"Nymph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... represents the action of heat and light on chaos, especially on the deep sea. It is the "Fiat lux" of Genesis, the first process in the conquest of Fate by Harmony. The island is dedicated to the nymph Rhodos, by whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach [Greek: sophotata noemata]; because the rose is the most beautiful organism existing in matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of light on the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... caught her in just such a propitious hour. He saw the sweet wild thing, pure and undefiled by touch of earth; caught her in that pregnant pause of time ere she had lighted. Another moment and a buxom nymph of the grove would fold her in a rosy mantle, colored as the earliest wood- anemones are. She would vanish, we know, into the daffodils or a bank of violets. And you might tell her presence there, or in the rustle of the myrtles, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... our great-grandfathers could scarcely have heard it mentioned, there lived within the great Forest of Burzee a wood-nymph named Necile. She was closely related to the mighty Queen Zurline, and her home was beneath the shade of a widespreading oak. Once every year, on Budding Day, when the trees put forth their new buds, Necile held the Golden Chalice of Ak to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... While ev'ry lady cries, and critick sleeps With ghosts, rapes, murders, tender hearts they wound, Or else, like thunder, terrify with sound When the skill'd actress to her weeping eyes, With artful sigh, the handkerchief applies, How griev'd each sympathizing nymph appears! And box and gallery both melt in tears Or when, in armour of Corinthian brass, Heroick actor stares you in the face, And cries aloud, with emphasis that's fit, on Liberty, freedom, liberty ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... more modern times—fixing upon the famed charger of Calatrava's knight. But here the analogy must end. The charms of the dark-haired Dulcinea can be brought into no comparison with those of the golden-haired wood-nymph of the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Mrs. Millamant, if you can love me, dear Nymph, say it, and that's the conclusion—pass on, or ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... procession to a fountain or a grove. They dance and eat fruit, and they return home singing songs. They have, in fact, been performing unconsciously the religious ceremonies of their ancestors, and which they pursue, and will forever, though they may have forgotten the name of the dryad or the nymph who ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... the visit of her majesty at Coudray, we are told that on the morning after her arrival she rode in the park, where "a delicate bower" was prepared, and a nymph with a sweet song delivered her a cross-bow to shoot at the deer, of which she killed three or four and the countess of Kildare one:—it may be added, that this was a kind of amusement not unfrequently shared by the ladies of that age; an additional trait of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... spines she guides the bundles of eggs into the hole and covers them up with a gummy stuff. There the eggs stay until next spring, when, my dear, out comes a little hopper with no wings, and this little hopper is called a nymph. It grows and splits its skin, grows and splits its skin, and with its new skin—it has five or six skins, and leaves all its old clothes hanging around on the bushes—its wings grow bigger and bigger. ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... Vosgic towers tremble! And God's wrath, Valkyrie, the awful Nymph, wind-ridden sweeps, A rider pitiless that ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... on the water nymph. The old man showed no surprise, but pious disgust. His eyes rolled up, and in a cracked ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... are few Beyond you that can go, In double character, to woo The lovely nymph below. At once both god and man you ape To expedite your flame; And yet you find in either shape ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... is like a sculptor who despises the easy flow of the resting figure, and fills his studio with agonizing athletes—every muscle on the stretch—the eyeballs projecting, and the hair on end. Even when he carves a slumbering nymph, her proportions are tremendous—she is like a sleeping tigress, calm and hushed, but giving evidence of preternatural strength; her very softness is the softness of melted gold—when it hardens it will kill like lead; or, if that is a bad image, her very quiet is the quiet of the sea—let ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... one of those aberrations common to her youth and her sex. She is repeating a madness of old Greece, and following you as a nymph might a goddess." ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and winning smile, as, advancing with a quiet courtesy that at once bespoke him a man of the world, despite slouched hat and hunting-frock, the intruder upon our heroine's solitude exclaimed, with half-earnest, half-jesting gallantry, "Prithee, fair woodland nymph, suffer a lone knight, who has wandered to the confines of a Paradise unawares, to bow the knee in thy service, and as atonement meet for venturing unbidden into thy hidden sanctum, to proffer thee the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... had been rearranged in such a way that I could find nothing in the place where I looked for it. But when I found them, they greeted me, so I fancied, like old acquaintances. The meek-looking "Belle Jardiniere" was as lamb-like as ever; the pearly nymph of Correggio invited the stranger's eye as frankly as of old; Titian's young man with the glove was the calm, self-contained gentleman I used to admire; the splashy Rubenses, the pallid Guidos, the sunlit Claudes, the shadowy Poussins, the moonlit Girardets, Gericault's terrible shipwreck ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... saw him—the one man—already awaiting her. He stood back to back with a mossy nymph languishing on her pedestal, and Flora hoped by running softly to steal up behind him, and make of the helpless marble lady a buffer between their greetings. But either she underestimated the nymph's bulk, or forgot how invariably direct was the man's attack; ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... judge gave the poor nymph fair play, holding the eye steady for her; but when she wished to slip in the thread that she had twisted to make straight, he moved a little, and the thread went on the other side. She suspected the judge's ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... to their notes they mov'd, then one Becoming of these signs, a little while Did rest them, and were mute. O nymph divine Of Pegasean race! whose souls, which thou Inspir'st, mak'st glorious and long-liv'd, as they Cities and realms by thee! thou with thyself Inform me; that I may set forth the shapes, As fancy doth present them. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... had been enabled to escape from her husband; for this nobleman had the same gallant disposition with those renowned knights of whom we read in heroic story, and had delivered many an imprisoned nymph from durance. He was indeed as bitter an enemy to the savage authority too often exercised by husbands and fathers, over the young and lovely of the other sex, as ever knight-errant was to the barbarous power of enchanters; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... pray you. I seem to breathe new life with this pure air, and the perfume of these bowers awakens within me an inexpressible and calm delight. I shall be all the better for one tranquil hour with nature in bloom, if you, like the guardian nymph of these floral treasures, will ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... the product of a shower, Grows in his garden, an illustrious flower! Why teems the earth? Why melt the vernal skies? Why shines the sun? To make(10) Paul Diack rise. From morn to night has Florio gazing stood, And wonder'd how the gods could be so good; What shape! what hue! was ever nymph so fair! He dotes! he dies! he too is rooted there. O solid bliss! which nothing can destroy, Except a cat, bird, snail, or idle boy. In fame's full bloom lies Florio down at night, And wakes next day a most inglorious wight; The tulip's dead! See thy fair sister's ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... young, gay, and bold, Lov'd Sylvia long, but she was cold; In'trest and Pride the Nymph control'd, So they in vain their Passion told. At last came Dalman, he was old; Nay, he was ugly, but had Gold. He came, and saw, and took the Hold, While t'other Beaux their Loss Condol'd. Some say, she's Wed; I ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... of Ammon by a ravished Garamantian Nymph, had built to Jove in his wide realms an hundred great temples, an hundred altars, and consecrated the wakeful fire that keeps watch by night before the gods perpetually, where the soil is fat with blood ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... present is not very enlivening. I am neither one thing nor the other; I am in a chrysalis state, which is notoriously a dull one; and I have the further aggravation, which I suppose never occurs to the nymph bona fide, of a miserable uncertainty whether my folded-up wings are those of a purple butterfly or of a poor drudge of a beetle. Besides, it is conceivable that the chrysalis may get weary of his case, and mine is not a silken one. I have been here ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... a deep magnificence of shade, to an arched and framed sunlight beyond, embroidered with every radiant or sparkling colour; in others, the trees, almost bare, met lightly arched above a carpet of intensest green—a tapis vert stretching toward a vaporous distance, and broken by some god, or nymph, on whose white shoulders the autumn leaves were dropping softly ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the fair nymph to forego, What anguish I felt in my heart! Yet I thought—but it might not be so— 'Twas with pain that she saw me depart. She gazed as I slowly withdrew, My path I could hardly discern; So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... be seen. I listened again—the sounds seemed to be falling from the sky. I raised my eyes. On the roof of my cabin was standing a young girl in a striped dress and with her hair hanging loose—a regular water-nymph. Shading her eyes from the sun's rays with the palm of her hand, she was gazing intently into the distance. At one time, she would laugh and talk to herself, at another, she would strike ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... Palace, the Tuilleries, Versailles, and the Alhambra, all in one. The only fault to be found with it was that it was not marble. It was a species of weather-proof composition, but very finely carved, and much valued by Mr. Breynton. It was a pretty thing—a water-nymph rising from an unfolded lily, with both hands parting her long hair from a wondering face, that, pleased with its own beauty, was bent to watch its reflection in ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... saying, "of a nymph among dowagers and frightened to death. There's really nothing to be frightened of, unless you prefer fear ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... but hastened to remount his steed; and Edith remained alone by the Roman fountain, motionless and sad, as if the nymph of the old religion stood there to see the lessening stream well away from the shattered stone, and know that the life of the nymph was measured by the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dashed by her reproof, neared her in a dancing manner, smiling as some ancient satyr may have smiled at the sight of some shy, snared nymph. ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... shrink from. It is not always nor often the great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens—it is usually the good folk, that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness and the under dog, as others dedicate themselves to mutton chops and the easy nymph. It is not my intention to idealise any of the men who were concerned in this rebellion. Their country will, some few years hence, do that as adequately as she has done it for those who went ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... the board a shining train appears, In rosy beauty, and in prime of years! This hates a flounce, and this a flounce approves, This shews the trophies of her former loves; Polly avers that Sylvia dress in green, When last at church the gaudy Nymph was seen; Chloe condemns her optics, and will lay 'Twas azure sattin, interstreak'd with grey; Lucy invested with judicial pow'r, Awards 'twas ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... irrecoverable, a clime Where any brook so radiant racing clear Through buttercup and kingcup bright as brass But gentle, nourishing the meadow grass That leans and scurries in the wind, would bear Another beauty, divine and feminine, Child to the sun, a nymph whose soul unstained Could love all day, and never hate or tire, A lover of mortal ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... over to Aunt Anne's side and finished the detaching process. When Nan came back after her first term at the seminary Aunt Anne preferred to college, and was running to him with her challenge of welcome, he was taken aback by the nymph-like grace and beauty of her, the poise of the small head with its braided crown—the girls at the seminary told her she might have been a Victorian by the way she wore her hair—and he instinctively caught her arms, about to enwreath his neck, held her still ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... a time, before the faery broods Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, Before King Oberon's bright diadem, Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem, Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns, The ever-smitten Hermes empty left His golden ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Which faire Nymph laye sleeping vppon a folded cloth, lap, and wounde vp vnder her head. An other part conuenientlie brought ouer her, to hide that bare which was womanly & meete to be kept secret. Lying vpon her right side with that subiected arme retract, and ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... say, my friend, thou sage mysterious, What Nymph, what Muse disown'd the strain Which bade our heedless mirth be serious, And woke our ears to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... placed by that wild mountain stream, That from the sacred hills, like Hippocrene, With warbling numbers, softly glides along. Kneel humbly there, and at the auspicious time, Invoke the listening spirit to my aid, That I may fly the nymph of shapely form, Whose fragrant brow inwoven wreaths adorn, Of blushing rose and ivy tendrils green. Then swear for me to deck the favoring shrine With flowrets, blooming from the lap of Spring, And on the sculptured pile, with solemn vow, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the first time of her life, before she notified her talent for singing, and invited herself up-stairs, to Lady Mary's harpsichord; where, with a voice like thunder, and with as little harmony, she sang to nine or ten people for an hour. "Was ever nymph like Rossvmonde?"-no, d'honneur. We told her, she had a very strong voice. "Lord, Sir! my master says it is nothing to what it was." My dear child, she brags abominably; if it had been a thousandth degree louder, you must have ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Dancing fires the Nymph to softer Joys; The Musick's dull, the Wine and Sweetmeat cloys; Strephon streight takes the Hint, withdraws a-while, By soft Endearments does her Grief beguile; Soon they return more vig'rous than before, Do what they will, she ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... said Shubin, 'only I'm afraid of being late. Look at the river; it seems to beckon us. The ancient Greeks would have beheld a nymph in it. But we are not Greeks, O nymph! ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... more dead than alive, lay helpless among the flowers, when a fourth nymph came up to him, of inexpressible beauty. She told him that he had grievously offended the naked youth, who was no other than Love himself; and added, that his only remedy was to be penitent, and to drink of the waters of a stream hard by, which he would find running from ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Loret. "The nymph of Vaux! thank you, La Fontaine; you have just given me the two concluding verses ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... home invaded by bands of insolent intruders, who seek to kill his son and rob him of his wife. The poem begins at that point where the hero is considered to be farthest from his home, in the central portion of the sea, where the nymph Calypso has kept him hidden from all mankind for seven years. Having by the help of the gods passed through innumerable dangers, after many adventures he reaches Ithaca, and is finally introduced into his own house as a beggar, where he is made to suffer the harshest ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... which exercise brought and preserved the females, gave also to their shape, that delicacy and suppleness, and to their every motion, that graceful agility which caracterized the Grecian beauties, and distinguished them for that nymph-stile of figure, which we to this day admire in the description of their historians, of their poets, or in the representations that yet remain to us in their statues, or other monuments ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... rests yon rock, whoso half-day's bath is done, With broad bright sight, beneath the broad bright sun, Like sea-nymph tired, on cushioned mosses sleeping. Yet, nearer drawn, beneath her purple tresses, From down-bent brows we find her slowly weeping, So many a heart for cruel man's caresses Must only pine and pine, and yet must bear A gallant front beneath ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... Nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... impudence enough to venture from my concealment; indeed, I felt like an arrant poacher, until I read one or two of Ovid's Metamorphoses, when I pictured myself as some sylvan deity, and she a coy wood nymph of whom I was in pursuit. There is something extremely delicious in these early awakenings of the tender passion. I can feel, even at this moment, the thrilling of my boyish bosom, whenever by chance I caught a glimpse ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... drudges ye are," answered the nymph of the land to the nymph of the sea. "As sune as the keel o' the coble touches the sand, deil a bit mair will the lazy fisher loons work, but the wives maun kilt their coats, and wade into the surf to tak the fish ashore. And then the man casts aff ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Last Wednesday there was a great feast in our house, [at Hofkammerrath Serrarius's,] to which I was also invited. There were fifteen guests, and the young lady of the house [Pierron, the "House Nymph"] was to play in the evening the concerto I had taught her at eleven o'clock in the forenoon. The Herr Kammerrath and Herr Vogler called on me. Herr Vogler seems quite determined to become acquainted with me, as he often importuned me to go to see him, but ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... the back of the Coelian Hill, is a valley covered with verdure, wonderfully quiet and rural-looking, though within the walls of a city. In this valley once stood the famous grove where Numa Pompilius had his mysterious interviews with the nymph Egeria. A spring still bubbles forth beside a cluster of farm-buildings, which is said to be the veritable Fountain of Egeria. The temple of the Muses, who were Egeria's counsellors, was close by; and the name of the gate of the city, Porta Capena, was in all likelihood a corruption ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... might if she had not been standing, a slender green-and-white, nymph-like figure, against the background of sun-hot, shadow-flecked, lichened stone, looking at him. The rosy light bathed her in its radiance. And as she looked, it seemed to him that something was dawning in that face of hers. He watched it, breathless ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... look so well as she did, with that little spirit of mischief upon her, lighting her beautiful eyes and colouring her cheeks. Madame de Rambouillet whispered to me that she was a perfect nymph, with her look of health and freshness. Then M. Darpent came in, and his grave face blushed with satisfaction as he saw his friend, my Lord ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... features, which were naturally elegant and expressive, that we will venture to say, there was not in all England a couple that excelled this amiable pair in personal beauty and accomplishments. Aurelia shone with all the fabled graces of nymph or goddess; and to Sir Launcelot might be applied what the divine poet Ariosto says of ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... entrance-hall, and just under the archway, was a plaster-of-Paris figure, nearly as large as life—that on the right-hand being a representation of Bacchus, and that on the left of a nymph dancing. But the female image had long since lost its head, and also one of its arms—the latter being still in existence, but being hung for convenience' sake through the raised arm of Bacchus, making him look like one of those Hindu ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... murmured the water-nymph, threateningly. "You are defying Fate. Creatures of my kind are dangerous ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... of which he too had explored the beautiful shores. At a glance, a word, a tone, Chopin and Heine understood each other; the musician replied to the questions murmured in his ear by the poet, giving in tones the most surprising revelations from those unknown regions, about that "laughing nymph" [Footnote: Heine. SALOON-CHOPIN.] of whom he demanded news: "If she still continued to drape her silvery veil around the flowing locks of her green hair, with a coquetry so enticing?" Familiar with the tittle-tattle and love tales ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... was empty, and the attendants proceeded to arrange upon it very strange looking things; packages in white paper, books, trinkets, what not; and in the middle of all a little statuette of a Grecian nymph, which was a great favourite of Daisy's. Daisy began to guess that the epergne had something to do with her birthday. But the nymph?—perhaps she came there by her beauty to dignify this use made of the stately old thing. However, she forgot ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... procession), and meant that the officers had charge of such celebrations.] being at the head of them, and the Flamens, Vestal Virgins, and Salii, being subordinate. Numa pretended that he met by night a nymph named Egeria, at a grotto under the Coelian Hill, not far from the present site of the Baths of Caracalla, and that from time to time she gave him directions as to what rites would be acceptable to the gods. Another ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... "'But ... Dione!' you would say. 'Ah, faithless poet, forsworn knight!' you would say. Not so, my friend." He looked far away with shining eyes. "That unknown nymph, that lady whom I praise in verse, whose poet I am, that Dione at whose real name you all do vainly guess—it is thy sister, lad! Nay,—she knows me not for her worshipper, nor do I know that I can win her love. I would ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... was educated by the Naiades dwelling on Mount Ida. At the age of fifteen years, he began his travels; while resting in the cool shades on the woody banks of a fountain and spring near Caira, he was approached by the presiding nymph of the fountain, Talmacis, who, becoming enamored of him, attempted to seduce him. Hermaphroditus, like Joseph, was the pattern and mirror of continence, and would not be seduced. Talmacis then, like Potiphar's ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... waving ringlets of her beautiful dark hair, carelessly fastened with a ribbon, the unaffected grace of her every motion, all together conveyed more strongly than imagination can paint, the pleasing idea of a wood nymph, deigning ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... mortal, to be won By such a simple feat as driving boars And lions to his chariot. What was that To him who saw the boar of Calydon, The sacred boar of Artemis, at bay In the broad stagnant marsh, and sent his darts In its tough, quivering flank, and saw its death, Stung by sure arrows of Arcadian nymph? ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... to obtain possession of her again. But fraud, not force, is the means employed, as in the Lapp story of the Maiden out of the Sea, where the mermaid's clothes are once more confiscated. In a legend of Llyn y Dywarchen (the Lake of the Sod), not very far from Beddgelert, the water-nymph subsequently appears to her husband, conversing with him from a floating turf while he stands on the shore. Here the motive of the reappearance is the unusual one of conjugal, rather than ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... whose emotion is all in their pulses, and who become inexpressive or sentimental when they try to turn sensation into speech. His caress had restored her to her natural place in the scheme of things, and Darrow felt as if he had clasped a tree and a nymph had bloomed ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... him. The Lityerses-song connected with this tradition was, like the Linus-song, one of the early, plaintive strains of Greek popular poetry, and used to be sung by the corn reapers. Other traditions represented Daphnis as beloved by a nymph, who exacted from him an oath to love no one else. He fell in love with a princess, and was struck blind by the jealous nymph. Mercury, who was his father, raised him to heaven, and made a fountain spring up in the place from which he ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... I smiled, it smote me as I recollected that Arthur Cradock was always at the parsonage in the vacations. Jaquetta had been sketched many a time as nymph of the orchard, and many a nymph besides. And if he was yielding to his brother's wisdom in making medicine his study and art his pleasure, was not our unconscious maiden the sugar that sweetened the cup of prudence? Might not elevation be as sore a trial ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... appeared