muses quotes

The Muses'garden, with pedantic weeds O'erspread, was purged by thee; the lazy seeds Of servile imitation thrown away, And fresh invention planted.

-Thomas Carew
  'An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul's, Dr.  John Donne'.

Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains, Because the Muses never knew their pains: They boast their peasants'pipes, but peasants now Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough.

- George Crabbe
  The Village, bk.1, l.21^4.

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo; Favete linguis; carmina non prius Audita Musarum sacerdos Virginibus puerisque canto. I despise the uninitiated mob and I warn them off: keep your tongues well-omened; I, priest of the Muses, am singing songs, never heard before, to girls and boys.

-Horace full name  Quintus Horatius Flaccus   65
Odes, bk.3, no.1, l.1^4 (translated by G  Williams).

   Farewell (sweet Cooke-ham) where I first obtained Grace from that grace where perfect grace remained; And where the muses gave their full consent, I should have power the virtuous to content; Where princely palace willed me to indite, The sacred story of the soul's delight.

- Aemilia Lanyer
Salve Deus Ex Judaeorum,'The Description of Cooke-ham'. Probably the first 'country-house'poem in English, this work is dedicated to Margaret Russell Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, and her daughter,  Anne Clifford, whose family home was Cookham.

PoetryontheairsoundsliketheMusesinstripedtrousers.

- George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
  'Poetry and the Microphone'.

Books and the Man I sing, the first who brings The Smithfield Muses to the Ear of Kings. Say great Patricians! (since your selves inspire These wond'rous works; so Jove and Fate require) Say from what cause, in vain decry'd and curst, Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first?

- Alexander Pope
  The Dunciad, bk.1, l.1^6.

There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell†divine as the vale of Tempe; you might have seen the gods there morning and eveningApollo and the sweet Muses of the Light† You enterprised a railroad†you blasted its rocks away† And, now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton.

-John Ruskin
^8  Praeterita, vol.3, pt.4,'Joanna's Cave', note.

But here I am in Kent and Christendom, Among the Muses, where I read and rhyme.

- SirThomas (the Elder) Wyatt
  'Mine Own John Poins'.