Muses get the credit for showing up when we produce fine works of art. They also get the blame when we don’t. It’s always because, as artists, we waited around for nothing. Sadly, that’s exactly what we did – we waited around for nothing.

I introduced you to one of my muses in A Sudden and Unexpected Visit. If that muse exists at all, he is him.

My other muse is not pale and oval-faced man. She doesn’t wear a large, sharp sapphire ring, so it goes without saying that she doesn’t hit me with the ring that she doesn’t wear. Apparently, it doesn’t go without saying, because I didn’t drop the previous sentence. My other muse is royalty, or inhabits a world near it. It doesn’t seem to matter to her that I am not.

I’ve yet to trace her lineage (she tires quickly from my questions), but I believe her to be a lady in mourning.

One of Lord (George Gordon) Byron’s many muses was said to be a woman in a mourning dress with spangles on it. The woman in mourning was his cousin, Mrs. John Eardley Wilmot.

A friend of Byron’s wrote that when Byron first saw, “the beautiful Mrs. Wilmot,” at Lady Sitwell’s Party on Seymour road, Byron was never the same. The evening concluded with Lord Byron offering a toast to Mrs. Wilmot’s health. He was said to have been in a “sad state” for the rest of the night, not saying much at all to anyone.

{Let’s pause for a reflective moment. How do we know these things? Because they are documented in many places, such as on the Poetry Foundation website. People, we learn history from reading it. We have the luxury of reading about it because someone took effort to document it. For crying out loud, write stuff down in your life! Do this even if it seems as mundane as a friend’s reaction to seeing someone beautiful for the first time, or the subject of his end-of-evening toast, and especially, if the next morning, after a night of obsessing, your friend reads something like the following to you …}

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens serenely sweet express
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o’er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent, —
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

True, she was his cousin, and married. Lord Byron seemed to have a thing for his cousins, and even a sister or two. Byron had a “scandalous liaison” with his sister, Augusta Leigh. Word on the street back in the 1800s was that her child, Medora, was Byron’s. (OK, maybe don’t write everything down).

Which brings me to the muse in the corner of the room. Did I tell you that she was in the corner of the room here? She’s in the corner of the room. I don’t know her well yet. I think she came with the house. Also, I don’t know if she is Mrs., Ms. or Miss.

I think her last name is Sitwell, because she does. Lord Byron’s muse walks in beauty, like the night. My muse is plain in appearance, and she doesn’t walk.

She mostly sits and stares, but does so with an abundance of elegance and grace.

In midday, she brings the best of darkness and light, and how pure and dear her dwelling place.

Right here, in the corner, just staring and waiting, waiting for me to write something down, anything, just to write.

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