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More "Sprite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one in dead of night From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking, That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite, Whose grim aspect sets every joint a shaking: What terror 'tis! but she, in worser taking, From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view The sight which makes ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... for the fourth time. And lo! advancing to me eagerly along the causeway seemed the very sprite of Alastor himself! There was a star upon his forehead, and around his young face there glowed an aureole of gold and roses—to speak figuratively, for the star upon his brow was hope, and the gold and roses encircling ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... who had conjured up some kind of opposition to his mother—had made living problems harder for her until she had won the confidence of others. The man must be, Travers concluded, a fanatic and an ignoramus, and to think of him holding power over that sprite of the woods! ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for he owed him a grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Scyorax. This Caliban Prospero found in the woods, a strange, ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... guess that for the space of one second his most cherished secret hovered upon his wife's lips, one turn of the balance of Fate, one breath from the mouth of an unseen sprite, and Marguerite ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... men and women of "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" are all in harmony with one another, with Borrow, and with Borrow's world. Jasper Petulengro and his wife, his sister Ursula, the gigantic Tawno Chikno, the witch Mrs. Herne, and the evil sprite Leonora, Thurtell, the fighting men, the Irish outlaw Jerry Grant, who was suspected of raising a storm by "something Irish and supernatural" to win a fight, Murtagh, that wicked innocent, the old apple-woman, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the telephone as Bell invented it, was merely a brilliant beginning in the development of the art of telephony. It was an elfin birth—an elusive and delicate sprite that had to be nurtured into maturity. It was like a soul, for which a body had to be created; and no one knew how to make such a body. Had it been born in some less energetic country, it might have remained feeble and undeveloped; but not in the United States. Here in one year it had become ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... to part; yet asks my sprite, Part we to meet? Ah! is it so? Man's fancy-made Omniscience knows, who made Omniscience nought ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... doth Sorrow wield; What spell so strong as guilty Fear! Repentance is a tender Sprite; If aught on earth have heavenly might, 'Tis lodged within her ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... That blessing ye brought forth, Behold! it lies in fetters On the soil that gave it birth: But the trumpet must be heard And the charger must be spurr'd; For your father Armin's Sprite Calls down from heaven, that ye Shall gird you for the fight And be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... "touched up" by an artist. Their hair is dressed by another artist, and every defect of face and figure is overcome as far as is possible. Thus adorned, the dull and jaded girl of the morning becomes, under the magical influence of the footlights, a dazzling sprite, and the object of the admiration of the half-grown boys and brainless men who crowd the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... his life, had become dissipated and vicious beyond all imagination or description. He was kindly and gracious, and his mother said of him that he was like the prince in a fable whom all the fairies had endowed with gifts, except one malignant sprite who had prevented any favour being of use to him. In the general exhaustion produced by the wars of Louis XIV., a Scotchman named James Law began the great system of hollow speculation which has continued ever since to tempt people ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... You feel us near In many a ghastly dream; With fancy's eye Our forms you spy, And hear our fatal scream. With clearer sight Ere falls the night, Just when to weal or woe Your disembodied souls take flight On trembling wing—each startled sprite Our choir ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... Sephora comes; the sprite Half baffled, followed—hovering on unseen— Till Meles, fair to see and nobly dight, Received his pensive bride. ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... Teach us, Sprite or Bird, What sweet thoughts are thine; I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... In sum, her countenance you still might know The same it was, not pale, but white as snow, Which on the tops of hills in gentle flakes Falls in a calm, or as a man that takes Desir'ed rest, as if her lovely sight Were closed with sweetest sleep, after the sprite Was gone. If this be that fools call to die, Death seem'd in her ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... achieved this disastrous result. If he had tried to do evil instead of good, he could hardly have wrought more irreparable mischief—and with the thought, pity, which had led him astray, winged off, like an ironic sprite, and left ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... tangled masses of images heaped themselves in utter disorder in his brain: passages of verse, bits of his trained laboratory jargon, phrases from half-forgotten books, the delicate curves of the Water Sprite at the exposition, and, above all, a fierce gnawing pain ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... letter to Maurizio Cataneo, dated December 25, 1585, Tasso gives an account of his sprite (folletto): "The little thief has stolen from me many crowns.... He puts all my books topsy-turvy (mi mette tutti i libri sottosopra), opens my chest and steals my keys, so that I can keep nothing." Again, December ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... unknown, what charms presume To break the quiet of the tomb? Who thus afflicts my troubled sprite, And drags me from the realms of Night? 30 Long on these mouldering bones have beat The winter's snow, the summer's heat, The drenching dews and driving rain! Let me, let me sleep again. Who is he, with voice unblest, That calls me from the bed ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... immaterial and sprite-like in her blue kimono, her strange eyes downcast as her habit was when talking about herself and her own doings, that Geoffrey could think no evil of her, nor could he wonder at Reggie's gaze of intense admiration which beat upon her like sunlight ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... she had a special affection for poor Sprite, the pony which threw her,—special, I mean, since the accident,—regarding him as in some sense the angel which had driven her out of paradise into a better world. If ever he got loose, and Connie was anywhere ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... last I raised my eyes, I became aware of the fact that I was still not alone; and peering through the dim spaces about me I beheld Jack sitting hunched up on the root of his tree like a small toad of fidelity! The little owl sprite in him never quite slumbers, I think; and seeing me leave the parsonage, he had crept out and followed bravely after through the shadows. But the picture he made now startled me ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Offering in fealty thy sweet simple songs To the abode of man? Hath the rude wind Chilled thy sweet woodland home, now quite despoiled Of all its summer greenery, and swept The bright, close, sheltering bowers, where merrily Rang out thy notes—as of a haunting sprite, There domiciled—the long blue summer through? Moulders untenanted thy trim-built nest, And do the unpropitious fates deny Food for thy little wants, and Penury, With tiny grip, drive thee to dubious walls,— Though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... sacred fire in fennel stalks Through windy ways is borne and densest night, Till where the outpost shivering sentry walks Beating the minutes into hours, the light Touches the guarded pile and, flaring, balks Beasts padding near and each unvisioned sprite By old dread apprehended; and new gladness Shakes in the village prone in ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... mother walked alongside, though from time to time the little sprite would insist on taking Phil's hand; or it might be that of stout Lub. She had made him promise he would send her his picture when he got home; and Lub always grinned when X-Ray Tyson or Ethan tried to joke him about his ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... its ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... home to find the countess-dowager in a state more easily imagined than described. Some sprite, favourable to the peace of Hartledon, had been writing confidentially from Ireland regarding Kirton and his doings. That her eldest son was about to steal a march on her and marry again seemed almost indisputably clear; and the miserable dowager, dancing ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... blushes pass To be so poor and weak, He falls into the dewy grass, To cool his fevered cheek; And hears a music strangely made, That you have never heard, A sprite in every rustling blade, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Och hone! widow machree, But you're keeping some poor fellow out in the cowld, Och hone! widow machree. With such sins on your head, Sure your peace would be fled, Could you sleep in your bed, Without thinking to see Some ghost or some sprite, That would wake you each night, Crying, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... art a restless, wayward sprite, So young, so tender, and so fair, I dare not trust thee from my sight, Nor let thee breathe the common air! Home to my heart, then, quickly flee, It is the only ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... that which doth conspissate active is; Wherefore not matter but some living sprite Of nimble Nature which this lower mist And immense field of Atoms doth excite, And wake into such life as best doth fit With his own self. As we change phantasies The essence of our soul not chang'd a whit, So do these Atoms change ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... Isabel whom Clara last remembered with her baby in her lap, beautiful and almost as inanimate as a statue? There was scarcely more change from the long-frocked infant to the bustling important sprite, than from that fair piece of still life to the active house-mother. Unruffled grace was innate; every movement had a lofty, placid deliberation and simplicity, that made her like a disguised princess; ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should rise twenty-five?" cried Erma. She was running about excitedly like a water-sprite. Her red sweater gleamed in the sullen gray light. The rain was trickling from her Tam-o-Shanter; but she was oblivious of all, save the ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... serpent marred the Eden of which the sacred legends of the Semites tell, so in the folk-thought does some evil sprite or phantom ever and anon intrude itself in the Paradise of childhood and seek ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... light-gathering he discerns things for which the light falling on his pupil one-fifth of an inch in diameter would not be sufficient. We never have seen any sun or stars; we have only seen the light that left them fifty minutes or years ago, more or less. Light is the aerial sprite that carries our measuring-rods across the infinite [Page 22] spaces; light spreads out the history of that far-off beginning; brings us the measure of stars a thousand times brighter than our sun; takes up into itself evidences ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... is edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, Whose screams forebode that ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the Muse, And her divine employment! The blameless Muse, who trains her Sons For hope and calm enjoyment; Albeit sickness, lingering yet, Has o'er their pillow brooded; And Care waylays their steps—a Sprite Not easily eluded. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... she cried, "thou young Rhine-sprite, thou water-imp, run to the wood for another bundle of fagots! Away, haste thee, or I 'll give thee back to thy elfin kinsfolk, who are ever ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... this? Nay, callous he whom this stirs not to rage, Punch pictures, with prophetic pen, a brighter cheerier page, Which must be turned, and speedily: Good Mr. PROSPERO BULL, Your Ariel is the Electric Sprite, DIBDIN, of pity full For tempest-tost Poor JACK, descried a Cherub up aloft Watch-keeping o'er his venturous life. That symbol, quoted oft, Must find new form to fit the time. The Ariel of the Spark Must watch around our storm-lashed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... interest that the thought of me, and the affection that I shall ever bear you, will soften your melancholy and decrease the bitterness of your tears. But if my friendship can make you look on life with less disgust, beware how you injure it with suspicion. Love is a delicate sprite[75] and easily hurt by rough jealousy. Guard, I entreat you, a firm persuasion of my sincerity in the inmost recesses of your heart out of the reach of the casual winds that may disturb its surface. ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... whan from the bluie sea The upswol[85] sayle dyd daunce before his eyne; Swefte as the withe, hee toe the beeche dyd flee. 85 And founde his fadre steppeynge from the bryne. Lette thyssen menne, who haveth sprite of loove, Bethyncke untoe hemselves how ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... celebrated his twentieth birthday, and he considered it disgraceful that he had never visited the "Big City," as New York was always known at Sanford. Norry met him at Grand Central, a livelier and more robust Norry than Hugh had ever seen. The boy actually seemed like a boy and not a sprite; his cheeks were tanned almost brown, and his gray eyes danced with excitement when he ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. It is Juno and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... boy, not six years old, A sprite of birth and lineage high: His birth I did myself behold, His caste ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of those smooth and lurking naiads which haunt lost pools—or like some ambushed water-sprite meditating malice, and slyly alert to do you a harm. Have a care, else I transform you into a fish and chase you under the water, and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... aright Its charming paths, its sloping height, Its beautiful and broad expanse, Must one approach in witching night When, like abodes of airy sprite Revealed unto the wondering glance, O'erflooded with electric light Than Luna's beams more dazzling bright, Illumined nooks the scene enhance; While zephyrs mischievous unite The timid stroller to affright By swaying boughs in ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... And thou hast broken the bond of bread and salt; wherefore the Almighty hath thrown thee into my grasp, and far is thy chance of escape from me." Rejoined Bahram, "By Allah, O my son, O Hasan, thou art dearer to me than my sprite and the light of mine eyes!" But Hasan stepped up to him and hastily smote him between the shoulders, that the sword issued gleaming from his throat-tendons and Allah hurried his soul to the fire, and abiding-place dire. Then ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... brightened when I came, light feet that flew to welcome me, and hands that loved to minister to every want of mine. Even when I sat engrossed among my books, there was a pleasant consciousness that I was the possessor of a household sprite whom a look could summon and a gesture banish. I loved her as I loved a picture or a flower,—a little better than my horse and hound,—but far less than I loved my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of his adoration. The affair is a somewhat mysterious one, and the lady seems to have suffered from the fire through which her powerful companion passed unscathed. Again, quaintest and oddest of all, is the fancy kindled by that "mysterious sprite of genius," as one of her contemporaries calls her, Bettina Brentano, the gifted child-woman, who fascinated all who came within her reach, from Goethe and Beethoven down to princes and nobles. Goethe's correspondence with this strange ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of your head about. Now?" asked Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the post office. "Have you discovered another kindred spirit?" Excitement hung around Anne like a garment, shone in her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane, like a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in wrong, but not in right. My second is in nymph, but not in sprite. My third is in Willie, but not in Ann. My fourth is in tin, but not in can. My fifth is in tinkle, but not in bell. My sixth is in ill, but not in well. My seventh is in see, but not in look. My eighth is ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... I am, though I have oftentimes longed to make an acquaintance with one. By the way, I should think this building of nooks and corners was admirably adapted for the carrying out some marvel of the sort. Pray, is there not some hobgoblin or merry sprite playing his antics about ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... for a Pilot of State. The knowing Nautilus sets her sails In a way to weather the roughest gales; But an egg for bark, with an imp for crew, To navigate Politics' boundless blue, Looks crank and queer; Drifting comes dear— It may pay for a day, but scarce for a year. A Puck-like sprite it may please to see "All things befall preposterously." But pure perversity soon out-pegs, GRANDOLPH, "as sure as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... thou the fashion of thy dress?" * She answered us in pleasant way with double meaning dight, We call this garment creve-coeur; and rightly is it hight, * For many a heart wi' this we brake and harried many a sprite." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... hand-maid of electricity cannot be told, for it seems impossible to set limits to the future conquests of the latter, which is probably destined to perform miracles un-dreamt of to-day, perhaps coupled in some unthought-of way, with radium, the youngest sprite of the weird, uncanny tribe of mysterious agents. Uranium, the supposed basis of the latest discovery, Radium, has only one-millionth part of the heat of the latter. The slow-moving earth takes twenty-four hours to turn upon its axis. Radium ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... sepulchre's moss-cankered seat, Beneath the Abbey's ivied wall That trembles o'er its shade; Where wrapt in midnight gloom, alone, Thou lovest to lie and hear The roar of waters near, And listen to the deep dull groan Of some perturbed sprite Borne fitful on the heavy gales ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... but by no means surprising fact, that Cupid planted himself in the midst of this party, and, with his fat little legs, in imminent danger of capsizing the dishes, began to draw his bow and let fly his arrows right and left. Being an airy sprite, though fat, and not at any time particularly visible, a careless observer might have missed seeing him; but to any one with moderate powers of observation, he was there, straddling across a dish of salad as plain as the salt-cellar before Captain Wopper's nose. His deadly ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... creature; for, setting aside a mother's fondness (which, by the bye, is growing on me, her little intelligent smiles sinking into my heart), she has an astonishing degree of sensibility and observation. The other day by B——'s child, a fine one, she looked like a little sprite.—She is all life and motion, and her eyes are not the eyes of a ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... is rude," she would say to Dora,—"insufferably so. She told Madame A. that she looked like an apple-tree; which might have been taken for a compliment, had not the saucy little sprite explained herself by pointing to that old tree in the garden which the flowering shrubbery has decked with every variety of blossom: Mrs. A. is extremely fond of fancy colors. And when I took her to Bowker's the other day, that sick Miss Ellenwood was examining his new French goods, and ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... Na.nefer.ka.ptah, from which he finally comes off victorious by his brother's use of a talisman, and so secures possession of the coveted magic book. The fourth act—which I have here only summarised—shows how Na.nefer.ka.ptah resorts to a bewitchment of Setna by a sprite, by subjection to whom he loses his magic power. The fifth act shows Setna as subjected to Na.nefer.ka.ptah, and ordered by him to bring the bodies of his wife and child to ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... Then an impish sprite of mischief whispered in her ear and her eyes danced merrily. On that chance meeting with Cora and Linda in the hall Cora had told her and Grace that they were staying in a suite of rooms on the third floor, and had asked them to come to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... what cursed morn, To find this bright pomp all surrendered, These palaces an empty shell, This vigor listless ruin rendered,— While every sprite of its delight Mocks fickle echoes through the court, And in our place a sculptured trace Saddens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... India, brought a monkey, which he presented to his wife. She called it Sprite, and soon became ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... through a haze After the wedded couple strain; Alas! the friend of childish days Away, Tattiana, hath been ta'en. Thy dove, thy darling little pet On whom a sister's heart was set Afar is borne by cruel fate, For evermore is separate. She wanders aimless as a sprite, Into the tangled garden goes But nowhere can she find repose, Nor even tears afford respite, Of consolation all bereft— Well nigh her ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... family of Georgia "crackers" had been a good deal of a misfit in the Vermont community until Janice had found and interested herself in them. Virginia, a black-haired sprite of eleven or twelve, was the leader of the family in all things, although there were several older children. But "Jinny" was ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... is sitting safely in the middle of civilisation—and yet still lives as a natural power in the people—is represented, on the whole, in pigmy proportions in the south. Here they have a little terror of small hobgoblins, good-natured fairies, a love-sick river-sprite, and so forth, beings who with us in the north, almost go about our houses like superstition's tame domestic animals. You have there, too, good-natured elves, who carry on their peaceful boating and coasting trade invisibly among the people. But then, in addition, natural ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... very strong with Hawthorne, and he quotes Emerson, who called Thoreau "the young god Pan." And this lends much semblance to the statement that Thoreau served Hawthorne as a model for Donatello, the mysterious wood-sprite in the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... and forth beneath the tree for hours; four times she crouched and sprang at the dancing sprite above her, but might as well have clutched at the illusive wind that murmured through ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Kildare approaching down the long stairway with the appreciation of a connoisseur. Beside her moved a slender sprite of a girl, whose hair gleamed like spun gold above a dress of apple-green. But his glance for her was merely cursory, and returned at once to the older woman. Of this Jemima was quite aware. It had happened to her before. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... went, silent and diligent, giving the grace of willingness to every humble or distasteful task the day had brought her; but some malignant sprite seemed to have taken possession of her kingdom, for rebellion broke out everywhere. The kettles would boil over most obstreperously,—the mutton refused to cook with the meek alacrity to be expected from the nature of a sheep,—the stove, with unnecessary warmth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and Ramona which Margarita did not know. The girl was always like a sprite,—here, there, everywhere, in an hour, and with eyes which, as her mother often told her, saw on all sides of her head. Now, fired by her new purpose, new passion, she moved swifter than ever, and saw and heard even ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... is her heart, and knit with tenderest ties To those she loves, and, elsewise, otherwise; For such a sprite, whose birthplace is the skies, Of manly beauty blent with woman's grace, No mortal pen, though fain, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lustrous threads of marble whiteness. They form long gauzy streamers as fine as sifted snow, giving to it the name of "Bridal Veil." No bride ever wore a veil of such delicate and exquisite texture unless it was some water sprite, fit creature to be adorned with such gauzy and wind-woven drapery. Only the fairy looms of Nature can produce lace-like gossamer films of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... equal among mankind; * Sultan of Beauty, and proof I'll cite: Thine eye-brows are likest a well-formed Nn,[FN35] * And thine eyes a Sd,[FN36] by His hand indite; Thy shape is the soft, green bough that gives * When asked to all with all-gracious sprite: Thou excellest knights of the world in stowre, * With delight ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... congratulated by a sympathetic, effusive American who had clapped him on the back, and who had said, "Oh, never fear—you will speak well!" he would have said nothing. The shy sprite in his own eyes would have read in his neighbor's eyes the dreadful truth that his sympathetic neighbor would have indubitably betrayed—a fear that he would not do well. The phlegmatic and stony Englishman neither felt nor cared whether Hawthorne spoke well or ill; ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy violin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make him cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly music in ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him. The boy, though, could think of nothing except that his little excursion among new and strange adventures was to begin, actually to begin. But then, quite unaccountably, there fell over his eagerness a chilling gloom. The delightful sprite named Expectation, who had whispered so piquantly of this same eventful morn, had basely changed herself into a hideous vampire, and she muttered at him, in frightful, raucous tones. Yet the hag's snarls were true promises. There was to come, surely, inexorably, a certain other eventful ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... A fairy or water-sprite that resides in the neighbourhood of the Orkneys is popularly known as Tangie, so-called from tang,, the seaweed with which he is covered. Occasionally he makes his appearance as a little horse, and at other times ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... But the sprite that led us paused for nothing, and long before I had passed the first step she had reached the bottom one, and was groping her way towards the single gleam of light that infused itself through the otherwise ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... was being played was indeed wonderful. This was not for the delight of children: no happy sprite with dancing feet could maintain this measure. It was music for the most advanced, enlightened intelligence,—for the soul that music had quickened to far depths,—for the heart that had suffered, triumphed, and gained the kingdom of calm,—for a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... great man looking with truth and kindliness into men's natures, and reading their characters and abilities in their words and acts, has a higher and better power than that attributed to the wandering sprite, for such a man holds in his hand the surest key to success. Washington, quiet and always on the watch, after the fashion of silent greatness, studied untiringly the ever recurring human problems, and his just ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... fairies, O pygmy of fire, Will nothing those brave little wings of yours tire? You follow the flowers from southern lands sunny, You pry amid petals all summer for honey! Now rest on a twig, tiny flowerland sprite, Your dear little lady sits near in delight; In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles— Two dots of white eggs to her warm breast she cuddles! Whiz-z! whiff! off to your flowers! Buzz mid the perfume of jasmine bowers! Chatter and chirrup, my king of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... door, put the bulging suit-case on a chair and watched the girl as she whirled about the hall, as graceful as a water sprite, with eyes alight with mischief and animation. The sight of her was so bewitching, the fact that she had come to him for help so good, that his curiosity to know what it was that ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... stock this saddle sprite Is grosser grown with savage things. Inured to storms, his fierce delight Is lawless as the beasts he swings His swift rope over.—Libidinous, obscene, Careless of dust and dirt, serene, He faces snows in calm disdain, Or makes his ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... quotha! 'Twas patience in truth a body had need of, who was thrown at all with her little ladyship. But there was ne'er so beautiful a maiden born in all the broad land of England; nor will be again—not though London Tower be standing when the last trump sounds. Meseemed she was an elf-sprite, so tiny was she; and her face like a fair flower, so fresh and pure. Her hair was shed about her face like sunlight on thistle-down, and her eyes made a shining behind it, like the big blue gems in her mother's jewel-box. When she laughed, it was as ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... blue flame dost know? Canst tell where it comes from, or where it will go? Is it the soul, released from clay, Over the earth that takes its way, And tarries a moment in mirth and glee Where the corse it hath quitted interred shall be? Or is it the trick of some fanciful sprite, That taketh in mortal mischance delight, And marketh the road the coffin shall go, And the spot where the dead shall be soon laid low? Ask him who can answer these questions aright; I know not the cause of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite, Friend and associate of this clay, To what unknown region borne Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... a common object at the Rink was a tall young man, in all the agonies of a debut on skates, and a bewitching little attendant sprite shooting before and around him, occasionally righting him with a fairy touch when he evinced too wild a desire to dash his brains against ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... purely an affair of the intellect, and so is society when it is at all good; no one but a fool dreams of going there for fine feelings and profound emotions. But the intellect to be nimble must be free: 'tis a sprite will play you the prettiest tricks an you give it the run of the house; close but one door though, and it sits sulking in the lobby. Delightful are the games it can play you: wit, irony, criticism, thrilling ideas, visions ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... in fantastic patterns on the projecting windows and fretted stone balconies of the quaint and crowded houses. It was not an honest and single-minded snow-storm, such as would seek to shroud the whole city in its delicate white mantle, but rather a tricksy and capricious sprite, that neglected one spot to hurl itself with wanton violence on another. Borne on the breath of a keen and shifting wind, it came tossing gleefully full in the face of a solitary artisan who, wrapped in a heavy cloak, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... and variety of thought. Heine's humor is never persistent, it never flows on long in easy gayety and drollery; where it is not swelled by the tide of poetic feeling, it is continually dashing down the precipice of a witticism. It is not broad and unctuous; it is aerial and sprite-like, a momentary resting-place between his poetry and his wit. In the "Reisebilder" he runs through the whole gamut of his powers, and gives us every hue of thought, from the wildly droll and fantastic to the sombre and the terrible. Here is a ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... carrying his shoes under his arms and looking wise, followed by cronies, fairies, goblins, and all the troops just loosed from Noah's storm-tossed ark. They walked, they strutted, they soared, they swam, and some came in through fire. One sprite climbed up to the moon on a ladder made of leaves and frozen dew-drops. A peacock with a great hooked bill flew in and out among the branches of a pomegranate-tree pecking the rosy fruit. He screamed so loud that Apollo ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... confounds elves with fairies in deriving all alike from fauns and dryads. Robin is "mad-merry," "jocund and facetious," "a cozening idle friar or some such rogue" [in origin], and so forth—simply described by Shakespeare as a "shrewd and knavish sprite." The forms of mischief in which he delights are described in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. i. 33-57, and all these "gests" may be found in the contemporary Robin Goodfellow literature;[86] though we have observed that some of the functions attributed ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... or demon, Common Sense! Seen seldom by us mortals dense, Come, sprite, inform, inhabit me And teach me art ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... the long-spurred red and yellow columbine and the painted cup, then the coral honeysuckle, jewelweed, trumpet-creeper, Oswego tea, and cardinal flower have the honor of catering to the exacting little sprite from spring to autumn. His sojourn in our gardens is prolonged until his beloved gladioli, cannas, honeysuckles, nasturtiums, and salvia succumb ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... to hear so good an account of your activity and interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in the flesh. Please remember me to your wife and to the four-year-old sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher matters. Do you know where the road crosses the burn under Glencorse Church? Go ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... doubt of the Matter; and he dreamt of nothing but Spectres and Devils: The very Habit of his Mind was got into his Face, that he was so pale, and meagre and dejected, that you would say he was rather a Sprite than a Man: And in short, he was not far from being stark mad, and would have been so, had it not ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... bewitching sprite. You reproached me just now with bringing her here, here under your very eyes, you said. Faustina, I brought her here, to this remote hold, that she might be the more completely in my power. That I might, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... rejected travelled. It is true that Mr. Erne had often expressed his film of dissatisfaction with the conventual results, and had planned an attack on matters of more solid learning; but, tricksy as a sprite, Eloise had escaped his designs, broken through his regulations, implored, just out of shackles, a year's gambol in liberty, and had made herself too charming to be resisted in her plea; and if, feeling his health fail, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... ancient or modern superstition. Hahn endeavoured to group the folk-tales of Europe under forty heads, and Baring Gould has followed his example. In every corner of Christendom some form of kelpie, sprite, troll, gnome, imp, or demon has a place in the mind of the people, much the same as ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... weary task foredone. Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the scritch owl, scritching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the churchway paths to glide: And we fairies, that do run, By the triple Hecate's team, From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallowed ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... asked him in and he went. Aunt Priscilla was out, and tea was served for the two of them from a lacquered tea cart—Orange Pekoe and Japanese wafers. It was delicious but unsubstantial. Dulcie with her coat off was like a wood sprite in leaf green. Her hair was gold, her eyes wet violets; but Mills missed something. He had a feeling that he wanted to get home and talk ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... and its ills, Duns and their bills, Bid we to flee. Come with the dawn, Blue-devil sprite; Leave us to-night, Round ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... tongue and throat, Ay, every rhythm and rhyme Of everything that lives and loves And upward, ever upward moves From lowly to sublime! Earth's multitudinous Sons of Light, I heard them lift their lyric might With each and every chanting sprite That lit the sky that wondrous night As far as eye ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... consciousness that he had been in that attitude nearly an hour, and had thought of nothing but Gwendolen and her husband. To be an unusual young man means for the most part to get a difficult mastery over the usual, which is often like the sprite of ill-luck you pack up your goods to escape from, and see grinning at you from the top of your luggage van. The peculiarities of Deronda's nature had been acutely touched by the brief incident and words which made the history of his intercourse with Gwendolen; and this ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... laughingly. The soft yellow hair was blown about her like a cloud, and the great bow under her chin gave her a coquettish air. What a changeful little sprite she was! ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fallen solemn, "haven't time. I'm going to take Marsh and the SPRITE and go to town. Old Heinzman," he added as an afterthought, "is stringing booms ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... was Cheiron's real name—knocked the ashes from his long pipe next day at eleven o'clock in the morning, after his late breakfast and began to arrange his books. His mind was away in a land of classical lore; he had almost forgotten the sprite who had invaded his solitude the previous afternoon, until he heard a tap at the window, and saw her standing there—great, intelligent eyes aflame and ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... form, in The Dolliver Romance. There was even a Persian kitten, too, to bear little Imogen company. But no fiction could surpass the singularity of this withered old magician living with the pale, tiny sprite of a child of mysterious birth in the ghost-haunted ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... The younger had commenced practising the same delicate and ingenious craft of embroidery, and the two pursued their industry in company under the same employer. It was amusing to mark the demure assumption of womanhood darkening the brows of the aerial little sprite, as, with all the new-born consequence of responsibility, she walked soberly by her sister's side, frame in hand, and occasionally revealed to passers-by a brief glimpse of her many-coloured handiwork. They were the very picture ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... herself to sleep. No comforting sprite whispered to her that she had won the first round in an arduous campaign. On the contrary, she fully expected dismissal on ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with buttercups, and cedars with the flying drops of rain—there was gesture. For gesture and attitude can convey all the important and necessary things, while speech in the human sense is but an invention of some sprite who wanted people to wonder what they really meant. In sublimest moments it is never used even in the best circles of intelligence; it drops away quite naturally; souls know one another face to face in ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... in the good greenwood when the goblin and sprite ranged free, When the kelpie haunted the shadowed flood, and the dryad dwelt in the tree; But merrier far is the trolley-car as it routs the witch from the wold, And the din of the hammer and the cartridges' clamor as they banish the swart kobold! O, a sovran ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... put the bulging suit-case on a chair and watched the girl as she whirled about the hall, as graceful as a water sprite, with eyes alight with mischief and animation. The sight of her was so bewitching, the fact that she had come to him for help so good, that his curiosity to know what it was that she had done ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... her word, And at her light-hearted view of him. "Let's get him made so—just for a whim!" Said the Phantom Ironic. "'Twould serve her right If we coaxed the Will to do it some night." "O pray not!" pleaded the younger one, The Sprite of the Pities. "She said it ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... "Pearl," as being of great price, and little Pearl grew up a wondrously lovely child, with a strange, lawless character. At times she seemed rather an airy sprite than human, and never did she seek to make acquaintance with other children, but was always Hester's companion in her walks ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Grimshawe's Secret, and again, in a somewhat different form, in The Dolliver Romance. There was even a Persian kitten, too, to bear little Imogen company. But no fiction could surpass the singularity of this withered old magician living with the pale, tiny sprite of a child of mysterious birth in the ghost-haunted rooms ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the notes. I burst through the knotted stalks of the ivy, and stooping like some poor travesty of Narcissus, with shaded face pierced down deep—deep into eyes not my own, but violet and unendurable and strange—eyes of the living water-sprite drawing my wits from me, stilling my heart, till I was very near plunging into that crystal ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... when the world was young. Through them, now and then, a little stream goes laughing, fringed with bulrushes and beds of calamus and fragrant mint, a narrow stream that runs chuckling through the stiff sod and spreads dimpling over the road on a bed of white sand, for all the world like a dodging sprite of the wood who laughs suddenly in ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... evil fairy, who by their gifts make up the life of the little babe within. The good fairy gives him a wonderful blessing, perhaps it is the power to write poems or paint pictures. Then the bad fairy, ugly little sprite that he is, adds a portion of evil, perhaps it is envy that eats the soul like a canker. And so they alternate, the good and evil, until the sum of a human life is made up, and the child grows up to live out his years, marked by joy and sorrow ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... the cormorants, whose black wings, one by one, Cut the blue wave that o'er them breaks in liquid pearls? Is it some hovering sprite with whistling scream that hurls Down to the deep from yon old ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... sufficient in rank and authority to serve her purpose. "We plead in vain with the officer-of-the-guard. He says his orders are imperative—to allow no one to intrude on that space," and madam looked as though she would rather look anywhere than at the animated sprite above her. ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... at the Rink was a tall young man, in all the agonies of a debut on skates, and a bewitching little attendant sprite shooting before and around him, occasionally righting him with a fairy touch when he evinced too wild a desire to dash his brains ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... heard, was spent again in Jersey. To the roaring music of the Channel breakers he built up his towers and battlements of prophecy. More, he wrote a poem, and for a day wondered whether it might be well to read it to his audience as preface. A friendly sprite whispered in his ear, and saved him from too utter folly. The sprite had not yet forsaken him; woe to him if ever it should! He wrapped the poem in a letter to Mr. Newthorpe, and had a very pleasant reply, written, as he afterwards heard, only a day or two before Mr. Newthorpe fell ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... played was indeed wonderful. This was not for the delight of children: no happy sprite with dancing feet could maintain this measure. It was music for the most advanced, enlightened intelligence,—for the soul that music had quickened to far depths,—for the heart that had suffered, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... and clap his hot hands, and cry, "More, father, more." Will and Dulcie looked gladly into each other's eyes at his animation, and boasted what a stamping, thundering man he would yet live to be—that midge, that sprite, with Dulcie's small skeleton bones, and Will's ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... not sprite shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us as round the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... these characters, the men and women of "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" are all in harmony with one another, with Borrow, and with Borrow's world. Jasper Petulengro and his wife, his sister Ursula, the gigantic Tawno Chikno, the witch Mrs. Herne, and the evil sprite Leonora, Thurtell, the fighting men, the Irish outlaw Jerry Grant, who was suspected of raising a storm by "something Irish and supernatural" to win a fight, Murtagh, that wicked innocent, the old apple-woman, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... girls hurried on. With a sister's instinct Hazel never stumbled, but seemed to get over every obstacle like some wood sprite called ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... had three servants whom he employed to attend to his most important business. These were a Gryphoness, a Water Sprite, and an Absolute Fool. This last one was very valuable; for there were some things he would do which no one else would think of attempting. The Dwarf called to him the Gryphoness, the oldest and most discreet of the three, and told her of the ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... the Signal dug-out of "A" Company, where, by the best fortune in the world, Private M'Gurk in person is installed as officiating sprite. Let us render ourselves invisible, sit down beside ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... the principal schoolroom was a deep, narrow closet where the working supplies were kept. To reach the shelves at the back one must pass through the pinched little door, an easy matter for a sprite like Polly, who flitted in and out at any angle; but an occasional plump pupil was obliged to slip in ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... O gentle sprite! if love still sway the blest, Look down on him thou here didst love, and view These tears that mourn my ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... soft yellow hair was blown about her like a cloud, and the great bow under her chin gave her a coquettish air. What a changeful little sprite she was! ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... risen and dressed herself, and had slipped out betimes," said the Lady of Dynevor, as she took her place at the board. "Methought she would be with thee. She is a veritable sprite for flitting hither and thither after thee. Doubtless she is with some of the others. Who knows where the boys have gone this morning? They are not wont to be ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to be the hand-maid of electricity cannot be told, for it seems impossible to set limits to the future conquests of the latter, which is probably destined to perform miracles un-dreamt of to-day, perhaps coupled in some unthought-of way, with radium, the youngest sprite of the weird, uncanny tribe of mysterious agents. Uranium, the supposed basis of the latest discovery, Radium, has only one-millionth part of the heat of the latter. The slow-moving earth takes twenty-four hours to turn upon its axis. Radium ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... hunted! They climbed trees to peep into squirrel-holes and birds'-nests; they chased bees and butterflies to ask for news of the elves; they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... heard what had chanced. It seemed that the wraith, or emanation, or the sprite, good or evil, or whatever it may have been, which called itself Eleanor, materialized in a very ugly temper. It complained that it had not been allowed to appear upon the previous Sunday and had been kept away from its brother, i.e. Godfrey. Then ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... villagers was the head man, swarthy-faced, clean-shaved Kusis; beside him Tulpe, his wife, a graceful young woman of about five-and-twenty, and her husband's little daughter by a former wife. This child was named Kinie, a merry-faced, laughing-voiced sprite, ten years of age, with long, wavy, and somewhat unkempt hair hanging down over ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... comes off victorious by his brother's use of a talisman, and so secures possession of the coveted magic book. The fourth act—which I have here only summarised—shows how Na.nefer.ka.ptah resorts to a bewitchment of Setna by a sprite, by subjection to whom he loses his magic power. The fifth act shows Setna as subjected to Na.nefer.ka.ptah, and ordered by him to bring the bodies of his wife and child to Memphis ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... princess's playfellows with all sorts of punishments if they would not confess something about her disappearance; but as they only repeated the same story he presently put down the whole affair to the work of some sprite or goblin, and tried to console himself for his loss by ordering a grand hunt; for kings cannot bear to ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... vine, or had but tasted one Small chalice of thy frantic liquor, he, As the wise Cato, had approv'd of thee. Had not Jove's son,[J] that brave Tirynthian swain, Invited to the Thesbian banquet, ta'en Full goblets of thy gen'rous blood, his sprite Ne'er had kept heat for fifty maids that night. Come, come and kiss me; love and lust commends Thee and thy beauties; kiss, we will be friends Too strong for fate to break us. Look upon Me with that full pride of complexion As queens meet queens, or come thou unto me ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... what was this sprite, this Brownie? What was she doing in his father's house? Were materialized spirits really ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... Mixed, tangled masses of images heaped themselves in utter disorder in his brain: passages of verse, bits of his trained laboratory jargon, phrases from half-forgotten books, the delicate curves of the Water Sprite at the exposition, and, above all, a fierce gnawing pain in ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... always brightened when I came, light feet that flew to welcome me, and hands that loved to minister to every want of mine. Even when I sat engrossed among my books, there was a pleasant consciousness that I was the possessor of a household sprite whom a look could summon and a gesture banish. I loved her as I loved a picture or a flower,—a little better than my horse and hound,—but far less than I loved my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... my heart, * Whileas thy form is far from sight, Thou art my sprite my me unseen, * Yet nearest ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Morals and Law's Serious Call, both admirable books, then the bookman is much exhilarated. Because of the mischief that is in him he will not relieve those two excellent men of that disgraceful Italian's company for a little space, but if he finds that the domestic sprite has thrust a Puritan between two Anglican theologians he effects a separation without delay, for a religious controversy with its din and clatter is more than he ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... his place again. It had been reported that, consequent upon a hasty pledge to remain in Liverpool until his candidate was returned, he was now doomed for ever to wander an unquiet sprite upon the banks of Mersey. But he has wisely determined that Parliament must not suffer to please ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... And the little sprite got in, keeping her head and the little cup of a bonnet protruding every moment to look round; yet if it could have been seen in the dark, with such a sly, half-humorous eye, as betokened one of those curiously-made creatures ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... warm up to her," contradicted Mademoiselle Eloise, a pale, light-haired sprite, who had arrived late and was making undignified efforts to get out of her clothes by way of her head. She was Polly's understudy and next in line for the ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... tower erects its battlements bravely; my Anecdotes of Painting thrive exceedingly: thanks to the gout, that has pinned me to my chair: think of Ariel the sprite ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... them both together every day. The younger had commenced practising the same delicate and ingenious craft of embroidery, and the two pursued their industry in company under the same employer. It was amusing to mark the demure assumption of womanhood darkening the brows of the aerial little sprite, as, with all the new-born consequence of responsibility, she walked soberly by her sister's side, frame in hand, and occasionally revealed to passers-by a brief glimpse of her many-coloured handiwork. They were the very picture of beauty ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... suddenly fallen solemn, "haven't time. I'm going to take Marsh and the SPRITE and go to town. Old Heinzman," he added as an afterthought, "is stringing booms ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... in deriving all alike from fauns and dryads. Robin is "mad-merry," "jocund and facetious," "a cozening idle friar or some such rogue" [in origin], and so forth—simply described by Shakespeare as a "shrewd and knavish sprite." The forms of mischief in which he delights are described in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. i. 33-57, and all these "gests" may be found in the contemporary Robin Goodfellow literature;[86] though we have observed that some of the functions attributed to Queen ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... to his original notion, that it is in the heart of the Oil Regions, of which he has seen pictures in the illustrated papers; and when I assert myself against his opinions, he treats me very gingerly, as if I were an explosive sprite, or an inflammable naiad from a torpedoed well, and it wouldn't be quite safe to oppose me, or I would disappear with ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... The tower door is open, and there is no one to be seen. He keeps on and on until he catches a flutter of a white dress. Cecil is running around the observatory, and his heart beats as he glances at the dazzling little sprite, with her sparkling eyes and her hair a golden mist about her face. He could watch forever, but it ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... unlucky Sprite! Like Will-a-whisp, a wandring light, Through ditch, thro' bog, who lead astray Benighted swains, who lose their way; You pinch the slattern black and blue, You silver drop in huswife's shoe; For call you Robin and sweet Puck, You do their work, and ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... am I, who thy protection claim, A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name. Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air, In the clear mirror of thy ruling star I saw, alas! some dread event impend, Ere to the main this morning sun descend, But heaven reveals not what, or how, or where: ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... men say that he was not the sonne, Of mortal sire or other living wighte, But wondrously begotten and begoune By false illusion of a guileful sprite, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... rising to her quivering cheek, And meet the glance she hastened once to greet, When not a thought had he, save in her sweet And solacing society; to seek Her smiles his only life! Ah! happy prime Of cloudless purity, no stormy fame His unknown sprite then stirred, a golden time Worth all the restless splendour of a name; And one soft accent from those gentle lips Might all the plaudits of a ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Giant Range; pleasant painted hamlets sprinkling it, fine mountain ridges and distant peaks looking on; Schneekoppe (SNOWfell, its head bright-white till July come) attends you, far to the right, all the way:—probably Sprite Rubezahl inhabits there; and no doubt River Elbe begins his long journey there, trickling down in little threads over yonder, intending to float navies by and by: considerations infinitely indifferent to Schwerin. 'The road,' says ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... by Lady, I will not be a sprite, masters. Get ye away; if I be a sprite, I shall be so lean, I shall make you ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... hail'd him from no mortal fowl alive, But from the cuckoo-clock just striking five— And Tinker's ear and Tinker's nose were keen— Off started he, and then a form was seen Dark'ning the doorway; and a smaller sprite, And then another, peer'd into the night, Ready to follow free on Tinker's track, But for the mother's hand that held her back; And yet a moment—a few steps—and there, Pull'd o'er the threshold by that eager pair, He sits by his own hearth, in his own ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... mother—had made living problems harder for her until she had won the confidence of others. The man must be, Travers concluded, a fanatic and an ignoramus, and to think of him holding power over that sprite of the woods! ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... ruddy morning faces, an absent-minded professor carrying his shoes under his arms and looking wise, followed by cronies, fairies, goblins, and all the troops just loosed from Noah's storm-tossed ark. They walked, they strutted, they soared, they swam, and some came in through fire. One sprite climbed up to the moon on a ladder made of leaves and frozen dew-drops. A peacock with a great hooked bill flew in and out among the branches of a pomegranate-tree pecking the rosy fruit. He screamed so loud that Apollo turned in his chariot of flame and from his burnished bow shot golden arrows ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... her closely and would not let her go, compelling her to meet his ardent eyes. A change came over the girl, a sudden red flashed up into her temples and down into her white throat. She drew herself impetuously away from her lover's arms and fled from the room. 'I am not sure but that she is a water-sprite, after all,' grumbled Waring, as he followed her. But it was a pleasure now to grumble and pretend to doubt, since from ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... flagging soul flies under her own pitch, Like fowl in air too damp, and lugs along, As if she were a body in a body, And not a mounting substance made of fire. My senses, too, are dull and stupified, Their edge rebated:—sure some ill approaches, And some kind sprite knocks softly at my soul, To tell ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... why, when he had finished his second ballad, and sometimes even sooner, concupiscent looks appeared in their eyes. The boatman of their dreams, the water-sprite of fairy tales, vanished in the mist of their childish recollections, and the singer re-assumed his real shape, that of musician and strolling player, whom they wished to pay, to be their lover. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... they got steady again; then I crept warily back, alert, watching, and ready to fly if there was occasion; and when I was come near, I parted the branches of a rose-bush and peeped through—wishing the man was about, I was looking so cunning and pretty—but the sprite was gone. I went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole. I put my finger in, to feel it, and said OUCH! and took it out again. It was a cruel pain. I put my finger in my mouth; and by standing ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... immortal harmony about to gush, like a mountain torrent, from the teeming strings; when lo! to our unmitigated disgust, it glides noiselessly along its hitherto resounding path, for—ye gods and little fishes!—some murderous wretch, at the instigation of we know not what evil sprite, has greased the horsehair, for which we solemnly devote him to the "bowstring," the first time he is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... their steps, they hastened, as they might, Under the cherished burden they conveyed; And now approaching was the lord of light, To sweep from heaven the stars, from earth the shade, When good Zerbino, he whose valiant sprite Was ne'er in time of need by sleep down-weighed, From chasing Moors all night, his homeward way Was taking to the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Can think of breeding awe and fear; 'Twill serve the purpose more by half To make the congregation laugh. 510 We want no ensigns of surprise, Locks stiff with gore, and saucer eyes; Give us an entertaining sprite, Gentle, familiar, and polite, One who appears in such a form As might an holy hermit warm, Or who on former schemes refines, And only talks by sounds and signs, Who will not to the eye appear, But pays her visits to the ear, 520 And knocks so gently, 't would not fright A lady in the darkest ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... passion after another destroyed his peace of mind and put him out of conceit with himself. His first affair of any moment was with Lady Caroline Lamb the wife of William Lamb, better known as Lord Melbourne, a delicate, golden-haired sprite, who threw herself in his way, and afterwards, when she was shaken off, involved him in her own disgrace. To her succeeded Lady Oxford, who was double his own age, and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster, the "Ginevra" of his sonnets, the "Medora" of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... that wild legend?" thought she. "I am getting to be as weak and superstitious as Helen. Why, when it seems to me that the wing of an angel is fluttering against my cheek, should I remember that demon-sprite?" ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... never persistent, it never flows on long in easy gayety and drollery; where it is not swelled by the tide of poetic feeling, it is continually dashing down the precipice of a witticism. It is not broad and unctuous; it is aerial and sprite-like, a momentary resting-place between his poetry and his wit. In the "Reisebilder" he runs through the whole gamut of his powers, and gives us every hue of thought, from the wildly droll and fantastic to the sombre ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Keep singing that sweet song over Of wee little Luddy-Dud. "'T is little Luddy-Dud in the morning— 'T is little Luddy-Dud at night; And all day long 'T is the same dear song Of that growing, crowing, knowing little sprite, Luddy-Dud." ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... dispositions. Each had a name, and some answered to their names when she called them. At least, she thought that they did, and I did not doubt it when I saw them swoop down to dip their bills in the flowers she held up, as she called "Sprite" and "Bright," and "Sweet" and "Swift," and the like crisp, short names in a voice that was like the tinkle of a little bell. It was a pretty sight,—the tiny woman, all white from cap to toe, standing in the full ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... a boy, not six years old, A sprite of birth and lineage high: His birth I did myself behold, His caste is ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is the time of night, That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Elvira keeps him that renders him so unsettled, and that if they were once married he would have some peace of mind, and be able to begin life in earnest. But to hurry on the marriage is such a fearful risk, with such a creature as that sprite, that she has persuaded him to wait, and let the child be satisfied by this season in London, that she may not think they are cheating her of her young ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... torrents pour, Like storm-clouds rushing through the vault of heaven, As when the mighty main on shore is driven, So wide, so loud, so dark, so fierce the strain When met the angry chiefs on Lena's plain. The king rushed forward with resistless might, Dreadful as Trenmor's awe-inspiring sprite, When on the fitful blast he comes again To Morven, his forefather's loved domain. Loud in the gale the mountain oaks shall roar, The mountain rocks shall fall his face before, As by the lightning's gleam his form is spied Stalking ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... Japanese doll, pointing excitedly: and indeed they did catch one more glimpse of the fleeting sprite between the shrubs. "He was mighty jolly," said the Brown Teddy-Bear enviously, in his deep, mournful voice; and "Let's go catch him!" cried the Baby, where it sat flat on the bricks, crowing and clapping ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... cried cheerily. 'I bring monsieur his coffee.' And her announcement was followed by a fragrance—the softly-sung response of the coffee-sprite. Her tray, with its pretty freight of silver and linen, primrose butter, and gently-browned pain-de-gruau, she set down on the table at my elbow; then she crossed the room and drew back the window-curtains, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... Sir Piercie Shafton, though it is most indisputably true that Scott has not by any means truly represented Euphuism, is good and amusing in itself; while there are those who boldly like the White Lady personally. She is more futile than a sprite beseems; but she ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... hone! widow machree, But you're keeping some poor fellow out in the cowld, Och hone! widow machree. With such sins on your head, Sure your peace would be fled, Could you sleep in your bed, Without thinking to see Some ghost or some sprite, That would wake you each night, Crying, 'Och hone! ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Like a sprite, the girl in the yellow slicker and rubber hat made for the highest end of the boat, measured her distance to the Chelton, and while Kent and Cora strained to ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... I find some wizard sprite, To bear my words to her I love, Beyond the shades of envious night, To where ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... far as Fifine is concerned, he cannot defend his taste: he can scarcely account for it. "Beautiful she is, in her feminine grace and strength, set forth by her boyish dress; but with probably no more feeling than a sprite, and no more conscience than a flower. It is likely enough that her antecedents have been execrable, and that her life is in harmony with them." Still, he does not wish it supposed that he admires a body ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... sisters; whereupon they all scamper out of their cells, and down the steps, to see the miracle, and behold, there sits the three-legged hare; but when Agnes Kleist took off her slipper, and threw it at the devil's sprite, my hare is off, and never a trace of him could be found again in the whole brew-house or in the whole convent court. Hereat the nuns shuddered, and each virgin has her opinion on the matter, but speaks it not; for just then, too, comes Sidonia forth, with old Wolde and the cat, and the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... thou seen by the streamlet side— A nymph or a water sprite— That thou comest with eyes so wild and wide, And with cheeks so ghostly white?" "Nor nymph nor sprite," the maiden cried, "But the corpse ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... great mountains of the Blue Ridge and owns all the game. Others are the Little Men, probably the two Thunder boys; the Little People, the fairies who live in the rock cliffs; and even the De[']tsata, a diminutive sprite who holds the place of our Puck. One unwritten formula, which could not be obtained correctly by dictation, was addressed to the "Red-Headed Woman, whose hair hangs down ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... lamp is lit, And in its mellow glow we sit And talk of matters, grave and gay, That went to make another day. Comes Little One, a book in hand, With this request, nay, this command— (For who'd gainsay the little sprite)— "Please—will you read ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... about him that led us to suspect that he was a chief. We found, upon inquiry, that it was Seattle, the old chief for whom the town was named, and the head of all the tribes on the Sound. He had with him a little brown sprite, that seemed an embodiment of the wind,—such a swift, elastic little creature,—his great-grandson, with no clothes about him, though it was a cold November day. To him, motion ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... of which a fairy is said to dwell, I fancied she was their queen, and must have dropped from one of the leaves, to gambol and wanton among the flowers below. Running to her, I caught her in my arms, and said, 'I watched your fall, and have you now, dear sprite, and will keep you here!'—pressing her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... Mountstuart Jenkinson, who represented to him the world he feared and tried to keep sunny for himself by all the arts he could exercise. She expected him to be the gay Sir Willoughby, and her look being as good as an incantation summons, he produced the accustomed sprite, giving her sally for sally. Queens govern the polite. Popularity with men, serviceable as it is for winning favouritism with women, is of poor value to a sensitive gentleman, anxious even to prognostic ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cheeks, ears, and nostrils are "touched up" by an artist. Their hair is dressed by another artist, and every defect of face and figure is overcome as far as is possible. Thus adorned, the dull and jaded girl of the morning becomes, under the magical influence of the footlights, a dazzling sprite, and the object of the admiration of the half-grown boys and brainless men who crowd the front rows ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... your mind: Celey Dunbar is Manager Morgan's ex-sweetheart; Mrs. Dovie Davis is married; that gay, jolly girl is Daisy Lee, the soubrette of the company; she'd cut out any one of us if she could; but she's so merry a sprite we don't mind her, especially as none of the ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... "the Brownies went on with their work in spite of the bottle-green suit, and Trout's luck returned to the old house once more. Before long Tommy began to work for the farmers, and Baby grew up into a Brownie, and made (as girls are apt to make) the best house-sprite of all. For, in the Brownie's habits of self-denial, thoughtfulness, consideration, and the art of little kindnesses, boys are, I am afraid, as a general rule, somewhat behindhand with their sisters. Whether this altogether proceeds from constitutional deficiency on these ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with a single stone To the vulgar eye no stone of price: Whisper the right word, that alone— Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice, And lo, you are lord (says an Eastern scroll) Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole Through the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... beauty! Her carriage was regal, and there was about her an air of competence, of authority. She was not disturbed by her surroundings—she laughed. What had she called the storm? A puff! She seemed, by George, like a sprite of the storm! Like the steersman yonder, she seemed to belong to this setting of laboring ship and tumultuous sea. Here she came toward ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... he said, pettishly; "I don't think that the harbor-master is a spirit or a sprite or a hobgoblin, or any sort of damned rot. Neither do I believe it ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... fount of life! God love thee for a merry sprite! Sing on! for though the sun be coy I sense with thee a budding joy, And all my heart with ranging rhyme Is ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... know, you curious Old World sprite, what scrapes your detestable spectacles brought me into? Here they are. Take them back. I don't want to see them again as long as ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... subsequent events confirmed me—that birdlings were out. Like other bird mammas, she sat on those infants as steadily as she had sat on the eggs, and it was a day or two later before I saw her feed. This was the murderous-looking fashion in which that dainty sprite administered nourishment to her babies: she clung to the edge of the nest, and appeared to address herself to the task of charging an old-fashioned muzzle-loading gun, using her beak for a ramrod, and sending it well home, violently enough, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... that ugly sprite, Bold, wicked, 'I don't care,' In life's long run less harm has done Because he is so rare; And one can be so stern with him, Can make the monster shrink; But, lack a day, what can we say ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the Extravagance of her Passion was this: You must know, that during the Course of our mutual Love and Tenderness, some envious female Sprite whispered in her Ear, that I had at that very time a Bastard, and was obliged to maintain both Mother and Child. To this Charge I pleaded guilty, but told her, that it was a piece of Gallantry that was never imputed to a Soldier ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... inclinations he had achieved this disastrous result. If he had tried to do evil instead of good, he could hardly have wrought more irreparable mischief—and with the thought, pity, which had led him astray, winged off, like an ironic sprite, and left ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... a run-away match would never have taken place but for opposition or interference. Parents are mostly to be blamed for these elopements. Their children marry partly out of sprite and to be contrary. Their very natures tell them that this interference is unjust—as it really is—and this excites combativeness, firmness, and self-esteem, in combination with the social faculties, to powerful and even blind resistance—which turmoil of the faculties hastens ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... girls safe in bed, sufficiently showed his opinion that the young ladies and their lovers were the ghost. Mrs. Wesley then fell back on the theory of rats, and employed a man to blow a horn as a remedy against these vermin. But this measure only aroused the emulation of the sprite, whom Emily began ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... not. She is sorrowful and afraid. In vain she tries to pray that night. Strange prickings disturb her slumber. Fantastic forms appear before her. The small gentle sprite seems to have grown imperious. He waxes bold. She is uneasy, indignant, eager to rise. In her sleep she groans, and feels herself dependent, saying, "No more do I belong ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... summoned up his courage and addressed the wood-spirit as he thought. "Who are you? Where are you?" he said. "Be you wood-sprite or fairy, I fear you not. I am ready to do your bidding; for your sweet voice and your distress have touched my ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... fired up, as there ran to her brain some little sprite out of the House of Memory and told her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... so good an account of your activity and interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in the flesh. Please remember me to your wife and to the four-year-old sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher matters. Do you know where the road crosses the burn under Glencorse Church? Go there, and say a prayer for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her heart, and knit with tenderest ties To those she loves, and, elsewise, otherwise; For such a sprite, whose birthplace is the skies, Of manly beauty blent with woman's grace, No mortal pen, though fain, can ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... wonder why the child ever and always turned from her, why she never reposed confidence in her, why she left her to live apart. If by any chance Lady Jane made a noise while she was in Irene's room and awakened that small sprite, then the scene would change. Irene would spring up in bed, dare her mother to invade her slumbers, and frighten her with immediately vanishing into the night-air and spending the rest of her time ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... tooth-powder. This Hermia smirked at him like the lady in the fashion page, exuding an atmosphere of wealth and nothing else—a strange, unreal Hermia who floated vaguely between her gilt barriers, neither sprite nor flesh and blood. How could Marsac have known the real Hermia—the heart, the spirit of her ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... thing to do, Soa he lukt raand until he browt His choice daan between two. One wor a big, fine, strappin lass, Her name wor Sarah Ann, Her height an weight, few could surpass, Shoo'r fit for onny man. An t'other wor a little sprite, Wi' lots o' bonny ways, An little funny antics, like A kitten when it plays. An which to tak he could'nt tell, He rayther liked 'em booath; But if he could ha pleased hissen, To wed one he'd be looath. A wife he thowt an evil thing, An sewer to prove ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... had her innings; not only was she prettily dressed, presenting the most joyous of pictures, as with golden curls flying about her shoulders she flitted in and out of the rooms like a sprite, but she was withal so polite in her greetings, dropping to everyone a little French courtesy when she spoke, and all in her quaint, broken dialect, that everybody fell in love with her at sight. None of the other mothers had such a ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that on the cloud-edges beats his drums in crash, roll, or rattle; the earthquake-fish or subterranean bull-head or cat-fish that wriggles and writhes, causing the earth to shiver, shudder and open; the ja or dragon centipede; the tengu or long-nosed and winged mountain sprite, which acts as the messenger of the gods, pulling out the tongues of fibbing, lying children; besides the colossal spiders and mythical creatures of the old story-books; the foxes, badgers, cats and other creatures which transform themselves and "possess" ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... either hand From that well-ordered road we tread, And all the world is wild and strange; Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite Shall bear us company tonight, For we have reached the Oldest Land Wherein the Powers of Darkness range. —From the Dusk to ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... places, was generally desultory. One evening, the subject introduced was concerning ghosts and apparitions; and many were the dreadful stories then told. A young midshipman, having accidentally dropped in, sat a silent and an attentive hearer; and, among other tales, heard a dreadful one of a sprite or hobgoblin dressed in white, which every night was seen hovering over the graves, in a church-yard at no great distance from the inn, and through which was a foot-path to one of the principal streets in the town. ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... her, indeed, and sometimes paid her compliments,—the friars as well as the cavaliers, the prebendaries as well as the magistrate,—as a prodigy of beauty, an honor to her Creator, and as a coquettish and mischievous sprite, who innocently enlivened the most melancholy of spirits. "She is a handsome creature," the most virtuous prelate used to say. "She looks like an ancient Greek statue," remarked a learned advocate, who was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... fro she went, silent and diligent, giving the grace of willingness to every humble or distasteful task the day had brought her; but some malignant sprite seemed to have taken possession of her kingdom, for rebellion broke out everywhere. The kettles would boil over most obstreperously,—the mutton refused to cook with the meek alacrity to be expected from the nature of a sheep,—the stove, with unnecessary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... remonstrated Budge; "Joseph's coat was just as bloody as Goliath's head was." Then Budge turned to me and explained that "all Tod likes Goliath for is 'cause when his head was cut off it was all bloody." And then Toddie—the airy sprite whom his mother described as being irresistibly drawn to whatever was beautiful—Toddie glared upon me as a butcher's apprentice might stare at a doomed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... Styria; that Chaucer, when he called the Queen of the Fairies Proserpine, meant nothing more than an eighteenth century poet when he called Dolly or Betty Cynthia or Amaryllis; that the lady who damned poor Tannhaeuser was not Venus, but a mere little Suabian mountain sprite; in fact, that poetry is only the invention of poets, and that that rogue, Heinrich Heine, is entirely responsible for the existence of Dieux en Exil.... My poor manuscript can only tell you what St. Augustine, Tertullian, and ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... what charms presume To break the quiet of the tomb? Who thus afflicts my troubled sprite, And drags me from the realms of Night? 30 Long on these mouldering bones have beat The winter's snow, the summer's heat, The drenching dews and driving rain! Let me, let me sleep again. Who is he, with voice unblest, That calls me from the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... glory, and bounced into the barouche with a vigor that made it rock quite unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. It is Juno and Arachne. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... with an effort, and straightened up as the cheery voice hailed me. She was coming towards me like a woodland sprite, floating, it seemed to me, for her gliding step was so free from any pronounced undulation. Her dress of blue checked gingham just escaped the ground, and she wore a gingham sunbonnet with two long strings, which she held in either hand. The sunbonnet was tilted ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... with this? Nay, callous he whom this stirs not to rage, Punch pictures, with prophetic pen, a brighter cheerier page, Which must be turned, and speedily: Good Mr. PROSPERO BULL, Your Ariel is the Electric Sprite, DIBDIN, of pity full For tempest-tost Poor JACK, descried a Cherub up aloft Watch-keeping o'er his venturous life. That symbol, quoted oft, Must find new form to fit the time. The Ariel of the Spark Must watch around our storm-lashed coast in tempest and in dark, Guardian of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... boy—the pride and joy Of the man who had broken her heart. Past swooning women and shouting men She fled like a flash of light; With her slender arm she gathered from harm The form of the laughing sprite. ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... imagined. In truth, they were like the work of dreams: they were Kubla Khan, only more so. Here and there was radiance like the flash of a diamond, but each poem, almost each verse and line, was marred by some fault or lack which seemed wilful perversity, like the work of an evil sprite. It was like a case of jeweller's wares set before you, with each ring unfinished, each bracelet too large or too small for its purpose, each breastpin without its fastening, each necklace purposely broken. I turned the pages, marvelling. When about half an hour had passed, and I was ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... tenderly boyish was he in effect that his confreres among the book clerks accepted with difficulty the story that he was married. When it was told that he had a son they gasped their incredulity. And when one day this extraordinary elfin sprite remarked that at the time of his honeymoon he had had a beard they felt (I remember) that the world was without power to astonish ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... infinite in awe, Heaven to great souls is given— And yet the sprite of littleness can draw ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... "Little dictionary sprite, sunshine vender, and girl to be loved, if I were a free man I would say to you—Come, little one, and let us learn of love. Let us learn of it, not as one learns from dictionaries, but let us learn ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
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