Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Muse   Listen
noun
Muse  n.  
1.
Contemplation which abstracts the mind from passing scenes; absorbing thought; hence, absence of mind; a brown study.
2.
Wonder, or admiration. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books



... sat with her hand on her forehead, in a musing attitude. Had she been reverting to her former studies, and thrown herself into the finest conceivable posture of the tragic muse, her appearance would not have been half so beautiful and affecting. I thought she was praying, and I think so still. The tears ran in silence down her face; I kissed them ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... child, the worst of them an amusement rather than a grief to the onlookers; a world that scarcely needed hope in its eager life of adventure and love, amidst the sunlit blossoming meadows, and green woods, and white begilded manor-houses. A kindly and human muse is Chaucer's, nevertheless, interested in and amused by all life, but of her very nature devoid of strong aspirations for the future; and that all the more, since, though the strong devotion and fierce piety of the ruder Middle Ages had by this time waned, and the Church was more ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... me now to strike the lyre, That mute and torn so long has lain; And yet I cannot wake the strain, Nor will the Muse one note inspire! Coldly it shakes in accents dire, As if my soul itself to wring, And when its sound seems but to fling A jest at its own low lament; So in sad isolation pent, My soul can ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... 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 ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... dear Erskine, tell I love the license all too well, In sounds now lowly, and now strong, To raise the desultory song? Oft, when mid such capricious chime, Some transient fit of lofty rhyme To thy kind judgment seemed excuse For many an error of the muse, Oft hast thou said, "If, still misspent, Thine hours to poetry are lent, Go, and to tame thy wandering course, Quaff from the fountain at the source; Approach those masters, o'er whose tomb Immortal laurels ever bloom: Instructive of the feebler bard, Still from the grave ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... intrigues, The freaks of Fortune, and the great Confederate in disastrous leagues, And arms with uncleansed slaughter red, A work of danger and distrust, You treat, as one on fire should tread, Scarce hid by treacherous ashen crust. Let Tragedy's stern muse be mute Awhile; and when your order'd page Has told Rome's tale, that buskin'd foot Again shall mount the Attic stage, Pollio, the pale defendant's shield, In deep debate the senate's stay, The hero of Dalmatic field By Triumph crown'd with deathless bay. E'en now with trumpet's threatening blare ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... O'er those wild exploits down to Rio Grande Which even now had made his fierce renown Terrible to all lonely ships of Spain. E'en now, indeed, that poet of Portugal, Lope de Vega, filled with this new fear Began to meditate his epic muse Till, like a cry of panic from his lips, He shrilled the faint Dragontea forth, wherein Drake is that Dragon of the Apocalypse, The dread Antagonist of God ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... side. She had selected "Paradise Lost" from her shelf of classics, thinking, I suppose, the religious character of the book best adapted it to Sunday; I told her to begin at the beginning, and while she read Milton's invocation to that heavenly muse, who on the "secret top of Oreb or Sinai" had taught the Hebrew shepherd how in the womb of chaos, the conception of a world had originated and ripened, I enjoyed, undisturbed, the treble pleasure of having her near me, hearing the sound of her voice—a sound sweet and satisfying in my ear—and ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... love to muse there till it kind o' seems Ez ef the world went eddyin' off in dreams. The Northwest wind thet twitches at my baird Blows out o' sturdier days not easy scared, An' the same moon thet this December shines Starts out the tents an' booths o' Putnam's lines; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way, To nerve my country with the patriot lay, To teach all men where all their interest lies, How rulers may be just and nations wise: Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee, Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... fini ses jours en Greve. She holds out her children, which are called les enfans de la Reine exclusivement, as beggars in the streets do theirs, to move compassion. Behold, how low they have reduced a Queen! But as yet she is not ripe for tragedy, so John St. John may employ his muse upon other subjects for a time. To speak the truth, all these representations of the miseries of the French nation do not seem to me (very decent) proper subjects for our evening spectacles, and it is not, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... been 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; Yet ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... applicable to art, for art and science are not coextensive; nay, to some extent, are even inimical to each other. Indeed, to call a work of art purely and simply "scientific," is tantamount to saying that it is dry and uninspired by the muse. In dwelling so long on this point my object was not so much to elucidate Liszt's meaning as Chopin's character ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... 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 the ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... thou River of my woes In cease lesse currents of complaining verse: Here weepe (young Muse) while elder pens compose More solemne Rites unto his sacread Hearse. And, as when happy earth did, here, enclose His heavn'ly minde, his Fame then Heav'n did pierce. Now He in Heav'n doth rest, now let his Fame earth fill; So, both him then posses'd: ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various

... condition till the young gentleman's blood had got some degrees cooler. Still, he could not help thinking how his folly and thoughtlessness had ruined the hopes of a poor innocent girl, and he longed for some opportunity for going abroad, or participating in some excitement to enable him to muse less moodily ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... of it which convinced him that the girl's nature was cast in a large mould. Sellers was anxious to report his discoveries to Hawkins; so he took his leave, saying that if the two "young devotees of the colored Muse" thought they could manage without him, he would go and look after his affairs. The artist said to himself, "I think he is a little eccentric, perhaps, but that is all." He reproached himself for having injuriously judged a man without giving him any fair chance ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... distant, in spirit still present to me, My best thoughts, my country, still linger with thee; My fond heart beats quick, and my dim eyes run o'er, When I muse on the last glance I gave to thy shore. The chill mists of night round thy white cliffs were curl'd, But I felt there was no spot like thee in the world— No home to which memory so fondly would turn, No thought that within me so madly ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... nor imagine that you precede your generation because you stand alone. He dreamed of far-away glory, and his flatterers told him his dreams were prophetic. He saw across the seas the mirage of a great Latin empire in the West, and beheld the Muse of history inscribing his name beside that of his great kinsman as the restorer of the political and commercial equilibrium of the world, as well as the benefactor who had thrown El Dorado open to civilization. With the faith of ignorance, he proposed to share with an Austrian archduke ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... "Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends; I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing To those that ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... 'Muse of Green Erin, break thine icy slumbers! Strike once again thy wreathed lyre! Burst forth once more and wake thy tuneful numbers! Kindle again thy ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... the boons of time; The bird of Heaven hath still an upward wing, The steps it lures are still the steps that climb; And in the ascent although the soil be bare, More clear the daylight and more pure the air. Let Petrarch's heart the human mistress lose, He mourns the Laura but to win the Muse. Could all the charms which Georgian maids combine Delight the soul of the dark Florentine, Like one chaste dream of childlike Beatrice Awaiting Hell's dark pilgrim in the skies, Snatched from below to be the guide above, And clothe Religion ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... will form the coronal wreath. The past editions of this work, and they have been many, have elicited the strongest praise here and abroad. The classic poets of every land have valued the praise which rewarded their dedication of the first triumphs of the muse to subjects connected with the cultivation of the soil, to the arts that rendered the breast of our common mother lovely, and wedded the labors which sustain life with the arts that render it happy. The work before us has an established reputation. It is written ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... in her days of celibate life, as Susanna Strickland. From the specimen with which she has furnished Dr. Bartlett of her poetic ardour, we are happy to find that neither the Canadian atmosphere nor the circumstances attendant upon the alteration of her name, have dimmed the light of that Muse which, in past years, engaged many of our juvenile hours with pleasure and profit.'—Montreal Gazette, 1833.] Mr. Charles Lindsey has given us, among other works, a life of Wm. Lyon Mackenzie,—with whom he was connected by marriage—valuable for its historical ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot

... or indifferent He waited for months in sick hope and sick despair, and then wrote asking for a judgment. He waited more months, and no answer came. He wrote for the return of his work, humbly, then impatiently, and finally with wrathful insult No answer ever came. The muse seemed as vile a jade as Claudia. But he had his tattered and stained old manuscript, interlined and entangled so that no creature but, himself could read it, and he put it all in type once more, and sent his printed copy to an eminent firm of publishers, who, after considering the matter ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... Pity weeps, Bewailing still her favourite's fate; And thence the Muse invokes her aid Of ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... await her. That there should be such things as railway trains and man-made schedules in this world of winds and mystery and the voice of great waters, was hard to believe; hardly worth believing in any case. Better not to think of it: better to muse on her companion, building fire as the first man had built for the first woman, to feed and comfort her in an environment of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... preface for her; Madame Recamier obtained her pension; the brilliant Sophie Gay, now Madame Emile de Girardin, wrote of her poetry, "How could one depict better the luxury of grief?" M. Raspail, the austere republican, called her the tenth muse, the muse of virtue; and Sainte-Beuve himself, thinking less of her literary life than of her family life and manifold compassions, terms her the "Mater Dolorosa of poetry." His memoir, however, is valuable for its own grace as much as for the modest sweetness of its subject: without his friendly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... I walke with thee, My shoulders from all burdens free. Our native soyle again to see Rich to my selfe I sing, Whil'st care strikes thee, and thy Muse dumb, The heavy weight of thy vast summe, Or what estate in time to come The faithlesse rout may bring. Hee's rich that nothing hath; Hee that In's certaine hand holds his estate, That makes himselfe his constant mate Where need ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski

... spark o' nature's fire, That's a' the learnin' I desire, Then, though I trudge through dub an' mire, At pleuch or cart, My muse, though homely in attire, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... to spend the day in Brussels, and he followed them; he still wanted to walk about and muse and ponder, and Brussels is a very nice, gay, and civilized city for such a purpose—a little Paris, with charming streets and shops and a charming arcade, and very good places to eat and drink ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... leading to the heart, Assumed her measured tread, her solemn tone, And round her courts the clouds of fable thrown, The wreaths of heaven descended on her shrine, And wondering earth proclaimed the Muse divine. Yet if her votaries had but dared profane The mystic symbols of her sacred reign, How had they smiled beneath the veil to find What slender threads can chain the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Corio. I muse my Mother Do's not approue me further, who was wont To call them Wollen Vassailes, things created To buy and sell with Groats, to shew bare heads In Congregations, to yawne, be still, and wonder, When one but of my ordinance ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... unconscious absurdity that an inverted immortality may be claimed for them. It is essential that their authors should have been serious, because parody and light verse have been carried to such a state of perfection that a tenth muse has been created—the muse of Mr. Owen Seaman and the late St. John Hankin for example. When the Anakim, men of old, which were men of renown—Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson—become playful, I confess to a feeling ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... "the 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 by such a comment on the present paragraph as would be ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... regret, the face will shine Upon me while I muse alone; And that dear voice, I once have known, Still speak to me ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... organized by the vanity of all to the profit of the vanity of each, kindled in me a desire to show myself frank and independent. I murmured, loud enough to be heard by all my neighbors,—"Of a truth, the Country's Muse is not Melpomene!" Madame Emile de Girardin, when Mademoiselle Delphine Gay and in the most brilliant period of her poetical youth, had styled herself "the Country's Muse"; her admirers had adopted the title, and it had remained her poetical alias. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... bad! We must muse on the situation for a season, and, meanwhile, shall confidently expect something or other to ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various

... of a more rigorous scholastic rule; such an asceticism, I mean, as only the hardihood and devotion of the scholar himself can enforce. We live in the sun and on the surface—a thin, plausible, superficial existence, and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our shallow and frivolous way of life, how can greatness ever grow? Come now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners and do chores, and suffer, and weep, ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser

... workest with such common things— Low souls, weak hearts, I mean—and hast to use, Therefore, such common means and rescuings, That hard we find it, as we sit and muse, To think thou workest in us verily: Bad sea-boats we, and manned with wretched crews— That doubt the captain, ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... more concern about a new play, than if you had never had any thing to do with the stage.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man's whore.' GOLDSMITH. 'Nay, Sir, but your Muse was not a whore.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not think she was. But as we advance in the journey of life, we drop some of the things which have pleased us; whether it be that we are fatigued and don't choose to carry so many ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... of streets, in the Rue de l'Etoile, the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue du Temple, the Rue Vielle-duTemple, the Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, the Rue Folie-Mericourt, the Quai aux Fleurs, the Rue du Petit-Muse, the Rue du Normandie, the Rue Pont-Aux-Biches, the Rue des Marais, the Faubourg Saint-Martin, the Rue Notre Dame des-Victoires, the Faubourg Montmartre, the Rue Grange-Bateliere, in the Champs-Elysees, the Rue Jacob, the Rue de Tournon, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... religion! Maid divine, Pardon a muse so mean as mine, Who in her rough imperfect line Thus dares to name thee. To stigmatise false friends of thine Can ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... the future may enshrine in Canadian literature, and however deserving may be the claims of the volumes of verse that have already appeared from the native press, I am bold to claim for these productions of Mrs. MacLean's muse a high place in the national collection and a warm corner in the ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... possessor. Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from this art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession, as well as a rich reversion, and that the Muse has a promise of both lives,—of this, and of that ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... virtue were ever the boundaries of his Muse, so in this little poem he had no other view than to set forth the beauty of a chaste and disinterested passion, even in the lowest class of human life. The real occasion was this: A shoemaker's 'prentice, making holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the puppet-shows, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... my reason for disturbing him—that as he had honoured my muse by forming so intimate an acquaintance with her, I was anxious to trespass on his politeness to introduce me into that room which had now become a sort of "Blue-beard blue-chamber" to my thirsty curiosity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various

... like a dream, is dreamt the recollection of human things already changed and ever changing. The remembrance of the interesting country through which I have been travelling shall abide by me always; for, encouraged by the desire to speak and muse, as I do now, of the hardy, freely happy, and contented sons of its mountains, I first learned that no greater blessing could be granted than a life of honourable industry, and that, pine who might beneath the infliction of mental or bodily exertion, I had known the exalted destiny of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... finest kinds of poetry when I am very thirsty; nor have I ever met any one who found real pleasure in a statue when he had toothache. There is something to be said for the theory of the sceptical bishop in Browning's poem, that the soul is only free to muse of lofty things ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... dog—and you may go after him! Do you hear me? Now look out!" And the Judge rang the bell for the servant, scolded her for not lighting the gas that no one had before wished lighted, and stormed out of the room, leaving his wife to follow him, and his daughter to drop again into her chair and muse over the pleasant prospect for after-life lying so broadly ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... into the secret of truth and love, use it for the good of all men, instead of a chosen few, and interpret through it all the forms of life. It is possible, perhaps, to be at once a priestly servant and a loving muse. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... man lays hold on a little strand o' human wisdom," said Tumm, breaking a heavy muse, "an' hangs his whole weight to it," he added, with care, "he've no cause t' agitate hisself with surprise if ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... seeing the sun shine on all that gold and the curious painted galleries under it. He thought it was real, solid gold. Real gold laid out on a house-roof, and the people all so poor! Findelkind began to muse, and wonder why everybody did not climb up there and take a tile off and be rich. But perhaps it would be wicked. Perhaps God put the roof there with all that gold to prove people. Findelkind got bewildered. If God did such a thing, was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... choral exhibitions, the dithyrambics of Cinesias are all equally condemned on the ground that they give pleasure only; and Meles the harp-player, who was the father of Cinesias, failed even in that. The stately muse of Tragedy is bent upon pleasure, and not upon improvement. Poetry in general is only a rhetorical address to a mixed audience of men, women, and children. And the orators are very far from speaking with a view to what is ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... telling of the delights of lying prostrate within the leafy fastnesses of the forest deep, but I am forced to believe these poets were elsewhere when engaged in inditing their immortal lines. On suitable occasions I have myself indulged in poesy; but I am quite certain I could not court the muse while ants were crawling on my limbs and even invading my garments, as in the present ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... Too long the Tragick Muse hath aw'd the stage, And frighten'd wives and children with her rage, Too long Drawcansir roars, Parthenope weeps, While ev'ry lady cries, and critick sleeps With ghosts, rapes, murders, tender hearts they wound, Or else, like thunder, terrify ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely, been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o'er steeps and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... muse over the chatter of my little children many a time, and almost reach out for them, as though they were here. They are near to my heart, and in the precious ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers

... Niccolo da Correggio, called by Isabella d'Este and Sabba da Castiglione "the most accomplished gentleman of the age, the foremost man in all Italy, in the art of poetry and in courtesy," who devoted his muse to the service of gentle ladies, and composed canzoni and capitoli or set Petrarch's sonnets to music for Isabella and Beatrice's pleasure. And among Ercole's courtiers at Ferrara there was one still greater, Matteo Boiardo, Count of ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... 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

... few big game hunters who trended east from here into the Barren Grounds seeking the musk-ox. Its foundation dates back to some time before the year 1820. We cross a bridge of clever Indian construction and sit for a while to muse on a flat boulder of primal rock. This stands as bell-tower to a quaint bell cast in Rome and bears an inscription to some dead and gone Pope. The missionary priest over half a century ago paddled in here bringing the Gospel ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... destructive trance! Shake off the shackles of this tyrant vice: Hear other calls than those of cards and dice: Be learn'd in nobler arts, than arts of play, And other debts, than those of honour pay: No longer live insensible to shame, Lost to your country, families and fame. Could our romantic muse this work atchieve, Would there one honest heart in Britain grieve? Th' attempt, though wild, would not in vain be made, If every honest hand would ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... chief and principalle, Callyd of Londone, the chirche cathedralle, Whiche oughte of resone the devys for[222] to excuse, To alle tho that wolde agen it frowne or muse. And fro that castelle the kyng forth gan hym dresse, Toward Poules chief chirche of this citee; And at the[223] Conduyt ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... and 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 in it his ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... they should employ their time in laborious and martial exercises; so that while the one effected all by persuasions and his people's love for him, the other, with danger and hazard of his person, scarcely in the end succeeded. Numa's muse was a gentle and loving inspiration, fitting him well to turn and soothe his people into peace and justice out of their violent and fiery tempers; whereas, if we must admit the treatment of the Helots to be a part of Lycurgus's legislations, a most cruel and iniquitous ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... pious design, and the protection of Jesus and His Mother was promised to her. Let us follow them in thought up the steep hill to Assisi—to the church where the relics of the saint, where his mortal remains are laid. Let us descend into the subterranean chapel, pause at every altar, and muse on the records of that astonishing life, the most marvellous perhaps of any which it has ever been permitted to mortal man to live. Let us go with them to the home of his youth, where his confessorship began in childish ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... if some hour of leisure Permits a lyric mood My wretched Muse takes pleasure In nothing else ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various

... our right hand, he would, perhaps, receive the manifest evidences they exhibit of constant reference and delighted re- perusal, as some sort of amende honorable for the unfairness of which we were guilty when we were less conversant with the higher inspirations of his muse. To Mr. Coleridge, and others of our originals, we must also do a tardy act of justice, by declaring that our burlesque of their peculiarities has never blinded us to those beauties and talents which are beyond the reach of ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... on learning that his son-in-law contemplated maintaining a household on the earnings of his Muse was still matter for pleasantry between the pair; and one of the humours of their first weeks together had consisted in picturing themselves as a primeval couple setting forth across a virgin continent and subsisting on the adjectives which Ralph was to trap for his epic. On this ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... young man "just the kind of a fellow to have around;" while Bert, in turn, held his senior in profound esteem—looked up to him, in fact, and in even his eccentricities strove to pattern after him. And so it was, when summer days were dull and tedious, these two could muse and doze the hours away together; and when the nights were long, and dark, and deep, and beautiful, they could drift out in the noon-light of the stars, and with "the soft complaining flute" and "warbling lute," "lay the pipes," ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... delicate way to comfort when I thought all the world had forsaken me, I tender my most grateful thanks. His kindness shall be remembered by me while memory holds her seat. Let the throng of uninvited fools who swarmed about us, accept the following sally of the house of correction muse, from the pen, or rather the fork, of a fellow convict. It may ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... the old tragedies, as we read, piped their iambics to a tune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a great head-dress. 'Twas thought the dignity of the Tragic Muse required these appurtenances, and that she was not to move except to a measure and cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music: and King Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words): the Chorus standing by in a ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... westward over the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit and muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys—a kind of horse—and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged laddies dream, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... Gondola, which has been more often translated into foreign languages than perhaps any other of Browning's works, gives us a picture of a night in Venice. The fluent rhythms of the verse indicate the lazy glide of the gondola through the dark waters of the canal. The lovers speak, sing, and muse; and their conversation is full of the little language characteristic of those who are in complete possession of each other, soul and body. They delight in passionate reminiscences: they love to recall their first ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... attitude towards India. Instinctively he appropriated to himself the most beautiful characteristics of Sanskrit poetry, its tender love for the objects of nature, for flowers and animals and the similes and metaphors inspired thereby, and he invests them with all the grace and charm peculiar to his muse. Some of his finest verses owe their inspiration to the lotus; and in that famous poem "Die Lotosblume aengstigt,"—so beautifully set to music by Schumann—the favorite flower of India's poets may be said to have found its aesthetic apotheosis. As is well known, ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy

... believe that so versatile a polymath should not at some time or other have courted the Muse, and if so, under what name could he have had a stronger motive for publishing his poems than that of SWINBURNE? So austere a theologian would naturally shrink from revealing his excursions into the realms of poesy, and under this disguise he was safe from detection. Lastly, while Sir W. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various

... the modesty which became a wise and virtuous statesman of a republic; and when it was about to be taken from his brow to be garnered for the coming ages, its flowers were fresh, and, like those which the muse of Milton strewed about the walks of Eden, were without a thorn. He had run a long and glorious course. His duty was all done. He had taken his place in the history ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... the eighteenth century to sail o'erseas to Newport, Rhode Island, there to build (in 1729) the beautiful old place, Whitehall, which is still standing. Hundreds of interested visitors drive every summer to the old house, to take a cup of tea, to muse on the strange story with which the ancient dwelling is connected, and to pay the meed of respectful memory to the eminent philosopher ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... in a few words, sometimes in an appendix, or a casual note. But history was ever written thus. Great victories are elaborately described; and all the pomp and circumstance of war is set down for our pleasure and instruction. But it is due to the grand solemn muse of history, who carries the torch of truth, that the other side, the horrors of war, should be as faithfully delineated. Wars will not cease until the lessons of their cruelty, their barbarity, and the dark ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... Although it was such a small collection, his book- lover's instinct compelled him to look at it. His eyes fell upon a Religio Medici, and he opened it hastily. On the fly-leaf was written "Mary Leighton, from R. L." He had just time, before its owner entered, to replace it and to muse for an instant. ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... miraculously performed—he believed that a benefactor had arisen from the grave to save us. Oh, it was a touching superstition, monsieur, and although I did not myself believe it, I would not for the world have destroyed my father's faith. How often did he muse over it and pronounce the name of a dear friend—a friend lost to him forever; and on his death-bed, when the near approach of eternity seemed to have illumined his mind with supernatural light, this thought, which had until ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... heard the woful news, That Temple was to be minister, To look upon it could she choose But as an omen most sinister? But when she heard he did refuse, In spite of Lady Chat. his sister, What could she do but laugh, O Muse? And so she ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... contrivers of plots would see no indication of life in the outlines. The life of the comedy is in the idea. As with the singing of the sky-lark out of sight, you must love the bird to be attentive to the song, so in this highest flight of the Comic Muse, you must love pure Comedy warmly to understand the Misanthrope: you must be receptive of the idea of Comedy. And to love Comedy you must know the real world, and know men and women well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may still ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in revery When he at eventide is calling. Nor muse: Who may this singer be Whose song about my heart is falling? Know you by this, the lover's chant, 'Tis I that ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce

... stir his bones, he perhaps meant the larger share of it for him or them who should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects or even the merits of the character that he wore in Stratford, when he had left mankind so much to muse upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from incurring any part of the anathema in requital for the irreverent ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... with the tragic muse, we do not dare to attempt any description of Eleanor's face when she first heard the name of Mrs. Slope pronounced as that which would or should or might at some time appertain to herself. The look, such as it was, Dr. Grantly did not soon forget. For a moment or ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... royal family was boundless; his power was absolute: the treasures, of America were at his command, and he made the most infamous use of them. In short, he had made the Court of Madrid one of those places to which the indignant muse of Juvenal conducts the mother of Britanicus. There is no doubt that Godoy was one of the principal causes of all the misfortunes which have overwhelmed Spain ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... write luxuriously is not the same thing as to live so, but a new and worse offence. It implies an intellectual defect also, the not perceiving that the present corrupt condition of human nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to perpetuate) is a temporary or superficial state. The good word lasts forever: the impure word can only buoy itself in the gross gas that now envelops us, and will sink altogether to ground as that works itself clear in ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the compositions by which poets from Lydgate to Skelton sought to ingratiate themselves with noble patrons and to prove their title to immortality. When they were off their guard they wrote much better. The reminiscences of the gay days of his youth stirred Hoccleve's muse to unwonted vivacity. In the London Lick-penny Lydgate, if Lydgate's it be, wrote humorous satire with success. Skelton himself, though in his (much too respectfully spoken of) play Magnificence he could flounder with the worst of his predecessors, in his ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... Had you been crooked, foul, of some coarse mould A cloister had done well; but such a feature That might stand up the glory of a kingdom, To live recluse! is a mere soloecism, Though in a nunnery. It must not be. I muse, my lord your brother will permit it: You should spend half my land first, were I he. Does not this diamond better on my finger, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... under such transformations, and it is doing a real injustice to the memory of Baron Swieten, the good friend of more than one composer, to hold him up needlessly to ridicule. [In one of George Thomson's letters to Mrs Hunter we read: "It it is not the first time that your muse and Haydn's have met, as we see from the beautiful canzonets. Would he had been directed by you about the words to 'The Creation'! It is lamentable to see such divine music joined with such miserable broken English. He (Haydn) wrote me lately that in three years, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... what memory else might lose, So may this photograph of verse impart An image, though without the native hues Of Calderon's fire, and yet with Calderon's art, Of what thou lovest through a kindred muse That sings in heaven, ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... you like to change with Clancy — go a-droving? tell us true, For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome If you had a wife and children and a lot of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... Deshoulires soon became a conspicuous personage at the court of Louis XIV. and in literary society. She won the friendship and admiration of the most eminent literary men of the age—some of her more zealous flatterers even going so far as to style her the tenth muse and the French Calliope. Her poems were very numerous, and included specimens of nearly all the minor forms, odes, eclogues, idylls, elegies, chansons, ballads, madrigals, &c. Of these the idylls alone, and only some of them, have stood the test of time, the others being entirely forgotten. She ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... parties in the island Master Benoist was faithful, the muse that presides over this history declines to reveal: perhaps he was an impartial traitor to both. It became presently clear that, in any case, his lameness was little more than a feint. During that same night he made a rope of his bedding, and ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... now called Monte Rotondo. We may take our Horace from our pocket, and feel, as with our Wordsworth at Dove Cottage, with our Scott at Ashestiel, that we are gazing on the hills, the streams, and valleys, which received the primal outpourings of their muse, and are for ever ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... dear, I see your forehead sprout!' 'Sprout!' quoth the man; 'what's this you tell us? I hope you don't believe me jealous! But yet, methinks, I feel it true; And really yours is budding too— Nay,—now I cannot stir my foot; It feels as if 'twere taking root.' Description would but tire my muse; In short, they ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... or Bard, Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou; Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P., ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... inclinations somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material. The husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.' An impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... in their presence, and after trolling out a few Irish melodies, he succeeded in eliciting from them a sympathetic response in the shape of some lively French songs. The result proved most delightful to all concerned; and thereafter the muse of Ireland and the muse of France kept up a perpetual antiphonal song, which beguiled ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... delusion we pity as we ought always to pity the error of those who know not what they do. Against him or for him we are all called upon to declare ourselves. There is no neutrality for any single true-born American. If any seek such a position, the stony finger of Dante's awful muse points them to their place in the antechamber ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... some sort of singularity not attractive to others. Often she makes them odious with conceit or deformity or dumbness or garrulity. Dante was such a poor talker that no one would ever ask him to dinner. If it had not been so I presume his muse would have been sadly crippled by indigestion. If you had been a good dancer and a lady's favorite I wonder if you would have studied Kirkham and Burns and Shakespeare and Blackstone and Starkie, and the science of surveying and been elected to the Legislature. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... persecuted by their friends and their friends' doctors, pet remedies and religions." On the whole, I may quite safely recommend these two hundred and fifty pleasantly written and delightfully printed pages to readers who like to muse quietly on the elementary principles of love and life without risking the surprise of startling or revolutionary lines of thought. There is nothing peculiarly good or bad in the many comic illustrations by Mr. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various

... warned them, 'We shall come now to the wandering blue rocks; my mother warned me of them, Calliope, the immortal muse.' ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... 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 my ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... 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 ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... swains that once did use To converse with Love and thee, In the language of thy Muse, Have forgot Love's deity: They deny to write a line, And do only talk of thine. Then, lov'd Adonis, come away, For friendship ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... Goujon, whose exquisite work we see now and again in these chateaux, that some writer has said, that the muse of Ronsard whispered in the ear of the French sculptor, and thus Goujon's masterpieces were poems of Ronsard translated in marble. It is a rather pretty fancy, but Lydia and I cannot remember its author. Walter says that he can understand why the Counts of Blois built their castle here, as ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... their fantastic choice of metaphors, a pleasing note. At present Mr. Le Gallienne's muse seems to devote herself entirely to the worship of books, and Mr. Le Gallienne himself is steeped in literary traditions, making Keats his model and seeking to reproduce something of Keats's richness and affluence of imagery. He is keenly conscious ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... suggestively described as the "fugitive slave" who was "the founder of Virginia." The notes on the credibility and authenticity of the narrations connected with his name are admirable. In reading these two chapters, one must muse upon the wilderness trampings and the ocean perils of the keen-set and all-enduring men who furnished the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... my Muse doth here intend, The honor of Saint Patrick to defend, And speake of his adventrous accidents, Of his brave fortunes, and their brave events, That if her pen were made of Cromwell's rump, Yet she should weare ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various

... would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves; when ev'ry muse And every blooming pleasure wait without, To bless the wildly devious ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... a mournful muse Soft pity to infuse; He sung the Weaver wise and good, By too severe a fate, Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from his high estate, And weltering ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... Muse be mute on The charms of Guist and Sall and Booton, Shimpling and Tattersett and Stody (Which, be it noted, rhymes with ruddy), And fair Winfarthing, where KING TINO Would seek in vain for a casino Or even a flask of maraschino. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various

... fact, it 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 bargain? ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... 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 ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... the gates That close the temple of the God of War. Be thou my help, to me e'en now divine! Let Delphi's steep her own Apollo guard, And Nysa keep her Bacchus, uninvoked. Rome is my subject and my muse ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... a gentleman, and a gallant officer, can find no other subject for his muse, in these times of trial, than in such beastly invocations to that notorious follower of the camp, the filthy Elizabeth Flanagan. Methinks the goddess of Liberty could furnish a more noble inspiration, and the sufferings of your country ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... people often muse upon that month Which brought your majesty so near the grave, From that time, thirty weeks had scarce elapsed, Before the queen's delivery ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Soft and silly, Are the verses, Muse rehearses, When with straining You're obtaining Her Assistance 'Gainst Resistance, Made by Mistress To your Distress. Therefore early Quit them fairly, If you'd be rid of ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according to the precept ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe

... Must buy his ancestors a slice, Resolved no nobleman on earth Should overgo him in the price. From which these serious lessons flow:— Fail not your praises to bestow On gods and godlike men. Again, To sell the product of her pain Is not degrading to the Muse. Indeed, her art they do abuse, Who think her wares to use, And yet a liberal pay refuse. Whate'er the great confer upon her, They're honour'd by it while they honour. Of old, Olympus and Parnassus In friendship heaved ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... Muse that watches o'er The actions of the great, And bids this Venturer to soar, And that to stand and wait, Will swear she never heard before The ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... 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 by no means sure that I have invariably given the true meaning of the cipher; ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... at least, if not alone, for the first time after the events of this troubled and varied day, Julian threw himself on an old oaken seat, beside the embers of a sea-coal fire, and began to muse on the miserable situation of anxiety and danger in which he was placed; where, whether he contemplated the interests of his love, his family affections, or his friendships, all seemed such a prospect as that of a sailor who looks upon ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... music, dancing, according to classic mythology, were presided over by nine goddesses, or Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, "Muse-mother," as Mrs. Browning terms her. The history of woman as a poet has yet to be written, but to her in the early ages poetry owed much of its development and its beauty. Mr. Vance has remarked that "among many of the lowest races ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... close, Even to the gates and inlets of his life! But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm, And with a natural gladness, he maintained The citadel unconquered, and in joy Was strong to follow the delightful muse." ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... The muse dictated nothing more. He was not in the mood for writing. He felt rather more in the mood for supper. His scruples scattered like clouds driven before a brisk North East wind; he put on the frogged ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... gaiety. The peculiar perfume of The Way of the World was given to neither, yet they wrote comedy of manners. But if Congreve left colleagues, he left no sons, and most certainly, one may say, that when those colleagues died, English comedy took to her bed. 'The Comic Muse, long sick, is now a- dying,' wrote Garrick in his prologue to She Stoops to Conquer, and she had not to apologise, like Charles the Second, for the unconscionable time she was about it. It is a little crude ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... himself to a standstill. Unfortunately the head will continue working when the legs are at rest. And when he sat opposite to her at meal-times, Frances Freeland would gaze piercingly at his forehead and muse: 'The dear boy looks much better, but he's getting a little line between his brows—it IS such a pity!' It worried her, too, that the face he was putting on their little holiday together was not quite as full as she could have wished—though ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... a muse. Her question recurred to her; but it was hardly likely, she felt, that her little companion could enlighten her. Nora was a bright, lively, spirited child, with black eyes and waves of beautiful black hair; neither ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner

... despatched his brother Theodorus to Olympia, with orders to repeat there in public, some verses in his name, in competition with some other poets for the poetical prize: the people, however, had too much taste to endure them, and rewarded his muse with groans and hisses. At Athens, however, he had better success; for he obtained the prize there for a composition which he sent in his name, but which was chiefly written by Antiphon, the son of Sophocles, whom he put to death for declining to praise some of his verses. Conscious, as he ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... But what, O Muse! was the rage of Peter Stuyvesant when from afar he saw his army giving way! In the transports of his wrath he sent forth a roar enough to shake the very hills. The men of the Manhattoes plucked up new courage at the sound, or, rather, they rallied ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... centres in the time-honoured tradition that Flavio Gioja, the original inventor of the compass, was a native of this town, once a flourishing and important member of the group of cities which comprised the Amalfitan Republic in its palmy days. But Clio, the Muse of History, is an inexorable mistress, and she will not rest content with mere hearsay, however venerable, and as a result of careful investigation it would seem that Flavio Gioja, who for centuries ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... We muse beside the rolling waves; We ponder on the grassy hill; We linger by the new-piled graves, And find that star is shining still. God in his great design hath spread, Unnumber'd rays to lead afar; They beam the brightest o'er the dead, And keep ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... the lees, For one dear instant disimmortalised In giving immortality! So dream the gods upon their listless thrones. Yet sometimes, when the votary appears, With death-affronting forehead and glad eyes, Too young, they rather muse, too frail thou art, And shall we rob some girl of saffron veil And nuptial garland for so slight a thing? And so ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton



Words linked to "Muse" :   Euterpe, puzzle, Thalia, Greek deity, seed, theologise, wonder, think over, Erato, reflect, Polyhymnia, mull over, terpsichore, think, source, cogitate, ruminate, calliope, cerebrate, Urania, ponder, muser, germ



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com