"Rapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the talk of a dreamer—of a rapt, romantic lunatic. I do dream. I will dream now and then; and if she has inspired romance into my prosaic composition, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... god in thy mind, remember him, O Dhananjaya! Thou art his devotee. Through his grace thou shalt obtain that rich possession." Hearing these words of Krishna, Dhananjaya, having touched water, sat on the earth with concentrated mind and thought of the god Bhava. After he had thus sat with rapt mind at that hour called Brahma of auspicious indications, Arjuna saw himself journeying through the sky with Kesava. And Partha, possessed of the speed of the mind, seemed to reach, with Kesava, the sacred foot of Himavat and the Manimat mountain ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... I played was memorable. As the tones floated through the air they caught the ears of those outside, and soon great numbers came into the apartment, listening in amazement and in rapt attention. Even the painful light was disregarded in the pleasure of this most novel sensation, and I perceived that if the sense of sight was deficient among them, that of hearing was sufficiently acute. I played many times, and sometimes sang from among the ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... rapt in pleasure seem, And taste of all that I forsake; Oh! may they still of transport dream, And ne'er—at least ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... pride may urge Thy claims to memory's grateful lore, And boast, as rapt from Lethe's surge, The Suliote ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... would hence recall thee?— Thy work so nobly done! Enough for mortal brow to wear The crown thy prowess won:— Grim warrior, grand in battle! Rapt christian, meek in prayer!— Vain age! that fain would reproduce A ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... shouting, and the unchecked tears running down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, her mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a silver statue. The people about her struggled along, gazing up at her through their tears with the rapt look of men and women who believe they are seeing one who is divine; and always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk, and such as failed of that privilege touched her horse ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the carol rapt me, As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, And the voice of my spirit tallied ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... other, is usually on his guard against spurious blandishments and reluctant to admit the claims of new pretenders. Even in poets of the first rank he slurred over a great deal; but what he loved he dwelt on with a kind of rapt inspiration until it became his second nature, its spirit and its language fused intimately with his own. This revolutionist in politics was a jealous aristocrat in the domains of art, and this admission does not impair our earlier assertion of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... appearance of devotees, men set aside, roaming preachers of a jehad whose meaning they have forgotten. They seem to be invariably of the short, dark type. The larger, fair- haired, long-headed men are common in business, but not in 'drumming.' The drummer's eyes have a hard, rapt expression. He is not interested in the romance of the road, like an English commercial traveller; only in its ever-changing end. These people are for ever sending off and receiving telegrams, messages, and cablegrams; they are continually ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... Things that do sound so fair?— I' the name of truth, Are ye fantastical, or that indeed Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner You greet with present grace and great prediction Of noble having and of royal hope, That he seems rapt withal:—to me you speak not: If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... out to Sophie as if she were not at her elbow—she feared he would not see. Mr. Feuerstein turned his picturesque head, slowly lifted his hat and joined them. At once Hilda became silent, listening with rapt attention to the commonplaces he delivered in ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... Man in the Mask? Was he rapt away into this silent seclusion from the luxury of a court, from the intrigues of diplomacy, from the scaffold of a traitor, from the clash of battle? What did he leave behind? Love, glory, or a throne? What did he regret when hope had fled? Did he pour forth imprecations and curses ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... arms a moment—I don't think Roger quite realised how his attitude hurts her: it is the only almost unjust thing I ever knew him to do. In the halls there is a great statue of Christ blessing the children, and Margarita stopped and stared at it several minutes, while we watched her. She seemed so rapt that Mary took my hand excitedly and whispered to me not to disturb her for the world, but wait for what she would say. After a while she turned ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... possible, of course, that the unknown had equally marked some slight interest on her part for him? The board fence, the maple-shaded walk, the soft brown street of pulverized shingles, all faded in the rapt glory of this vision. Bobby gasped. Literally it had not occurred to him before. Now all at once he desired it, desired it not merely with every power of his child nature, but with the full strength of the man's soul that waited but the passing of years to ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... all this, my companion sank to the ground and sat very still and silent like one rapt in pleasing wonder. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... confusion fadeth Like to a dream, and leaves behind A heaven of sweetness which pervadeth My whole rapt ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... words with a swelling heart. He did not speak, for he could not. He sat still, watching the actor as he paced to and fro, histrionically rapt in his representation of an actor who had just taken a piece from a young dramatist. "If you can realize that part as you've sketched it to me," he said, finally, "I will play it exclusively, as Jefferson does Rip Van Winkle. There are immense capabilities in the piece. Yes, sir; that thing ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... sky is dim with snow, The light flakes falter and fall slow; Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale, Silently drops a silvery veil; And all the valley is shut in By flickering curtains gray ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... age and authority require to be made, but nevertheless, such as is not quite consistent with the equal rights of friendship. You have told me the subject of your day-dream, my love, and if you please, I will tell you the subject of mine. I was rapt into times long past: I was living over again some early scenes—some which are connected, and which connect me, in a curious manner, with this ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... fine proportions of his graceful limbs, His strength and beauty. Her enamoured heart Suffused her cheek with blushes, every glance Increased the ardent transports of her soul. So mild was his demeanour, he appeared A gentle lion toying with his prey. Long they remained rapt in admiration Of each other. At length the warrior rose, And thus addressed her: "It becomes not us To be forgetful of the path of prudence, Though love would dictate a more ardent course, How oft has Sam, my father, counselled me, Against unseeming thoughts,—unseemly ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... on her belly. She was swathed in black stuff to her heels; her hair was grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which was not the practice in that island; her eyes big and bright and crazy. These she fixed upon me with a rapt expression that I saw to be part acting. She said no plain words, but smacked and mumbled with her lips, and hummed aloud, like a child over its Christmas pudding. She came straight across the house, heading for me, and, as soon as she was alongside, caught up my hand and purred and crooned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sieve-maker's was a fascinating embroidery shop, the keeper of which was entirely willing, when he had no customers, to let Utta lounge on one of his sofas and inspect embroideries to her heart's content. So lounging, rapt in the contemplation of Egyptian appliqus, Syrian gold-thread borders, Spanish linen-work, silk flower patterns from Cos, Parthian animal designs and Celtic cord-labyrinths after originals in leather thongs, Utta could glance up from time to time and make sure ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... navigation, and making a star-gazer of little Fleda. Sometimes kneeling beside him as he sat on her mattress, with her hand leaning on his shoulder, Fleda asked, listened, and looked; as engaged, as rapt, as interested, as another child would be in Robinson Crusoe, gravely drinking in knowledge with a fresh healthy taste for it that never had enough. Mr. Carleton was about as amused and as interested as she. There is a second ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... time he stood still, looking before him with an intense gaze, a gaze rapt and immobile, that seemed to watch the minute quivering of a delicate balance, coming to ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... with such plaintive sweetness from Arthur's Seat, while Edinburgh and Musselburgh lie rapt in delight, and the mermaids come flapping up to Leith shore to hear the exquisite music? Sweeter piper Edina knows not than Aytoun, the Bard of the Cavaliers, who has given in his frank adhesion to the reigning dynasty. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Respectable Cowfold, which thought it knew everybody in the place, could not tell. There was no sign of their existence on the next day. People gathered together and looked at the mischief wrought the night before, and talked everlastingly about it; but the doers of it vanished, rapt away apparently into an invisible world. On Sunday next, at one o'clock, Cowfold Square, save for a few windows not yet mended, looked just as it always looked; that is to say, not a soul was visible in it, and the pump ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... suddenly putting on a farcically rapt and yearning expression and speaking in a hollow, hungry voice. "Are we ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... his eyes from the rapt, white face of the girl at that instant, and look at the sand, he did not know. But he seemed compelled to look. Something moved, close to Sanda's feet; something thin and long and very flat, like a piece of rope pulled quickly toward her by an unseen hand. Max did not stop to wonder what it ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... squatted in the road while I sang my songs for them, and gave me their most rapt attention. It was hugely gratifying and flattering, the silence that always descended upon an audience of soldiers when I sang. There were never any interruptions. But at the end of a song, and during the chorus, which they always wanted to sing with me, as ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... and means to be delivered (mercy on us!) exactly opposite our chair! All are attentive to the godlike man; you might hear a pin drop: the subject is announced once and again in a very audible voice; the touch-paper is ignited, the magazine will blow up presently! Incontinently we are rapt off to Pere la Chaise, where the great composer lies buried, and a form of communication is made to us on this suitable spot, that Bellini is dead; then comes, in episode, a catalogue of all the operas he ever wrote, with allusions to each, and not a little vapouring and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... preparation week all the female part of my grandmother's household, as I have before remarked, were at a height above any ordinary state of mind; they moved about the house rapt in a species of prophetic frenzy. It seemed to be considered a necessary feature of such festivals that everybody should be in a hurry, and everything in the house should be turned bottom upwards with enthusiasm—so at least we children understood it, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... proofs that Christ's words to 'THIS generation,' namely, this particular phase of creation,—are true. 'Blessed are they which have not seen and yet believed,' He said;—and many there are who have passed away from us in rapt faith and hope, believing not seeing, and with whom we may rejoice in spirit, knowing that all must be well with them. But now—now we are come upon an age of doubt in the world—doubt which corrodes and kills the divine ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... and distinctly not. Frightfully interested and rapt and all that, only I didn't quite ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... home and some black-eyed babies, but she clung to Maren as she had ever done,—and now, in her twenty-sixth year, Maren had risen to the call as her father had done before her, and lifted her face, rapt as some pagan Priestess', toward that mystic West,—bound for the Land of the Whispering Hills, whence had come that old, vague rumour, lured alike by love of the unknown and shy, unspoken longing for the father whose heart must be the pattern ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... prevent his following the train of any previously prepared effort and he would briefly review the history of the battle and its results upon the world's history. He spoke for nearly and hour and a quarter, holding his fine audience in rapt attention by his eloquence, the elegance of his diction and his superb enunciation. It was, indeed, a wonderful effort, and will compare favorably with Webster's great orations in '25 and '43."—From the diary of Henry H. Edes. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Heavens, the Angler oft doth see, Taking therein no little delectation, To think how strange, how wonderful they be; Framing thereof an inward contemplation, To set his heart from other fancies free; And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye, His mind is rapt ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... apartments?" said a hen-pecked Chinaman one day to us—and we think he was consoled to hear that viragos are by no means confined to China. One of the happiest moments a Chinese woman knows, is when the family circle gathers round husband, brother, or it may be son, and listens with rapt attention and wondering credulity to a favourite chapter from the "Dream of the Red Chamber." She believes it every word, and wanders about these realms of fiction with as much confidence as was ever placed by western child in the marvellous stories ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... music, begged her to favour him with an air. Perizide complied with his request very graciously, and commenced playing. The Prince listened with delight, and was drinking in the soft strains with rapt attention, when he suddenly heard a loud and very ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... heart of friendship knows Be to your ear conveyed in rustic prose, Lost in the wonders of your Eastern clime, Or rapt in vision to some unborn time, Th' unartful tale might no attention gain; For Friendship knows not, like the Muse, to feign. Forgive her, then, if in this weak essay She tries to emulate thy daring lay, And give to truth ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... as the designs may be, they reveal Michelangelo's loftiest dreams and purest visions. The nervous energy, the passionate grip upon the subject, shown in the pen-drawings, are absent here. These qualities are replaced by meditation and an air of rapt devotion. The drawings for the Passion might be called the prayers and pious thoughts of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... 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
... sat in rapt solemnity, and when the Norsemen joined laughingly in the chorus, they allowed a faint smile to play for a moment on their faces, and murmured their satisfaction to each other when the song was done. But it was evident that they wanted something more, for they ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... herd returning home From fruitful meads where they have grazed their fill, No longer in the stalls contain'd, they rush With many a frisk abroad, and, blaring oft, With one consent, all dance their dams around, 500 So they, at sight of me, dissolved in tears Of rapt'rous joy, and each his spirit felt With like affections warm'd as he had reach'd Just then his country, and his city seen, Fair Ithaca, where he was born and rear'd. Then in wing'd accents tender thus they spake. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... begun, that scene in which Adrienne accomplishes her generous sacrifice in furnishing herself the ransom which must deliver her unfaithful lover. The rapt attention that Zibeline paid to this scene, and the slight movements of her head, showed her approval of this disinterested act. Very touching in her invocation to her "old Corneille," Mademoiselle Gontier was superb at the moment when the comedienne, ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... dies unnoticed and unknown; but it is sufficient for some shallow uneducated passman out of either University to get up in his pulpit and express his doubts about Noah's ark, or Balaam's ass, or Jonah and the whale, for half of London to flock to hear him, and to sit open-mouthed in rapt admiration at his superb intellect. The growth of common sense in the English Church is a thing very much to be regretted. It is really a degrading concession to a low form of realism. It is silly, too. It springs from an ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... and heart-broken; a pensive lay nun who had retreated from the vanities and deceits of the world to this secluded spot, where she lived like a heroine upon the produce of her flocks, with some "neat-handed Phillis," to milk the cows and churn the butter, while she sat rapt in contemplation of the stars above or the snakes below. It was not until after our arrival at Tampico that I had the mortification to discover that the interesting creature, the charming recluse, is seventy-eight, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... can come, from the wilderness leaning on the arm of their Beloved, and go up - up - up!' - raising his hand higher, and higher, at every repetition of the word, so that he stood with it at last stretched above his head, regarding them in a strange, rapt manner, and pressing the book triumphantly to his breast, until he gradually subsided into some other portion ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... have shouted to them to come down, but at the thought of doing so a feeling of nervous trepidation came over him. Donald had looked half wild when the dog interrupted him; how would he behave if he were interrupted again, just as he was in this rapt state, and playing away with all ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... by Dr. Minot's heresies carries me back to the first act in that shadow fight, for I too was brought up by the strictest of parents, and, indeed, was myself, as a boy, a veritable prodigy of piety. What would you think of me as a preacher expounding the gospel over a piano-stool for pulpit to a rapt congregation of three? I could show you a sermon of that precocious Mr. Pound-text printed in the New York Observer when he was as much as nine years old—and the ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... ever-increasing devotion to things holy; her delight in prayer became almost a passion. She never wearied of visiting the churches in and about her native village, and she passed many an hour in a kind of rapt trance before the crucifixes and saintly images in these churches. Every morning saw her at her accustomed place at the early celebration of her Lord's Sacrifice; and if in the afternoon the evening bells sounded across the fields, she would kneel ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... in the afternoon; For something missed from the lavish June; For the heart that died in the long ago; For the livelong pain that pierceth so: Thus the Pewee cries, While the evening lies Steeped in the languorous still sunshine, Rapt, to the leaf and the bough and the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... by faith more than by all other things put together—a faith so rapt that, to our less passionate natures, it seems to have been the very insanity of fanaticism. But it did the work; and that is the thing ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... eyes of clear steel-blue, The coiled up mainspring of the Fair, Originating everywhere The expansive force, without a sound, That whirls a hundred wheels around; Herself meanwhile as calm and still As the bare crown of Prospect Hill; A noble woman, brave and apt, Cumaea's sybil not more rapt, Who might, with those fair tresses shorn, 'The Maid of Orlean' casque have worn; Herself the Joan of our Arc, For every shaft ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... discerned standing in rapt attention, gazing from a platform on the roof upon the far-distant scene. He was enveloped in the white coarse woollen gown of the Dominican monks, and seemed wholly absorbed in meditating on the scene before him, which appeared to move him deeply; for, raising ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Paulina, exerting all her power to detach Polyeuctes from what she believes to be his folly, and Polyeuctes, on the other hand, rapt to the pitch of martyrdom, exerting all his power to resist his wife, and even to convert her—this scene, we say, is full of noble height and pathos, as pathos and height were possible in the verse which Corneille had to write. Neither ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... later Nic had forgotten his adventure, as he lay there upon his chest close to the edge, gazing down from the Bluff into the tremendous gully, rapt in amazement by its wonders, fascinated by its beauties. He stayed for hours tracing the river, and as his eyes grew more accustomed to the depth he made out the animals grazing ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... will not be careless of form, but the passion that is in him will make simple words burn and live; never will he in the mode of the time go wide of the truth to make a picturesque phrase; his mind rapt on the thing will fix on the true word; his heart warm with the battle will fashion more beautiful forms than you, O detached and dainty artist; his soul full of music and adventure will scale those ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... special tenderness and feeling. Yet the combined poesy of Heine and Schumann triumphed gloriously over the inadequacy of the execution. The wonderful, choral-like melody soared like the flight of a swan over the rapt pair, and completely dissolved their ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... after she had passed the statue of Achilles she had the rapt look of one brushing through crowds on a summer's afternoon, when the trees are rustling, the wheels churning yellow, and the tumult of the present seems like an elegy for past youth and past summers, and there rose in her mind a curious sadness, as if time and eternity showed through skirts ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... uncontrollable sobs, Tibble Steelman rose and found him crouching rather than kneeling before the figure of an emaciated hermit, who was greeting the summons of the King of Terrors, with crucifix pressed to his breast, rapt countenance and outstretched arms, seeing only the Angel who hovered above. After some minutes of bitter weeping, which choked his utterance, Ambrose, feeling a friendly hand on his shoulder, exclaimed in a voice broken by sobs, "Oh, tell me, where ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... staring in rapt attention at the mirror. "There's a man with her, Walter," he said under his breath. "He came in while we were changing places - a fine-looking chap. By Jove, I've seen him before somewhere. His face and his manner are familiar ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... we were waited upon by the Japanese page. I ate very sparingly, in fact, made only a pretence of eating, for God's message lay so heavily on my heart that I had to deliver it. They listened with rapt attention, and all but one shed tears. How stolid she appeared to be! yet she was possibly the one many months later most impressed. I met her again. She was home then in her father's house once more, but was not ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... transposition suited for the organ, something I had never dreamt of doing. During the performance the Queen leaned her elbow on the keyboard of the organ, her chin resting on one hand and her eyes upturned. She seemed rapt in exstasy which, as may be imagined, was not ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... darkest grain Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypres lawn Over thy decent shoulders drawn: Come, but keep thy wonted state, With even step, and musing gait, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: There, held in holy passion still, Forget thyself to marble, till With a sad leaden downward cast Thou fix them on the earth as fast: And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the rapt poet's step may rove, And yield the muse the day; There beauty led by timid love May shun ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... bred for dangling from the gallows-tree; To Saint who spends his holy days in rapturous hope ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... others he could think of as appropriate;—judgment may decide swiftly and without comparison, especially when it is supervising the suggestions of a vivid fancy, and still be judgment, or taste, if we choose to call it by that name. We know by the result whether it was present. The poet rapt into unconsciousness would soon betray himself. Under the power of the imagination, all his faculties waken to a higher life; his fancies are more vivid and clear; all the suggestions that come to him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... no;—though your behest I always heed with rapt attention, Most fervently I must protest Against this horrible invention; Your word has hitherto been law, But this appears the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... eloquent sway of the form; the folds of garments that no longer hide, but are illumined by, the plenitude of an inner life and grace; the elastic feet; the ethereal energy and discipline of arms and shoulders; the supple wrists; the very fingers quivering on the strings; the rapt face, and ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... book-shop! For many years that boyhood of eager concern in the printed page had seemed to him to belong to somebody else. Now, all at once, it came back to him as his own possession; he felt that he could take up books again where he had dropped them, perhaps even with the old rapt, intent zest. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... it came about that graduation day found the Other Girl beside Glory, in a beautiful white dress that lay about her in soft, sheer folds. The Other Girl's face above it was shining and rapt. This was almost like graduating herself. On the other side of Glory sat Tiny Tim, in the conscious pride of his best suit. There was no little crutch in sight. Timmie had hidden it under the seat. He was ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... intently on the ceiling. His look was one of rapt inspiration. I stood and waited. "Cumberledge," he said at last, coming back to earth with a start, "I see it more plainly each day that goes. We must get ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... on the percipient faculties of the soul, than men of a more phlegmatic constitution do; and that they can draw from such intuitions of their own a sort of inspiration, or second-sight of nature, comparable to prophecy, which gives their highest poetic utterance a rapt enthusiasm—and the accuracy of this estimate need not be disputed, but, so far as Ossian is concerned, it must be considerably extended. To read Ossian as we do, from the text of Macpherson, there was another sort of insight, purely scientific, into ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... Naturally of a gay, buoyant disposition, she had not dwelt much upon her future or her past; but now that the familiar plain seemed slipping from her sight entirely, she was conscious of its beauty, and, rapt with the associated emotions which came crowding upon her, she felt as though she were leaving the tried and true ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... the next morning toiling up a long ascent, and from its summit a prospect of majestic beauty burst upon them. The great peaks had grown nearer, the air was clear, and the girl sat, rapt, in the saddle, gazing at the vast snow-fields that glittered with ethereal brilliance, very high up against a cloudless sky. Then the wonderful blue coloring of the shadows streaking the white slopes caught her glance, and she found it unutterably lovely. Kermode, however, had an ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... in the Autumnal Tide, When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed, The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride Were gilded o'er by his rich golden head. Their leaves and fruits, seem'd painted, but was true Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue, Rapt were my ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... said Grim, who was stretched full length on the grass and gazing skywards with a rapt expression in his eyes, "and look over there. How ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... with a rapt sympathy in her face repeated slowly: "I am ill, and our children cry for food. The wife calls to her husband, my darlings say, 'Will ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... unjust! In the strife of Freedom slain!" And I crept here under the grass. And now from the battlements of time, behold: Thrice thirty million souls being bound together In the love of larger truth, Rapt in the expectation of the birth Of a new Beauty, Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom. I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration Before you see it. But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... how much significance should be attached to the fairly frequent phenomenon of dying people seeming in some rapt vision to see or feel as if meeting them the presence of loved ones gone before. Sometimes these phenomena are very striking. I once thought of asking a religious journal to open its columns to testimony from ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... rocky headlands, far and near, The wakened ocean murmured with dull tongue Till all the coast's mysterious caverns rung With the waves' voice, barbaric, hoarse, and drear. Within this distant valley, with rapt ear, I listened, thrilled, as though a spirit sung, Or some gray god, as when the world was young, Moaned to his fellow, mad with rage or fear. Thus in the dark, ere the first dawn, methought The sea's deep roar and sullen surge and shock Broke the long silence ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... gleaned the information (enlivened by cuts of duchesses) that the London season had reached a high point of gaiety; and that, although the weather had grown inauspiciously warm, there was sufficient gossip for the thoughtful. To the rapt mind of Miss Selina Tibbs came a delicious moment of comparison: precisely the same conditions prevailed ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... "When Love's rapt sense the heart-strings gently sweep, [1] 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 glad surprise, [5] Our ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... placed her hand upon its tiny head, and, turning her eyes upwards with the rapt expression of one who sees ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... in that case I'll go in and see." James threw the door open. Old Mr. Bowdoin was standing, still puffing, in front of the fire, evidently quite breathless. In the corner by the window, too rapt to notice her father's entrance, sat Miss Abby, intently gazing into a round glass crystal that, with a carved ebony frame, formed one of the Oriental ornaments of ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... windows opened on a street hardly six feet 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 ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... 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 with the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... come to ask you to do me the honor to accept a copy of my new volume of poems: Metatoron's Flames. Is it not a beautiful title? When Enoch was taken up to heaven while yet alive, he was converted to flames of fire and became Metatoron, the great spirit of the Cabalah. So am I rapt up into the heaven of lyrical poetry and I become all fire and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and shook his head, though the subject was by no means an unpleasing one, at least judging from his animated countenance, and the rapt attention which he paid ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... up bravely under this panegyric of praise and his face wore a rapt expression which amounted ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... acquainted. Time was when we walked ever hand in hand. A saintly youth, with worldly thought untainted, None better-loved than I in all the land! Time was, when maidens of the noblest station, Forsaking even military men, Would gaze upon me, rapt in adoration— Ah me, I was ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... not his heart rise in his throat as he caught the gleam of his father's eye, while, bending forward on his staff, with white, reverend locks falling about his face, he listened to the voice of his pride—his first born? And did he not see the glistening tears in his mother's eye, as with rapt ear she hung upon his every word? Ah, the young man's first triumph! When, full of confidence and hope, he enters the field of life, all his white glistening as yet unsoiled by the dust of the combat, the unproved world turning towards him with flatteries and promises in both hands, what other ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... gazing fixedly upward at the ornate chandelier. It was a handsome fixture, and boasted some of the most advanced ideas in modern lighting equipment. Yet it scarcely seemed to warrant the passionate scrutiny which T. A. Buck was bestowing upon it. So rapt was his gaze that when the telephone-bell shrilled unexpectedly in the hallway he started so that his stick slipped on the polished floor, and as Emma McChesney and the still voluble agent emerged from the kitchen the dignified head of the firm of T. A. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... perhaps, she practiced. The little Bulgarian paused outside her door and listened, rapt, his eyes closed. Peter Byrne, listening while he sorted lecture memoranda at his little table in bathrobe and slippers, absently filed the little note with the others—where he came across it months later—next to a lecture on McBurney's Point, and spent a sad hour or so over it. Over all the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of happy anticipation is in vivid contrast to Jeremiah's sorrowful attitude of retrospection. The picture brings out clearly the fact that the keynote of Daniel's prophecy is hope. Looking into his rapt face, we may imagine that this is the message he is writing: "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Tommy some of the things Gavinia said about Thomas Sandys as a boy: how he sat rapt in church, and, instead of going bird-nesting, lay on the ground listening to the beautiful little warblers overhead, and gave all his pennies to poorer children, and could repeat the Shorter Catechism, beginning ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... intelligible.' And having assured himself by a furtive glance through the window that the owners of the room were not returning, he settled himself to peruse it. When he again looked up, which was at a point about one-third of the way through the document, his face wore a look of rapt, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... the third year of his testimony, as Basil was rapt in devotion, with hands and face uplifted to the great silent stars, an Angel, clothed in silver and the blue-green of the night, stood in front of him in the air, and said: "Descend from thy pillar, and get thee ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... for three dear hours of the day; she, leaning over her book, her sweet young face bent on her task with a look of earnest intellectuality in it, that made her like some sainted maid of olden time; and he watching her every movement, and listening to every syllable, with a rapt interest such as only very early youth can feel. How happy he used to look! How his face would lighten up, as if an angel's wing had swept over it, when the two gentle taps at the door heralded young Jessie! How his boyish ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... this comment, at least ONE of them, were quite oblivious. "I trust," said Carmen, timidly, when they had for the fourth time regarded in rapt admiration an abominable something by some Dutch wood-chopper, "I trust I am not keeping you from your great friends:"—her pretty eyelids were cast down in tremulous distress:—"I should never forgive myself. Perhaps it is important business ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... cluster round the door, Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor, And on whose top an hawthorn blows, Amid whose thickly-woven boughs Some nightingale still builds her nest, Each evening warbling thee to rest; Then lay me by the haunted stream, Rapt in some wild poetic dream, In converse while methinks I rove With Spenser through a ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... there myself and heard him, attracted by his great repute. Yes, now that I come to reflect, this miscreant who went out this morning and the preacher to whom I listened with such rapt attention, are ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... pungency of expression than in the above-cited aphorism of Pope. There is an ample variety of tenacious womanly characters between the extremes marked by Miriam beating her timbrels, and Cleopatra applying the asp; Cornelia showing her Roman jewels, and Guyon rapt in God; Lucrezia Borgia raging with bowl and dagger, and Florence Nightingale sweetening the memory of the Crimean war with philanthropic deeds. What group of men indeed can be brought together, more distinct in individuality, more contrasted in diversity ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... I should say the way to pray," Said Rev. Dr. Wise, "Is standing straight, with outstretched arms, And rapt ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... better than to be more than remotely friendly with her outside of office hours. He did not want to give her any excuse to tell him anything for his own good. So he spoke pleasantly and kept company only with his own thoughts. But he did notice that she looked rapt and starry-eyed even through the long and dreary hours of free flight. She was mentally tracking the moonship through the void. She'd know when the continents of Earth were plain to see, and the tints of vegetation on the two hemispheres—northern ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... emotion, and an especial fitness to raise it above sense to the love of heavenly things."[1] In like manner the Saint's illustrious son, Cardinal Newman, has spoken of "the emotion which some gentle, peaceful strain excites in us," and "how soul and body are rapt and carried away captive by the concord of musical sounds where the ear is open to their power;"[2] how, too, "music is the expression of ideas greater and more profound than any in the visible world, ideas which centre, indeed, in Him whom Catholicism manifests, who is the seat of ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... with a rapt expression at the preparations before him. "So I'm drowned," something was saying inside him. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... time, the author begs leave to thank his readers for the rapt attention shown in perusing these earnest pages, and to apologize for the tears of sympathy thoughtlessly wrung from eyes unused to weep, by the graphic word-painting and fine ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... 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 ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... sweet beside the lily-pool, Unknowing any might her singing hear, When rose another voice, so rich, so full As thrilled her into rapt and pleasing wonder; And as she hearkened to these deep-sung words, She flushed anon and ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... roots and grains, and we receive glances from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude, and foretell the remotest future. The blue zenith is the point in which romance and reality meet. I think, if we should be rapt away into all that we dream of heaven, and should converse with Gabriel[473] and Uriel,[474] the upper sky would be all that would ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... blade, but failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... heavenly 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
... crowded with the spirits of bygone men and women who had held stately revels there three hundred years before. He was not frightened, but a sense of awe crept over him, rooting him to the spot and imparting a rapt expression to his face. Did he hear anything? Wasn't there a faint rustling sound somewhere in the air behind him? No. It must have been his fancy. Everything was as silent ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... stood 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 ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... were on him; he caught her glance of rapt attention, and she made him understand with a warm smile that she had listened to his every word. She wanted to show Ole how little she had meant her thoughtless regret that he was no poet. She nodded to Coldevin and wished the poets all they got. Coldevin was grateful for her smile; she was the ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... rather delights my father; which my sister lends herself to, complaining a little of the trouble, fatigue, and late hours; but thinking it for the interest of her future public career, and always becoming rapt and excited beyond all other considerations in her own capital musical performances.... As for me, I am rather bewildered by the whirl in which we live, which I find rather a trying contrast to my late solitary existence ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Or shake her head as if to say, "You silly souls, to act this way!" And never a sound from night I would hear, Unless some far-off cock crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great glasses bent on me, She would glance into reality; And shake her round old silvery head, With—"You!—I thought you was in bed!"— Only to tilt her book again, And ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... his voice was like a stone cast into still water. The rapt peace of her look was broken into an eddy of conflicting emotions. Amazement was there and a swift joy, which gave way almost before it could be named to something approaching dread, and that in turn yielded place to wide-eyed wonder. With her ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... shake at the conclusion. The majesty of her sustained tones, so rich, so ample as not only to fill but overflow the cathedral where I heard her, the solemnity of her manner, and the St. Cecilia-like expression of her raised eyes and rapt countenance, produced a thrilling effect through the united medium of sight and hearing. Whoever has heard Catalani sing this, accompanied by Schmidt on the trumpet, has heard the utmost that music can do. Then in the succeeding chorus, when the same awful words, 'The trumpet ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... Bevis kept his eyes upon her face, with a look of rapt adoration which turned at length ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... struck with the fact that they have multiplied. The telescope has been supplemented by the spectroscope and the photographic camera. Now, this really involves a whole world of change. It means that astronomy has left the place where she dwelt apart in rapt union with mathematics, indifferent to all things on earth save only to those mechanical improvements which should aid her to penetrate further into the heavens, and has descended into the forum of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... in admiration—in marveling admiration. For long stretches at a time he permitted himself to fall into silent, rapt contemplation of this perfected bit of womanhood. Every childish feature that he remembered so well had been subtly vignetted by the soft touch of nature; he was sensing for the first time the vast distinction between fifteen and twenty—the distinction ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Wordsworth saying that, at a particular stage of his mental progress, he used to be frequently so rapt into an unreal transcendental world of ideas that the external world seemed no longer to exist in relation to him, and he had to reconvince himself of its existence by clasping a tree, or something that happened to be near him. I could not help connecting this fact with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth |
