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If she but smile, the crystal calm shall break
In music, sweeter than it ever gave,
As when a breeze breathes o'er some sleeping lake,
And laughs in every wave.

— Bayard Taylor The Return of the Goddess (1850)

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More quotes by Bayard Taylor

Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest,—
The loving are the daring.

The Song of the Camp (1856)

Knowledge alone is the being of Nature,
Giving a soul to her manifold features,
Lighting through paths of the primitive darkness,
The footsteps of Truth and the vision of Song.

Kilimandjaro (1852)

And yonder fly his scattered golden arrows,
And smite the hills with day.

The Poet's Journal (1863)

Thunder-spasms the waking be
Into Life from Apathy:
Life, not Death, is in the gale, —
Let the coming Doom prevail!

The Poet's Journal (1863)

The hollows are heavy and dank
With the steam of the Goldenrods.

The Guests of Night (1871)

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The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value.

Lucy Green

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Thomas Carlyle Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Eduard Hanslick

Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.

François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bayard Taylor (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.