"Rapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over the polished ivory keys, and the room was filled with melody. Eeny stood by the piano with a rapt face. Captain Danton sat in an arm-chair and listened with half-closed eyes, and Grace sat down in a corner, and drew ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... rapt contentment join and share; My tide is full; There is new happiness in earth, in air: All beautiful And fresh the world but now so ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... this brown-skinned girl of the rapt and steadfast gaze remained with him. It was, he explained to himself, the look one finds in the eyes of sailors accustomed to the limitless reach of the monotonous seas; it came from the constant contemplation of desert wastes ending only in skylines, of sunlit domes dust-besprinkled, of night ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... earth or heaven, but rather rest, Rapt by the face of heaven, and hold on earth's warm breast. Hushed lips, a beating heart, yea, ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... solitude, was felt by Him. As it had been for Moses and Elijah, the wilderness was His school; and as the collective Israel, so the personal Son of God, has to be led into the wilderness, that there God may 'speak to His heart.' So deep and rapt was the communion, that, for forty days, spirit so mastered flesh that the need and desire for food were suspended. But when He touched earth again, the pinch of hunger began. Analogous cases of the power of high emotion to hold physical wants ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the initiative. Indeed, he showed less of annoyance with his critics than of boredom with 'Biades, who, whichever way his big brother turned, revolved punctually as a satellite, never relaxing his rapt, upward ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... star-pictured Nature's ceiling, Where, trancing the rapt spirit's feeling, And God himself to man revealing, The harmonious spheres Make music, though unheard their ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... of the evening there was a little music, which Mr. Tymperley seemed much to enjoy. He let his head fall back, and stared upwards; remaining rapt in that posture for some moments after the music ceased, and at length ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... rapt expression of hers. "Sing it again, dearie!" he said. She sang it again. "Do you mean it?" he asked then. "Can you sing it, and mean it with all your ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... easy in the old shipmaster's stiff fingers. The mental travail of this unwonted literary effort wrung his brain. An epic poet struggling with his masterpiece could not have been more rapt. And his nerves were correspondingly touchy. Constable Zeburee Nute, emerging at a brisk trot from the town office, had a warning word of counsel for all those intending to venture upon the first selectman's privacy. He ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Love's rapt sense the heartstrings gently sweep With joy divinely fair, the high and deep, To call her home, She shall mount upward unto purer skies; We shall be waiting, in what ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... course," began Jim, at last, awkwardly, "crowin' over dad as I do. I never thought how—how 't would make the rest of you fellers feel." Bob, on the grass, bridled and opened his lips, but something in Jim's rapt face kept him from giving voice to his scorn. "'Course there ain't any one like dad—there can't be," continued Jim hurriedly. "He treats me white, an' he's straight there every time. Dad don't dodge. Maybe I should n't say so much about him, only—well, me an' dad are all alone. There ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... at his feet. Fain would I tell of the reception which he deigned to the fairies, and how he told them of his ancient victories over man; how he chafed at the gathering invasions of his realm; and how joyously he gloated of some great convulsion* in the northern States, which, rapt into moody reveries in those solitary woods, the fierce demon broodingly foresaw. All these fain would I narrate, but they are not of the Rhine, and my story will not brook the delay. While thus conversing ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ago. It informed the world that the seven wives of Bluebeard were the Dawns, and that his two brothers-in-law were the morning and the evening Twilight, identifying them with the Dioscuri, who delivered Helena when she was rapt away by Theseus. We must remind those readers who may feel tempted to believe this that in 1817 a learned librarian of Agen, Jean-Baptiste Peres, demonstrated, in a highly plausible manner, that Napoleon had never ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... Fannes the sweet tresses of thy scorn-gold haire, Admiring oft those redder strawberries, Ript by the Sun-shine of thy loue-blest eyes, Should in this maze of pleasure, being led, Grow weary, with much time satisfied: Then might the eare be rapt with melodie Surpassing farre the seuen-spheard harmonie Deliuerd from thy pearle-enuirond tongue, Each word being sweeter then a well tun'd song. But for the touch, all ages that are past, And times to come, would steale away, and waste Euen like a minute; and no time suffice To ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... an evil daughter to you: I never thought of you—O, never once— Until I heard a moor-bird cry like you. I am wicked, rapt in joys of breath and life, And I must force myself to think of you. I leave you to caretakers' cold gentleness; But O, I did not think that they dare leave you. What woman ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... I