"Rapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the piano was detached, a being apart from this scene of quiet, absorbed in his piano, which gave forth the turbulence which had been in the soul of the great composer. The expression upon the dark face of the young musician was rapt and eager, until he crashed the chords to their triumphant conclusion when he sank back in his chair with a gasp, his head bent forward upon his breast, his dark gaze fixed upon the keys which still echoed ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... remarkable for any beauty of feature, grew rapt and almost noble in its expression, and Gervase looked at him with a faint touch of ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... her remarks in a loud and clear voice, so that Paul Ford could not have failed to hear every word. A faint but beatific smile concealed itself roguishly about Paul Ford's mouth, and he looked with a rapt expression on an advertisement above Mrs Clayton Vernon's head, which assured him that, with a certain soap, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... except with his forefinger, which he used to place under his chin, and sometimes against his nose in a very peculiar manner. With a clear piping voice and colloquial style he held his audience in rapt attention, disdaining all the tricks of sensational oratory. Twice I heard him deliver his somewhat celebrated discourse on "The Day of Judgment;" it was a masterpiece of solemn eloquence, in which sublimity and simplicity were ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... year nineteen hundred—marveling, as the effects and forces of applied science is unfolded to our comprehension, and discovery moves on, each invention leading in another, in stately procession; we, all the while rapt in wonder, are straining in hope and fear to catch the coming word, and to comprehend its import. Never was speculation so rife, never was the field of human observation so unobstructed and expanded, nor the ascertainment and sifting of facts so facile. Never were opinions ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... stream pour through the land 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 a ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... to them to come down, but at the thought of doing so a feeling of nervous trepidation came over him. Donald had looked half wild when the dog interrupted him; how would he behave if he were interrupted again, just as he was in this rapt state, and playing away ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... that living came to! You heard of other people being rapt by splendid sins and splendid virtues, and you anticipated that to-morrow some such majestic energy would transfigure your own living, and change everything: but the great adventure never arrived, somehow; and the days were frittered away piecemeal, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... 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 ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Rapt into future times, the bard begun: A virgin shall conceive, a virgin bear a son! From Jesse's root behold the branch arise, Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies: 10 The ethereal Spirit o'er its leaves shall move, And on its top descends the mystic Dove. Ye Heavens! ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... the initiates, their gesture, their calm glance. I have heard how in rapt thought, in vision, they speak with another race, more beautiful, more intense than this. I could ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... out every feature of the country into startling distinctness, transmuting the dull tormented earth into towers, domes, and pinnacles of gleaming metal,—and weaves for every distant summit a robe of variegated light, such as the "Delectable Mountains" must have worn for the rapt gaze of weary "Christian;"—and another to plod over the same forty miles, drenched to the skin, seeing nothing but the dim, grey roots of hills, that rise you know not how, and you care not where,—with no better employment than to look ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... before beginning his tall form stood in commanding attitude on the rostrum, the impressiveness of his theme and the significance of the occasion reflected in his thoughtful and earnest features. The spell of the hour was visibly upon him; and holding his audience in rapt attention, he closed in a brilliant peroration with an appeal to the people to join the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... sight, at first sight, at a glance, at the first blush; prima facie [Lat.]. Int. look!, &c (attention) 457. Phr. the scales falling from one's eyes; an eye like Mars to threaten or command [Hamlet]; her eyes are homes of silent prayer [Tennyson]; looking before and after [Hamlet]; thy rapt soul ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... became very good friends. Often when she had nothing to do we would wander along the river through the forests, always, I noticed, by a route which took us away from the village. Each day I discovered some new accomplishment. Sometimes I would read Heine or Goethe to her, and she would grow rapt and silent. In the midst of some murmurous stanza I would suddenly stop, only to see her start and look at me as though I had committed a sacrilege, in that I had spoiled some dream of hers. Then again I myself would become lost in dreams, to be aroused by a soft ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... The rapt look faded from the strained face, leaving it downcast. "I'm afeared, then, I won't be able to claim that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... come back, and, after a few expressions of wonder at his absence, Mrs. Vickers and her daughter, rapt in the hopes and fears of the morrow, almost forgot that he had left them. With marvellous credulity they looked upon the terrible stake they were about to play for as already won. The possession of the boat seemed to them ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... probable reaction, violent, no doubt, from the composition of Parsifal. In Parsifal the central themes and the unavoidable conclusion are derived from outgrown beliefs that have long since ceased to influence the heart of mankind. Parsifal is medieval, mystic, rapt, devout. Its ideals are those of celibacy and asceticism, the products of an age whose theories and practices as regards sex-relationships can have no echo in modern civilization. What more natural than that Wagner should fling himself, for ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... realise how impressive is the ceremonial there enacted. As I write, I can see, in memory, the whole scene—the room, severely simple, with its lemon walls and deep wardrobes of white wood, the young fops, philomathestatoi ton neaniskon, ranged upon a long bench, rapt in wonder, and, in the middle, now sitting, now standing, negligently, before a long mirror, with a valet at either elbow, Mr. Le V., our cynosure. There is no haste, no faltering, when once the scheme of the day's toilet has been set. It is a calm toilet. A flower does ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... stollen from its sweet prison, folded in cloudy curls, lay dallying with her breath, sometimes striving to get a kiss, and then repulsed flew back, sometimes obtaining its desired bliss, and then as rapt with joy, retreated in wanton caperings.... Her breasts at liberty displayed were of so pure a whiteness as if one's eye through the transparent skin, had viewed the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... 