“Extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical, is one of the grand beauties of lyric poetry.”

Summing up Gray's demanding ideal of clarity, brevity and musical expression in lyric verse · Letter to William Mason, 13 January 1758

• Music
• Poetry
• Style

“The air of Mordelia is surely old. The second part especially seems to me to have the genuine pathos of the ancients.”

Showing her sensitivity to the emotional character and historical texture of traditional music · Letter to editor Robert Archibald Smith, during the Scottish Minstrel period

• Emotion
• Music
• Tradition

“I wrote it merely because I liked the air so much, and I put these words to it, never fearing questions as to the authorship.”

A rare first-person explanation of how one of her best-known songs came into being · Letter recalling the origin of The Land o' the Leal

• Music
• Poetry
• Writing

“I have always felt a deep interest in music, as a divine art, too often made a vehicle of evil, but which, when properly learned, might produce most important results.”

Expressing her conviction that music carries significant moral and spiritual power · Letter to her Edinburgh correspondent, 26 January 1844

• Art
• Morality
• Music

“If Mr. Purdie will in some way obliterate that drinking song of Burns', the work will do credit to all parties.”

Expressing her strong moral standards as an editor of traditional song · Note to the publisher of the Scottish Minstrel

• Criticism
• Morality
• Music

“An ebony flute ought to be very effective for most any sort of singing for that matter.”

Using musical imagery to imagine a voice capable of expressing many shades of experience · Column, The Ebony Flute, August 1926

• Imagination
• Music
• Writing

“It seems to me this perfect poem is possessed by the melancholy yet tender music of winds sighing at twilight, in some churchyard, through old trees that watch beside silent graves.”

Describing how poetry can fuse sound, atmosphere, nature and melancholy · Letter to Louise Chandler Moulton, quoted in Representative Women of New England

• Music
• Nature
• Poetry

“When better singing is needed, their ears will have grown too heavy to hear the gentle sound of the music of the future.”

Original: Pan fydd eisiau gwell canu, bydd eu clustiau wedi trymhau gormod i glywed swn tyner miwsig y dyfodol. — A striking metaphor for becoming unable to hear the possibilities of a new age · Sermon, Cyfamod Duw a Dyn (Welsh)

• Change
• Music
• Time

“Look at them: they live by singing. Do you know of any other family that lives so happily?”

Original: Edrychwch arnynt, y maent yn byw dan ganu,—wyddoch chwi am ryw deulu arall yn byw mor ddedwydd? — Finding an image of carefree happiness in the singing of birds · Sermon, Ceisio Teyrnas Dduw, July 1886 (Welsh)

• Happiness
• Music
• Nature

“Our own old melodies and our old musicians must be given more room and greater attention.”

Original: Rhaid i'n hen alawon ein hunain, a'n hen gerddorion ni, gael mwy o le a rhagor o sylw. — Calling for greater attention to the inherited musical traditions of Wales · Address, National Eisteddfod Merthyr proclamation, 1900 (Welsh)

• Memory
• Music
• Tradition

“The country has awakened, and the nation is beginning to rub its eyes. Our literature is growing and our poets multiplying; perhaps our music lags furthest behind.”

Original: Y mae'r wlad wedi deffro, a'r genedl yn dechreu rhwbio ei llygaid. Y mae ein llenyddiaeth ar gynnydd, a'n beirdd o hyd yn amlhau; dichon mai ein cerddoriaeth sydd fwyaf ar ol. — Expressing optimism about a Welsh cultural awakening while calling for musical renewal · Address, National Eisteddfod Merthyr proclamation, 1900 (Welsh)

• Hope
• Music
• Poetry

“These old spoil tips are the most poetic hills in the country. The finest poets, musicians and singers of our nation have consecrated them in the depths of the earth.”

Original: Yr hen dips' yma yw y bryniau mwyaf barddonol yn y wlad! Y mae beirdd a cherddorion a chantorion goreu ein cenedl ni wedi bod yn cysegru'r rhai hyn yn nyfnderoedd y ddaear. — Finding poetry and music within the industrial landscape of the coalfields · Address, National Eisteddfod Merthyr proclamation, 1900 (Welsh)

• Beauty
• Music
• Poetry

“It is not an institution for teaching shorthand, but one where hands too calloused to write it can clap their applause for a song.”

Original: Nid sefydliad i ddysgu llaw-fer yw hi, ond sefydliad i ddwylaw â gormod o gyrn arnynt i ysgrifennu llaw-fer, i guro cymeradwyaeth cân. — Celebrating the Eisteddfod as a cultural home for working people · Gorsedd paper, National Eisteddfod Rhyl, 1892 (Welsh)

• Art
• Community
• Music

“He is essentially the poet of youth; he is the embodiment, as it were, of youth and poetry in the richness of the imagination and in the abundance of melodious power.”

Seeing Keats as an embodiment of youthful imagination and musical richness · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Childhood
• Music
• Poetry

“Great emotion always tends to become rhythmic, and out of that tendency the forms of art have been evolved.”

Connecting artistic form with the natural rhythms produced by strong feeling · Essay, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Tendencies in Modern American Poetry

• Art
• Music

“Merely chopping prose lines into lengths does not produce cadence, it is constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time.”

Rejecting the idea that free verse is simply prose divided into lines · Preface, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

• Art
• Music
• Poetry

“They are built upon 'organic rhythm,' or the rhythm of the speaking voice with its necessity for breathing, rather than upon a strict metrical system.”

Grounding free verse rhythm in the natural movement of speech · Preface, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

• Music
• Poetry

“Men under stress of emotion tend to talk in a rhythmed speech.”

Locating poetic rhythm in the natural speech of heightened emotion · Essay, Why We Should Read Poetry

• Music
• Poetry

“It’s got, I think, a lovely slow lyrical movement.”

Showing Thomas listening critically to the movement and music of his own verse · Letter to Vernon Watkins, 30 August 1944

• Art
• Music
• Poetry

“I often think that baths were built especially for drowsy poets to lie in and there intone aloud amid the steam and boiling ripples.”

Celebrating the importance of hearing poetry spoken aloud · Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, 1933

• Joy
• Music
• Poetry

“But think of my coming to Germany to hear opera badly sung, and magnificently acted!”

Summing up the paradox of his German operatic experience with characteristic wit · Letter to Anna Harte, 1878

• Art
• Humour
• Music

“I don’t mind saying plainly, that it was the most diabolically hideous and stupidly monotonous performance I ever heard.”

Giving his uninhibited personal reaction to a performance of Wagner · Letter to Anna Harte, on Wagner's Tannhäuser, 1878

• Art
• Music

“I have been hesitating whether I should slowly prepare you for a great shock or tell you at once that musical Germany is a humbug.”

Introducing an irreverent verdict on the operatic performances he heard in Germany · Letter to Anna Harte, 1878

• Humour
• Music

“Then the press will be as impotent as the pulpit to dictate the laws and remove the landmarks of art; and those will be laughed at who demand from one thing the qualities of another—who seek for sermons in sonnets and morality in music.”

Defending artistic independence from moral and journalistic prescription · Notes on Poems and Reviews

• Art
• Music
• Poetry