Lyre Quotes - page 2
They [French critics of the Paris Salon of 1824, where his painting 'the Hay Wain' received a gold medal] are very amusing and acute - but very shallow and feeble. Thus one - after saying: "'it is but justice to admire the truth - 'the color' - and 'general vivacity' & richness -" – yet they want the objects more formed and defined &c, and say they are like the rich preludes in musick, and the full harmonious warblings of the Aeolian lyre, which means 'nothing,' and they call them orations - and harangues - and high-flown conversations affecting a careless ease - &c &v &c - Is not some of this 'blame' the highest 'praise' – what is poetry? – What is Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (the very best modern poem) but something like this?
John Constable
The Merchant, to Secure His Treasure The merchant, to secure his treasure, Conveys it in a borrowed name Euphelia serves to grace my measure, But Cloe is my real flame. My softest verse, my darling lyre Upon Euphelia's toilet lay - When Cloe noted her desire That I should sing, that I should play. My lyre I tune, my voice I raise, But with my numbers mix my sighs And whilst I sing Euphelia's praise, I fix my soul on Cloe's eyes. Fair Cloe blushed Euphelia frowned I sung, and gazed I played, and trembled And Venus to the Loves around Remarked how ill we all dissembled.
Edgar Allan Poe
Alas! for him whose youthful fire
Is vowed and wasted on the lyre,-
Alas! for him who shall essay,
The laurel's long and dreary way!
Mocking will greet, neglect will chill
His spirit's gush, his bosom's thrill;
And, worst of all, that heartless praise
Echoed from what another says.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
[Alvine] 'Tis one of those bright fictions that have made
The name of Greece only another word
For love and poetry ; with a green earth-
Groves of the graceful myrtle - summer skies,
Whose stars are mirror'd in ten thousand streams-
Winds that move but in perfume and in music,
And, more than all, the gift of woman's beauty.
What marvel that the earth, the sky, the sea,
Were filled with all those fine imaginings
That love creates, and that the lyre preserves !
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Oh, blessedness !
To see the fair creations of the thought
Assume a visible form ; sweet Poesy !
How witching is thy power upon the heart ;
Enchantment that does bind our senses up
In one unutterable influence ;
A charmed spell set over every thought,
Till life's whole hope is cast upon the lyre.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
A musician would not willingly consent that his lyre should be out of tune, nor a leader of a chorus that his chorus should not sing in the strictest possible harmony; but shall each individual person be at variance with himself, and shall he exhibit a life not at all in agreement with his words?
Basil of Caesarea
What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.
Pablo Picasso
If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, ‘of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods'; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.
Aristotle
But in a farther age shall rise along
The banks of Po two greater still than he;
The world which smiled on him shall do them wrong
Till they are ashes, and repose with me.
The first [Ariosto] will make an epoch with his lyre
And fill the earth with feats of chivalry:
His fancy like a rainbow, and his fire,
Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his thought
Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire;
Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught,
Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme,
And Art itself seem into Nature wrought
By the transparency of his bright dream.
Ludovico Ariosto
