"Sylph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conscious that he now had not much to fear from Sweden, left the conduct of the desultory war with his generals, and set out on another tour of observation to southern Europe. The lovely Catharine, who, with the fairy form and sylph-like grace of a girl of seventeen, had won the love of Peter, was now a staid and worthy matron of middle life. She had, however, secured the abiding affection of the tzar, and he loved to take her with him on all ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... in the whaling brig "Jasper Green." We are compelled to confess that the only nautical experience we ever had was to once temporarily command a canal boat on the dark-rolling Wabash, while the captain went ashore to cave in the head of a miscreant who had winked lasciviously at the sylph who superintended the culinary department on board that gallant craft. The eccentric individual smiles in a ghastly manner, says perhaps we won't lend him a dollar till tomorrow; to which we courteously reply that we CERTAINLY ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... as a premiere danseuse was made on March 30, 1844. It was not a successful one. Far from it. The fact was, the Parisians, accustomed to the dreamy and sylph-like pirouettings of Cerito and Elssler and Taglioni, and their own Adele Dumilatre, could not appreciate the vigorous cachuchas and boleros now offered them. When they voiced their disapproval, Lola lost the one thing she could never keep—her temper. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... 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 detach themselves from their companions, in order to continue a while their simulated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... 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 ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... filmy wings its narrow cell. So the pleased Linnet in the moss-wove nest, Waked into life beneath its parent's breast, 415 Chirps in the gaping shell, bursts forth erelong, Shakes its new plumes, and tries its tender song.— —And now the talisman she strikes, that charms Her husband-Sylph,—and calls him to her arms.— Quick, the light Gnat her airy Lord bestrides, 420 With cobweb reins the flying courser guides, From crystal steeps of viewless ether springs, Cleaves the soft air on still expanded wings; Darts like a sunbeam o'er the boundless ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Indian girls came down the river. The younger, tall, slender and graceful, dressed in bright, clean scarlet, was a picture. With her jet black hair hanging in shining plaits, her piercing eyes and handsome face, she was the most comely, sylph-like Indian maiden ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... sylph, resting on the tiniest of feet, with hands so charming that you would feel an almost irresistible desire to fold them caressingly within your own—the rich complexion of a brunette with the bloom of ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... piano, guitar, or mandoline, of which instruments she is a perfect mistress. Her dancing is no less admirable than her singing; and, at every ball to which she goes, crowds collect around her to watch the sylph-like grace with which she glides through the dance. In short, she unites every womanly accomplishment, and yet this heavenly creature persists in concealing her face under that vile mask, which fits so closely that not the smallest portion of her countenance can be perceived. However hideous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... scarce another eye that could behold this living picture of health and beauty, without pausing on it with pleasure. The traveller stopped his weary horse on the eve of entering the city which was the end of his journey, to gaze at the sylph-like form that tripped by him, with her milk-pail poised on her head, bearing herself so erect, and stepping so light and free under her burden, that it seemed rather an ornament than an encumbrance. The lads of the neighbouring suburb, who held their evening rendezvous ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the lovely maiden, That my young heart captive led; Like a sylph, with gold curls laden, And her lips of cherry red. Now fond voices seem to echo, Tones as when I heard them last; And my heart sighs sadly, Heigh, ho! For ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... commenced with the 'Magic-wove Scarf,' from Barnett's opera of 'The Mountain Sylph.' Barnett is a fine composer, and was theoretically educated in Germany; and, on his return, he composed the above opera. The musicians in England were much surprised when this clever author left the field of composition, after ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... 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 ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... continued to read—"'is 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 in May. You know that the sorrow of my ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... enough; springs necessary for comfort & safety Sylph spring frame saves muscle & nerves & is perfection. All users delighted. Investigate. We also make a 30 lb. rigid Sylph. ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... the restless seas, The wind blows loud, fierce from the skies; Sweet, sylph-like Una clasps the shell, Peace brooding in ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... like of which is sometimes seen in the great theaters of Europe. To the subdued strains of the orchestra there seems to appear in the midst of a shower of light, a cascade of gold and diamonds in an Oriental setting, a deity wrapped in misty gauze, a sylph enveloped in a luminous halo, who moves forward apparently without touching the floor. In her presence the flowers bloom, the dance awakens, the music bursts forth, and troops of devils, nymphs, satyrs, demons, angels, shepherds and shepherdesses, dance, shake their ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the gale, Her step upon the wold; And morning diamonds brightly gem Her braided locks of gold. Far up the pine-wood glen, Her sylph-like form is seen, By hunter in the hazy dawn, Or ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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 ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... those eyes that must eclipse the day: Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, 15 And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground, And the press'd watch return'd a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow prest, Her guardian SYLPH prolong'd the balmy rest: 20 'Twas He had summon'd to her silent bed The morning-dream that hover'd o'er her head; A Youth more glitt'ring than a Birth-night Beau, (That ev'n in slumber caus'd her cheek to glow) Seem'd to her ear his winning lips ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... was preparing 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 very ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... 