"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was skilful in compliments. When he painted his famous picture of Mrs. Siddons as the "Tragic Muse" he put his name on the border of her garment. The actress went near the picture to examine it, and when she saw the name she smiled. The artist said: "I could not lose the opportunity of sending my name to posterity on the hem ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... mysteries from which the physiological Muse recoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers while they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there are occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passage in my book that the Muse ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the gallant and the good From Tyler down to Thistlewood, My muse the trophies grateful sings, The deeds of Miller and of Ings; She sings of all who, soon or late, Have burst Subjection's iron chain, Have seal'd the bloody despot's fate, Or cleft a peer or priest ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... Esther were then called in to help him in the purchase of a carpet, a folding-bed, an old sofa, and a few chairs. A carpenter got to work on the bookshelves, and in a fortnight's time still another habitation had been built for the Muse,—a habitation from which she was not destined to remove again, till she and Angel and Henry all moved into one house together,—a removal which was, as yet, too far off to ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... that for a considerable period she desired no higher pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab. To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life, and it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston found so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... then, she was very beautiful. In the autumn of that year we became great friends; and through her influence I began to see beyond the portals of the mansions of the rich. Matthew Prior's Chloes and Sir John Suckling's Euphelias lost their charms. Henceforth my muse's name became Phyllis. I took her to the opera when I didn't know where I was going to breakfast on the morrow. I sent her roses and went without tobacco, a privation of which woman ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... make for herself occupation, there was still space in which to muse and to torment herself with her thoughts. Whilst her hands were engaged she craved for leisure in which to think; when unemployed, the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... querulous sounds, that, as some one has happily expressed it, "one was almost tempted to ask what ailed it." A traveller was moving slowly up the side of the river, and ever and anon stopping, as if to muse over some particular object. It was Elliot. He had returned from Greenland, and, in disguise, had come to the place of his birth—to the dwelling of his mother and his sister; he had heard that his mother was ill—that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... to be alone to muse of things in your dreamy way, but my love, it is better not to do so, it only makes things harder to bear. Try to banish disagreeable subjects as much as possible, that is my maxim. But I cannot refuse you anything just now, so after ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... succession of kindly and learned men to the public service through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it finally died out with Constance de Theis, Princesse de Salm, who was known under the Directory and the Empire in Paris as the 'Muse of Reason,' and the 'Boileau of Women,' and with her nephew, the last Baron de Theis, one of the most charming of men, and one of the most conscientious and accurate of archaeologists and collectors. The baron died in 1874. The 'objets d'art et de haute curiosite,' brought ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... thing he had not got himself into a worse scrape at Mellor. Good heavens! in what plight would a man stand—a man with his career to make—who had given Marcella Boyce claims upon him! As well entangle oneself with the Tragic Muse at once as with that stormy, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the thought he looked again to her. She was sitting there drooped into a muse. He saw a tear fall, and his heart flared hot. He saw for the first time that one of her shoulders was quite uncovered, one arm bare, he could see one of her small breasts; dimly, because it had become almost dark ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material. The husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.' An impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life. She could only recover her equanimity by assuring ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Addison; wit and simplicity are their common attributes: but the style of Swift is supported by manly original vigour; that of Addison is adorned by the female graces of elegance and mildness. The old reproach, that no British altars had been raised to the muse of history, was recently disproved by the first performances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts. I will assume the presumption of saying, that I was not unworthy to read them: nor will I disguise my different feelings in the ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... muse as I continue to descend toward the sea. "Her appearance of sadness was not, therefore, on Yves's account. On whose, then?" and the phrase ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... the character of the man, with those peculiarities that were to make of him so original a writer, and little did Marivaux imagine that in the coquette of Limoges he "had seen the living and faithful image of his Muse,"[14] with all its archness, coquettishness, and ingenuity in style and expression. Marivaux had much of the feminine in his nature,—a rare intuition, a marked finesse in observation, an extreme sensitiveness with regard to his own and others' ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... from the banks of the Garonne. Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... it, and the cureless vulgarity and nauseousness with which the whole subject appears to be invested. In opposition to so many obstacles and dissuasives, this great man yielded to the impulse of his muse, and obtained an immortality to which no other action of his life would have entitled him. It is with unaffected regret that we are compelled to state, that, to procure a sight of this celebrated poem, we have ransacked our libraries without the least success. How painful is the reflection, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... words the too-affected sound,— "Here the sense flags, and your expression's bound, Your fancy tires, and your discourse grows vain; Your term's improper;—make it just and plain." Thus 'tis a faithful friend will freedom use. But authors partial to their darling muse Think to protect it they have just pretense, And at your friendly counsel take offense. "Said you of this, that the expression's flat? Your servant, sir, you must excuse me that," He answers you. "This word has here no grace, Pray leave it ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... longer spoke but gravely of the studies hanging in the dining-room. Art was returning into their lives, and it made her muse. When she saw him go off with his bag, his portable easel, and his sunshade, it often happened that she flung herself ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Jean Goujon, whose exquisite work we see now and again in these chateaux, that some writer has said, that the muse of Ronsard whispered in the ear of the French sculptor, and thus Goujon's masterpieces were poems of Ronsard translated in marble. It is a rather pretty fancy, but Lydia and I cannot remember its author. Walter says ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... hurrying curtain thumped the platform. Vona had leaped, risking her life, and was able to dodge under the descending pole. For a moment, sick with horror and unutterable woe, she stood there alone against the tawdry curtain, as wide-eyed and white-faced as Tragedy's muse. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... began to muse, "it doesn't take long for the most polished man—not that I ever was ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... the Great, even as, in later years, a chance question on the part of Elwood led to his writing 'Paradise Regained.' [Footnote: Thou hast said much of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found? He made no answer, but sat some time in a muse. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... other bards, who have sported in lyric poetry, and acquired the applause of their fellow-citizens. Candidates for literary fame appeared even in the higher sphere of life, embellished by the nervous style, superior sense, and extensive erudition of a Corke; by the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feelings of a Lyttleton. King shone unrivalled in Roman eloquence. Even the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste and ingenuity. Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier in learning and critical ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the sea, wears upon its luminous walls small trace of its long history of blood. As we contemplate its mosques and houses flashing their white profiles into the sky, it is impossible not to muse upon the contrast between its radiant and picturesque aspect and its veritable character as the accomplice of every crime and every baseness known to the Oriental mind. To see that sunny city basking between ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... fell, like a dead man, with the blood gushing from his nose and mouth; and Catiline, striding across the prostrate body, retired sullenly and slowly to muse on the disappointment of this his most atrocious project, in the darkness and solitude of his own private chamber whither none dared ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... his policy of improving on his father's rakish Muse was the frequent endorsement of the beautiful and harmless practice of kissing. The kiss is mentioned some forty-eight times in the present work, and in the nine hundred untranslated Rubaiyat, two hundred and ten more kisses occur, making a grand total of two hundred ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... his chaste Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre None but the noblest passions to inspire, Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line which, dying, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... playne (my honour'd Lord) I was not borne, Audacious vowes, or forraigne legs to use, Nature denyed my outside to adorne, And I, of art to learne outsides refuse. Yet haveing of them both, enough to scorne Silence, & vulgar prayse, this humble muse And her meane favourite; at yo'r comand Chose in this kinde, to kisse your ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... I talk," answered he, "and get through a great deal of work; then I give over: but you prose, and muse, and sigh, and prose again." ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... old places. The voice of the guide and the company beneath had a hushed and muffled sound; and when I rustled the ivy leaves, or, in trying to break off a branch, loosened some fragment of stone, the sound affected me with a startling distinctness. I could not but inly muse and wonder on the life these old monks and abbots led, shrined up here as they were in ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... finding "no end in wandering mazes lost," much rather as a sober truth caught from the invisible world, than as merely an ingenious fancy. The late Robert Montgomery has rather unhappily chosen Satan as one of the themes of his muse; and in his long poem, designated in its second title "Intellect without God," he has set that personage a-reasoning in a style which, I fear, more completely demonstrates the absence of God than the presence of intellect. It has, however, sometimes occurred to me, that a poet of the larger calibre, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the whole it seems to have been a peaceful, idle, rather trivial time of sojourn among congenial people. He danced, he strolled, he wrote verses to little Miss Emily; in short, he enjoyed himself as a youngish man may, whether the muse is waiting for him, or some less high-flown customer. "I wish I could give you a good account of my literary labors," he wrote his sister after several months in Dresden, "but I have nothing to report. I am merely seeing, and hearing, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... in prison, Keep them here at heart unseen, Till my muse again rehearses Long years hence, and in my verses You shall meet them rearisen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and makes them the words of the Reason. The Imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world. Shakspeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is upper-most in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... less with the wildest surmise Do I muse on the bountiful dish Of sensation purveyed for the wise And the foolish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... cultivated this rhetorical art. When writing failed, however, acting rose, and the admirable performances of Aesopus and Roscius did much to keep alive an interest in the old works. Varius and Pollio seem for a moment to have revived the tragic muse under Augustus, but their works had probably nothing in common with this early but interesting drama; and in Imperial times tragedy became more and more confused with rhetoric, until delineation of character ceased to be an object, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... call me banish'd, I will ne'er refuse A name expressive of the lot I chuse. 20 I would that exiled to the Pontic shore, Rome's hapless bard7 had suffer'd nothing more! He then had equall'd even Homer's lays, And, Virgil! thou hadst won but second praise. For here I woo the Muse with no control, And here my books—my life—absorb me whole. Here too I visit, or to smile, or weep, The winding theatre's majestic sweep; The grave or gay colloquial scene recruits My spirits spent in Learning's long ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... is not doing so well of late. Kitty has not attended a meeting in months, and I often wonder where we may look for another Poet, Philosopher, and Friend—unless you will come back! Father did not tell me where you had been or what you intended to do, but I hope you have not given up the Muse. To encourage you I will send down a book, now and then, and you may send me a poem. Is it a ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... are," said Will. The humming stopped. I saw poor Spenser, a shy gentle soul, With haunted eyes like starlit forest pools, Smuggling his cantos under his cloak again. "There's verse enough, no doubt," Bacon went on, "But English is no language for the Muse. Whom would you call our best? There's Gabriel Harvey, And Edward, Earl of Oxford. Then there's Dyer, And Doctor Golding; while, for tragedy, Thomas, Lord Buckhurst, hath a lofty vein. And, in a lighter prettier vein, why, Will, There ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... course of complaisance. She was still comparatively an outsider here, her life with Lady Petherwin having been passed chiefly in alternations between English watering-places and continental towns. However, it was too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that from first to last Ethelberta never discovered from the Belmaines whether her proposal had been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly were they practised in sustaining that ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... no fit polish can my verse attain, Not mine is strength to try the task sublime: My genius, measuring its power to climb, From such attempt doth prudently refrain. Full oft I oped my lips to chant thy name; Then in mid utterance the lay was lost: But say what muse can dare so bold a flight? Full oft I strove in measure to indite; But ah, the pen, the hand, the vein I boast, At once were vanquish'd by ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... who had been bred a hair-dresser, but who experienced, as he believed, the secret visitations of the Muse, and became inspired. "With sad civility, and aching head," I perused no fewer than six comedies from the pen of this aspiring genius, in no page of which I could discern any glimmering of poetry or wit, or in reality could form ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... and discriminating judgment, never over-stepping the bounds of courtesy, never exaggerating a defect or concealing a beauty. A talk might be raised about the inconsistency with a former tone; but if the fact was made apparent that the later effusions of a tender and melodious, but shallow Muse, were but dilutions, ever more watery and insipid, of the first sweet and abundant flow, was the critic or the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... irresistible feelings," "the too-tender sensibility"; and if the frosts of prudence, the icy chain of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness! At this time the profanation of the word "love" rose to its height; the muse of science condescended to seek admission at the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into the service of virtue than ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... great events in the olden times; and vast assemblies were swayed by the eloquence of the budding sockless statesmen. It was at the old field school "exhibition" that the goddess of liberty always received a broken nose, and the poetic muse a black eye; it was at the old field school "exhibition" that Greece and Rome rose and fell, in seas of gore, about every fifteen ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... existence with childlike, all-believing, Homeric eyes. That creative vision which of old peopled Olympus still peoples the world for her, beholding gods where the skeptic, critical eye sees only a medical doctor and a sick woman. So is she stamped a true child of the Muse, descended on the one side from Memory, or superficial fact, but on the other from Zeus, the soul of fact; and being gifted to discern the divine halo on the brows of humanity, she rightly obtains ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... combinations new and important inferences; and in this process might almost rival in originality the creations of the poet and the artist. But if the processes of science are necessarily slow, they are sure. There is no retrograde movement in her domain. Arts may fade, the Muse become dumb, a moral lethargy may lock up the faculties of a nation. the nation itself may pass away and leave only the memory of its existence but the stores of science it has garnered up will endure for ever. As other nations come upon the stage, and new forms of civilization ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... itched for the abandoned brush while his thumb crooked longingly for the discarded palette. Here was a subject fit for his Muse, a Jeanne d'Arc whose soul was beaming from her luminous eyes. Not that maid of visions and fought fields, but as she hung flame-tortured in the open square of Rouen. No peasant soul this, rather a royal maiden burning on the altars of her country. Awkward and ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... your soul could not but know mine that That gave up in your ghost but just now his: As soul is known from soul so is your ghost Known to the Muses by my muse that's yours. ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... reason of the starres, Hence Plato fecht his deepe Philosophy: And heere in Heauenly knowledg they excell. Antho. More then most faire, another Heauen to me, The starres where on Ile gaze shalbe thy face, 860 Thy morall deedes my sweete Philosophy, Venus the muse whose ayde I must implore: O let me profit in this study best, For Beauties scholler I am now prefest. Lord. See how this faire Egiptian Sorceres, Enchantes these Noble warriars man-like mindes, And melts their hearts in loue and wantones. Caes. Most glorious Queene, whose cheerefull ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... Slaughter to a Throne, And shut the Gates of Mercy on Mankind, The struggling Pangs of conscious Truth to hide, To quench the Blushes of ingenuous Shame, Or heap the Shrine of Luxury and Pride With Incense, kindled at the Muse's Flame. Far from the madding Crowd's ignoble Strife, Their sober Wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd Vale of Life They kept the noiseless Tenor of their Way. Yet ev'n these Bones from Insult to protect ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... the front door, with his essays and his prose symphonies and his satirical novel—the satire of a young man is apt to be very bitter—but it was as tightly shut against him as if a publisher and not the muse of literature ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... singular as in the beauty of her face, which was but of a little model, and yet proportionable to her body; her eyes black and full of loveliness and sweetness, her eyebrows small and even, as if drawn with a pencil, a very little, pretty, well-shaped mouth, which sometimes (especially when in a muse or study) she would draw up into an incredible little compass; her hair a sad chestnut; her complexion brown, but clear, with a fresh colour in her cheeks, a loveliness in her looks inexpressible; and by her whole composure was so beautiful a sweet creature at her marriage as not many did parallel, ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... "My muse," he explained. "A Parnassian pleasure. Tobacco smoke is the Ichor of mental life. Some men write with a pencil, others with a typewriter, I write with ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... thought I held, And yet all thro' it The wires all England over shrill'd, And I never knew it! In a high muse I nurst my news All the forenoon, While England braced her limbs and thews ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... that a man ought to be able to return to the Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ceased ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... his years, and Wordsworth and Shelley became his prime favorites. His contributions to the "Eton Miscellany" were various, sometimes in prose and now and then in verse. A poet by nature, he could not resist the Muse's influence, and he expressed a genuine emotion, oftentimes elegantly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... a poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... and intensely. He does not analyse, he does not amass his facts; he concentrates. He wrings out quintessences; and when he has distilled his drops of pure spirit he brews his potion. Something of the kind happens to me now, whether verse or prose be the Muse of my devotion. A stray thought, a chance vision, moves me; presently the flame is hissing hot. Everything then at any time observed and stored in the memory which has relation to the fact is fused and in a swimming flux. Anon, as the Children of Israel said to Moses, "There came forth this calf." ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... sat awhile in a muse, she asked me if there was not a place of Scripture which said Peter was at a tanner's house. I told her there was such a Scripture, and directed her where ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... freedom and dignity in the court of Augustus. The triumph of Messalla was justified by the conquest of Aquitain. As an orator, he disputed the palm of eloquence with Cicero himself. Messalla cultivated every muse, and was the patron of every man of genius. He spent his evenings in philosophic conversation with Horace; assumed his place at table between Delia and Tibullus; and amused his leisure by encouraging the poetical talents of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... forsaken me, I tender my most grateful thanks. His kindness shall be remembered by me while memory holds her seat. Let the throng of uninvited fools who swarmed about us, accept the following sally of the house of correction muse, from the pen, or rather the fork, of a fellow convict. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... notices of the figure that have been preserved the indications are that there was originally only one Sibyl—she was the mythical embodiment of divine revelation, as the muse was the embodiment of intellectual inspiration. At a later time many sibyls came into being; Varro reckons ten and other authors give other numbers. Apparently a process of local differentiation went on; when ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... the vain expectation that fame would attend my labours, and my country be my pride. How have I been treated? I need only refer you to the critiques of last month, and you will acquit me of unreasonable instability. When I leave England,—adieu to the muse for ever,—I will never publish another line while I exist, and even those manuscripts now finished ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... the Tragick Muse hath aw'd the stage, And frighten'd wives and children with her rage, Too long Drawcansir roars, Parthenope weeps, While ev'ry lady cries, and critick sleeps With ghosts, rapes, murders, tender hearts they wound, Or else, like thunder, terrify with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... his great scene of the Haunted Poet, is tremendous. You discover him in bed, too much visited by the Muse to sleep, and reading his manuscripts aloud to himself, after the manner of poets when they cannot find other listeners. He is alarmed by various ghostly noises in the house, and is often obliged to get up and examine the dark corners of the room, and to look under the bed. When at last the spectral ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... various proofs of religion; but he dwells with peculiar complacency on the Sibylline verses, and the fourth eclogue of Virgil. Forty years before the birth of Christ, the Mantuan bard, as if inspired by the celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated, with all the pomp of oriental metaphor, the return of the Virgin, the fall of the serpent, the approaching birth of a godlike child, the offspring of the great Jupiter, who should expiate the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... O, muse not at it; 'tis the Hebrews' guise, That maidens new-betroth'd should weep a while: Trouble her not; sweet Lodowick, depart: She is thy wife, and thou ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... auditor of the Official Accounts of Iceland, and got married. During the ten ensuing years I was buried under an avalanche of accounts and official documents and could hardly hold my head up above the waters. The wings of my soul drooped with exhaustion. My dramatic muse awakened several times, but I could not receive her visits. At last, in 1890, I began to write "Skipit sekkur" [The Ship is Sinking,—a naturalistic drama], parts of which I rewrote seven times; so badly had I treated my muse that she began to work ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... world a secret yet. Whether the nymph to please her swain Talks in a high romantic strain; Or whether he at last descends To act with less seraphic ends; Or, to compound the business, whether They temper love and books together, Must never to mankind be told, Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold." ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... more passionate, are more tender than others; and often, when I walk at this time in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight, and hear those airs played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me and my dear companion (as I must always call her), I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us for ever. How it happened the reader will understand from what remains ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... in tragedy, Who lives that never knew The honey of the Attic Bee Was gather'd from thy dew? He of the tragic muse, Whose praises bards rehearse: What power but thine could e'er diffuse Such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... its merchandise; I barter curl for curl upon that mart, And from my poet's forehead to my heart Receive this lock which outweighs argosies,— As purply black, as erst to Pindar's eyes The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart The nine white Muse-brows. For this counterpart, ... The bay-crown's shade, Beloved, I surmise, Still lingers on thy curl, it is so black! Thus, with a fillet of smooth-kissing breath, I tie the shadows safe from gliding ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... great noyse still, and as I heare Charing Crosse shall haue a new coat too: but in the meane time while so many monuments are raised, either to the honour of the dead, or else for the profit and pleasure of the lyuing: Dic mihi musa virum, I pray Muse and shew me the man, who ioynes with that euer zealous, reuerend, learned Deane in founding a Colledge for a Societie of writers against the superstitious Idolatries of the Romane Synagogue, the which happily might be like the [ec]Tower ...
— An Exposition of the Last Psalme • John Boys
... remember the time past; I muse upon all thy works: yea, I exercise myself in the works of ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... with quick, keen eyes. And thus he presently whispered Robin who, laughing slyly, made signal to his followers, whereupon, by ones and twos they stole silently away until there none remained save only Sir Pertinax who, wrestling with his muse, stared aloft under knitted brows, all unknowing, and presently brake ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Christian Religion. The time he could spare from this literary occupation he devoted to preaching in the neighboring cities, and especially at Angouleme. A vine, beneath which he loved to recline and muse, may still be seen; it was for a long time called "Calvin's vine." He was still living on the last bounties of a church which he had renounced, and which he called "a stepmother and a prostitute"; and on the presents ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... fragile and dainty; and though her cheek lacks bloom, the lines are soft and graceful, and the face pensive and poetic. The mouth is small and well curved, and the air of repose that rests upon the imaginative brow resembles the Muse of Meditation. The serenity that is uniformly spread over her unique countenance is in strong contrast to the animated, vivacious features of her cousin. Celina's head is fashioned after a classic model, and the mass of amber-hued hair which crowns it might ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... until the Government found it opportune to take them in hand. The greatest Italian poet and one of the greatest imaginative writers in Europe will now be able to devote himself—if his rather morbid Muse has suffered no injury—to his predestined task. Those—the comparatively few that read—whose acquaintance with this writer's work usually caused them to regret his methods, could not help admiring his personal activities, his genius for leadership and his vital fire during ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... voice that will not let me rest? I hear it speak. Where is the shore will gratify my quest, Show what I seek? Not yours, weak Muse, to mimic that far voice, With halting tongue; No peace, sweet land, to bid my heart ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... they were out of hearing of the other two. "If I were poetically minded I should say that you looked like the Tragic Muse." ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... upon with love and joy, was dull and hard; the trees dingy, the leaden waters motionless, the distant hills rough and austere. Where was that translucent sky, once brilliant as his enamoured fancy; those bowery groves of aromatic fervor wherein he had loved to roam and muse; that river of swift and sparkling light that flowed and flashed like the current of his enchanted hours? All vanished—as ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... gray Who blew the pibroch ere the battle lowered, Then pitched his tent upon the balmy beach? "Snow-bound," I ween, among his native hills. And where the master hand that swept the lyre Till wrinkled critics cried "Excelsior"? Gathering the "Aftermath" in frosted fields. Then, timid Muse, no longer shake thy wings For airy realms and fold again in fear; A broken flight is better than no flight; Be thine the task, as best you may, to sing The deeds of one who sleeps at Gettysburg Among the thousands ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... 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 ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in spirit still present to me, My best thoughts, my country, still linger with thee; My fond heart beats quick, and my dim eyes run o'er, When I muse on the last glance I gave to thy shore. The chill mists of night round thy white cliffs were curl'd, But I felt there was no spot like thee in the world— No home to which memory so fondly would turn, No thought that within me so madly ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... door at muse I stand, My restive sponge and towel in my hand. Thus to await you, Jimmy, is not strange, But as I wait I mark a woeful change. Time was when wrathfully I should have heard Loud jubilation mock my hope deferred; For who, first in the bathroom, fit and young, Would, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... to "Magna sed Apta," both saddened by this deplorable misadventure, to muse and talk and marvel over these wonders; penetrated to the very heart's core by a dim sense of some vast, mysterious power, latent in the sub-consciousness of man—unheard of, undreamed of as yet, but linking him with ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the merry month of June, when all is green and gay, because the poor muse, whose slave the author is, has been more capricious then the love of a queen, and has mysteriously wished to bring forth her fruit in the time of flowers. No one can boast himself master of this fay. At times, when grave thoughts occupy the mind and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... heavenly muse, shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the infant God? Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain, To welcome Him to this His new abode— Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod, Hath took no print of the approaching light, And all the spangled host keep ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... it, the idee struck me as bein' sort o' pitiful,—to go to whippin' a ghost. But she didn't seem to notice my remark, for she seemed to be a gazin' upward in a sort of a muse; and she says,— ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... arterward," boastingly declared the man in leather breeches. "We find that thar is ther simplest way o' doin' business. Ef we makes a mistake, an' gits ther wrong galoot, nobody ever kicks up much o' a row over it, fer we're naterally lively over thar, an' we must hev somethin' ter 'muse us 'bout ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... such times to put on their worst clothes, to sprinkle ashes on their heads; and, assembling in crowds in the public squares, to shed tears and bitterly to upbraid the muse who had ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of Fame thy noble bosom fires, Nor vain the hope thy ardent mind inspires; In British breasts whilst Purity remains, Whilst Liberty her blessed abode retains, Still shall the muse of History proclaim To ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve, and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs. The cooeperation is involuntary, and is put upon us by the Genius of Life, who reserves this as a part of his prerogative. 'Tis fine for us to talk: we sit and muse, and are serene, and complete; but the moment we meet with anybody, each ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... and stonier faces— Some from library windows wan Forth on her gardens, her green spaces, Peer and turn to their books anon. Hence, my Muse, from the green oases Gather ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God, I thence Invoke thy aid ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the leaders of the Danaans and their captains. Now tell me, O Muse, who among them was first and foremost, of warriors alike and horses that followed the sons of Atreus. Of horses they of Pheres' son were far goodliest, those that Eumelos drave, swift as birds, like of coat, like of age, matched to the measure ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... desired that in some degree his work should be regarded as one of poetical conception and design. To this it was not possible to do justice, and in the attempt I have doubtless very often need of the reader's indulgent consideration. My natural respect for the old gentleman's vagaries, with a muse of equivocal character, must be my only excuse whenever the language, without luxuriating into verse, borrows flowers scarcely natural to prose. Truth compels me also to confess, that, with all my pains, I am ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of no age of people. The dirtiest Hindoo sings to his fetish the songs of the Brahmin muse, with as keen a relish as the most devout Christian does the hymns of Dr. WATTS. Melody comes of Heaven, and is a gift vouchsafed to all generations, and all kinds of men. In proof of this, let us adduce a single extract from the great epic ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... suggest that Sir John should devote all that money he proposes to make by the aid of his familiar spirit—the ghost of Narcisse—to the building of a temple in honour of the tenth muse, the muse of cookery," said Mrs. Sinclair; "and what do you think, Sir John, of a name I dreamt of last night for your sauce, 'The New Century Sauce'? How will ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... on that bank, 'that mossy bank where the violets grow,' my dear Henry, and muse there in sober sadness, while I face the dragon in her den." And saying these words, I galloped off without further discussion. I had not gone far before he overtook me; and quoting the words of Andrew Fairservice in "Rob Roy," which we had ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... that boat of cypress wood, Now here, now there, as by the current borne. Nor rest nor sleep comes in my troubled mood; I suffer as when painful wound has torn The shrinking body. Thus I dwell forlorn, And aimless muse, my thoughts of sorrow full. I might with wine refresh my spirit worn; I might go forth, and, sauntering try to cool The fever of my heart; but ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... he not change a thousand times a day? Sloth is of all things the most fanciful— 120 And moves more parasangs in its intents Than generals in their marches, when they seek To leave their foe at fault.—Why dost thou muse? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... informed, could compose only when he was surrounded by smoking fowls and Bologna sausages; their fumes seemed to inflame his imagination, to feed his muse; his brain was stimulated first through his nose and then through his stomach. When Gluck wrote music he betook himself to the open fields, accompanied by at least two bottles of champagne. Salieri told Michael Kelly that a comic ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten |
