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Everything ends with songs.
[Fr., Tout finit par des chansons.]
Author: Pierre Auguste Caron de Beaumarchais
Source: Mariage de Figaro (end)
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Sing a song of sixpence.
Author: Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
Source: Bonduca (act V, sc. 2)
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I cannot sing the old songs
Though well I know the tune,
Familiar as a cradle-song
With sleep-compelling croon;
Yet though I'm filled with music,
As choirs of summer birds,
"I cannot sing the old songs"--
I do not know the words.
Author: Robert Jones Burdette
Source: Songs Without Words
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All this for a song.
Author: Lord William Cecil Burleigh (Burghley)
Source: to Queen Elizabeth I when ordered to give 10 pounds to Spenser
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I can not sing the old songs now!
It is not that I deem them low,
'Tis that I can't remember how
They go.
Author: Charles Stuart Calverley
Source: Changed
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Unlike my subject, I will make my song.
It shall be witty, and it shan't be long.
Author: Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield
Source: Preface to Letters (vol. 1)
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A song of hate is a song of Hell;
Some there be who sing it well.
Let them sing it loud and long,
We lift our hearts in a loftier song:
We life our hearts to Heaven above,
Singing the glory of her we love,
England.
Author: Helen Gray Cone
Source: Chant of Love for England
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And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Absalom and Achitophel (pt. I, l. 197)
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Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound;
She feels no biting pang the while she sings,
Nor as she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things.
Author: William Gifford
Source: Contemplation
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He play'd an ancient ditty long since mute,
In Provence call'd, "La belle dame sans merci."
Author: John Keats
Source: The Eve of St. Agnes (st. 33), "La Belle Dame, sans Merci" is a poem written by Alain Chartier
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We are tenting tonight on the old camp ground,
Give us a song to cheer.
Author: Walter Kittridge
Source: Tenting on the Old Camp Ground
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In the ink of our sweat we will find it yet,
The song that is fit for men!
Author: Walter Kittridge
Source: Tenting on the Old Camp Ground
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The song on its mighty pinions
Took every living soul, and lifted it gently to heaven.
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source: Children of the Lord's Supper (l. 44)
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Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source: The Day is Done (st. 9)
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Listen to that song, and learn it!
Half my kingdom would I give,
As I live,
If by such songs you would earn it.
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source: Tales of a Wayside Inn (pt. I, The Musician's Tale, The Saga of King Olaf, pt. V)
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And grant that when I face the grisly Thing,
My song may trumptet down the gray Perhaps
Let me be as a tune-swept fiddlestring
That feels the Master Melody--and snaps.
Author: John Gneisenau Neihardt
Source: Let me live out my Years
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She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with
pity: and when winter evenings fall early (sitting at her merry
wheel), she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of
fortune . . . and fears no manner of ill because she means none.
Author: Sir Thomas Overbury
Source: A Fair and Happy Milkmaid
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I think, whatever mortals crave,
With impotent endeavor,
A wreath--a rank--a throne--a grave--
The world goes round forever;
I think that life is not too long,
And therefore I determine,
That many people read a song,
Who will not read a sermon.
Author: Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Source: Chant of the Brazen Head
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Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song?
Author: Matthew Prior
Source: A Better Answer
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Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude
it may be.
[Lat., Etiam singulorum fatigatio quamlibet se rudi modulatione
solatur.]
Author: Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilian)
Source: De Institutione Oratoria (I, 81)
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Builders, raise the ceiling high,
Raise the dome into the sky,
Hear the wedding song!
For the happy groom is near,
Tall as Mars, and statelier,
Hear the wedding song!
Author: Sappho
Source: Fragments, (J.S. Easby Smith's translation)
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Song forbids victorious deeds to die.
Author: Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
Source: The Artists
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The lively Shadow-World of Song.
Author: Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
Source: The Artists
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Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,
That old and antique song we heard last night.
Methought it did relieve my passion much,
More than light airs and recollected terms
Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.
Come, but one verse.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (Orsino, Duke of Illyria at II, iv)
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Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Source: To Wordsworth (l. 12)
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