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 ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Sent by 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 Then seal your lips, put on ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 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 size. Phelps and the other guides ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Vrain looked like a sylph or a dainty shepherdess of Dresden china, and should have been arrayed in gossamer robes, rather than in the deep mourning she affected. Indeed, Lucian considered that such weeds were rather premature, as Mrs. Vrain could not yet be certain ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... respects 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 melody of the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... light cap on his head. His vermilion lips, brilliant white teeth, and arched eye-brows gave him the air of a charming girl. So graceful and airy are his movements, that one might well ask, whether he be mortal or a heavenly spirit. He looks like a sylph formed of the essence of flowers, or a soul descended from the moon. Is it indeed a youth who has come out to divert himself, or is it a sweet perfume from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... of the tram: Be thine the throne, and thine to reign O'er all the varying year! But ere thou rulest the Fates command; That of our chosen rival band A Sylph shall win thy heart and hand, Thy sovereignty ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... who spoke thus playfully was fair, tall, and sylph-like, in a muslin dress, and with just the coquettish desinvolture which an English girl brings home from abroad, and loses again after a few months of native life. Joshua was the reverse of playful; the world was too important a concern for him to indulge in light moods. He told her in decided, ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... had been a beauty, and liked to tell us of the balls she had danced at, when, dressed in white muslin with heelless slippers and a wreath in her hair, she had been called "a sylph," Why she had never married was a puzzle to many. I remember she used to tell us of a wonderful visit to London, and of how she came home sick at heart about leaving all the "ferlies," as she called them. On ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... ornament which woman seeks much to improve, was of bright glossy brown, and encumbered rather than adorned with a snood, set thick with marine productions, among which the small clear pearl found in the Solway was conspicuous. Nature had not trusted to a handsome shape, and a sylph-like air, for young Barbara's influence over the heart of man; but had bestowed a pair of large bright blue eyes, swimming in liquid light, so full of love and gentleness and joy, that all the sailors from Annanwater to far Saint Bees acknowledged their power, and sung songs about the ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... know the story of St. Anthony? How he was tempted by the Devil in the semblance of a lovely sylph, until all at once he saw the fiend's hoof appear ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... in the midst of these excited feelings, the ballet; drawing its magic net about the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like form, her scarf floating behind her, as if she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings. Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did her feet touch the earth. She seemed to floatin the air, and the floor to bend and wave under her, as a branch, when a bird alights upon ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... I am an author and a plagiarist. Every sketch in my book is taken from some other work, except the "Screecher," which is from the artistic pen of Lady G.M.; and the lovely form and features of the coloured sylph, for which I am indebted to my friend Mr. J.F.C.—You must not be too curious.—I consider myself justified in plagiarizing anything from anybody, if I conceive it will help to elucidate my subject or amuse my reader, provided ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... daughter of the "blind beggar of Bethnal Green," a lady by birth, a sylph for beauty, an angel for constancy and sweetness. She was loved to distraction by Wilford, and it turned out that he was the son of lord Woodville, and Bess the daughter of lord Woodville's brother; so they were cousins. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 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
... Away tripped 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 paid my respects to my warm hearted relations. But that petticoat—it could ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... 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
... Alice appeared dressed in spotless white, with a half-open lily in her hair and another at her throat. The moon, which was nearing its full, shone through the open spaces of the vine-clad porch and added an ethereal touch to the sylph-like picture she presented, and one that was certainly not ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... detour to the side, caught sight of a broad, blue serge back, looking broader than ever from contrast with sylph-like forms, a coil of yellow hair beneath a sailor hat, and the side of a crimson cheek. Mellicent! Of course it was Mellicent! There she stood, the poor dear thing, a statue of misery in the midst of the fashionable crowd, a roll of shawls clutched in one ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... can interpret the symbol expressed by the wings of the air-sylph forming within the case of the caterpillar? Only he who feels in his own soul the same instinct which impels the horned fly to leave room in its involucrum for antennae yet to come." Such a man knows and feels that the potential ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... halting-place, a mean term, a starting-point whence one rises toward the beautiful with a fresher and keener perception. The salamander gives relief to the water-sprite; the gnome heightens the charm of the sylph. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... magic image 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 and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... poem by describing Belinda, the heroine, awaking from sleep. He tells how her guardian sylph brings a morning dream to warn her of coming danger. In the dream she is told that all around her unnumbered fairy spirits fly ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... privilege to see real peasantry flirt, and it has always struck us as a singularly solid and substantial affair—makes one think, somehow, of a steam-roller flirting with a cow—but on the stage it is so sylph-like. She has short skirts, and her stockings are so much tidier and better fitting than these things are in real peasant life, and she is arch and coy. She turns away from him and laughs—such a silvery laugh. And he is ruddy and curly haired and has on such a beautiful waistcoat! how can she ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... the right arm, as though partisan meant the instrument in their grasp. O lame and impotent! As if a little bit of a truncheon could bruise a ghost! What says Ossian, speaking of a ghost? "The dim stars twinkled through his form." A plain proof of his want of substance. So of Pope's sylph: ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... costume. Her drapery, which was of delicate lace, being happily adapted to show to the greatest advantage the captivating contour of her elegant figure, and ornamented with white silk fringe and tassels, marked every airy motion of her sylph-like form. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... compelled, although the sea-breeze does its best, to keep the house, or else get outside the bay of Boston, away from the land: this I was afforded frequent opportunities of doing, in a very pretty schooner-yacht called the Sylph, which Mr. F——s had down here. She was about eighty tons burthen, capitally appointed, and with rare qualities as a sea-boat; in her I had the happiness to pass many days, when the poor people on shore were pitiably grilled, cruising for codfish, and dishing them up into a sort of soup ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... the lights were lowered to the faintest glimmer. Soft music played. Forms floated through the air, now here, now there, plucking at a tambourine—touching a sweet chord on the open piano. At last, in evil moment, the most angelic, sylph-like form came all too near our friend who wore the bangle. The temptation was too great for mortal man. He extended his arms and took firm, substantial, desperate hold of the nymph, at the same instant shouting wildly to his brother, "Turn ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... by 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: Then seal your lips, put on the ring, And sometimes ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... bird whispered in my ear that you were seen in Redcliffe Meadows walking with a mighty pretty young lady, with a figure like a sylph and a face like an angel. Now then, Tom, don't be shy, but out with it, and tell ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... 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 ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... reality and truth became conspicuous, even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.' The Rape of the Lock is the masterpiece, as often noticed, of an unconscious allegory. The sylph, who was introduced with such curious felicity, is to be punished if he fails to do his duty, by imprisonment ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... hero's ravings about his Matilda's eyes and cheeks, and her foot and her sylph-like waist, and her raven hair, I wondered what that young man would say of me if he were my lover and I his persecuted mistress. The Matilda was a pleasing person enough; but if I take her point by point, it would be absurd to speak of her charms in the same breath ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Kaili, Kaili! Kaili, leaf of the koa, Graceful as leaf of the koa, 10 Granddaughter of goddess, Whose name is the breath of love, Darling of blooming Lehua. My lady rides with the gray foam, On the surge that enthralls the desire. 15 I pine for the sylph robed in gauze, Who rides on the surf Maka-iwa— Aye, cynosure thou of all hearts, In all of sacred Wailua. Forlorn and soul-empty the house; 20 You pleasure on the beach Ali-o; Your love is up here in ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... he remarked with an amiable grin. "Tex most always does the hirin', yuh see. Glad to know yuh. My name's McCabe—Slim, they calls me, 'count uh my sylph-like figger. These here guys is Bill Joyce an' his side-kick, Butch Siegrist; likewise Flint Kreeger an' Doc Peters over to the table. Bud Jessup ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Sub For as in a e any o oo to a o what o oo would c z suffice o u son c s cite ph v Stephen c k cap ph f sylph ch k ache q k liquor ch sh machine qu kw quote d j soldier s sh sure e i England s zh rasure e a there s z rose e a feint u e bury ee i been u i busy f v of u oo rude g j cage u oo pull gh f laugh x ks wax gh k lough x ksh noxious i e police x z Xerxes i e thirst x gz examine i y ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of light fabrics do best agree with Majoli's sylph-like form. Pearls and feathers are consonant to her artistic taste. Her emblematic flower is the lily, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... eyes, that had been fixed on his, followed his glance, and we saw a Spaniard, whose glittering eyes shone through a clump of orange-trees. On finding himself the object of our attention, the man vanished with the swiftness of a sylph. A young ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... sylph or a fairy, Sinuous, wary, I passed from the airy Lawns, where the flute Of the winds made ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... approached the wondrous forest, and was gazing earnestly upwards. Presently one of the 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 not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... at a common rein to the sound of the young mocking voice. Alice Frome had come in unnoticed and was standing in the doorway smiling at them. The effect she produced was demurely daring. The long lines of her slender sylph-like body, the girlishness of her golden charm, were vigorously contradicted in their suggestion of shyness by the square tilted chin and the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... instant, 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 ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... a golden pin, and up sprang a tiny figure, all crimson and gold, with shining wings, and a garland on its dainty head. Softly played the hidden music, and airily danced the little sylph till the silvery chime died away; then, folding her delicate arms, she sank from sight, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the beast, The Words of the Four be addressed: Salamander, shine glorious! Wave, Undine, as bidden! Sylph, be ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... For the moment the wife and the father-in-law were combining their efforts to convince a very stout, elderly gentleman that check trousers would make him look like a sylph. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... 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 ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... roaming! I 've been roaming! O'er red rose and lily fair, And like a sylph I 'm coming With ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... the future came upon me. I remembered the Prince in the fairy tale, who was given by the Fates three magic citrons, and told that each one contained a beautiful sylph, who would appear to him as he cut the rind of her prison. She would ask for a drink of water, and if he wished to keep her for his wife he must instantly obey or she would vanish, never to return, even ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... 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 ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... mourning can be very becoming to Lady Mabel," ruminated Mrs. Tempest. "Those small sylph-like figures rarely look well ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... in truth, a beautiful, sylph-like young woman—one whom I would have looked at with complacency in any circumstances; for who that admires the fair and the lovely in nature—whether it be the wide-spread beauty of sky and earth, or beauty in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... tell me twenty years are past Since I have look'd upon thee last, And thought thee fairest of the fair, With thy sylph-like form and light-brown hair! I can remember every word That from those smiling lips I heard: Oh! how little it appears Like the lapse of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... combine them at the piano when breakfast was at an end, though it was Sunday morning, were exasperating to the exquisite lover of music. Mr. Pericles was really suffering torments. Do you know what it is to pursue the sylph, and touch her flying skirts, think you have caught her, and are sure of her—that she is yours, the rapturous evanescent darling! when some well-meaning earthly wretch interposes and trips you, and off she flies and leaves you floundering? A lovely melody nearly grasped and lost in this fashion, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of those sylvan Amazons who could handle any thing, from the hunting-knife to the ponderous axe; and she dressed in the true sylph-like costume of the backwoods. Her robe, which appeared to be the only garment with which she encumbered herself, fitted her, as they say at sea, "like a purser's shirt on a handspike," and looked for all the world ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... of the house-fronts white We rolled rich puncheons of Spanish grape, Till at length, with the fire of the wine alight, I saw at a doorway a fair fresh shape - A woman, a sylph, or sprite. ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... in a moved voice, then, Ralph, the artist spake again— "Does not that weird orb unroll Scenes phantasmal to your soul? As I gaze thereon, I swear, Peopled grows the vacant air, Fables, myths alone are real, White-clad sylph-like figures steal 'Twixt the bushes, o'er the lawn, Goddess, nymph, undine, and faun. Yonder, see the Willis dance, Faces pale with stony glance; They are maids who died unwed, And they quit their gloomy bed, Hungry still for ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... language you 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, and the gentleman vexed, yet vanquished. But evil days were at hand; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... skilful fingers fine, Purpled o'er those wings of thine? Was it some sylph whose tender care Spangled thy robes so fine and fair, And wove them of the morning air? I feel thy little throbbing heart; Thou fear'st e'en ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... He had no doubt that his Syrilla would rapidly recover a part of her lost weight, but he felt as if at the moment he had lost Syrilla. He could not picture her as a sylph of one hundred and fifty pounds. He was worried, indeed, as he sat eating his lunch in Mrs. Pilker's mansion. It was then he heard ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... gathered together, made up principally of English people. As for myself, I must admit the frivolous, or, rather mundane, bent of my tastes; the truly admirable spectacle presented to my eyes interested me much less than the young stranger, who at this moment was descending with the lightness of a sylph the little road which led to the Mer ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... feet in the witchery of its rhythm and set them moving upon the sand-covered floor of the Temple. Yet there was no smile on her lips as, moved by whatever it is that causes us to do strange things in the East, she danced like a wraith or a sylph, or a leaf in the wind, in and out of the columns and out into the light of the moon, and through the granite door onto the terrace where once had been planted the incense trees which had come with the spoil from Punt to perfume the air to the glory ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... one— Rhode Island weighed the tenth of a ton; The Empire State was pure as a pearl, And Massachusetts a modest girl; Vermont was red as the blush of a rose— And the goddess sported a turn-up nose; And looked, free sylph, where she painfully sat, The worlds she would give to be out of that. And in this way The maidens gay Flashed up the street on the beautiful day, That gave us— Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! (With some sacrifices, our mothers would ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... and therefore more divine! He could hardly recall her as the careful housewife, harassed by lack of pence, knitting her brows over her butcher's books, mending endless socks, and trying to keep the nose of a lazy husband to the grindstone. All that seemed to have vanished. This white sylph was pure romance—pure joy. He saw her anew; ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... 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
... and through the great north window came the rays from the light in the forked tree that fell like moonlight athwart the saloon. In the centre of the broad gleam was a sylph-like form, keeping time to the music in a sort of phantom style of movement; twisting, shimmering folds that appeared to effuse a scintillation of opal shades. 'Twas the chaconne; slow, graceful and full of romance, the full major lifting and seeming to float, at last dying imperceptibly into ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne |
