"Sylph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... girls walked in the familiar schoolgirl fashion of Hyde Lodge, Charlotte's arm encircling the waist of her friend. They were both dressed in white muslin, and looked very shadowy and sylph-like in the summer dusk. Mr. Hawkehurst found himself in a new atmosphere in this suburban garden, with these two white-robed damsels by his side; for it seemed to him that Diana with Charlotte's arm round her waist, and a certain shy ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... as in Sub For as in a e any o oo to a o what o oo would c z suffice o u son c s cite ph v Stephen c k cap ph f sylph ch k ache q k liquor ch sh machine qu kw quote d j soldier s sh sure e i England s zh rasure e a there s z rose e a feint u e bury ee i been u i busy f v of u oo rude g j cage u oo pull gh f laugh x ks wax gh k lough ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... now, blushing Claire? Maid of the sylph-like air, Blooming and debonair, Whither so early? Chasing the merry morn, Down through the golden corn? List'ning the hunter's horn Ring through ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... say to her about his aunt's refusal to become acquainted with her; but he discovered, promptly enough, that with Miss Daisy Miller there was no great need of walking on tiptoe. He found her that evening in the garden, wandering about in the warm starlight like an indolent sylph, and swinging to and fro the largest fan he had ever beheld. It was ten o'clock. He had dined with his aunt, had been sitting with her since dinner, and had just taken leave of her till the morrow. Miss Daisy Miller seemed very glad to see him; she declared ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... little shy, but not more shy than Bateman, to whom the whole situation was highly embarrassing, and it did not put him at his ease to see this sylph-like thing take a shaker and with a ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... began to pull again, and the coxswain steered so as to bring the Zephyr in a circle round the Sylph. ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... is on the gale, Her step upon the wold; And morning diamonds brightly gem Her braided locks of gold. Far up the pine-wood glen, Her sylph-like form is seen, By hunter in the hazy dawn, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a sylph. Her chiefest charm lay in her physical feebleness. She was generally presented to us in some ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... of the magic Child, Which there he made up-grow by his strong art, As in that crystal[458:1] orb—wise Merlin's feat,— The wondrous 'World of Glass,' wherein inisled 40 All long'd-for things their beings did repeat;— And there he left it, like a Sylph beguiled, To live and yearn ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... did the two beautiful sisters differ. The figure of Josephine was tall and majestic; her walk and gestures were imperative and commanding. Sophia's form was slight and sylph-like; her every movement was characterized by exquisite modesty and grace, and her voice had all the liquid ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... will imagine some music-loving sylph attempting to guide the wind among the strings of an Aeolian harp, every now and then for a moment succeeding, and then again for a while the wind having its own way, he will gain, I think, something like a dream-notion of the man's playing. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... have assisted at several New-York balls, I have met two countenances only throughout the whole galaxy of beauty that, in dancing the Waltz, have indicated either joy or undisturbed gratification: the one, is that of a little sylph-like beam of pleasure, who might well carry upon her beautiful hair, 'unincumbered lots,' as her wedding-portion; who gains our hearts while she laughs at us; and who, because I chance to be within half a score of her father's years, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... a sylph, unheard, unseen A new-year's gift from Mab our queen: But tell it not, for if you do, You will be pinch'd all black and blue. Consider well, what a disgrace, To show abroad your mottled face ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... in a little secluded parlour behind the bar, in which sat the widow Davis, auditing her accounts in the morning, and giving out orders in the evening to Norah Geraghty, her barmaid, and to an attendant sylph, who ministered to the front parlour, taking in goes of gin and screws of tobacco, and bringing out the price ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... her abode on the earth, there remained to her only the life of a sylph. I have been interested to record, not a journal of her sickness, but the mental phenomena of such an almost disembodied life. Such may cast light on the period when also our Psyche may unfold her wings, free from bodily bonds, and the hindrances ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... sylph, unheard, unseen, A new-year's gift from Mab our queen: But tell it not, for if you do, You will be pinch'd all black and blue. Consider well, what a disgrace, To show abroad your mottled face: Then seal your lips, put on the ring, And sometimes ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... visions bright Of sylph and river, flower and fay, Now through a narrow corridor She ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... with the 'Magic-wove Scarf,' from Barnett's opera of 'The Mountain Sylph.' Barnett is a fine composer, and was theoretically educated in Germany; and, on his return, he composed the above opera. The musicians in England were much surprised when this clever author left ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... of these excited feelings, the ballet; drawing its magic net about the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like form, her scarf floating behind her, as if she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings. Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did her feet touch the earth. She seemed to floatin the air, and the floor to bend and wave under her, as a branch, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... this, the Sylph, one of the East India Company's cruisers, of sixty tons and mounting eight guns, was accompanying the mission under Sir Hartford Jones, from Bombay, to Persia; when being separated from the rest of the squadron, she was attacked in the gulf ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... She was the center of a group of intimates, of whom those who survive must connect her with many of their happiest hours. No one could have combined in a way more winning than hers the discriminations of fashionable life with an inborn passion for poetry. She was perfect in features, slight as a sylph in figure, and her large dark eyes alternately gleamed with laughter and were grave as though she were listening for a voice from some vague beyond. Many of her phrases, when she was speaking of social matters, were ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... nowhere to be found in the world. The lady seeing his astonishment said to the Prince, "This mansion is nothing beside all my others which now, of my free will, I have made thine own; and when thou seest them thou shalt have just cause for wonderment. Then that sylph-like being took seat upon a raised dais and with abundant show of affection seated Prince Ahmad by her side. Presently quoth she, "Albeit thou know me not, I know thee well, as thou shalt see with surprise when ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... The Words of the Four be addressed: Salamander, shine glorious! Wave, Undine, as bidden! Sylph, be thou ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... sword val'et myr'tle syn'a gogue boast breez'y wid'geon cod'i cil ghost greasy pig'eon dom'i cile queer gar'den mal'ice ver'sa tile brief par'don pal'ace hyp'o crite spoke e'vil tor'toise hip'po drome croak ea'gle mor'tise scen'er y self pole'ax sel'vage ple'na ry sylph poult'ry ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... watching the movements of animals. I have, to the sorrow of my neighbours, filled my garden in London with all kinds of purchases from Jamrach's. But from the moment that I knew you, who combined the fascination of a fawn and a child with that of a sylph or a fairy, my poor little menagerie was neglected, and what became of its members I scarcely know. I suppose I am very uncomplimentary to you, but you would have the truth. The moment that I felt myself threatened by ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Lucy entered at another door, having changed her dress since her return. The exquisite feminine beauty of her countenance, now shaded only by a profusion of sunny tresses; the sylph-like form, disencumbered of her heavy riding-skirt and mantled in azure silk; the grace of her manner and of her smile, cleared, with a celerity which surprised the Master himself, all the gloomy and unfavourable thoughts which had for some time overclouded his fancy. In those features, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the sylph—like girl, and in a twinkling reappeared with the desired garment, which in a convulsion of laughter she slipped over my head as I sat on the floor; and having fastened it properly round my waist, I rose and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... from the adagio into the allegro; the steps of the dancers became quicker, their gestures more animated, the play of their limbs more voluptuous. With the exception of one couple, every glance and movement of the performers seemed directed or aimed at the Caliph. This couple consisted of the most sylph-like and exquisitely formed of the four female dancers, and of a Persian warrior, who was pursuing her, and from whom she strove coyly to escape. With admirable grace and skill did these two figures ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... the sun of life; he felt the pressure of no duty—was like a bird of the air lying under its mother's wing, and dreaming of flight; his childhood's most cherished dream had grown fact: there was the sylph, the oriad, the naiad of all his dreams, a living lady before his eyes—nor the less a creature of his imagination's heart; from her, as the centre of power, had all the marvellous transformation proceeded; ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... this rattling sylph, cries. 'Oh yes! Do let us resolve ourselves into a Committee of the whole House! So delicious!' Veneering says, 'As many as are of that opinion, say Aye,—contrary, No—the Ayes have it.' But nobody takes the slightest notice of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... whispered in my ear that you were seen in Redcliffe Meadows walking with a mighty pretty young lady, with a figure like a sylph and a face like an angel. Now then, Tom, don't be shy, but out with it, and ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... overwrought by the life I lead! Honorine is my real concern. To recover my wife is my only study; to guard her in her cage, without her suspecting that she is in my power; to satisfy her needs, to supply the little pleasure she allows herself, to be always about her like a sylph without allowing her to see or to suspect me, for if she did, the future would be lost,—that is my life, my true life.—For seven years I have never gone to bed without going first to see the light of her night-lamp, or her shadow ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... the boldest Sylph appal, When gleaming with meridian blaze, Thy beauty must enrapture all, But who ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... sunshine quivered through those delicately tinted glass bottles, lighting up the glittering liquid contained within them!—why, they look more like soap-bubbles than anything else! ... and the boy who carried them moved with such a lazy, noiseless grace that he might have been taken for a dream-sylph rather than ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... The fascinating sylph, Madeleine Guimard, broke almost as many hearts and inspired as many duels as the charming Sophie Arnould herself. Plain even to ugliness, and excessively thin, her exquisite dancing and splendid eyes made great havoc among her numerous admirers. ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... coast, and, internally, exhibit taste in their furniture and ornament. The ladies excite the author's pen into absolute rapture; their sparkling eyes and glossy hair, are, in themselves, sufficient to negative the idea of tameness or insipidity, while their sylph-like figures exhibit fresh graces at every step. This is supported by the more important qualities, of "being by far the more industrious half of the community, and performing their household ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... the floating tides; While melting music steals upon the sky, And softened sounds along the waters die; Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. All but the sylph—with careful thoughts oppressed, Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast. He summons straight his denizens of air; The lucid squadrons around the sails repair; Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe, That ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... to play the tune which Frank had requested. The Sylph was making very good progress through the water, and the rowers kept pulling with a ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... every wave, and actually overhauls the high seas till she finds him, and there the first time he opens his eyes is that sweet, quaint piece of innocence leaning over him. He is shut up with her for ten days or so; she is as graceful as a sylph, and has a tender sort of baby face that's enough to distract a man, and I don't see how he could possibly leave that vessel without being in love with her, unless some other woman had already got hold of his heart. No, even ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... trees—as I must call them—unfolded a long ciliary process, with which it seized one of the gleaming fruits that glittered on its summit, and sweeping slowly down, held it within reach of Animula. The sylph took it in her delicate hand, and began to eat. My attention was so entirely absorbed by her, that I could not apply myself to the task of determining whether this singular plant was or was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was not forgotten. Every now and then her sylph-like form flitted before my imagination, and I could not help associating it with the scenery through which we were passing, and amidst which, no doubt, she was born and nurtured—its fair indigene. The glimpse of the fete champetre, where several Creole-like girls were conspicuous, brought ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the boldest Sylph appall, When gleaming with meridian blaze; Thy beauty must enrapture all; But who can dare thine ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... a boat, and the party within it sang Swedish and Danish songs; but by the shore, under that tall, hanging birch, sat four young girls—so pretty—so sylph-like! and they each plucked up from the grass four long straws, and bound these straws two and two together, at the ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... voice Miss Marcia stops and regards him with a surprised smile. She is very pretty, is Marcia,—bewitchingly pretty,—and she has an air of demure grace and modesty about her that is perfectly charming. Why? oh, why does she not remain in that sylph-like, attitude of questioning silence? But she speaks—and the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... him, with his hands crossed on the cane upon which he rested, stood Dominie Sampson, whom Mannering recognised at once. Time had made no change upon him, unless that his black coat seemed more brown, and his gaunt cheeks more lank, than when Mannering last saw him. On one side of the old man was a sylph-like form—a young woman of about seventeen, whom the Colonel accounted to be his daughter. She was looking, from time to time, anxiously towards the avenue, as if expecting the post-chaise; and between whiles busied herself in adjusting the blankets, so as to protect her father ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... lieth love's delight. Complexion, stature, nature, mateth it, Not with their kinds, but with their opposites. Hence hands of snow in palms of russet lie; The form of Hercules affects the sylph's; And breasts, that case the lion's fear-proof heart, Find their meet lodge in arms where tremors dwell! Haply for this, on Afric's swarthy neck, Hath Europe's priceless pearl been seen to hang, That makes the orient ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... baby?" he asked. "Your hair is beaten gold, your eyes are deep and true, your slender little form has all the symmetry and beauty of a sylph. You are young, radiant, glorious, and your voice the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... adept came in smiling, with her eyes full of fire. She was dressed in a short pelisse, open in front, and an embroidered muslin skirt which did not go beyond her knees. She looked like a sylph. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of you," interrupted De Forrest, as they stood talking a moment near the head of the stairs in the hall. "We did not know but that the sylph you escorted away had made a supper of Hemstead, with you as a relish. Have you seen enough of this ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... ladies in youth are very sylph-like and elegant; and this appearance is obtained without the use of those artificial constraints so justly to be condemned. They are almost too slight for beauty, though this does not signify while they retain the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... love and melancholy. "Oh!" at length murmured she, "would that I were she who has the right of seeing you every minute, of speaking to you every instant! would that I were she who might watch over you, she who would have no need of mysterious springs, to summon and cause to appear, like a sylph, the man she loves, to look at him for an hour, and then see him disappear in the darkness of a mystery, still more strange at his going out than at his coming in. Oh! that would be to live a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that fall, Withered leaves—one—two—and three— From the lofty elder tree! Through the calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyed Sylph or fairy hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. But the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws and darts! First at one and then its fellow, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... succeeds the schottish, the scene presents one bewildering maze of flaunting gossamers and girating bodies, now floating sylph-like into the foreground, then whirling seductively into the shadowy vista, where the joyous laugh dies out in the din of voices. The excitement has seized upon the head and heart of the young,—the child who stood trembling between the first and second downward ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... visible existence; his second, that he beheld an apparition; the third and abiding conviction, that it was Amy herself, paler, indeed, and thinner, than in the days of heedless happiness, when she possessed the form and hue of a wood-nymph, with the beauty of a sylph—but still Amy, unequalled in loveliness by aught which had ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... and deserted, and she herself was changed. She was no longer the graceful, enchanting prima donna, the floating sylph; she was a calm, proud woman, almost imposing in her grave, pale beauty; her melancholy smile touched the heart, while it contrasted strangely with her ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... little lady, and she looked at him. He felt himself melting away, but he still remained firm with his gun on his shoulder. Suddenly the door of the room flew open and the draught of air caught up the little dancer, she fluttered like a sylph right into the stove by the side of the tin soldier, and was instantly in flames and was gone. The tin soldier melted down into a lump, and the next morning, when the maid servant took the ashes out of the stove, she found him in the shape of a little tin heart. But of the little dancer ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... heavenliest blue, liquid, laughing, brimming with espieglerie; a slim little nose with an upward tilt, which expressed a contemptuous gaiety, an inquiring curiosity; a dimpled chin sloping a little towards the full round throat; the bust and shoulders of a Venus, the waist of a sylph, set off by the close-fitting velvet bodice, with its diamond and turquoise buttons; hair of palest gold, fluffed out into curls that were traps for sunbeams; hands and arms of a milky whiteness emerging from the large loose elbow-sleeves—a ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... her head. "I don't know about the sylph-like form, but at least I mean to possess a slender figure when I have followed Miss Cullam's advice ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... Carthusian match, for the footer captain to give his eleven a formal tea, Phil arranged the usual preliminaries, sick at heart, and wearily certain as to the result. Three put in an appearance—Vercoe, Baines, and Roberts—and in place of the burly forms of the rest of the St. Amory's eleven, the sylph-like figures of their fags flitted to Phil's hall of entertainment with curt little notes. Worcester and the rest "regretted they were unable to avail themselves of the ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... air of sylph-like simplicity to one, whose features, though beautiful, were marked by an expression foreign to simplicity, evincing that taste, not sentiment, presided over her toilet, and that, "chez elle, un beau desordre ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... themselves the rousing shake, And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground, And the pressed watch returned a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow pressed, Her guardian Sylph prolonged the balmy rest; 'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed The morning-dream that hovered o'er her head; A youth more glittering than a birth-night beau, (That even in slumber caused her cheek to glow) Seemed to her ear his winning lips to lay, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... ever such luck!" cried Bart, joyously. "This is the ship Sylph, and that is Mr. Watson, and he has built this ship for my father. Isn't it odd that we should come to this ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... mother and daughter, whilst the pretty Euphemia paid the same compliment to him. During his stay, he ventured to look once only at her sylph-like figure. There was an unreceding something in her liquid blue eyes, when he chanced to meet them, which displeased him; and he could not help seeing that from the instant she entered the room she had seldom ceased staring in ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... having ambitious labels, and a wash-sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like women in a paradisaic costume, balancing themselves upon the tips of their toes on the bare backs of frantic and plunging steeds, and kissing their hands ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Kaili, Kaili! Kaili, leaf of the koa, Graceful as leaf of the koa, 10 Granddaughter of goddess, Whose name is the breath of love, Darling of blooming Lehua. My lady rides with the gray foam, On the surge that enthralls the desire. 15 I pine for the sylph robed in gauze, Who rides on the surf Maka-iwa— Aye, cynosure thou of all hearts, In all of sacred Wailua. Forlorn and soul-empty the house; 20 You pleasure on the beach Ali-o; Your love is up ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... jingle, jangle, jingle, Soft tunes that sweetly mingle, The cows are coming home. Malvine and Pearl and Florimel, Dekamp, Redrose and Gretchen Schnell, Queen Bell and Sylph and Spangled Sue— Across the fields I hear her "loo-oo" And clang her silver bell; Goling, golang, golinglelingle, With faint far sounds that mingle, The cows come slowly home; And mother-songs of long-gone years, And baby joys and ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Templeton, young American lads, meet each other in an unusual way soon after the declaration of war. Circumstances place them on board the British cruiser, "The Sylph," and from there on, they share adventures with the sailors of the Allies. Ensign Robert L. Drake, the author, is an experienced naval officer, and he describes admirably the many exciting adventures of ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... the rest, alone remained; and more than one of these actually mixed in the affray, with a heroism worthy a better cause. Miranda, still sitting erect, and supported in the arms of a kneeling and trembling sylph in white, watched the conflict with terribly-exultant eyes, that blazed brighter and brighter with the lurid fire of vengeful joy st every ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... he was back off Niagara, and there again sighted the enemy; but a heavy westerly gale drove both squadrons to the lower end of the lake, where each entered its own harbor on the 19th. August 29 the American put out again, having an additional newly built schooner, named the "Sylph," large and fast, carrying three or four long 32-pounders. Chauncey reported that he had now nine vessels with ninety-one guns, but that the enemy was still superior. In number of guns, possibly; but it is difficult to accept the statement otherwise, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... As for myself, I must admit the frivolous, or, rather mundane, bent of my tastes; the truly admirable spectacle presented to my eyes interested me much less than the young stranger, who at this moment was descending with the lightness of a sylph the little road which led ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... a happy one, until death sundered the tie. Caroline Mary, who thus became the Duchess de Berri, was of sylph-like grace of figure, beautiful in features, and by her affable manners and unaffected amiability won all hearts. Four years glided swiftly away. Two children were born, a son and a daughter; both died in infancy. A third child proved to be a daughter. As, by an ancient law of the realm, ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... to men; she did not trouble herself to put on her prettiest gown when the evening train came in, bringing the bachelors from the city. She was tall—five foot eight in her stockings; all her muscles were well developed; there was nothing sylph-like about her waist, but all her motions had a strong, gentle grace of their own that bespoke health and dignity. She had a profession, too, which was much beneath most of the be-crimped and smile-wreathed ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... spare the four sylph-like Misses Clipper, for with them vanished all hopes of delicious music in the evening. Ah, that was music! The way they played together the "Taking of Tel-el- Kebir" took us by storm. The silent march through the dead of night, the charge, the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... knew all manner of simples; he was doctor and priest together. He had a very simple magic. He himself did not expect it to reach the Great Spirit, but it might affect the innumerable zemes or under and under-under spirits. These barbarians, using other words for them, had letter-notion of gnome, sylph, undine and salamander. All things lived and took offense or became propitious. Effort consisted in making them propitious. If the effort was too great one of them killed you. Then you went to the shadowy ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... though reluctantly, to her whim. As she entered the bower, and turned to speak to him, the moonlight fell full upon her figure. "What a pretty little witch you are!" he exclaimed. "My Lily Bell, my precious pearl, my sylph! You look like a spirit just floated down ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... behind her, across the garden, all aglow with the crimson light of the western sky, against which the outlines of her figure, in its close-fitting dark dress, stand out clearly and distinctly. Vera has the figure, not of a sylph, but of a goddess; it is the absolute perfection of the female form. She is tall—very tall, and she carries her head a little proudly, like a young queen ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... wide world," I exclaimed, quite unintentionally quoting Tom Moore; "there never has been, nor can ever be again, so charming a creature. No nymph, or sylph, or winged Ariel, or syren with song and mirror, was ever so fascinating—no daughter of Eve so ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the two vessels lay abreast within easy hail. The brig, with her fine lines and her white sails, looked vaporous and sylph-like in the moonlight. The gunboat, short, squat, with her stumpy dark spars naked like dead trees, raised against the luminous sky of that resplendent night, threw a heavy shadow on the lane of water between the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... he had guessed correctly, nearly at that very moment the prisoner heard in the lobby a step light as that of a sylph, and the rustling of a gown, and a well-known voice, which ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... a young fellow sketches in water-colours a charming sylph-like girl in various entrancing attitudes; it is disastrous when she teaches him a soft flowing language like the Italian; but it is absolute destruction when he teaches her the English tongue and ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... willows That overhung the sea, And as she view'd the billows, She moan'd most piteously; The storm in all its rigour Swept the bosom of the main, And shook the sylph-like figure Of lovely ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Yama, Varuna, Zeus; Vishnu[Hindu deities], Siva, Shiva, Krishna, Juggernath[obs3], Buddha; Isis[Egyptian deities], Osiris, Ra; Belus, Bel, Baal[obs3], Asteroth &c.[obs3]; Thor[Norse deities], Odin; Mumbo Jumbo; good genius, tutelary genius; demiurge, familiar; sibyl; fairy, fay; sylph,, sylphid; Ariel[obs3], peri, nymph, nereid, dryad, seamaid, banshee, benshie[obs3], Ormuzd; Oberon, Mab, hamadryad[obs3], naiad, mermaid, kelpie[obs3], Ondine, nixie, sprite; denizens of the air; pixy &c. (bad spirit) 980. mythology; heathen-mythology, fairy-mythology; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... colonies, he would have me to understand, was unbounded. For example, Miss Arabella Pope of Norfolk, in Virginia,—and did I know her? No, I had not that pleasure, though I assured him the Popes of Virginia were famed. Miss Pope danced divinely as any sylph, and the very memory of her tripping at the Norfolk Assembly roused the captain to such a pitch of enthusiasm as I had never seen in him. Marvellous to say, his own words failed him, and he had recourse to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... filled with joy; but I will not take up all my letter to you with ecstatic rhapsodies; nor will I indulge myself by referring to her beauty, her charm, her Madonna-like face and sylph-like form. Her extraordinary affection for me (I speak with all humility)—tempered as it naturally was by the modesty of her age (she is barely seventeen)—was, I think, what first drew me towards her. We are to be married ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... held to me, when first we met, Charles? But I shall lose my spirits if I talk to you. What a sweet evening! What a delicious breeze! Bon soir!" And forth she went, tripping it among the beds of flowers like a sylph, followed by Lafontaine, moody and miserable, yet unable to resist the spell. Of those scenes I saw a hundred, regularly ending in the same conclusion; the lady always, as ladies ought, gaining the day, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... transgressing the rules of good breeding, now throw in the way of many well-disposed young persons. He explains his system, by supposing that an unmarried lady and gentleman meet for the first time at a public ball: he is enchanted with the sylph-like grace of the lady in a waltz—she, fascinated with the superb black moustaches of the gentleman. Mutual interest is created in their bosoms, and the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... these compositions are as gay and fantastic as the wiles of an enamored, yet mischievous sylph; some are soft, playing in undulating light, like the hues of a salamander; some, full of the most profound discouragement, as if the sighs of souls in pain, who could find none to offer up the charitable prayers necessary for their deliverance, breathed through ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... This sylph-like person had little in common with a monstrous lady whose adventures in the wildernes Phelps was fond of relating. She was built some thing on the plan of the mountains, and her ambition to explore was equal to her ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the creature By the spell of the Four, says the teacher: Salamander shall glisten,[12] Undina lapse lightly, Sylph vanish ...
— Faust • Goethe
... must eclipse the day: Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, 15 And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground, And the press'd watch return'd a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow prest, Her guardian SYLPH prolong'd the balmy rest: 20 'Twas He had summon'd to her silent bed The morning-dream that hover'd o'er her head; A Youth more glitt'ring than a Birth-night Beau, (That ev'n in slumber caus'd her cheek to glow) Seem'd to her ear his winning ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... titles ranging from that of Anax imperator, indicative of imperial sway, to epithets expressive of feminine delicacy and ladylike grace, such as virgo, puella, demoiselle, and damsel-fly, which are appropriated to the sylph-like forms that many of them exhibit. In their habits, however, they by no means deserve the gentle appellations bestowed upon them. They are, in truth, the tigers of the insect world, and their whole lives are devoted to bloodshed ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... cried Bull, "it was because he was so fat and so light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It was like the old speculations—what would happen if an elephant could leap up in ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... lightness it assumed the moment feet moved in time with the music. If life had been a continuous waltz no partner of hers less awkward than a rhinoceros could have avoided falling in love with her. But waltzes ended all too soon and the thistle-down sylph of a woman became my plain homely Blanquette, uninspiring of romance save in the hardware bosom of the quincaillier at the corner of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... velvet who could compare in personal beauty with Francesco Gonzago; and the bride alone, of all the beauties who shone in gold and silver, appeared superior in feminine charms to the lovely Beatrice, notwithstanding that her cumbrous robe of grey stuff obscured the delicate proportions of her sylph-like form. Buoyant in spirit, and animated by the scene before her, occasionally a gleam of sunshine would irradiate her brow as she gazed upon the sparkling throng who formed the brilliant pageant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... happened on the journey, or whether it came from care, no one could say. He looked at the little girl and she looked at him. He felt that he was melting, but still he stood steadfast, musket in hand. Then a door opened. A whiff of air caught the dancer, and she flew like a sylph right into the tile-stove to the tin soldier, blazed up in flame, and was gone. Then the tin soldier melted to a lump, and when the maid next day took out the ashes, she found him as a little tin heart. But of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner |
