When I Met My Muse...

O Muses, O high genius, aid me now!
O memory that engraved the things I saw,
Here shall your worth be manifest to all!
(Dante Alighieri, in Canto II of The Inferno)

Oh, for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention

A Kingdom for a stage, princes to act,

And Monarchs to behold the swelling act!

(William Shakespeare, Prologue, Henry V)