am rapt aloft by your words already, my mouth open for your bonne bouche; as you love me, leave me not in those upper regions ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Cardegee thundered suddenly, looking up from the spreading of his blankets and encountering the rapt gaze of the other. "It strikes me as 'ow it 'ud be the proper thing for you to draw your jib, douse the glim, an' turn in, seein' as 'ow it worrits you. Jes' lay to that, you swab, or so 'elp me I'll take a ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... So rapt was I in the sympathetic contemplation of her that I did not see Maitland's entrance or realise I was observed till he plucked me by the coat and motioned me to get down. I did so and he told me he had rented the rooms, and laid before me the ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... into Bradford's steadfast eyes upraised to his, and his own gaze became rapt and well-nigh prophetic. When he spoke again it was in a lower and ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... might be fond to choose. How might he tune the alternate reed with thee, Perhaps a Strephon thou, a Daphnis he, While some old Damon, o'er the vulgar wise, Thinks he deserves, and thou deserv'st the prize! Rapt with the thought, my fancy seeks the plains, And turns me shepherd while I hear the strains. Indulgent nurse of every tender gale, Parent of flowerets, old Arcadia, hail! 40 Here in the cool my limbs at ease I spread, Here ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... chair, and going to Mount Dunstan put his hand on his shoulder, his fine old face singularly rapt ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... learned it from the subsequent events, he had voluntarily surrendered himself, and insisted upon seeing Fanny conveyed to a place of safety. Almost every day while they had been on the island, she had sung her sweet songs to Wahena, and he had listened to them with rapt attention. As the boat slowly went its way, he begged her by signs to sing, and she complied. He expressed his pleasure, which was shared by Ethan and Rattleshag, by the ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... itself, as they proceeded to the castle, Madeline perceived with a tearful repentance of her interference, that he sate by her side cold and rapt; and that once or twice when his eyes dwelt upon her, it was with an ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wide, and while we were preparing for bed there was a buzz of subdued whispers outside. We switched on a powerful electric flashlight and there stood at least forty men, women and children gazing at us with rapt attention, but they melted away before the blinding glare like snow ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... bred for dangling from the gallows-tree; To Saint who spends his holy days in rapturous hope his ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... rippled. The passengers went singing on the deck, as in a parlor, till ten o'clock. We passed a vessel on her beam-ends on a rock just outside the islands, and some of us thought that she was the "rapt ship" which ran ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... drew nigh. Oft turning from her work, With bare arms and uncovered head she clomb The landward slope of the prophetic hill; From whose green head, as on the verge of time, Seer-like she gazed, shading her hope-rapt eyes From the bewilderment of work-day light, Far out on the eternity of waves; If from the Hades of the nether world Her prayers might draw the climbing skyey sails Up o'er the threshold of the horizon line; For when he came she was to be his wife, And celebrate ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... her very old. She saw that his face looked pale and distressed; his eyes were closed, his lips tight set, like one bearing transient pain. At the end of the table her uncle knelt upright, with hands clasped and face uplifted, no feature or muscle moving—a strong figure rapt in devotion. On her other side, as a slight tree waves in the wind, her aunt's slim figure was swaying and bending with feeling that was now convulsive and now restrained. Sometimes she moaned audibly or whispered "Amen." Across the richly-spread table Susannah saw the preacher kneeling ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... with rapt attention every line, every letter that appeared on the white paper, and ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... happened just then to come up and clear the ground. A moment afterwards the ears of all who were awake in the quarter were greeted by an admirable voice proceeding from a man who had seated himself on a stone opposite the door of the Sevillano. Everybody listened with rapt attention to his song, but none more so than Tomas Pedro, to whom every word sounded like a sentence of excommunication, for the romance ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... after reading this letter, rapt into a divine state of exaltation,—the pure joy, in contemplating an infinite good to another, in which the question ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... The speaker's expression grew rapt, and he spoke in the mystic manner which she knew and now dreaded. Her anxiety for the return of Paul Harley grew urgent—a positive need, as, meeting the gaze of the long, magnetic eyes, she felt again, like the touch of cold steel, all the penetrating force of this man's will. ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... went at his "piece" with a set purpose to conquer, to redeem himself, and to bring back the smile into the child's tear-stained face. I watched the face during the speaking. The wide eyes, the parted lips, the whole rapt being, said the breathless audience was forgotten, that her spirit was ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... and magnificent in guilt, Splendid in scorn, rapt in a cloudy dream, He paused at last upon the Stygian silt, And raised calm eyes above the angry stream.... Hand in his breast, he stood till Charon came, While Hades hummed with gossip of ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... good-breeding, so to speak, but it is worth noticing. I have often observed that vulgar persons, and public audiences of inferior collective intelligence, have this in common: the least thing draws off their minds, when you are speaking to them. I love this young creature's rapt attention to her diminutive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... memory of what had passed and no change in her physical condition. This didn't matter so much when, as a mere child, she disappeared for thirty days; but when, mother of an incomparable heir of two, she was rapt away in the middle of a picnic for twenty-five years, and returned to find a husband, mother and father inexplicably old and changed, and dreadfully silent about her babe—well, you see for yourself how hopeless everything was. As if there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... his knees by her, dumb from excess of sympathy, kissing her dress, all unfelt by her; he murmured half-words, he began passionate sentences that died away upon his lips; and she—she thought of nothing but her father, and was possessed and rapt out of herself by the dread of losing him to that fearful country which was almost like the grave to her, so all but impassable was the gulf. But Philip knew that it was possible that the separation impending ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I twined my story in with hers, she listening in a rapt way, peculiarly her own. I told her of my prisonment on the day of her visit. I confessed entirely, up to the point she had narrated. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with Jennie and her husband, for Morrison's constitution was shattered, and he could not work as hard as he wished. They had one son, Alec, who grew up a fine manly boy. The sailor was fond of spinning yarns, to which his son listened with rapt attention, and longed to meet with the same adventures ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... the left (O treacherous want of sight) He poured his praise;—the fish was on the right. Thus would he at the fencer's matches sit, And shout with rapture at some fancied hit; And thus applaud the stage machinery, where The youths were rapt aloft and lost in ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... of her failings, as though there were a rapt press interviewer at her elbow, anxious to make ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... fancy spread her visions gay, Love fondly view'd the fair display, Hope shew'd the blissfu' nuptial day, And I was rapt with Mary, My ain dear Mary; The flowers of Eden strew'd the way That ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... pair of them kneeling on the floor of the entrance hall before a large sheet of paper, on which the professor was drawing a diagram of the solar system, with a little pellet and a big ball to represent earth and sun, while the child was listening with rapt attention to an account of the planets and their movements, which he knew so well how to make simple and precise without ever ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... lost,—once more, now, in hand,—once more he is elated with that wonderful sense of a religious poise, that, it would seem, no doubts or terrors could overbalance. Unconsciously kneeling on the wet deck, he is rapt into a kind of ecstatic indifference to winds, to waves, to danger, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... see the rapt devotion that now lighted up his ugly face until it shone with saintly beauty. The harsh lines were softened, the eyes were gentle, the mouth tender. "Then indeed," he almost whispered, "I might say my 'Nunc Dimittis' ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... aid bestow, O'er my rapt soul bid inspiration flow; Let voice seraphic, mighty Lord, be mine, Whilst I unfold this awful bold design. No less a theme my lab'ring breast inspires, Than earth's last throes and overwhelming fires, Than man arising ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... given—an amusing specimen from a well-established manufactory. "The famous picture of Raffaelle, painted for the church of St John at Bologna, representing St Cecilia holding a musical instrument in her hands, with others at her feet, affords an example of the errors alluded to. She listens with rapt attention to a choir of angels borne on the clouds, and singing. On her right hand are St Paul and St John the Evangelist, strongly characterized; the one by his sword, the other by his eagle, and both by the airs of the heads. On her left are St Magdalene with her cup, and St Augustine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... I gazed in rapt admiration. Across the river a shower had fallen, and the clouds, clearing away abruptly, had left there a twin rainbow of matchless perfection. Its double arch was poised as accurately over the town as if it had been painted there. Each hoop was flawless in form, lovely in ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... went back to his own house praising God. In an ill moment he forgot, however, to stop the hole in the window. The piece of glass broken out at the corner of the window just nipped off the bare heel of the boy standing motionless and looking with rapt eyes into the face of ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... back.' They sang our customary hymn at parting—and broke down before they got to the end. It was she who consoled them! Not once, through all that melancholy ceremony, did she lose her strange composure, her rapt mysterious look. I was the last to say farewell; and I own I couldn't trust myself to speak. She held my hand in hers. For a moment, her face lighted up softly with a radiant smile—then the strange preoccupied expression flowed over her again, like shadow over a light. Her eyes, still looking ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... raised his eyebrows. 