"Seraph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ceremony of the fiancailles, and was dressed in a kirtle of white, with an upper robe of pale blue. Her head was covered with a veil of white gauze, so thin, as to float about her like the misty cloud usually painted around the countenance of a seraph. But the face of Eveline, though in beauty not unworthy one of that angelic order, was at present far from resembling that of a seraph in tranquillity of expression. Her limbs trembled, her cheeks were pale, the tinge ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... my lingering footsteps slow retire, Some Spirit of the Air has waked thy string! 'Tis now a seraph bold, with touch of fire, 'Tis now the brush of Fairy's frolic wing. Receding now, the dying numbers ring Fainter and fainter down the rugged dell; And now the mountain breezes scarcely bring A wandering witch-note of the distant spell— And ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... doves.' The first yon have yet to leap, and with Erle Palma as your preceptor, your prospective tuition fees are heavy. You are a sweet good earnest-hearted child, but in this house you need to be something quite different—a Seraph. Do you understand? Now you are only a cherub, which in the original means dove; but some day, if you live here, you will learn the wisdom of the Seraph, which means serpent! I know little 'Latin, less of Greek,' no Hebrew; but a learned seer of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... in her pretty summer dress of pearly gray touched here and there with crimson—the loveliest creature to be seen for miles around. Her usually mournful face was brightened with an inner kind of bliss which, from the face of the Tragic Muse, made it the face of a youthful seraph serene and blessed; her smile was one of almost unearthly ecstasy, if it still retained that timid, tremulous, fleeting expression which was so beautiful to Edgar; her eyes, no longer sad and sorrowful, but dewy, tender, bashful, shone with the purity, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... and the thunder-cloud darts its nimble and forked lightnings. Else, why do these pangs and fears shoot and flash through it, every now and then? Why does the drowning man instinctively ask for God's mercy? Were his conscience pure and clear from guilt, like that of the angel or the seraph,—were there no latent crime within him,—he would sink into the unfathomed depths of the sea, without the thought of such a cry. When the traveller in South America sees the smoke and flame of the volcano, here ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... has passed, for the sake of what has passed, I must always regard Arthur as a brother," the seraph continued; "we have known each other years, we have trodden the same fields, and plucked the same flowers together. Arthur! Henry! I beseech you to take hands and to be friends! Forgive you!—I forgive you, Arthur, with my heart I do. Should I not do so for making ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... There, clasps the infant son his murder'd sire, While the sad virgin on her lover's face, Weeps, with the last farewel, the last embrace, And the lone widow too, with frenzied cries, Amid the common wreck, unheeded dies. O Peace, bright Seraph, heaven-lov'd maid, return! And bid distracted nature cease to mourn! O, let the ensign drear of war be furl'd, And pour thy blessings on a bleeding world; Then social order shall again expand, It's sovereign good again shall bless the land, Elate the simple villager shall see, ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... unconscious in her arms? Mother! What a delightful sound; and how beautiful she seemed! Yet I have no distinct idea of her, my head was so confused; but I have a vague recollection of something very fair, and beautiful, and seraph-like, covered with silver drapery, and flowers, and with the sweetest voice in the world. Yet that must be too young for my mother; perhaps it was my sister; and my mother was too much overcome to meet her ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... who knew the forty miles of underground workings in Botallack as well, I suppose, as a postman knows his beat; a man who dived into the bowels of the earth with the vigour and confidence of a mole and the simple-minded serenity of a seraph. ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... story of a little girl who had inherited a most remarkable musical talent, which found its natural expression through the medium of the violin. The picturesqueness of Mrs. Jamison's stories is remarkable, and the reader unconsciously becomes Seraph's friend and sympathizer in all ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... many hearts. That little circle is a happy home; love spun the bonds that hold them close therein, and many are the strands that bind them there. They come from beauteous eyes that beam with light; from lisping tongues more sweet than seraph choirs; from swelling hearts that beat in every pulse with fond affection, which is richer far than all the nectar of the ancient gods. Bind me with these, O Fortune! and I hug my chains o'erjoyed. Be these the cords which hold me to the rock around which break the surging waves of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... serenity of his mind, he affectionately inquired for the amiable boy he had seen take so touching an interest in the mournful errand to the church-yard on that ever-remembered day, and who, like a ministering seraph, had so guardingly watched the exposed head of his revered master, under the pitiless element then ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... and bloom and fade. Behold the blooming maid: the song of larks Is in her warbling throat; the blue of heaven Is in her eyes; her loosened tresses fall A shower of gold on shoulders tinged with rose; Her form a seraph's and her gladsome face A benediction. Lo beneath her feet The loving crocus bursts in sudden bloom. Fawn-eyed and full of gentleness she moves— A sunbeam on the lawn. The hearts of men Follow her footsteps. He whose sinewy arms Might burst through bars of steel like bands of straw, Caught in ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... dark eyes and long dark lashes, contrasting with the brightness of her complexion and the luxuriance of her radiant locks, combined to produce a beauty as rare as it is choice; and so strange, that Egremont might for a moment have been pardoned for believing her a seraph, that had lighted on this sphere, or the fair phantom of some saint haunting the sacred ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... adoring, fair-haired seraph, who will worship him as a demigod, and accept him as her best revelation of strength and wisdom. The more dependent she is, the better he will love her; the less of conscious thought, of active will, of originative ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Mr. Fletcher," cried a young married woman, with a face like a seraph, "we're all educated now, and scandal about a lady with her waist under ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... as sure a seraph feels When in some golden hour of grace God smiles, and suddenly reveals A new, strange glory in ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... He, that rode sublime 95 Upon the seraph wings of Ecstasy, The secrets of th' abyss to spy. He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time: The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, 100 He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, Clos'd his eyes in endless ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... cynical disregard of her own claims to admiration, who on earth could she be? She reviewed those ladies with whom gossip had coupled Richard's name. Morabita, the famous prima donna, for instance. But surely, it was inconceivable that mountain of fat and good nature, with the voice of a seraph, granted, but also with the intellect of a frog, could ever inspire so fantastic and sublimated a passion! And passing from these less legitimate affairs of the heart—in which rumour accredited Richard with being very much of a pluralist—her mind traveled back to the young man's projected ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and oh! for a seraph's tongue, and a seraph's powers of representation! but there was no seraph at hand, only the soft running waters singing a quiet tune, and predisposing Miss Benson to listen with a soothed spirit to any tale, not immediately involving her brother's ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the desire and hope of finding true good in men, and not with the ready vanity that sets itself to fiction instantly, and carries its potter's wheel about with it always, (off which there will come only clay vessels of regular shape after all,) instead of the pure mirror that can show the seraph standing by the human body—standing as signal to the heavenly land:[48] with this heed and this charity, there are none of us that may not bring down that lamp upon his path of ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... upon my darkened vision Comes a gleam of light Elysian; And a seraph voice breathes softly—'Answered yet shall be that prayer! For the spirit crushed and broken By those burning words unspoken, Soon shall hear them swelling, floating far upon the heavenly air, And its deepest inmost visions shall ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... thither his way, Where the winged one of heaven stood beauteous and gay. But, just as he hoped that the height was surmounted, Far distant again they each other confronted. And still the Angel beckoned there, But—never, never near. "My seraph! wilt ever avoid my embrace?" —Said the songster with mortified mien— "But though I'm unable to climb to thy place, My eye thou hast blest from the mansions of grace, And thy heaven, thou ...
— Queen Berngerd, The Bard and the Dreams - and other ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... uncalculable depth, stars scintillating in the flame, and brighter glints of the everlasting light form the aureole of the Father, who arrives from the depths of the infinite with the action of a hovering eagle, accompanied by an archangel and a seraph whose hands support ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... starting from the ground in despair, and throwing herself for refuge on Camilla's bosom. "Monster! thou canst not be Flodoardo! such a fiend can never have been such a seraph. Flodoardo's actions were good and glorious as a demi-god's! 'Twas of him that I learned to love good and glorious actions, and 'twas he who encouraged me to attempt them myself; his heart was pure from all mean passions, and capable ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... Engravings: 1.—The Invitation, with the Emperor and the Empress, and the Buff-tip Moth writing the Cards.—2. The Dance, with the Sphinx Hippophaes, the Pease Blossom, the Mouse, the Seraph, Satellite, Magpie, Gold Spangle, Foresters, Cleap Wings, &c.—3. The Alarm.—4. The Death's Head Moth. These are beautifully lithographed by Gauci. Their colouring, after Nature, is delightfully executed: the finish, too, of the gold-spangle is good, and the winged brilliancy of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... pressed hard upon Emerson. He could not do without God in nature, and yet, like most of us, he could not justify himself until he had trimmed and cut away a part of nature. God is the All, but the All is a hard mass to digest. It means hell as well as heaven, demon as well as seraph, geology as well as biology, devolution as well as evolution, earthquake as well as earth tranquillity, cyclones as well as summer breezes, the jungle as well as the household, pain as well as pleasure, death as well as life. How are you ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... A young seraph, named Cuchulain, chancing to pass that way shortly afterwards, saw the threepenny-piece peeping brightly from the rocks, and he picked ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... An angel from the sky Accepting the bad bargain of a man, Could not have found a worse. You took me up A battered piece of ordnance, broken in spirit, Accursed to myself and to my kind; And underneath me thou hast held an arm Sustaining as the seraph's