"Sylph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jingle, Soft tunes that sweetly mingle, The cows are coming home. Malvine and Pearl and Florimel, Dekamp, Redrose and Gretchen Schnell, Queen Bell and Sylph and Spangled Sue— Across the fields I hear her "loo-oo" And clang her silver bell; Goling, golang, golinglelingle, With faint far sounds that mingle, The cows come slowly home; And mother-songs of long-gone ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... those eyes that must eclipse the day: Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, 15 And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground, And the press'd watch return'd a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow prest, Her guardian SYLPH prolong'd the balmy rest: 20 'Twas He had summon'd to her silent bed The morning-dream that hover'd o'er her head; A Youth more glitt'ring than a Birth-night Beau, (That ev'n in slumber caus'd her cheek to glow) Seem'd to her ear his winning ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... that sabbath slept. The valley dreamed, and the fairy lute Of the whispering reed by the brook was mute. The slender rush o'er the glassy rill, As a marble shaft, was erect and still, And no airy sylph on the mirror wave, A dimpling trace of its footstep gave. The moon shone down, but the shadows deep Of the pensile flowers, were hushed in sleep. The pulse was still in that vale of bloom, And the Spirit rose from its marshy tomb. It rose o'er the breast of a silver spring, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... the core," thought Jack. "Large grey eyes, rich brown hair— the complexion of the lily tinged with the rose—a figure a sylph might envy." ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... more strange for her to do, even this received such a varnish from her lips, her eyes, her beauties, her irradiating zeal, that reason everlastingly renounce me if I scarcely knew, while she spoke, whether it were not the history of some sylph, some heavenly spirit she ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... who spoke thus playfully was fair, tall, and sylph-like, in a muslin dress, and with just the coquettish desinvolture which an English girl brings home from abroad, and loses again after a few months of native life. Joshua was the reverse of playful; the world was too important a concern for him to ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... not trouble herself to put on her prettiest gown when the evening train came in, bringing the bachelors from the city. She was tall—five foot eight in her stockings; all her muscles were well developed; there was nothing sylph-like about her waist, but all her motions had a strong, gentle grace of their own that bespoke health and dignity. She had a profession, too, which was much beneath most of the be-crimped and smile-wreathed maidens who basked in the favour of the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... into life beneath its parent's breast, 415 Chirps in the gaping shell, bursts forth erelong, Shakes its new plumes, and tries its tender song.— —And now the talisman she strikes, that charms Her husband-Sylph,—and calls him to her arms.— Quick, the light Gnat her airy Lord bestrides, 420 With cobweb reins the flying courser guides, From crystal steeps of viewless ether springs, Cleaves the soft air on still expanded wings; Darts like a sunbeam ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... describing Belinda, the heroine, awaking from sleep. He tells how her guardian sylph brings a morning dream to warn her of coming danger. In the dream she is told that all around her unnumbered fairy spirits fly ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the hero's ravings about his Matilda's eyes and cheeks, and her foot and her sylph-like waist, and her raven hair, I wondered what that young man would say of me if he were my lover and I his persecuted mistress. The Matilda was a pleasing person enough; but if I take her point by point, it would be absurd to speak of her charms in the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... with visions bright Of sylph and river, flower and fay, Now through a narrow corridor She goes ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... the beautiful sylph darkened in a moment, like a cosmoramic landscape. "And why not?" returned she, pettishly; "I ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... proved a happy one, until death sundered the tie. Caroline Mary, who thus became the Duchess de Berri, was of sylph-like grace of figure, beautiful in features, and by her affable manners and unaffected amiability won all hearts. Four years glided swiftly away. Two children were born, a son and a daughter; both died in infancy. A third ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... lace, with her deep pointed bodice, a bright flower in her coal-black hair beside the tall comb, and her exquisitely shaped arms adorned with heavy bracelets. "Oh, what magnificent eyes! What exquisite long lashes!" you exclaim to yourself. See her poise an instant with the grace of a sylph, one slippered foot just touching the floor, then click, click, sound the castanets, as they have sounded for upwards of two thousand years and are likely to do for two thousand more, for their inspiriting click seems necessary to move Spanish feet and give ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... Lucy entered at another door, having changed her dress since her return. The exquisite feminine beauty of her countenance, now shaded only by a profusion of sunny tresses; the sylph-like form, disencumbered of her heavy riding-skirt and mantled in azure silk; the grace of her manner and of her smile, cleared, with a celerity which surprised the Master himself, all the gloomy and unfavourable thoughts which had for some time overclouded ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... hair, a natural ornament which woman seeks much to improve, was of bright glossy brown, and encumbered rather than adorned with a snood, set thick with marine productions, among which the small clear pearl found in the Solway was conspicuous. Nature had not trusted to a handsome shape, and a sylph-like air, for young Barbara's influence over the heart of man; but had bestowed a pair of large bright blue eyes, swimming in liquid light, so full of love and gentleness and joy, that all the sailors from Annanwater to far Saint Bees acknowledged their power, and sung songs about the bonnie lass ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... commenced with the 'Magic-wove Scarf,' from Barnett's opera of 'The Mountain Sylph.' Barnett is a fine composer, and was theoretically educated in Germany; and, on his return, he composed the above opera. The musicians in England were much surprised when this clever author left the field of composition, after he had received such popularity from his opera of 'The Mountain Sylph;' ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... and stores. And little Anne was certainly as lovely and engaging a little creature as ever I saw; while, as to her elder sister, in all the trouble and anxiety of the night, I could not help enjoying the sight of her beautiful eager face and form. She was tall and very slight, sylph-like, as it was the fashion to call it, but every limb was instinct with grace and animation. Her face was, perhaps, rather too thin for robust health, though this enhanced the idea of her being all spirit, as also ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Phil arranged the usual preliminaries, sick at heart, and wearily certain as to the result. Three put in an appearance—Vercoe, Baines, and Roberts—and in place of the burly forms of the rest of the St. Amory's eleven, the sylph-like figures of their fags flitted to Phil's hall of entertainment with curt little notes. Worcester and the rest "regretted they were unable to avail themselves ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... (In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly) Voglio e non. You're hot! You're scalding! The left hand ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... began to pull again, and the coxswain steered so as to bring the Zephyr in a circle round the Sylph. ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... about a month, when I was invited to a ball. My spirits and strength had been renovated by the change of scenery, and I was persuaded to dance. I was at that time particularly fond of the amusement, and my partial friends flattered me by saying that I measured the mazy figure like a sylph. I was at that period a nurse; and, during the evening, Maria was brought to an antechamber to receive the only support she had ever yet taken. Unconscious of the danger attendant on such an event, I gave her her accustomed nourishment immediately after dancing. ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... open forest glade, he may look up just in time to see a great strange butterfly—a blue Morpho, let us say, wandering in some far country where this angel insect is unknown—passing athwart his vision with careless, buoyant flight, the most sylph-like thing in nature, and all blue and pure like its aerial home, but with a more delicate and wonderful brilliance in its cerulean colour, giving such unimaginable glory to its broad airy wings; ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... an involuntary cry of incredulity and admiration as his eyes rested upon the picture—upon the pure, sweet face, surrounded by a wealth of golden, glossy hair, and the sylph-like form, so perfect in every contour. But a charge of silence from Harris, made ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... through the crowd, a mask dressed as a sylph bent its head over my shoulder, and I heard the words, "Why are you not in a domino?" I made some careless answer. "Go and get one immediately," was the reply. "Take this card, fasten it on your robe, and meet me here again." The mask ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... object of a piquant, amused scrutiny under her long lashes. It came to him that this Paris-gowned, long-limbed young sylph was more than willing to let him become intrigued by her charms. But Kirby Lane had not called so early in the day to fall ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... as in Sub For as in a e any o oo to a o what o oo would c z suffice o u son c s cite ph v Stephen c k cap ph f sylph ch k ache q k liquor ch sh machine qu kw quote d j soldier s sh sure e i England s zh rasure e a there s z rose e a feint u e bury ee i been u i busy f v of u oo rude g j cage u oo pull gh f laugh x ks wax gh k lough x ksh noxious ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... compositions are as gay and fantastic as the wiles of an enamored, yet mischievous sylph; some are soft, playing in undulating light, like the hues of a salamander; some, full of the most profound discouragement, as if the sighs of souls in pain, who could find none to offer up the charitable prayers necessary for their deliverance, breathed through their notes. Sometimes ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... "I don't know about the sylph-like form, but at least I mean to possess a slender figure when I have followed Miss Cullam's advice on diet. ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... little sylph, resting on the tiniest of feet, with hands so charming that you would feel an almost irresistible desire to fold them caressingly within your own—the rich complexion of a brunette with the bloom of Hebe on her cheek—her hair like burnished jet—eyes large, lustrous and black—but (alas ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... somewhat stolid and indifferent friends, saying, "They're going to fire it as soon as we round the point"; and presently a dull boom, as of a small piece of ordnance discharged in the neighborhood of the hotel, struck through the gathering fog, and this elderly sylph clapped her hands and exulted: "They've fired it, they've fired it! and now the captain will blow the whistle in answer." But the captain did nothing of the kind, and the lady, after some more girlish effervescence, ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... midst of these excited feelings, the ballet; drawing its magic net about the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like form, her scarf floating behind her, as if she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings. Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did her feet touch the earth. She seemed to floatin the air, and the floor to bend and wave under her, as ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... coming. She is here; and the trappings of the wanderers are on board. The young wild man stands alone upon the upper deck. His eyes pierce to where stands the sylph he leaves with reluctance. She is looking at him. He lifts his cap and bows farewell. She waves her kerchief in return. The steamer speeds away. They are parted. Has that brief interview left an impression upon those two young hearts to endure beyond a day? Will ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... head. His vermilion lips, brilliant white teeth, and arched eye-brows gave him the air of a charming girl. So graceful and airy are his movements, that one might well ask, whether he be mortal or a heavenly spirit. He looks like a sylph formed of the essence of flowers, or a soul descended from the moon. Is it indeed a youth who has come out to divert himself, or is it a sweet perfume from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... feet in the witchery of its rhythm and set them moving upon the sand-covered floor of the Temple. Yet there was no smile on her lips as, moved by whatever it is that causes us to do strange things in the East, she danced like a wraith or a sylph, or a leaf in the wind, in and out of the columns and out into the light of the moon, and through the granite door onto the terrace where once had been planted the incense trees which had come with the spoil from Punt to perfume the air to ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... to play the tune which Frank had requested. The Sylph was making very good progress through the water, and the rowers kept pulling with a ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... know the story of St. Anthony? How he was tempted by the Devil in the semblance of a lovely sylph, until all at once he saw the fiend's hoof ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... some willows That overhung the sea, And as she view'd the billows, She moan'd most piteously; The storm in all its rigour Swept the bosom of the main, And shook the sylph-like ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... subject. It inclines to superficiality and is liable to degenerate into a mere detailed description of the person. It demands of the writer the ability to catch striking details and to present them vividly and interestingly. Examples: Hawthorne's "Sylph Etherege" and "Old Esther Dudley;" Poe's "The Man of the Crowd;" James' "Greville Fane" and "Sir Edmund Orme;" Stevenson's "Will o' the Mill;" Wilkins' "The Scent of the ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... enough; springs necessary for comfort & safety Sylph spring frame saves muscle & nerves & is perfection. All users delighted. Investigate. We also make a 30 lb. rigid Sylph. ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... and a wash-sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like women in a paradisaic costume, balancing themselves upon the tips of their toes on the bare backs of frantic and plunging steeds, and kissing their hands to the ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... should taste For it makes the spirit gay, In graceful sylph-like movements free, O'er the smooth floor ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... little bird whispered in my ear that you were seen in Redcliffe Meadows walking with a mighty pretty young lady, with a figure like a sylph and a face like an angel. Now then, Tom, don't be shy, but out with it, and ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... this naturally was that the fine flower of the aristocracy of the most distinguished women, the most elegant toilettes, filled on Wednesday Pleyel's rooms. There was also the aristocracy of artists and amateurs, happy to seize in his flight this musical sylph who had promised to let himself once more and for a few hours be ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Nanlo's face, sylph-like in its beauty, hardened. Negu Mah was wealthy indeed. Had he not bought her, and had she not cost him more, much more, ...
— The Indulgence of Negu Mah • Robert Andrew Arthur
... glides, The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides; While melting music steals upon the sky, And softened sounds along the waters die; Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. All but the sylph—with careful thoughts oppressed, Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast. He summons straight his denizens of air; The lucid squadrons around the sails repair; Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe, That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath. Some to the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... said to the Prince, "This mansion is nothing beside all my others which now, of my free will, I have made thine own; and when thou seest them thou shalt have just cause for wonderment. Then that sylph-like being took seat upon a raised dais and with abundant show of affection seated Prince Ahmad by her side. Presently quoth she, "Albeit thou know me not, I know thee well, as thou shalt see with surprise ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the sofa, smoking too many cigarettes, till, punctually at one o'clock, a peal at the bell announced the arrival of Miss Martin. She entered, radiant, smiling, and in her costume of innocence she looked like a sylph. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... devil hides his claws behind the daintiest fingers, all pink and white. He conceals his cloven hoof in a slipper, truly sylph-like." ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... not in this wide world," I exclaimed, quite unintentionally quoting Tom Moore; "there never has been, nor can ever be again, so charming a creature. No nymph, or sylph, or winged Ariel, or syren with song and mirror, was ever so fascinating—no daughter of Eve so pretty ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... is on the gale, Her step upon the wold; And morning diamonds brightly gem Her braided locks of gold. Far up the pine-wood glen, Her sylph-like form is seen, By hunter in the hazy dawn, Or wandering bard ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... if the tenor always satisfied our ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... quadrille, the waltz succeeds the schottish, the scene presents one bewildering maze of flaunting gossamers and girating bodies, now floating sylph-like into the foreground, then whirling seductively into the shadowy vista, where the joyous laugh dies out in the din of voices. The excitement has seized upon the head and heart of the young,—the child who stood trembling between the first and second downward step finds her ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... whole gang didn't go as mum as a lot of railroad hands after a smash-up. Why, they hadn't seen no such lady, cross their hearts they hadn't. Maybe it was old Rosa, yes? And Rosa a sylph that would fit tight in a pork ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... spirits of the air, More graceful than the Sylph of symmetry, Than the enthusiast's fancied love more fair, 35 Were the bright forms that swept the azure sky. Enthroned in roseate light, a heavenly band Strewed flowers of bliss that never fade away; They welcome virtue to its native ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... all to do with that or anything else that ever was published but 'Evelina;' you, I suppose, read the 'Sylph' for its ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... sylph—like girl, and in a twinkling reappeared with the desired garment, which in a convulsion of laughter she slipped over my head as I sat on the floor; and having fastened it properly round my waist, I rose and paid my respects to my warm hearted relations. But that petticoat—it could not have ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... foremost of the tram: Be thine the throne, and thine to reign O'er all the varying year! But ere thou rulest the Fates command; That of our chosen rival band A Sylph shall win thy heart and ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... the woman whose relations with Mme. de Sevigne were the most intimate was Mme. de Coulanges, who merits here more than a passing word. Her wit was proverbial, her popularity universal. The Leaf, the Fly, the Sylph, the Goddess, her friend calls her in turn, with many a light thrust at her volatile but loyal character. This brilliant, spirituelle, caustic woman was the wife of a cousin of the Marquis de Sevigne, who was as witty as herself and more inconsequent. Both were amiable, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Templeton, young American lads, meet each other in an unusual way soon after the declaration of war. Circumstances place them on board the British cruiser, "The Sylph," and from there on, they share adventures with the sailors of the Allies. Ensign Robert L. Drake, the author, is an experienced naval officer, and he describes admirably the many exciting adventures ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... Dinner in the middle of the day, one course and nothing else. In the evening, tea and bread-and-butter again. You compare her with your Englishwomen who wolf down from three to five meat meals a day; and naturally you find her a sylph. The difference is not a difference of type: it's the difference between the woman who eats not wisely but too well, and the woman who eats not wisely but ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... twist it deftly into unexpected quips and incongruous conjunctions. Her talk ran on like a limpid brook, with a musical ripple playing ever on the surface. As for Bernard, he helped her about the ship like a brother, as she moved lightly around, with her sylph-like little form, among the ropes and capstans. Melissa Hked to be helped, she said; she didn't believe one bit in woman's rights; no, indeed; she was a great deal too fond of being taken care of for that. And ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... Farnesian Hercules! no Roman sylph in her city's decline would ever have called the sun-god, Mr. Apollo. We hope that Houri melted entirely away in the window, but we certainly did ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... encounter the beast, The Words of the Four be addressed: Salamander, shine glorious! Wave, Undine, as bidden! Sylph, be thou hidden! Gnome, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... modish, still vaguely resembled her! It was this suggestion of the woman whom at least he must always remember as the perfection of female beauty, that had tempted him to lurk in the darkness of the terrace and watch Anne through the windows of Bath House. In a day when girls cultivated the sylph, minced in their speech, had numberless affectations, his early choice had possessed a noble, large figure and a lofty dignity. She was not ashamed to walk, was to be seen on her horse in the Row every morning, and ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... fair As fabled Arcady, the sylph and fay, And all their gentle kindred, shun the air, Where car and steamer ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... elder tree! Through the calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyed Sylph or fairy hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. But the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws and darts! First at one and then its fellow, Just as light ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... stream, and ate lunch. Before lunch was finished, two Indian girls came down the river. The younger, tall, slender and graceful, dressed in bright, clean scarlet, was a picture. With her jet black hair hanging in shining plaits, her piercing eyes and handsome face, she was the most comely, sylph-like Indian maiden I ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was—anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... me she shed some trifling favours too. Sure Granville's luck exceeds all other men's Led through a sad variety of tens;[19] The rest have sometimes eights and nines, but he Is always followed by 'the jolly three;'[20] But the great Skew some guardian sylph protects, His judgment governs, and his hand directs When to refrain, when boldly to put in And catch with happy nine the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... but a heavy westerly gale drove both squadrons to the lower end of the lake, where each entered its own harbor on the 19th. August 29 the American put out again, having an additional newly built schooner, named the "Sylph," large and fast, carrying three or four long 32-pounders. Chauncey reported that he had now nine vessels with ninety-one guns, but that the enemy was still superior. In number of guns, possibly; but it is difficult to accept the statement otherwise, except in the one very important ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... that Miss Flower was no party to the plan, for, though she beamed on Webb as she did on all, she frankly showed her preference for the younger officers who could dance as well as ride, and either dancing or riding was her glory. She danced like a sylph; she seemed to float about the room as though on air; she rode superbly, and shirked no leap that even Ray and Field took with lowered hands and close gripping knees. She was joyous, laughing, radiant with all the officers, and fairly glowed with cordiality for all the women. But it speedily ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... companion until I was hoarse. Mischievous Gatty, and yet good and loving as she was mischievous. Serena managed her admirably, and could make her do whatever she liked; and it was pretty to see the sylph-like girl holding the great strong powerful Gatty in awe, lecturing her in a gentle, grave, simple way, with a sweet low voice, that murmured like a stream. Sybil might talk of duty, and "you ought" and "you ought not," until her fair face was flushed ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... comes trotting his horse through the water, and, backing up by the rock on which the distressed lady stands, bids her get on. Get on the back of a horrid bathing-horse! behind the back of a horrid boy! Had she been a sylph the prospect would have been most untempting, but a two-hundred-and-fifty-pounder! Nevertheless, the unhappy fair one begins to prepare for the sacrifice with grief and consternation in her face. "How can I do it?" her trembling lips whisper, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... pick of the men were posted, because, as fast as a callow youth gets worth marrying, somebody promptly marries him. The Fast Young Married Crowd was a closed corporation and played exclusively within itself; the female of the species had to compete only with females of equal tonnage. The only sylph-like temptation that a husband could encounter was a dissolute person whose reputation had already been ruined—and she didn't count, because nobody invited her to parties anyway. A wife could get as fat as she wanted ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... anywhere, we all see for ourselves how many are passed over simply for want of an attractive setting. It was quite on the cards that she might share the fate of those beauties in humble life to whom romantic accidents do not occur, for all her golden hair and aristocratic profile, her figure of a sylph and complexion ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... "Sensibility." "Trilby, le Lutin d'Argail"[83] (Nodier himself explains that he alters the spelling here with pure phonetic intent, so as to keep the pronunciation for French eyes and ears[84]), is a spirit who haunts the cabin of the fisherman Dougal to make a sort of sylph-like love to his wife Jeannie. He means and does no harm, but he is naturally a nuisance to the husband, on whom he plays tricks to keep him away from home, and at length rather frightens the wife. They procure, from a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of those sylvan Amazons who could handle any thing, from the hunting-knife to the ponderous axe; and she dressed in the true sylph-like costume of the backwoods. Her robe, which appeared to be the only garment with which she encumbered herself, fitted her, as they say at sea, "like a purser's shirt on a handspike," and looked for all ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... bathing, though the heads of the swimmers were soon in view. A staircase is reserved for women, who are watched over by the elders of their sex. But they could be seen in the distance, frolicking in the water; and they were so hilarious that their shouts could be heard on board of the Sylph, as the boat ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... another eye that could behold this living picture of health and beauty, without pausing on it with pleasure. The traveller stopped his weary horse on the eve of entering the city which was the end of his journey, to gaze at the sylph-like form that tripped by him, with her milk-pail poised on her head, bearing herself so erect, and stepping so light and free under her burden, that it seemed rather an ornament than an encumbrance. The lads of the neighbouring ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... nose with an upward tilt, which expressed a contemptuous gaiety, an inquiring curiosity; a dimpled chin sloping a little towards the full round throat; the bust and shoulders of a Venus, the waist of a sylph, set off by the close-fitting velvet bodice, with its diamond and turquoise buttons; hair of palest gold, fluffed out into curls that were traps for sunbeams; hands and arms of a milky whiteness emerging from ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Madam, and see these cards! What quaint, odd, old-time figures they are! I wonder if the kings and queens of by-gone centuries were such grotesque-looking objects as these. Look at that Queen of Spades! Why, Dr. Slop's abdominal sesquipedality was sylph-like grace to the Lambertian girth she displays. And note the pattern of her dress, if dress it can be called,—that rotund expanse of heraldic, bar-sinistered, Chinese embroidery. Look at that Jack of Diamonds! What a pair of collar-bones he must have! That little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Bintang, is a dangerous reef, on which the clipper-bark Sylph struck in 1835, and on which she lay for four months, defying the fury of the north-east monsoon and the heavy rolling swell from the Chinese Sea; thus proving beyond a doubt the great strength of a teak-built ship. An English ship in the same circumstances would ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... in the midst of the universal silence, opened my heart to all sweet emotions. It seemed to me that an airy sylph, touched with a sense of my solitude, had come to visit me, and this idea ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the credit of writing the first English opera, strictly so called, since Arne's 'Artaxerxes.' 'The Mountain Sylph,' which was produced in 1834, fulfils all the requirements of the operatic form. It is besides a work of genuine charm and power, and retained its ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Kau'kahi-alii. O, Kaili, Kaili! Kaili, leaf of the koa, Graceful as leaf of the koa, 10 Granddaughter of goddess, Whose name is the breath of love, Darling of blooming Lehua. My lady rides with the gray foam, On the surge that enthralls the desire. 15 I pine for the sylph robed in gauze, Who rides on the surf Maka-iwa— Aye, cynosure thou of all hearts, In all of sacred Wailua. Forlorn and soul-empty the house; 20 You pleasure on the beach Ali-o; Your love is up here in ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... shake, And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground, And the pressed watch returned a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow pressed, Her guardian Sylph prolonged the balmy rest; 'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed The morning-dream that hovered o'er her head; A youth more glittering than a birth-night beau, (That even in slumber caused her cheek to glow) Seemed to her ear his winning lips ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... sylph has a wide range along the temperate regions of the Cordilleras. The genus of sylph to which it belongs is among the most beautiful and graceful in form of the humming-birds. The body is of a bronzed green, and the crown of the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... behind and on all sides of the Sylph threw up the water in mighty geysers, as if it were a typhoon that surrounded the little vessel. Shells screamed overhead, but ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... of sylph-like simplicity to one, whose features, though beautiful, were marked by an expression foreign to simplicity, evincing that taste, not sentiment, presided over her toilet, and that, "chez elle, un beau desordre fut l'effet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... fine, Purpled o'er those wings of thine? Was it some sylph whose tender care Spangled thy robes so fine and fair, And wove them of the morning air? I feel thy little throbbing heart. Thou fear'st, e'en now, death's ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... English people. As for myself, I must admit the frivolous, or, rather mundane, bent of my tastes; the truly admirable spectacle presented to my eyes interested me much less than the young stranger, who at this moment was descending with the lightness of a sylph the little road which led to the Mer ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... said John Seymour, as a light, sylph-like form tripped up the steps of the veranda of the hotel where he was lounging away ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had been snuffed and through the great north window came the rays from the light in the forked tree that fell like moonlight athwart the saloon. In the centre of the broad gleam was a sylph-like form, keeping time to the music in a sort of phantom style of movement; twisting, shimmering folds that appeared to effuse a scintillation of opal shades. 'Twas the chaconne; slow, graceful and full of romance, the ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... and the girl he had left there seemed to be hovering about him. Now and then, she would lay gentle hands upon him, and her soothing touch would send him off to sleep again; but there was a puzzling change in her appearance. He remembered her as slight in figure—sylph-like he had sometimes called her—fastidious and dainty, and always artistically dressed. Now, however, she seemed to have grown taller, stronger, more reserved, and, as he vaguely realized, more capable, while her garments were of a different and coarser fashion. What was still more curious, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... the two vessels lay abreast within easy hail. The brig, with her fine lines and her white sails, looked vaporous and sylph-like in the moonlight. The gunboat, short, squat, with her stumpy dark spars naked like dead trees, raised against the luminous sky of that resplendent night, threw a heavy shadow on the lane of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... To these very favourable observations was added the certainty that the fair object to whom they referred possessed an excellent shape, bordering perhaps on enbonpoint, and therefore rather that of a Hebe than of a Sylph, but beautifully formed, and shown to great advantage by the close jacket and petticoat which she wore after a foreign fashion, the last not quite long enough to conceal a very pretty foot, which rested on a bar of the table at which she ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... house, his hostess's relation, who appeared to more advantage that night than she had ever done before—in a sky-blue dress, which had nothing between it and the fair skin of her neck, lending her an unusually soft and sylph-like aspect. She saw him, and they converged. Her look of 'What do you think of me NOW?' was suggested, he knew, by the thought that the last time they met she had appeared under the disadvantage of mourning clothes, on a wet day in a country-house, ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... to encounter the creature By the spell of the Four, says the teacher: Salamander shall glisten,[12] Undina lapse lightly, Sylph vanish brightly, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... foot Than a sylph or a fairy, Sinuous, wary, I passed from the airy Lawns, where the flute Of the winds made tremulous music ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... expression—tenderness, gentleness, urbanity, simplicity, and benignity in a state of fusion! Now, do not run away, reader, with the idea of an Eastern princess, with gorgeous black eyes, raven hair, tall and graceful form, etcetera! This apparition was fair, blue-eyed, golden-haired, girlish, sylph-like. She was graceful, indeed, as the gazelle, but not tall, and with an air of suavity that was irresistibly attractive. She had a "good" face as well as a beautiful, and there was a slightly pitiful look about the eyebrows that seemed ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... connected with the memory of Lord Byron, and among the rest to the groves and gardens of Annesley Hall, the seat of his early passion for Miss Chaworth. One of her poetical effusions mentions her having seen from Howet's Hill in Annesley Park, a "sylph-like form," in a car drawn by milk-white horses, passing by the foot of the hill, who proved to be the "favorite child," seen by Lord Byron, in his memorable interview with Miss Chaworth after her marriage. That favorite ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... are superior to any others on the coast, and, internally, exhibit taste in their furniture and ornament. The ladies excite the author's pen into absolute rapture; their sparkling eyes and glossy hair, are, in themselves, sufficient to negative the idea of tameness or insipidity, while their sylph-like figures exhibit fresh graces at every step. This is supported by the more important qualities, of "being by far the more industrious half of the community, and performing their household duties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... azure of light fabrics do best agree with Majoli's sylph-like form. Pearls and feathers are consonant to her artistic taste. Her emblematic flower is the lily, of sacred ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... can be very becoming to Lady Mabel," ruminated Mrs. Tempest. "Those small sylph-like figures rarely look well ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... O lame and impotent! As if a little bit of a truncheon could bruise a ghost! What says Ossian, speaking of a ghost? "The dim stars twinkled through his form." A plain proof of his want of substance. So of Pope's sylph: ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... This sylph-like person had little in common with a monstrous lady whose adventures in the wildernes Phelps was fond of relating. She was built some thing on the plan of the mountains, and her ambition to explore ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Gonzago; and the bride alone, of all the beauties who shone in gold and silver, appeared superior in feminine charms to the lovely Beatrice, notwithstanding that her cumbrous robe of grey stuff obscured the delicate proportions of her sylph-like form. Buoyant in spirit, and animated by the scene before her, occasionally a gleam of sunshine would irradiate her brow as she gazed upon the sparkling throng who formed the brilliant pageant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... the summons, proved to be the sylph-like child that had guided the traveller to the house. To the expression of listlessness and desolation which he had previously noticed, there was now added a look of bewilderment and fear. He thought she might, perhaps, be a step-daughter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... his voice Miss Marcia stops and regards him with a surprised smile. She is very pretty, is Marcia,—bewitchingly pretty,—and she has an air of demure grace and modesty about her that is perfectly charming. Why? oh, why does she not remain in that sylph-like, attitude of questioning silence? But she speaks—and the charm ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli |
