"Wraith" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blaw his ain parritch," said Seth Jamieson doggedly, coming to a dead stop. "What is it tae us if a wraith or a bogle minds tae tak' a fancy tae Cloomber? It's no canny tae meddle ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to behold the wraith of a something which existed long ago. There are traditions of ancient greatness, the line of their present King stretching proudly back to 1390, and beyond that an indefinite background of splendor and vista of heroic deeds which, we are told, made China and Japan and all ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... like this, where by merely reaching out I can touch you, a little—visionary to me. I confuse you with the Dumb Princess over there whom you made me create. I get misgivings that you're just a sort of wraith. Well, if you're going away and we aren't to be within—touching distance of each other again for a long while—perhaps months, I want more of you, that my memory can hold on by. The real every-day person that you are instead, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the story saith, Out of the night came the patient wraith, He might not speak, and he could not stir A hair of the Baron's minniver—- Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin, He roved the castle to seek his kin. And oh,'twas a piteous thing to see The dumb ghost follow his ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... healers, mesmerists, and clairvoyants. Before making investments or embarking in his great railroad ventures, Vanderbilt visited spiritualists; we have one circumstantial account of his summoning the wraith of Jim Fiske to advise him in stock operations. His excessive vanity led him to print his picture on all the Lake Shore bonds; he proposed to New York City the construction in Central Park of a large monument that would commemorate, side by side, the names of Vanderbilt and ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... Could no one else see what was so plain to her? She was tempted to go home. She felt she could not bear the strain of watching that little figure perched on the grey beast that looked like a wraith, like a warning. But she did not go, and she learnt to be glad to have shared with Francis the horror of the moment when the mare, out of control and mad with excitement, tried a fence topping a bank, failed, and fell with Christabel ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... of Joe Powers the black hulk of a Japanese liner rose black out of the gray fog shadow. But the freighters, the coasters, tramps that went hither and thither over the earth wherever fat cargoes lured them—they were either swallowed in the mist or shadowed to a ghost-like wraith of themselves so tenuous that all detail ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... me," she said, "because I want all the spirits I am capable of to carry it through. It has to be done with a light heart, else it will deceive nobody. And so, my dear, to-morrow you will say 'good-bye' to me, and have a sort of wraith of me instead for a little while. Oh, Alice, I hope it won't take ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... recall the apparition which stole into my solitude after supper—which I had scented longingly from afar. A wraith all in white—gown and neck and arms and face, the masses of fluffy hair making this last more wraith-like. It sank to the floor beside my low bed, and gathered me, miserable culprit, in a cuddling embrace, and bade me "tell Cousin all ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... unconsciousness, mostly blissful, of the annihilation of Eugene Brassfield. The mails might take to Mrs. Baggs at Hazelhurst vague letters from Judge Blodgett hinting at clues and traces of Florian, preparatory to the restoration of the lost brother; but Brassfield, never anything but a wraith from the mysterious caves of the subconsciousness, was non-existent for evermore, except through the magic of Le Claire. But Elizabeth Waldron, just home from college, full of the wise unwisdom of Smith and twenty-three, and palpitating ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... he might lie with hands clinched across his brow to shut out the wraith of it that haunted him; though he might set his course by the faith that was in him, and put away the hope of the world—whose hope is love—the truth was there, staring, staring at him out of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... to amuse himself by sitting naked on a rock in the sunlight, reading Herodotus while he cooled, and then plunging into the deep pool beneath him—to emerge, further up stream, and then climb through the spray of the waterfall till he was like a glittering human wraith in the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... on with me?" from Southey, placed on his title-page, together with quotations at the heads of chapters, belongs to a past fashion. Fanshawe and Butler are powerful conceptions, but they are so purely embodiments of passion as to assume an air of unreality. Butler is like an evil wraith, and Fanshawe is as evanescent as a sad cloud in the sky, touched with the first pale light of morning. Fanshawe, with his pure heart and high resolves, represents that constant aspiration toward lofty ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... something for her before Hugh came in. Perhaps it did; for though she lay in a kind of stupor, and was conscious of no change whatever, she was able when she heard him coming to get up and sit in the chair in an ordinary attitude. But she looked like the wraith of herself an ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... changed eerily to a deep, mocking bass; and Rita Irvin lying, a pallid wraith of her once lovely self, upon the untidy bed, stirred slightly—her lashes quivering. Her eyes opened and stared straightly upward at the low, dirty ceiling, horror ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... thawing bacon on the ends of sticks; and in the morning darkness, without a word, they arose, slipped on their packs, adjusted head-straps, and hit the trail. The last miles into Selkirk, Daylight drove the Indian before him, a hollow-cheeked, gaunt-eyed wraith of a man who else would have lain down and slept or abandoned his ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... his arm about her, and herself willingly nestling against him, trembling now and again; looking out at the sheeny surface of the slow flowing stream from which, in the imperceptible night breeze, stole away wraith after wraith of water mist to float and lose themselves in the ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... you that like them maist, Ye're far frae kelpie, wraith, and ghaist, And fairy dames, no unco chaste, And haunted cell. Among a heathen clan ye're placed, That ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... and he knew it was a favourite seat of hers for, glancing over his rows of corn, he could see the top of her head bent over a book. He did not know how long she pored over a page with eyes that saw him, a wraith of him hovering over the print, nor that when their passionate depths grew hungrier for the actual sight of him, how she threw one glance at his working figure and bent to her book again. As he came suddenly in upon her she sprang up and faced him, the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... tint, and the whiteness of her skin would have matched the Hyperborean snows tidily enough. As for her eyes, the customary similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for her little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily acquiescent to the custom ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... like one clad in garments of invisibility. I could see, but was not seen. I could feel, but was not felt. In the country there are few who would not stop to speak to me, or at least appraise me with their eyes; but here I was a wraith, a ghost—not a palpable human being at all. For a moment I ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... wavering mist Waned the wonder out of sight, To a sigh of amethyst, To a wraith of scented light. Flower and magic glass had gone; Near the clutching fire we sat Dreaming, dreaming, all alone, Each upon a ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... had been killed by falling down the steep cellar stairs, and the spot on the left side where she was found unconscious and bleeding had been pointed out to me. There, I heard it again! Was it the wraith of the aged dame or the cries of that unfortunate creature? Hush! ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... the way, as if instinctively, took note of this one. His nerves crisped at the noiseless slide of that form, as it stalked on from lamp to lamp, keeping pace with his own. He felt a sort of awe, as if he had beheld the wraith of himself; and even as he glanced suspiciously at the stranger, the stranger glanced at him. He was inexpressibly relieved when the figure turned down another ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... we have been able to offer him since he joined in which he has shown the slightest interest." Nevertheless, it was generally admitted that Ranson had saved the post. He had been ubiquitous. He had been seen galloping into the advancing flames like a stampeded colt, he had reappeared like a wraith in columns of black, whirling smoke, at the same moment his voice issued orders from twenty places. One instant he was visible beating back the fire with a wet blanket, waving it above him jubilantly, like a substitute at the Army-Navy game when his side scores, and the next staggering from out of ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... Like a wraith Shorty faded into the night, leaving our friend alone with his thoughts. A Lewis gun was firing away down the line in short bursts, while Verey lights and flares went up every now and then with a faint hiss. Above, the low-flying clouds scudded over the sky, and our ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... however, restrain your natural impatience a little longer, until another night has passed. I will, if you please, myself spend some hours in the Grey Room after dark, and learn what the medieval spirits have to tell me. Shall I see the wraith of Prince Djem, think you? Or the ghost of Pinturicchio hovering round his little picture? Or those bygone, cunning workers in plaster who built the ceiling? They will at least talk the language of Tuscany, and I shall be at home ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... pretended that she did not exist, and the little wraith floated back to Paris from which she had come, suddenly, on days when she had written him certain letters which had brought ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... The wraith of the present carries with him more vital energy than his predecessors, is more athletic in his struggles with the unlucky wights he visits, and can coerce mortals to do his will by the laying on of hands as well as by the look or word. He speaks with ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... dear!' Then she spoke to me; and I knew she was speaking, but I could not hear her voice. . . . It was that way while she stood beside me—I could not hear her, Celia. I could not hear what she was saying. It was no spirit I saw—no phantom from the dead there by my bed, no ghost—no restless wraith, grave-driven through the night. I believe she is living. She knows I believe it. . . . As you sat here, a moment ago, reading to me, I saw her reflected for a moment in the mirror behind you, passing into the room beyond. Her hair ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... leprechaun, Cluricaune^, troll, dwerger^, sprite, ouphe^, bad fairy, nix, nixie, pigwidgeon^, will-o'-the wisp. [Supernatural appearance] ghost, revenant, specter, apparition, spirit, shade, shadow, vision; hobglobin, goblin, orc; wraith, spook, boggart^, banshee, loup-garou [Fr.], lemures^; evil eye. merman, mermaid, merfolk^; siren; satyr, faun; manito^, manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c 503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hardly climb the mountain goats, On stormy cape and crag, The refuge of the wanderer floats— Our hospitable flag; While alien banners only mock With glory's fleeting wraith, It stands on the eternal rock Of our eternal faith; And handed on from sire and son, It furls not day nor night; So England holds what England won, And God ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... outlining her cumbersome hulk. Men's voices made the night noisy, and numerous feet scuttled to and fro over the cobbles of the dockyard to where a handful of fishing boats were drawn up, only their masts showing above the landing, with here and there a ghostly wraith of sail. ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... spectral sheet, Wraith of long-perished wrong and time, Forbear! the spirit starts to meet The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... young man sallies out in much exaltation of feeling and full of contempt for the unconverted. As he goes he meets another young man of mysterious appearance, who seems to be an exact double of himself. This wraith, however, presents himself as only a humble admirer of Robert's spiritual glory, and holds much converse with him. He meets this person repeatedly, but is never able to ascertain who he is. The stranger ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Lake of Tears which my grief discovered, I laid dead Love with a passionate kiss, And over those soundless depths has hovered The sweet, sad wraith of my vanished bliss. ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... billiard-room. It was light and warm there, though the place was empty, and he decided upon a cigar as a proximate or immediate solution. He sat smoking before the fire till the tobacco's substance had half turned into a wraith of ash, and not really thinking of anything very definitely, except the question whether he should be able to sleep after he went to bed, when he heard a creeping step on the floor. He turned quickly, with a certain expectance in his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... behind me; it does not move; it glares at me with its two red eyes. It is my wraith,[1], Sigurd! Three times has it appeared to me; that bodes that I shall ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... "Where none attends, what boots it to complain? Men's froward hearts are moved with women's tears As marble stones are pierced with drops of rain, No plaints find passage through unwilling ears: The tyrant, haply, would his wraith restrain Heard he these prayers ruthless Godfrey hears, Yet not thy fault is this, my chance, I see, Hath made ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... to me to have been particularly kindly and "safe." The most pronounced anarchist among them has long since become a convert to a religious sect, holding Buddhistic tenets which imply little food and a distrust of all action; he has become a wraith of his former self but he ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... hardly can persuade myself Whether to laugh or pull a solemn face At seeing you. It is preposterous! I thought that you were dead—a myth—a wraith. ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... is visible and is hidden alternately as we pass on the shore-line high hill and intervening swale. With a blanket thrown over me, as the others sleep, I lie along the gunwale, and the beauty of it sinks into my very soul. Just before we enter McMurray the wraith of a tall oil-derrick tells of the enterprise of some pioneer ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... last we met; My passion I as freely told him! Clasped in his arms, I little thought That I should nevermore behold him! Scarce was he gone, I saw his ghost; It vanished with a shriek of sorrow; Thrice did the water-wraith ascend, And gave a doleful ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... am I so frightful then? I live; though they call it death; I am only cold—say dear again"— But scarce could he heave a breath; The air felt dank, like a frozen fen, And he a half-conscious wraith. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... bewilderment; was it himself, or his ghost, his shadow. He tried to think, but everything melted before him in a mist. The girl by his side was a wraith; they were dead, and this was some strange unaccountable happening in another world. The marble felt cold to his knees. Velasco tried to move, to rise, but the hand of the priest held him down. The voice ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... the incorruptible crown that fadeth not away, which His hand will give, should fire our hope, and shine before our faith. Not Naaman's gifts but God's approval is Elisha's reward. Not the praise from lips that will perish, or the 'hollow wraith of dying fame,' but Christ's 'Well done! good and faithful servant,' should be a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... can deny that there is magic in a mirror, a weird atmosphere imprisoned, between the metal and the glass, borrowing the occult powers of the gulf of space, and returning to us our own wraith and apparition at any hour of the day or night when we smite it with a ray of light,—reaching with its searching power into the dark places where we have hidden ourselves, and seizing and projecting them in open sight? Who doubts that this sheeny ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... her in that pitchy blackness, except when the lightning flashes came. Then she was like a ghostly wraith, with drenched clothes clinging to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her wet hair streaming and her wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead. After the lightning flashes, when the world was darkest, ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... Costigan's broad countenance did not harbor the wraith of a smile. "What kin I git for fifty chips? 'Tain't much," mused the pariah, with the prompt inclination to spend that stamps the comparative stranger to ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... waterfall reversed, going up instead of down. It suggested Stockton's story of negative gravity. A small brook comes down off the mountain and attempts to make the leap down a high precipice; but the winds catch it and carry it straight up in the air like smoke. It is translated; it becomes a mere wraith hovering above the beetling crag. Night and day this goes on, the wind snatching from the mountains in this summary way the water it has ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... an anguisht wraith; Ah me; ah me! (Sweet squashes, mother!) Wan hope a dolorous musing saith; (Ah me; ah me! ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... house. Ghosts like good architecture, especially when it has become pretty antique, and they have a passion for neglected door-yards. The place lacked nothing that I could see to make it attractive to even the most fastidious wandering wraith. As I say, I think this was not my first impression, but certainly it was about the next one, and I could see by her face that it ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... over the black sea of Michiganon a vast black wraith; a thing horrible, tremendous, titanic in organic power. It howled, execrated, menaced; missed its aim, and passed. The little swaying house still stood! Under the sheltered log some tiny sparks of fire still burned, omen of the unquenchable hearthstones which the land ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Siward's straight figure swinging past, silhouetted against the glare of light from the billiard-room. And here she made an effort to efface the vision, shutting her eyes as she rode there in the rain. But clearly against the closed lids she saw the phantoms passing—spectres of dead hours, the wraith of an old happiness masked with youth and ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... on an over-turned boat, her chin in her hands, staring out to sea. The soft tide of the bay lapped almost at her feet, and the draperies of her white gown melted hazily into the sands. She looked like a wraith, a despondent phantom of the sea, although the adjective is redundant. Nobody ever thinks of a cheerful phantom. Strangely enough, considering her evident sadness, she was whistling softly to herself, over and over, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seen many campaigns, was riding his hobby of the Civil War and descanting on Lee's tactics in the last Wilderness struggle. I said something about the stark romance of it—of Jeb Stuart flitting like a wraith through the forests; of Sheridan's attack at Chattanooga, when the charging troops on the ridge were silhouetted against a harvest moon; of Leonidas Polk, last of the warrior Bishops, baptizing his fellow generals by the light of a mess candle. "Romance," ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... storm grew loud apace, The water wraith was shrieking, And in the scowl of heaven each face Grew dark as they were ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Bride Spooks of the Hiawassee Lake of the Dismal Swamp The Barge of Defeat Natural Bridge The Silence Broken Siren of the French Broad The Hunter of Calawassee Revenge of the Accabee Toccoa Falls Two Lives for One A Ghostly Avenger The Wraith Ringer of Atlanta The Swallowing Earthquake The Last Stand of the Biloxi The Sacred Fire of Natchez Pass Christian The ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... grieve to relate—was still holding her hand in his. There stirred in his pulses the thrill Kathleen Eppes had always wakened—a thrill of memory now, a mere wraith of emotion. He was thinking of a certain pink-cheeked girl with crinkly black-brown hair and eyes that he had likened to chrysoberyls—and he wondered whimsically what had become of her. This was not she. This was assuredly not Kathleen, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... to put the church in order for the night and hover about to find out what was going on in the session room. He never told but he liked to know. The moon had gone under a cloud. Billy slipped out of the car, and slid up the side path like a wraith, his tired legs seeming to gather new vigor with the need. He gave a glance of content up to the window. He was glad the bells were ringing, and that she was there. He wished she knew what peril their friend had been in last night, and how he ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... ghastly sights of burning sand. The headlands that we reach by day, About whose shore the dragons roam; And mildewed vaults of gathered bone, Where eyeless skulls and ape-shanks lie As moaning winds reel to and sway From gorey pools and tower'd dome, A goggling wraith and shambling gnome Doth forage for each ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... was gone the chancellor paced the room with halting step. Then, toward the wraith of his ambition he waved a hand as if to explain how futile are the schemes of men. He shook himself free from this idle moment and proceeded to the apartments of her highness. Would she toss aside this crown, or would she fight for it? ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... golden-haired glory Flits to and fro; She whom I loved—but 'tis just the old story: Dead, long ago. 'Tis but a wraith of love; yet I linger (Thus passion errs), Foolishly kissing the ring on my finger— Once ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... room in which he heard a noise. That room happened to be his mother's, and when the stranger, with the fatal resemblance to her absent son, presented himself before her in that strange way, at that strange hour, in that strange place, the fear had leaped to her heart that it was his wraith warning her of his death, and she had ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... her arms, but this wraith of the mother, he remembered, frightened the child, who ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the oldest, and the kindest woman in the village, was the first to come to her senses. "He may be a ghost, or a bogle, or a wraith," she said; "or he may only be a harmless Brownie. It is beyond me to say; but this I know, that if he be an evil spirit, he will not dare to look on the Holy Book." And with that she ran into her cottage, and brought out the great leather-bound ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... to be frayed with a bogle, {14} and, as might have been deemed, the bogle but a prentice loon, when all was done. To my thinking all this fairy work is no more true than that you are a dead man's wraith. But they are all wild about it, at the castle, where I was kept long, doing no trade, and listening to their ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... often charged with superstition, and the enlightened editor of the eighteenth century excised all the scene of Mrs. Donne's wraith as too absurd. But Walton is a very fair witness. Donne, a man of imagination, was, he tells us, in a perturbed anxiety about Mrs. Donne. The event was after dinner. The story is, by Walton's admission, at second