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 to him are more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... hush, as if in truth the Spirit had moved him to speak, and every sentence was armed with a sacred authority. Asenath Mitchenor looked at him, over the low partition which divided her and her sisters from the men's side, absorbed in his rapt earnestness and truth. She forgot that other hearers were present: he spake to her alone. A strange spell seemed to seize upon her faculties and chain them at his feet; had he beckoned to her, she would have arisen and walked to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Greeks. There is an anecdote of his walking across a public park (I am told Richmond, but more probably it was Wimbledon Common) with his hat in his left hand and his right waving to and fro declamatorily, while the wind blew his hair around his head like a nimbus: so rapt in his ecstasy over the solemn sweep of the Biblical music that he did not observe a small following consisting of several eager children, expectant of thrilling stump-oratory. He was just the man, however, to accept an anti-climax genially, and to dismiss his disappointed ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... have forgotten his existence for one rapt moment, remembered it with a start. "Did you show this to your mother?" she ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... transposition suited for the organ, something I had never dreamt of doing. During the performance the Queen leaned her elbow on the keyboard of the organ, her chin resting on one hand and her eyes upturned. She seemed rapt in exstasy which, as may be imagined, was not ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... day long are alight with mischief, were reverently closed, and as she haltingly uttered the words of the old, yet ever young child's prayer her rapt face, raised occasionally from her dimpled hands, took on an expression almost ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... not answer: still sitting, with that strange, rapt, straining gaze, and with an unconscious, mechanical motion, rolling the little sand pebbles down the side ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... 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 looked on to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... vanished; surprise went after it; it became natural, right, and true. Daddy, of course, sitting by his window in the carpenter's house, had seen the Twilight Scaffolding sweep past and had climbed into it. Its beauty had rapt him out and away. In the darkness his mind wandered, too, gathering notes subconsciously ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... quiet, rapt in some new thought. In another minute she placed her hand lightly upon Paul's shoulder, ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... of any lack of interest on the part of my auditors. They listened to every word of my story with rapt attention. When I had finished they were both silent for several moments. Mabane eyed me curiously. I think that at first he scarcely knew whether to believe me ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... aggression, the other by a general passivity and unearthly calm. The fanatic is, notwithstanding, nothing but a worldling too narrow and violent to understand the world, while the mystic is a sensualist too rapt and voluptuous to rationalise his sensations. Both represent arrested forms of common-sense, partial developments of a perfectly usual sensibility. There is no divine inspiration in having only one passion left, nor in dreamfully accepting or renouncing all the passions together. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... stood at his easel, seizing and recording, the unconscious grace of her pose, the rapt stillness of her face. He was never weary of painting her—never quite satisfied with the result; always within an ace of achieving the one perfect picture that should immortalise a gleam from her inner uncaptured loveliness—the essence of personality that eternally foils the sense, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... her. She wondered why Wollaston looked at the teacher so instead of at herself. She gave her head a charming cant, and glanced again, but the boy still had his eyes fixed upon the elder woman, with that rapt expression which is seen only in the eyes of a boy upon an older woman, and which is primeval, involving the adoration and awe of womanhood itself. The boy had not reached the age when he was capable of falling in love, but he had reached the age of adoration, and there was nothing in little ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... concluded the writer, "were the tokens of gratitude and delight with which his townspeople rewarded him." A month later MacDowell played the same concerto in Boston, at a Symphony concert, under Mr. Gericke; his performance of it evoked "rapt attention," and "the very heartiest of plaudits, in which both orchestra ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... in rapt suspension, All the quivering, palpitating Chords of life in utmost tension, With the fervor of invention, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... before the spectacle, chanting to himself a kind of insane ritual, like a Parsee fire-worshipper making obeisance before his god. He was rapt away to some plane of mystic exaltation, to some hinterland of the soul that merged upon madness. When at length the boat crunched upon the sandy shore he got up unsteadily from the stern and pointed to the pharos that flamed in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... his disgrace 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
... his door, as Lionel, rapt by the music, had forgotten the pain of the revery so bewitchingly broken, Darrell detained the hand held out to him, and said, "No, not yet; I have something to say to you: come in; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Goth, as she felt the birth of new feelings within her while he spoke, her cheeks glowed, her features lightened up, her very form seemed to freshen and expand. No intruding thought or awakening remembrance disturbed her rapt attention. No cold doubt, no gloomy hesitation, appeared in her companion's words. The one listened, the other spoke, with the whole heart, the undivided soul. While a world-wide revolution was concentrating its hurricane forces around them; while the city of an Empire tottered already to ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... rate, Tyson had not been very long at Thorneytoft before Mrs. Wilcox found herself arguing with Mr. Wilcox. She herself was impervious to argument, and owing to her rapt inconsequence it was generally difficult to tell what she would be at. This time, however, she seemed to be defending Mr. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... 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. Well, this ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... one afternoon when they were enjoying in rapt silence the peace and quiet of their cozy apartment, "you've been creating a hiatus big enough for a dog to crawl through in this month's honorarium. You haven't been paying your dressmaker anything on ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... 