"Rapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tangle of sounds; again the clear, perfect phrase, followed by melodious little bells. Dunham and Sylvia, motionless, continued to gaze into each other's eyes, and the girl's rapt smile stirred the man, for it was kin to the ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... stood there, almost like two children, fascinated by the sight of the theater. Charmian was rapt. For a moment she forgot the passers-by, the gliding motor-cars, the noises of the city, even herself. She was giving herself imaginatively to fate, not as herself, but merely as a human life. She was feeling the profound mystery of human life held in the arms of ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... unborn nations warm'd his breast, Repaid his toils and sooth'd his soul to rest; Thus o'er thy subject wave shalt thou behold Far happier realms their future charms unfold, In nobler pomp another Pisgah rise, Beneath whose foot thy new found Canaan lies; There, rapt in vision, hail my favorite clime, And taste ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... the soft carpet without a thought of its strangeness to his rustic feet. A vision of beauty had been vouchsafed to him, and his eyes glanced from picture to picture, now glistening with delight and now lost in rapt admiration. ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... the well-worn pages, worn only by my own handling, and although I knew all by heart, from the beginning, "When from Carcosa, the Hyades, Hastur, and Aldebaran," to "Castaigne, Louis de Calvados, born December 19th, 1877," I read it with an eager, rapt attention, pausing to repeat parts of it aloud, and dwelling especially on "Hildred de Calvados, only son of Hildred Castaigne and Edythe Landes Castaigne, first ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... him of something similar in his own experience, for he immediately started in on a description of his own, and Nan sat listening in her turn with rapt attention. Every now and then a shout of laughter would come from the group in the distant corner, and the girls longed to go over and ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... incipient "operations" which he had blundered into within the past week, and was now soaring along through some brilliant expectations born of late promising experiments upon the lacking ingredient of the eye-water. And at such a time Washington ought to have been a rapt and enthusiastic listener, but he was not, for two matters disturbed his mind and distracted his attention. One was, that he discovered, to his confusion and shame, that in allowing himself to be helped a second time to the turnips, he had robbed those hungry children. He had not needed the ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... young, too, but very thin, and with a mist of fluffy brown beard all round his haggard face. All day long, at sea or in harbour, he could be seen walking hastily up and down the after-deck, wearing an intense, spiritually rapt expression, which was caused by a perpetual consciousness of unpleasant physical sensations in his internal economy. For he was a confirmed dyspeptic. His view of my case was very simple. He said it was nothing but deranged ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... the boy soon found himself in an apartment fitted up with all the appliances of a gymnasium, where a number of powerful young men were leaping, vaulting, climbing, and in other ways improving their physical powers. Frank joined them, and for a long time Willie stood in rapt and envious contemplation ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... spirit shall now issue from thy body; thou shalt go and behold the judgments of God; they shall serve thee only as presages, and thy spirit shall again return shortly afterwards.' Instantly was my spirit rapt, and he who bore me away was a being of the most splendid whiteness. He put into my hand a ball of thread, which shed a blaze of light, such as the comet darts when it is apparent. He divided it, and said to me, 'Take thou this thread, and bind it strongly on ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... we all know it. This was precisely what Milton could not have done. He had none of that sympathy with which Shakspeare embraced all natural and common affections of his brother men. Milton, burning as he did with a consuming fire of passion, and yearning for rapt communion with select souls, had withal an aloofness from ordinary men sad women, and a proud disdain of commonplace joy and sorrow, which has led hasty biographers and critics to represent him as hard, austere, an iron man of iron ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the "low-hung lip" and "profound" forehead of the other, the "noticeable Man with large grey eyes," mark him out as S. T. C.; "the rapt One, of the god-like forehead," described in the 'Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg'. The description "Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy," is verified by what the poet and his wife said to Mr. Justice ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... infinite tenderness had done and borne for those who hated goodness and would not obey God. Molly listened, and Daisy talked; how, she did not know, nor Molly neither; but the good news was told in that poor little house; the unspeakable gift was made known. Seeing Molly's fixed eyes and rapt attention, Daisy went on at length and told all. The cripple's gaze never stirred all the while, nor stirred when the story came to an end. She still stared at ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... its highest brilliancy, while the galaxy threw its white scarf gracefully across the sky, veiling millions of suns in their own excessive brightness. I paused several times in my walk, as broader expanses opened between the great elms that gave to our town a sylvan beauty, and repeated, with a rapt feeling of awe and admiration, the opening stanza of a ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... question in a tone the intensity of which forced her to lift her eyes to his. Molly did not see the glance, for the infinitude of her own experiences led her to find the moment favorable for gazing out of the window in a sort of rapt admiration for the Insel rose-bushes in the foreground and the ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... for a year leading the Brahmacharya mode of life, subduing his senses and observing vows, peruseth with rapt attention this meeting of Sakra with the Pandavas, liveth a hundred years free ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... urged thy stay, Or force, which those resistless must obey. If this is error, let me still remain In error wrapp'd—nor wake to truth again! Come then, sweet Hope, with all thy train of joy Nor let Despair each rapt'rous thought destroy; Indulgent Heav'n, in pity to our tears, At length will bless a parent's sinking years; Again shall I behold thy lovely face, By manhood form'd, and ripen'd ev'ry grace, Again I'll press thee to my anxious ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... raised his eyebrows. 'Oh yes, often.' He smiled. 'It is my own modest fashion of attending divine service. The congregation is rapt.' