Vocal Decline

Famous quotes containing the words vocal and/or decline:

    With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
    And Phoebus fir’d my vocal rage;
    He caught me in his silken net,
    And shut me in his golden cage.

    He loves to sit and hear me sing,
    Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
    Then stretches out my golden wing,
    And mocks my loss of liberty.
    William Blake (1757–1827)

    We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall—which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.
    Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)