I am not going to spend any time whatsoever attacking the Foreign Secretary.Quite honestly, I am beginning to feel extremely sorry for him. If we complain about the tune, there is no reason to attack the monkey when the organ grinder is present.

-Bevan, Aneurin
  Expressing his wish to address Prime Minister Harold Macmillan rather than Selwyn Lloyd on the Suez crisis in the House of Commons, May.

Different rhymes for different times Different styles for different climes Someday them rogues in Whitehall Be forced to change their tune.

-Brodber, Erna
  Myal, ch.15.

O my Luve's like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June; O my luve's like the melodie That's sweetly play'd in tune. As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my Dear, Till a'the seas gang dry. Till a'the seas gang dry, my Dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun: O I will love thee still, my Dear, While the sands o' life shall run.

-Burns, Robert
  'A red, red rose'.

There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle.

-Butler, Samuel
  The Way of  All Flesh.

   The angels all were singing out of tune, And hoarse with having little else to do, Excepting to wind up the sun and moon, Or curb a runaway young star or two.

-Rochdale
  The Vision of  Judgement, stanza 2.

He was an average guy who could carry a tune.

-Crosby, Bing originally Harry Lillis Crosby
Suggesting his own epitaph. Quoted in David Pickering Brewer's Twentieth Century Music (1994).

'Hope' is the thing with feathersö That perches in the soulö And sings the tune without the wordsö And never stopsöat allö

-Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
c.1860  Complete Poems, no.254 (first published1891).

There's Carol like a rolling car, And Martin like a flying bird, And Adam like the Lord's First Word, And Raymond like the Harvest Moon, And Peter like a piper's tune, And Alan like the flowing on Of water. And there's John, like John.

-Farjeon, Eleanor
  Then There Were Three,'Boys' Names'.

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. Sweet blues!

-Hughes, (James Mercer) Langston
  'The Weary Blues'.

Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune.

-Lamb, Charles
  Essays of Elia,'A Chapter on Ears'.

I must be mad, or very tired, When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune, And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a city square Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.

-Lowell, Amy
  'Meeting-House Hill'.

A place as kind as it isgreen, the greenest place I've never seen. Every name is a tune.

-Moore, Marianne Craig
What  AreYears,'Spencer's Ireland'.

   A lamentable tune is the sweetest music to a woeful mind.

-Shute, Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway
  Arcadia, pt.2.

All night has the casement jessamine stirred To the dancers dancing in tune; Till a silence fell with the waking bird, And a hush with the setting moon.

-Tennyson
  Maud, pt.1, sect.22, stanza 3, l.864^7.

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers: Little we see in nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.öGreat God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathe'  d horn.

-Wordsworth,William
  'The world is too much with us; late and soon', complete poem (published1807).

O Oisin, mount by me and ride To shores by the wash of the tremulous tide, Where men have heaped no burial-mounds, And the days pass by like a wayward tune.

-Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)
  'TheWanderings of Oisin', l.80^3.