Music quotes

Song of Myself, section 1 in the 1882 Leaves of Grass text, printed page 29 (Wikisource scan page 35). The retained wording “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” is not the 1855 first-edition opening, which reads only “I celebrate myself”; the synchronized source year is therefore corrected from 1855 to 1882.

On the Grasshopper and Cricket, final line; the cricket continues the earth’s poetry in winter.

The Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Missiles,” maxim 33, Anthony M. Ludovici translation, Project Gutenberg #52263. The maxim begins comically with the sound of a bagpipe before arriving at this sentence.

Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene 1, Orsino; 1922 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by George Henry Nettleton, printed page 1 / Wikisource scan leaf 13. “If music be the food of love, play on” opens Orsino’s attempt to use excess music to surfeit and extinguish his appetite for love. It remains fictional dramatic speech shaped by Orsino’s self-dramatizing desire, not Shakespeare speaking autobiographically or a modern psychological claim about music and emotion.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; the line sits amid Whitman’s celebration of bodily and spiritual acceptance.

“To Autumn,” final stanza, in Keats: Poems Published in 1820; Project Gutenberg #23684. The line follows the question “Where are the songs of Spring?” and answers by valuing autumn’s own sounds.

Psalm 71:23 in the King James Version; opening clause of the verse.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in Keats: Poems Published in 1820; Project Gutenberg #23684. The line addresses figures represented on the urn and belongs to the poem’s meditation on art, imagination and permanence.

“Another Spring,” Project Gutenberg #16950. The stanza begins conditionally—'If I might see another Spring'—so the present-focused conclusion grows from mortality and uncertainty.

The Renaissance, “The School of Giorgione”; Project Gutenberg #2398. The surrounding paragraph explains that other arts strive to reduce the separation between matter and form.

‘Hope,’ third stanza, in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, Project Gutenberg #1019. ‘She would sing while I was weeping; / If I listened, she would cease’ belongs to Brontë's deliberately bleak personification in which Hope behaves as a false, unreliable guard and finally departs. It is not simple positive-thinking advice or a clinical claim about hope.

Psalm 100:2 in the King James Version.

“The Last Chrysanthemum,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. Floral death is poetic seasonal imagery, not literal human bereavement.

The Republic, Book III, Jowett translation; the passage connects musical and literary form with simplicity of character.

The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2; Caliban reassures Stephano and Trinculo about the mysterious music of the island.

As a Man Thinketh, chapter “Visions and Ideals”; this is an excerpt from Allen’s longer exhortation to remain true to constructive ideals.

“Postponement,” collected in Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898), Project Gutenberg #3167. The poem's landscape frames a delayed relationship encounter and is not generic weather description.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part II, Valley of Humiliation, represented by Project Gutenberg #39452, the Jesse Lyman Hurlbut-edited Every Child Can Read edition that includes the Part II episode. Mr. Great-heart and the pilgrims see a shepherd boy feeding his father's sheep and hear him sing ‘He that is down needs fear no fall...’; the song is followed by Great-heart's praise of the boy's heart's-ease. The previous #131 fallback does not contain this represented Part II passage, so the evidence layer moves to #39452. The stanza remains embedded Christian-allegorical character song rather than Bunyan autobiography or secular clinical advice about humility.

“The Darkling Thrush,” Poems of the Past and the Present; Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem's final hope remains uncertain to the speaker rather than becoming a guarantee of optimism.

Discourses of Epictetus, Book I, Chapter XVI, “Of Providence,” George Long translation; 1877 George Bell & Sons witness on Wikisource, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #10661. The passage is explicitly theological Stoicism: Epictetus says understanding should lead people to sing hymns, bless the deity and recount divine benefits.