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 ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... forward again, moving noiselessly, and reached the outskirts of the crowd, sheltering himself between the bushes that fringed the jungle. Torches flared, and smoked, and shed a ruddy, uncertain light on hundreds of rapt, upturned faces. The orator stood tall and straight above them, fully revealed by purposely clustered lights. He volleyed reproach and insult upon his listeners, he gave them taunts instead of persuasion. They stood enthralled by the passionate ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... plea for, "More—to-morrow night?" with which the conclave brought up at the call to prayers and to pillows. This has not so far flattered me out of my sober senses as to beget a hope that my reminiscences will find such loving interest and attention so rapt in the larger audience outlying our doors. Yet I dare believe that other grandparents will read and other children will listen to the real happenings of the Long Time Ago WHEN ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... returning to my bed to sleep, a voice 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 this thread, and bind ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... For her that's Pityless of my grief and Woes, And will not on me Pity take. I'll sleep among my most inveterate Foes And with gladness never wish to wake, In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close That in an enraptured dream I may In a rapt lulling sleep and gentle repose Possess ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... on his nees & swares he'll hav revenge. The 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 represented. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... fiddles when I first saw them here. Off the sidewalk, upon the pavement of the street, there is a crowd of men and boys, closely grouped around something in the way of a show. As I approach, old voices of the once familiar woodlands and farm-yards greet my ear. I listen to them, for a brief moment, rapt. Alas! they are spurious. They emanate from a dirty man, who stands in the centre of the group, with a small wooden box slung before him. By his side stands his torch-bearer, who illuminates him with a lamp suspended from a long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... trivial chatter, and squabbles, and amusements of her small contemporaries. After a time, indeed, she condescended to astonish their minds with some of her old stories, and was gratified by the admiration of a round-eyed, open-mouthed audience, who listened with rapt attention as she related some of the glories of past days, balls, and theatres, and kursaals, princes and counts, and fine dresses; it served in some sort to maintain the sense of superiority which was sorely tried during the untoward events of the lesson ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... with a rapt expression at the preparations before him. "So I'm drowned," something was saying inside him. "Life ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... seats and declaring that he would be able to see well enough, at last opened the little book, a quiver of curiosity sped from one end of the carriage to the other, and every head was stretched out, lending ear with rapt attention. Fortunately, Pierre had a clear, powerful voice and made himself distinctly heard above the wheels, which, now that the train travelled across a vast level plain, gave out but ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... 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 ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... to contemplation, the diagonal to action, what ca be said of landscape? It is without action, it is true, and yet does not express that positive quality, that WILL not to act, of the rapt contemplation. The landscape uncomposed is negative, and it demands unity. Its type of composition, then, must give it something positive besides unity. It lacks both concentration and action; but it can gain them both from a space composition which shall combine ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... He seemed rapt and carried by his own devilry. The wreck and ruin strewn about the floor consorted with the ruin of his fortunes; let all go smash—what was the use of caring? Now in his frenzy, he, ordinarily so ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... chair! All are attentive to the godlike man; you might hear a pin drop: the subject is announced once and again in a very audible voice; the touch-paper is ignited, the magazine will blow up presently! Incontinently we are rapt off to Pere la Chaise, where the great composer lies buried, and a form of communication is made to us on this suitable spot, that Bellini is dead; then comes, in episode, a catalogue of all the operas he ever wrote, with allusions to each, and not a little vapouring and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... begun, that scene in which Adrienne accomplishes her generous sacrifice in furnishing herself the ransom which must deliver her unfaithful lover. The rapt attention that Zibeline paid to this scene, and the slight movements of her head, showed her approval of this disinterested act. Very touching in her invocation to her "old Corneille," Mademoiselle Gontier was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... first rapt realization, for a dozen ants had lost no time in ascending my shoes, and, as if at a preconcerted signal, all simultaneously sank their jaws into my person. Thus strongly recalled to the realities of life, I realized the opportunity that was offered and planned for my observation. No living ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... concession of those leper windows be confirmed. He would agree to forfeit a thousand pounds should he break his word, he said. Thereupon they closed the subject. The host tried to lead back to the cults of the Greek States, but the guest was now too rapt and breathless to follow to much purpose. Soon, by mutual consent, they ended the interview, not without private friendliness, but ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... and, the trees no longer hiding it, I looked down the vale, which was the gate of Tuscany. There—high, jagged, rapt into the sky—stood such a group of mountains as men dream of in good dreams, or see in the works of painters when old age permits them revelations. Their height was evident from the faint mist and grey of their hues; their outline was tumultuous, yet ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... sits beside the fire With folded hands and dreaming eyes, Watching the restless flames aspire, And rapt in thralling memories. I mark the fitful firelight fling Its warm caresses on her brow, And kiss her hands' unmelting snow, And glisten on ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... fill, 10 My bosom burns and heaves, I hear within A sacred sound that prompts me to begin, Lo! Phoebus comes, with his bright hair he blends The radiant laurel wreath; Phoebus descends; I mount, and, undepress'd by cumb'rous clay, Through cloudy regions win my easy way; Rapt through poetic shadowy haunts I fly: The shrines all open to my dauntless eye, My spirit searches all the realms of light, And no Tartarean gulphs elude my sight. 20 But this ecstatic trance—this glorious storm Of inspiration—what will ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... for it was a beautiful and holy mystery. It was also a great joy, and she seemed to give herself up to it. No music ever escaped her, and of all human music she took most pleasure in the singing of love songs. These she listened to with a simple and rapt delight; their joy seemed to answer to her joy, and the joyousness of a song of love seemed to gather in the ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... in the instrument the very pang of love. It might have been a psalm and this forsaken dew-drenched bower a great cathedral, so rapt, so devoted, his spirit as he sought to utter the very deepest ecstasy. Into the reed he poured remembrance and regret; the gathered nights of riot and folly lived and sorrowed for; the ideals cherished and surrendered; the remorseful sinner, the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... sounds; again the clear, perfect phrase, followed by melodious little bells. Dunham and Sylvia, motionless, continued to gaze into each other's eyes, and the girl's rapt smile stirred the man, for it was kin to ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... But Heaven rapt the heart of little Bell! The waves fell on her finer ear like subtlest music; to her they were harps, and the fingers of angels were touching them, while the ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... silence held save for the tempest of sobs that were not unhappy and that gradually subsided, but after a little the rapt happiness on the man's face became clouded under a thought that carried a heavy burden of anxiety and he seemed groping for words that were needed ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... several incipient "operations" which he had blundered into within the past week, and was now soaring along through some brilliant expectations born of late promising experiments upon the lacking ingredient of the eye-water. And at such a time Washington ought to have been a rapt and enthusiastic listener, but he was not, for two matters disturbed his mind and distracted his attention. One was, that he discovered, to his confusion and shame, that in allowing himself to be helped a ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... pose and accent he knows so well and understands too easily,—and if, then, half-through the drama, late and longed-for, tardily and splendidly, comes the Star, and if she be a fine creature, of a high fame, and worthy of it,—ah, then look you to her spectator. Rapt and rapturous she will hold him till ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... 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
... about that graduation day found the Other Girl beside Glory, in a beautiful white dress that lay about her in soft, sheer folds. The Other Girl's face above it was shining and rapt. This was almost like graduating herself. On the other side of Glory sat Tiny Tim, in the conscious pride of his best suit. There was no little crutch in sight. Timmie had hidden it under the ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... screamingly funny volume the reader follows, with rapt attention and hilarious delight, the mishaps, mortifications, confusions, and agonizing mental and physical distresses of a self-conscious, hypersensitive, appallingly bashful young man, in a succession ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... rapt in melancholy meditation, his host came up and thus accosted him: 'Friend! why stand you thus looking so ill-pleased? if any thing be amiss in your food and lodging, tell me and ...
— Fleur and Blanchefleur • Mrs. Leighton
... in preaching. It is such a glorious thing to be able to gather great congregations; but even this may be done and the messenger fail. It is such a delightful thing to a preacher to watch a multitude waiting spellbound beneath his eloquence in rapt attention, or swept by waves of emotion; but that multitude may disperse, the great end of preaching still unwrought and the whole attempt a splendid failure. It is possible to attract people to your ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... both men turned to look their last on the martyrs. The death knell which had rung in the ears of the Christians, was to them the voice of God. Stern, dark visages of men and the sweet, submissive faces of women were uplifted with rapt attention. A light seemed to shine from these faces as if the contemplation of God had ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... again upon his counter. His face was rapt, and he spread his finger-tips a little, as if something within them stirred ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... matters." The girl's voice was rapt and dreamy. Truedale put his hands across the space dividing them and took hold ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... one, was a long time rapt in calculations, concerning the various "numbers" allotted him by the First Luff, otherwise known as the First Lieutenant. In the first place, White-Jacket was given the number of his mess; then, his ship's number, or the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... was a little hungry and tired with toil, a stew of goat's flesh with sweet cakes and fruits, washed down with wine out of a sheep's skin, made a feast; and after, there was music and singing and dancing, or the travelling story-teller would gather round him his rapt audience. Paris had only robbed women of their grace and dignity. He preferred the young girls in their costume of the fourteenth dynasty. Progress, he thought, had tended only to complicate life and render it less enjoyable. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... you, Peter?" She thrust a strand of hair back from her temple. Her eyes rested on him for a moment, then wandered, till in their absent look was the rapt expression of the sleep-walker. The dark-rimmed eyes had in their depths the quiet of a conflagration, and Peter, seeing these things, and knowing the gamut of all her moods, saw that he had been mistaken. She had not ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... there in this rapt serenity, when she was conscious that some one was rapping softly at the door. This did not disturb her. She arose from her knees, still in deep peace, went to ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... telephone, and an appropriate response was made by the same medium. At length the Boston company were requested to remain quiet while a lady at the other end conveyed to them the sweet strains of music. The assemblage thereupon listened with rapt attention while a young lady commenced singing "The Last Rose of Summer." The effect was simply charming. The sound of the voice penetrated into the Boston end of the telephone with a distinctness equal to that attainable in the more distant parts of a large concert room, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... and motionless, his head thrown back, resting against the wall, and from his blue eyes that looked into the far, far distance, tears fell in thick drops. Close to Meir in a compact body stood a dozen or more of young men, who looked with rapt attention at the reader. They breathed quickly, smiled now and then, and raised their arms and sighed. They seemed not to see or hear the crowd; their spirits, longing for truth and blindly searching for it, had fastened upon the new thoughts. A thin, quavering voice ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... groups, chanting a welcome. Like all Indian songs it was monotonous. Every line he uttered with emphasis and a rising inflection, the phrase "Haih-haih" which may be translated "Hail to thee!" or better, "All hail!" Nevertheless, under the moonlight in the wilderness and with rapt faces about him, it was deeply impressive. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sang she sweet beside the lily-pool, Unknowing any might her singing hear, When rose another voice, so rich, so full As thrilled her into rapt and pleasing wonder; And as she hearkened to these deep-sung words, She flushed anon and ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the delicacy of his fancy and the beauty of his diction. His Ode on the Passions is universally esteemed for its sudden and effective changes from the bewilderment of Fear, the violence of Anger, and the wildness of Despair to the rapt visions of Hope, the gentle dejection of Pity, and the sprightliness of Mirth and Cheerfulness. His Ode on the Death of Thomson is an exquisite bit of pathos, as is also the Dirge on Cymbeline. Everybody knows and admires ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... held low to freezing lips Too rapt with frost To take it. How sweet it would have tasted, Just a drop! Was God so economical? His table 's spread too high for us Unless we dine on tip-toe. Crumbs fit such little mouths, Cherries suit robins; The eagle's golden breakfast Strangles them. ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... allowance for a touch of caricature to which I may claim to be considered myself as the chief victim), that in the grave attention of Carlyle, the eager interest of Stanfield and Maclise, the keen look of poor Laman Blanchard, Fox's rapt solemnity, Jerrold's skyward gaze, and the tears of Harness and Dyce, the characteristic points of the scene are sufficiently rendered. All other recollection of it is passed and gone; but that at least its principal actor was made ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... I stole a glance at Ariadne; her eyes were still riveted, in a rapt yet half-fearful abstraction, upon the face of the Rhamda. It was time I took ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... something in his loud, self-asserting voice; sometimes stopping suddenly, drawing his huge stature erect, and changing the keen and haughty expression of his face into the rapt and half fatuous look of the oracle, he would without preface recite some long fragment from Welsh or Scandinavian bards, his hands hanging from his chest and flapping in symphony. Then he would push on again, and as suddenly stop, arrested by the beautiful scenery, and exclaim, 'Ah! this ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the philosophical 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 ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and Telson enjoyed that lecture! They listened to it with rapt attention with hearts full of gratitude and faces full of sympathy. They did not understand a word of it, but a chapter out of "Midshipman Easy" could not have delighted them more; and when they saw that the clock had slowly ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... with Mr. Lanhearne the old gentleman said: "This is Ada's church. As the door is open let us enter and wait for prayers." So out of the rush and crush of Broadway the old and the young man turned into the peace of the temple. And as they entered Ada rose up from before the altar, and with a pale, rapt face glided into the solitude of her own pew. Neither spoke of the circumstance, but on Roland's mind it made a deep impression. At that hour he realised how beautiful a thing is true religion and how holy a thing is a woman pure of heart, calmly radiant ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... closed, a sudden amazement at my own perverse proceeding struck like a blow upon me. I felt from the first it was me he wanted—me he was seeking—and had not I wanted him too? What, then, had carried me away? What had rapt me beyond his reach? He had something to tell: he was going to tell me that something: my ear strained its nerve to hear it, and I had made the confidence impossible. Yearning to listen and console, while I thought ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... which irrationally tyrannising over sexual relations, produces unnatural celibacy and prostitution. These threads, and many others, were all taken up in his first serious poem, 'Queen Mab' (1812-13), an over-long rhapsody, partly in blank verse, partly in loose metres. The spirit of Ianthe is rapt by the Fairy Mab in her pellucid car to the confines of the universe, where the past, present, and future of the earth are unfolded to the spirit's gaze. We see tyrants writhing upon their thrones; Ahasuerus, "the wandering Jew," is introduced; the consummation on earth of the age of ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... where all hours were lost, And day and night were indistinguishable— We had been sitting a long silent while, Some lightly sleeping, others bowed in prayer, When on a sudden, like a voice from God, Perpetua spake to us and all were roused. Her voice was rapt and solemn: 'Friends,' she said, 'Some word hath come to me in a dream. I saw A ladder leading to heaven, all of gold, Hung up with lances, swords, and hooks. A land Of darkness and exceeding peril lay Around it, and a dragon fierce as hell Guarded its foot. ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... experience he had held and lost,—once more, now, in hand,—once more he is elated with that wonderful sense of a religious poise, that, it would seem, no doubts or terrors could overbalance. Unconsciously kneeling on the wet deck, he is rapt into a kind of ecstatic indifference to winds, to waves, to danger, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... rapt, I bent, to know Each wonder of that fateful day When midst thy zeal's terrific glow He met thee on the Syrian way: I saw, I felt, the scene: my soul Drank the new bliss, ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... dead. Hail, holy man, arriv'd th' immortal shore, Though we shall hear thy warning voice no more. Come, let us all behold with wishful eyes The saint ascending to his native skies; From hence the prophet wing'd his rapt'rous way To the blest mansions in eternal day. Then begging for the Spirit of our God, And panting eager for the same abode, Come, let us all with the same vigour rise, And take a prospect of the blissful skies; While on our minds Christ's image is imprest, And the ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... Rapt Fancy hears the Cherub plead: ... Propitious is the Culprit's fate, If one, by tender mercy sway'd, Amongst ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... a kind of Christianity; and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnestness with which it was believed and laid to heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain janglings about Homoiousion and Homoousion, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead! ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... skin, with black imperial and mustache, tall, straight as an arrow, Santos had risen and was now gazing down with rapt attention, not at the map, but ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... to show the many curiosities and treasures of the palace to such visitors as desired it. Clementina did desire it. The old man led her and her companion to the armoury, where he was for spending much time and breath over the trophies which the distinguished General Caprara had of old rapt from the infidels. But Clementina quickly broke in ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... impetuosity of impassioned contemplation not only contain in themselves a great vitality and potency, but they often succeed in engaging the lower functions in a sympathetic vibration, and we see the whole body and soul rapt, as we say, and borne along by the harmonies of imagination and thought. In these fugitive moments of intoxication the detail of truth is submerged and forgotten. The emotions which would be suggested by the parts ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... bigger as he ascended, and yet darker with the coming on of night. The sun had already set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New England skies; and, while he was looking upon the rosy splendor with rapt admiration, a solitary bird made wing along the illuminated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was lost in the distance, asking himself whence it had come and to what far home it was flying. When he went to the house where he was to stop for the night, his mind was still ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... seemed to me to treat life in the spirit of a mystic or a dreamer, with unshared and secret experiences, withdrawing into his own ecstasy, half afraid of life, rapt away into interior visions. Though he had a deep curiosity about mystical experiences, he was never a mystic in the sense that he had, as great mystics seem to have had, one shell less, so to speak, between him and the unseen. ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... still they were not done. The respite came through Mandy, who, solid in weight and heavy of foot, had laboured through the reels as often as she could get a partner, and at other times had sat gazing in rapt ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... glorified," to let you understand that I was certain, and am certain by its gracious revelation, that she was in Heaven; wherefore I, thinking many times how this was possible for me, went thither, rapt, as it were. Then subsequently I speak of the effect of this thought, in order to let you understand its sweetness, which was such that it made me desirous of Death, that I also might go where she was gone. And of this I speak there: "Of whom so sweetly it discoursed to ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... 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 ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... pain and suffering and danger could not develop, joy could, and boys sang, and shouted and cried, and danced as if in a delirium. "God's country," fairer than the sweet promised land of Canaan appeared to the rapt vision of the Hebrew poet prophet, spread out in glad vista before the mind's eye of every one. It had come—at last it had come that which we had so longed for, wished for, prayed for, dreamed of; schemed, planned, toiled for, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... greeted by connoisseurs of the best stamp— President Martin van Buren, "prince of good fellows;" Webster, another intellect, saturnine in repose and mercurial in activity; the convivial Senator Douglas, and the like. These formed the rapt ring around Lincoln in his own chair in the snug corner of the congressional chat-room. Here he perceived that his rusticity and shallow skimmings placed him under the trained politicians. It was here, too, that his stereotyped prologue ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... inquired whether the goose had disagreed with her. She finally gave them "Oh! let me slumber!" in a sweet and feeble voice. When she reached the chorus with its wish for a sleep filled with beautiful dreams, her eyelids partly closed and her rapt gaze lost itself in ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... 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 flower of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... retinue of bearers, attendants, shouters, parachute-carriers, and so forth—queer groups to see. The experts for the most part ignore me completely, even as they ignore each other, or notice me only to begin a clamorous exhibition of their distinctive skill. The erudite for the most part are rapt in an impervious and apoplectic complacency, from which only a denial of their erudition can rouse them. Usually they are led about by little watchers and attendants, and often there are small and active-looking creatures, small ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... exhilaration of feeling it imparted, these flushed and shining faces, the liquid eyes of the south now charged with the fires of transporting expectation, the steady gaze of blue-eyed northerners firm and rapt and steadfast; the power of huge, colossal frames of muscle, the sinuous activity of spare and slender forms all attired in that consummate garb of blue and white, their caps of metal reflecting the light ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... to the cooling airs that began to blow a little stronger. Paul was rapt far away among the rosy clouds of the future. Shif'less Sol, who held neither oar nor paddle, closed his eyes and leaned luxuriously against a mast, but Henry ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the wicked lotos grew, Wicked, for holding guilefully away Ulysses men, whom rapt with sweetenes new, 195 Taking to hoste*, it quite from him did stay; And eke those trees, in whose transformed hew The Sunnes sad daughters waylde the rash decay Of Phaeton, whose limbs with lightening rent They gathering up, with sweete teares did ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... wonder, too, how much significance should be attached to the fairly frequent phenomenon of dying people seeming in some rapt vision to see or feel as if meeting them the presence of loved ones gone before. Sometimes these phenomena are very striking. I once thought of asking a religious journal to open its columns to testimony from thoughtful, cool-headed ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... believe that the girl wasn't sorry to have me beside her again. Once in a while I threw a glance at her face as we spun over the perfect road through woods which might never have been touched by the hand of man, and there was a rapt look on it, the sweetest look you ever saw—sweeter than you ever saw, because you haven't seen her yet. But you will—you will!—when you've finished your ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... else is nought, the root from which it all sprang: he lived as one who felt the words, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ which liveth in me.' He would spend hours in rapt devotion before the crucifix, with no mortal near, until his very face was transformed, and the love of the Crucified ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... many other pious young men, Mr. Hall said Gawd.) "I met you the other night at your uncle's. The young man whose life we then despaired of has recovered." And with more of this, Mr. Hall told Julia's secret, while Mrs. Anderson, between her anger and her rapt condition of mind, seemed to ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... the clouds, a mountain-air To guide the lonely and uplift the weak. "Record it all," she told me, "more than merely this, More than the shine of sunset on our heads, more than a kiss, More than our rapt agreement and delight Watching the mountain mingle with the night.... Tell that the love of two incurs The love of multitudes, makes way And welcome for them, as a solitary star Brings on the great array. Go make a lovers' calendar," She ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... chief was rapt and mystic. The black eyes in the bronzed face looked into futurity and infinity. Robert was more than impressed, he had a feeling of awe. A great Indian chief was a great Indian chief to him, as great as any man, and he did not doubt that the words of Hendrik would come true. And ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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, caught up my hand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heart, as Thomas Shepard for one was, that stranger on the earth is at last within a step of that happy coast where all wishes end. Watch that man. Take a last look at that man. He will soon be taken out of your sight. Ere ever he is himself aware, he will be rapt up into that life where saints and angels seek not their own will, labour not for their own profit or promotion, listen not for their own praises, but find their blessedness, the half of which had not here been told them, in glorifying God and in ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... impassive, clothed in robes of white, with a golden coronet around his brows, listening to the music of the spheres, or seeking relaxation in the more humble hymns of Homer, Hesiod, and Thales; lost in the contemplation of Nature, or rapt in ecstasy in his meditations on God; manifesting his descent from Apollo or Hermes by the working of miracles, predicting future events, conversing with genii in the solitude of a dark cavern, and even surpassing the wonder of speaking simultaneously in different ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the picture with rapt interest. To this deep-hearted passionate woman, whose sympathies stretched upward and downward along the whole gamut of human feeling, its appeal was far stronger than Quita—in whom passion was mainly an imaginative quality—was likely to realise. For ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Who were they? Respectable Cowfold, which thought it knew everybody in the place, could not tell. There was no sign of their existence on the next day. People gathered together and looked at the mischief wrought the night before, and talked everlastingly about it; but the doers of it vanished, rapt away apparently into an invisible world. On Sunday next, at one o'clock, Cowfold Square, save for a few windows not yet mended, looked just as it always looked; that is to say, not a soul was visible in it, and the ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... all his classes were held in the smoking-parlour and he meditated only in Hamlet or in the sequestered arbour at the end of the laburnum walk. Once he had meditated on the village green, but Lucia did not approve of that and had led him, still rapt, home by the hand. ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... happy anticipation is in vivid contrast to Jeremiah's sorrowful attitude of retrospection. The picture brings out clearly the fact that the keynote of Daniel's prophecy is hope. Looking into his rapt face, we may imagine that this is the message he is writing: "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... of his graceful limbs, His strength and beauty. Her enamoured heart Suffused her cheek with blushes, every glance Increased the ardent transports of her soul. So mild was his demeanour, he appeared A gentle lion toying with his prey. Long they remained rapt in admiration Of each other. At length the warrior rose, And thus addressed her: "It becomes not us To be forgetful of the path of prudence, Though love would dictate a more ardent course, How oft has Sam, my father, counselled me, Against ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... I took my place in the shop I had the feeling of my boyhood—as if I were celebrating a High Mass before the sacrifice of another day. There was much of the Pontifical in me, for I was a rapt radical. Each morning on my way to Commercial Calvary I saw another sacrifice; I overtook small shrivelled forms, children they were, by the dim dawn. How their immature coughings racked my heart and gave me that strange tightening of the ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... breathlessly, her rapt, unhumorous eyes fixed on Eldress Hannah's still face. Now and then she asked a question, and once cried out that, after all, why wasn't it the way to live? Peace and self-sacrifice and love! "Oh," she said, turning to her husband, "can't ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... back to where you were before, only leaving you with a greater burden of worry and expense," she continued, unheeding. "I was rapt, I was deadened to selfish forgetfulness by the sweet music of those dreams. I am awake now, and I tell you that you must not do it, that I shall never permit you to ruin your life by assuming a load ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... these poems there are some with footholds firmly rooted in the earth and others whose proper realm is air. These have wings for alighting, for flitting thither and hither, or for pursuing some sudden rapt whirl of flight in Heaven's face at fancy's bidding. They are certainly not less original than those other solider, earth-fast poems, but they are less unique. Being motived in transient fancy, they are more akin to poems by other hands, and could be classed more readily ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... of recognition and welcome with which he had greeted his friend faded from his face, and a look of rapt wonder took its place, as of a lover listening to the voice of his beloved. His mouth parted slightly, showing the white line of teeth, and his eyes looked out and out till they seemed to Darcy to be focused on things beyond the vision of man. Then ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... 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 ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... ready. Accordingly on the third day the baths were brought to the chamber, and the lady occupied herself with filling them. While she was doing so her lord left the chamber for a space, and during his absence the King and the lady were clasped in each other's arms. So rapt were the pair in their amorous dalliance that they failed to notice the return of the seneschal, who, when he saw them thus engaged, uttered an exclamation of surprise and wrath. Equitan, turning quickly, saw him, and with a cry of despair leapt into the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... he ended his melodious song, An host of angels flew the cloud among, And rapt this swan from his attentive mates To make him one of their associates In heaven's ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... of the several towns and corporations, or their own particular occasions, but are much despised, because they want the same endowments. Among these the ladies choose their gallants: but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but provided with paper and implements, and without ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... did it by faith more than by all other things put together—a faith so rapt that, to our less passionate natures, it seems to have been the very insanity of fanaticism. But it did the work; and that is ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... and the mission of peace which brings you to this land, would all move us to open our arms to you, to show you what we are and what we would be, so that, on returning to your country, you may tell the millions of your fellow-citizens who will hang upon your words with rapt attention, that Mexico is not that mythical land, which legends shroud in the mists of the adventurous romance of the old Latin countries, restless, mistrustful, dreamy; nay rather, you will tell them, that it is a sturdy young nation, starting out, aye, already ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... 