melody quotes

A pretty girl is like a melody That haunts you night and day.

- Irving originally Israel Baline Berlin
  'A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody'.

The song is ended But the melody lingers on.

- Irving originally Israel Baline Berlin
  Song from Ziegfeld Follies.

Whether on Ida's shady brow, Or in the chambers of the East, The chambers of the sun that now From ancient melody have ceased.

-William Blake
  Poetical Sketches,'To The Muses'.

O my Luve's like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June; O my luve's like the melodie That's sweetly play'd in tune. As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my Dear, Till a'the seas gang dry. Till a'the seas gang dry, my Dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun: O I will love thee still, my Dear, While the sands o' life shall run.

- Robert Burns
  'A red, red rose'.

Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blund'ring kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in; Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad.

-John Dryden
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.2, l.412^17.

Melody is the very essence of music.When I thinkof a good melodist I thinkof a fine race horse. A contrapuntist is onlya post-horse.

- (Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  Letter to Michael Kelly.

Here is the ecstasy Of sun-fed wine and song: Drink! it is melody Under a kurrajong.

-John Shaw Neilson
'Under a Kurrajong', stanza1, in R H Croll (ed) Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).

   You're the top You're the Louvr'Museum You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss.

- Cole Porter
  'You're theTop', from the show Anything Goes.

Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-clouds thundrous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass isgreen, lakes damp, and mountains steep And,Wordsworth, both are thine.

-J(ames) K(enneth) Stephen
  Lapsus Calami,'A Sonnet'.