"Rapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tell. There was no sign of their existence on the next day. People gathered together and looked at the mischief wrought the night before, and talked everlastingly about it; but the doers of it vanished, rapt away apparently into an invisible world. On Sunday next, at one o'clock, Cowfold Square, save for a few windows not yet mended, looked just as it always looked; that is to say, not a soul was visible in it, and the pump was, as ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... female voice, with no special tenderness and feeling. Yet the combined poesy of Heine and Schumann triumphed gloriously over the inadequacy of the execution. The wonderful, choral-like melody soared like the flight of a swan over the rapt pair, and completely dissolved their souls in ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... a rapt expression at the preparations before him. "So I'm drowned," something was saying inside him. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... their harmonious strings, till all the idle boys of the neighborhood gathered about them, listening with a grave and still delight. It was a most serious company: the Neapolitans, with their cloudy brows, rapt in their music; and the Yankee children, with their impassive faces, warily guarding against the faintest expression of enjoyment; and when at last the minstrels played a brisk measure, and the music began to work in the blood of the boys, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... all about it, Jerry, will you?' urged Alick, to whom the topic of the North Pole expedition was always attractive; and he threw himself back on the mossy ground to listen in rapt attention. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... in that case I'll go in and see." James threw the door open. Old Mr. Bowdoin was standing, still puffing, in front of the fire, evidently quite breathless. In the corner by the window, too rapt to notice her father's entrance, sat Miss Abby, intently gazing into a round glass crystal that, with a carved ebony frame, formed one of the ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... Christopher's presence was still with her—his arm still enveloped her, his voice still spoke in her ears; and so rapt was the ecstasy in which she moved that it was with a positive shock that she found herself presently before the little area which led into the brick kitchen in the basement of the Hall. Here from the darkness her name was spoken in a stifled voice, while a hand reached ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... gazing in rapt wonder that was near to worship when the great door began to move. He saw the first hair-line crack, and the thin line of light was like a hot wire across his eyes, so quickly did he respond. Beyond, where he had not yet gone, was a branching passage. All the ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... life in those early hours when the sun, the master artist, whose touch has coloured every leaf and tinted every flower, demands her adoration. Then it is, perhaps, that she turns her thoughts from all lesser companionships and, rapt in universal worship, suffers us to pass and repass as unnoticed as the idlers in the cathedral by those who ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... no doubting the fire of rapt enthusiasm in his eye, rising and looking out across the moonlit fields as if already he saw the pleasant hills ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... edge of the group and waited for him to finish his narrative which must have been of lively interest if the rapt attention of the men and women was ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... with which he feasted on the emotions of those who lost; always serene, and, except in debauch, always passionless,—Majendie, tracing the experiments of science in the agonies of some tortured dog, could not be more rapt in the science, and more indifferent to the dog, than Lord Lilburne, ruining a victim, in the analysis of human passions,—stoical in the writhings of the wretch whom he tranquilly dissected. He ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the spectacle, chanting to himself a kind of insane ritual, like a Parsee fire-worshiper making obeisance before his god. He was rapt away to some plane of mystic exaltation, to some hinterland of the soul that merged upon madness. When at length the boat crunched upon the sandy shore he got up unsteadily from the stern and pointed to the pharos ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... harp. Never such music was made by mortal hand, for it had in it sorrows that man has never felt, and joys for which man has no name, and it seemed as if a man listening to that music might burst from time into eternity and be as one of the Immortals for evermore. And Finn listened, amazed and rapt, till at last as the triumphant melody grew nearer and louder he saw dimly a Shadow Shape playing as it were on a harp, and coming swiftly towards him. Then with a mighty effort he roused himself from dreams, and tore the cover from the spear-head and ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... friends, it would seem, of the speaker, for ever and anon his eyes turned in that direction, and as if each glance incited him to fresh efforts, his eloquence increased, until at last no sound save that of his deep-toned voice was heard, so rapt was every one in the words of the young orator. But when his speech was ended, there arose deafening shouts of applause, while bouquets fell in perfect showers at his feet. Among them was one smaller and more elegant than the rest, and as if ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... from a bed of vapors, and seemed fairly to dissolve with tenderness and warmth. For an hour or two the air was perfectly motionless, and full of low, humming, awakening sounds. The naked trees had a rapt, expectant look. From some unreclaimed common near by came the first strain of the song sparrow; so homely, because so old and familiar, yet so inexpressibly pleasing. Presently a full chorus of voices ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... passionate generosity of soul was running in too strong a tide just then to be stemmed by any such interference; it could but be diverted, and Muncaster's bedroom served us as well wherein to squat in one of those close, rapt circles of talk such as, I think, after all, men who love poetry can alone know—men, anyhow, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... was like a stone cast into still water. The rapt peace of her look was broken into an eddy of conflicting emotions. Amazement was there and a swift joy, which gave way almost before it could be named to something approaching dread, and that in turn yielded place to wide-eyed wonder. With her hands clasped tightly ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... screamingly funny volume the reader follows, with rapt attention and hilarious delight, the mishaps, mortifications, confusions, and agonizing mental and physical distresses of a self-conscious, hypersensitive, appallingly bashful young man, in a succession of astounding accidents, and ludicrous ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... furtive glance through the window that the owners of the room were not returning, he settled himself to peruse it. When he again looked up, which was at a point about one-third of the way through the document, his face wore a look of rapt, incredulous, fatuous astonishment. ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... of Rose, a country girl and Stephen a sturdy young farmer. The girl's fancy for a city man interrupts their love and merges the story into an emotional strain where the reader follows the events with rapt attention. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... sing of earth or heaven, but rather rest, Rapt by the face of heaven, and hold on earth's warm breast. Hushed lips, a beating heart, yea, Silence, that ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... positively and distinctly not. Frightfully interested and rapt and all that, only I didn't ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... columns of the "Carlow County Herald" might be gleaned the information (enlivened by cuts of duchesses) that the London season had reached a high point of gaiety; and that, although the weather had grown inauspiciously warm, there was sufficient gossip for the thoughtful. To the rapt mind of Miss Selina Tibbs came a delicious moment of comparison: precisely the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Like forms and landscapes magical they lay. Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus— The vulture at his vitals, and the links Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh; And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth With its far-reaching fancy, and with form And color clad them, hiss fine earnest eye Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl Of His thin nostril, and his quivering lip Were like the wingd ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and shining eyes of the white-clad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in Libby Prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the friendly, jostling crowd of farmers, happy, ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... whose cornemuse, sounds with such plaintive sweetness from Arthur's Seat, while Edinburgh and Musselburgh lie rapt in delight, and the mermaids come flapping up to Leith shore to hear the exquisite music? Sweeter piper Edina knows not than Aytoun, the Bard of the Cavaliers, who has given in his frank adhesion to the reigning dynasty. When a most beautiful, celebrated and unfortunate ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... minus a haircut, with a large, fat, pasty face, sat at an adjoining table and discoursed to his friends. Presently, during an intermission of the music, he rose and took the rest of those present into his confidence. With rapt eyes on the faraway space of distant ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... rows back, an aged cottage woman, as upright as a girl, sat with a rapt expression on her carved old face. She never moved, her eyes seemed drinking in the movements of the Rector's lips, her whole being seemed hanging on his words. It is true her dim eyes saw nothing but a blur, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Juan spoke very little during the meal. Mr Laffan, however, conversed for all the party; rattling away, as he could do when he had had a glass or two of good wine to raise his spirits, and listening, apparently with rapt attention, to Uncle Richard's sea stories and jokes, though he had heard them fifty times before. Dona Maria, too, spoke English very fairly, having learned it from her husband; and Juan could understand what was said, though he was bashful ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... The speaker's expression grew rapt, and he spoke in the mystic manner which she knew and now dreaded. Her anxiety for the return of Paul Harley grew urgent—a positive need, as, meeting the gaze of the long, magnetic eyes, she felt again, like the touch of cold steel, all the penetrating force of this man's ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... do," said Grim, who was stretched full length on the grass and gazing skywards with a rapt expression in his eyes, "and look over there. How beautiful ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... she stands, the world's prime wonder The great queen of song! Ye rapt musicians, Touch your golden wires, for now ye prelude strains To mortal ears unwonted. Hark! she sings. Yon pearly gates their magic waves unloose, And all the liberal air rains melody Around. O night! O time! delay, delay,— Pause here, entranced! Ye evening ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... piano, and began to talk in a very pleasant and amusing fashion to Miss White. She was turning over the leaves of the book before her, and Macleod grew angry with this idle interference. Why should this lily-fingered jackanapes, whom a man could wind round a reel and throw out of window, disturb the rapt devotion of this beautiful ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Who upon his bended knees Rapt in silent ecstasy Of divinest self-surrender, Saw the vision ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the clash of couplings and the clamor of wheels, frothing green and white-streaked among mighty boulders in the gorge below. Then as we swung giddily over a gossamer-like timber bridge, the walls of quartz and blue grit fell back on either hand; and, for the first time, I gazed in rapt silence upon the cold unsullied whiteness of eternal snow, undefiled from the beginning by any foot of man. It stretched in a glimmering saw-edge high above us athwart the brightening east, and, below, smooth-scarped slopes of rock polished to a steely luster by endless ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... till earth's confusion fadeth Like to a dream, and leaves behind A heaven of sweetness which pervadeth My whole rapt being—heart ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... I also wish she had known it, for it would have unveiled for her the most beautiful facts about other holy youths of our own day, as well as similar facts of earlier days,—truths whose purity would have rapt her thought even more deeply than Fra Angelico's purity in art, uncurtained by brave and humble hands for her sight. It is to be observed that her views and tacit beliefs and my father's are identical. They did not really believe that Italy was under an "incubus;" they felt the physical weight ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... And standing in the stream, he turned his face towards the god of day. And touching the water of the Ganges the virtuous Yudhishthira with senses under complete control and depending upon air alone for his sustenance, stood there with rapt soul engaged in pranayama.[7] And having purified himself and restrained his speech, he began to sing the hymn ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... little dust on Matine shore has spann'd That soaring spirit; vain it was to pass The gates of heaven, and send thy soul in quest O'er air's wide realms; for thou hadst yet to die. Ay, dead is Pelops' father, heaven's own guest, And old Tithonus, rapt from earth to sky, And Minos, made the council-friend of Jove; And Panthus' son has yielded up his breath Once more, though down he pluck'd the shield, to prove His prowess under Troy, and bade grim death O'er skin and nerves alone ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... abhorred the very name of love, now finding love was quite consumed by love. She loved him so! Even to herself she never could express how tremendous a thing to her their love was. She used deliberately to call it to her mind (as the new, rapt possessor of a jewel going specially to the case to peep and gloat again) and when she called it up like that, or when, in the midst of occupation, her mind secretly opened a door and she turned and saw it there, a ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... that Miss Grosvenor could so lose her self-respect and standing, as to look upon a poor professor, who gains his bread by his own exertions, as a favored competitor for her hand, and, it was not until I saw with my own eyes, that I could credit what I had heard. I was satisfied in time, that his rapt admiration as he gazed upon her, was something more than enthusiasm that she had excelled even his most ardent expectations; and the expression of her beautiful face, as she concluded, might have been ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... Paula. "For my own part, nothing keeps me from taking the veil but my hope of finding my long-lost father; I, like your Pulcheria, have often longed for the peace of the cloister. How piously rapt your daughter stands there! What a sweet and touching sight!—In my heart all was dark and desolate; but here, among you all, it is already beginning to feel lighter, and here, if anywhere, I shall recover what I lost in my other home.—Happy child! Could you not fancy, as she stands there ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... evening-beams, The vales reposing, every height a-glow, The silver brooklets meeting golden streams. The savage mountain, with its cavern'd side, Bars not my godlike progress. Lo, the ocean, Its warm bays heaving with a tranquil motion, To my rapt vision opes its ample tide! But now at length the god appears to sink; A new-born impulse wings my flight, Onward I press, his quenchless light to drink, The day before me, and behind the night, The pathless waves beneath, and over me the skies. Fair dream, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Franklin's case so glibly as that; if it wasn't what she might have of charm that he had fallen in love with, it wasn't what she might have of virtue either. Perhaps one's soul hadn't much to do with either charm or virtue. And, after all, whatever it was, he was gazing at it, rapt, smiling, grave, in the lover's trance. He saw her, and only her. And she saw him, and a ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... beyond mine towards the end, round the corner, and it is dimly lit all night. Well, I distinctly saw a very tall grey figure disappear round the bend of the hall! When I got thus far every one dropped their books and listened with rapt attention, and I could see them exchanging looks, so I am sure they know it is haunted, and were trying to keep it from me. I asked Mrs. Smith if she had seen or heard anything, because she sleeps in one of the rooms. She looked perfectly green, but she said she had not heard a sound, and ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... recall that wondrous vision which Coleridge conjured up, when, opium-rapt, he dreamed in his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... feet. They held in their hands tall wax-candles, whose yellow flames burned steadily in the semi-darkness. Five or six young girls knelt, motionless as statues, in their midst. They also carried tapers, and their rapt faces were turned towards the unseen altar within, of which the outer one is but the visible token. Their eyelids were downcast. Their white veils were thrown back from their calm foreheads, and floated like wings from ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... on tiptoe and watched this process over the young man's shoulder. He stood in an attitude of rapt attention and, as the pencil made stroke after stroke of the printed letters, his own finger traced each line in the air, as though he were memorizing their directions and positions. Only after the notice had been pressed on a sharpened stick and placed before the ruined threshold ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... speculated on the systems of the Ionian philosophers. They certainly impress powerfully on the mind the truths of theology, as Watts and Cowper and Wesley did in their noble lyrics. So that the most rapt and imaginative of men, if artists, utilize the whole realm of knowledge, and diffuse it, and perpetuate it in artistic forms. But real poets are rare, even if there are many who glory in the jingle of language and the structure of rhyme. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... said in Lapland's chill domain, Where dreary winter holds a lengthen'd reign, What time the Runic drum and magic spell Evoke the rapt soul from its fragile cell, Attendant spirits, won by charms and prayer, In gliding motion float ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... She thrust a strand of hair back from her temple. Her eyes rested on him for a moment, then wandered, till in their absent look was the rapt expression of the sleep-walker. The dark-rimmed eyes had in their depths the quiet of a conflagration, and Peter, seeing these things, and knowing the gamut of all her moods, saw that he had been mistaken. She had not come, to dance in triumph, in the face of her brother's enemies. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... fact, teemed with a spirit of savage grandeur. Many of the glens on each side were deep and precipitous, where rock beetled over rock, and ledge projected over ledge, in a manner so fearful that the mind of the spectator, excited and rapt into terror by the contemplation of them, wondered why they did not long ago tumble into the chasm beneath, so slight was their apparent support. Even in the mildest, seasons desolation brooded over the lesser hills and ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... all times those meetings are of overwhelming interest, by reason of the character and histories of each man among that unique audience, and also it may be added on account of their rapt attention to the 'old, old story,' which, 'majestic in its own simplicity,' is invariably set before them. But, on this occasion, add to the picture the distant and apparently deserted figure just seen through the rifts in the mist, ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... consciousness. I am sure I repeatedly awakened with a jerk back from some hazy, far-off, oblivious realm, shut off even in memory from the things of this life. I am sure I tried to burrow my hand through the clammy moss-wall of the beaver lodge to let in fresh air; but my spirit would be suddenly rapt away to that other region. I am sure I felt the waters washing over my head and sweeping me away from this world to another life. Then I would lose grip of the pole and come to myself clutching at it with wild terror; and again the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... quarters, had greeted them with a hymn. And the Christmas moon, rising high above the mountains of Gilead and Moab, had found for a short space of time an opening in the curtain of mist and had poured down its light upon the hills of Judea, making the city of Bethlehem seem to the rapt minds of the two Yorkshire dalesmen as though it had been the city of the living God let down ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... men stood straining eyes and ears in rapt attention. Suddenly an idea struck Servadac's mind. "The volcano!" he cried; "may it not be the volcano that we saw, whilst we were on board ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Gallery, on the night when I attended, received it with rapt interest rather than delirious enthusiasm, The Darling of the Gods promises once more to justify its title. The play has undergone very little modification since it was produced a decade ago. It remains pure melodrama incidentally set in a Japanese dress, and sprinkled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... held low to freezing lips Too rapt with frost To take it. How sweet it would have tasted, Just a drop! Was God so economical? His table 's spread too high for us Unless we dine on tip-toe. Crumbs fit such little mouths, Cherries suit robins; The eagle's golden breakfast Strangles them. God keeps his oath to sparrows, Who of ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... fine days which the April of the other year meanly grudged us, a poet, flown with the acceptance of a quarter-page lyric by the real editor in the Study next door, came into the place where the Easy Chair sat rapt in the music of the elevated trains and the vision of the Brooklyn Bridge towers. "Era la stagione nella quale la rivestita terra, piu che tutto l' altro anno, si mostra bella," he said, without other salutation, throwing his soft gray ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... mountains; and, finding among these the colour, and liberty, and variety, and power, which are for ever grateful to them, delight in these to an extent never before known; rejoice in all the wildest shattering of the mountain side, as an opposition to Gower Street, gaze in a rapt manner at sunsets and sunrises, to see there the blue, and gold, and purple, which glow for them no longer on knight's armour or temple porch; and gather with care out of the fields, into their blotted herbaria, the flowers which the five orders ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... murmured, after that rapt pause. "Such a portrait, too, without any apparent effort! Just compare the cold sunlight on the statue with the same light falling on wet skin. Of course, Mr. Trenholme, you'll send this to the Salon. Burlington House finds satiety in Mayors ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... moved him to speak, and every sentence was armed with a sacred authority. Asenath Mitchenor looked at him, over the low partition which divided her and her sisters from the men's side, absorbed in his rapt earnestness and truth. She forgot that other hearers were present: he spake to her alone. A strange spell seemed to seize upon her faculties and chain them at his feet; had he beckoned to her, she would have arisen and walked to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sentence, and means to be delivered (mercy on us!) exactly opposite our chair! All are attentive to the godlike man; you might hear a pin drop: the subject is announced once and again in a very audible voice; the touch-paper is ignited, the magazine will blow up presently! Incontinently we are rapt off to Pere la Chaise, where the great composer lies buried, and a form of communication is made to us on this suitable spot, that Bellini is dead; then comes, in episode, a catalogue of all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... over those wet fields. If the brothers and the donkey partook of the saintly nature of the inhabitants of Salt Lake City, possibly they did not find it a weary one. Mrs. Peckaby certainly did not. She was rapt in a glowing vision of the honours and delights that would welcome her at her journey's end;—so rapt, that she and the donkey had been for some little time in one of the narrow paths of the wood before she missed ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... library table apparently in rapt contemplation of a pair of sixteenth century bronze inkwells, strange twisted shapes, half man, half beast, bearing in their breasts twin black pools. But his thoughts were far from their grotesque beauty—centered on vast schemes ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... turn, with never answer But to the band that plays.— O rapt and eerie dancer, What of your ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... could show not how they were won, but only how they were lost, and how was one to clothe in romance a battle which had been fought in the midst of mud and rain, from behind a breastwork, and with scarce a glimpse of the enemy? But I had a rapt audience of two in James and Dorothy. They were not critical, and I told the story of Great Meadows over and over again, ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... this comment, at least ONE of them, were quite oblivious. "I trust," said Carmen, timidly, when they had for the fourth time regarded in rapt admiration an abominable something by some Dutch wood-chopper, "I trust I am not keeping you from your great friends:"—her pretty eyelids were cast down in tremulous distress:—"I should never forgive myself. Perhaps it is important business of ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... Minister, "a most agreeable man and not married, as I have the misfortune to be;" and on the other side "I have ventured to place Senator Ratcliffe, of Illinois, whose admirable speech I saw you listening to with such rapt attention yesterday. I thought you might like to know ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... immediately behind me, a gun on each hip, his arms folded, looking at the audience; fixing his gaze with instant intentness on any section of the house from which there came so much as a whisper. The audience listened to me with rapt attention. At the end, with a pride in my rhetorical powers which proceeded from a misunderstanding of the situation, I remarked to the chairman: "I held that audience well; there wasn't an interruption." To which the chairman replied: "Interruption? Well, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to me, was where had been By Ganymede his kith and kin abandoned, When to the high consistory he was rapt. ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... relieved from his nephew's trying presence, he was most gracious, and his harangues, much as they had once fretted me, had now a familiar sound, as proving that we were no longer "at the back of the north wind," while Eustace listened with rapt attention, both to the long words and to anything coming from one whose name was enrolled in his favourite volume; who likewise discovered in him likenesses to generations past of Alisons, and seemed ready to admit him ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day itself, as they proceeded to the castle, Madeline perceived with a tearful repentance of her interference, that he sate by her side cold and rapt; and that once or twice when his eyes dwelt upon her, it was with an expression of reproach ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... laugh came back an echo hard to his own hearing. Was It speaking the same mute language to her It had spoken to him since first he came to the Holy Cross? The violet shadows of twilight slowly filled with a primrose mist, with a rapt hush as of the day's vespers. The great quiet of the mountain world wrapped them round as in ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... It transfuses the roughest elements into immortal influences,—it colours the earth with fairer hues, and fills the days with beauty; every hour is a gem of sweet thought set in the dreaming soul, and the lover, at certain times of rapt ecstasy, would smile incredulously were he told that anyone living could be unhappy. For love goes back to the beginning of things,—to the time when the world was new. It has its birth in that primeval light when 'the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... a supreme confidence she extended her hand. It was one of the culminating moments of our love. For love is like a journey in mountainous country, up through the clouds, and down into the shadows to an unknown destination. It was a moment rapt and full of feeling, in which we seemed to dwell together high up and alone—till she withdrew her hand from my lips, and I found myself back in the cabin, as if precipitated ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... truth. Place in his hands the thunderbolt, and at his feet the eagle, and the same form would serve for Jupiter the Thunderer, except only that to the countenance of the Jewish prophet there has been imparted a rapt and inspired look, wholly beyond any that even Phidias could have fixed upon the face of Jove. He who wrought this head must have believed in the sublimities of the religion whose chief minister he has made so to speak them forth, in the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the edge of the world and peered downwards, into the forbidden depths; as though they suddenly found themselves in the presence of a thing so wonderful that thought and speech alike were chained. Wrayson involuntarily followed the direction of their rapt gaze. The stranger certainly presented a somewhat formidable appearance. He was standing upon slightly higher ground, and the massive proportions of his tall, powerful figure stood out with almost startling distinctness against the empty background. His face was half in the shadow, yet it seemed ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... evangelist lost his look of exaltation, his eyes grew soft and his limbs relaxed. His silence was no longer rapt—it was the silence of delicious, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... details exactly what he had, and she listens to these moving episodes with the rapt interest of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... and rapt in ecstasy, I ran after her till I came to a place in which religion and reason forsook me." Persian ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... come up and clear the ground. A moment afterwards the ears of all who were awake in the quarter were greeted by an admirable voice proceeding from a man who had seated himself on a stone opposite the door of the Sevillano. Everybody listened with rapt attention to his song, but none more so than Tomas Pedro, to whom every word sounded like a sentence of excommunication, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... playwright to produce a drama that will rouse an audience to wild enthusiasm; whereas, if the subject is un-pregnant with dramatic issues, not even genius can invest it with the charm that commands the sympathy and attention of the many. Watch a large, miscellaneous audience, as it listens, rapt, intent, and weeping, to Kotzebue's "Stranger," and see the same audience as it tries to attend to Talfourd's "Ion." Yet here it is the hack writer who succeeds and the true poet who fails. Why? Because the former has hit upon a subject which gives him at once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... feelings putting the question to him, who, with his imagination rapt on the thoughts of other days, hastens to the classic shore:—"What is the use of running out in the sun; cannot you see those piles of stones from the deck?"—Senseless, unfeeling, sordid, and degraded! what can have induced you to ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the last moment saved Iphigenia, rapt her away from mortal eyes and set her down in the land of the Tauri to be her priestess. (In Tauris is only the Latin for "among the Tauri.") These Tauri possessed an image of Artemis which had fallen from heaven, and kept up a savage rite of sacrificing to it all strangers who ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... do; and if we would solve this negro problem, and all the thousand and one problems which are ever vexing the life of our free Republic, we must solve them by the principles of the Golden Rule and the democracy of the Lord's Prayer. It is not sufficient for us to stand with Thomas and say in rapt admiration, "My Lord and my God." Side by side with our black brother and with our white brother, with our yellow brother and with our red brother, we are to kneel and say, not "My Lord and my God," but "Our Father," and the spirit of common prayer to a common Father whom we have ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... man who foresees chances that succeeds, as you should know by now, your honour. I was greatly touched by the offer you made me— indeed, yes," she added, seeing the rapt eager look in his face. "I had been told what had upset me, that Dyck Calhoun was guilty of killing my father, and all the world seemed dreadful. Yes, in the reaction, it was almost on my tongue to say yes to you, for you are a good talker, you had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was Sir George's forester. Lady Crawford repeated her question, but Dorothy was too intently watching the scene in the courtyard to hear. I went over to her, and looking out at the window discovered the object of Dorothy's rapt attention. There is no need for me to tell you who it was. Irony, as you know, and as I had learned, was harmless against this thick-skinned nymph. Of course I had no authority to scold her, so I laughed. The object of Dorothy's attention was about to mount his horse. He was drawing on his gauntleted ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... "as it had been the face of an angel;" and when, at the words "Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God," the murderous mob rushed upon and stoned the rapt disciple of Jesus, Paul ostentatiously made ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... passed through the garden gate and walked towards the Spinney, and stood looking in a rapt way at the sunset clouds and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... regard its selection as a probable reaction, violent, no doubt, from the composition of Parsifal. In Parsifal the central themes and the unavoidable conclusion are derived from outgrown beliefs that have long since ceased to influence the heart of mankind. Parsifal is medieval, mystic, rapt, devout. Its ideals are those of celibacy and asceticism, the products of an age whose theories and practices as regards sex-relationships can have no echo in modern civilization. What more natural than that Wagner should fling himself, for mental and emotional ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and to his intense delight observed the planet fully entered upon the Sun's disc. Instead of proceeding to take observations, he was so overcome with emotion at the sight of the phenomenon, that he continued to gaze upon it with rapt attention, nor did he recover his self-possession until the clouds again hid from ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... marriage or otherwise, without the full knowledge, will, or consent of the father, mother, and guardians, should be punished with death; and the ordinance adds: 'Et pareillement seront punis extraordinairement tous ceux qui auront participe audit rapt, et qui auront prete conseil, confort, et aide en aucune maniere que ce soit.' (And in like manner shall be extraordinarily punished all persons whomsoever, who shall have participated in the said abduction, and who shall have given ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... regarding them with great interest. In front, on a rock, sat Kepenau; and I judged by his attitude and the tone of his voice that he was addressing them on a matter of importance, while they listened with rapt attention. His right hand pointed to the sky, while his left was directed towards the earth; and by the words which reached me I knew that he was preaching the gospel—setting before the people the way of ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... to see the rapt face of its owner as she sat in her weeds before the picture, which she tearfully pronounced "a strikin' likeness," to sympathize with the townsfolk who looked askance at the bereaved woman, even while they bore with her delusion, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... standing in rapt admiration, Chico Miguel wondering if the kick of the horse had not unsettled the strange caballero's reason, and the Senora blandly aware that her daughter and the tall one had become adepts in interpreting the language ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... morn its lovely blushes spread, See Sewell number'd with the happy dead. Hail, holy man, arriv'd th' immortal shore, Though we shall hear thy warning voice no more. Come, let us all behold with wishful eyes The saint ascending to his native skies; From hence the prophet wing'd his rapt'rous way To the blest mansions in eternal day. Then begging for the Spirit of our God, And panting eager for the same abode, Come, let us all with the same vigour rise, And take a prospect of the blissful skies; While on our minds Christ's ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... length of nave, choir, and chapel, the embowed roof high above, sustained on massive pillars, she uttered a low murmur of 'beautiful!' and there was a heart-felt expression of awe and reverence on her face, a look as of rapt thought, chased away in a moment by his eye, and giving place to quiet pensiveness. After the service they went over the building; but though eager for information, the gravity did not leave her, nor did she speak at once when they emerged into ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... open, shouting, and the unchecked tears running down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, her mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a silver statue. The people about her struggled along, gazing up at her through their tears with the rapt look of men and women who believe they are seeing one who is divine; and always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk, and such as failed of that privilege touched her horse and then kissed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... trying to catch their conversation, although, unfortunately, it was in too low an undertone. He never released her arm or changed his affectionate attitude towards her, but appeared to be relating to her some long and interesting chain of events to which she listened with rapt attention. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... are all enveloped in a golden cloud of fashionable hard work, which rather delights my father; which my sister lends herself to, complaining a little of the trouble, fatigue, and late hours; but thinking it for the interest of her future public career, and always becoming rapt and excited beyond all other considerations in her own capital musical performances.... As for me, I am rather bewildered by the whirl in which we live, which I find rather a trying contrast to my late solitary existence ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... brown-skinned girl of the rapt and steadfast gaze remained with him. It was, he explained to himself, the look one finds in the eyes of sailors accustomed to the limitless reach of the monotonous seas; it came from the constant contemplation of desert wastes ending only in skylines, of sunlit domes dust-besprinkled, of night ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... pitying you in your doleful case that he will only tread you under foot.... He will crush out your blood and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments so as to stain all his raiment." But Edwards was a rapt soul, possessed with the love as well as the fear of the God, and there are passages of sweet and exalted feeling in his Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, 1746. Such is his portrait of Sarah Pierpont, "a young lady in New Haven," who afterward became his wife, and who "will ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... toward the pomegranate trees, became transfigured. He changed as if by magic; his lips parted in a tender smile, his figure grew tense with listening; not until the last note had died away did he move. Then a great breath stirred his lungs, and with shining eyes and rapt countenance he went on ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Pope. There is an ample variety of tenacious womanly characters between the extremes marked by Miriam beating her timbrels, and Cleopatra applying the asp; Cornelia showing her Roman jewels, and Guyon rapt in God; Lucrezia Borgia raging with bowl and dagger, and Florence Nightingale sweetening the memory of the Crimean war with philanthropic deeds. What group of men indeed can be brought together, more distinct in individuality, more contrasted in diversity of traits and destiny, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... answered, with rapt little brown face. "I'm going to, Uncle Jem. But you must help me find ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... was the same smile; but in Rachel s eyes, as pictures will, it changed its character with her own change of thought, and now it seemed the pale rapt smile of one who hears music far ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... it began to darken. The tiny threads of which it was composed twisted and shriveled and broke. Bert hunched up his knees, and sat as though rapt in brooding contemplation, while all the time that tiny shaft bored deeper and deeper into the rope like a red ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... had Eckhof displayed such fire, such enthusiasm; the students had never exhibited such rapt and earnest attention. Their excitement was shown by their flashing eyes and glowing cheeks, and the low murmurs of delight which arose occasionally from this dark mass. But at length a moment arrived when it became impossible to suppress ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... up with ribbon all her copybooks, and the letters of her girl-friends, shut up all the drawers, watered the flowers and caressed every blossom with her hand. All this she did without haste, noiselessly, with a kind of rapt and gentle solicitude on her face. She topped at last in the middle of the room, slowly looked around, and going up to the table above which the crucifix was hanging, she fell on her knees, dropped her head on to her clasped hands ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... By day—but ah! at evening under the electric lights, to the delicate strains of the palm-shaded orchestra! Man is incapable of these exquisite transformations. By day a gruff and hurried machine—at evening, at best, a rapt and laconic poker player. A change with no ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... present know that I received the proper training for the part I am about to play. If all goes well we women will erect a tablet to my father's memory in the cathedral at Berlin." She leaned down and patted the rapt face of Heloise, then scowled at Mimi. "May I not count on you?" ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... tale of him whose love Was sighed between white Deirdre's breasts, It will not lift the heart above The sodden clay on which it rests. Love once had power the gods to bring All rapt ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... almost unique in his profound sympathy with the fantasies he imagines. There is no trace of make-believe in his designs. On the contrary, he makes the old legends become vital, not because of the personalities he bestows on his heroes and fairy princesses—his people move often in a rapt ecstasy—but because the adjuncts of his mise-en-scenes are realised intimately. His prince is much more the typical hero than any particular person; his fair ladies might exchange places, and few would notice the difference; but when it comes to the environment, the real incidents of ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... Peloponnesian War. Yet, to the scholar, a raid in Thucydides is more than a campaign in Xenophon. For neither is his style so pure as that of either of his rivals, nor is his enthusiasm the same. We feel him always a polished man of the world—never the rugged patriot, never the rapt seer. He seems, too, to lack impartiality. He lavishes praise upon Agesilaus, a second-rate man, while he is curt and ill-tempered concerning Epaminondas, the real genius of the age. It is more than likely that he has colored ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... how sweet to stray, With rod and line, the livelong day, Or trace each rural charm, away From cark of every callin'! There dove-like, o'er my path would brood The spirit pure of solitude; For native each rapt, genial mood Is to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... British missionaries did not come until 1797, on the Duff. They planted gardens and worked diligently and prayed. They had vast patience, and confidence in their all-powerful and avenging God, and a rapt devotion to his son, who forgave the sins of those who adopted His faith. Their ideals were as fixed as the stars, and their courage superior to the daily discouragements of their lives and continuous hardships of separation from home. But they could not break the strength of the superstitions of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Sinner born and bred for dangling from the gallows-tree; To Saint who spends his holy days in rapturous hope ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... have I gaz'd with rapt delight, Upon those eyes that sparkled bright, Emitting beams of joy and light! ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... attention of their fellow-voyagers, and leading them to believe that this handsome young man, speaking so earnestly in such low tones to his companion, and the lovely youthful widow, who was listening to him with such rapt attention, were a pair of happy ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the Captain told her such tales of the settlement as he could make clear to her and repeated some simple English words he had been trying to teach her. As he talked and as she said over and over the words she had learned, Pocahontas gripped his arm with rapt interest and longed to follow where he led. But night was coming on, it was unwise for her to go beyond the last fork of the trail, and so, reluctantly, she parted from her new and wonderful friend. But before she left him she darted ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Ceaseless their prayers. They tilled a sterile soil; Beneath their hands it blossomed like the rose: O'er thymy hollows blew the nectared airs; Blue ocean flashed through olives. They had fled From praise of men; yet cities far away Rapt those meek saints to fill the bishop's throne. I saw the light of God on faces calm That blended with man's meditative might Simplicity of childhood, and, with both The sweetness of that flower-like sex which wears Through love's Obedience twofold ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... Agatha stared at the rapt speaker with amazed eyes, and presently the anger she had felt at Doctor Thayer's words rose again within her breast, doubly strong. The doctor had given but a feeble version of the judgment; here was the real voice hurling anathema, as did the prophets ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... share in the dialogue, and listened to her, rapt and dreamily as in his fiery youth he had listened to the songs of the sirens. No siren Isaura! She was defending her own cause, though unconsciously—defending the vocation of art as the embellisher of external nature, and more than embellisher of the nature which dwells crude, but plastic in ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... playfully admonished her mother, her eyes chancing to rest on her daughter's rapt face. "If my ears do not deceive me, I think I heard the doorbell. Perhaps it ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... invitation to lunch per telephone, and an appropriate response was made by the same medium. At length the Boston company were requested to remain quiet while a lady at the other end conveyed to them the sweet strains of music. The assemblage thereupon listened with rapt attention while a young lady commenced singing "The Last Rose of Summer." The effect was simply charming. The sound of the voice penetrated into the Boston end of the telephone with a distinctness equal to that attainable in the more distant ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... Dunscombe, who was entertaining them with a long and very detailed account of a wedding and great party at Randolph, which she had had the happiness of attending. Eagerly fighting her battles over again, and pleased with the rapt attention of her hearers, the speaker forgot herself, and raised her voice much more than she meant to do. As every turn of his walk brought John near, there came to his ears sufficient bits and scraps of Margaret's story to give him a very fair sample of the whole; and he was sorry to see Ellen ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... The crowd of marks moved on down the other side of the tent, and Charley watched them. Ned and Ed drew the biggest crowd, an attentive, almost rapt crew who could be suckered into buying anything the Siamese twins wanted to sell them. Dave milked them for all they were worth, and Charley nodded quietly to himself. Dave was ...
— Charley de Milo • Laurence Mark Janifer AKA Larry M. Harris
... the Southern night; they could hear the long sweep of the pirogue through the glistening moonlit water, the beating of birds' wings, rising startled from among the reeds in the salt-water pools; they could see the faces of the lovers, pale, close together, rapt in oblivious forgetfulness, drifting into ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... one white-haired old bishop beneath his canopy transformed for me a foolish piece of mummery into a prayer in action. So it was again, when the young stranger turned to us his pale clear-cut face, solemn with an awe as rapt as if he verily stood before the throne of Him he called upon, and felt Its glory beating on his face; then, by that one earnest and believing presence, all was transformed and redeemed; the old emblems recovered their first significance, the time-worn phrases glowed with life again, and we ourselves ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... and silent still remain'd the throng Whilst rapt attention own'd the power of song. Then loud as when the wintry whirlwinds blow From ev'ry voice the thundering plaudits flow; Darius smil'd, Apame's sparkling eyes Glanc'd on the King, and ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... done, and only a ruddy circle of firelight was left to oppose the rapt gloom that filled the hall, where shadows now seemed to lurk in ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... slightly rapt look which, she knew, denoted that George Bulmer was doing his duty as he saw it, even in her disappointment. "No, you have not the right. You are wedded to your state-craft, to your patriotism, to your self-advancement, or christen it what you will. You are wedded, at all events, to your man's ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various |