hand. Thus, in the language ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... he had thought about her intensely for a long time, the picture would not come at all or come with tantalizing incompleteness, apparently because he wanted it to be whole so much—all he could see would be a wraith of Nancy, wooden as a formal photograph, with none of her silences or mockeries about her till he felt like a painter who has somehow let the devil into his paintbox so that each stroke he makes goes a little fatally out of true from the vision in his mind ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... now that when the northern fires light the sky, across the fjord drifts the wraith of Arnkel, and that ever the wild hunt comes up from the sea and hounds him hence. I have heard the bay of those terrible hounds more than once indeed, but I have seen naught, and round our hall is ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... towards the maid like a sane man, and, above all, a true man. Don't go about the land gnashing thy teeth until everyone laughs at thee. Don't go staring at her in grim silence as if she were a wraith; and, more particularly, don't pretend to be fond of other girls, for thou didst make a pitiful mess of that attempt. In short, be Glumm without being Gruff, and don't try to be anybody else. Be kind and straightforward to her, worship her, or, as Kettle Flatnose ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... all, but it was enough to bring the light to Cecil's eyes and a sudden triumphant gladness to his heart. At last he approached the land of his vision, at last he should find the bridge whose wraith had faded before him into the west ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... letter was written in deep dejection of spirit, and mentioned that he feared a judgment had come upon him for wishing to appear as a Scotchman on Scottish soil, as he had one moonlight night shortly after his arrival seen his 'wraith'. He evidently alluded to the fact that before his departure he had procured for himself a Highland costume similar to that which we had the honour to supply to you, with which, as perhaps you will remember, he was much struck. He may, however, never have worn it, as he was, to my own knowledge, ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... sobbing girl seemed to be bursting from its pain and suspense. Her beloved father wanted to go away—to follow the wraith mother beckoning from the rafters. How could she open her arms and allow him to leave her alone in ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... flowers and sweet with blossomed fruit trees. It was so unexpected, so splendidly beautiful, it surpassed a dream of fairy-land. We passed on, saw a shadowy lady among the flowers on the lawn, knew it was the wraith of the unhappy and guilty Dearvorgill. Stole out of the farther gate—at least I did— feeling naughty and intrusive. Found ourselves in the clean little town of Drumahaire, a pretty little village, straggled over a ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... appearing like a materializing wraith from the shadow, and with an undulating movement of incredible grace she was again seated upon her perch, the fallen ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... seemed to him stranger than complete oblivion. But he soon convinced himself that a slight hazy vision he conjured up of a wedding years and years ago was only a reflex image—an automatic reaction—from his recent marriage. For did not the wraith of his present wife quietly take its place before the altar where by rights he should have been able to recall her predecessor? It was all confusion; no ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... still sits and drinks the blood-red wine in roofless Dunfermline tower; the ladies still haunt the windy headland—Kinghorn or Elie Ness—with 'their kaims intil their hands' waiting in vain the return of their 'good Scots lords'; the wraith of Sir Patrick himself in misty days strides the silver strand under the Hawes Wood, reading the braid letter. Near by is Donibristle; and it keeps the memory of the 'Bonnie Earl of Moray,' slain here, hints the balladist—though ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... I were now, to the best of our belief, alone on the island, and a lonesomer spot it would be hard to imagine, or one touched at certain hours with a fairer beauty—a beauty wraith-like and, like a sea-shell, haunted with the marvel of the sea. But we, alas!—or let me speak for myself—were sinful, misguided men, to whom the gleam and glitter of God's making spoke all too seldom, and whose hearts were given to the baser ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Silently as a wraith she went, now appearing in the open spaces, now vanishing, beneath the dense gloom of cedar boughs, till she reached a naked, lonely rock which stood almost upon the edge of the gulf. Opposite to this rock was a great ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... the first. I wanted to cross the threshold over which he walked so often, to see the noise-proof room in which he used to write, to look at the chimney-place down which the soot came, to sit where he used to sit and smoke his pipe, and to conjure up his wraith to look in once more upon his old deserted dwelling. That vision was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and placed it in the flaccid hand. The fingers closed over it. The filmiest wraith of a smile played ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... beneath the tree stood two; In trembling joy, and wondering "Is it true?"— Two that were each like some strange, misty wraith: Yet each on each gazed with a living faith. And the moon hangs low in ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... old-world times returned by magic? had a crazed serving-man revived the vanished duties of his warlike predecessor? was the wraith of seneschal or man-at-arms conjuring up a ghostly beacon to stream into the soft air? was an evil spirit about to bewilder and mislead a fated ship to meet its doom on the jagged rocks beneath the dead calm of that glassy sea? So dense was the vapour that ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... of the gravel-walk. This figure, too, was reading; but not from a book: the words which engrossed it being the inscription on Mrs. Henchard's tombstone. The personage was in mourning like herself, was about her age and size, and might have been her wraith or double, but for the fact that it was a lady much more beautifully dressed than she. Indeed, comparatively indifferent as Elizabeth-Jane was to dress, unless for some temporary whim or purpose, her eyes were ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Cloisterham at some not far distant time; if so, wander out at night in the old graveyard, when the moon is up, and in among the cathedral crypts, if you can gain access to them; and see if from some shadowy corner of lane or building does not start out before you the wraith of the hideous small boy, Deputy, eluding your touch, and chanting as he dances in front of you the old song which was the badge of his office as ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... a boy was creeping towards him—creeping, as it seemed to him, from the shadows in the tunnel. Who—who was it? Was it really a being of flesh and blood? At first it seemed to him that it must be the wraith of the little fellow about whom he had been speaking—Hibbert—but even as the thought filtered through his mind the boy was kneeling beside him, looking ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... chirping, the squirrels chattering and playing. He envied them their health and spirits, their happy, care-free existence. That he should contrast their condition with his was inevitable; and that he should question why they were splendidly vigorous while he was a feeble, dying wraith of a man, was likewise inevitable. His conclusion was the very obvious one, namely, that they lived naturally, while he lived most unnaturally therefore, if he intended to live, he ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... his head in despairing admiration and leaned back to watch the landscape at the window. So did she. On the windows their own reflections were cast in transparent films of light. Each wraith watched the other, seeming to read the mood and ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... thoughtfully; "but the thing, you see, was in the shape of a man—a man lying at full length as if he were dead, and indeed in his grave: he might take it for his wraith—an ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... wraith of my sturdy comrade! When she lifted her beseeching eyes to me and faintly, fleetingly smiled—unable to even whisper my name, I, forbidden to speak, could only touch her cheek with my lips and leave her alone with her devoted nurse—for, so weak was she that a breath might have blown her ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... asked. Again he had forgotten the lady. But from one of memory's pantries her wraith peered out. "Ah, yes, of course! Well, we can stop by for it and you can run it over in the country to-night. You remember that you are to dine with ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the night. Anxiety came, wraith-like at first, drifting into her busy brain. She had hardly had time to be anxious in the rush of preparation and departure. But restlessness paved the way. She began to ask herself with growing uneasiness what ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... wraith the girl was out of his arms ... in anger or alarm his whirling senses could not know, although it was their passionate concern. But his last gleam of prudence got him through the gate ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... huge shadow floated out of the dark chaos and passed so close over the heads of Neewa and Miki that they heard the menacing purr of giant wings. As the wraith-like creature disappeared there came back to them a hiss and the grating snap of a powerful beak. It sent a shiver through Miki. The instinct that had been fighting to rouse itself within him flared up like a powder-flash. Instantly ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... the sight of Leopold, so triumphantly alive, had shown him fully his own change and his weakness had demonstrated to him clearly that he was but the wraith ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... spots, which are always in the remote country, untouched by the advantages of civilisation, one is conscious of an enwrapping web or mist of spirit—is it, perhaps the glamourous and wistful wraith of all the vanished shapes once dwelling there in ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... after-deck, and under this was arranged with care the main collection of corals and shells, the commoner sorts, such as found a ready sale at low prices. There was pure white coral, in long branches, studded with tiny points, like the wraith of the fairy thorn; there were great piles of the delicate fan-coral, which the sailors call sea-fans, and which Franci would hold out to every girl who had any pretence to good looks, with his most gracious bow, and ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... her. Without me constantly with her, the fear of her mother, perhaps the doubt of me, the burden of the whole disastrous secret was too much. And it was my fault, Willits—all my fault!" He turned to the window to hide his working face. "Do you wonder," he added softly, "that her poor little wraith comes back to ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... of memory slipped ahead through four years of time, and he was aware of the present, of the books he had opened and the universe he had won from their pages, of his dreams and ambitions, and of his love for a pale wraith of a girl, sensitive and sheltered and ethereal, who would die of horror did she witness but one moment of what he had just lived through—one moment of all the muck of life through which ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Painfully distinct, the wraith of Josephine Childe rose up before me, pale and accusing. Fragments of the letter which had offered me the Sealyham re-wrote themselves upon my brain.... It nearly breaks my heart to say so, but I've got ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... his master's wraith; and because the earl signed his will this morning, he is sure to die, especially as Lord Cairnforth saw the same thing himself. Will you say, my lord, what ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Cluricaune[obs3], troll, dwerger[obs3], sprite, ouphe[obs3], bad fairy, nix, nixie, pigwidgeon[obs3], will-o'-the wisp. [Supernatural appearance] ghost, revenant, specter, apparition, spirit, shade, shadow, vision; hobglobin, goblin, orc; wraith, spook, boggart[obs3], banshee, loup-garou[Fr], lemures[obs3]; evil eye. merman, mermaid, merfolk[obs3]; siren; satyr, faun; manito[obs3], manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c.503. [in jest, in science] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the figures ascend, but now leaf thin, tapering to a dusky wraith, which, fiery tipped, draws its twofold passion from my heart. For me it sings, unseals my sorrow, thaws compassion, floods with love the sunless world, nor, ceasing, abates its tenderness but deftly, subtly, weaves in and ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... left me with a living body, indeed, but with little more. I do not say that body has not amused itself. Yet I too, loved her, Harry Heleigh. And when I saw this new Alison—for Marian is her mother, face, heart, and soul,—why, some wraith of emotion stirred in me, some thrill, some not quite forgotten pulse. It seemed Alison come back from the grave. Love did not reawaken, for youth's fervor was gone out of me, yet presently I fell a-dreaming over my Madeira on long winter evenings,—sedate ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... charms, And witless held a shell; but forth as light As the first sigh of dawn her spirit took flight Across the dusky plain to where fires gleamed And muffled guards stood sentry; and it streamed Within the hut, and hovered like a wraith, A presence felt, not seen, as when gray Death Seems to the dying man a bedside guest, But to the watchers cannot be exprest. So hovered Helen in a dream, and yearned Over the sleeper as he moaned and turned, Renewing his day's torment in his sleep; ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... but to an obscure, back-breaking business. And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain—I am trying to account to myself for—for—Mr. Kurtz—for the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and—as he was good enough to say ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... there was a noise outside, as if a person were moving through the underbrush. It was fearsome in its suddenness. Was it human or wraith? Kennedy darted to the door in time to see a shadow glide silently away, lost in the darkness of the fine old willows. Some one had approached the mausoleum for a second time, not knowing we were there, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... lives in my body's house, And you have both the house and her— But sometimes she is less your own Than a wild, gay adventurer; A restless and an eager wraith, How can I tell what she will do— Oh, I am sure of my body's faith, But what if my ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... imaginary romance, believing, like her mother, that Lisbeth would never marry; and now, within a week, this visionary being had become Comte Wenceslas Steinbock, the dream had a certificate of birth, the wraith had solidified into a young man of thirty. The seal she held in her hand—a sort of Annunciation in which genius shone like an immanent light—had the powers of a talisman. Hortense felt such a surge of happiness, that she almost doubted whether ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... heart for the run to Havre, and except for feeling at twilight the wistfulness that comes out of the Norman landscape—the melancholy of things forgotten but not gone, dead but still brooding wraith-like over the valley of the Seine, haunting the hoary churches, and the turreted chateaux, and the windings of the river, and the long lines of poplar, and the villages and forests and orchards and corn-fields—except for this, his spirits were good. If ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... (as Peter Rolls observed when he "happened" to pass, about the time the Monarchic neared the Statue of Liberty) and nothing reminiscent remained save a haunting perfume of "Rose-Nadine" sachet powder, a specialty which might have been the lingering wraith of a dryad. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... have appealed to precedents in the annals of the Psychical Society, where they exist in scores, and are technically styled "collective hallucinations." But neither a jury, nor a judge, perhaps, would accept the testimony of experts in Psychical Research if offered in a criminal trial, nor acquit a wraith. ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... she might consider it an omen of approaching death, and indeed, though not a superstitious man, he was inclined so to view it himself; but his mother lived for many years after the appearance of her wraith. I also knew a young gentleman to whom the unpleasant experience of beholding his own double was once vouchsafed. He had been spending a quiet evening with some young ladies, and returned home about eleven o'clock, let himself into the house ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... of faithful cloud A wraith-muezzin of the sunset cried Over the sea that swung with sultan pride, "Allah is Beauty, there is none beside! Allah is Beauty, not to be denied By ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... cliff, booming through the low-mouthed caves, curling its great green curls and combing them out to frothing ringlets along the strips of beach, winding itself about the rock of Conca in a heavily gleaming sheet and whirling its wraith of foam to heaven, the very ghost ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... romantic nor visionary declare they have seen a figure, slight and beautiful, clad in robe of skin, with moccasoned feet, and long, white hair, nearly reaching to the ground, hovering sorrowfully around the falls; and this strange figure they believe to be the wraith ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... there, and then he stole into the house and up stairs, and threw himself upon the bed. And outside he still heard Sheila singing lightly to herself as she went about her ordinary duties, little thinking in how strange and wild a drama her wraith had that night ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... it came into my head That I was killed long since and lying dead— Only a homeless wraith that way ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... I am forsooth weighty argument. Fourthly, beloved, 'tis an ass that—ha! O sweet vision for eyes human or divine! Do I see thee in very truth, thou damsel of disobedience, dear dame of discord, sweet, witching, wilful lady—is it thou in very truth, most loved daughter, or wraith conjured of thy magic and my ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... honors," Venus answered. "This land is Libya, but the town is Tyrian, founded by Dido, who fled hither from her brother Pygmalion, who had secretly murdered her husband, Sichaeus, for his gold. To Dido, sleeping, appeared the wraith of Sichaeus, pallid, his breast pierced with the impious wound, and revealed to her her brother's crime, showed where a hoard of gold was concealed, and advised ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... in Ibsen's An Enemy of Society; the last act is melodrama with a large admixture of remarkably interesting social philosophy; the intervening acts betray the poet that always underlay the dramatist in Bjornson. The crudity, again, of the melodramatic appearance of the wraith of Clara's father in the third act, contrasts strangely with the mature thoughtfulness of much of the last act and with the tender charm of what has gone before: And—strangest incongruity of all ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... the storm grew loud apace, The water—wraith was shrieking; And in the scowl of heaven eachface, Grew dark as ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... a while and again watched the fire. Nell's sweet face floated like a wraith in the pale smoke—glowed and flushed and smiled in the embers. Other faces shone there—his sister's—that of his mother. Gale shook off the tender memories. This desolate wilderness with its forbidding silence and its dark promise of hell on the morrow—this ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... A hush and a silence then; The dancers rest in their pleasure quest, And lo! I am old again. Old and alone in my chamber, While the night wears wearily on, And the pallid wraith of a broken faith— Keeps watch with me till ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... park. The sun had been swallowed up by rising fog; all colour had been sucked out of the leaves and the heather, even from the golden glades of fern. Only Hester's hair, and her white dress as she passed along, uplifted, made of her a kind of luminous wraith, and beside her, like the supports of an altar-piece, moved the two pensive figures ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he bought a rucksack for his few clothes, and boarded a bus which dropped him at Jarviston, Minnesota, at two a.m. He thrust his hands into his pockets, partly like a lonesome tramp, partly like some carefree immortal, and partly like a mixed-up wraith who didn't quite know who or what he was, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... much I know that a part of my youth which in some strange way seems to have acquired an individuality, of its own dwells, and will for ever dwell, among these scenes. And I shall never be so ill-advised as to seek it, for the wraith, like a mocking dryad, would flit from tree to tree, as beautiful and as ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... often sate near him in her lounging-chair and with gentle artfulness lured him into reminiscences of his past campaigns. She was very frail to-day, and in her white robe, and with her large eyes which seemed to have outgrown her face, she looked like the wraith of a woman rather than a creature ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for sleep, And whispered, though the soft word choked my throat, Your dear name out across the valley deep. Be near to me, for now I need you most. To-night I saw an unsubstantial flame Flickering along those shadowy paths, a ghost That turned to me and answered to your name, Mocking me with a wraith of far delight. ... My lovely one, be near to ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... me, made letters he called mine: what I sent, he retained, gave these in place, all by the mistress messenger! As I recognized her, at potency of truth, so she, by the crystalline soul, knew me, never mistook the signs. Enough of this—let the wraith go to nothingness again, here is the orb, have only thought for her!" What follows admits us to the very HEART of Browning's poetry—admits us to the great Idea which is almost, in these days, strange to say, peculiarly ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Death could hit upon anywhere, and those on board the steamer who knew it confirmed my opinion. As we arrived a steady down-pour of rain was falling from an inky sky; the white men who met us on the wharf appeared ghostly and wraith-like, and the very negroes seemed pale and wan. The news which met us did not tempt me to lose any time in getting up the country to my brother. According to all accounts, fever and ague, with some minor diseases, especially dropsy, were having ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... myself away to you. I walked beside you, a little wraith of love, through the silent night streets of your great city,—but you did not know me. There was no sky above us, only a hollow blackness, and the snow lay new and white upon the pavements; but I wore green leaves in my hair and a red Southern rose ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... laughed darkly, as was her fashion, and said that she knew nothing of it, never having seen the face of the child's father, who rose out of the sea at night. And for this cause some thought him to have been a wizard or the wraith of her dead husband; but others said that Groa lied, as many women have done on such matters. But of all this talk the child alone remained and she ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... nothing loath. Either he was not the bravest in the party, or else he had the keenest appreciation of the odds against an exposed position. In a very few minutes the dory was a mere gray wraith on the water, but there it hung. Evidently the rower was overruled by others less cautious, or of the certain conviction that at the distance the yacht was a better mark ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple |
