“I like music (limited).”

The deliberately understated wording is typical of Field's playful self-portraiture. · Auto-Analysis

• Humour
• Music

“I should like to own a big astronomical telescope and a twenty-four-tune music-box.”

An appealing pairing of scientific curiosity with a love of mechanical music. · Auto-Analysis

• Curiosity
• Music

“One should hear at least one little song every day, read a good poem, see a fine painting and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.”

Original: Man sollte alle Tage wenigstens ein kleines Lied hören, ein gutes Gedicht lesen, ein treffliches Gemälde sehen und, wenn es möglich zu machen wäre, einige vernünftige Worte sprechen. — Goethe imagines a daily life nourished by music, poetry, art and thoughtful conversation. · Maxims and Reflections (German)

• Art
• Music
• Poetry

“Music is love in search of a voice.”

Presenting music as emotion given audible form · The Science of English Verse

• Emotion
• Love
• Music

“Sorrow shared through song ceases to be a burden and becomes a shared bridge.”

Describing how music and verse transform personal grief into communal connection · Letter to a Friend

• Consolation
• Music
• Sorrow

“In every song there lives a fragment of the soul that created it.”

Original: في كل أغنية تعيش قطعة من روح من أبدعها — Connects creative expression with the inner spirit · Attributed musical commentary (Arabic)

• Creativity
• Music
• Soul

“The true artist plays with language as a musician plays with strings.”

Original: الشاعر الحقيقي يعزف باللغة كما يعزف الموسيقي على الأوتار — Draws a direct link between verse and music · Attributed essay statement (Arabic)

• Art
• Language
• Music

“Music reaches places where words dare not tread.”

Original: Die Musik erreicht Orte, wohin Worte sich nicht zu wagen scheinen. — Honors music's unique capacity to articulate internal depth · Conversational remark recalled by Karl Röck, 1912 (German)

• Emotion
• Music
• Words

“In every song of sorrow there is a longing for peace.”

Original: In jedem Lied der Trauer liegt eine Sehnsucht nach Frieden. — Links grief with the fundamental human search for rest · Conversational remark remembered by Karl Röck, 1913 (German)

• Music
• Peace
• Sorrow

“Listen now, stooping singer: the tones are streaming back.”

Original: Lyt nu, du ludende sanger, tonerne strømmer tilbage. — A poignant image of artistic reflection and musical echo · Address to Welhaven (Norwegian)

• Art
• Music
• Reflection

“Music reaches the soul in places where words alone cannot tread.”

Original: Musikken når inn til sjelen der ordene alene ikke strekker til. — Captures the transcendent emotional reach of musical art · Letter on art (Norwegian)

• Art
• Music
• Soul

“The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.”

The present defined by past and future · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

• Meaning
• Music
• Time

“There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.”

Finding private fulfilment in the act of song itself · Imaginary Conversations

• Joy
• Music
• Solitude

“Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.”

Elevating music as the divine bridge between mortal and eternal · Imaginary Conversations

• Art
• Heaven
• Music

“In the poetry of fancy and of the imagination, there is poetry that lulls and lifts, and soothes with music and pictures.”

Distinguishes imaginative and musical poetry from the more demanding poetry he regarded as greatest · Across Spoon River

• Imagination
• Music
• Poetry

“She knew that poetry is thought and feeling, imagery and music rather than rhyme and meter.”

Defines poetry by its imaginative and emotional substance rather than by formal rules · Across Spoon River

• Creativity
• Music
• Poetry

“It's an attempt at mere sound verse, with scarcely the shadow of a sense in it: or hardly that so much as a vague Verlainesque emotion. It's an inferior production.”

An unusually direct description of his pursuit of sound, atmosphere and suggestion over explicit meaning · Letter to Victor Plarr, c. 1891

• Criticism
• Music
• Poetry

“I have been writing verses, in the manner of the French symbolists: verses making for mere sound, and music, with just a suggestion of sense, or hardly that; a vague Verlainesque emotion.”

A concise statement of Dowson's attraction to musicality and suggestion in Symbolist verse · Letter to Arthur Moore, 20 March 1891

• Music
• Poetry
• Style

“Metre, therefore, is no such false artifice as most exponents of radicalism would have us believe, but is instead a natural and inevitable embellishment to poesy.”

Defending poetic metre as an organic extension of humanity’s rhythmic instinct · Essay, Metrical Regularity

• Music
• Poetry
• Tradition

“Though I love music I cannot write within earshot of any instrument.”

An intriguing distinction between his love of music and the silence required for writing · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Music
• Silence
• Writing

“The old songs which she sang to me, so full of romance, love and sacrifice.”

Acknowledges the emotional inheritance received through his mother's songs · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Love
• Motherhood
• Music

“Music is the most impersonal of things and words the most personal, and that is why musicians do not like words.”

Wryly contrasting the abstract character of music with the personal nature of language · Essay, The Musician and the Orator

• Language
• Music
• Wit

“What are we going to do to restore the primitive singing of poetry?”

Reflecting Yeats's concern with recovering poetry's ancient connection with voice, rhythm and song · Conversation with Vachel Lindsay, Chicago

• Music
• Poetry
• Tradition

“The poet is one who sees life newly, assimilates it emotionally, and contrives to utter it musically.”

Defining poetry as a union of fresh perception, emotion and musical expression · Essay, The Poet, or Seer

• Emotion
• Music
• Poetry