upward look Askance ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... of such an interrogatory as a magnetiser would address to his subject; and the answers I received were given with the plain, involuntary precision characteristic of hypnotised persons. She stood there before me, with her hands clasped in each other; that seraph-face of hers, that seemed the type of innocence and purity, without a tinge of colour, although her dreadful confession was enough to paint the cheeks of the most degraded woman with the colour of shame. She seemed to have no bashfulness, no sense of shame, and to be wholly ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... treasure And the gentle voice he heard, In the poor forlorn boy's spirit, Joy, the sleeping Seraph, stirred; In his hand he took the flowers, In his heart ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... Porter once said that the savage visiting London with Livingstone appreciated everything except the libraries. The poor black man understood the gallery, for the face of his child answered to that of Raphael's cherub and seraph. He understood the cathedral, with its aisles and arches, for it reminded him of his own altars and funeral hymns. He understood the city, for it seemed like many little towns brought together in one. But the great library, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... an ally called the Bheestee. If you ask, Who is the Bheestee? I will tell you. Behisht in the Persian tongue means Paradise, and a Bihishtee is, therefore, an inhabitant of Paradise, a cherub, a seraph, an angel of mercy. He has no wings; the painters have misconceived him; but his back is bowed down with the burden of a great goat-skin swollen to bursting with the elixir of life. He walks the land when the heaven above him is brass and the earth iron, when the trees and shrubs are languishing ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... possession of all my being. Edmee appeared to me in a new light. She was no longer the lovely girl whose presence stirred a tumult in my senses; she was a young man of my own age, beautiful as a seraph, proud, courageous, inflexible in honour, generous, capable of that sublime friendship which once bound together brothers in arms, but with no passionate love except for Deity, like the paladins of old, who, braving a thousand ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... dort zu dem Gipfel des Berges. 50 Da umgab von dem hohen Moria ihn Schimmer der Opfer, Die den ewigen Vater noch jetzt in Bilde vershnten. Ringsum nahmen ihn Palmen in's Khle. Gelindere Lfte, Gleich dem Suseln[2] der Gegenwart Gottes, umflossen sein Antlitz Und der Seraph, der Jesus zum Dienst auf der Erde gesandt war, 55 Gabriel, nennen die Himmlischen ihn, stand feirend am Eingang Zwoer umdufteter Cedern, und dachte dem Heile der Menschen, Und dem Triumphe der Ewigkeit nach, als jetzt der Erlser Seinem Vater ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... a pleasant hallucination," said Mabel, "for even the governess, whom I do not much like, seemed transformed into a seraph, as she bent over me. As for Ben Benson, he was ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... 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 bounds, connects, and ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... out his arms like a crucifix; his face shone with the brightness of a seraph's; in his voice, as it rose to the last word, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it will, it comes, Like the rain or the bow Or the nightingale's lay By the lake below: As free from restraint as the seraph that roams O'er the ebbing waves of the dying day, When the reddening west, 'twixt the sun and the sea, Seems to ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... curse His chosen people, oft to God averse. Well Balaam knew that if he were to die "Their God was not a man that he should lie." He bated Truth, but was constrained to sing Of their blest state beneath God's fostering wing. And when he sang the latter end of such His harp gave tones as though from Seraph's touch He sang aloud their bliss, not did he cease Till all the hills re-echoed sweetly "Peace." Nor could refrain from envy when he viewed Jehovah's covenant of Peace renewed; But breaking forth in rapture loud did cry "O ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... we are here, to come in and examine that curiously illuminated missal of yours. How agreeable Mr. Brown is, now that he is getting well! Don't you think so? And Mr. Norton is as good and radiant as a seraph! No doubt, they are pining with homesickness, just as you are, and will be ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... cherub and seraph, are singular. Cherub, as applied to a little child, takes the English plural, cherubs. As applied to an order of angels, it takes the Hebrew plural, cherubim. The singular, seraph, has an English plural, seraphs, as well as the Hebrew plural, seraphs. The double plurals, ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allan met me at the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy, with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a seraph. I really think I'd like to be a minister's wife when I grow up, Marilla. A minister mightn't mind my red hair because he wouldn't be thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would have to be naturally ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in the Northern Ocean, likely any moment to be overwhelmed beneath it. Then I thought a ship appeared, and Captain Dean was at the helm, and that sweet Mary, dressed in white, and looking like a seraph, stood on the forecastle waving to me to come off to them. I, of course, could not move, for my feet were jammed into a hole in the ice, and I struggled in vain to drag them out. On a sudden a storm ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the great ocean, like a holy hall, Where slept a seraph host maritimal, Was gorgeous with wings ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... virgin, as all women are By love's white purging fire which leaves no scar Where all was soiled and seamed before the torch Of Eros toucht the heart, and the keen scorch Lickt up the foul misuse of vase so fair As woman's body, Helen flusht and fair Leaned from the wall a fire-hued seraph's face And in one rapt long look gave and took Grace. Deep in her eyes he saw the light divine, Quick in him ran fierce joy of it like wine: Light unto light made answer, as a flag Answers when men tell tidings from one crag Unto another, and from peak to peak The good news ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... upward driven Till they blent in one in the bosom of heaven; And when closed o'er the eye lid of night, His own mind's eye saw it doubly bright, And as upward and upward it floated on He deemed it a seraph—and anon. Through its light on heaven's floor he made, The shadow bright of his dead love's shade, In her living beauty, and he wrapt her in light, Which dropped from the eye of the Infinite. And as she breathed her heavenward sigh, 'Twas halved by that light all radiently, As it lit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... the glance of Egremont. That brow full of thought and majesty was fixed on his. He encountered that face radiant as a seraph's; those dark eyes flashing with the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... "Rodolfo da Tossignano, Hist. Seraph. Relig. P. i. p. 138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend of Piccarda: 'Her brother Corso, inflamed with rage against his virgin sister, having joined with him Farinata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other abandoned ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... to the froward, What joy to the just and kind! When the Seraph band comes streaming Christ's gleaming banner behind; Heavenly blue shall its hue be To a myriad marvelling eyes; Save where its heart encrimsons The cross of ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... The beauteous, seraph sister-band, With earnest tears I pray, Thous know'st the snares on ev'ry hand— ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... than out of an old hulk that has been ground up in the breakers. If with innocence to start with in this life a man does not become godly, what prospect is there that in the next world, starting with sin, there would be a seraph evoluted? Surely the sculptor has more prospect of making a fine statue out of a block of pure white Parian marble than out of an old black rock seamed and cracked with the storms of a half century. Surely upon a clean, white sheet of paper it is easier to ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... wear'st the yoke Of use that does not fail! The grasses, like an anchored smoke, Ride in the bending gale; This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, And fire-dropt as a seraph's mail. ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... the "Gorgias," the "Philebus," and especially the "Republic," with what noble joy are we filled on hearing the voice of conscience, like a harp swept by a seraph's hand, uttering such deep-toned melodies! How does he drown the clamors of passion, the calculations of mere expediency, the sophism of mere personal interest and utility. If he calls us to witness the triumph of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... but compared with Mme. de Maufrigneuse, that heavenly creature was a Messalina. Women wondered among themselves how such a giddy young thing had been transformed by a change of dress into the fair veiled seraph who seemed (to use an expression now in vogue) to have a soul as white as new fallen snow on the highest Alpine crests. How had she solved in such short space the Jesuitical problem how to display a bosom whiter than her soul by ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... never condescended to show herself thus mediating and amiable. Why? Clearly, because she conceived that he had no virile fire in his composition. Did the detestable little devil think silly duelling a display of valour? Did the fair seraph think him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... babes, whilst there is manna for angels; truth level with the mind of a peasant; truth soaring beyond the reach of a seraph.—REV. HUGH STOWELL. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... humbleness of awe, that its mirror may reflect as serenely the shadow as the light. Vainly, for its moral, dost thou gaze on the landscape, if thy soul puts no check on the dull delight of the senses. Two wings only raise thee to the summit of Truth, where the Cherub shall comfort the sorrow, where the Seraph shall enlighten the joy. Dark as ebon spreads the one wing, white as snow gleams the other,—mournful as thy reason when it descends into the deep; exulting as thy faith when it springs to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bad thoughts sometimes. No doubt he is a good man, after all. But he must not meet Elinor now, not if he were a seraph. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... when we would frame as well as we can an idea of the First Being; who yet, it is certain, is infinitely more remote, in the real excellency of his nature, from the highest and perfectest of all created beings, than the greatest man, nay, purest seraph, is from the most contemptible part of matter; and consequently must infinitely exceed what our narrow understandings can conceive ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... would not breathe; 'Twould cloud with woe that placid brow, Round which a seraph seems to wreathe A crown of ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... only the wife of a 'Merchant of Venice;' but then she is pretty as an antelope, is but two-and-twenty years old, has the large, black, oriental eyes, with the Italian countenance, and dark glossy hair, of the curl and colour of Lady J * *'s. Then she has the voice of a lute, and the song of a seraph (though not quite so sacred), besides a long postscript of graces, virtues, and accomplishments, enough to furnish out a new chapter for Solomon's Song. But her great merit is finding out mine—there is nothing so amiable ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... but that is neither here nor there. Understand me, I'm no seraph; I pose as no model of rectitude, and, unfortunately for my peace of mind, Miss Montague is a really likable young person. But Buddy has a mother and a sister, and they hold me responsible for him. We three are dining ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... wary, take heed, lest aught should be seen or heard Of the shining seraph band, as they take the heavenward way; Too soon the Angel on Earth will learn the magical word Sung at the close of ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... nice," remarked Richard, glancing at the circle of anxious faces leaning over him. "It's worth being shot to have so many ministering angels about one; and a Seraph with a flaming sword at the foot of my couch to guard me," he added, glancing again at Phoebe, now holding a lamp high with a perfectly steady arm, so that the others could see ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... out his hand. "I accept," he cried frankly. "I'm not a fool. I know you're right. When are you coming to see Penton Court? I will give a housewarming You say that Dix has settled down here. I'll look him up. I'll be glad to see the muddle-headed seraph again. I'll ask him to come, too, so there will be you and he—and perhaps your sister will honor me, and ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Some happier island in the watry waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To Be, contents his natural desire, He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire; 110 But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... and indeed, so poignant were they, that I swooned." The ravishments which St. Theresa experienced she expressed in terms of abandoned precision. Mme. Guyon wrote so carnally of the divine that Bossuet exclaimed; "Seigneur, if I dared, I would pray that a seraph with a flaming sword might come and purify my lips ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... thus because he had to come thus. There was no time to dress. The poor chalk-fingered poet was miserable the whole evening, hardly roused himself when the talk fell on Blake, and when we took a walk together the next day he made his moan to me about it. A seraph with chalk on his fingers. Somehow, that little incident seems to me an epitome of his life, though I have mentioned it only to show how busy ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... virtuous. Her tender solicitudes, her enrapturing endearments, her soul-inspiring blandishments,—gone, gone for ever? That heavenly form, that discriminate mind—all lovely as light, all pure as a seraph's—a prey to worms—mingled with incorporeal shadows, regardless of former inquietudes or delights, regardless of the keen anguish which now wrings tears of blood from ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... is in my mind, So keenly clear and sharp-defined, I picture every phase and line Of life and death, and neither mine,— While some fair seraph, golden-haired, Bends over me,—with white arms bared, That strongly plait themselves about My drowning weight and lift me out— With joy too great for words to state Or tongue ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... of the real name of my pretty mentor. The little Mary—for so was the younger called, who could not be more than eleven years of age—was a slender, frolicsome sylph, with a skin of the purest carnation, and a face like that of Sir Joshua's seraph in the National Gallery, but with larger orbs and longer lashes shading them. As she danced and leaped before me on her way home again, I could not but admire the natural ease and grace of every motion, nor fail to comprehend and sympathise ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... gain Lightly uplifts us. With the rhythmic waltz, The lyric prelude, the nocturnal song Of love and languor, varied visions rise, That melt and blend to our enchanted eyes. The Polish poet who sleeps silenced long, The seraph-souled musician, breathes again Eternal eloquence, immortal pain. Revived the exalted face we know so well, The illuminated eyes, the fragile frame, Slowly consuming with its inward flame, We stir not, speak not, lest ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... exclaimed Mrs. Cadurcis. 'The sweet seraph! Oh! why did not my Plantagenet speak to you, Lady Annabel, in the same tone? And he can, if he likes; he can, indeed. It was his silence that so mortified me; it was his silence that led to all. I am so proud of him! and then he comes here, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... looks like something, which, If not the last, rose higher than the first, Haughty, and high, and beautiful, and full Of seeming strength, but of inexplicable Shape; for I never saw such. They bear not The wing of Seraph, nor the face of man, Nor form of mightiest brute, nor aught that is Now breathing; mighty yet and beautiful As the most beautiful and mighty which 60 Live, and yet so unlike them, that I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... I will take close and watchful care. I wish to live, not to die. The future opens like Eden before me; and still, when I look deep into the shades of my paradise, I see a vision that I like better than seraph or cherub glide ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Supreme Essence from which it emanates. Thence comes the joy wherewith I flame, because to my vision, in proportion as it is clear, I match the clearness of my flame. But that soul in Heaven which is most enlightened,[2] that Seraph who has his eye most fixed on God, could not satisfy thy demand; because that which thou askest lies so deep within the abyss of the eternal statute, that from every created sight it is cut off. And when thou retumest to the mortal world, carry this back, so that it may no more presume ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... What seraph on the wings of light Can bear a charm like thee? And where, in fancy's wide domain, Can ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... with frank effusion. He was obviously happy at having given utterance to his sense of obligation. Selma was tingling from head to foot and a womanly blush was on her cheek, though the serious seraph spoke in her words and eyes. She felt moved to a wave ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... with glowing hand On golden dishes and in baskets bright Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand In the retired quiet of the night, Filling the chilly room with perfume light.— "And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake! Thou art mine heaven, and I thine eremite: Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake, Or I shall drowse beside thee, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... in the centre, Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings, Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter, Streaming from off the sun like seraph's ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... pinions here the youth withdrew 240 The sage stood wondering as the seraph flew. Thus look'd Elisha, when, to mount on high, His master took the chariot of the sky; The fiery pomp ascending left the view; The prophet gazed, and ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... a dark spirit walking in our house, And swiftly will the destiny close on us. It drove me hither from my calm asylum; It lures me forward—in a seraph's shape I see it near, I see it nearer floating— It draws, it pulls me with a godlike power, And, lo, the abyss! and thither am I moving; I have no power within ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the realms of space, I view'd this mortal planet roll, A yearning towards they hapless race, Unbidden, filled my seraph soul! ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... seraphs, Or chum with the cherubim, But if ever them seraph johnnies Get a-poking ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... the seraph; and forthwith Appeared a shining throng Of angels, praising God, and ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... great ladies and gay lionnes alike gave him the palm as the handsomest man in all the Household Regiments—not even excepting that splendid golden-haired Colossus, his oldest friend and closest comrade, known as "the Seraph." ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... OUR seraph fair, such loveliness possessed, In num'rous ways a Gascon could have blessed; Above, below, appeared angelic charms; 'Twas Paradise, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal Love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,—that you look on him almost with a shudder, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... holy service But hath its secret bliss: Yet, of all blessed ministries, Is one so dear as this? The ministry that cannot be A wondering seraph's dower, Enduing mortal weakness With more than angel-power; The ministry of purest love Uncrossed by any fear, That bids us meet At the Master's feet And keeps us ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... in the face of the Father of light.[133] Scarcely had he spoken, when an angel blew a trumpet, and all the angels cried out with awful voices, "Blessed be the glory of the Lord by His creatures, for He has shown mercy unto Adam, the work of His hands!" A seraph then seized Adam, and carried him off to the river Acheron, washed him three times, and brought him before the presence of God, who sat upon His throne, and, stretching out His hand, lifted Adam up and gave him over to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Never did I realized of what the human heart is capable until Belle came into the store, one lovely spring morning, looking like a seraph in a new spring bonnet, and blushingly—with a saucy flash of her dark eyes that made her rising color all the more divine—inquired for table-damask ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... the tortoise and the hare: Half the smallest atom is—my soul was getting tipsy— Heaven is one big circle and the centre's everywhere, Yus, and that old woman was an angel and a gipsy, Yus, and Bill, the chicken-thief, the corn-flower millionaire, Shamming not to care, What was he? A seraph on ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... thy sole divinity? Here is enough of genius to convert Vile dung to precious diamonds, and to spare, Then why transform the diamond into dirt, And change thy mind w^h. sh^d. be rich & fair Into a medley of creations foul, As if a Seraph ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... whispered for the lady with the glory; it was for my sweet mamma. And she, too, came and blessed my gentle slumbers. Surely, that beautiful creature must have been my mother, for long did she come and play the seraph's part over her child, and watched by his pillow, till he sank ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... good. Both their mothers now dwell in the unseen world; while the one is represented on earth by a most loathsome specimen of humanity, the other by a pure and elevated spirit, that needs only to pass the gate of death to become a seraph. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... some altogether unexpected and delightful manner. Her impromptu bataille des fleurs, for example, was still remembered in Woodbridge although it took place nearly sixteen years ago. Somewhere her attention had been caught by the picture of a cherub, or possibly seraph, perched on a cloud and pouring from a cornucopia great masses of flowers upon the delighted earth. The idea seemed such a lovely one that when, in the spring, her mother gave a card party out on the terrace, she determined to give the ladies a delightful surprise. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Sun, unmastered and insurgent pulse of Life; breath of the empyrean, seraph winged with ardours ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... corse And fling it down. Upon the stone-paved floor In a thin strip of moonlight flung it down, And then drew breath. Perhaps he paused to glance At the white face there, with the strange half-smile Out-living death, the brightness of the hair Lying in loops and tangles round the brow— A seraph's face of silver set in gold, Such as the deft Italians know to carve; Perhaps his tiger's blood cooled then, perhaps Swift pity at his very heart-strings tugged, And he in that black moment of remorse, Seeing how there his nobler ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... fatuus, ignes fatui; madame, mesdames; magus, magi; memorandum, memoranda or memorandums; monsieur, messieurs; nebula, nebulae; oasis, oases; parenthesis, parentheses; phenomenon, phenomena; radius, radii or radiuses; seraph, seraphim or seraphs; stratum, strata; synopsis, synopses; terminus, termini; vertebra, vertebrae; ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... own, Draws the deep purple round his royal seat, Lifts his low crest, affects the God complete, By giving with light breath, oh, shame to tell! These heirs of Heav'n unto the fate of hell. Sped by the mandate of his recreant train, Lo! commerce, broad winged seraph of the main! Shook her white plumage and coqueting, won Propitious favors from the southern sun, Till manly hearts and keel-impelling gales, Furled on the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... rapturous moment when He snapt thy fetters, dashed thy chains to the earth, and said: "I am the Breaker; I came to break thy chains, and set thee free"? What tho thou art ever so gloomy now, canst thou forget that happy morning, when in the house of God thy voice was loud, almost as a seraph's voice, in praise? for thou couldst sing: "I am forgiven; ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... prophesy the dissolution of the American Confederacy, and, through it, the destruction of that gigantic structure, human slavery! But this knowledge was not the result of a moment's or an hour's gleaning, but nearly half a century's existence in the seraph life. I have carefully watched my country's rising progress, and I am thoroughly convinced that it cannot always exist under the present Federal Constitution, and the pressure of that ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... Seraph and Cherub, careless of their charge And wanton in full ease, now live at large, Unguarded leave the passes of the sky, And all dissolved in Hallelujahs lie. —Dramatic Works, i. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... feeling, but from the heroism of the highest love: they must previously, in struggles painful beyond expression, have obtained the victory over every earthly tie; and by the exhibition of these struggles, of these sufferings of our mortal nature, while the seraph soars on its flight to heaven, the poet may awaken in us the most fervent emotion. In Polyeucte, however, the means employed to bring about the catastrophe, namely, the dull and low artifice of Felix, by which the endeavours of Severus to save his rival are made rather to contribute ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... misty eye; And in the west a brooding cloud— Departed day's wind-lifted shroud— Waved slowly in the depths of blue, While now and then a world looked through The broken edge, as from above Steals down a seraph's glance of love, Through sorrow's cloud and mortal air, On breaking hearts or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... Son On his great expedition now appeared, Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned Of majesty divine: sapience and love Immense; and all his Father in Him shone. About his chariot numberless were poured Cherub and Seraph, Potentates and Thrones, And Virtues, winged Spirits, and chariots winged From the armoury of God, where stand of old Myriads, between two brazen mountains lodged Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand, Celestial equipage; and now came forth Spontaneous, for within them Spirit lived, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... columns, and angel figures, were all nothing to Archie compared to the simple mound that told him of an undying love for the lonely and crippled one. No marble arose there in wonderful grace and beauty, no reclining seraph imaged the departed saint; but low down, beneath the green turf was the heart that leaped at the advent of her first-born son, and the eye that overlooked the blemish that all other eyes seemed to dwell upon, and the hand that was laid upon his head in the last sad moment. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... love springs pure and unrepressed; There, all are loved, and love again. Love fills each burning cherub's breast; Love fires each flaming seraph train. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... pore aborigines experiences bad luck the moment ever they takes to braidin' in their personal destinies with a paleface. I don't blame 'em none neither. I sees this Caldwell seraph on one o'casion myse'f; she's shore a beauty! an' whenever she throws the lariat of her loveliness that a-way at a ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... All and each of these made a pet of Tinker, since they found it the surest way to abate his father's coldness. On the other hand the great ladies of the Faubourg de St. Germain petted him because his seraph's face and delightful manners charmed them; while any nice woman petted him because ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... the charming Princess Marcelline [Czartoryska], another object of my respect, place at her feet the homage of a poor man who has not ceased to be full of the memory of her kindnesses and of admiration for her talent, another bond of union with the seraph whom we have lost and who, at this hour, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... early training. I know he thinks that I never half appreciated you, and that I do not appreciate you now. If you will recollect, you praised his verses once. He cherishes that praise amongst his sweetest treasures. Poor dear good old Gwynne, tender, sensitive, shrinking, with the face of a seraph and the heart of a maid. Never were two men more incongruously companioned. I love him for himself. He tolerates me, I do secretly believe, because of you. He longs to meet you,—he knew you well through my father,—and we often talk you over. Be sure at every opportunity ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... heaven and earth like this? What silveriest cloud could hang 'neath such a sky? A tide of wondrous and unwonted bliss Rolls back through all her pulses suddenly, As if some seraph, who had learned to kiss From the fair daughters of the world gone by, Had wedded so his fallen light with hers, Such sweet, strange joy through soul ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... vast ethereal sky Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing, Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan Winnows the buxom air. * * * * * * * * At once on th' eastern cliff of Paradise He lights, and to his proper shape returns A seraph wing'd. * * * * Like Maia's son he stood, And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... stand before her the ruin she had made him, then vanish from her sight. To-morrow he would leave the house, but she must see him yet once, alone, before he went! Once more he must hang his shriveled pinions in the presence of the seraph whose radiance had scorched him! And still the most hideous thought of all would keep lifting its vague ugly head out of chaos—the thought that, lovely as she was, she ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... Mrs Todgers vowed that anything one quarter so angelic she had never seen. 'She wanted but a pair of wings, a dear,' said that good woman, 'to be a young syrup'—meaning, possibly, young sylph, or seraph. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... an early hour and went to Ottaviani's house; his wife loaded me with caresses. I found there five or six children, amongst them a girl of eight years, named Marie, and another of seven, Rose, beautiful as a seraph. Ten years later Marie became the wife of the broker Colonda, and Rose, a few years afterwards, married a nobleman, Pierre Marcello, and had one son and two daughters, one of whom was wedded to M. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... without losing much save in size, be compressed into poems of the class commonly set to music. It is rather the basis of thought than the writing of the "Gipsy Child," which affords cause for objection; nevertheless, there is a passage in which a comparison is started between this child and a "Seraph in an alien planet born,"—an idea not new, and never, as we think, worth much; for it might require some subtlety to show how a planet capable of producing a Seraph should be ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... sunset of his childish memory; the gorgeous crimson piles of glory in the west, fading away into the cold calm light of the rising moon, while here and there a cloud floated across the western heaven, like a seraph's wing, in its flaming beauty; the earth was the same as in his childhood's days, full of gentle evening sounds, and the harmonies of twilight—the breeze came sweeping low over the heather and ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... when they were free of the crowd which pressed upon him with questions and conjectures and comments. "What a slump!—what a slump! That blessed, short-legged little seraph has spoilt the best sport that ever was. Why, he's sent that fool of a Gerrish home with the conviction that he was right in the part of his attack that was the most vilely hypocritical, and he's given that heartless scoundrel the pleasure of feeling like an honest man. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... I, in Heaven's glorious sun, And in the glare of Hell; My spirit drank a mingled tone, Of seraph's song, and demon's moan; What my soul bore, my soul ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... on one of Heaven's long-lighted days, The Four and all the Host having gone their ways Each to his Charge, the shining Courts were void Save for one Seraph whom no charge employed, With folden wings and slumber-threatened brow. To whom The Word: 'Beloved, what dost thou?' 'By the Permission,' came the answer soft, 'Little I do nor do that little oft. As is The Will in Heaven so on Earth Where by The Will I strive to make men ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... sickly taper shed Its light through vapors, damp, confined, Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, A new Electra by the bed Of suffering human-kind! Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay, To that pure hope ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... spot on the Verna Francis received the stigmata; whether the seraph which appeared to him was Jesus or a celestial spirit; what words were spoken as he imprinted them upon him;[13] and he no more understands that hour when Francis swooned with woe and love than the materialist, who asks to ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... to thee, father Francis, Drawn to the Life that died; With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his Lovescape crucified And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters And five-lived and leaved favour and pride, Are sisterly sealed in wild waters, To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... might have happened. The instant flashed forth like a point of light and now from cloud on cloud of vague circumstance confused form was veiling softly its afterglow. O! In the virgin womb of the imagination the word was made flesh. Gabriel the seraph had come to the virgin's chamber. An afterglow deepened within his spirit, whence the white flame had passed, deepening to a rose and ardent light. That rose and ardent light was her strange wilful heart, strange ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... rain-clouds sweep and harry, Down the long haggard hills, formless and low, Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry, Piled gray and tender blue and roseate snow; East—like a fiend, the bolt-breasted, streaming Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail; West—like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming, Venus leads the ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... morn my inmost being is borne, And I behold th' unearthly train Of solemn splendours that pertain To seraph state, Such as our glories symbolize. They sweep in countless bright convoys Athwart my blissful view, they seem Completion of all pleasure known Or loved, and of our ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer |
