"Seraphic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manhood, and mourned for them in tender and mellifluous threnodies. It would be easy to trace many parallelisms in their prose and poetry, but to have dared to name any man whom we have known in our common life with the seraphic singer of the Nativity and of Paradise is a tribute which seems to savor of audacity. It is hard to conceive of Emerson as "an expert swordsman" like Milton. It is impossible to think of him as an abusive controversialist as Milton was in his controversy with Salmasius. But ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... still, Love pictures my bright lady at his will, That ever my desire may verdant rise. Deep pity she with graceful grief applies— Warm feelings ever gentle bosoms fill— While captived equally my fond ears thrill With her sweet accents and seraphic sighs. Love and fair Truth were both allied to tell The charms I saw were in the world alone, That 'neath the stars their like was never known. Nor ever words so dear and tender fell On listening ear: nor tears so pure and bright From such fine eyes ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Rose scornfully, in answer to Agnes's laugh; 'she knows you will give her bread and butter and I won't, out of a double regard for my skirts and her morals. Oh, dear me! Miss Barks was quite seraphic last night; she never made a single remark about my clothes, and she didn't even say to me as she generally does, with an air of compassion, that she "quite understands how hard it must be to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sagacious, he beheld one of those masterpieces of Nature whose creation appears to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here was a fair young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate pride, like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,—due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which vivified and colored it. Her hair, raised to the top of her head, fell thence with black reflections round ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... beautiful girl ... ... Her flesh was the soft seraphic screen Of a soul that is meant ... To just see earth, and hardly be seen, And blossom in heaven instead. Yet earth saw one thing, one how fair? One grace that grew to its full ... ... She ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... and also you, "Joint sons of sacred harmony, adieu! "Apollo whispering, prompts me to retire, "And bids me join the bright seraphic choir: ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... heart. The heart travails in pain through sorrow and loss and compassion and pity and loneliness and aspiration and sensitiveness; and lo! there is born from this pain, the spiritual Self, which embraces the lesser consciousness, enfolding all your consciousness in the softness and bliss of pure, Seraphic Love—the ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... to approval were tabu: Quinet was thrice caught reading Voltaire. If criticism of any of the doctrines of Catholic piety was a sin to be expiated hardly even by months of penance: there was nothing sacred to his inquiries, from the authority of the Popes of Avignon to the stigma miracle of the Seraphic St. Francis. He was an enfant terrible; Revolutionist Rousseau had infected him; Victor Hugo the Excommunicate was his literary idol; hidden and forbidden sweets made their way by subterranean passages to his appetite; he was the leader of a group ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... losses he took with reasonable equanimity, exclaiming over and over, when he lost: "Shucks! I hadn't orter have done that," and snapping his fingers. When he won heavily or was winning he munched tobacco with a seraphic smile and occasionally in the midst of trading would exclaim: "You fellers better come in. It's a-gonta rain some more." He was not easy to trap in any small gambling game, and only lost or won when there was a free, open struggle ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... recently composed oratorio "Redemption," reveal him still in search of power and a personal manner. No doubt a great improvement over the works of the first period is visible. From this time there date the seraphic "Panis angelicus," and the noble and delicate "Prelude, fugue and variation" for harmonium and piano. But it was only with the composition of his oratorio "Les Beatitudes," completed in 1879, that Franck's great period commences. The man had finally been formed. And, in swift succession, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... his youth when he first sang in New York, his voice was yet in perfect preservation. It lacked nothing that is to be expected in a tenor voice of the first class; and it had that mingling of manliness and tenderness, of human sympathy and seraphic loftiness which, for lack of any other or better word, we call divine. As a vocalist he was not in the first rank, but he stood foremost in the second. His presence was manly and dignified, and he was a ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... robed in white, was bareheaded and barefooted. The dress, the action, the seraphic face were not infrequent on the water, and especially in the churches; recognition was instantaneous, and through the eager ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... The broken precipice and barren heath. Here admiration may have ample scope: The spirit soaring upward drinks in light From other worlds, and in the choral song Of happy birds among the forest bowers, Hears the seraphic and harmonious strains That angels chant around the eternal throne!— To him there is an anthem in the breeze, A burst of triumph in the thunder's peal, Which, slowly rolling through the troubled air, Strikes man with terror, ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... summer sunset, appeared a vast city, with domes and palaces of pearl and ruby, and whose gates were gates of burnished gold. As he gazed, they were flung open on silent hinges, and a host, clothed in spotless white, entered their portals, welcomed with swelling anthems and seraphic songs. Then the toppling precipice began to reel and stagger beneath his feet—a fierce bright flame burst from amidst the night below, more brilliant than the sun's intensest ray. It drank up the darkness, and filled the gulf with liquid ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... is not much, Monsieur Jean," she interrupted, with a seraphic smile. "To be your servant, monsieur, is—— I mean, to do anything to please you ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... the ascendency of the religious element over all forms of art, and this was a characteristic of the Flemings. One was everywhere confronted with a curious union of religion and war, representations peopled exclusively by seraphic beings surrounded or accompanied by armed warriors. Everything is adoration, resignation, incense fumes, psalmody, and crusaders. The greatest buildings we saw were ecclesiastical, the richest dresses ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... any particulars be easily ascertained relative to reprints of the acts of the canonisation of the Seraphic Doctor in their original ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... about the Pegram mystery, as it had come to be called in the newspapers. I found him playing the violin with a look of sweet peace and serenity on his face, which I never noticed on the countenances of those within hearing distance. I knew this expression of seraphic calm indicated that Kombs had been deeply annoyed about something. Such, indeed, proved to be the case, for one of the morning papers had contained an article, eulogizing the alertness and general competence of Scotland Yard. So great ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... and smiled, a faint, seraphic smile. "My dear boy," he said, "you forget. This is the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... of a veteran, to some of the darling Dalilahs of his youth, "to the admirable and soul-ravishing knowledge of the three great Hypostatical principles of nature, salt, sulphur, and mercury," and, proh pudor! to alchemy and astrology—and those seraphic doctors and professors, Crollius, Libavius, and Van Helmont. He closed his literary performances with this noble fabric of logic and learning, not the less striking, and scarcely less useful, because it is chequered by some of the mosaic work of human ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... travellers, who have seen many foreign institutions of this kind, have a curiosity to see, in its first rudiments, this seat of primitive piety; for such it must be called by future ages, to the eternal honour of the founders. I have read Madonella's excellent and seraphic discourse on this subject." The lady immediately answers, "If what I have said could have contributed to raise any thoughts in you that may make for the advancement of intellectual and divine conversation, I should think myself extremely happy." He immediately fell back with the profoundest veneration; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... office, by my side, sat with me, walked with me, was my inexpressibly sweet and inseparable companion,—never left me but to go and sit with her mother. We knew all her intelligence, all her pure and delicate sensibility, the quickness and power of her perceptions, her seraphic love. She was all love, and loved all God's creation, even the animals, trees, and plants. She loved her God and Saviour with an angel's love, and died ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... Hark! strains seraphic fall upon the ear, From shining ones around th' eternal gates: Glad that man's load of guilt may disappear, Infinite strength on finite ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the word, in this sense, in the poem 'At a Solemn Music,' where the 'saintly shout' of the seraphic choir, with 'loud uplifted angel-trumpets,' 'immortal harps of golden wires,' and the singing of psalms and hymns, are collectively called 'that melodious noise.' Also in his Hymn on the Nativity, verse ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... she bound and spell-bound thee. 'Love is not altogether a Delirium,' says he elsewhere; 'yet has it many points in common therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or demoniac, Inspiration or Insanity. But in the former case too, as in common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds itself to sight; on the so petty domain of the Actual plants its Archimedes-lever, whereby to move at will ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... company, rising, and still rising, higher and higher, before they come to that mighty mount on which He has placed the gates of the Celestial City. The angels receive His pilgrims as they come up from the River of Death, and form for them a bright, glittering, seraphic, loving convoy, whose conversation prepares them gradually for that exceeding and eternal weight of glory which is to be theirs as they enter in at the gate. Bunyan has thus, in this blissful passage from the river to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... A seraphic smile spread over Patty's face. "I've been able to take a little nourishment to-day," ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... boy and girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through the silent hours, in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows; such dreams as were possible to their age floated from one to the other; beneath their closed eyelids there shone, perhaps, a starlight; if the word marriage were not inappropriate ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Franciscans were established by the munificence of their great patron, Henry III. Ralph le Porter granted a site of land in that part of the city where the street still retains the name of the founder of the Seraphic Order. In 1308 John le Decer proved a great benefactor to the friars, and erected a very beautiful chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, in ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the mingling contrasts of scales and wings, of feathers and hair. Through the combined lenses of science and imagination, we look back into ancient times, so dreadful in their incompleteness, that it may well have been the task of seraphic faith, as well as of cherubic imagination, to behold in the wallowing monstrosities of the terror-teeming earth, the prospective, quiet, age-long labour of God preparing the world with all its humble, graceful service for his unborn Man. The imagination of the poet, on the other hand, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... round it," said Emmeline, who was seated on Paddy's shoulder, holding on tight to him, and gazing upon the island, the green of whose trees was now visible, an oasis of verdure in the sparkling and seraphic blue. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... organising, enriching, making ready the lawful inheritance of the suffering proletariat. Michaelis pronounced the great word "Patience"—and his clear blue glance, raised to the low ceiling of Mr Verloc's parlour, had a character of seraphic trustfulness. In the doorway Stevie, calmed, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... amid the forms of light, Seraphic and divine, The painter's wand had summoned from The dim Ideal's shrine; And felt within my fevered soul Ambition's wasting fire, And seized the pencil with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... a day of amnesty to men, a fete day in Paradise, when God gave to this young girl that crown of golden hair, that seraphic brow, those eyes that purified the moral miasma of earth. The ideal of poetry, the reality ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... stitch in her fancy-work, and her beautiful face took on an almost seraphic expression; she was thinking of George Ramsey. She hardly noticed when the doctor took his leave, and she did not in the least understand her mother's sigh when the door closed. For her the gates of love were wide open, but she had no conception that for her mother they ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lot of thousands of innocent men and women at the hands of Philip's soldiers in a country at peace with Philip, at the very moment when that monarch was protesting with a seraphic smile on his expiring lips that he had never in his whole life done injury to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... madden, and shiver, and burn! How were my lips at once bursting with frenzy and locked in silence! It was my guardian angel that protected me, that pleaded for me, that awed me to patience, and that repaid by her seraphic praise the virtue she ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... expert in those piquant flippancies of speech which harass the enemy like a straggling fire; and could contrive, when it suited her purpose, to make herself as disagreeable as if her face had not been that of a cherub, or her voice seraphic. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... structure was too athletic to please him, their wrath seemed to him too tempestuous, their passion too overpowering, the lion-marrow which fills every member of his phases was matter too substantial for his tastes, and the Raphaelic and Seraphic profiles which are wrought into the midst of the nervous and powerful creations of this great genius, were to him almost painful from the force of the cutting contrast in which they ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... the storm that raged round Mr. Tubbs. It is said that in the heart of the tempest there is calm, and this great truth of natural philosophy Mr. Tubbs exemplified. His face adorned by a seraphic, buttery smile, he stood unmoved, while Miss Higglesby-Browne uttered cyclonic exhortations and reproaches, while Aunt Jane sobbed and said, "Oh, Mr. Tubbs!" while Mr. Shaw strove to make himself heard above the din. He did at least succeed in extracting from the traitor a ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... left Octavio trembling with fear of the result: a thousand times he was like to have denied all, but durst not defame the most sacred idol of his soul: sometimes he thought his uncle would be generous, and think it fit to give him Sylvia; but that thought was too seraphic to remain a moment in his heart. 'Sir,' replied Octavio, 'I own I said so of Sylvia, and hope no action she has committed since she had a protection under your roof has contradicted any thing I said. 'No,' said Sebastian, sighing—and ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Christ, and displayed the banner of truth with an invincible faith. His heart was true, pure, fresh, and fragrant as the heart of a rosebud, through the indwelling Spirit of God. His life was wonderfully attractive. His eloquence was seraphic; his lips had been touched with a live coal from the altar of God; his soul was aflame with the Gospel. He was animated with transfiguring revelations of Christ and His redeeming truth. He was a burning and shining light. The light he shed was too bright to last long in ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... them a glance of disdain, as Beauvayse, his seraphic face agrin, screwed in his supererogatory eyeglass, and lounged over the table. "You artless babes! Did you suppose I should be likely to swallow such a feuille de chou without even oil and vinegar? For pity's sake, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and harmony. Yet the remark of Montfaucon (Diario Italico) "aera Dodonaea dixisses", alluding to the brass kettles of the oracle (Potter Arch. Graec. B. 2, Sec. 8) is an exaggeration. Their flabelli are of metal, of a round form, surrounded with little bells, which are sounded at the seraphic hymn, to express, if we might believe Cancellieri, "by the trembling of the hands, that of the blessed spirits, who assist at the throne of the Divine Majesty with fear and trembling". (Tre Pontific. Not. VI). Their ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... As if for you to choose, Discretion in the interval, With gay delays he goes To some superior tree Without a single leaf, And shouts for joy to nobody But his seraphic self! ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... Necessarian-like-speaking, it is correct. Page 98: "Dead is the Douglas! cold thy warrior frame, illustrious Buchan," etc., are of kindred excellence with Gray's "Cold is Cadwallo's tongue," etc. How famously the Maid baffles the Doctors, Seraphic and Irrefragable, "with all their trumpery!" Page 126: the procession, the appearances of the Maid, of the Bastard Son of Orleans, and of Tremouille, are full of fire and fancy, and exquisite melody of versification. The ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... writing deliberately to her friend Emma, she laid down her pen and thought of nothing; and into this dreamfulness a wine passed, filling her veins, suffusing her mind, quickening her soul: and coming whence? out of air, out of the yonder of air. She could have imagined a seraphic presence in the room, that bade her arise and live; take the cup of the wells of youth arrested at her lips by her marriage; quit her wintry bondage for warmth, light, space, the quick of simple being. And the strange pure ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Fipple-Flute, a word Suggestive of seraphic screeches; The Poliphant comes next, and third ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... with it in her hands and looked at the beautiful childish head, till the face of the real Arthur rose up afresh before her. How clear it was in every detail! The sensitive lines of the mouth, the wide, earnest eyes, the seraphic purity of expression—they were graven in upon her memory, as though he had died yesterday. Slowly the blinding tears welled ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... recognizable by any one who had ever had the privilege of knowing him in the faulty flesh. She eliminated all his bad qualities, and projected from her imagination a Mr. O'Rourke as he ought to have been—a species of seraphic being mixed up in some way with a violin; and to this ideal she erected a costly headstone in the suburban cemetery. "It would be a proud day for Larry," observed Margaret contemplatively, "if he could rest his oi on the illegant monumint ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... remember him at the Annual Meeting in Pittsfield in 1849. My own thought at the time was, that were an angel present in human form, his appearance and deportment would be much like those of Mr. Stoddard. A calm, seraphic joy shone in his face, and all that he said and did was just what all delighted to hear and see. His presence did much to give a character to that meeting. Mr. Stoddard had a frail body, and an almost feminine ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... at home when this telegram came. It was the first he had ever received. With trembling hands he tore it open, his rosy face broke into a seraphic smile, and the tears came into his eyes. He rushed to his mother, threw his arms around her, ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... that religious fanaticism should be inoffensive, the heart in which it exists must be very pure. It is true that even in that case it is unproductive of good. But the hearts that have been born without the seraphic purity which establishes a premature Limbo on the earth, are careful not to become greatly inflamed with what they see in retables, in choirs, in locutories and sacristies, unless they have first erected in their own consciences an altar, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... in street circles, ran through his mind, but did not issue from his lips, and his face remained perfectly calm—almost seraphic in expression. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... many Christians, quite seraphic in appearance, are far from this! But in this condition, as in all others, there are souls more or less divine. God hides them in His bosom, and under the veil of a most common life, so that they may be known to Him alone, ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... express it. Seraphic comes nearer. Looks as if she had some great sorrow she was constantly thinking of, and trying to smile as she thought of it," Mrs. Biggs replied. Then, as Eloise looked quickly up, she exclaimed, "Well, if I ain't beat! It's come to me what ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... feeling that he was kindling a fire which should never be quenched, even that which was to burn up all the wicked idols of an idolatrous generation, unloosed his tongue and animated his features. The most striking examples of seraphic joy, of a sort of divine beauty playing upon the features, are among orators. In animated conversation, a person ordinarily homely, like Madame de Stael, becomes beautiful and impressive. But in the pulpit, when the sacred orator is moving a congregation with the fears and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... country—Lux mundi, as he was called. Some fragments of his conversation have been preserved, the unquestioned judgements which his hearers loyally received. Of the Schoolmen he was contemptuous, with their honorific titles: 'doctor angelic, doctor seraphic, doctor subtle, doctor irrefragable.' 'Was Thomas (Aquinas) a doctor? So am I. Thomas scarcely knew Latin, and that was his only tongue: I have a fair knowledge of the three languages. Thomas saw Aristotle only as a phantom: I have read him in Greece in his own words.' ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... a glittering hall I heard a voice seraphic call, That bade me "ever reign, All hail!" it said in accent wild, "For thou art Nature's chosen child, Whom wealth nor blood has e'er defil'd, Hail, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... shining bald head, which looked so very large because it shone so much; and the long grey hair at its sides and back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very benevolent because it was never cut; were not, of course, to be seen in the boy as in the old man. Nevertheless, in the Seraphic creature with the haymaking rake, were clearly to be discerned the rudiments of the Patriarch with the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... sweet face, Which thus and ever gleams, And smiles, with a seraphic grace, Upon my ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... In yonder heaven deep the stars are lit For evening service of seraphic quires— Eternal pomp of serried, blazing worlds, The heraldry of God, ere yet Time was. The moon hangs low, her golden orb impearl'd In a sweet iris of delicious light, That leaves the eye in doubt, as swelling die Round trills of music on the raptur'd ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... execute without you." The frequent chairman was Ryland, who was soon to train missionaries for the work at Bristol College. The treasurer was the only rich man of the twelve, who soon resigned his office into a layman's hands, as was right. Of the others we need now point only to Samuel Pearce, the seraphic preacher of Birmingham, who went home and sent L70 to the collection, and who, since he desired to give himself like Carey, became to him dearer than even Fuller was. The place was a low-roofed parlour in the house of Widow Wallis, looking on to a back garden, which many a pilgrim still ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... battered, my dear, but I am seasoned; I have great experience: you would not repent, and shall not, by the Face on the Handkerchief! But happen you see my master, happen he wear his brocade of white and gold—it is all peacocks' eyes, my seraphic heart, in gold and blue upon snowy white—happen again he look, 'Come' at you—why, off you trot as a hound to the platter, and I speed you thither with open heart. Thus walks his world, Guarino Guarini, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Christ and Him crucified, and by such arguments, we may fear, crucified by them. Here is Slavery's abhorred riot of vices and crimes, from whose soul-sickening details the human imagination shrinks aghast,—and over all, to complete the picture, these theologians bring in the seraphic countenance of the Saviour of mankind, smiling celestial approval of the multitudinous miseries and infamies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Zoological Gardens, where, a fortnight ago, we saw wild boars from Hesse Darmstadt; wild boars from Egypt; bush pigs from Africa; peccaries from South America; and two painted pigs from West Africa; all "de grege porci," and in excellent health: to say nothing of two hippopotamuses; four "seraphic" giraffes; antelopes (we did not number them); brush turkeys from Australia; an apteryx from New Zealand; the curious white sheathbills from the South Seas; the refulgent metallic green and purple-tinted monaul, or Impeyan pheasant, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... to describe her ineffable loveliness, for, like the beauty of a flower, it was incapable of analysis. Nothing that I could write would give you any adequate idea of this girl's seraphic face, for she was like unto no one you have ever seen in this cold Western world. I watched in a wild, nervous transport, I know not how long—time and space had no part in this new ecstasy of mine! I could think of nothing, do nothing—only feel,—feel the hot blood deluge ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... followed by gloomy looks, and what French reporters call "sensation," in these young men, whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders, boys that were called young men, men that were reading Sophocles—(a name that carried with it the sound of something seraphic to my ears)—and who never had vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. The day was come, however, when all that would be changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the public playgrounds, and delivering a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended to hurt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... on her violin, and Sahwah's discontented thoughts took wing, and she went floating out on a magic sea of music, and sat with closed eyes drinking in those wild, seraphic melodies that flowed from Veronica's enchanted bow until it seemed as if it could be no mere violin making that music, it was the Angel Israel, playing on his own heart strings. As Sahwah sat and listened there suddenly came over her a great ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... passion: a flame kept alive by vestal ministrants in the yewwood of the forest of Old Romance; planted only in the breasts of very favourite maidens. Love had eyes, love had a voice that night,-love was the explicable magic lifting terrestrial to seraphic. Though, true, she had not Henrietta's golden smoothness of beauty. Henrietta, illumined with such a love, would outdo all legends, all dreams of the tale of love. Would she? For credulous men she would be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... up his trend of thought, Judy's face lost its resentful expression, and something like seraphic righteousness spread over it. "I see what you mean. Just how did you plan to make up for this shut-in feeling that poor Droozle must have been suffering so much ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... she is love, All wisdom she, all thoughts that move About her everlasting breast Till she gathers them to rest: All tenderness of all the ages, Seraphic secrets of the sages, Vision and hope of all the seers, All prayer, all anguish, and all tears Are but the dust, that from her dream Awakes, and knows herself supreme — Are but earth when she reveals All that her secret heart conceals Down in the dark and silent ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... are all tears forever, All wounds removed by the healing hand.... Again, midst corpses and biers, I never, With torch inverted and quenched shall stand In darkness rife;— But, the torch upturning, By flames of life I restore its burning— And then, Seraphic, with you unite In songs of praise at the Throne ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... over our war, and longs for a letter from you. He sends cartes de visite of himself and his wife. He looks uncommonly dumpy, with a pair of winged whiskers of astounding effect, and the expression of his face is blandly seraphic. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... was utterly bereft of power to resist his advances, so pulling up her clothes he forced his legs between her yielding thighs, and soon brought the nose of Mr. Peaslin to the mark. As it just touched the lips of that seraphic cunt the effect was irresistible on the slightly struggling lady, who suddenly opened her legs as widely as possible to meet his charge, and throwing her arms around his neck, returned his kisses with equal ardour as she sighed, "Oh, I am undone, give it me now, dear Doctor, but ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... curry, with a seraphic grin. "I suppose it's the gettin' so near home, and all that. I do feel rather festive this mornin. 'Rolls a ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... divine words that will spring from my mouth! Hear ye then with the ears of your souls and hearts that the words of the Lord may not fall on the stony soil where the birds of Hell may consume them, but that ye may grow and flourish as holy seed in the field of our venerable and seraphic father, St. Francis! O ye great sinners, captives of the Moros of the soul that infest the sea of eternal life in the powerful craft of the flesh and the world, ye who are laden with the fetters of lust ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... rougher, more earth-born, and of less genial goodness than that of Joan of Arc, but with a shaping imagination of the same realizing intensity, the beautiful myths of Romish superstition, which her innocent soul transfigured into gracious ministering spirits of seraphic might and seraphic tenderness, glared in upon his more morbid spiritual vision as menacing angels, or grinning imps, or scoffing fiends. But still the tortured soul toiled sturdily on through the anguish of its self-created hells, the mind crazed and shattered, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... third upon the river; their chapel-choir is not inferior to Saint George's itself; and the Boniface ale the best in Oxbridge. In the comfortable old wainscoted College-Hall, and round about Roubilliac's statue of Saint Boniface (who stands in an attitude of seraphic benediction over the uncommonly good cheer of the fellows' table) there are portraits of many most eminent Bonifacians. There is the learned Doctor Griddle, who suffered in Henry VIII.'s time, and Archbishop Bush who roasted him—there is Lord Chief Justice Hicks—the Duke of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... course, with fire and tenderness breaking out in his face and manner, that gave him a kind of seraphic look, the speaker burst forth into a description of the love of Christ, that before long bowed the heads and hearts of his audience as one man. Sobs and whispers and smothered cries, murmured from all parts of the church; ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... discipline." "The followers of St. Francis continued to contain ardent-minded men who maintained that the Franciscan reform had not produced all its due results; that that reform was superior to popes and to the dispensations issued at Rome; that the appearance of the seraphic Francis was neither more nor less than the advent of a new Christianity and a new Christ, like in all respects to the first, but superior to it by poverty. Therefore all the democratic and communistic ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... company, His eyes that just a little wink As deep I go into the merit Of this and that distinguished spirit— His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink, As long I dwell on some stupendous And tremendous (Heaven defend us!) Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous Demoniaco-seraphic Penman's latest piece of graphic. Nay, my very wrist grows warm With his dragging weight of arm. E'en so, swimmingly appears, Through one's after-supper musings, Some lost lady of old years With her beauteous vain endeavor And ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... who enquire after misfortune. She could wait and let the evil news find her, and by so doing she won many a bright hour from the advancing shadows. The Senora was in unusual spirits. She had obtained a new confessor. "A man of the most seraphic mind, and, moreover, so fortunate as to be connected with the house of Flores." He had been gentle to her in the matter of penances, and not set her religious obligations above her capacities. Consequently, the Senora had laid aside her penitential garments. She was ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... Raffaelle, it seems to shine out in still more truthful vividness from the brow of a young person rapt in religious ecstasy. The hands clasped in prayer,—the upturned eyes,—the expression of humble confidence and seraphic hope, (displayed, let me suggest, on a beautiful face,) constitute a picture of which, having witnessed it, I can never forget the force. Yet I knew it was only a trance. So one knows that village churches are built by common mechanics. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... could not be done by the rasping bass voices of the well-fed monks; women were out of the question in the then social stage of church evolution; so that at last a compromise was effected by admitting the eunuch, who could chant in a most seraphic soprano, as his prototype, the mendicant priests of Cybele, had ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... simplicity, but the seer's perfect familiarity with the New Hampshire landscape, its mountains, its watercourses, the ways and customs of the people, the local legends and poetical associations, the sympathy with the Indian, and the seraphic delight which he took in the play of light upon the New Hampshire hills. Not more did Daniel Webster study with eager eyes the glowing and the paling of the light on the hilltops, no more rapturously did Rembrandt unweave the mazes of darkness, conjure the shadows, and win by study ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... sphere, Spaced out their suns, and round each radiant goal, Orb over orb, compell'd their train to roll, Bade heaven's own harmony their force combine. Taught all their host symphonious strains to join, Gave to seraphic harps their sounding lays, Their joys to angels, and to men ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... this life and beauty, this gay glory and tremorous ecstasy and effort was here for moth-love of one incarnate fever of frail-winged loveliness! Oh! to what unguessed archangelic observation, to what infinite seraphic compassion, may not our own swarming race, who dare not too much pity ourselves, be but just such dainty ephemera! Splendid in purposes, intelligence, and affections as these in colors and grace, glorious when on the wing, and marvellous ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... glittering staff unfurled Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanced, Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich imblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host upsent A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. Paradise ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Meresq had that deceptive countenance apparently created for the shipwreck of female hearts. Sometimes men called him an ugly fellow, but no woman ever thought so. There was expression enough in those luminous eyes to have set up three beauty men. They could look both demoniacal and seraphic,—tender often, but scarcely ever true; add to this a magnificent physique, a soft manner, a winning voice, and, what gave him an almost superstitious interest to women, that fey look attributed to the Stewarts. He had read and studied hard by fits and starts, for whatever possessed his mind ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... was a boy of energy, very decided, although not very intelligent. His uncle, Fray Jose de Calasanz, when he knew him, grew fond of him. Fray Jose enjoyed great esteem in the Order that is called,—nobody knows whether it is in irony,—the Seraphic Order. Fray Jose consulted several competent persons and they advised him to send his nephew to study outside of Spain. It is known that among her ministers the Church prefers men without a country. Catholicism means universality, and the real Catholic has no ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... recedes: it disappears: Heaven opens on my eyes; my ears With sounds seraphic ring. Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave where is thy victory? O ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... heart-robbing, alluring, enticing; appetizing &c. (exciting) 824; cheering &c. 836; bewitching; enchanting, entrancing, enravishing[obs3]. charming; delightful, felicitous, exquisite; lovely &c. (beautiful) 845; ravishing, rapturous; heartfelt, thrilling, ecstatic; beatic[obs3]; beatific; seraphic; empyrean; elysian &c. (heavenly) 981. palmy, halcyon, Saturnian. Phr. decies repetita placebit[Lat]; "charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul" [Pope]; "sweetness and light" [Swift]; beauty is only ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... listen. You're quite mistaken in thinking I want to stay here till Hugh and his wife come. It won't do. You're getting far too sweet and docile, and everything detestable. I had no idea of marrying an angel; it's too bad if you turn seraphic upon my hands. I wonder, now, whether, by way of pleasing me, you would answer ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... fancied knowledge of transmutation applied to the metals; so, doubtless, has many a visionary speculation of magic; so, again, has the ridiculous schwermerey of the Rabbis in particular ages. But those are as transient and even for the moment as partial titles as the titles of Invincible or Seraphic applied to scholastic divines. Out of this idea the truth grew, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... woman it was—like some ancient, androgynous deity of Etruscan fanes long dust, and yet neither woman nor man; human and unhuman, seraphic and sinister, benign and malefic—and still no more of these four than is flame, which is beautiful whether it warms or devours, or wind whether it feathers the trees or shatters them, or the wave which is wondrous whether it caresses ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurl'd Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanc't Shon like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gemms and golden lustre rich emblaz'd Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metall blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... a seraphic smile overspread her face, she added, "Leave me alone till he comes, Lizzie, but be quick. I would see him now, now; all is light, light, light! Joy, love, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... a criticism as this, a shining reflection, so to speak, of the work which it exalts; yet MacSilly, the seraphic aesthete of Edinburgh, has expressed in a still more moving and penetrating fashion the impression produced upon his mind by the sight of this primitive painting. "The Madonna of Margaritone," says the revered MacSilly, "attains the transcendent ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... occurred to me that it was time to depart. Again I traversed the streets at that solemn hour, insensible to every feeling, and regardless of every object but the flaming torch lit up in my heart and the seraphic image of Laura. At length I was warned by the scrutinizing gaze of a watchman to repair to my lodgings. But my pillow afforded no rest. All night long I pondered on the exhilarating events of the day. Many were the endearing ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... of all he could desire to see in woman. His love was not of the blind-little-boy sort, but of a deeper, more exacting, keen-eyed kind, that sees faults where even a true mother will not, so jealous is it of the perfection of the beloved. But one thing was plain, even to this seraphic dragon that dwelt sleepless in him—and there was eternal content in the thought—that such a woman, once started on the right way, would soon leave fault and weakness behind her, and become as one of the grand women of old, whose religion was simply what religion is—life, neither more nor less ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... often wore about her round, full throat; the white frock, say, with arabesques of blue all over it, that Felix Kennaston said reminded him of Ruskin's tombstone; or that other white-and-blue one—decollete, that was—which I swear seraphic mantua-makers had woven out of mists and the skies of June: when I remember these things, I repeat, almost am I tempted to become a boot-maker and a lapidary and a milliner and, in fine, an adept in all the other arts and trades and sciences that ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... you there entirely; if the gardener were surveying his sweetheart in the church choir he might have some such seraphic expression, but it is utterly thrown away on those vegetables; his face and his broadcloth coat are in perfect harmony," Mr. Winthrop said, with even voice, as he held aloft the picture that all the other members of his household had ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... up at Miss Lord with the innocent, seraphic gaze that always warned those who knew her best that is was ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... just been saved from doing so, the marriage in the first case never actually takes place, and in the second it ends after a few months. And as a smaller instance of repetition, we may compare the bedroom visit of the seraphic Dinah Morris to the earthly Hetty with that of the pattern Lucy Deane ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the friend of God on high; Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heav'n's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... face that 's fair, Nor lip and cheek that 's red, Nor of the tresses of her hair, Nor curls in order laid, Nor of a rare seraphic voice That like an angel sings; Though if I were to take my choice I would have all these things: But if that thou wilt have me love, And it must be a she, The only argument can move Is that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... to him "the seraphic look" which he had never seen in any face but hers; and as he met her eyes it appeared to him that all other women whom he had loved were but tinted shadows—that they were one and all utterly devoid of the mystery by which ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... hope to represent something of the progress of art in the spirit world; and would be enabled to depict marvels of landscapes, and the seraphic beauty of the human face with its grace and perfection of form, as it meets us ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... of the young Venetia was not the hereditary gift of her beautiful mother. It was not from Lady Annabel that Venetia Herbert had derived those seraphic locks that fell over her shoulders and down her neck in golden streams, nor that clear grey eye even, whose childish glance might perplex the gaze of manhood, nor that little aquiline nose, that gave a haughty expression ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... that order of angels to whom a knowledge of the future, or the seraphic penetration into the hidden heart of man is forbidden, stayed his wings over the lovely valley in which the main scene of our history has been cast, no spectacle might have seemed to him more appropriate to that lovely spot, or more elevated in the character of its tenderness ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dialogue! one scarce might deem, While mute we thus communed in tender fashion, How time slipped by like some seraphic dream Of night, all woven of joy ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... his couch an angel fair, with radiant, glitt'ring wings Of hues as bright as the living gems the fount to Heaven flings; With loving smile he bent above the fair child cradled there, While sounds of sweet seraphic power stole o'er the ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... said, "I wonder what the bright seraphic beings up there—for surely there must be such in that pure heaven above us—are thinking of the proceedings of us mortals down here below. We have to fight, and it is right to defend our country, but I tell you, Ben, ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... thoughts into the proper channel. As she pinched you, the Kitten dropped her eyes so that you noticed how long and black were her eyelashes. Then, having punished you, she raised her eyes to yours with so seraphic an expression that you thought of "large-eyed cherubim" and entirely forgot that she had pinched you at all, unless next day as you looked in the glass you happened to notice a little blue mark on your cheek. The ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... and as a result, for the first moments of the battle, Kenneth occupied the uncomfortable and inglorious position of the under dog. He strove only to escape punishment, avoiding offensive tactics altogether. It was hard work, however, for Brewster pummeled like a good one, his seraphic face aflame with the light of battle and his yellow hair seeming to stand about his head like a golden oriflamb. And while Kenneth hugged his adversary to him, ducking his head away from the incessant jabs of a very industrious fist, he realized that he had made a mistake in ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... short life of Donne has painted a figure of almost seraphic beauty. When Donne was but a boy, he declares, it was said that the age had brought forth another Pico della Mirandola. As a young man in his twenties, he was a prince among lovers, who by his secret marriage with his patron's ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... rare beauty and gentleness, and was Theresa's perfect idol. She was perpetually contriving pleasant surprises for her favorite; and it was her delight to wreath flowers around Amy's golden curls, and to add a thousand fantastic decorations to her delicate and seraphic loveliness. They would have made an exquisite picture, those two sisters, so different in age and character; the one so fair, with childhood's silent and fragile beauty, the other glowing with life and premature ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... were an unfailing token of mediaeval sainthood. We read of Francis of Assisi's sheepskin that "often a companion of the saint would take it to the fire to clean and dispediculate it, doing so, as he said, because the seraphic father himself was no enemy of pedocchi, but on the contrary kept them on him (le portava adosso) and held it for an honor and a glory to wear these celestial pearls in his habit. Quoted by P. Sabatier: Speculum Perfectionis, etc., Paris, 1898, p. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... mothers or not. But the great sensation was when he got into the pulpit. The manner in which he dropped on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, and showed his beautiful rings was, as a young lady said behind me, simply seraphic. We understood his celebrity, from that moment—I wonder whether I can remember ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... dream of all lovers of the beautiful, under whatsoever form it comes; the seraphic beauty that Luini put into his Marriage of the Virgin, that noble fresco at Sarono; the beauty that Rubens grasped in the tumult of his "Battle of the Thermodon"; the beauty that five centuries have elaborated in the cathedrals of Seville and Milan; the beauty of the Saracens at Granada, the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... for both your groups, if you will only make your limit of age include me. I am only five feet ten, and I 'll sit very low if you 'll admit me to the charmed circle. Shall you have a stage name? I would suggest 'The Seraphic Sapphira.'" ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... he could see no other point in the child's body or mind or soul whereon Margaret Mueller had left a token. The Doctor liked to discuss Kenyon with his wife from the standpoint of ancestry. He took a sort of fiendish delight—if one may imagine a fiend with a seraphic face and dancing blue eyes and a mouth that loved to pucker in a pensive whistle—in Mrs. Nesbit's never failing stumble ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... standard. That proud honour claimed Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled Th' imperial ensign; which, full high advanced, Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... footsteps coming down the stairs. Then, Mr Brass left off writing entirely, and, with his pen in his hand, hummed his very loudest; shaking his head meanwhile from side to side, like a man whose whole soul was in the music, and smiling in a manner quite seraphic. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... "And this seraphic ocean-child And heroine was Orlie Wilde: And thus it was I came to hear Her voice's music in my ear— Ay, thus it was Fate paved the way That I walk desolate to-day!" . ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... being seraphic, Full of fun, full of frolic and mirth; Who can talk in a manner most graphic Every possible language on earth. When she's roaming in regions Italic, You would think her a fair Florentine; She speaks German like Schiller; and Gallic Better far ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... at her child's prayer and murmured, Amen. And as the little innocent knelt there, a perfect picture of seraphic beauty, purity, innocence and faith, the thought of the poet came ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... it was easy to see that a prayer trembled on his lips. As a strain of music fades into silence, his tones fell away, fainter and fainter; and with the same seraphic light on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... finished. Bonny's gaze, distracted from the colonel to his sister, glued itself to the lady's face, while the perplexity in the blue eyes changed to delight. With a seraphic smile upon her dainty lips, a smile that would have made her recognizable anywhere, under any disguise, the little creature propelled herself from Glory's arms to the outstretched arms of Miss Laura, ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... gentle Mother. The Gothic, on the contrary, is less timid, more captivated by the two other Persons and the Virgin; it is the home of less rigorous and more artistic Orders. Bowed shoulders are straightened, downcast eyes are raised, sepulchral voices become seraphic. It is, in fact, the expansion of the spirit, while the Romanesque symbolizes its repression. At least, to me, that is the interpretation of these ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... an impartial source, I had heard of a Mexican priest whose life-springs seemed to be the soul-stirring impulses of the thirteenth century; who was devoted in soul and in body to the service of God and of his fellow-men; in whom, in a word, the seraphic spirit of St. Francis of Assisi seemed to live again. But by this way coming to such tangible evidence of the survival in the present time of forces which were born into the world six hundred years ago, my thoughts took a natural turn to my own ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... mighty wind swept past her, and after it an ocean of molten crystal came rushing through the illimitable hall. The sea and the wind purged away the blood and put out the lamps, leaving behind them a glow of light like that upon her brow, and where the lamps had been stood myriads of seraphic beings, whilst from ten thousand tongues ran forth a ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Mistress' skirt Amaze thy brain, scorn not the Priest Whom greater honours do not hurt. Stand off and gaze, if more than this Be more than thou canst understand, Revering him whose power of bliss, Angelic, dares to seize her hand, Or whose seraphic love makes flight To the apprehension of her lips; And think, the sun of such delight From thine own darkness takes eclipse. And, wouldst thou to the same aspire, This is the art thou must employ, Live greatly; so shalt thou acquire Unknown ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... Mr. Rochester said suddenly, "I am bidden invite you to pass the night here. There are stranger inhabitants than Mr. and Mrs. Rochester in these regions you have by some means strayed into—wilder denizens, by much; for youth's seraphic finding. Not for mine, sir, I vow. Depart again in the morning, if you will: we shall neither of us be displeased by then to say farewell, I dare say. I do not seek company. My obscure shell is enough." I rose. "Sit down—sit ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... past, present and to come. Appeals must all be made to him, and his sentence was definitive. Law or gospel, physics or metaphysics; himself alone superior to college, court, or convocation. Before him sunk scholiast and schools. In his presence the doctors all must stand uncapped: the seraphic, the subtle, and the singular; the illuminated, the angelic, and the irrefragable to him, were tyros all. Our censor in private, and in public our familiar: like a malignant demon, no respect, no place, no human barriers could exclude him. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... gather slowly. Madame Lepelletier is more enchanting still in some soft black fabric, with dull gold in relief. Floyd has washed and brushed and freshened, but still wears his travelling suit for a very good reason. Cecil is in white, with pale blue ribbons, which give her a sort of seraphic look. Yet she is tired with all the jaunting about, and after a while Laura ceases to torment her with questions, as the ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... trade and very secluded, and with no other view than that of the heavens. In front of it is the street in the middle of which is the royal hospital of the Spaniards, which has been administered since its foundation by the religious of our seraphic father St. Francis. There the religious who is vicar of this convent, who administers to us the holy sacraments, had a cell. From the alms given us we provide for his support. Lately, Governor Don Sevastian Hurtado de Corcuera, without cause or reason for it, drove the religious ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... likeness.[32] The expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic; it is one of Fisher's best works. Now he is about our Wiedeman, and if he succeeds as well in painting angels as men, will do something beautiful with that seraphic face. You are to understand that these works are done by the artist for the artist. Oh, we couldn't afford to have such a luxury as a portrait done for us. But I am pleased to have a good likeness of each of my treasures extant in the possession of somebody. Robert's will, of course, be ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
