"Rapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand upon its tiny head, and, turning her eyes upwards with the rapt expression of one ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... subtle emphasis. Later he read a long letter from the C.-in-C. of the Irish Republican Army to his Chief of Staff discussing the possibility of enlisting the germs of typhoid and glanders in their noble fight for freedom. The House listened with rapt attention until Sir HAMAR came to the pious conclusion, "God bless you all." Amid the laughter that followed this anti-climax Mr. DEVLIN was heard to ask, "Was not the whole thing concocted in Dublin Castle?" Well, if so, Dublin Castle must have developed a sense of humour quite foreign to its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... or worn with oppressive labor. He sat on his bed doing nothing; no book, no pipe, no pen or paper anywhere appeared, yet anything less indolent or listless than his attitude and expression I never saw. Erect he sat, with a hand on either knee, and eyes fixed on the bare wall opposite, so rapt in some absorbing thought as to be unconscious of my presence, though the door stood wide open and my movements were by no means noiseless. His face was half averted, but I instantly approved the Doctor's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... rapt attention. Suddenly he spoke up, forgetting his resolve not to say anything more after Ferguson had called him "innocent." "I think you're wrong, Mel," he said positively. "I was reading a book the other day called 'Lavengro.' It's all about Gipsies. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... brazen sky, The yellowed tepes stand. Not far away a singing river Sets through the sand. Within the shadow of a lonely elm tree The tired ponies keep. The wild land, throbbing with the sun's hot magic, Is rapt ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... workmanship, these windows seemed to us most beautiful, especially those on the right-hand side through which the light streamed red, yellow and blue from the jewelled panes. The window representing the crowning of Charles VII at Rheims is especially rich in color. Joan, with a rapt ecstatic expression on her face, is here to see her King crowned and with her is the banner that she loved even more than her mystic sword. Below are inscribed her own simple words, "It has been with him in the suffering, it is right that it should be with him in the glory." Ever self-effacing, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... platform, took off his top-coat and drew a manuscript from his pocket. He had a narrow, sloping forehead, a prominent nose, gray eyes and a skin of singular transparency. His voice was rich and mellow but not strong. Lincoln listened with rapt attention to his talk about Democracy. It was a memorable night. He spoke of it often. Such contact with the great spirits of that time, of which he studiously availed himself in Washington, was of great value to the statesman from Illinois. His experiences on the floor were in no ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... blossoms in the trees, Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... neither the rapt, reflective calm of Wordsworth's solemn tones, nor the ethereal intoxication of Shelley's spirit-music; but there is in them the same consciousness of the infinite meaning of natural facts. And beyond this, there is also, in the closing lines, a hint of a new region for art. Shelley and Wordsworth ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... in guilt, Splendid in scorn, rapt in a cloudy dream, He paused at last upon the Stygian silt, And raised calm eyes above the angry stream.... Hand in his breast, he stood till Charon came, While Hades hummed with gossip ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... flowers spread on either hand, and at last, just where the path dipped down to the water-side at Hernersfiord, the traveller stopped. For a while he remained there in the morning sunshine, watching the scene below, and now and then speaking out his thoughts absently in the rapt manner of ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... her horse's swift feet consumed the way. She reached the river—a silver billow between emerald banks, to-day! Almost unheedingly she crossed the ford, just smiling, rapt in her vision, as memory brought back the darkness of her former crossing! Then she swept on, through the dark, over-arching pines, their odor mingling with the incense of love which filled her heart. She had forgotten Red Wing and all that pertained to it. The new song her lips had been ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... hour, perhaps, she practiced. The little Bulgarian paused outside her door and listened, rapt, his eyes closed. Peter Byrne, listening while he sorted lecture memoranda at his little table in bathrobe and slippers, absently filed the little note with the others—where he came across it months later—next to a lecture ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the silver suggestiveness such as Barrymore gives us when Peter gets his first glimpse of Mary, Duchess of Towers. Who else could convey his realization of her beauty, and the quality of reminiscence that lingers about her, of the rapt amaze as he stands by the mantel-piece looking through the door into the space where he sees her in the midst of dancers under a crystal chandelier somewhere not very distant? Or the moment when he finds her bouquet ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... for the hurrying throng of passers-by Will crush her with their onward-rolling stream. Much must be done before the brief light die; She may not loiter, rapt in the vain dream. With unused trembling hands, and faltering feet, She staggers forth, her ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... how many loving rivers can I reckon up, whom beauty hath enthralled! I say nothing all this while of idols themselves that have committed idolatry in this kind, of looking-glasses, that have been rapt in love (if you will believe [4855]poets), when their ladies and mistresses ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... neither spoke. His rapt gaze hung upon the glossy crown that pressed against him so gently. He could not see her eyes, but somehow he felt they were tightly shut, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... strange old native woman crawled into the house almost on her belly. She was swathed in black stuff to her heels; her hair was grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which was not the practice in that island; her eyes big and bright and crazy. These she fixed upon me with a rapt expression that I saw to be part acting. She said no plain words, but smacked and mumbled with her lips, and hummed aloud, like a child over its Christmas pudding. She came straight across the house, heading for me, and, as soon as she was alongside, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the fact that they have multiplied. The telescope has been supplemented by the spectroscope and the photographic camera. Now, this really involves a whole world of change. It means that astronomy has left the place where she dwelt apart in rapt union with mathematics, indifferent to all things on earth save only to those mechanical improvements which should aid her to penetrate further into the heavens, and has descended into the forum of human knowledge, at once a suppliant ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... battle of Ossawatermy takes place. Old Brown kills Mister Blane, the sinister individooal aforesed. Mister Blane makes a able & elerquent speech, sez he don't see his mother MUCH, and dies like the son of a gentleman, rapt up in the Star Spangled banner. Moosic by the Band. Four or five other Border ruffins air killed, but thay don't say nothin abowt seein their mothers. From Kansis to Harper's Ferry. Picter of a Arsenal is ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Madge as soon as her household duties were done in the morning. Mrs. Broderick, who had had a sleepless night of pain, looked more worn and languid than usual, but she brightened up at the sight of the flowers, and poked her long nose into the heart of a rose with an air of rapt enjoyment, but the ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... she has raised the man of her choice! And already she is making plans for removing her own establishment to St. Petersburg, to a mansion not too far from the Embassy; while the Prince, with his pale sunk cheeks and rapt look—the look whose penetration Bismarck could never sustain—checks upon his contemptuous lips the smile at once mysterious and dogmatic, compounded of diplomacy and learning, and thinks to himself: 'Now Colette must make ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... assembly. But, having perceived that the masses were very perceptibly learning to sway themselves, I have retired to Te-a-Iti. You have read "Epipsychidion," my dear Dean? And, in your time, no doubt you have loved? {15} Well, this is the Isle of Love, described, as in a dream, by the rapt fancy of Shelley. Urged, perhaps, by a reminiscence of the Great Aryan wave of migration, I have moved westward to this Paradise. Like Obermann, I hide my head "from the wild tempest of the age," but in a much dearer ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... strictures we will refer to a single novel, "The Last of the Mohicans," which everybody will admit to be one of the most interesting of his works,—full of rapid movement, brilliant descriptions, hair-breadth escapes, thrilling adventures,—which young persons probably read with more rapt attention than any other of his narratives. In the opening chapter we find at Fort Edward, on the head-waters of the Hudson, the two daughters of Colonel Munro, the commander of Fort William Henry, on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears; We speak his praise who wears to-day The glory of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Rapt in the fond forgetfulness of life, Neuha, the South Sea girl, was all a wife, With no distracting world to call her off From Love; with no Society to scoff At the new transient flame; no babbling crowd Of coxcombry in admiration loud, Or with adulterous whisper to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... thought. 'It's British. Come, I am going to sleep, I must wake up, I must aim higher—aim higher,' cried the little artist to himself. All through his tea and afterward, as he was giving his eldest boy a lesson on the fiddle, his mind dwelt no longer on his troubles, but he was rapt into the better land; and no sooner was he at liberty than he hastened with positive exhilaration ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... pensive nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypres lawn Over thy decent shoulders drawn: Come, but keep thy wonted state, With even step, and musing gait, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: There, held in holy passion still, Forget thyself to marble, till With a sad leaden downward cast Thou fix them on the earth as fast: And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Pennsylvania Dutch preacher said, 'I'm glad that I can say that I'm glad that I'm here.' "He rattled off the words in rapid Pennsylvania Dutch, at which the children laughed and some whispered, "Why, he can talk the Dutch, too!" Then they listened in rapt attention as ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... quiet epilogue: "This, if it be true, would explain much as to that lovely land of eternal spring and daffodils and friendly girls, of which his verses make us free. It would even explain Corinna and Herrick's rapt living without any human ties. For all poets since the time of AEschylus, who could not write until he was too drunken to walk, have been most readily seduced by whatever stimulus most tended to heighten their imaginings; so that for the sake of a song's ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... till earth's confusion fadeth Like to a dream, and leaves behind A heaven of sweetness which pervadeth My whole rapt being—heart ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with a chagrined smile. Surely this was the oddest of wedding days, he thought. A shabby little bride, who had no eyes for her groom, but who sat and stared with rapt attention at such things as ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... dare not call thee aloud, nor cry, Thou art so solemn, so rapt in rest, But I will whisper: Dolores, 'tis I: My heart is breaking within ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... continued, evidently approving of the rapt attention of his audience, "many wells now owned by Indians and leased to white-men companies. The Osage have big holdings. They are reservation Indians, mostly—perhaps they can not help that. I ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... waste, and lighting it, presented it to her admiring customer, for it was evident, from the rapt manner in which he scanned her, that he was deeply smitten by her ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... is quite ignorant of their admiration, and therefore quite innocent. I am the only woman he loves, and he never even remembers me when he is in the sacred office. If you could see him come out of the vestry in his white surplice, with his rapt face and prophetic eyes. So mystical! So beautiful! You would not wonder that ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... swiftly and without comparison, especially when it is supervising the suggestions of a vivid fancy, and still be judgment, or taste, if we choose to call it by that name. We know by the result whether it was present. The poet rapt into unconsciousness would soon betray himself. Under the power of the imagination, all his faculties waken to a higher life; his fancies are more vivid and clear; all the suggestions that come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... breath and said, in a rapt tone, as though the words came to her one by one: "Yes, it makes you feel sometimes as if your soul would get away ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... while Vermont sat a little apart, listening, and occasionally glancing thoughtfully at the beautiful profile of the singer. Then his cold, malignant eyes would wander with an almost sinister expression over the rapt face of his friend and benefactor, as he leaned over the piano. But at any movement of the other guests his countenance would assume its usual amiability of expression, as though a mask were re-adjusted, while his fat, white hand softly beat time ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... Mrs. Windsor stood near the window, idly following with her eyes the perambulations of Bung, who was flitting about the garden like a ghost with a curled tail and a turned-up nose. Mr. Amarinth leaned largely upon the piano, in an attitude of rapt attention. His clever, clean-shaved face wore an ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... cunning a hand, yet with so careless an air, and, master of our feelings, submits himself so little to our judgment, that every thing seems superior. We discern not his course, we see no connection of cause and effect, we are rapt in ignorant admiration, and claim no kindred with his abilities. All the incidents, all the parts, look like chance, whilst we feel and are sensible that the whole is design. His Characters not only act and ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... days which the April of the other year meanly grudged us, a poet, flown with the acceptance of a quarter-page lyric by the real editor in the Study next door, came into the place where the Easy Chair sat rapt in the music of the elevated trains and the vision of the Brooklyn Bridge towers. "Era la stagione nella quale la rivestita terra, piu che tutto l' altro anno, si mostra bella," he said, without other salutation, throwing his soft gray hat on a heap of magazines and newspapers ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... others rapt in pleasure seem, And taste of all that I forsake; Oh! may they still of transport dream, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... putting the question to him, who, with his imagination rapt on the thoughts of other days, hastens to the classic shore:—"What is the use of running out in the sun; cannot you see those piles of stones from the deck?"—Senseless, unfeeling, sordid, and degraded! what can have induced you to ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... Lemnian festering in his flesh; [Footnote: Vulcan; the Olympian artist, who, when hurled from heaven, fell upon the Island of Lemnos, in the AEgean. He forged the chain with which Prometheus was bound.] And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim, Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth With its far-reaching fancy, and with form And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye Flashed with a passionate fire; and the quick curl Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip, Were like the wing'd god's, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the rapt prophetic Gaze Bright as what glories of the jasper throne Stream from the gorgeous and face-veiling plumes Of Spirits adoring! Ye ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... rapt in pious exultation. Exonerated from such a load of paternal guilt, he seemed to pray with more assured confidence of Divine protection. His gratitude to the worthy physician exceeded the powers of language. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... exclaimed Mrs. Donovan, admiringly, taking the picture and gazing at it with rapt admiration. "Who showed you how to ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... not answer. She stared ahead over the horse's head with a strange, rapt look in the wonderful eyes. An artist would have loved to paint her at that moment, but it would not have been as a type of happiness. The expression spoke rather of struggle, of restlessness, and want—a spiritual want which lay ever at the back of the excitement ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... whether, if he had the traditions of a society man, he would have done that; but somehow, when she looked at his dreamy face, rapt in remote thought that beautified it from afar, she did not care for his neglect of small attentions. She said to herself that if a woman could be the companion of his thoughts that would be enough; she did not go into the details of arranging association with thoughts so far off as Maxwell's; she ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... was watching Pollyanna's rapt face a little curiously. Suddenly a new thought came to him. He touched the bell ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... I gazed in rapt admiration. Across the river a shower had fallen, and the clouds, clearing away abruptly, had left there a twin rainbow of matchless perfection. Its double arch was poised as accurately over the town as if it had been painted there. Each hoop was flawless in form, lovely in hue, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... no;—though your behest I always heed with rapt attention, Most fervently I must protest Against this horrible invention; Your word has hitherto been law, But this appears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... a tremendous encounter; but at the end of five or six minutes the surgeon interfered once more: another man so severely hurt as to render it unsafe to add to his harms. I watched this engagement as I watched the others—with rapt interest and strong excitement, and with a shrink and a shudder for every blow that laid open a cheek or a forehead; and a conscious paling of my face when I occasionally saw a wound of a yet more shocking nature inflicted. My eyes were upon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... be it said, violated the same rules in much the same way, for he continued to gaze at Flora in rapt admiration until Mr Westwood turned to introduce her ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... opportunity of employing the best of our hours, those of the silence and peace of the bewitching nights, in contemplating, admiring, spelling out the words of the Great Book of the Heavens. Let our freed souls fly swift and rapt toward those marvelous countries where indescribable joys are prepared for us, and let us do homage to the first and most splendid of the sciences, to Astronomy, which diffuses the light ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... him to announce that supper was ready, found John, seated in his chamber of dead ladies, his arms folded, his legs crossed, his eyes fixed, a frown upon his prone brow; his spirit apparently rapt in a ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... company, and the gifted being whose powers I had envied was there, the centre of attraction and the observed of all observers. He read to those assembled from a book; and what he read flashed with a brightness that was dazzling. All listened in the most rapt attention, and, by the power of what the gifted one read, soared now, in thought, among the stars, spread their wings among the swift-moving tempest, or descended into the unknown depths of the earth. As for myself, my mind seemed endowed with new faculties, and to rise almost into ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... whose cornemuse, sounds with such plaintive sweetness from Arthur's Seat, while Edinburgh and Musselburgh lie rapt in delight, and the mermaids come flapping up to Leith shore to hear the exquisite music? Sweeter piper Edina knows not than Aytoun, the Bard of the Cavaliers, who has given in his frank adhesion to the reigning dynasty. When a most beautiful, celebrated and unfortunate princess whose memory ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... can digest. But how unseemly is it for my sex, My discipline of arms and chivalry, My nature, and the terror of my name, To harbour thoughts effeminate and faint! Save only that in beauty's just applause, With whose instinct the soul of man is touch'd; And every warrior that is rapt with love Of fame, of valour, and of victory, Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits: I thus conceiving, [268] and subduing both, That which hath stoop'd the chiefest of the gods, Even from the fiery-spangled veil of heaven, To feel the lovely warmth of shepherds' flames, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... to tick, undisturbed in this instance by the pole of the sergeant-at-arms, time became a lost dimension for Austen Vane. He made a few unimportant discoveries such as the fact that Mrs. Pomfret and her daughter were seated beside Victoria, listening with a rapt attention; and that Mr. Crewe had begun to read statistics; and that some people were gaping and others leaving. He could look up at the gallery without turning his head, and sometimes he caught her momentary glance, and again, with her chin in her hand, she was watching Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... poetry that Edgar Poe lived in the new Allan home and from the balcony of the second story looked out upon the varied scenes of the river studded with green islets, the village beyond the water, and far away the verdant slopes and forested hills into the depths of which he looked with rapt eyes, seeing visions which that forest never held for any other gaze. Mayhap, adown those dim green aisles he previsioned the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir" with the tomb of Ulalume at the end of the ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... in rapt attention until Anne had finished. "God is good," she murmured. "A higher power surely willed that Mabel should ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... Grantly would have him avoided as the plague; but the old Doctor and Mr Harding were fast friends. Young Johnny Bold used to play as a boy on Mr Harding's lawn; he has many a time won the precentor's heart by listening with rapt attention to his sacred strains; and since those days, to tell the truth at once, he has nearly won another heart within ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... minutes after she had passed the statue of Achilles she had the rapt look of one brushing through crowds on a summer's afternoon, when the trees are rustling, the wheels churning yellow, and the tumult of the present seems like an elegy for past youth and past summers, and there rose in her mind ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... delicate white cloth. In its depths, framed in a mat of odorous double violets, stood the photograph of the face of a handsome man of forty—a face crowned with clustering black locks, from beneath which a pair of large, mournful eyes looked out with something like religious fervor in their rapt gaze. It was ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... songs by happier minstrels sung;— In Shakespeare's shadow thou shalt find a home, Shalt house with melodists of Greece and Rome, Or awed by Dante's wintry presence be, Or won by Goethe's regal suavity, Or with those masters hardly less adored Repose, of Rydal and of Farringford; And—like a mortal rapt from men's abodes Into some skyey fastness of the gods— Divinely neighboured, thou in such a shrine Mayst for a moment ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... his theme; and it would have to be a play. Its hero would be a young musician, a mere boy, a master of the demon-voices of the violin; he would be rapt in his vision, and around him a group of people who would be embodiments of the world and all its forces of evil. One by one they came trooping before Thyrsis' fancy, with all their trappings of pomp and power, their greatness and their greed—sinister and cruel figures, but ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... he sat with a dark-bright face beside her, not aware of her, and somehow, she felt he was conveying to strange, secret places the love that sprang in him for her. He sat with a dark-rapt, half-delighted face, looking at a little stained window. She saw the ruby-coloured glass, with the shadow heaped along the bottom from the snow outside, and the familiar yellow figure of the lamb holding the banner, a little darkened now, but in the murky ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... crown of Lucca, must always have special associations for lovers of poetry. Here Shelley lived, rapt in his beautiful dreams, and translated the Symposium so that his wife might share something of his delight in Plato. Here, ten years later, Heine sneered, and laughed and wept, and sneered again—drank tea with "la belle Irlandaise," flirted with Francesca "la ballerina," and wrote ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... complacency with which he feasted on the emotions of those who lost; always serene, and, except in debauch, always passionless,—Majendie, tracing the experiments of science in the agonies of some tortured dog, could not be more rapt in the science, and more indifferent to the dog, than Lord Lilburne, ruining a victim, in the analysis of human passions,—stoical in the writhings of the wretch whom he tranquilly dissected. He wished to win money of Vaudemont—to ruin this man, who presumed to be more generous ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... with rapt attention, leaning more and more toward me as my story progressed. She put out her hand to take mine. I could not tell whether it was the hand of pity or admiration. Her eyes were kindly, but they searched me. She seemed to say: "What difficulty in this boy's ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... lay. Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus— The vulture at his vitals, and the links Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh; And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth With its far-reaching fancy, and with form And color clad them, hiss fine earnest eye Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl Of His thin nostril, and his quivering lip Were like the wingd ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... hand in hand. A saintly youth, with worldly thought untainted, None better-loved than I in all the land! Time was, when maidens of the noblest station, Forsaking even military men, Would gaze upon me, rapt in adoration— Ah me, I was a fair ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... passing shadow, and on unseemly canvas limned it for all time in forms of unuttered and unutterable loveliness. They shaped into glowing life the phantoms of grace that were always flitting before their enchanted eyes, and poured into inanimate marble their rapt and passionate souls. They struck the lyre to wild and stirring songs whose tremulous echoes still linger along the corridors of Time. Some sought the icebound North, and grappled with dangers by field and flood. They hunted the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Indians that it was quite impossible for them to avoid its flames, unless, taught by a priest, they came to know God's law. He then briefly (as he says) explained the mysteries of our faith. They listened rapt, except that 'the boys laughed a little' when he spoke of hell.* Nothing more painful than to see a child laughing unconscious of its peril in the traffic of a crowded street, and we may well believe that the kind-hearted ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Salve sat rapt in thought, and more absent than was polite to his friend for the rest of the evening. An idea that it might be Elizabeth had shot through him, and he could not divest himself of it, although the more he reflected the more certain he knew he ought to be that she had been married long ago to young ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... been hitherto of rather a substantial order; I had few accomplishments. To these I turned my care. "What has a woman," I thought, "to do with solid learning? It never tells in society." I had observed the rapt attention with which William listened to music. Hitherto I had been only a passable performer, such as any girl of sixteen might be. But under the influence of this new motive I studied diligently; the best masters were supplied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the five-inch stream, sluiced out of the earth and back to the earth by the droning motor, he forgot his discourse and stood and gazed, rapt and unheeding, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... he remembered that day. The light that never was on sea or land fell upon the brickfield. He had read the story at one stretch. He had sat there for hours reading, for hours rapt in his Vision. At last material darkness began to gather round him, and he awoke with a start to realization that he had been sitting there most of the day. With a sigh he replaced his book in the hole, which he cunningly masked with a lump of hard clay, and, feeling stiff and cold, ran, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... if out of the perplexing, weary world into the sphere of the soul. She smiled deeply at one of her girls while she fell into the listening harmony of attitude, and her delicate face took on a look of rapt exaltation. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... wilderness leaning on the arm of their Beloved, and go up - up - up!' - raising his hand higher, and higher, at every repetition of the word, so that he stood with it at last stretched above his head, regarding them in a strange, rapt manner, and pressing the book triumphantly to his breast, until he gradually subsided into some other portion ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... old bedroom at home; the picture was a shifting one, my mind wandering uncertainly in search of more vivid images; I could see no accident of form or shadow without conscious labour after the necessary conditions. It was all prosaic effort, not rapt passivity, such as I had experienced half an hour before. I was discouraged; but I ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in Libby Prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the friendly, ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... beautiful eyes sparkling, her thin pink nostrils dilated, her red lips parted, her round throat lifted in the air, and one small foot advanced before her. The men glanced hurriedly at each other, and then fixed their eyes upon her with a rapt yet frightened admiration. To their simple minds it was Anarchy and ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... Massachusetts, Roger Griswold and Uriah Tracy of Connecticut, who led the front and held the wings of debate; while in reserve, broken in health but still in the prime of life, the pride of his party and of the House, was Fisher Ames, the orator of his day, whose magic tones held friend and foe in rapt attention, while he mastered the reason or touched the heart. Upon these men the Federal party relied for the vindication of their principles and the maintenance of their power. Supporting them were William Vans Murray ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... with rapt delight, Upon those eyes that sparkled bright, Emitting beams of joy and light! ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... mathematician; yet he shrank from a consideration of the theory of Copernicus: it was more important, he declared, to think of the immortal soul. In the last years of his short life he sank into a torpor of superstition—ascetic, self-mortified, and rapt in a strange exaltation, like a medieval monk. Thus there is a tragic antithesis in his character—an unresolved discord which shows itself again and again in his Pensees. 'Condition de l'homme,' he notes, 'inconstance, ennui, inquietude.' It is the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... knees by her, dumb from excess of sympathy, kissing her dress, all unfelt by her; he murmured half-words, he began passionate sentences that died away upon his lips; and she—she thought of nothing but her father, and was possessed and rapt out of herself by the dread of losing him to that fearful country which was almost like the grave to her, so all but impassable was the gulf. But Philip knew that it was possible that the separation impending might be that of the dark, mysterious grave—that the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... mother and daughter sat at the open parlor window. While I was reclining in an easy-chair at the other end of the room Lucy was narrating something and Dora was listening, apparently with rapt attention. I watched their profiles. Finally I said: "She must be telling you something important, considering the interest you are ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Health-giving waters? Can the slave, who lures His wretched followers with the hope of gain, Feel in his bosom the immortal fire That bound a Wallace to his country's cause, And bade the Thracian shepherd cast away Rome's galling yoke; while the astonish'd world— Rapt into admiration at the deed— Paus'd, ere she crush'd, with overwhelming force, The man who fought to win ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... shining azure of her eyes, the ever-changing expression of her mobile mouth, and now and then the rapt look bestowed upon her companion were indications, she certainly was a happy young woman. Her right hand rested upon his arm, her left shielded her face from the too fierce onslaughts of confetti. Neither of them took an active part in the fun. That, however, ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... himself holding the salon rapt with his wonderful conversation. A silvery voice says suddenly, "No, I don't agree with you." He turns his head in astonishment. O the piquante, golden-haired beauty, adorably white and subtle, the dazzling shoulders, the coquettish play of the lorgnette, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... rapt admiration, Chico Miguel wondering if the kick of the horse had not unsettled the strange caballero's reason, and the Senora blandly aware that her daughter and the tall one had become adepts in interpreting the language of the eyes, Sundown rode away in a cloud of dust, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... throng. It was a very different Freddie from the moody youth who had returned to the box after his conversation with Uncle Chris. He was leaning against a piece of scenery with his head tilted back and a beam of startled happiness on his face. So rapt was he in his reflections that he did not become aware of Derek's approach ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... inmates. Here was a poor half-naked creature, with a straw crown on his head, and a wooden sceptre in his hand, seated on the ground with all the dignity of a monarch on his throne. There was a mad musician, seemingly rapt in admiration of the notes he was extracting from a child's violin. Here was a terrific figure gnashing his teeth, and howling like a wild beast;—there a lover, with hands clasped together and eyes turned passionately ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... slight crash was heard; the organ ceased abruptly, the singers broke off. The musician was dead. He had fallen forward on the keys of the instrument, and when they raised him, his face was fairer than the face of any sculptured angel, so serene was its expression, so rapt was its smile. No one could tell exactly the cause of his death—he had always been remarkably strong and healthy. Everyone said it was heart-disease—it is the usual reason assigned by medical savants for these sudden departures out of the world. His loss was regretted by all, save myself ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead—she holds an organ in her hands—her countenance, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Nello was kneeling, rapt as in an ecstasy, before the altar-picture of the Assumption, and when he noticed Patrasche, and rose and drew the dog gently out into the air, his face was wet with tears, and he looked up at the veiled places as he passed them, and murmured to his ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... on the front seat were sitting side by side gazing over the blue-grey landscape with faces of rapt innocence. They did not appear to be interested in the conversation in the back seat, but his aunt gave Trooper a sharp poke with ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... objects of this comment, at least ONE of them, were quite oblivious. "I trust," said Carmen, timidly, when they had for the fourth time regarded in rapt admiration an abominable something by some Dutch wood-chopper, "I trust I am not keeping you from your great friends:"—her pretty eyelids were cast down in tremulous distress:—"I should never forgive myself. Perhaps it is important ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... low-couched along the sea, Old chemist, rapt in alchemy, Distilling silence, — lo, That which our father-age had died to know — The menstruum that dissolves all matter — thou Hast found it: for this silence, filling now The globed clarity of receiving space, This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... train had come to Budapest all the young women, urged on to insubordination, had removed their veils, and Kalora had boldly invaded another compartment to engage in rapt and feverish dialogue with a ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... Harper delivered a poem upon 'Moses' in Wilbraham to a large and delighted audience. She is a woman of high moral tone, with superior native powers highly cultivated, and a captivating eloquence that hold her audience in rapt attention from the beginning to the close. She will delight any intelligent audience, and those who wish first-class lecturers cannot do better than to secure her services."—Zion's ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Irishmen, or any of the stock characters of the American repertory. On another occasion I dined with a bishop of the Church. I expected that when the soup came he would say, "There was an old darky—" After which I should have had to listen with rapt attention, and, when he had finished, without any pause, rejoin, "There were a couple of Irishmen once—" and so on. But the bishop never said ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... A rapt look spread over Priscilla's face; the look of the worshipper who could lose self in a passion. But this was no dread god that demanded unlovely sacrifice. It was a glad creature that desired laughter, song, and dance. Priscilla had seen to that. A repetition of her ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... stir the heart with high and noble emotion, and an especial fitness to raise it above sense to the love of heavenly things."[1] In like manner the Saint's illustrious son, Cardinal Newman, has spoken of "the emotion which some gentle, peaceful strain excites in us," and "how soul and body are rapt and carried away captive by the concord of musical sounds where the ear is open to their power;"[2] how, too, "music is the expression of ideas greater and more profound than any in the visible world, ideas which centre, ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... turned to unrighteousness through some corrupting influence, they may have lost the memory of the holy things which once they saw. Few only retain an adequate remembrance of them; and they, when they behold here any image of that other world, are rapt in amazement; but they are ignorant of what that rapture means, because they do not clearly perceive. For there is no clear light of justice or temperance, or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls, in the earthly copies of them: they ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... morning toiling up a long ascent, and from its summit a prospect of majestic beauty burst upon them. The great peaks had grown nearer, the air was clear, and the girl sat, rapt, in the saddle, gazing at the vast snow-fields that glittered with ethereal brilliance, very high up against a cloudless sky. Then the wonderful blue coloring of the shadows streaking the white slopes caught her glance, and she found ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... so rapt with pleasure and delighte I scarce thynke I am mortall; all the Joys, Wherewith heavens goodnes can inryche a man, Not onlye greete but dwell upon my sence, And whyles I see thee cannot stray from thence, Most ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... first time, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, "the young frank personable priest"[131:3]—and seeing him as rapt he gazed at ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... with Jennie and her husband, for Morrison's constitution was shattered, and he could not work as hard as he wished. They had one son, Alec, who grew up a fine manly boy. The sailor was fond of spinning yarns, to which his son listened with rapt attention, and longed to meet with the ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... of my Sword, and do contest As hotly, and as Nobly with thy Loue, As euer in Ambitious strength, I did Contend against thy Valour. Know thou first, I lou'd the Maid I married: neuer man Sigh'd truer breath. But that I see thee heere Thou Noble thing, more dances my rapt heart, Then when I first my wedded Mistris saw Bestride my Threshold. Why, thou Mars I tell thee, We haue a Power on foote: and I had purpose Once more to hew thy Target from thy Brawne, Or loose mine Arme for't: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... fantasies he imagines. There is no trace of make-believe in his designs. On the contrary, he makes the old legends become vital, not because of the personalities he bestows on his heroes and fairy princesses—his people move often in a rapt ecstasy—but because the adjuncts of his mise-en-scenes are realised intimately. His prince is much more the typical hero than any particular person; his fair ladies might exchange places, and few would notice the difference; but when it comes to the environment, the real ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... Heavens, the Angler oft doth see, Taking therein no little delectation, To think how strange, how wonderful they be; Framing thereof an inward contemplation, To set his heart from other fancies free; And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye, His mind is rapt above the ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... and would not obey God. Molly listened, and Daisy talked; how, she did not know, nor Molly neither; but the good news was told in that poor little house; the unspeakable gift was made known. Seeing Molly's fixed eyes and rapt attention, Daisy went on at length and told all. The cripple's gaze never stirred all the while, nor stirred when the story came to an end. She still stared at ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... many times and endlessly I have heard praised.' I know not whether while I was thus engrossed in prayer I fell on sleep, and sleeping saw those things whereof I am about to tell, or whether, indeed, I was rapt thence in bodily form to see them; all I can tell is that suddenly I found myself borne through the heavens in a gleaming chariot drawn by white doves, and that inclining my eyes to things below I beheld the fruitful earth shrunk to a narrow ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... rotting thatch kept down by stones and straw-banks; and at the back a rambling court-ledge of barns and walls, around which pigs and barefoot children grunted in loving communion of dirt. At the door, rapt apparently in the contemplation of the mountain peaks which glowed rich orange in the last lingering sun-rays, but really watching which way the sheep on the moor were taking, stood the innkeeper, a brawny, sodden-visaged, blear-eyed six feet of brutishness, holding up his ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... seated on a wood-pile, quietly smoking a pipe; while near him, Washington, divested of regimentals, and clad in a modest suit of reddish-gray, his thin locks frosted by time, and his fleshless visage showing great age, was gazing, in rapt admiration, at a group of dancers in front ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Not the rapt poet's frenzied lay When the soul's wildest feelings stray Can speak so well as they. How eloquent are eyes! 5 Not music's most impassioned note On which Love's warmest fervours float Like them bids ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... light And alternations of all hues, he stood. 'O child of man, why muse you here alone Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old Which fill'd the Earth with passing loveliness, Which flung strange music on the howling winds, And odours rapt from remote Paradise? Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality, Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay: Open ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... housekeeper, and soon begin their usual spinning chorus. Their hands and feet work busily while two verses of the song are sung, and all are remarkably diligent except Senta, who sits with her hands in her lap, gazing in rapt attention at the portrait of the Flying Dutchman, whose mournful fate has touched her tender heart, and whose haunting eyes have made her indulge in many a long day-dream. Roused from her abstraction by the chiding voice of Mary, and by her companions, who twit her with having fallen ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... when he was dead she would read of this in his will, and go and dig up the ring, and remember and forgive him. He struck off from the walk across the turf straight toward this dell, taking the ring from his waistcoat pocket and clinching it in his hand. He was walking quickly with rapt interest in this idea of abnegation when he noticed, unconsciously at first and then with a start, the familiar outlines and colors of her brougham drawn up in the drive not twenty yards from their old meeting-place. He could not be mistaken; he knew the horses well enough, and there was old Wallis ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... his chair, and going to Mount Dunstan put his hand on his shoulder, his fine old face singularly rapt ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... surpassing beauty of the scene: I turned impatiently from it to gaze again on her graceful figure, girlish still in its slim proportions; but her face, flushed with sunlight, and crowned with its dark, shining hair, seemed to me like the face of one of the immortals. The expression of rapt devotion on it made me silent, for it seemed as if she too had been touched by nature's magic, like earth and sky, and been transfigured; and waiting for the mood to pass, I stood by her side, resting my hand on her knee. By-and-by she ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... was Sir George's forester. Lady Crawford repeated her question, but Dorothy was too intently watching the scene in the courtyard to hear. I went over to her, and looking out at the window discovered the object of Dorothy's rapt attention. There is no need for me to tell you who it was. Irony, as you know, and as I had learned, was harmless against this thick-skinned nymph. Of course I had no authority to scold her, so I laughed. The object of Dorothy's attention was about to mount ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... and let one be A friendly patron unto thee: Lest, rapt from hence, I see thee lie Torn for the use of pastery: Or see thy injur'd leaves serve well, To make loose gowns for mackerel: Or see the grocers in a trice, Make hoods of thee to serve ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... table slanted like a desk. A fire burned on the hearth, in front of which revolved the skinned carcass of a rabbit, suspended by a string from a nail. Leaning with one arm on the mantle-shelf stood Winterborne, his eyes on the roasting animal, his face so rapt that speculation could build nothing on it concerning his thoughts, more than that they were not with the scene before him. She thought his features had changed a little since she saw them last. The fire-light ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... gone.... And after some moments, rapt as I was at her late presence, which still seemed to fill the room like the fragrance, like the fragrance of her hair which still lingered in my senses, I looked about, sighing for that she was gone. Then I noted that our friend Partial had gone with her. "Fie! Partial, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... no hand can reach them, and flourishing with the scant nourishment that the crevices in the rocks afford them, fill the air with their fragrance. Generations of men come and go, and the face of Nature remains as it was when the boy poet first gazed in a rapt vision at the grey bastions of St Vincent's Rocks, and down at the river at his feet rushing out to ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... her rapt face and raising her outstretched arms high above her head, with no sense of sin, no consciousness of cruelty, only with the feeling of having done that thing which had been laid on her to do—of having satisfied and avenged her mother—she cried aloud in a voice deepened by the pathos ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... easy in the old shipmaster's stiff fingers. The mental travail of this unwonted literary effort wrung his brain. An epic poet struggling with his masterpiece could not have been more rapt. And his nerves were correspondingly touchy. Constable Zeburee Nute, emerging at a brisk trot from the town office, had a warning word of counsel for all those intending to venture upon the first selectman's privacy. He ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the address. There was tense, rapt silence. The little voice went on, soft, low, sweet, pleading, very clear. There must be many men who had not yet found God. There were those, perhaps, in the Church tonight who had not even thought about God. There were ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... Sir, you seem rapt; And yet the time is not akin to thought. 450 These old walls will be noisy soon. The baron, Or count (or whatsoe'er this half drowned noble May be), for whom this desolate village and Its lone inhabitants show more respect Than did ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... "praying that it would show us the best ascent"; and that spirit answered not his demand but of our country and of our life did ask us. And the sweet Leader (Virgil) began "Mantua ..." And the shade all rapt in self leaped toward him saying, "O Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy city. And one embraced the other" (VI, 67). This episode gives to Dante the opportunity to contrast on the one hand the love of those two fellow citizens drawn together by no other bond than affection ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... the surroundings, which, indeed, was no more than the prelude of the promised fete, charmed all who were there; and they testified their admiration over and over again, not by voice or gesture, but by deep silence and rapt attention, those two languages of the courtier which acknowledge the hand of no master powerful enough to ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that bring to a brighter birth Dust and earth, Rapt to glory on your wings, All transfigured in the white Living light Shed from ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... rather. Come, come, Captain," added the sage, "sit down, we have a third person present, you see," pointing towards Israel, who sat rapt at the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... happiness are often dubbed incomprehensible, or worse. But there were moments at a period of Valentine's life when he felt discontented at his strange inability to long for sin; when he wondered, rather wearily, why he was rapt from the follies that other men enjoyed; why he could refuse, without effort, the things that they clamoured after year by year with an unceasing gluttony of appetite. The saint quarrelled mutely with his holiness of intellectuality, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... received out of sight.' It transfuses the roughest elements into immortal influences,—it colours the earth with fairer hues, and fills the days with beauty; every hour is a gem of sweet thought set in the dreaming soul, and the lover, at certain times of rapt ecstasy, would smile incredulously were he told that anyone living could be unhappy. For love goes back to the beginning of things,—to the time when the world was new. It has its birth in that primeval light when 'the morning ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... were gathered. Heavy veils shrouded their faces and fell to their feet. They held in their hands tall wax-candles, whose yellow flames burned steadily in the semi-darkness. Five or six young girls knelt, motionless as statues, in their midst. They also carried tapers, and their rapt faces were turned towards the unseen altar within, of which the outer one is but the visible token. Their eyelids were downcast. Their white veils were thrown back from their calm foreheads, and floated like wings ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... simplicity hi the arrangement and general effect. The dark, rocky background throws out distinctly the beautiful figure, raised on one elbow, her long, golden hair floating loosely down, as she bends forward over her book with parted lips, slightly flushed cheek, and an air of rapt and pleased attention. Though the neck and bosom are exposed, yet there is an angelic seriousness and gravity in the conception of the piece which would check an earthly thought. The woman is of that high class about whom there might seem to be a hovering angelic presence—the perfection ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... came this Mrs. Petherwin to think of such a queer trick as telling romances, after doing so well as a poet?' said a man in the stalls to his friend, who had been gazing at the Story-teller with a rapt face. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... programme was already at the second number, which, in spite of all the efforts of patriotism, was of German origin—a Brandenburg concerto by Bach. More curious still, it was encored. Pierson did not applaud, he was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt smile on his face, oblivious of his surroundings. He remained thus removed from mortal joys and sorrows till the last applause had died away, and Leila's voice said ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... most terrible came to my ear; 'Charles! thy spirit shall now issue from thy body; thou shalt go and behold the judgments of God; they shall serve thee only as presages, and thy spirit shall again return shortly afterwards.' Instantly was my spirit rapt, and he who bore me away was a being of the most splendid whiteness. He put into my hand a ball of thread, which shed a blaze of light, such as the comet darts when it is apparent. He divided it, and said to me, 'Take thou ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Cherry gave her verdict for "the song about the lady in the wood;" and although both Mrs. Carstairs and Iris rallied her on the mournfulness of her choice, Cherry stuck to her guns; and to judge from the rapt expression in her big brown eyes as the singer prophesied the lonely and tragic fate of poor unhappy Melisande, the idea of that fate proved exquisitely soothing ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... leaning motionless against the window, drinking in with rapt attention the notes which at that moment came in a torrent from ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... herbage on the flat behind the trapper was a lank, long-limbed horse from which he had just dismounted, and which looked travel-stained and weary like his master. The news the man brought was worthy of consideration, and Ralph listened with rapt attention and with a heart that beat hard and quick, though he said no word and ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... caught the gleam of his father's eye, while, bending forward on his staff, with white, reverend locks falling about his face, he listened to the voice of his pride—his first born? And did he not see the glistening tears in his mother's eye, as with rapt ear she hung upon his every word? Ah, the young man's first triumph! When, full of confidence and hope, he enters the field of life, all his white glistening as yet unsoiled by the dust of the combat, the unproved ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Castle." No sooner said than done. The poet and the painter set out. Nature lay bright and lovely before them in that delicious summer morning. After an eight-miles walk they reached the castle at Roslin. Burns went down under the great Norman arch, where he stood rapt in speechless admiration of the scene. The thought of the eternal renewal of youth and freshness of nature, contrasted with the crumbling decay of man's efforts to perpetuate his work, even when founded upon a rock, as Roslin Castle is, seemed ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... of so fine a composition there is no call for finical criticism. The "Recessional" is a product of the poet's holiest mood. "The Spirit of the Lord came upon him"—as the old Hebrew phrase is, and for the time he was a rapt prophet, with a backward and a forward vision. Providence saved the hymn, and it touched and sank into the better mind of the nation. It is already learned by heart—and sung—wherever English is the common speech, and will be heard in numerous translations, with ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... and for the rest of the evening, Etienne was in the most delightful spirits, inexhaustibly cheerful; but while thus giving vent to his intoxication, he now and then fell into the dreamy abstraction of a man who seems rapt in his ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... very bad distemper."]—who died of joy; and of Thalna, who died in Corsica, reading news of the honours the Roman Senate had decreed in his favour, we have, moreover, one in our time, of Pope Leo X., who upon news of the taking of Milan, a thing he had so ardently desired, was rapt with so sudden an excess of joy that he immediately fell into a fever and died.—[Guicciardini, Storia d'Italia, vol. xiv.]—And for a more notable testimony of the imbecility of human nature, it is recorded by the ancients—[Pliny, 'ut supra']—that Diodorus the dialectician died upon ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... that was sportive, wild, and gay! Now led by Pity to deplore Hearts that can ache and bleed no more, We roam'd long tales of sadness o'er! Now, prompted by achievements higher, We caught the hero's, martyr's fire! Who, listening to an angel choir, Rapt and devoted, following still Where duty or religion led, The mind prepar'd, subdued the will, Bent their grand purpose to fulfil: Conquer'd, endur'd, or meekly bled! Nor wonder'd we, for we were given, Like them, to zeal, to ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... rapt glow suffused her body. Never in all her life had she been so absolutely alone. She might as well have been in her grave. She might have been dead to all earthy things and reveling in spirit in the glory of the physical that ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... though but five feet six in height, seemed singularly tall; and his sharply aquiline countenance was strongly indicative of reflection. This aspect was increased by a downward cast of the eyes, which were invariably fixed upon the ground; and in his solitary walks he seemed like one rapt in a dream. Such a character could not but be quite a marvel to the literary coterie of Cockpaine, which found in him an inexhaustible subject of discussion; while the more common class of the community viewed him with solemn wonderment—'aye, there he gaes aff ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... like low-hung clouds The waving woodlands lie; Far in the West the glowing plain Melts warmly in the sky. No accent wounds the reverent air,— No footprint dints the sod,— Low in the light the prairie lies Rapt in a dream of God. 1367 ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... eyes were fixed intently on the ceiling. His look was one of rapt inspiration. I stood and waited. "Cumberledge," he said at last, coming back to earth with a start, "I see it more plainly each day that goes. We must get ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... than, abandoning the horses to their own devices, Arima crept cautiously forward until he reached Escombe's heap of clothing, and, availing himself of the preoccupation of the bathers, took the jewel in his hand and examined it with the most rapt attention and care. For a space of nearly five minutes he continued his examination, after which he slowly and thoughtfully made his way back to the horses, which were too busily feeding upon the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... more phlegmatic constitution do; and that they can draw from such intuitions of their own a sort of inspiration, or second-sight of nature, comparable to prophecy, which gives their highest poetic utterance a rapt enthusiasm—and the accuracy of this estimate need not be disputed, but, so far as Ossian is concerned, it must be considerably extended. To read Ossian as we do, from the text of Macpherson, there was another sort of insight, purely scientific, into the mysteries of nature, inherited and ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... really," Telzey admitted. "Or sort of." She laughed, her cheeks flushed. "This is the most ... go ahead please! Sorry I interrupted." She stared at the wall beyond Dr. Droon with a rapt expression. ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... SYLPHS OF NICE EAR! with beating wings you guide The fine vibrations of the aerial tide; 235 Join in sweet cadences the measured words, Or stretch and modulate the trembling cords. You strung to melody the Grecian lyre, Breathed the rapt song, and fan'd the thought of fire, Or brought in combinations, deep and clear, 240 Immortal harmony to HANDEL'S ear.— YOU with soft breath attune the vernal gale, When breezy evening broods the listening vale; Or wake the loud tumultuous sounds, that dwell In Echo's many-toned diurnal ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Love's rapt sense the heart-strings gently sweep, [1] With joy divinely fair, the high and deep, To call her home, She shall mount upward unto purer skies; We shall be waiting, in what glad surprise, [5] ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... said, and again she seemed rapt in dreamy contemplation of an air-vision. "The natural beauty of Sampaolo is to my thinking unparalleled. At a distance, as your ship approaches it, Sampaolo lies on the horizon like a beautiful soft cloud, all vague rose-colours ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... admiring circle, he betakes himself with infinite zest to the discussion of aesthetic tittle-tattle over a cup of tea and a toasted bun. "Dear fellow," his friends will say of him at such a moment, "he is so etherial; and his eyes, did you observe that far-away, rapt look in them?" They will then take pleasure in persuading one another without much difficulty, that they are the fine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... no more, but stood gazing at his picture, rapt in contemplation. Jaquith was silent, too, watching him, half in amusement, half—or more than half—in something not unlike reverence. Mr. Homer was not an imposing figure: his back was long, his ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... threats and defiances as huge as ever were thundered from the lips of the renowned knight of La Mancha. All would not do, however; the cortege held on its way with whirlwind speed. Vainly Gabriel strained every sinew to overtake the coach. The fell enchanters rapt his peerless mistress from his eyes, and every moment the distance between him and them became wider and more hopeless. At last, breathless, exhausted, enraged, he was forced to give over the pursuit, after having maintained it for nearly three miles over the pavements of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various |
