"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shoes and now at my home-spun stockings. Once only, when he had ventured to look a little higher, our eyes met; and no thief taken with a hand in a man's pocket could have shown more lively signals of distress. This set me in a muse, whether his timidity arose from too long a disuse of any human company; and whether perhaps, upon a little trial, it might pass off, and my uncle change into an altogether different man. From this I was awakened by ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and composed one admirable tragedy; Sheridan sketched some brilliant satires; Miss Baillie delineated the passions with epic power; and genius of the highest order in our times, that of Byron and Bulwer, has endeavoured to revive the tragic muse in these islands. But the first declared that he wrote his dramatic pieces with no design whatever to their representation, but merely as a vehicle of noble sentiments in dialogue of verse; and the second is too successful as a novelist to put forth his strength in dramatic poetry, or train his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... nor imagine that you precede your generation because you stand alone. He dreamed of far-away glory, and his flatterers told him his dreams were prophetic. He saw across the seas the mirage of a great Latin empire in the West, and beheld the Muse of history inscribing his name beside that of his great kinsman as the restorer of the political and commercial equilibrium of the world, as well as the benefactor who had thrown El Dorado open to civilization. With the faith of ignorance, he proposed to share ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... it's impossible. I may die with you, starve with you, or be damned with your works. But to live, even three days, the life of a play, I no more expect it than to be canonised for a muse after ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... dress; From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase, And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays; Then with mosaick art the piece combine, And boast the glitter of each dulcet line: Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse His vigorous sense into the Latian muse; Aspir'd to shine by unreflected light, And with a Roman's ardour think and write. He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire, And, like a master, wak'd the[59] soothing lyre: Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim, While Sky's wild rocks ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... provisions from the town miles away. His dwelling-place, surrounded with palmetto trees, was little more than a rough shelter. Diotti arose at daylight, and after a simple repast, betook himself to practise. Hour after hour he would let his muse run riot with his fingers. Lovingly he wooed the strings with plaintive song, then conquering and triumphant would be his theme. But neither satisfied him. The vague dream of a melody more beautiful than ever man had heard dwelt ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... such unusual interest to his society, so that no friend of his can forget that figure of Fleeming coming charged with some new discovery: it is this that makes his character so difficult to represent. Our fathers, upon some difficult theme, would invoke the Muse; I can but appeal to the imagination of the reader. When I dwell upon some one thing, he must bear in mind it was only one of a score; that the unweariable brain was teeming at the very time with other thoughts; that the good heart had left ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though the deed of blood be veiled in night, "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Fair, blighted flower! The muse, that weeps thy doom, Rears o'er thy sleeping dust ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... may be said to end. Yet a poet, whether he will or no, is shaped by his early surroundings. In some verses by Mr. C. W. Dalmon called "The Sussex Muse," I find the influence of Shelley's surroundings ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... tenderness, cling within their hearts to all the lost privileges of love they must by tradition affect to despise. My prayer for the little lamb that was I presented no aspect of incongruity to my uncle; it left him silent and solemnly abstracted: the man being cast into a heavy muse upon its content, his head fallen over his breast, as was his habit, and his great gray brows drawn down. How still the night—how cold and clear: how unfeeling in this frosty calm and silence, save, afar, where the little stars winked their kindly cognizance ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... most prominent and ardent English Catholics of his day. A son of his became a priest, and a famous preacher and writer on religious subjects. Another child, a daughter, took the veil. Lady Rens, who was not clever, although she was at one time almost universally considered to have the face of a muse, shared in the family ardour for the Church, but was far too fond of the world to leave it. While she was very young she met Lord Rens, a Lifeguardsman of twenty-six, who called himself a Protestant, but who was really quite happy without any faith. He fell ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... his Muse a gravely jocund note in his "Seasons' Comfort." He, too, of the four fellow-versifiers shows the greater aptitude for experiments, though it may perhaps be felt that his touch is nowhere quite so sure, nor his artistic feeling so direct ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... since Taine's exaltation of it, has often been taken as a Balzacian quintessence), and Autre etude de femme, yet another rehandling of earlier work. In 1843 came the introduction of the completed Sur Catherine de Medicis, Honorine and La Muse du departement (almost as often reconstructed as La Femme de trente ans), with Comment aiment les jeunes filles (a similar rehandling intended to start the collected Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes), and a further instalment of Illusions perdues, Les ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... pursuit, like us, who, wanting capacity for momentous views, make serious study of what is only the transitory occupation of a genius. Had the court of the first Charles been peaceful, how agreeably had the prince's congenial propensity flattered and confirmed the inclination of his uncle! How the muse of arts would have repaid the patronage of the monarch, when, for his first artist, she would have presented him with his nephew! How different a figure did the same prince make in a reign of dissimilar complexion! The philosophic warrior, who could relax himself ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this work, and they have been many, have elicited the strongest praise here and abroad. The classic poets of every land have valued the praise which rewarded their dedication of the first triumphs of the muse to subjects connected with the cultivation of the soil, to the arts that rendered the breast of our common mother lovely, and wedded the labors which sustain life with the arts that render it happy. The work before us has an established reputation. It is written by one whose labors ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... speaking, he would sit quietly and muse upon what I had been saying; or, if he thought me not too deeply absorbed in reflection, would ask a question, or say something relative to the subject in hand, which would give me the opportunity of ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... yet come to the age of sentiment, but now and then she reached forward a little and surveyed its possibilities, and now she paused awhile to muse upon the subject of her aunt's spinsterhood. Not for long, however; she decided that Aunt Mary must have had excellent reasons of her own for remaining single, and returned to the more pressing problem of how to get Dick ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... at me, with earnestness, as if to ascertain whether I was really as unconcerned as I affected to be. Then she seemed to muse, picking the cotton of the spotless counterpane on which she was lying, like one at a loss what to ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... denunciations of Great Britain, so thickly strewn through these carmina non prius audita of the Congressional muse, we are sure they will excite no feeling in our readers but that of pity and contempt, and that comment upon them is unnecessary. The jealousy of foreign nations towards the arts and arms of his country, is ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... days when Dryden held office no Laureate has been appointed so distinctly pre-eminent above all his contemporaries, so truly the king of the poets, as he upon whose brows now rests the Laureate crown. Dryden's grandeur was sullied, his muse was venal, and his life was vicious; still in his keeping the office acquired a certain dignity; after his death it declined into the depths of depredation, and each succeeding dullard dimmed its failing lustre. The first ray of hope for its revival sprang ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... The Muse, whoever she be, who presides over this Comic History must now descend from the genteel heights in which she has been soaring and have the goodness to drop down upon the lowly roof of John Sedley at Brompton, and describe what events are taking place ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for ever and ever for this boon," he answered; and Bertram went back to his room, to lie awake and muse over what had befallen till the dawn broke and his brothers awoke to ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... descending lingered fondly yet about the minarets of the Foundling, and gilded the grassplots of Mecklenburgh Square—Perkins, I say, and Lucy would often sit together in the summer-house of that pleasure-ground, and muse upon the strange coincidences of their life. Lucy was motherless and fatherless; so too was Perkins. If Perkins was brotherless and sisterless, was not Lucy likewise an only child? Perkins was twenty-three: his age and Lucy's united, ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Two were rather intricate financial lures which Average Jones was able to dispose of by a mere "Don't." The third was a Spiritualist announcement behind which lurked a shrewd plot to entrap a senile millionaire into a marriage with the medium. These having been settled, the expert was free to muse upon a paragraph which had appeared in all the important New York morning papers ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... beauties." Mother's curse. kiss. land. night. "Mother's son." Mother's soul. spirit. tears. "Mothers." "Mothers, little." Mother-in-law. Mountain-mother. Mourning. Mouse. Mouth. Mud-mother. Mud-pies. "Mulberry Bush." Mumbo-jumbo. Mummies. Mundfaul. Muscari. Muse-mother. Music. Musician (child). Mustard. Mut (Maut). Mutilations. Mutterbiene. Mutterbirke. Mutterblume. Mutterboden. Mutteresel. Muttergefilde. Muttergrund. Mutterhase. Mutterhaus. Mutterhimmel. Mutter Holle. Mutterholz. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... tell,' I remarked. 'Would you rather explain it as magic? Or as the work of fairies? Or do you believe in ghosts? Your muse has fascinated you, you mystic!' And I laughed and trilled a line from 'The Mascot,' which we had seen the evening before at ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the exclusive birthright of no age of people. The dirtiest Hindoo sings to his fetish the songs of the Brahmin muse, with as keen a relish as the most devout Christian does the hymns of Dr. WATTS. Melody comes of Heaven, and is a gift vouchsafed to all generations, and all kinds of men. In proof of this, let us adduce a single extract from the great epic of the Hawaiian poet, POPPOOFI, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... 