'Oh yes, often.' He smiled. 'It is my own modest fashion of attending divine service. The congregation is rapt.' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Rapt in these thoughts I negligently rov'd, Imagin'd transports all my soul employ, When the delightful voice of her I lov'd Sent thro' the Shades a sound of real joy. Confus'd it came, with giggling laughter mixt, And echo from ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... beyond all praise. With few exceptions, their churches are very inferior to those of Normandy, but each returning Sunday finds the Breton churches full of an earnest crowd, evidently assembled for the purpose of worshipping with their whole heart and soul. The rapt expression of many of the faces makes them for the moment simply beautiful, and if an artist could only transfer their fervency to canvas, he would produce a picture worthy of the masters of the Middle Ages, and read a lesson to the world far greater than ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... leaves; And the ripe blood that swells his purple veins Is as the glowing of a sacred fire. He walks with Shelley's spirit on the cliffs Of the Ethereal Caucasus, and o'er The summits of the Euganean hills; And meets the soul of Wordsworth, in profound And philosophic meditation, rapt In some great dream of love towards The human race. The cheery Spring may come, And touch the dreaming flowers into life, Summer expand her leafy sea of green, And wake the joyful wilderness to song, As a fair hand strikes music from a lyre: But Autumn, ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... was unusually brightly awake, and Frederick, joining the rapt young circle, sat and listened to his brother's serio-comic narrative of the night of wreck on the island of Blang; of the swim through the sharks where half the crew was lost; of the great pearl which Desay brought ashore with him; of the head-decorated palisade that surrounded the ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... room belonged to a single customer or to the whole company. This invasion of his realm was indeed the last straw. Men were brutes, and he conceived an unspeakable scorn for humanity when he saw Logre and Monsieur Lebigre fixing their eyes on Florent with rapt attention. Gavard with his revolver irritated him, and Robine, who sat silent behind his glass of beer, seemed to him to be the only sensible person in the company, and one who doubtless judged people by their real value, and was ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... cannot be lost or destroyed—you are a part of it all, and are eternal. 'But,' you ask, 'beyond all of this of which you have told me, what is there—what is the Centre of it All?' Your Teacher's face takes on a rapt expression—a light not of earth beams forth from his ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... course was gone—the feasters fell back on their couches—there was a pause while they listened to the soft voices of the South, and the music of the Arcadian reed. Glaucus was the most rapt and the least inclined to break the silence, but Clodius began already to ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... But while she spoke, rapt as they were within themselves, they saw not one who stood with folded arms beside the rustic bench, and gazed ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... tenderness melt the hardness of our natures. Now, as we stretch the helping hand and witness the joy and gratitude evoked, by our God-like deeds, we feel in every fiber of our being the thrill of the poet's rapt exclamation: ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... things. But the poetry, which was first admired to excess and then rejected with undue contempt, is now beginning to find its due level. It is not poetry of the first order. It is not the poetry of deep meditation or of rapt enthusiasm. Much that was once admired has now become rather offensive than otherwise. And yet it has a charm, which becomes more sensible the more familiar we grow with it, the charm of unaffected and spontaneous ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... who, rapt to heights of tranced trust, These tokens claim to feel and see, Read radiant hints of times to be - Of heart to heart ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in Libby Prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... on edifice of cloud i' the grey and green Of evening,—built about some glory of the west, To barricade the sun's departure,—manifest, He plays, pre-eminently gold, gilds vapour, crag and crest Which bend in rapt suspense above the act and deed They cluster round and keep their very own, nor heed The world at watch; while we, breathlessly at the base O' the castellated bulk, note momently the mace Of night fall here, fall there, bring change with every blow, Alike to sharpened shaft and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... cheek; Makes the heart bound more swiftly to its bliss, And bids the rushing blood the magnet seek— Out from their bounds swell nerve, and pulse, and sense, The veins in tumult would their shores o'erflow; Body to body rapt—and charmed thence, Soul drawn to soul with intermingled glow. Mighty alike to sway the flow and ebb Of the inanimate Matter, or to move The nerves that weave the Arachnean web Of Sentient Life—rules all-pervading ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... weighed in the balance, are found unequal to the demonstration of divine Life and Love; and their highest endeavors are, to divine Science, what a child's love of pictures is to art. A child, in his ignorance, may imagine the face of Dante to be the rapt face of Jesus. Thus falsely may the human conceive of the Divine. If the schoolmaster is not Christ, the school gets things wrong, and knows it not; but ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... The rapt look faded from the strained face, leaving it downcast. "I'm afeared, then, I won't be able to claim that there money," he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was in the companionship and sympathy of a devoted wife, that Ellison thought to find, and found, an exemption from the ordinary cares of Humanity, with a far greater amount of positive happiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams of De Stael. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... bizarre creations. He was the founder of diabolism in French letters. As Sainte-Beuve wrote of Baudelaire: "S'est pris l'enfer et s'est fait diable." The lucubrations of the so-called Satanic School of Byron, Shelley and Hugo were surpassed by Baudelaire's rapt worship of evil as the great power of the world. Take his ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... nothing. They can do with me what they will. What are life and death when in the balance dwells love?" I cried, rapt in unearthly ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... contempt for the vulgar error which sets a value upon wealth and renown and dominion and power, upon gold and purple, and all that dazzles the eyes of the world,—and once attracted my own! I listened with rapt attention, and with a swelling heart. At the time, I knew not what had come over me; my feelings were indescribable. My dearest idols, riches and renown, lay shattered; one moment I was ready to shed bitter tears over the disillusionment, the next, I could have laughed for scorn of these very things, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... hour after this, I had occasion to traverse one of the corridors of Barnan's Hotel, when I saw a group of gentlemen, most of whom sported "Atlantic Cable Charms" on their watchchains, gathered about a person who had secured their rapt attention to some ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Raven saw, but a band seemed to tighten about his heart. Deny her before men, she whom he had not yet untangled from the rapt vision of their meeting? ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... there is nothing in them which a parson of any church or denomination would feel inclined to repudiate, on the score either of their fineness of mental perception or healthiness of moral sense. The author tells us, that, in writing these essays, he has not been rapt away into heroic times and distant scenes, but has written of daily work and worry amid daily work and worry: and herein lies the charm of his discourses. He has one of those sensible, elastic, cheerful natures whose ideal qualities are not perverted by fretfulness and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... nearly as numerous and quite as obstinate as the majority, always refuses to be bound by it. No sooner does some sapient librarian, with the sublime confidence of conviction, get his classification house of cards constructed to his mind, and stands rapt in admiration before it, when there comes along some wise man of the east, and demolishes the fair edifice at a blow, while the architect stands by with a melancholy smile, and sees all his household gods lying shivered ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... sung her best now. There was dead silence; no one had expected such a glorious voice as this. Hugh Ingelow's rapt face showed what he felt as ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... rapt with pleasure and delighte I scarce thynke I am mortall; all the Joys, Wherewith heavens goodnes can inryche a man, Not onlye greete but dwell upon my sence, And whyles I see thee cannot stray from ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... rapt attention to Krenska's accounts of the stage, her numerous appearances and triumphs, and the vivid life of an actor. As she related her experiences Krenska was herself carried away by enthusiasm and painted them in glowing colors; she no ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Irish mountain home, after I had prepared my Latin lessons for the following day, and my uncle, aunt, and cousins had left off work, I joined with great enjoyment in the family group around the turf fire, and listened with rapt attention to songs and stories; my favourite among the latter being the adventures of Barney Henvey among the fairies in the old rath, or "forth," as they called it, ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... he had a great listener in Mrs. Gaunt: she was always there whenever he preached, and her rapt attention never flagged. Her gray eyes never left his face, and, being upturned, the full orbs came out in all their grandeur, and seemed an angel's, come down from heaven to hear him: for, indeed, to a very dark man, as Leonard was, the gentle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the ropes of the swing and among the fruit-laden boughs, miraculously escaping all perils; and over the hedge, where a small wind bore it up and up out of sight. And Martin, who had been looking after it with a rapt gaze, sighed, "Oh!" And six other "Ohs!" echoed his. Then he looked up and saw the six milkmaids standing quite close to him, full of hesitation and longing. So he took six more pipes from his pockets, and soon the air was glistening ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... Very softly a man, coatless and in his socks, had stolen out from the bedroom where he had lain concealed, and was looking in through the opening of the partly closed study door. Virginia felt her finger-nails dig into her flesh. She stood there rapt and breathless. Instinctively she felt that the cards had been taken from her hand, that she was to be a witness of events more swift and definite than any in which she herself could have ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to hesitant lovers, with the proper emphasis and as much feeling as he dared, he managed to make it a wholly impersonal performance. When he finished he dropped the book and glanced over at his companion. She was sitting forward with a rapt expression, her cheeks flushed, her breath coming unevenly. But there was neither challenge nor self-consciousness in her eyes. The sparkle had left them, but it was their innocence, not their melting, that stirred him profoundly. With her palimpsest mind she was a poet for ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... sensibility. How are they affected, for instance, by a piece of Mozart's? In the sense of hearing they are equal: look at them. In the one we perceive perplexity, annoyance, perhaps pain; he hears nothing but a confused medley of sounds. In the other, the whole being is rapt in ecstasy, the unutterable pleasure gushes from his eyes, he cannot articulate his emotion;—in the words of one, who felt and embodied the subtile mystery in immortal verse, his very soul seems "lapped in Elysium." Now, could this difference be possible, were the sole ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... that lecture! They listened to it with rapt attention with hearts full of gratitude and faces full of sympathy. They did not understand a word of it, but a chapter out of "Midshipman Easy" could not have delighted them more; and when they saw that the clock had slowly worked ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... dust on Matine shore has spann'd That soaring spirit; vain it was to pass The gates of heaven, and send thy soul in quest O'er air's wide realms; for thou hadst yet to die. Ay, dead is Pelops' father, heaven's own guest, And old Tithonus, rapt from earth to sky, And Minos, made the council-friend of Jove; And Panthus' son has yielded up his breath Once more, though down he pluck'd the shield, to prove His prowess under Troy, and bade grim death O'er skin and nerves alone exert ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... open and inclined to lean on others, that she had, as we have seen, sought a confidante in Isabel; but with her, even at the first, she found but the half-contemptuous pity of a strong and hard mind; and lately, since Edward's visit to Middleham, the Duchess of Clarence had been so rapt in her own imperious egotism and discontented ambition, that the timid Anne had not even dared to touch, with her, upon those secrets which it flushed her own bashful cheek to recall. And this visit to the court, this new, unfamiliar scene, this estrangement from all the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down before immensity, and recognize that we represent but one class in the upward direction towards the stars, and one degree in the descent to the moth and rust that corrupt; and perhaps that worm, that I killed in order to take rapt pleasure in its wings, thought itself the middle of eternity round which the world is whirling like Plato's featherless two-footed animals; and when at the door of death it uttered its last cry, it probably thought that ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... all working diligently under the direction of Maria, the housekeeper, and soon begin their usual spinning chorus. Their hands and feet work busily while two verses of the song are sung, and all are remarkably diligent except Senta, who sits with her hands in her lap, gazing in rapt attention at the portrait of the Flying Dutchman, whose mournful fate has touched her tender heart, and whose haunting eyes have made her indulge in many a long day-dream. Roused from her abstraction by the chiding voice of Mary, ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... whisper not of ruin past; It may tell of the tempest hurrying on, To complete the work the blast begun. With the voice of a Syren, it may whisp'ringly tell Of a moment of hope in the deluge of rain; And the shout of the free heart may rapt'rously swell, While the tyrant is gath'ring his power again. Though the balm of the leech may soften the smart, It never can turn the swift barb from its aim; And thus the resolve of the true freeman's heart May ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... more, till the gloaming passed into moonlight and still they were not done. The respite came through Mandy, who, solid in weight and heavy of foot, had laboured through the reels as often as she could get a partner, and at other times had sat gazing in rapt devotion upon ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... hushed in the coming of the great silence, and the darkness swoons around him, and the cry "Press on!" stirs no pulsation any longer—in that great hour he is lifted to the heights of the highest, the prophet's rapt vision, the poet's moment of serenest inspiration, or what else magnifies or makes approximate to the Divine this mortal ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... the baths were brought to the chamber, and the lady occupied herself with filling them. While she was doing so her lord left the chamber for a space, and during his absence the King and the lady were clasped in each other's arms. So rapt were the pair in their amorous dalliance that they failed to notice the return of the seneschal, who, when he saw them thus engaged, uttered an exclamation of surprise and wrath. Equitan, turning quickly, saw him, and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... of hard travail I raised a temple. It had no doors or windows, its walls were thickly built with massive stones. I forgot all else, I shunned all the world, I gazed in rapt contemplation at the image I had set upon the altar. It was always night inside, and lit by the lamps of perfumed oil. The ceaseless smoke of incense wound my heart in its heavy coils. Sleepless, I carved on the walls fantastic figures ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... far, though not so large, Think'st thou, to his own confusion, He, like him, will blindly charge? Inch by inch the brute advances, Stealthy yet vindictive glances, Horns as straight as levell'd lances, Crouching withers, stooping haunches;— Closer yet, until the tightening Strains of rapt excitement height'ning Grows oppressive. Ha! like lightning ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... with the utmost indifference, seeming to take a boy's rapt interest in the spectacle below him rather than in the affair at his elbow. He glanced at his watch and remarked: "Less than half an hour now. I can ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... happy also. The people turned to look at her as she passed. With the slight flush upon her cheeks and the light in her eyes, she seemed the personification of youth, and life, and love. One tall old gentleman started as he looked, and watched her with a rapt face until she disappeared. Some cheek had flushed and some eye had brightened at his words once, and sweet old days had for an instant ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... sick at what would surely be Doree's fate. He saw her just beyond the perimeter of battle still held by her two captors who were viewing the fight with rapt interest. If he could only reach her. One swing of his gun butt and she would serve no vile purpose in ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... house was roofed in before my foundations were laid. Not that I could not build as quickly and as well as he, if I chose. I could, but I never chose. While he, with serious face and rapt attention, piled layer upon layer, and pinnacle upon pinnacle, absorbed in his architectural ambition, I sat by watching him, or wondering who drew the beautiful picture on the lid of my box, or speculating on the quantity ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Pres's hymn to the Virgin, "Ecce tu pulchra es"; and when Barbara's "Quia amore langueo" reached his ear and heart with its love-yearning melody, he nodded to his sister with wondering delight, and then listened, as if rapt from the world, until the last notes of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... turf-edged way Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see With scarlet patches tagg'd deg. and shreds of grey, deg.114 Above the forest-ground called Thessaly deg.— deg.115 The blackbird, picking food, Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all; So often has he known thee past him stray Rapt, twirling in thy hand a wither'd spray, And waiting for the spark from heaven to ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... of feeling, sentiment, and taste, I shall thus add largely to his enjoyments. Let me flatter myself that this sweet little fellow, who is just now running about my desk, will be a man of a melting, ardent, glowing heart; and an imagination, delighted with the painter, and rapt with the poet. Let me figure him wandering out in a sweet evening, to inhale the balmy gales, and enjoy the growing luxuriance of spring; himself the while in the blooming youth of life. He looks abroad on all nature, and through nature up to nature's God. His soul, by swift delighting degrees, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... associate with that far happy time the rich mellow tones of the poet's voice in the poet's verse. These were most characteristic of him, and it is as if I might put my ear against the ethereal wall beyond which he is rapt and hear ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... those of small children, the inner a woman's. From the point at which they ended they did not return; they pointed all one way. Brewer, who had observed them at the same moment, was leaning forward in an attitude of rapt ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and a succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham's chin, clipped his moustache, and cut and arranged his hair. All this he did without a word, with something of the rapt air of a poet inspired. And as soon as he had finished Graham was handed ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... slime, Will Cromwell with the smaller score Dare to cross o'er to Dunbar shore? Tho' shipped were half his guns and men The foe falls ere he turn again. With foresight keen, like one inspired, He saw the end ere Leslie fired. "THE LORD," said he, as rapt he stands, "HATH GIVEN THEM INTO OUR HANDS!" 'Tis the ninth month and second day, A wild, wet night, historians say. Quit you like men, and bravely stand; Death's wrestle now is close at hand; Heed not the hoarse sea's doleful ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... distinguished poet employed salaried musicians, the joglars (jongleurs), who wandered from court to court, singing their masters' new songs. Others again, the comtaires, related romances of love and adventure, gathering round them a rapt throng of lords and ladies. Courtly manners and lofty principles quickly became the recognised ideal; the man who was satisfied with the pleasures of the senses was held in contempt; the greatest reproach was "vilania"; in the "Yvain" of the French epic ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heav'n's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... whole family, indeed, listened with rapt attention when Shad related how Chronos attacked Uranos with a sickle, wounding and driving Uranos from his throne; how from some of the drops that fell from Uranos's wounds sprang giants, the forefathers of the wild Indians; how from still ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... they took their first long, rapt look, stood at one side, with a smile like a faun's ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... occasion of my second Shakespearean night, for as such I seem to place it, when Laura Keene and Mr. Lester—the Lester Wallack that was to be—did Beatrice and Benedick. I yield to this further proof that we had our proportion of Shakespeare, though perhaps antedating that rapt vision of Much Ado, which may have been preceded by the dazzled apprehension of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Broadway (there was a confessed Theatre;) this latter now present to me in every bright particular. It supplied us, we must have felt, our greatest conceivable ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... rapt in admiration at the beauty of the dining-room. The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco in the Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female forms, in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances corbeils of fruit, from which spring the garlands ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... by a sudden similarity between Rachel and Anna. She too was looking at him with the indignant aloofness of his wife—with a rapt attention seemingly beyond the sound of his words. He caught the two women turn and smile to each other with an understanding that left him a stranger to both. He thought quickly, "Anna is the only one in the room intelligent enough for Rachel to understand." ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... burden. She went quietly into the living room and listened. Something drew her closer and closer to the piano. Daniel had not noticed that she had entered the room and sat down. He was wholly lost in what he was doing; he never took his rapt and wondering eyes ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... them all that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken such and such things within her. And hence arises what I may call the quite extraordinary purity and spirituality of her life of prayer. 'Defecate' is Goodwin's favourite and constant word for the purest, the most rapt, the most adoring, and the most spiritual prayer. 'I have known men'—it must have been himself—'who came to God for nothing else but just to come to Him, they so loved Him. They scorned to soil Him and themselves with any other errand than just ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... chiefs, in different parts engaged. In every quarter fierce Tydides raged; Amid the Greek, amid the Trojan train, Rapt through the ranks he thunders o'er the plain; Now here, now there, he darts from place to place, Pours on the rear, or lightens in their face. Thus from high hills the torrents swift and strong Deluge whole fields, and sweep the trees along, Through ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... not answer. She stared ahead over the horse's head with a strange, rapt look in the wonderful eyes. An artist would have loved to paint her at that moment, but it would not have been as a type of happiness. The expression spoke rather of struggle, of restlessness, and want—a spiritual want ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... living came to! You heard of other people being rapt by splendid sins and splendid virtues, and you anticipated that to-morrow some such majestic energy would transfigure your own living, and change everything: but the great adventure never arrived, somehow; and the days were frittered ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... as quiet epilogue: "This, if it be true, would explain much as to that lovely land of eternal spring and daffodils and friendly girls, of which his verses make us free. It would even explain Corinna and Herrick's rapt living without any human ties. For all poets since the time of AEschylus, who could not write until he was too drunken to walk, have been most readily seduced by whatever stimulus most tended to heighten their imaginings; so that for ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... you, my dear Heinrich, that we both followed this narrative with the most rapt attention and the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... form stood in commanding attitude on the rostrum, the impressiveness of his theme and the significance of the occasion reflected in his thoughtful and earnest features. The spell of the hour was visibly upon him; and holding his audience in rapt attention, he closed in a brilliant peroration with an appeal to the people to join ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... river, so rapt in the beauties around him that he forgot all about the Doctor and his search for the precious metals. All at once, as he was seated out upon a mass of stone by the river side, it struck him that, though he had watched the fish a good deal, it would be very pleasant to ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... plunged down into it, his face lost a certain rapt brightness and shadowed deeply. He let slip the load of fresh pelts from his back, drew his feet from the skis which he stuck up on their ends in the snow, and removed the fur cap from his head and the huge dark spectacles ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt |