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... came in one summer's day, She felt that she must creep, So silent was the clear cool house, It seemed a house of sleep. And sure, when she pushed open the door, Rapt in the stillness there, Her mother sat, with stooping head, Asleep upon a chair; Fast—fast asleep; her two hands laid Loose-folded on her knee, So that her small unconscious face Looked half unreal to be: So calmly lit ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... has so magically vanished away from the eye and the thought, then does the change make one of those rare epochs of life in which the charm is the stillness. In the pause from all by which our own turbulent struggles for happiness trouble existence, we feel with a rapt amazement how calm a thing it is to be happy. And so as the night, in deepening, brightened, Lilian and I wandered by the starry lake. Conscious of no evil in ourselves, how secure we felt from evil! A few days more—a few ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... much mooning mad for a while, I suppose: sometimes walking about the cabin and thrusting with my feet contemptuously at the gold ingots strewn over the floor of it, and sometimes standing still in a sort of rapt wonder over my heap of jewels—and anything like sensible thinking was quite beyond the power of my unbalanced mind. But at last I was aroused, and so brought to myself a little, by the daylight waning suddenly: as it did in that region ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... many loving rivers can I reckon up, whom beauty hath enthralled! I say nothing all this while of idols themselves that have committed idolatry in this kind, of looking-glasses, that have been rapt in love (if you will believe [4855]poets), when their ladies and mistresses looked on to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... home to her mother, for the great event, and Mrs. Sheridan was exulting in the care of them both. Just now she was in the kitchen, and the two girls were alone together, Norma a little awed and a little ashamed of the emotion that Rose's pale and rapt and radiant face gave her; Rose secretly pitying, from her height, the woman who ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... to where you were before, only leaving you with a greater burden of worry and expense," she continued, unheeding. "I was rapt, I was deadened to selfish forgetfulness by the sweet music of those dreams. I am awake now, and I tell you that you must not do it, that I shall never permit you to ruin your life by assuming a load which ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... gatherings. Large tents are put up, with the front open towards the road, and there the preachers from morning till evening, preacher succeeding preacher, address the people, while hearers succeed hearers. A few individuals stop a long time, as if rapt up in what they hear, as if they were drinking in every word; others stop a considerable time; while many, after looking on and gaping for a few minutes, hold on their way. Every now and then questions are asked, objections ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... to them," said Shere Ali; he sought refuge amongst them from the thought of those people in the galleries. Ahmed Ismail was well content with the results of his pilgrimage. Shere Ali, as he paced the streets of Delhi with a fierce rapt look in his eyes, had the very aspect of a Ghazi fresh from the hills and ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... see them in the Adelphi stalls one evening, rapt in a sentimental melodrama. I joined them between the acts, and poked fun at the play, as one does at the Adelphi, but Miss Lovell begged me quite earnestly not to spoil her interest, and Billy wanted to enter upon a serious argument as to whether a man was justified in behaving as Will Terriss ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... had completed their story, Grand Old Man appeared at the table, and talked for nearly an hour. Few to listen, but that no matter. A rapt auditor in OLD MORALITY, sitting forward with hands on knees, eyes reverently fixed on orator, drinking in his honeyed words. Something paternal in his attitude towards Ministers. Here and there they had done not quite the right thing. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... very satisfactory. The photographer pronounced it a remarkably fine group. Elizabeth Eliza's eyes were lifted to the heavens perhaps a little too high. It gave her a rapt expression not customary with her; but Mr. Peterkin thought she might look in that way in the presence of the Sphinx. It was necessary to have a number of copies, to satisfy all the friends left behind when they should go to Egypt; and it certainly ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... 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 exert its power, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... of larceny or anything else. It took Steger two hours and ten minutes to make his argument, and District-Attorney Shannon longer to make his reply, during which the five judges on the bench, men of considerable legal experience but no great financial understanding, listened with rapt attention. Three of them, Judges Smithson, Rainey, and Beckwith, men most amenable to the political feeling of the time and the wishes of the bosses, were little interested in this story of Cowperwood's transaction, particularly since his relations with Butler's daughter and Butler's consequent ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... battle of Ossawatermy takes place. Old Brown kills Mister Blane, the sinister individooal aforesed. Mister Blane makes a able & elerquent speech, sez he don't see his mother MUCH, and dies like the son of a gentleman, rapt up in the Star Spangled banner. Moosic by the Band. Four or five other Border ruffins air killed, but thay don't say nothin abowt seein their mothers. From Kansis to Harper's Ferry. Picter of a Arsenal is represented. Sojers cum & fire at it. Old Brown cums out & ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the excited little American. "I'm one of a party of eight. We're all school-teachers And this guide"—she waved a hand in the direction of a rapt little group standing in the agonising position the ceiling demands—"just informed us that the ceiling is by Raphael. And we're paying him ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... that lecture! They listened to it with rapt attention with hearts full of gratitude and faces full of sympathy. They did not understand a word of it, but a chapter out of "Midshipman Easy" could not have delighted them more; and when they saw that the clock had slowly worked round from nine to ten ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... Effi was rapt with attention. After a few moments she said: "Crampas, that is in its way very beautiful, and because it is very beautiful I will forgive you. But you might do better, and please me more, if you would tell stories of another kind, even from ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the most inviting of the houses, but the one soonest available within convenient distance of church and sea. When it came to practical details, Miss Mohun was struck by the contrast between her companion's business promptness and the rapt, musing look she had seen when she came on him listening to the measured cadence of the waves upon the cliffs, and the reverberations in the hollows beneath. And when he went to hire a piano she, albeit unmusical, was struck by what her ears told her, yet far more by the look of reverent ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proudly let me stand, With the rapt fervor of a Poet's eye, And pour my blessings on my native land; Oh! for the gift to tell thy destiny, And mould it to the telling—thou should'st rise, Eternal, as the stars that bless thy skies, And sparkle in thy banner—thou should'st be ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... Paris," he thought. "It's British. Come, I am going to sleep, I must wake up, I must aim higher—aim higher," cried the little artist to himself. All through his tea and afterward, as he was giving his eldest boy a lesson on the fiddle, his mind dwelt no longer on his troubles, but he was rapt into the better land; and no sooner was he at liberty than he hastened with positive exhilaration ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Spirit of the Lord passed by, and, seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy, was the last essential of Negro religion and the one more devoutly believed in than all the rest. It varied in expression from the silent rapt countenance or the low murmur and moan to the mad abandon of physical fervor,—the stamping, shrieking, and shouting, the rushing to and fro and wild waving of arms, the weeping and laughing, the vision and the trance. All this is nothing new in the world, but old as religion, as Delphi and ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... for a moment, and then went on, the child sitting rapt, gazing at him with eyes which saw all the wonders of which ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... mood which vaguely weds itself to the play of light and shade. The silence which generally prevails at that time makes it particularly dear to artists, who grow contemplative, stand a few paces back from the pictures on which they can no longer work, and pass judgement on them, rapt by the subject whose most recondite meaning then flashes on the inner eye of genius. He who has never stood pensive by a friend's side in such an hour of poetic dreaming can hardly understand its inexpressible soothingness. Favored by the clear-obscure, the material ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... impart to his friends those sacred, precious, all-important truths he had himself learned. As he went on speaking, his countenance seemed to assume an almost beatific expression; the tones of his voice were full of melody. His friends listened with rapt attention, tears streaming down from their eyes, their breasts heaved; but not one moved his position, not a gesture was made. Truly it seemed as if some holy blessed spirit animated the dark form of one whom, under other circumstances, we should have supposed to be a mere ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... to tear his eyes from the rapt, white face of the girl at that instant, and look at the sand, he did not know. But he seemed compelled to look. Something moved, close to Sanda's feet; something thin and long and very flat, like a piece of rope pulled quickly toward ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... thou shalt find a home, Shalt house with melodists of Greece and Rome, Or awed by Dante's wintry presence be, Or won by Goethe's regal suavity, Or with those masters hardly less adored Repose, of Rydal and of Farringford; And—like a mortal rapt from men's abodes Into some skyey fastness of the gods— Divinely neighboured, thou in such a shrine Mayst for a ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Let us lose no opportunity of employing the best of our hours, those of the silence and peace of the bewitching nights, in contemplating, admiring, spelling out the words of the Great Book of the Heavens. Let our freed souls fly swift and rapt toward those marvelous countries where indescribable joys are prepared for us, and let us do homage to the first and most splendid of the sciences, to Astronomy, which diffuses the light of Truth ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... saint, with Brahman wand, empowered By lore divine that dart devoured. Nor could the triple world withdraw Rapt gazes from that sight of awe; For as he swallowed down the dart Of Brahma, sparks from every part, From finest pore and hair-cell, broke Enveloped in a veil of smoke. The staff he waved was all aglow Like Yama's sceptre, King below, Or like the lurid ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... long in rapt meditation. He marveled at himself for having ever accepted his present position. Its limitations were so narrow and so palpable, its possibilities were so restricted, its complacent provincialism so glaring, that the imaginative glories with which he had once enwrapped it seemed now simply ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a visionary blush Stole warmly o'er the voiceless wild; And in her rapt and wintry hush The lonely ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... minutes after she had passed the statue of Achilles she had the rapt look of one brushing through crowds on a summer's afternoon, when the trees are rustling, the wheels churning yellow, and the tumult of the present seems like an elegy for past youth and past summers, and there rose in her mind a curious sadness, as if time and eternity showed through ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... and lovely, and heart-broken; a pensive lay nun who had retreated from the vanities and deceits of the world to this secluded spot, where she lived like a heroine upon the produce of her flocks, with some "neat-handed Phillis," to milk the cows and churn the butter, while she sat rapt in contemplation of the stars above or the snakes below. It was not until after our arrival at Tampico that I had the mortification to discover that the interesting creature, the charming recluse, is seventy-eight, and has just buried her seventh husband! I accept the account doubtingly, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... had come to Budapest all the young women, urged on to insubordination, had removed their veils, and Kalora had boldly invaded another compartment to engage in rapt and feverish dialogue with a little but ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... escape was in the desk; he might find salvation if he could again hide his heart in the heap and litter of papers, and again be rapt by the cadence of a phrase. He threw open his window and looked out on the dim world and the glimmering amber lights. He resolved that he would rise early in the morning, and seek once more for his true ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... excuse for withdrawal. And yet, having had no experience of the etiquette due to prophets when the orgy of vaticination is upon them, he was not quite comfortable on the question of being scathed. There was no need for fear; Sheikh Burrachee was too rapt to heed his presence or absence. He heard not his voice, and knew not when he crossed the room and closed the door softly behind him. He found Trix in the hall ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... us regret nothing. They can do with me what they will. What are life and death when in the balance dwells love?" I cried, rapt in ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... candlesticks, then lights the candles, muttering a ceremonial Hebrew benediction.] Boruch atto haddoshem elloheinu melech hoolam assher kiddishonu bemitzvosov vettzivonu lehadlik neir shel shabbos. [She pulls down the blinds of the two windows, then she goes to the rapt composer and touches him, remindingly, on the shoulder. He does not move, but continues writing.] Dovidel! [He looks up dazedly. She points to the candles.] Shabbos! [A sweet smile comes over his face, he throws the quill resignedly away and submits ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... Rapt were they when, with rare verbal felicity and unstudied eloquence, the young man pictured himself standing upon a lofty sunlit mountain, while a storm raged in the valley below, calling passionately to those far down in the ebullition to come up to him and mingle in the blue serene ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... the pyramid belongs to contemplation, the diagonal to action, what can be said of the type of landscape? It is without action, it is true, and yet does not express that positive quality, that will not to act, of the rapt contemplation. The landscape uncomposed is negative; and it demands unity. Its type of composition, then, must give it something positive besides unity. It lacks both concentration and action; but it can gain them both from a space ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... in a rapt tone and without looking at her questioner, so intent was she on staring out of the windows, between both of which she divided ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the door of Claybank Academy, and in a moment more he had slipped into a back seat of the crowded room, where a young orator was ringing Poe's "Bells" through all the varying cadences of his changing voice to a rapt audience of relations and friends. Here unobserved Ezra hoped to recover his self-possession, remove the beads of perspiration one by one from his brow with a corner of his neatly folded handkerchief, and perhaps from this vantage-ground even enjoy the delight ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... sweet beside the lily-pool, Unknowing any might her singing hear, When rose another voice, so rich, so full As thrilled her into rapt and pleasing wonder; And as she hearkened to these deep-sung words, She flushed anon ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... of the ladies and gentlemen wedged before the pictures had the "look" which signified social consecration. As Undine made her way among them, she was aware of attracting almost as much notice as in the street, and she flung herself into rapt attitudes before the canvases, scribbling notes in the catalogue in imitation of a tall girl in sables, while ripples of self-consciousness played up and down her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... They are the scientific proofs that Christ's words to 'THIS generation,' namely, this particular phase of creation,—are true. 'Blessed are they which have not seen and yet believed,' He said;—and many there are who have passed away from us in rapt faith and hope, believing not seeing, and with whom we may rejoice in spirit, knowing that all must be well with them. But now—now we are come upon an age of doubt in the world—doubt which corrodes and kills the divine spirit in man, and therefore we are being ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... her piece, to everybody's amazement the Colonel clapped gaily to himself and said Bravo! as if at a Cafe Chantant, looking round for his glass. But there was no glass. So he crossed his neatly-khakied legs, and looked rapt again. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... love enveloped his existence in the purple atmosphere of Paradise, that Ellison thought to find, and found, exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity, with a far greater amount of positive happiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Kensington; and up-stairs in her room Aunty Nan slept, with that rapt smile on her face and Joscelyn's red roses in her hands. Thus it was that Mrs. William found her, going in the next morning with her breakfast. The sunlight crept over the pillow, lighting up the sweet old face and silver hair, and stealing ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... scenes which so powerfully awakened her image. Sometimes he had bribed a servant, who had been left in the care of Madame Montoni's chateau, to permit him to visit the gardens, and there he would wander, for hours together, rapt in a melancholy, not unpleasing. The terrace, and the pavilion at the end of it, where he had taken leave of Emily, on the eve of her departure from Tholouse, were his most favourite haunts. There, as he walked, or leaned from the window of the building, he would endeavour ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Sober, stedfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, Flowing with majestick train, And sable stole of Cipres Lawn, Over thy decent shoulders drawn. Com, but keep thy wonted state, With eev'n step, and musing gate, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: There held in holy passion still, Forget thy self to Marble, till With a sad Leaden downward cast, Thou fix them on the earth as fast. And joyn with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... a barren pasture, and climbed the cliff-like rock that was crowned by the ancient pines. He stood there erect, his head thrown back, his forehead to the radiant heavens, his eyes fixed on the pale twinklings of the seven stars in the northernmost constellation of the Bear—rapt, caught away in spirit by the intensity of feeling engendered by the hour, the place. Then he knelt, bowing his head on a lichened rock, and unto his Maker, and the Maker of that humanity he had elected to serve, he consecrated ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... like Juba on a cursed design. I could not bear To leave thee in the neighbourhood of death, But flew, in all the haste of love, to find thee; I found thee weeping, and confess this once, Am rapt with joy, to see ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... had to improvise a transposition suited for the organ, something I had never dreamt of doing. During the performance the Queen leaned her elbow on the keyboard of the organ, her chin resting on one hand and her eyes upturned. She seemed rapt in exstasy which, as may be imagined, was not precisely displeasing ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... 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
... word, and unconsciously emphasising each passage with gestures, slight in themselves, but eloquent and forcible in their exact suitability to the words, and very soon every man and woman in the church was listening to him, not only with rapt attention, but with a growing feeling of uneasiness and apprehension as to what ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... sunlight. Here there were damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five years old upwards. They send even the little ones to meditate, Clarice tells me; and there are these infants kneeling before the flower-bedecked altars, rapt in religious contemplation, like so many Thomas a Kempises. The young meditators glanced shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me everything of special interest in the pleasant old place, Clarice and Madelon ran off to dress ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... my story in with hers, she listening in a rapt way, peculiarly her own. I told her of my prisonment on the day of her visit. I confessed entirely, up to the point she had narrated. When ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a new world to Hannah. She took her young instructor's breath away by the avidity with which she devoured the lessons he set her. By the rapt air of exultation with which Hannah recited them, stepping back and forth by her wheel, you would have thought that "c-a-t, cat; r-a-t, rat," was the finest poetry ever written. And in no time at all it was no longer "c-a-t, cat," but "parallel," and "phthisis," and such orthographical ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Will Dawson 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 ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... the far reaching look that Clara knew so well came into the true and tender grey eyes, strong with all the rapt purpose of a devoted woman. Her resolutions were forming and strengthening as she went on. She had been guided by instinct and feeling, but they were guiding ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... fascinates because there is connected with it the story of the building and the hungry little brood it sheltered. Tales of animals, fairies and real folk, busy in simple and familiar occupations hold him entranced, and he will watch with rapt attention the performance of most common tasks. It is noteworthy that his interest in all this is not so much in the end to be accomplished, as in the activity itself. Even in his play, the preparations ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... 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 ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... kingship, and all yielded from the beginning to his sway. Ears and mouths opened toward him the liege. Upon the magnet of his voice hung the eager atoms. There was a filmy, distant look in the eyes of the listeners, as of men rapt with the mystic utterances of a seer. My entrance unheralded broke up the monologue, whatever it was. But seeing the true sacrificial look on my brow, all at once, from chief to sutler, confessed a brother. To me then turning, Duespeptos, king of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... was communicated. He was a very religious man, who would sooner have gone without his sword than his Saviour upon any affairs. Jehane saw him fed without a twitch of the lips. She was in a great mood, a rapt and pillared saint; but when mass was over and his thanksgiving to make, she got up and hid herself away from him in the shades. There she lurked darkling, and he, lunging out, swept with his sword's point the very edge of her ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... kissed it. It was a little kissable heel, elegant in fashion; one could tell how it belonged aforetime to the footwear of a beautiful girl. Perhaps this thought was aided by the reverent preoccupation of Richard as he regarded it, for he set the boot-heel on the table and hung over it in a rapt way that had the outward features of idolatry. It was right that he should; the little heel spoke of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 will. She was angrily ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... in whose dust recline Their mouldering relics whose immortal wreath. Blooms on, unfaded by Time's withering breath, In these proud ashes what a prize is thine! Sure it is holy ground I tread upon; Nor do I breathe unconsecrated air, As, rapt, I gaze on each undying name. These monuments are fragments of the throne Once reared by genius on this spot so fair, When Florence was the seat of arts ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... to St Martin's and done the real thing. No amount of chaff could hide that his had been the glory of the initiative. Indeed, he showed less of annoyance with his critics than of boredom with 'Biades, who, whichever way his big brother turned, revolved punctually as a satellite, never relaxing his rapt, upward gaze ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... seasons the human affections in which the breath of God breathes and is. Go forth to the world, O Art, go forth to the innocent, the guilty, the wise, and the dull; go forth as the still voice of Fate! Speak of the insecurity even of goodness below; carry on the rapt vision of suffering Virtue through "the doors of the shadows of death;" show the dim revelation symbolled forth in the Tragedy of old,—how incomplete is man's destiny, how undeveloped is the justice divine, if Antigone sleep eternally in the ribs of the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... effect; he is incarnating the soul of a fact. And so Mantegna, with his Roman kindness for whatever had breath and vigour and boldness of design, carved his Judith on the lines of a Vestal Virgin, and gave her the rapt, daemonic features of the Tragic Muse. And, with his full share of that unhealthy craving for the mere nastiness of crime, that Aminatrait which distinguished the later Empire and its correlate the Renaissance, he drew together ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... already seized the other apparatus connected with the art-gallery and had the wireless receiver over his head. He was listening with rapt ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... once. He went down: I set him a stool by the fire, and offered him a quantity of good things: but he was sick and could eat little, and my attempts to entertain him were thrown away. He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely—'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Ah, speechless, rapt, I bent, to know Each wonder of that fateful day When midst thy zeal's terrific glow He met thee on the Syrian way: I saw, I felt, the scene: my soul Drank the new bliss, ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... I am an evil daughter to you: I never thought of you—O, never once— Until I heard a moor-bird cry like you. I am wicked, rapt in joys of breath and life, And I must force myself to think of you. I leave you to caretakers' cold gentleness; But O, I did not think that they dare leave you. What woman ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... Patriot multitudes, all ye men of France; this man is rapt away from you. He has fallen suddenly, without bending till he broke; as a tower falls, smitten by sudden lightning. His word ye shall hear no more, his guidance follow no more.—The multitudes depart, heartstruck; spread the sad tidings. How touching is the loyalty of men to their ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... he had purchased in seventy bound volumes, a miracle of cheapness, parted with, he was assured by the shopman, at the price of the red-and-gold alone. He looked, doubtless, while he played his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in reverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the question of where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge would be able to enter. Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be perhaps what he should most substantially ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... delectation, To think how strange, how wonderful they be; Framing thereof an inward contemplation, To set his heart from other fancies free; And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye, His mind is rapt above ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... convictions were so private as to be hidden from herself; she never admitted that she thought Finlay had it, and in the supreme difficulty of proving anything else we may wisely accept her view. But he had something, the subtle Celt; he had horizons, lifted lines beyond the common vision, and an eye rapt and a heart intrepid; and though for a long time he was unconscious of it, he must have adventured there with a happier confidence because ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... room, as she hovered over the work spread out before her, the girl, too, was talking aloud to herself, not in the toneless, rambling voice that came from John Anderson's mumbling lips, but in hushed, rapt, broken sentences which were ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... two-gun man sat 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." ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... weird, he recounted in particular the exploits of Stingaree (included a garbled version of the recent fiasco across the Murray) with a zest only equalled by his confidant undertaking to avenge the death of Robert Duncan before another day was out; all listened in a rapt silence, and the younger men were duly disappointed when the party broke up prematurely between nine and ten. But they also had played their part in a fatiguing week; by the later hour all were in their rooms, and before very long Rosanna ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... bewitching of promising young men by lovely maidens who turn out to be really foxes in disguise, ending as usual in the triumph of virtue and the discomfiture of vice. The fixed eyes and open mouths of the crowd, listening with rapt attention, is a sight which, once seen, is not ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... made ready. Accordingly on the third day the baths were brought to the chamber, and the lady occupied herself with filling them. While she was doing so her lord left the chamber for a space, and during his absence the King and the lady were clasped in each other's arms. So rapt were the pair in their amorous dalliance that they failed to notice the return of the seneschal, who, when he saw them thus engaged, uttered an exclamation of surprise and wrath. Equitan, turning quickly, saw him, and with a cry of despair leapt into the bath that the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... comely, perhaps beautiful; she had beautiful lips, and her nose, behind the nostrils, joined the cheek in a lovely contour, like a tiny bulb. Yes, she was superb. But what mastered him was less her fresh physical charm than the rapt and extreme vitality of her existing.... He knew from her gestures and the tools on the table that she could be no amateur. She was a professional. He thought: Chelsea!... Marvellous place, Chelsea! He ought to have found that out long ago. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... countenance is blent The majesty of high intent With meekness by devotion lent, And when she bends in prayer Before the Virgin's awful shrine,— The rapt enthusiast might deem The seraph of his brightest dream, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... but, unfolding in the clear, keen, cold New England clime, and nurtured in its abstract and positive theologies, her religious faculties took other forms. Instead of lying entranced in mysterious raptures at the foot of altars, she read and ponder treatises on the Will, and listened in rapt attention while her spiritual guide, the venerated Dr. H., unfolded to her the theories of the great Edwards on the nature of true virtue. Womanlike, she felt the subtile poetry of these sublime abstractions which dealt with such infinite and unknown quantities,—which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... a better fate, should be ruined, body and soul, so young. Thus absorbed, she neither saw nor listened to anything that was occurring near her or in the large room of the tavern, but stood gazing into vacancy as if rapt away from earth. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in rapt contemplation of a pear-tree in full blossom, her hands tightly clasped behind the back, for greater safety from the temptation, when, hearing the shrubbery gate open, she turned, expecting to see her papa, but was frightened at the sight of two ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... young person who listened to him with such rapt admiration and respect, when she listened at all, had no method or system whatever. She simply waited for the hint, the flash that revealed the vision, then she joyously and ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... the front and listened with rapt attention while this fine actor declaimed the speech. When he finished Charles said, in his ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... sick at what would surely be Doree's fate. He saw her just beyond the perimeter of battle still held by her two captors who were viewing the fight with rapt interest. If he could only reach her. One swing of his gun butt and she would serve no vile purpose in ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... exultation, they would have led him back across the Jordan to the company of their friends, amidst the thanksgivings of the people. But, alas! for the prophet himself, this would have been his loss, even had it proved to be their gain. The opening Jordan, cleft in twain by his rapt spirit, pressing its way to the skies, had returned to its course; and now the fords of the river, with its rocky bed, would have required his laboring feet to grope their way back to his toil; or the arms of men, instead of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... The rapt look faded from the strained face, leaving it downcast. "I'm afeared, then, I won't be able to claim that there money," he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... woman placed her hand upon its tiny head, and, turning her eyes upwards with the rapt expression of one ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... sat on his bed doing nothing; no book, no pipe, no pen or paper anywhere appeared, yet anything less indolent or listless than his attitude and expression I never saw. Erect he sat, with a hand on either knee, and eyes fixed on the bare wall opposite, so rapt in some absorbing thought as to be unconscious of my presence, though the door stood wide open and my movements were by no means noiseless. His face was half averted, but I instantly approved the Doctor's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... telling the story of these riotous escapades, he was careful to avoid the use of any offensive epithet. He phrased his narrative in choice imaginative language, as if paying due regard to the presence of the young girls, who, like their elders, including Marcolina, listened with rapt attention. The hour grew late, and Amalia sent her daughters to bed. They all kissed Casanova a tender good-night, Teresina behaving exactly like her sisters. He made them promise that they would soon come with their father and mother to visit him in Venice. ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... influences—even as her own voice was soaring heavenward in the choir—she thought to herself, "How delicious to have an emotion which you feel will last for ever and which you know won't!" And a gleam of amusement flitted over her rapt features. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... first shock of sky-quake had subsided, Donald turned and looked at me with a rapt and heavenly smile, the thing emitting sundry noises all the while, like fragments from a crash of sound, comparatively mild, as a stream which has just ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... and place your two hands upon his neck!" She wanted to cry out at the recklessness of the thought, and in vain she appraised her own cleanness and culture and balanced all that she was against what he was not. She glanced about her and saw the others gazing at him with rapt attention; and she would have despaired had not she seen horror in her mother's eyes—fascinated horror, it was true, but none the less horror. This man from outer darkness was evil. Her mother saw ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... side to side, and his body swayed, Smellie says, "vermicularly," as if at each alternate step "he meant to alter his direction, or even to turn back." Often, moreover, his lips would be moving all the while, and smiling in rapt conversation with invisible companions. A very noticeable figure he was as he went up and down the High Street, and he used to tell himself the observations of two market women about him as he marched past them one day. "Hegh sirs!" said one, shaking her head significantly. "And he's weel put on ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... heart, as Thomas Shepard for one was, that stranger on the earth is at last within a step of that happy coast where all wishes end. Watch that man. Take a last look at that man. He will soon be taken out of your sight. Ere ever he is himself aware, he will be rapt up into that life where saints and angels seek not their own will, labour not for their own profit or promotion, listen not for their own praises, but find their blessedness, the half of which had not here been told them, in glorifying ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... rapt in these and similar reforms, political, social, and moral, calculated to bestow on the people of the nether world the blessings of a civilisation known to the races of the upper, that I did not perceive that ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... face disconcerted Alan. With an effort the son began and explained his errand. His father settled himself down into his ample and dignified professional chair—old oak round-backed,—and with head half turned, and hands folded in front of him, seemed to diagnose with rapt attention this singular form of psychological malady. When Alan paused for a second between his halting sentences and floundered about in search of a more delicate way of gliding over the thin ice, his father eyed him closely with those keen, gray ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... and magnificent in guilt, Splendid in scorn, rapt in a cloudy dream, He paused at last upon the Stygian silt, And raised calm eyes above the angry stream.... Hand in his breast, he stood till Charon came, While Hades hummed with gossip ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... in seeing her that night," I said, watching the rapt expression of his face. He looked up quickly, became conscious of my scrutiny, and dropped his eyes again, smiled feebly, and drawing a circle in the ashes with ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... on rising was to run up the shade, in order to benefit by the full light of the morning sun. Then for some minutes she studied her reflection in a little hand-mirror which gave back to her view a face rapt and absorbed. With Annabel this rite was a substitute for morning prayer, and it brought her a peace not always secured by equally sincere devotions. Diantha's willowy height woke in her a sense of exasperated fear. It sometimes seemed to her that the girl's growth was with deliberate ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... such and such circumstances. When the Tchurtchun has obtained all the necessary information, he recites a few prayers, opens his book of divination, and finally pronounces his oracle, while the Tartars, who have come to consult him, listen to his words, kneeling, and rapt in profound devotion. Your Grand Lama, he says, is come to life again, in Thibet, at such a distance from your house; you will find him in such a family. When the poor creatures have heard the oracle, they return rejoicing, to announce the good ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... 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 surge, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... 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 ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... indifferent and played like a machine. Blicky sat eager and excited, under a spell. Jesse Smith was a slow, cool, shrewed gambler. Bossert and Pike, two ruffians almost unknown to Joan, appeared carried away by their opportunity. And Kells began to wear that strange, rapt, weak expression that ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... shrouded their faces and fell to their 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
... others; Nor doth he of himself know them for aught Till he behold them formed in th' applause Where th' are extended; who, like an arch, reverb'rate The voice again; or, like a gate of steel Fronting the sun, receives and renders back His figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this; And apprehended here immediately Th' unknown Ajax. Heavens, what a man is there! A very horse that has he knows not what! Nature, what things there are Most abject in regard and dear in use! ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... there is a moment When the sun's highest point Peers like a star o'er ocean's western edge, When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea: 205 Then has thy rapt imagination soared Where in the midst of all existing things The temple ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... made some difference, but loving entreaty all the difference in the world. To a casual glance there was nothing but refinement to distinguish her from her neighbours, to a closer one there was more than that. Her eyes, they said, had the far, intent, rapt gaze of a wild animal. They seemed to search minutely, reaching beyond our power of vision, to find there things beyond our human ken. But whereas the things which she looked at, invisible to us, caused her no dismay, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... lines of her swinging figure that told of coming womanhood, or in the flashing, laughing appeal of her dark eyes where for the moment both woman and child looked out. He set the brake on his wagon and waited for her to pass. She came by with a smile and a word of greeting, to which his rapt attention prevented any reply except a slight nod. When she had passed, he turned and looked after her until she had gone around the little hill on the road ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... arm. Her husband by an energetic forward play around the end achieved her other wing. In this formation, sticks flashing, skirt whipping, with a somewhat spirited mien, the august spectacle receded from our rapt view, to be at length obliterated as a unit by the ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... and she would as vaguely return with no memory of what had passed and no change in her physical condition. This didn't matter so much when, as a mere child, she disappeared for thirty days; but when, mother of an incomparable heir of two, she was rapt away in the middle of a picnic for twenty-five years, and returned to find a husband, mother and father inexplicably old and changed, and dreadfully silent about her babe—well, you see for yourself how hopeless everything was. As if there were not enough real tragedy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... 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 the envy of a greater than the Signor. We dismissed the Signor, but he still continued his ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... and, the trees no longer hiding it, I looked down the vale, which was the gate of Tuscany. There—high, jagged, rapt into the sky—stood such a group of mountains as men dream of in good dreams, or see in the works of painters when old age permits them revelations. Their height was evident from the faint mist and grey of their hues; their outline was tumultuous, yet balanced; full of accident ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... he liked to watch him toy with his fan as he introduced his listeners to the characters of his story. Then the story-teller would hold his fan like a rod of command, whilst he kept his audience in rapt attention, then sometimes, amidst the laughter of those present, he would raise his voice to a shrill whine, and would emphasize a joke by a sharp tap on the table with his fan. After they had listened to one tale Yoshi-san was sleepy. ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... aspect of that division which claims the stupendous church of St. Eutrope[10] is wondrously imposing. I never beheld anything more so, and we stood some time on the high-raised road which commanded the view, rapt in astonishment at the ruined grandeur before us. The enormous tower of St. Eutrope rises from a mass of buildings which appear Lilliputian beside it; gardens and vines and orchards slope down from it, and low in the meadows a long series of arches betray the celebrated amphitheatre—another ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... a wise man, guided by special portents, recognised him as the long-expected and divinely appointed light-bringer and life-giver of mankind. When but a youth he was lost for a time and was found by his father in the midst of a circle of holy men, sunk in rapt contemplation of the great mystery of existence. The parallel between these legends and the Christian version of the marvels attending the birth of Jesus is so close as to preclude the possibility ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... unconsciously, of course) become more than my beloved. She became for me the actual embodiment, the incarnate end, aim, and reward of all the strivings of my lonely life, from the night of my flight from St. Peter's Orphanage down to that very day. In my rapt contemplation of her, of the personality which enthralled me far, far more than her beautiful person could, I smiled over recollection of my bitter struggles in London slums, of the heart-racking anxiety and grinding humiliation of life with poor Fanny. I smiled ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... held Ken Ward in rapt perusal was the Morning Times-Star's. At first the print blurred in Ken's sight. Then he read it over again. He liked the glowing praise given the team, and was shamefully conscious of the delight in his name in large letters. A third time he read it, guiltily this time, for he ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... a portion of the debt due by posterity to those who laboured long and painfully for it, when I stand rapt in admiration before the works of the great masters of the olden time, my heart touched with a lively sympathy for their destinies; nor can I look on the glorious faces or glowing landscapes that remain to us, evincing the triumph of genius over even ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... took their first long, rapt look, stood at one side, with a smile like a faun's when ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... for the Congress. Elected to the House, he was immediately greeted by connoisseurs of the best stamp— President Martin van Buren, "prince of good fellows;" Webster, another intellect, saturnine in repose and mercurial in activity; the convivial Senator Douglas, and the like. These formed the rapt ring around Lincoln in his own chair in the snug corner of the congressional chat-room. Here he perceived that his rusticity and shallow skimmings placed him under the trained politicians. It was here, too, that his stereotyped prologue to his ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... knees are raised to form a snowy mountain, and he leads his paper soldiers up the slope. Sometimes his kitten romps across the coverlet and pounces on his wriggling toes; and again sleeps on the sunny window-sill. His book, by his rapt attention, must deal with far-off islands and with waving cocoanut trees. Lately I have observed that a yellow drink is brought to him in the afternoon—a delicious blend of eggs and milk—and by the zest with which he licks the remainder from his lips, it ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... there occurred one or two exquisite movements in the prayer harmony, and I turned to note their effect on Mrs. Yocomb, and was greatly struck by her appearance. She was looking fixedly into space, and her face had assumed a rapt, earnest, seeking aspect, as if she were trying to see something half hidden in the far distance. With a few rich chords the melody ceased. Mr. Yocomb glanced at his wife, then instantly folded his hands and assumed an attitude ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the distance with her family about her, and Christie took a survey before reporting herself. Madame looked more like a fashion-plate than ever, in a mass of green flounces, and an impressive bonnet flushed with poppies and bristling with wheat-ears. Beside her sat a gentleman, rapt in a newspaper, of course, for to an American man life is a burden till the daily news have been absorbed. Mrs. Saltonstall's brother was the possessor of a handsome eye without softness, thin lips without benevolence, but plenty of will; a face and figure which ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... his swinging stride. For a face, rapt in its intense earnestness, broke in upon his gnawing loneliness. A lovely vision, a very Rose of ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... the rejoicings in the white house by the shore that day, and marvelous was the dinner Isaiah served in honor of the occasion. Mary was obliged to relate the story of her trip from start to finish, while three rapt listeners nodded and exclaimed in sympathy or broke in to ask questions. She had written faithfully, but, as Isaiah said, "writin' ain't tellin'." So Mary told and her uncles and Mr. Chase listened and questioned. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... been turned on. The little congregation, relaxed, weary, weak from hunger, many of them, sat rapt and still except at those times when the prayer book demanded spoken responses. The voice of the little rabbi, rather weak now, had in it a timbre that made it startlingly sweet and clear and resonant. Fanny slid very quietly into the seat beside Mrs. Brandeis, and slipped her moist ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... She listened with rapt attention to Krenska's accounts of the stage, her numerous appearances and triumphs, and the vivid life of an actor. As she related her experiences Krenska was herself carried away by enthusiasm and ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... the Holy Child, Holding a globe and sceptre, sweet and mild; The Magi bring their gifts with reverent looks, And the rapt Shepherds lean ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... these words with a swelling heart. He did not speak, for he could not. He sat still, watching the actor as he paced to and fro, histrionically rapt in his representation of an actor who had just taken a piece from a young dramatist. "If you can realize that part as you've sketched it to me," he said, finally, "I will play it exclusively, as Jefferson does Rip Van Winkle. There are immense capabilities in the piece. Yes, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... an attitude at once primitive and grand, an attitude that we have almost come to ignore. Listening to the Mass, we find ourselves feeling as though some vates of a Mediterranean folk were come in rapt and lofty mood to offer sacrifice, to pacify the living, to celebrate with fitting rites the unnumbered multitudes of the heroic dead. There are some compositions that seem to find the common ground of all men throughout the ages. And to the company of such works of art, the grand Mass for ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... stood Berta, leaning motionless against the window, drinking in with rapt attention the notes which at that moment came in a torrent ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... act had begun, that scene in which Adrienne accomplishes her generous sacrifice in furnishing herself the ransom which must deliver her unfaithful lover. The rapt attention that Zibeline paid to this scene, and the slight movements of her head, showed her approval of this disinterested act. Very touching in her invocation to her "old Corneille," Mademoiselle Gontier ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... found them lovely. There seemed no cruelty in the knife or the blood. It was a delicate mystery of worship, as wholesome as the morning song of birds. I do not know how the Semites found Ashtaroth's ritual; to them it may well have been more rapt and passionate than it seemed to me. For I saw in it only the sweet simplicity of Nature, and all riddles of lust and terror soothed away as a child's nightmares are calmed by a mother. I found my legs able to move, and I ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... much significance should be attached to the fairly frequent phenomenon of dying people seeming in some rapt vision to see or feel as if meeting them the presence of loved ones gone before. Sometimes these phenomena are very striking. I once thought of asking a religious journal to open its columns to testimony from thoughtful, cool-headed clergy and laity of such experiences at death-beds. It ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... hard must that heart be," said the clergyman, going on with his subject, "who would ill use an innocent, helpless kitten!" "Like me, like me," said Fluff, or so it seemed to say, in its piteous way. The people in both aisles fixed their eyes on dear mamma, who in vain pretended to be rapt in the sermon; they knew very well by this time what was wrapped in her muff, and in the end dear mamma had to go. The denunciations of the clergyman against cruel people followed her down the aisle, and were supposed, no doubt, by those who didn't know her, to have a personal application, ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... vast spaces Clove the inane, While we stood tearless, White with rapt faces In wonder and ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... Love's rapt sense the heart-strings gently sweep, [1] With joy divinely fair, the high and deep, To call her home, She shall mount upward unto purer skies; We shall be waiting, in what glad ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Hypnot. has impressed his subjects with the idea that there is an Angel at the other end of the hall, and they are variously affected by the celestial apparition, some gazing with a rapt grin, while others invoke her stiffly, or hail her like a cab. Mr. MIDGELLY alone exhibits ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... gainer, for he had allotted to her Lord Skye, the British 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 him. Did ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... before immensity, and recognize that we represent but one class in the upward direction towards the stars, and one degree in the descent to the moth and rust that corrupt; and perhaps that worm, that I killed in order to take rapt pleasure in its wings, thought itself the middle of eternity round which the world is whirling like Plato's featherless two-footed animals; and when at the door of death it uttered its last cry, it probably thought that this cry for vengeance ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... None live to bear that gentle name for me, Though one may lisp it now, perchance, in Heaven. I know not even, for I never felt, The quiet yearnings of such love as this; Thou should'st have known a deeper feeling dwelt In the rapt ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... the beautiful effects of this interminable Portico, with its moving and changing crowds robed in a thousand varieties of the richest costume. It was indeed a spectacle of beauty, such as I never had seen before nor elsewhere. I chose out point after point, and stood a silent and rapt observer of the scene. Of the view from one of these points, I have purchased a painting, done with exquisite skill, which I shall send to you, and which will set before ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman |