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 upon ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... And I muse as I continue to descend toward the sea. "Her appearance of sadness was not, therefore, on Yves's account. On whose, then?" and the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... mine since those events Ruled the pulsation of my daily life: And now they are a vulgar chronicle, And gossiped over by the rudest tongues. A haunting song of old felicities Lured me, scarce consciously, down here to muse Upon my shattered dreams; safe from the roar Of interests in our grim metropolis, The beating heart of England and the world. Not seen by me, since on that wondrous night Her consolation came into my soul; ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... the mind with a vision of pomp and magnificence, which it is pleasanter to contemplate, as it were, from afar, massed together in that general survey, than to examine part by part. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Carlyle agree in exalting that ode of Klopstock's, in which he represents the Muse of Britain and the Muse of Germany running a race. The piece seems to me more rhetorical than strictly poetical; and if the younger Muse's power of keeping up the race depends on productions of this sort, I would not give a penny for her chance, at least if the contest ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... An engine so powerful, so mighty to aid, So simple in structure, so readily made, A helper so potent in training the young— 'Tis meet that thy praise by the muse should be sung; For though sages may reason, and orators talk, They can ne'er make their mark ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... no heed of it. By and by, to drive off his fit, they spoke harsh words to him; at times they would laugh, at times they would chide, and then set him at nought. So he went to his room to pray for them, as well as to nurse his own grief. He would go, too, into the woods to read and muse, and thus for some weeks ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... aptly art thou named, For thou hast been the cause of many a tear; For deeds of treacherous strife too justly famed, The Atlantic's charnel—desolate and drear; A thing none love, though wand'ring thousands fear— If for a moment rest the Muse's wing Where through the waves thy sandy wastes appear, 'Tis that she may one strain of horror sing, Wild as the dashing waves that tempests ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... in a muse, she asked me if there was not a place of Scripture which said Peter was at a tanner's house. I told her there was such a Scripture, and directed her where to ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... "Yet while I muse, it seems quite plain That as I am I can't complain, For Tom and Jack—they both confess— Adore me. So I rather guess I'd wish I were a girl again, Were ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... nothing of the epigrammatist in him, and his finest lines all seem to have come by accident, or at any rate without effort. [27] His excessive reverence for the Alexandrines Callimachus and Philetas, has cramped his muse. With infinitely more poetic fervour than either, he has made them his only models, and to attain their reputation is the summit of his ambition. It is from respect to their practice that he has loaded his poems with pedantic erudition; in the very midst of passionate pleading ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Rustick Satyr, now no more Abuse, In rude Unskilful Strains, thy Tuneful Muse; No more let Envy lash thy true-bred Steed, Nor cross thy easy, just, and prudent Speed: Who dext'rously doth bear or loose the Rein, To climb each lofty Hill, or scour the Plain: With proper Weight and Force thy Courses run; Where ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... dire compact; The watchful Irish took them in the fact. Of riding armed; O traitorous overt act! With each of them an ancient Pistol sided, Against the statute in that case provided. But, why was such a host of swearers pressed? Their succour was ill husbandry at best. Bayes's crowned muse, by sovereign right of satire, Without desert, can dub a man a traitor; And tories, without troubling law or reason, By loyal instinct can ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... but wherever the English language is spoken, his fame is cherished and his verse repeated. Nor is the delight inspired by his works limited to the language in which they were written. All over the continent of Europe, among the nations whose language is of Latin and Celtic origin, his muse inspires deep interest and pleasure. His extraordinary oriental poem, "Lalla Rookh," has been translated into Persian, and delights the literary sons of Iran as it erst thrilled the imagination and heart of all persons ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... rear. Kenealy was charmingly equipped, and lent the party a luster. If he did not contribute much to the conversation, he did not interrupt it, for the ladies talked through him as if he had been a column of red air. Sing, muse, how often Kenealy said "yaas" that afternoon; on second thoughts, don't. I can weary my readers without celestial aid: Toot! toot! toot! went a cheerful horn, and the mail-coach came into sight round a corner, and rolled rapidly toward them. Lucy looked ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... a place sacred to the Muse; she inspired (really to a considerable extent) Tennant's vernacular poem "Anster Fair"; and I have there waited upon her myself with much devotion. This was when I came as a young man to glean engineering experience from the building of the breakwater. What I gleaned, I am sure I do not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in our own name, for we are but atoms—but in the name of philology itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and tormented Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, most incurable woes; and speaks to men comfortingly of the beautiful and godlike ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... high. When the world roars, and flames the startled sky, In its own adamant it rests secure, As free from chance and malice ever found, And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse, As it is loyal to each manly thing And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse. Only in that part is it not so sound Where Love hath set ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... shall these things change? Shall childish galleries That deemed you once Apollo's minister, Say, "Garn, old monkey!" Shall colossal salaries Reward the Muse and not the dulcimer? Not gleaming eyeballs, not the soul illuminate? Shall old faiths falter and Antonio's heart Sicken the while he churns, and chilly ruminate, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... Villa San Giorgio, most of all in the society of its graceful chatelaine, I had my fill of poetry and the other ornamental arts. Wit, love, philosophy, literature, bric-a-brac, religion—each had its petit- maitre, and each its sparkling Muse. It was before the day of Arcadia and shepherdesses, those flowers of our more jaded years; women were still called divine, but it was very possible, or we used to think it so, to discuss matters which you did not ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the heart of Corydon, that he should not be put out of his farm, that putting off his shepherd's bonnet, he did her all the reverence that he might. But all this while sate Montanus in a muse, thinking of the cruelty of his Phoebe, whom he wooed long, but was in no hope to win. Ganymede, who still had the remembrance of Rosader in his thoughts, took delight to see the poor shepherd passionate, laughing at Love, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... customary signal for the train to approach, threw his vast frame upon the earth, and seemed to muse on the deep responsibility of his present situation. His sons were not long in arriving; for the cattle no sooner scented the food and water than they quickened their pace, and then succeeded the usual bustle and avocations ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... lead them, holding a lyre in his hands, and playing sweetly as he stepped high and featly. So the Cretans followed him to Pytho, marching in time as they chanted the Ie Paean after the manner of the Cretan paean-singers and of those in whose hearts the heavenly Muse has put sweet-voiced song. With tireless feet they approached the ridge and straightway came to Parnassus and the lovely place where they were to dwell honoured by many men. There Apollo brought them and showed them his most ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... pity the night poor Amy Robsart passed there, and the scene between her, Leicester, and the queen, when that prince of villains, Varney, claims her as his wife. But in spite of the romantic and historical associations belonging to the place, I do not think it would have "inspired my muse." ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... disobedience And the fruit of that forbidden tree Whose mortal taste brought death into the world, And all our woe, With loss of Eden, Till one greater Man restore us And regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, That on the secret top of Horeb Or of Sinai Didst ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... had now to decide between the goddesses, he certainly would have awarded you the golden apple," exclaimed the first muse, who never let an opportunity slip to display her ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... her cheeks (being Cupid's throne) Is my heart's sovereign: O, when she is dead, This wonder, Beauty, shall be found in none. Now Agripyne's not mine, I vow to be In love with nothing but deformity. O fair Deformity, I muse all eyes Are not enamoured of thee: thou didst never Murder men's hearts, or let them pine like wax, Melting against the sun of thy disdain;[1] Thou art a faithful nurse to Chastity; Thy beauty is not like to Agripyne's, For cares, and age, and sickness, hers deface, But thine's eternal: O Deformity, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... first cause explore, To fix the aeras of recorded time, And live in ev'ry age and ev'ry clime; Record the chiefs, who propt their country's cause; Who founded empires, and establish'd laws; To learn whate'er the sage, with virtue fraught, Whate'er the muse of moral wisdom taught. These were your quarry; these to you were known, And the world's ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... said it, the idee struck me as bein' sort o' pitiful,—to go to whippin' a ghost. But she didn't seem to notice my remark, for she seemed to be a gazin' upward in a sort of a muse; and she says,— ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the Colonel, he ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only awoke occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing. On each of these occasions he showed a gratitude and kind courtesy that endeared him to me beyond expression. 'Champdivers, my lad, your health!' ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clever adolescence, whom Chatterton certainly mocked bitterly enough in satires which he wrote apparently for his own private satisfaction, but whom he nevertheless took considerable pains to conciliate as being men of substance who could lend books and now and then reward the Muse with five shillings. For Burgum the poet invented, and pretended to derive from numerous authorities (some of which are wholly imaginary), a magnificent pedigree showing him descended from a Simon de Seyncte Lyse alias ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... certain grotesque humor in Thor's adventures, which is missed in his mythologic counterpart of the South, Hercules. It is the old rich "world-humor" of the North, genial and broad, which still lives in the creations of the later Teutonic Muse. The dints which Thor made on the mountain-skull of Skrymir were types and forerunners of the later feats of the Teutonic race, performed on the rough, shaggy, wilderness face of this Western hemisphere, channelling it with watery highways, tunnelling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... 'Tis not vain or fabulous (Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance) What the sage poets, taught by the heavenly Muse, Storied of old in high immortal verse Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles, And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell; For such there be, but unbelief is blind. Within the navel of this hideous ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... 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 Frogs • Aristophanes
... he thought, as he walked toward the Bayswater Road, looking for a hansom. "Just the sort to save a man trouble, and get full value out of a sovereign." He continued to muse on the wonderful discovery he had made of a woman perfectly planned, according to man's ideal—sweet, yielding, tenderly sympathetic, willing and capable to ward off all annoyances from her master, full of feeling for his troubles, and not to be moved ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... temples and palaces, and the mutilated remains of its statues and triumphal columns, conveying to the mind mournful images of the fallen fates of those who had for ages been its proud possessors; where the Mantuan bard first caught inspiration from the deathless muse; where Tully charmed the listening throng, whilst defending with mild persuasion the arts and the sciences he loved, and condemning in terrible denunciations the mad ambition that threatened the destruction of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... am very thirsty; nor have I ever met any one who found real pleasure in a statue when he had toothache. There is something to be said for the theory of the sceptical bishop in Browning's poem, that the soul is only free to muse of lofty things ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... contemptuously at the creature of his thoughts. What an idle ambition was the author's! How far beneath him was the practice of that childish art! With his hand closing on his first brief, he felt himself a man at last; and the muse who presides over the police romance, a lady presumably of French extraction, fled his neighbourhood, and returned to join the dance round the springs of ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... piece frum de mainest house. Thar was one brick chimbly an' one dirt one to hit, an' a great big wide po'ch 'cross de front of de house. I 'member Mis Nancy an' white folks 'ud set out thar of an evenin' an' mek us li'l cullud chullun dance an' sing an' cut capers fer to 'muse 'em. Den dey had a trough, built 'bout lak a pig trough, an' dey would mek de cook bake a gre't big slab er co'n bread an' put hit in de trough an' po' milk or lasses over hit, an' tu'n us li'l cullud chullun loose on hit. An' I'se tell'n y' as much of hit went in our hair ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... may come while we are alone in the darkness, under the stars, or while we walk by ourselves or in a crowd, or while we sit and muse. It may come upon the sinking ship or in the tumult of the battle. There is no saying when it may not come to us. . . . But after it has come our lives are changed, God is with us and there is no more doubt of God. Thereafter ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... melancholy glee To think where once my fancy strayed, I muse on what the years may be Whose coming tales are all unsaid, Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid Within their shadowed niches, grow By grim degrees to pick and spade, As one by ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the Man who with ennobling pride Beholds not his own nature? where is he Who but with deep amazement awe allied Must muse the mysteries of the human mind, The miniature of Deity. For Man the vernal clouds descending Shower down their fertilizing rain, For Man the ripen'd harvest bending Waves with soft murmur o'er the plenteous plain. He spreads the sail on high, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... fail thee not, I trust that I shall again proclaim in song a sweeter glory yet, and find thereto in words a ready way, when to the fair-shining hill of Kronos I am come. Her strongest-winged dart my Muse hath yet in store. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... because, secondly, the power of depicting graphically what they are in the daily habit of seeing, is not in them, not having been cultivated by study and practice; and thirdly, not being stimulated to literary activity by that Muse of the imperative mood, Necessity, they find more pleasure in having these things brought under their eyes, results of the mental toil and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... one way that I may live—to take every impulse that comes—to be watching, watching—to dare always and instantly, to hesitate, to put off never, to seize the skirt of my muse whenever it shimmers before me. So I make myself a habit, a routine, a discipline; and so each day I have new power. So each day I feel myself, I bare my arms, I walk erect, exulting—I laugh—I am ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... to sit with Shirley in her panelled parlour, where others came and went, and where he could rarely find a quiet moment to show her the latest production of his fertile muse; he must have her out amongst the pleasant pastures, and lead her by the still waters. Tete-a-tete ramblings she shunned, so he made parties for her to his own grounds, his glorious forest; to remoter scenes—woods severed by the Wharfe, vales ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the shadow of 'Talbot's tower,' we might prefer to muse historically, and gather up our memories of facts connected with the place; but we are treading again upon 'the footsteps of the Conqueror,' and must pay for our indiscretion. From the moment we approach the precincts of the castle, we are pounced upon by the inevitable spider (in this instance, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... fanatic to-night, for you read history not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocian for the Greek, and Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, and John Brown the ripe fruit of our noonday, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Thus did she muse, gazing questioningly at the whiteness of the altar flowers and those steady tongues of flame, hearing the silence, as of reverent waiting, which dwelt in the place. But, on the other hand, to give, in this her hour of weakness, that which she had refused in the hours of clear-seeing strength;—to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... sacrifice in order to admire it more, and greatly rejoiced in being able to give full admiration to one whom she had learnt to love so heartily as Caroline. Such a triumph over natural timidity and feebleness of character was indeed a great and gallant thing, and Marian used to muse and wonder at it in her solitary hours. There was still much to suffer externally as well as internally; there was the return of letters and presents, with all their associations; there was the feeling of the pain and offence given ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the poet had applied his Muse to describe the living representative of the noble House he could justly have bestowed upon him a much greater meed of praise. It is a rare conjunction to find one who is born great, seek also to achieve greatness; ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... bitter, bitterrer than Gall Physicians say are always physical: Now Women's Tongues if into Powder beaten, May in a Potion or a Pill be eaten, And as there's nought more bitter, I do muse, That Women's Tongues in Physick they ne'er use. My self and others who lead restless Lives, Would spare that bitter Member ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... No. 4, Melpomene, is tragedy; No. 5, Terpsichore, is dance and song. Now comes Apollo with his quiver full of arrows. He is the god of the hunt and twin brother to Diana, the goddess of hunt; also he is god of music and poetry. No. 6 is Polyhymnia, muse of hymn-music; No. 7, Euterpe, is song poetry; No. 8, Thalia, is comedy, and No. 9, Urania, ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... 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 with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the equinox, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... of kindly and learned men to the public service through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it finally died out with Constance de Theis, Princesse de Salm, who was known under the Directory and the Empire in Paris as the 'Muse of Reason,' and the 'Boileau of Women,' and with her nephew, the last Baron de Theis, one of the most charming of men, and one of the most conscientious and accurate of archaeologists and collectors. The baron died in 1874. The 'objets ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... heart beats quick; my body's force is gone, Thinking, dear Prince, on this which thou hast said, Pointing along the paths. What! robbed of realm, Stripped of thy wealth, bare, famished, parched with thirst, Thus shall I leave thee in the untrodden wood? Ah, no! While thou dost muse on dear days fled, Hungry and weeping, I in this wild waste Will charm thy griefs away, solacing thee. The wisest doctors say, 'In every woe No better physic is than wifely love,' And, Nala, I will make it true to ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... left alone to muse on the uncertainly of all things, and to tell herself over and over again, how vain it was to set the heart on any earthly good. "Poor Janet!" well might her father say; and amid her own sorrow ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... we have ready to hand a refuge from the clash of wits or the small talk of the day amid the solemn beauties of our venerable minster, whose silvern chimes daily 'knoll us to prayer,' and in the shady walks of whose tranquil graveyard we muse with softened heart, and ever and anon with moistened eye, upon the memorials of the young, the beautiful, the aged, the wise, and ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... with telling me, he could have wished I had rather turned my thoughts to the comic than the tragic muse; for tragedy was less fashionable, and consequently less profitable both to the house and the author, than comedy or opera. I sighed and answered, it was an ill proof of public taste, when it could receive greater pleasure from the unconnected scenes of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... line. He has not finished his play, the actors have not learnt their parts, and the king is impatient at being kept waiting. Moliere is perplexed, and, not knowing what to do, he decides to go to sleep. The Muse appears to him, styles him "the light of the people," and brings to him all the ghosts of the great poets before him. AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare all declare to him that, in their time, they had ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... speeches of Gladstone in the Midlothian campaign, dealing with politics in the light of eternal principles. Legislation was developed through the "judgments" of priestly oracles. Poetry lighted her flames at the altar. Philosophy busied itself with ethics. The Muse of History was the Spirit of Holiness. The nation's ambitions were aspirations. Her heroes grew to be saints. The divine became to her, not the true or the beautiful, but the good. She evidently had, as Matthew Arnold said of John Wesley, "a ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... the chillness of death pervaded the sacred apartment; but on great occasions, when the sun was allowed to penetrate the thirty-two tiny panes of glass in each window, and a blaze was lighted in the fire-place, Miss Hollis would look in as she went upstairs, and muse a moment over the pathetic little romance of rags, the story of two lives worked into a bouquet of old-fashioned posies, whose gay tints were brought out by a setting of sombre threads. Existence had gone so quietly in this remote corner of the world that all ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a better right to sing of cider than of wine; but it behooves them to sing better than English Phillips did, else they will do no credit to their Muse. ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... ground, as may be seen in his "Holy Family" in the National Gallery. But we doubt if the critique upon his "Mrs Siddons" is quite fair. The chair and the footstool may not be on the cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour reconciling the bodily presence of the muse with the demon and fatal ministers of the drama that attend her. Though Sir Joshua's words are here brought against him, it is without attention to their application in his critique, which condemned their form and character as not historical nor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... that his son-in-law contemplated maintaining a household on the earnings of his Muse was still matter for pleasantry between the pair; and one of the humours of their first weeks together had consisted in picturing themselves as a primeval couple setting forth across a virgin continent and subsisting on the adjectives ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... times, and past, with evils be snared, They shall not last: with cithern silent Muse, Apollo wakes, and ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... I will; I am no muse. Listen to your inspiration comfortably, Ribalta," replied, with a laugh, he whom the vendor of old books received with such original unconstraint. He was evidently accustomed to the eccentricities of the strange merchant. In Rome—for this scene took place ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... is very hard to define; but it seems to arise from a kind of innate sympathy with the moods and humors of those she loves. If one is gay, there is a cheerful ring in her silver laugh that seems gladness itself; if one is sad, and creeps away into a corner to bury one's head in one's hand and muse, by and by, and just at the right moment, when one has mused one's fill, and the heart wants something to refresh and restore it, one feels two innocent arms round one's neck, looks up, and lo! Blanche's soft eyes, full of wistful, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... melancholy smile, but it disappeared at once, and she seemed to muse in silence, with no very pleasant thought on her mind. Twice or thrice I thought she wished to speak to me, but if so she changed ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... whether a muse, or by what other name soever thou choosest to be called, who presidest over biography, and hast inspired all the writers of lives in these our times: thou who didst infuse such wonderful humour into the pen of immortal Gulliver; who hast ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... touch and commune with each other. In his rapt verses we feel some of that mystic thrill felt by a devotee in the open sanctuary of the Almighty. No man ever interpreted Nature in such inspired strains as William Wordsworth. What supremely delights the lover of scenery is that this poet's muse can overwrap the exact and detailed knowledge of Nature with a superb mantle of idealistic glory. He saw and understood the harmony of Nature's forms and colours through all the seasons: at the quiet ingleside he meditated on what he had ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... later either Gregory or Peter might have been observed coming down the staircase with a missive from Hamlet. Juliet had detected his gift for verse, and insisted, rather capriciously, on having all his replies in that shape. Hamlet humored her, though he was often hard put to it; for the Muse is a coy immortal, and will not always come when she is wanted. Sometimes he was forced to fall back upon previous efforts, as when he translated these ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... strut and caper and fling bombastic insults at the authorities in Rome, until the Government found it opportune to take them in hand. The greatest Italian poet and one of the greatest imaginative writers in Europe will now be able to devote himself—if his rather morbid Muse has suffered no injury—to his predestined task. Those—the comparatively few that read—whose acquaintance with this writer's work usually caused them to regret his methods, could not help admiring his personal activities, his genius for leadership and his vital fire during ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... do love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse, That unto me dost such religion use! How I do fear myself, that am not worth The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth! At once thou mak'st me happy, and unmak'st; And giving largely to me, more thou takest! What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves? What art is thine, that so thy ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... I marvel that a gentleman, and a gallant officer, can find no other subject for his muse, in these times of trial, than in such beastly invocations to that notorious follower of the camp, the filthy Elizabeth Flanagan. Methinks the goddess of Liberty could furnish a more noble inspiration, and the sufferings of your country a ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... JOHN BRADBURY, the Muse shall fill my strain To sing thy praises; thou hadst spent thy time Not idly, nor hadst lived thy life in vain, Unfitted for the guerdon of my rhyme. For lo, the Funds went sudden crashing down, And men grew pale with monetary fear, And in the toppling mart The stoutest ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... Granta! They set the blood glowing, Your verse-grinder's galloping lines, There seems rare inspiration in Rowing! The Muse, who politely declines To patronise pessimist twitters, Has smiled on these stanzas, which smack Of health, honest zeal, foaming "bitters," And vigour of brain and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... in a grey hour you sit by the fireside with a few of your friends and lock the door against the uproar of Europe, and escape in thought to happier times, and muse and dream ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... desired no higher pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab. To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life, and it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston found so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street and Regent ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... wand of Muse— Queen Posy's shaft of subtle art— Seared to the distant heights of blue, Past onyx lees that Sunsets dyed, And put to Vellum Couplets' fuse, Sped same to Fate with timid heart, Then shed dim tears in Sorrow's pew, This work's ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... guilt-laden conscience and of a sense of justice. These dim emotions, however, were drowned by a more powerful sentiment: his newly awakened love of life, the primal feeling of self-preservation, which seized him all the harder the more he began to muse about the possibility of having to lose a life which offered so much that was worth living for. An inner voice called to him: "Thou shalt not die! ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... editor, besides the stanzas we have quoted, has contributed indeed less than other editors, in similar works, and much less than we could wish, for we are sincere admirers of his plaintive muse. His preface should be read with due attention, for it is calculated to set the public right on the fate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... are at leisure and feel a little dull, I advise you to take up some of our good-natured writers, such as Dr. Moore, Goldsmith, Coleman, Cervantes, Don Quixote, Smollett's novels, or the pleasant and airy productions of the muse. These I have always found a powerful anti-splenetic; and, although I am not a professed physician, I will venture to prescribe to you in this instance with all the confidence of Hippocrates. The whole system of nostrums from that arch-quack, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... find credit in these latter days, If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase: What Chaucer, Spenser, did, we scarce refuse To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer muse. If you can add a little, say why not, As well as William Pitt and Walter Scott, Since they, by force of rhyme, and force of lungs, Enrich'd our island's ill-united tongues? 'Tis then, and shall be, lawful to present Reforms in writing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... send in Mrs. Crabtree with her tawse!" said Rosamond. "But is it right by Raymond to let his wife bring this Yankee muse to talk her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... retained her antique abhorrence of the spectral dead, etc. etc. She concluded by beseeching him, if he could not desist from haunting her with his ghostly presence, at least to spare her the added misfortune of being be-rhymed by his muse. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp tone, 'Is that poetry, Sir?—Is it Pindar?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, there is here a great deal of what is called poetry.' Then, turning to me, the poet cried, 'My muse has not been long upon the town, and (pointing to the Ode) it trembles under the hand of the great critick.' Johnson, in a tone of displeasure, asked him, 'Why do you praise Anson?' I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question. He proceeded, 'Here is an errour, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... to Dr. May that George's vigil soon became a sound repose on the sofa in the dressing-room; and he was left to read and muse uninterruptedly. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... cautious not to dare beyond his tried strength, more especially in designing a subject of several figures. His true genius as alone conspicuous in those where much of the portrait was admissible; and such was his "Tragic Muse," a strictly historical picture: was it equally discernible in his "Nativity" for the window in New College Chapel? We think not. There is nothing in his "Nativity" that has not been better done by others; yet, as a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... sends me a couple of handkerchiefs; and, were it not that he has divined my inmost feelings, the mere sight of these handkerchiefs would be enough to make me treat the whole thing as ridiculous. The secret exchange of presents between us," she went on to muse, "fills me also with fears; and the thought that those tears, which I am ever so fond of shedding to myself, are of no avail, drives me likewise to blush ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Shall I muse on noble pictures, turn the poet's stirring page, And grow base and mean in action, petty ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and excitement, to his mother's joy and pride; while Charles merited her wrath by too much of his habitual and paternal quietude, particularly when he withdrew his forces altogether from the loud domestic fray, by retreating up-stairs to cogitate and muse, perhaps to make a calming prayer or two about all these matters of importance. As for Mrs. Tracy herself, she was even now, within the first hour of that news, busily engaged in collecting cosmetics, trinkets, blonde lace, and other female finery, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... cause, our suit and trial o'er, The worthy serjeant need appear no more: In pleasing I a different client choose, He served the Poet—I would serve the Muse. Like him, I'll try to merit your applause, A female counsel in a female's cause. Look on this form—where humour, quaint and sly, Dimples the cheek, and points the beaming eye; Where gay invention seems to boast ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan |
