"Sprite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compelling her to meet his ardent eyes. A change came over the girl, a sudden red flashed up into her temples and down into her white throat. She drew herself impetuously away from her lover's arms and fled from the room. 'I am not sure but that she is a water-sprite, after all,' grumbled Waring, as he followed her. But it was a pleasure now to grumble and pretend to doubt, since from ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... should you languish here? Come, my dearest, my beauty, be sensible! The blood of a Nixey runs in your veins. Oh, won't you let yourself be one? Give your nature the reins for once in your life; fall head over ears in love with some other water sprite and plunge down head first into a deep pool, so that the Herr Professor and all of us may ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... ever recalling that wild legend?" thought she. "I am getting to be as weak and superstitious as Helen. Why, when it seems to me that the wing of an angel is fluttering against my cheek, should I remember that demon-sprite?" ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... moments, then he hurries up-stairs. The tower door is open, and there is no one to be seen. He keeps on and on until he catches a flutter of a white dress. Cecil is running around the observatory, and his heart beats as he glances at the dazzling little sprite, with her sparkling eyes and her hair a golden mist about her face. He could watch forever, but ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... beautiful. On the other hand, the grotesque seems to be a halting-place, a mean term, a starting-point whence one rises toward the beautiful with a fresher and keener perception. The salamander gives relief to the water-sprite; the gnome heightens the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... one in dead of night From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking, That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite, Whose grim aspect sets every joint a shaking: What terror 'tis! but she, in worser taking, From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view The sight which makes ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... for the fourth time. And lo! advancing to me eagerly along the causeway seemed the very sprite of Alastor himself! There was a star upon his forehead, and around his young face there glowed an aureole of gold and roses—to speak figuratively, for the star upon his brow was hope, and the gold and roses encircling ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... who had conjured up some kind of opposition to his mother—had made living problems harder for her until she had won the confidence of others. The man must be, Travers concluded, a fanatic and an ignoramus, and to think of him holding power over that sprite of the woods! ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for he owed him a grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Scyorax. This Caliban Prospero found in the woods, a strange, ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... guess that for the space of one second his most cherished secret hovered upon his wife's lips, one turn of the balance of Fate, one breath from the mouth of an unseen sprite, and Marguerite ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... men and women of "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" are all in harmony with one another, with Borrow, and with Borrow's world. Jasper Petulengro and his wife, his sister Ursula, the gigantic Tawno Chikno, the witch Mrs. Herne, and the evil sprite Leonora, Thurtell, the fighting men, the Irish outlaw Jerry Grant, who was suspected of raising a storm by "something Irish and supernatural" to win a fight, Murtagh, that wicked innocent, the old apple-woman, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the telephone as Bell invented it, was merely a brilliant beginning in the development of the art of telephony. It was an elfin birth—an elusive and delicate sprite that had to be nurtured into maturity. It was like a soul, for which a body had to be created; and no one knew how to make such a body. Had it been born in some less energetic country, it might have remained feeble and undeveloped; but not in the United States. Here in one year it had become ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... to part; yet asks my sprite, Part we to meet? Ah! is it so? Man's fancy-made Omniscience knows, who made Omniscience nought ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... doth Sorrow wield; What spell so strong as guilty Fear! Repentance is a tender Sprite; If aught on earth have heavenly might, 'Tis lodged within her ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... That blessing ye brought forth, Behold! it lies in fetters On the soil that gave it birth: But the trumpet must be heard And the charger must be spurr'd; For your father Armin's Sprite Calls down from heaven, that ye Shall gird you for the fight And be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... "touched up" by an artist. Their hair is dressed by another artist, and every defect of face and figure is overcome as far as is possible. Thus adorned, the dull and jaded girl of the morning becomes, under the magical influence of the footlights, a dazzling sprite, and the object of the admiration of the half-grown boys and brainless men who crowd the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... his life, had become dissipated and vicious beyond all imagination or description. He was kindly and gracious, and his mother said of him that he was like the prince in a fable whom all the fairies had endowed with gifts, except one malignant sprite who had prevented any favour being of use to him. In the general exhaustion produced by the wars of Louis XIV., a Scotchman named James Law began the great system of hollow speculation which has continued ever since to tempt people ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... You feel us near In many a ghastly dream; With fancy's eye Our forms you spy, And hear our fatal scream. With clearer sight Ere falls the night, Just when to weal or woe Your disembodied souls take flight On trembling wing—each startled sprite Our choir ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... Sephora comes; the sprite Half baffled, followed—hovering on unseen— Till Meles, fair to see and nobly dight, Received his pensive bride. ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... Teach us, Sprite or Bird, What sweet thoughts are thine; I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... In sum, her countenance you still might know The same it was, not pale, but white as snow, Which on the tops of hills in gentle flakes Falls in a calm, or as a man that takes Desir'ed rest, as if her lovely sight Were closed with sweetest sleep, after the sprite Was gone. If this be that fools call to die, Death seem'd in her ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... achieved this disastrous result. If he had tried to do evil instead of good, he could hardly have wrought more irreparable mischief—and with the thought, pity, which had led him astray, winged off, like an ironic sprite, and left ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... tangled masses of images heaped themselves in utter disorder in his brain: passages of verse, bits of his trained laboratory jargon, phrases from half-forgotten books, the delicate curves of the Water Sprite at the exposition, and, above all, a fierce gnawing pain ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... letter to Maurizio Cataneo, dated December 25, 1585, Tasso gives an account of his sprite (folletto): "The little thief has stolen from me many crowns.... He puts all my books topsy-turvy (mi mette tutti i libri sottosopra), opens my chest and steals my keys, so that I can keep nothing." Again, December ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... unknown, what charms presume To break the quiet of the tomb? Who thus afflicts my troubled sprite, And drags me from the realms of Night? 30 Long on these mouldering bones have beat The winter's snow, the summer's heat, The drenching dews and driving rain! Let me, let me sleep again. Who is he, with voice unblest, That calls me from the bed ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... immaterial and sprite-like in her blue kimono, her strange eyes downcast as her habit was when talking about herself and her own doings, that Geoffrey could think no evil of her, nor could he wonder at Reggie's gaze of intense admiration which beat upon her like sunlight ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... she had a special affection for poor Sprite, the pony which threw her,—special, I mean, since the accident,—regarding him as in some sense the angel which had driven her out of paradise into a better world. If ever he got loose, and Connie was anywhere ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... last I raised my eyes, I became aware of the fact that I was still not alone; and peering through the dim spaces about me I beheld Jack sitting hunched up on the root of his tree like a small toad of fidelity! The little owl sprite in him never quite slumbers, I think; and seeing me leave the parsonage, he had crept out and followed bravely after through the shadows. But the picture he made now startled me ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Offering in fealty thy sweet simple songs To the abode of man? Hath the rude wind Chilled thy sweet woodland home, now quite despoiled Of all its summer greenery, and swept The bright, close, sheltering bowers, where merrily Rang out thy notes—as of a haunting sprite, There domiciled—the long blue summer through? Moulders untenanted thy trim-built nest, And do the unpropitious fates deny Food for thy little wants, and Penury, With tiny grip, drive thee to dubious walls,— Though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... sacred fire in fennel stalks Through windy ways is borne and densest night, Till where the outpost shivering sentry walks Beating the minutes into hours, the light Touches the guarded pile and, flaring, balks Beasts padding near and each unvisioned sprite By old dread apprehended; and new gladness Shakes in the village prone in ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... mother walked alongside, though from time to time the little sprite would insist on taking Phil's hand; or it might be that of stout Lub. She had made him promise he would send her his picture when he got home; and Lub always grinned when X-Ray Tyson or Ethan tried to joke him about his ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... its ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... home to find the countess-dowager in a state more easily imagined than described. Some sprite, favourable to the peace of Hartledon, had been writing confidentially from Ireland regarding Kirton and his doings. That her eldest son was about to steal a march on her and marry again seemed almost indisputably clear; and the miserable dowager, dancing ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... blushes pass To be so poor and weak, He falls into the dewy grass, To cool his fevered cheek; And hears a music strangely made, That you have never heard, A sprite in every rustling blade, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Och hone! widow machree, But you're keeping some poor fellow out in the cowld, Och hone! widow machree. With such sins on your head, Sure your peace would be fled, Could you sleep in your bed, Without thinking to see Some ghost or some sprite, That would wake you each night, Crying, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... art a restless, wayward sprite, So young, so tender, and so fair, I dare not trust thee from my sight, Nor let thee breathe the common air! Home to my heart, then, quickly flee, It is the only ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... that which doth conspissate active is; Wherefore not matter but some living sprite Of nimble Nature which this lower mist And immense field of Atoms doth excite, And wake into such life as best doth fit With his own self. As we change phantasies The essence of our soul not chang'd a whit, So do these Atoms change ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... Isabel whom Clara last remembered with her baby in her lap, beautiful and almost as inanimate as a statue? There was scarcely more change from the long-frocked infant to the bustling important sprite, than from that fair piece of still life to the active house-mother. Unruffled grace was innate; every movement had a lofty, placid deliberation and simplicity, that made her like a disguised princess; ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should rise twenty-five?" cried Erma. She was running about excitedly like a water-sprite. Her red sweater gleamed in the sullen gray light. The rain was trickling from her Tam-o-Shanter; but she was oblivious of all, save the ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... serpent marred the Eden of which the sacred legends of the Semites tell, so in the folk-thought does some evil sprite or phantom ever and anon intrude itself in the Paradise of childhood and seek ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... light-gathering he discerns things for which the light falling on his pupil one-fifth of an inch in diameter would not be sufficient. We never have seen any sun or stars; we have only seen the light that left them fifty minutes or years ago, more or less. Light is the aerial sprite that carries our measuring-rods across the infinite [Page 22] spaces; light spreads out the history of that far-off beginning; brings us the measure of stars a thousand times brighter than our sun; takes up into itself evidences ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... is edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, Whose screams forebode that ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the Muse, And her divine employment! The blameless Muse, who trains her Sons For hope and calm enjoyment; Albeit sickness, lingering yet, Has o'er their pillow brooded; And Care waylays their steps—a Sprite Not easily eluded. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... she cried, "thou young Rhine-sprite, thou water-imp, run to the wood for another bundle of fagots! Away, haste thee, or I 'll give thee back to thy elfin kinsfolk, who are ever ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... this? Nay, callous he whom this stirs not to rage, Punch pictures, with prophetic pen, a brighter cheerier page, Which must be turned, and speedily: Good Mr. PROSPERO BULL, Your Ariel is the Electric Sprite, DIBDIN, of pity full For tempest-tost Poor JACK, descried a Cherub up aloft Watch-keeping o'er his venturous life. That symbol, quoted oft, Must find new form to fit the time. The Ariel of the Spark Must watch around our storm-lashed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... interest that the thought of me, and the affection that I shall ever bear you, will soften your melancholy and decrease the bitterness of your tears. But if my friendship can make you look on life with less disgust, beware how you injure it with suspicion. Love is a delicate sprite[75] and easily hurt by rough jealousy. Guard, I entreat you, a firm persuasion of my sincerity in the inmost recesses of your heart out of the reach of the casual winds that may disturb its surface. ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... whan from the bluie sea The upswol[85] sayle dyd daunce before his eyne; Swefte as the withe, hee toe the beeche dyd flee. 85 And founde his fadre steppeynge from the bryne. Lette thyssen menne, who haveth sprite of loove, Bethyncke untoe hemselves how ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... celebrated his twentieth birthday, and he considered it disgraceful that he had never visited the "Big City," as New York was always known at Sanford. Norry met him at Grand Central, a livelier and more robust Norry than Hugh had ever seen. The boy actually seemed like a boy and not a sprite; his cheeks were tanned almost brown, and his gray eyes danced with excitement when he ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. It is Juno and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... boy, not six years old, A sprite of birth and lineage high: His birth I did myself behold, His caste ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of those smooth and lurking naiads which haunt lost pools—or like some ambushed water-sprite meditating malice, and slyly alert to do you a harm. Have a care, else I transform you into a fish and chase you under the water, and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... aright Its charming paths, its sloping height, Its beautiful and broad expanse, Must one approach in witching night When, like abodes of airy sprite Revealed unto the wondering glance, O'erflooded with electric light Than Luna's beams more dazzling bright, Illumined nooks the scene enhance; While zephyrs mischievous unite The timid stroller to affright By swaying boughs in ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... And thou hast broken the bond of bread and salt; wherefore the Almighty hath thrown thee into my grasp, and far is thy chance of escape from me." Rejoined Bahram, "By Allah, O my son, O Hasan, thou art dearer to me than my sprite and the light of mine eyes!" But Hasan stepped up to him and hastily smote him between the shoulders, that the sword issued gleaming from his throat-tendons and Allah hurried his soul to the fire, and abiding-place dire. Then ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... brightened when I came, light feet that flew to welcome me, and hands that loved to minister to every want of mine. Even when I sat engrossed among my books, there was a pleasant consciousness that I was the possessor of a household sprite whom a look could summon and a gesture banish. I loved her as I loved a picture or a flower,—a little better than my horse and hound,—but far less than I loved my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of his adoration. The affair is a somewhat mysterious one, and the lady seems to have suffered from the fire through which her powerful companion passed unscathed. Again, quaintest and oddest of all, is the fancy kindled by that "mysterious sprite of genius," as one of her contemporaries calls her, Bettina Brentano, the gifted child-woman, who fascinated all who came within her reach, from Goethe and Beethoven down to princes and nobles. Goethe's correspondence with this strange ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of your head about. Now?" asked Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the post office. "Have you discovered another kindred spirit?" Excitement hung around Anne like a garment, shone in her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane, like a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in wrong, but not in right. My second is in nymph, but not in sprite. My third is in Willie, but not in Ann. My fourth is in tin, but not in can. My fifth is in tinkle, but not in bell. My sixth is in ill, but not in well. My seventh is in see, but not in look. My eighth is ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... I am, though I have oftentimes longed to make an acquaintance with one. By the way, I should think this building of nooks and corners was admirably adapted for the carrying out some marvel of the sort. Pray, is there not some hobgoblin or merry sprite playing his antics about ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... for a Pilot of State. The knowing Nautilus sets her sails In a way to weather the roughest gales; But an egg for bark, with an imp for crew, To navigate Politics' boundless blue, Looks crank and queer; Drifting comes dear— It may pay for a day, but scarce for a year. A Puck-like sprite it may please to see "All things befall preposterously." But pure perversity soon out-pegs, GRANDOLPH, "as sure as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... sprite may bring you as a boon Sweets from the rose that crowns imperial June, Or reminiscence of ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... thou the fashion of thy dress?" * She answered us in pleasant way with double meaning dight, We call this garment creve-coeur; and rightly is it hight, * For many a heart wi' this we brake and harried many a sprite." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... hand-maid of electricity cannot be told, for it seems impossible to set limits to the future conquests of the latter, which is probably destined to perform miracles un-dreamt of to-day, perhaps coupled in some unthought-of way, with radium, the youngest sprite of the weird, uncanny tribe of mysterious agents. Uranium, the supposed basis of the latest discovery, Radium, has only one-millionth part of the heat of the latter. The slow-moving earth takes twenty-four hours to turn upon its axis. Radium ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... sepulchre's moss-cankered seat, Beneath the Abbey's ivied wall That trembles o'er its shade; Where wrapt in midnight gloom, alone, Thou lovest to lie and hear The roar of waters near, And listen to the deep dull groan Of some perturbed sprite Borne fitful on the heavy gales ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... but by no means surprising fact, that Cupid planted himself in the midst of this party, and, with his fat little legs, in imminent danger of capsizing the dishes, began to draw his bow and let fly his arrows right and left. Being an airy sprite, though fat, and not at any time particularly visible, a careless observer might have missed seeing him; but to any one with moderate powers of observation, he was there, straddling across a dish of salad as plain as the salt-cellar before Captain Wopper's nose. His deadly ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... creature; for, setting aside a mother's fondness (which, by the bye, is growing on me, her little intelligent smiles sinking into my heart), she has an astonishing degree of sensibility and observation. The other day by B——'s child, a fine one, she looked like a little sprite.—She is all life and motion, and her eyes are not the eyes of a ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... is rude," she would say to Dora,—"insufferably so. She told Madame A. that she looked like an apple-tree; which might have been taken for a compliment, had not the saucy little sprite explained herself by pointing to that old tree in the garden which the flowering shrubbery has decked with every variety of blossom: Mrs. A. is extremely fond of fancy colors. And when I took her to Bowker's the other day, that sick Miss Ellenwood was examining his new French goods, and ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... Na.nefer.ka.ptah, from which he finally comes off victorious by his brother's use of a talisman, and so secures possession of the coveted magic book. The fourth act—which I have here only summarised—shows how Na.nefer.ka.ptah resorts to a bewitchment of Setna by a sprite, by subjection to whom he loses his magic power. The fifth act shows Setna as subjected to Na.nefer.ka.ptah, and ordered by him to bring the bodies of his wife and child to ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... Then an impish sprite of mischief whispered in her ear and her eyes danced merrily. On that chance meeting with Cora and Linda in the hall Cora had told her and Grace that they were staying in a suite of rooms on the third floor, and had asked them to come to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... what cursed morn, To find this bright pomp all surrendered, These palaces an empty shell, This vigor listless ruin rendered,— While every sprite of its delight Mocks fickle echoes through the court, And in our place a sculptured trace Saddens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... India, brought a monkey, which he presented to his wife. She called it Sprite, and soon became ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... through a haze After the wedded couple strain; Alas! the friend of childish days Away, Tattiana, hath been ta'en. Thy dove, thy darling little pet On whom a sister's heart was set Afar is borne by cruel fate, For evermore is separate. She wanders aimless as a sprite, Into the tangled garden goes But nowhere can she find repose, Nor even tears afford respite, Of consolation all bereft— Well nigh her ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... family of Georgia "crackers" had been a good deal of a misfit in the Vermont community until Janice had found and interested herself in them. Virginia, a black-haired sprite of eleven or twelve, was the leader of the family in all things, although there were several older children. But "Jinny" was ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... is edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, Whose screams forbode that ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... is sitting safely in the middle of civilisation—and yet still lives as a natural power in the people—is represented, on the whole, in pigmy proportions in the south. Here they have a little terror of small hobgoblins, good-natured fairies, a love-sick river-sprite, and so forth, beings who with us in the north, almost go about our houses like superstition's tame domestic animals. You have there, too, good-natured elves, who carry on their peaceful boating and coasting trade invisibly among the people. But then, in addition, natural ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... very strong with Hawthorne, and he quotes Emerson, who called Thoreau "the young god Pan." And this lends much semblance to the statement that Thoreau served Hawthorne as a model for Donatello, the mysterious wood-sprite in the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... and forth beneath the tree for hours; four times she crouched and sprang at the dancing sprite above her, but might as well have clutched at the illusive wind that murmured through ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Kildare approaching down the long stairway with the appreciation of a connoisseur. Beside her moved a slender sprite of a girl, whose hair gleamed like spun gold above a dress of apple-green. But his glance for her was merely cursory, and returned at once to the older woman. Of this Jemima was quite aware. It had happened to her before. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... went, silent and diligent, giving the grace of willingness to every humble or distasteful task the day had brought her; but some malignant sprite seemed to have taken possession of her kingdom, for rebellion broke out everywhere. The kettles would boil over most obstreperously,—the mutton refused to cook with the meek alacrity to be expected from the nature of a sheep,—the stove, with unnecessary warmth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and Ramona which Margarita did not know. The girl was always like a sprite,—here, there, everywhere, in an hour, and with eyes which, as her mother often told her, saw on all sides of her head. Now, fired by her new purpose, new passion, she moved swifter than ever, and saw and heard even ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... is her heart, and knit with tenderest ties To those she loves, and, elsewise, otherwise; For such a sprite, whose birthplace is the skies, Of manly beauty blent with woman's grace, No mortal pen, though fain, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lustrous threads of marble whiteness. They form long gauzy streamers as fine as sifted snow, giving to it the name of "Bridal Veil." No bride ever wore a veil of such delicate and exquisite texture unless it was some water sprite, fit creature to be adorned with such gauzy and wind-woven drapery. Only the fairy looms of Nature can produce lace-like gossamer films of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... equal among mankind; * Sultan of Beauty, and proof I'll cite: Thine eye-brows are likest a well-formed Nn,[FN35] * And thine eyes a Sd,[FN36] by His hand indite; Thy shape is the soft, green bough that gives * When asked to all with all-gracious sprite: Thou excellest knights of the world in stowre, * With delight ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... congratulated by a sympathetic, effusive American who had clapped him on the back, and who had said, "Oh, never fear—you will speak well!" he would have said nothing. The shy sprite in his own eyes would have read in his neighbor's eyes the dreadful truth that his sympathetic neighbor would have indubitably betrayed—a fear that he would not do well. The phlegmatic and stony Englishman neither felt nor cared whether Hawthorne spoke well or ill; ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... sprite, Bold, wicked, 'I don't care,' In life's long run less harm has done Because he is so rare; And one can be so stern with him, Can make the monster shrink; But, lack a day, what can we say ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy violin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make him cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly music in ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him. The boy, though, could think of nothing except that his little excursion among new and strange adventures was to begin, actually to begin. But then, quite unaccountably, there fell over his eagerness a chilling gloom. The delightful sprite named Expectation, who had whispered so piquantly of this same eventful morn, had basely changed herself into a hideous vampire, and she muttered at him, in frightful, raucous tones. Yet the hag's snarls were true promises. There was to come, surely, inexorably, a certain other eventful ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... A fairy or water-sprite that resides in the neighbourhood of the Orkneys is popularly known as Tangie, so-called from tang,, the seaweed with which he is covered. Occasionally he makes his appearance as a little horse, and at other times ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... But the sprite that led us paused for nothing, and long before I had passed the first step she had reached the bottom one, and was groping her way towards the single gleam of light that infused itself through the otherwise ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... was being played was indeed wonderful. This was not for the delight of children: no happy sprite with dancing feet could maintain this measure. It was music for the most advanced, enlightened intelligence,—for the soul that music had quickened to far depths,—for the heart that had suffered, triumphed, and gained the kingdom of calm,—for a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... great man looking with truth and kindliness into men's natures, and reading their characters and abilities in their words and acts, has a higher and better power than that attributed to the wandering sprite, for such a man holds in his hand the surest key to success. Washington, quiet and always on the watch, after the fashion of silent greatness, studied untiringly the ever recurring human problems, and his just ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... fairies, O pygmy of fire, Will nothing those brave little wings of yours tire? You follow the flowers from southern lands sunny, You pry amid petals all summer for honey! Now rest on a twig, tiny flowerland sprite, Your dear little lady sits near in delight; In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles— Two dots of white eggs to her warm breast she cuddles! Whiz-z! whiff! off to your flowers! Buzz mid the perfume of jasmine bowers! Chatter and chirrup, my king of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... door, put the bulging suit-case on a chair and watched the girl as she whirled about the hall, as graceful as a water sprite, with eyes alight with mischief and animation. The sight of her was so bewitching, the fact that she had come to him for help so good, that his curiosity to know what it was that ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... stock this saddle sprite Is grosser grown with savage things. Inured to storms, his fierce delight Is lawless as the beasts he swings His swift rope over.—Libidinous, obscene, Careless of dust and dirt, serene, He faces snows in calm disdain, Or makes his ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... quotha! 'Twas patience in truth a body had need of, who was thrown at all with her little ladyship. But there was ne'er so beautiful a maiden born in all the broad land of England; nor will be again—not though London Tower be standing when the last trump sounds. Meseemed she was an elf-sprite, so tiny was she; and her face like a fair flower, so fresh and pure. Her hair was shed about her face like sunlight on thistle-down, and her eyes made a shining behind it, like the big blue gems in her mother's jewel-box. When she laughed, it was as ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... blue flame dost know? Canst tell where it comes from, or where it will go? Is it the soul, released from clay, Over the earth that takes its way, And tarries a moment in mirth and glee Where the corse it hath quitted interred shall be? Or is it the trick of some fanciful sprite, That taketh in mortal mischance delight, And marketh the road the coffin shall go, And the spot where the dead shall be soon laid low? Ask him who can answer these questions aright; I know not the cause of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite, Friend and associate of this clay, To what unknown region borne Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... a common object at the Rink was a tall young man, in all the agonies of a debut on skates, and a bewitching little attendant sprite shooting before and around him, occasionally righting him with a fairy touch when he evinced too wild a desire to dash his brains against ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... purely an affair of the intellect, and so is society when it is at all good; no one but a fool dreams of going there for fine feelings and profound emotions. But the intellect to be nimble must be free: 'tis a sprite will play you the prettiest tricks an you give it the run of the house; close but one door though, and it sits sulking in the lobby. Delightful are the games it can play you: wit, irony, criticism, thrilling ideas, visions ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... in fantastic patterns on the projecting windows and fretted stone balconies of the quaint and crowded houses. It was not an honest and single-minded snow-storm, such as would seek to shroud the whole city in its delicate white mantle, but rather a tricksy and capricious sprite, that neglected one spot to hurl itself with wanton violence on another. Borne on the breath of a keen and shifting wind, it came tossing gleefully full in the face of a solitary artisan who, wrapped in a heavy cloak, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... and variety of thought. Heine's humor is never persistent, it never flows on long in easy gayety and drollery; where it is not swelled by the tide of poetic feeling, it is continually dashing down the precipice of a witticism. It is not broad and unctuous; it is aerial and sprite-like, a momentary resting-place between his poetry and his wit. In the "Reisebilder" he runs through the whole gamut of his powers, and gives us every hue of thought, from the wildly droll and fantastic to the sombre and the terrible. Here is a ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... carrying his shoes under his arms and looking wise, followed by cronies, fairies, goblins, and all the troops just loosed from Noah's storm-tossed ark. They walked, they strutted, they soared, they swam, and some came in through fire. One sprite climbed up to the moon on a ladder made of leaves and frozen dew-drops. A peacock with a great hooked bill flew in and out among the branches of a pomegranate-tree pecking the rosy fruit. He screamed so loud that Apollo ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... confounds elves with fairies in deriving all alike from fauns and dryads. Robin is "mad-merry," "jocund and facetious," "a cozening idle friar or some such rogue" [in origin], and so forth—simply described by Shakespeare as a "shrewd and knavish sprite." The forms of mischief in which he delights are described in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. i. 33-57, and all these "gests" may be found in the contemporary Robin Goodfellow literature;[86] though we have observed that some of the functions attributed ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... or demon, Common Sense! Seen seldom by us mortals dense, Come, sprite, inform, inhabit me And teach me art ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... the long-spurred red and yellow columbine and the painted cup, then the coral honeysuckle, jewelweed, trumpet-creeper, Oswego tea, and cardinal flower have the honor of catering to the exacting little sprite from spring to autumn. His sojourn in our gardens is prolonged until his beloved gladioli, cannas, honeysuckles, nasturtiums, and salvia succumb ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... to hear so good an account of your activity and interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in the flesh. Please remember me to your wife and to the four-year-old sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher matters. Do you know where the road crosses the burn under Glencorse Church? Go ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... doubt of the Matter; and he dreamt of nothing but Spectres and Devils: The very Habit of his Mind was got into his Face, that he was so pale, and meagre and dejected, that you would say he was rather a Sprite than a Man: And in short, he was not far from being stark mad, and would have been so, had it not ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... bewitching sprite. You reproached me just now with bringing her here, here under your very eyes, you said. Faustina, I brought her here, to this remote hold, that she might be the more completely in my power. That I might, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... rejected travelled. It is true that Mr. Erne had often expressed his film of dissatisfaction with the conventual results, and had planned an attack on matters of more solid learning; but, tricksy as a sprite, Eloise had escaped his designs, broken through his regulations, implored, just out of shackles, a year's gambol in liberty, and had made herself too charming to be resisted in her plea; and if, feeling his health fail, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... ancient or modern superstition. Hahn endeavoured to group the folk-tales of Europe under forty heads, and Baring Gould has followed his example. In every corner of Christendom some form of kelpie, sprite, troll, gnome, imp, or demon has a place in the mind of the people, much the same as ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... weary task foredone. Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the scritch owl, scritching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the churchway paths to glide: And we fairies, that do run, By the triple Hecate's team, From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallowed ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... asked him in and he went. Aunt Priscilla was out, and tea was served for the two of them from a lacquered tea cart—Orange Pekoe and Japanese wafers. It was delicious but unsubstantial. Dulcie with her coat off was like a wood sprite in leaf green. Her hair was gold, her eyes wet violets; but Mills missed something. He had a feeling that he wanted to get home and talk ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... and its ills, Duns and their bills, Bid we to flee. Come with the dawn, Blue-devil sprite; Leave us to-night, Round ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... tongue and throat, Ay, every rhythm and rhyme Of everything that lives and loves And upward, ever upward moves From lowly to sublime! Earth's multitudinous Sons of Light, I heard them lift their lyric might With each and every chanting sprite That lit the sky that wondrous night As far as eye ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... consciousness that he had been in that attitude nearly an hour, and had thought of nothing but Gwendolen and her husband. To be an unusual young man means for the most part to get a difficult mastery over the usual, which is often like the sprite of ill-luck you pack up your goods to escape from, and see grinning at you from the top of your luggage van. The peculiarities of Deronda's nature had been acutely touched by the brief incident and words which made the history of his intercourse with Gwendolen; and this ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... laughingly. The soft yellow hair was blown about her like a cloud, and the great bow under her chin gave her a coquettish air. What a changeful little sprite she was! ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fallen solemn, "haven't time. I'm going to take Marsh and the SPRITE and go to town. Old Heinzman," he added as an afterthought, "is stringing booms ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... was Cheiron's real name—knocked the ashes from his long pipe next day at eleven o'clock in the morning, after his late breakfast and began to arrange his books. His mind was away in a land of classical lore; he had almost forgotten the sprite who had invaded his solitude the previous afternoon, until he heard a tap at the window, and saw her standing there—great, intelligent eyes aflame and ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... form, in The Dolliver Romance. There was even a Persian kitten, too, to bear little Imogen company. But no fiction could surpass the singularity of this withered old magician living with the pale, tiny sprite of a child of mysterious birth in the ghost-haunted ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... The younger had commenced practising the same delicate and ingenious craft of embroidery, and the two pursued their industry in company under the same employer. It was amusing to mark the demure assumption of womanhood darkening the brows of the aerial little sprite, as, with all the new-born consequence of responsibility, she walked soberly by her sister's side, frame in hand, and occasionally revealed to passers-by a brief glimpse of her many-coloured handiwork. They were the very picture ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... herself to sleep. No comforting sprite whispered to her that she had won the first round in an arduous campaign. On the contrary, she fully expected dismissal on ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with buttercups, and cedars with the flying drops of rain—there was gesture. For gesture and attitude can convey all the important and necessary things, while speech in the human sense is but an invention of some sprite who wanted people to wonder what they really meant. In sublimest moments it is never used even in the best circles of intelligence; it drops away quite naturally; souls know one another face to face in ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... in the good greenwood when the goblin and sprite ranged free, When the kelpie haunted the shadowed flood, and the dryad dwelt in the tree; But merrier far is the trolley-car as it routs the witch from the wold, And the din of the hammer and the cartridges' clamor as they banish the swart kobold! O, a sovran ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick |
