight falling on his cheek! Oh, the long-haired nurslings of the Muse, wearing spasmodic and contemptuous smiles, that cluster about them! Oh, the young ladies, with faces of greenish pallor, who squeal; over their pianos! For that is the established rule with us in Russia; a man cannot be devoted to one art alone—he must have them all. And so it is not to be wondered ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine 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 ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... much startled while I sat in my muse to hear a footstep coming. A steady, regular footstep; no light trip of children; and the hands were in the field, and this was not a step like any of them. My first thought was, the overseer's come to spy me ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of London from the gas; the new, swift energy of rebound in that huge population. I am surprised now, as I reread, to note how much research, experiment, and induction must have been accomplished in the day that elapsed before the paper was printed. . . . But that is by the way. As I sit and muse over this partly carbonized sheet, that same curious remote vision comes again to me that quickened in my mind that morning, a vision of those newspaper offices I have already described to you ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... genius was most fertile and almost superhuman—(he wrote five dramas and many other admirable poems in fifteen months, that is to say, in less time than it requires to copy them)—two biblical subjects inspired his muse: "Cain," and "Heaven and Earth." Both were admirably suited to his pen. He naturally treated them as a philosopher, but without any preconceived notion of making any religious converts. His enemies nevertheless seized hold of these pieces, to incriminate ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... argument. Which of the arts then are flatteries? Flute-playing, harp-playing, choral exhibitions, the dithyrambics of Cinesias are all equally condemned on the ground that they give pleasure only; and Meles the harp-player, who was the father of Cinesias, failed even in that. The stately muse of Tragedy is bent upon pleasure, and not upon improvement. Poetry in general is only a rhetorical address to a mixed audience of men, women, and children. And the orators are very far from speaking with a view to what is best; their way is to ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... following; and assures me, during slow recovery, that a people which can endure such fluting and piping among them is not likely soon to have its modest ear pleased by aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song. Perhaps I am then led on into meditation respecting the spiritual nature of the Tenth Muse, who invented this gracious instrument, and guides its modulation by stokers' fingers; meditation, also, as to the influence of her invention amidst the other parts of the Parnassian melody of English education. Then it cannot but occur to me to inquire how far this modern "pneuma," Steam, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... same difficulty, and intent on its solution. As to the second problem: that of drinking without discomposure to the subservient limbs: the company present worked out this republican principle ingeniously, but in a manner beneath the attention of the Muse. Let Clio record that mugs and glasses, tobacco and pipes, were strewn upon the table. But if the guests had arrived at that stage when to reach the arm, or arrange the person, for a sip of good stuff, causes moral debates, and presents ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not pay; had been arraigned before the magistrates for tampering with village girls, and waylaid and cudgelled by injured husbands, fathers, sweethearts. A hundred years ago his character and actions might have been described at length by the painter of manners; but the Comic Muse, nowadays, does not lift up Molly Seagrim's curtain; she only indicates the presence of some one behind it, and passes on primly, with expressions of horror, and a fan before her eyes. The village had heard how the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... jacket, and the corkscrews which bobbed over each temple as he nodded and swayed his head to the flourishes of "the gaberlunzie man" (the measure which Halliday had chosen for his words); so when the song was finished, and I had drank a health to Robin's muse, I stepped across to where he sat, and said I wished to speak with him alone. He put down his jug of punch, and followed me into my own room. I closed the door and told him, that as I understood him to be in the Channel trade, I applied to know if he ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... 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 ferment within rendered ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... shareholders of the Mutual-Admiration Society, organized by the vanity of all to the profit of the vanity of each, kindled in me a desire to show myself frank and independent. I murmured, loud enough to be heard by all my neighbors,—"Of a truth, the Country's Muse is not Melpomene!" Madame Emile de Girardin, when Mademoiselle Delphine Gay and in the most brilliant period of her poetical youth, had styled herself "the Country's Muse"; her admirers had adopted the title, and it had remained her poetical alias. The exclamation ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... step may rove, And yield the muse the day: There Beauty, led by timid Love, May shun the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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 ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... as stationmaster at Llanidloes, was appointed to the management of this little line. The duties were not particularly arduous, and, in any case, "Ceiriog" was apt to take life with a light heart. Whether he sat in his office or in the cosy corner of some favourite rural inn the muse burned brightly within him, and, from his remote retreat among the hills which look down on the infant Severn, he poured out his soul in poetry, which ranks high in Celtic literature. Welsh verse always suffers ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... 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
... spoke, and warned them, 'We shall come now to the wandering blue rocks; my mother warned me of them, Calliope, the immortal muse.' ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... confidence that existed between Vetranio and Julia, it is necessary to inform the reader that the lady—although still attractive in appearance—was of an age to muse on her past, rather than to meditate on her future conquests. She had known her eccentric companion from his boyhood, had been once flattered in his verses, and was sensible enough—now that her charms were on the wane—to be as content ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... "It will not do; Against the Muse I've sinned, oh!" And her torn rhymes sent flying through Olympus's back window. Then, packing up a peplus clean, She took the shortest path thence, And opened, with a mind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... play right, what a difference it would have made! He would have been able to do a number of things he had never done, things which he had always desired to do. He had desired above all to travel—to see France and Italy; to linger, to muse in the shadows of the world's past; and after this he had desired marriage, an English wife, an English home, beautiful children, leisure, the society of friends. A successful play would have given him all these things, and now his dream ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... reigned upon the hillside where the torn web lay, its bloom and beauty all gone. Ragged bits of green, mingled with dull brown tracery of vine and tendril, lay back upon the background of earth, but of purple there was no trace. In the hush of the night, the Weaver came back, to muse sadly over what had been and, perhaps, to dream of what ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... 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
... justice, downcast soul! Muse, and take better heart; Back with thine angel to the field, Good ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... and plays like a muse,' returned Calenus; 'those are virtues that he who employs me ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... "Scherzo" and, as the two movements thus interpreted seemed rather paltry, and none of the usual effects could be got with them, our musicians came to regard the entire symphony as a sort of accidental hors d'oeuvre of Beethoven's muse—who, after the exertions with the A major symphony had chosen "to take things rather easily." Accordingly after the Allegretto Scherzando, the time of which is invariably "dragged" somewhat, the Tempo di Minuetto is universally served up as a refreshing "Landler," which passes the ear without ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... 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 ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... of the lowly, humble kind, to be indeed thankful for as all nobility must be, whether it be that of the honest farmer who tills the soil in silence, or that of the gentle Longfellow who cultivates his modest muse in equal quietness. But there is the nobility of the nightingale and the nobility of the eagle; there is the nobility of the lamb and the nobility of the lion; and beside the titanesqueness of Gogol, and Turgenef, and Tolstoy, the nobility of Pushkin, though high ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... not now thrown to the wild beasts for the entertainment of the multitude, as in former days; and had John Keats, or even poor Henry Kirke White, written and published fifty years later, they would never have perished by the critic's pen. Yet the same malignant assault which crushed their tender muse was the only thing which could amuse the latent powers of a far greater genius; and had not Byron been as cruelly attacked by the Edinburgh, he would never have given 'Childe Harold' to the world. The authorship ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was greedily devoured in large quantities, mostly raw—producing a raging thirst. The water supply was now curtailed to a few bucketsful, but even these few drops of the precious fluid were mostly wasted in the melee for their possession. The majority of the contestants retired disappointed to muse on the comforts of the Sahara Desert, and as the stories about tapping camels recurred to them, suggestive glances were cast at the more fortunate rivals. After a few days, conspicuous for the sparing enjoyment of salt cod, the water supply was ordered unlimited. An ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... 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 ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... of which I fain would sing, If the kind Muse her Aid would bring, Is Arbor Vitae; but in brief, By vulgar Men ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... your three Studies. He has sent me the rather bad one of your Mazurkas for two performers. These I played over with the Baroness von Meyendorff yesterday evening. She begs me to tell you our very favorable opinion of these charming productions of your Polish muse. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... when he unbuttoned the long black overcoat which enclosed him tightly. Never was he seen without his hands behind him, and the poet Holger Drachmann started a theory that as Ibsen could do nothing in the world but write, the Muse tied his wrists together at the small of his back whenever they were not actually engaged in composition. His regularity in all habits, his mechanical ways, were the subject of much amusement. He must sit day ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... limit of all good, There, where thou markest that which thou dost speak, Thence priz'd of me the more. Glad thou hast made me. Now make intelligent, clearing the doubt Thy speech hath raised in me; for much I muse, How bitter can spring ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Scian and the Teian Muse" Ruled us as tyrants absolute; Now even pedagogues refuse To stodge us with such stale old fruit. Why should the STANLEY-dowered West Make ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... was only Mr. Booth, an eccentric old man of moderate means, who liked to muse, read, and play with children. He had no callers, no friends; he went to the city every day and came back at night. He talked but little, he was absent-minded, he smoked and thought and smiled and muttered to himself. He never went to church; but once ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 and bare. It seems as if nature and ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... have sex and sex-emotions put frankly into the fore-ground of everything, as far as art and letters are concerned. He would take the timid hyperborean Muse of the modern world and bathe her once more in the sun-lit waters of the Heliconian Spring. He would paganize, Latinize and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... 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 one else lose the thread or grow short-breathed ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Too long 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 sound When the skill'd actress ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Bishop Horne, "The 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
... breast was, and how white his belly; And whose immortal fingers did imprint That heavenly path with many a curious dint That runs along his back; but my rude pen Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men, Much less of powerful gods: let it suffice That my slack Muse sings of Leander's eyes; Those orient cheeks and lips, exceeding his That leapt into the water for a kiss Of his own shadow, and, despising many, Died ere he could enjoy the love of any. Had wild Hippolytus Leander seen, Enamour'd of his beauty had he been: His presence made ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... 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, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... like a Muse, with her dark silky hair just streaked with grey, looped away behind her ears; while Miss Henrietta, the younger, had ringlets and large eyes and ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... ordered otherwise I went with him—I tried to judge how the Old World would have struck him. It was not only there, however, that I watched him; the relations he had entertained with the new had even a livelier interest. His own country after all had had most of his life, and his muse, as they said at that time, was essentially American. That was originally what I had loved him for: that at a period when our native land was nude and crude and provincial, when the famous "atmosphere" it is supposed to lack was not even missed, ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... to be as successful as usual: the ideas refuse to come at his bidding, and he glares around in consternation, Can it be possible that he has exhausted himself; that his ideas are entirely run out; that the fountain is dry, and the Muse has ceased to smile upon him; that he must descend from his high elevation as the poet of the family, the hope and pride of his friends and the admiration of himself, and sink to the level of his earthy brothers and become one of them, no better and no worse? No—perish ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... 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. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... a cluster of farm-buildings, which is said to be the veritable Fountain of Egeria. The temple of the Muses, who were Egeria's counsellors, was close by; and the name of the gate of the city, Porta Capena, was in all likelihood a corruption of Camena, the Latin name for Muse, and was not derived, as some suppose, from the city of Capua. The spot outside the present walls, formerly visited as the haunt of the fabled nymph, before the discovery of the site of the Capena gate fixed its true ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... will not come out, not while you are here. True, after you have gone, after the fire has burned down and the room is all still—usually near midnight, as I sit and muse alone over the dead or dying fire—true, then the Singing Mouse comes out and asks for its bit of bread; and then it folds its tiny paws and sits up, and turning its bright red eye upon me, half in power and half in beseeching, as of some fading memory of the past—why, ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... gone now, I remembered, getting up from the fire. It was not for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit and a grateful heart. So I said to myself, "Esther, Esther, Esther! Duty, my dear!" and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a shake that they sounded like little bells and rang me ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves; when ev'ry muse And every blooming pleasure wait without, To bless the wildly devious ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... that they live 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. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the river in the distance!" The farmer looked blankly at Parnassus as we passed, and then I remembered my mission as a distributor of literature. Mifflin was sitting with one foot on his bulging portmanteau, watching the tree tops rocking in the cool wind. He seemed to be far away in a morning muse. I threw down the reins and accosted ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... tyrant's walk, and glitter in the eyes Of such as bow the knee; when honour'd urns Of patriots and of chiefs, the awful bust And storied arch, to glut the coward rage Of regal envy, strew the public way With hallow'd ruins; when the Muse's haunt, The marble porch where Wisdom wont to talk With Socrates or Tully, hears no more, 740 Save the hoarse jargon of contentious monks, Or female Superstition's midnight prayer; When ruthless Rapine from the hand of Time Tears the destroying scythe, with surer blow To sweep the ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
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