to him before as a creature of brightness, but now she lighted up the place, she irradiated, she made everything that surrounded her of no consequence; dropping upon the shabby sofa with an effect as charming as if she had been a nymph sinking on a leopard-skin, and with the native sweetness of her voice forcing him to listen till she spoke again. It was not long before he perceived that this added lustre was simply success; she was young and tender still, but the sound of a great applauding audience had been ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... that to get his best work he must be insured the freedom from disturbances which the creative power absolutely demands, more absolutely perhaps in these slighter artists than in the great masters. His nerves must be steady for him to finish a rose-leaf or the fold of a nymph's drapery in his best manner; and they will be unsteadied if he has to perform the honest drudgery which another can do for him quite as well. And it is just so with the poet, though he were only finishing an epigram; you must no more meddle roughly with him than you ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wonderful dancing, every action of her alert young body was so beautifully graceful that you forgot her modern costume and could imagine her a nymph in classic draperies. Her arms kept motion with her tripping feet, and both were in time with the tune that she was trilling. It seemed a spontaneous expression of gaiety as natural as the flight of a dragon-fly or the sporting of a kitten. Her dark hair flew out behind ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... conditions here are so different from those in the East. People want Italian and Spanish gardens, and there is the most marvellous choice of flowers, shrubs, and vines with which to get them, but we want to be told how, and added to this, it is heart-breaking to love a fountain nymph in the advertisements and to find that her travelling expenses ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Egyptian character, and becomes too vast for refinement. At present, the dinner was served on Sevres porcelain of Rose du Barri, raised on airy golden stands of arabesque workmanship; a mule bore your panniers of salt, or a sea-nymph proffered it you on a shell just fresh from the ocean, or you found it in a bird's nest; by every guest a different pattern. In the centre of the table, mounted on a pedestal, was a group of pages in Dresden china. Nothing could be more gay than their bright cloaks ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... taste, the furnish'd hall forgot, To feast in gardens, or th' unhandy grot ? Or novelty with some new charms surprises, Or from our very shifts some joy arises. Hark, while below the village bells ring round, Echo, sweet nymph, returns the soften'd sound; But if gusts rise, the rushing forests roar, Like the tide tumbling on the pebbly ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Flowers; AEgle comes in and incourages the timorous youths, and stains his jolly red Face with Blackberries, Silenus laughs at their innocent contrivance, and desires to be unbound, and then with a premeditated Song satisfies the Nymph's and Boys Curiosity; The incomparable Poet sings wonders, the Rocks rejoyce, the Vales eccho, and happy Eurotas as if Phoebus himself sang, hears all, and bids the Laurels that grow upon his Banks listen to, and ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... Peleus, the King of Phthia, and of his marriage to the river nymph, Thetis. All the gods and goddesses came to their wedding feast, Only one of the immortals was not invited—Eris, who is Discord. She came, however. At the games that followed the wedding feast she threw a golden apple amongst the guests, ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... probably as soon as he had seen her himself. I saw the modest, sleek glory of the tawny head, and the full, grey shape of the girlish print frock she filled so perfectly, so satisfactorily, with the seduction of unfaltering curves—a very nymph of Diana the Huntress. And Diana the ship sat, high-walled and as solid as an institution, on the smooth level of the water, the most uninspiring and respectable craft upon the seas, useful and ugly, devoted to the support of domestic virtues ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... constellations in the southern hemisphere, near Sagittarius. This bird is fabled to have been translated to heaven by Apollo for discovering to him the infidelity of the nymph Coronis. ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... great gate with a sweet welcome to passers-by, and lined the avenue, winding through lemon trees and feathery palms up to the villa on the hill. Every shadowy nook, where seats invited one to stop and rest, was a mass of bloom, every cool grotto had its marble nymph smiling from a veil of flowers and every fountain reflected crimson, white, or pale pink roses, leaning down to smile at their own beauty. Roses covered the walls of the house, draped the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... laughed again, while the echo laughed wildly in answer. "Just the sort of name to suit a Norwegian nymph or goddess. Thelma is quaint and appropriate, and as far as I can remember there's no rhyme to it in the English language. Thelma!" And he lingered on the pronunciation of the strange word with a curious ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... you; perhaps his dream now shows him black eyes and rosy lips, or some nymph sleeping on the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... terrace beneath the windows of the Gallery of Mirrors. From this, marble steps led down to a beautiful parterre, below which the Fountain of Latona played in the white moonlight. Standing on the terrace, Calvert could see the marble nymph through the mist of spray flung upon her from the hideous gaping mouths of the gilded frogs lying along the edge of the basin. 'Twas the story of Jupiter's wrath against the Lyceans which the sculptor had told, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... fallen back, revealing her lofty and pellucid brow, and the dark and lustrous locks that were braided over her temples. The whole countenance combined that brilliant health and that classic beauty which we associate with the idea of some nymph tripping over the dew-bespangled meads of Ida, or glancing amid the hallowed groves of Greece. Although the lady could scarcely have seen eighteen summers, her stature was above the common height; but language cannot describe the startling symmetry of her ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... as she sat there, her head drooped into the attitude of the marble nymph, and her sweet features assumed the same expression of plaintive and dreamy thoughtfulness; her heavy dark lashes lay on her pure waxen cheeks like the dark fringe of some tropical flower. Her form, in its drooping outlines, scarcely yet showed the full development of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... obtain a better view of the undulating coast, embraced in one grand mountain form, all its parts uniting like the members of one body. Ischia and the naked promontories on the extreme end repose in their lilac envelop, like a slumbering Pompeiian nymph under her veil. Veritably, to paint such nature as this, this violet continent extending around this broad luminous water, one must employ the terms of the ancient poets, and represent the great fertile goddess embraced and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... insufferable wag, snapped out sarcastically, 'Perhaps you painted its mate, then, the Bolton Corot.' 'The one that sold for three thousand dollars last week? Of course I painted it; it's the best nymph scene I ever done. Don't get mad, mister; I paint most of the Corots. I'm glad ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... him, Sylvia got up and walked quickly towards the Row with the dog. Woodville looked after her, and then strolled slowly towards the bridge. How well the sylvan surroundings suited them! Sylvia was a wood nymph in a fashionable dress; Woodville, a faun in Bond Street clothes. Chetwode smiled to himself. Then for a moment he was surprised.... It seemed odd to see the secretary so far from his usual haunts. Why should Sylvia sit in Kensington Gardens with him, and then go on alone to the Row? However, ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... friend, and as he's not musical I don't see that she has any special right to him; but he's there every Wednesday now, and does his dances on their Sunday evenings too. He's got a new one—lovely, quite lovely—an imitation of Lydia Kyasht as a water-nymph. I wanted him to do it here tonight, but Lady Everard has taken him to the opera. Now, won't you dance? Your husband promised he would. You both look ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... answered nothing. The light riding skirt and jacket taken off, left her in green from head to foot. A daring colour for a brunette. But her own tint was so clear and the mossy shade of her dress was so well chosen, that the effect was extremely good. She looked like a wood nymph. ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... There was once a Nymph named Clytie, who gazed ever at Apollo as he drove his sun-chariot through the heavens. She watched him as he rose in the east attended by the rosy-fingered Dawn and the dancing Hours. She gazed as he ascended the heavens, urging his steeds still higher in the fierce heat of the noonday. She ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... vast golden dome lighted by glowing spheres hung with diamonds, forward at a towering proscenic arch above which slim, nude goddesses in bas-relief floated in a languor which obsessed her, set free the bare brown laughing nymph that hides in every ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... and it was only the difficulty of breaking this long silence that withheld him from an instant restitution of the money he had stolen or (as he preferred to call it) borrowed. In vain he sat before paper, attending on inspiration; that heavenly nymph, beyond suggesting the words 'my dear father,' remained obstinately silent; and presently John would crumple up the sheet and decide, as soon as he had 'a good chance,' to carry the money home in person. And this delay, which is indefensible, was his ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the sun-god, and Clymene, a beautiful ocean-nymph, there was born in the pleasant land of Greece a child to whom was given the name of Phaeton, the Bright and Shining One. The rays of the sun seemed to live in the curls of the fearless little lad, and when at noon other ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... Neville.... Messalina coarsely patronising a wood-nymph ... the cat striking her claws into a singing bird.... And poor—and old! Neville was, indeed, six years ahead of Rosalind, but she looked the younger of the two, in her slim activity, and didn't need to paint her face either. Mrs. Hilary all but ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... of evening, penetrated into a chamber where every thing seemed contrived to exalt the luxury of slumber. The heaps of cushions, which formed a stately bed, seemed rather to be touched than impressed by the form of a nymph of fifteen, the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... German or French forests; and though their elms and oaks and beeches are often giants, they seem dedicated to the spirit of youth. Their shadows are never black, but only a darker green, or translucent gray; and part of their charm is a nymph-like frivolousness which comes, I think, from their ruffly green dessous. Other woods have no dessous. Their ankles are mournfully bare, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... o'clock, came gently down one of these alleys, with a scarf over her head and shoulders. She looked like a nymph in Tanagra. And as if she knew where she was going, exactly, she walked gently but unfalteringly between the linked crocus-beacons to where the alley broadened into a bay of cut yews, to where ghostly white seats and a dim sun-dial seemed disposed as for a scene in ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... might come to learn of him and to seek his help in time of need. At length he came to a broad plain, by the shore of a beautiful lake; and there he began to build a house, for the land was a pleasant one, well-watered, and rich in grain and fruit. But the nymph that lived in the lake liked not to have Apollo so near her, lest men seeing and loving him should forget to honor her; and one day, garmented with mosses and crowned with lilies, she came and stood before him ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... porch. A city nymph, in cool summer gown and picture hat, paused before one of my newly reared warnings and read it through with care. Profound deliberation characterized her movements. She was statuesquely tall, but with a toss of the head and a flirt of the skirt she dropped on hands and knees, crawled ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... very early the next morning, Becky brought the telescope in their sitting-room, which faced the sea, to bear upon the bathing-machines on the beach; saw Briggs arrive, enter her box; and put out to sea; and was on the shore just as the nymph of whom she came in quest stepped out of the little caravan on to the shingles. It was a pretty picture: the beach; the bathing-women's faces; the long line of rocks and building were blushing and bright in the sunshine. Rebecca wore a kind, tender smile ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to withdraw from them in some degree the sight of his own beauty. We must, therefore, I fear, liken them to Acharis, the painter of Lemnos, who, intending to represent Phoebus, painted from a mirror a copy of his own defects and deformities; or perhaps to that Nymph, who finding herself beloved by Phoebus, instead of reverently and silently returning the affection, boasted of it to all her neighbours, as a token of her own beauty, and despised the god; so that he, being angry, changed her into a chattering ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... there were no two rivers alike, every one of them having its own speed, its own windings, depths, and shallows, its own way with the reeds and grasses, so had every street its own claim to an especial nymph, forasmuch as no two streets had exactly the same proportions, the same habitual traffic, the same type of shops or houses, the same inhabitants. In some cases, of course, the difference between the 'atmosphere' of two streets ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... slumber bound, Nods till the piteous Trump of Judgment sound. Perchance Leviathan of the deep sea Would lease a lost mermaiden's grot to me, There of your beauty we would joyance make— A music wistful for the sea-nymph's sake: Haply Elijah, o'er his spokes of fire, Cresting steep Leo, or the Heavenly Lyre, Spied, tranced in azure of inanest space, Some eyrie hostel meet for human grace, Where two might happy be—just you and I— Lost in ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... wildness of Dante, the regular beauties of Tasso, and the boundless variety of the incomparable Ariosto. The merits of the lover I am still less qualified to appreciate: nor am I deeply interested in a metaphysical passion for a nymph so shadowy, that her existence has been questioned; [2] for a matron so prolific, [3] that she was delivered of eleven legitimate children, [4] while her amorous swain sighed and sung at the fountain of Vaucluse. [5] But in the eyes of Petrarch, and those of his graver contemporaries, his ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... reconciliation, a wonderful home-coming, and how I luxuriated in the great green forgiveness! Yes! the giant maples had forgiven me, and the multitudinous beeches had taken me to their arms. The flowers and I were friends again, the grass was my brother, and the shy nymph-like stream, dropping silver vowels into the ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne |