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 ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... landscapes magical they 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 god's, breathing ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... received enables me to answer this question. "When I first met him, I looked on him with the deepest interest, and realized the charm that everyone felt. He had just gone up to Oxford, and was intensely keen on Ruskin and Browning, and devoted to music. He would listen with rapt attention when we played Chopin and Schumann to him. I used to meet him at dinner-parties when I first came out, by which time he was very enthusiastic on the Catholic side, and very fond of St. Barnabas, Pimlico, and was also deeply moved by social ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... gazed upon his mild countenance, could doubt that they listened to a good man. During the first prayer, on that evening, my heart became softened and subdued, and when he gave out his text, from Matthew xi. chap., 28, and two following verses, I listened to him with rapt attention. It seemed almost that he understood my individual case. In the course of his sermon, he said:—'I presume there are few in this congregation who have not some burden of sorrow which they would gladly have removed. Shall I tell you how you may be released from ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... sublime expectancy of conscious power til His enemies become His footstool, and the toils of His scattered disciples. It is like that moment which the genius of the great painter has caught in an immortal work, when Jesus in rapt communion with the mighty dead, and crowned with the accepting word from Heaven, floated transfigured above the Holy Mount, while below His disciples wrestled impotently with the demon that would not be cast out. But it is not really contrast. He has not so parted the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... gusts, had been far more noticeable than in the basement beneath. Below stairs the company had been natural and normal, talking of this and that, in a brightly lighted room, dwelling only on matters that fell beneath the range of their senses, lulled by warmth and food and cigar-smoke into a kind of rapt self-contemplation. But up here, in the gloom, lighted only on this occasion by a single shaded candle, in a complete interior silence, three persons had sat round a table for more than an hour, striving by passivity and a kind of indescribable ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... young person who listened to him with such rapt admiration and respect, when she listened at all, had no method or system whatever. She simply waited for the hint, the flash that revealed the vision, then she joyously and ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... needed to confirm Dave Patton in his resolve, it was this. From the rapt child his eyes turned and met his ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 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
... spheres audible in their Olympian mansion, making heaven drowsy with its harmony? In what way do they congregate? In what order do they address each other? Are the voices of all the deities free and equal? Is plodding Themis from the Home Department, or Ceres from the Colonies, heard with as rapt attention as powerful Pallas of the Foreign Office, the goddess that is never seen without her lance and helmet? Does our Whitehall Mars make eyes there at bright young Venus of the Privy Seal, disgusting that quaint tinkering Vulcan, who is blowing his bellows at our Exchequer, not altogether ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... a stylus, with which, when the voice has ceased, to record the communicated truth. Place in his hands the thunderbolt, and at his feet the eagle, and the same form would serve for Jupiter the Thunderer, except only that to the countenance of the Jewish prophet there has been imparted a rapt and inspired look, wholly beyond any that even Phidias could have fixed upon the face of Jove. He who wrought this head must have believed in the sublimities of the religion whose chief minister he has made so to speak them forth, in the countenance and in the form; and yet who has ever ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... easy-chair. There was a knock at his door, and a servant handed him a card, and he said: "No;" and we were alone. I could not think of a word of consolation; and in a moment he appeared to have forgotten me, and stared in a fixed, rapt dream at the flickering flame in the grate. It occurred to me to get up and go away quietly, as conversation was impossible—for there was too much to say. It came to me that I ought not to leave him alone. Something in him reminded me of the mystical phrases of the transcendent paragraph of his ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... peer, notwithstanding his breeding and social position, becomes entangled, until he is mysteriously put out of the way. From this point on complication and adventure succeed each other in rapid succession, holding the reader in rapt fascination until the end of the story is reached, where the plots of love and mysterious disappearances are ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stuff out of which mystics and fanatics are made. Her ardent soul was raised to ecstasy by the stately ceremonial of the Church; her imagination was captivated by its majestic music, its mystery, its solemnity, and she was wont to spend hours in rapt meditation. But her strong fund of good sense, her firm reason fortified by wide and solid reading, together with her habits of close observation and analysis, saved her from falling a victim to her own emotional needs, or to chimeras of any sort. She had drawn her mental nourishment ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... noted characters of the age. She won his lasting regard. He was cheered by the warmth of her piety and her unwavering faith, while his more logical and better disciplined mind would no doubt moderate and tone down her excess of introspection and rapt emotion. She spent three happy years in Paris, consulted by many persons on religious matters, admired and honoured by several distinguished people, and sheltered from storm in the house of her daughter, now married to the Count de Vaux. But the sunshine ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... and health to thee, From thy most meek disciple! Deign once more Endure me at thy feet, enlighten me, As when upon my boyish head of yore, Midst the rapt circle gathered round thy knee Thy sacred vials of learning thou didst pour. By the large lustre of thy wisdom orbed Be my ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... volume the reader follows with rapt attention and hilarious delight, the mishaps, mortifications, confusions, and agonizing mental and physical distresses of a self-conscious, hypersensitive, appallingly bashful young man, in a succession of astounding accidents, and ludicrous predicaments, that convulse the reader ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... in the City by the new glory that has fallen upon the ninth of November (it is said that Sir PETER LAURIE has been so rapt by the auspicious coincidence, that he has done nothing since but talk and think of "the Prince of Wales"—that on Wednesday last he rebuked an infant beggar with, "I've nothing for you, Prince of Wales")—independently of the lustre flung upon the new Lord Mayor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... dwell, Enshrined in Saint Valmiki's lay, A monument to live for aye, My deeds in song shall tell." Thus Rama spoke: their breasts were fired, And the great tale, as if inspired, The youths began to sing, While every heart with transport swelled, And mute and rapt attention held ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... 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 interior ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence |
