"Rapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still man and wife!'" Tears came to Julia's eyes, she shook her head as if to shake them away. "I've hungered for you, Jim, until it seemed as if I must go mad!" she went on, looking far beyond him now, and speaking in a low, rapt voice as if to herself. "I've felt," she said, "as if I'd die for just one more kiss from you, die just to have you take my big coat off once more, and catch me in your arms, as you used to do when we came back from dinner ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... shapely hands the chords of Chopin's 'Nocturne'." "He was a frequent visitor to our house," says another, "and would often play for us on his beautiful silver flute. The image of him standing in his rapt passion, while he poured forth the entrancing sound, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the men paid little attention to him just then. One man was talking, and the rest were listening with rapt interest. They were cowpunchers, every one. Cowpunchers such as Tresler had heard of. Some were still wearing their fringed "chapps," their waists belted with gun and ammunition; some were in plain overalls and thin cotton shirts. All, except ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... eight hundred voices, and some of the world's famous soloists. He left his wife sitting beside me, and she was very silent as he went forward to lift the conductor's baton. It was one of the earliest renditions of "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast." We sat at rapt attention and when the last, weird music died, the great chorus and orchestra rose as a man to acclaim the master; he turned toward the audience and then we turning for the first time saw that sea of faces behind,—the misty thousands whose voices rose to one strong shout of joy! It was a moment ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... on her belly. She was swathed in black stuff to her heels; her hair was grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which was not the practice in that island; her eyes big and bright and crazy. These she fixed upon me with a rapt expression that I saw to be part acting. She said no plain words, but smacked and mumbled with her lips, and hummed aloud, like a child over its Christmas pudding. She came straight across the house, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... They spied and listened; they received and sent secret messengers; and they stole Jane's books and records, and finally the papers that were deeds of her possessions. Through it all they were silent, rapt in a kind of trance. Then one by one, without leave or explanation or farewell, they left Withersteen ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... figure me as gazing on Raffles all this time in mute and rapt amazement. But I had long been past that pitch. If he had told me now that he had broken into the Bank of England, or the Tower, I should not have disbelieved him for a moment. I was prepared to go home with him to the Albany and find the regalia under his bed. And I took down my overcoat ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... with a gaze so rapt, so reverent, so expressive of immeasurable gratitude that her eyes filled with tears. "I think you ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... descent it was! the moment his foot touched these vulgar flags, he was once more the hard-worked doctor at everybody's command, with a fretful patient waiting for him a mile beyond St Roque's; and all these dazzling moments, which had rapt the unfortunate young fellow into another world, were so much time lost to the prose figure that had to help Nettie down and let her go, and betake himself soberly about his own business. Perhaps Nettie felt it a little disenchanting too, when she was dropped upon the bare ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... one who had within him an attitude at once primitive and grand, an attitude that we have almost come to ignore. Listening to the Mass, we find ourselves feeling as though some vates of a Mediterranean folk were come in rapt and lofty mood to offer sacrifice, to pacify the living, to celebrate with fitting rites the unnumbered multitudes of the heroic dead. There are some compositions that seem to find the common ground of all men throughout the ages. And to the company ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... trail of that sly fox. You go right up to see Mother and tell her all about Miss Melody." Again his gaze sought the ceiling. "Melody! What a perfect name for the most charming, graceful, exquisite human flower that ever bloomed!" Turning suddenly, the rapt speaker encountered Mrs. Whipp's twisted, acid, hungrily listening countenance. He emitted a burst of laughter and looked back at Miss Mehitable, who was wiping her eyes. "Tell Mother the whole story," he went on, "just as you did ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... slightly puzzled. But later on, hearing much shouting and clouting and banging of tin, I quietly investigated and found Dinkie in the corral-gate, holding it against all comers. So earnest was he about it, so rapt was he in that solemn business of warfare, that I decided to slip away without letting him see me. He was sixteen long centuries away from Casa Grande, at that moment. He was afar off on the banks of the Tiber, defending the Imperial City against Lars Porsena and his footmen. All Rome was ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... prospect, measuring its promises and threats, gathering herself for the effort they demand. She sits on a high Italian mountain-ledge, with a blue plain spread out beneath her like the kingdoms of the world; and there she looks at her future with rapt absorption, lost to all other thought. Her mind, if we saw it, would tell us everything then at least; she searches its deepest depth, it is evident. And that is the very reason why her mind should not be exposed in that hour; the troubling shapes that lurk in it are not ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... (rousing himself with an effort). Oh! Pardon! Your Majesty would have me speak on politics, and affairs of State? I was rapt ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... blessings on humanity;—and having thus brought his noble poem to a noble termination, the poet, modestly smiling, and ready for applause, rolled up his manuscript, and raised his eyes to the countenance of his silent and admiring listener—that listener who had been so rapt in the glowing images and sonorous couplets, that he had not uttered so much as ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... curry and beer. Eat he could not in this lazaret, but sipped a little of the dark Kirin brew, and plunged again into his researches. Alone with his lamp and rustling papers, he fought through perplexities, now whispering, now silent, like a student rapt in some midnight fervor. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... swinging figure that told of coming womanhood, or in the flashing, laughing appeal of her dark eyes where for the moment both woman and child looked out. He set the brake on his wagon and waited for her to pass. She came by with a smile and a word of greeting, to which his rapt attention prevented any reply except a slight nod. When she had passed, he turned and looked after her until she had gone around the little hill on the road that ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... number, which, in spite of all the efforts of patriotism, was of German origin—a Brandenburg concerto by Bach. More curious still, it was encored. Pierson did not applaud, he was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt smile on his face, oblivious of his surroundings. He remained thus removed from mortal joys and sorrows till the last applause had died away, and Leila's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Ceaseless their prayers. They tilled a sterile soil; Beneath their hands it blossomed like the rose: O'er thymy hollows blew the nectared airs; Blue ocean flashed through olives. They had fled From praise of men; yet cities far away Rapt those meek saints to fill the bishop's throne. I saw the light of God on faces calm That blended with man's meditative might Simplicity of childhood, and, with both The sweetness of that flower-like sex which wears Through ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... No rapt enthusiast, or mystic sage, No Asian founder of a faith divine, No bard, or writer of inspired page Hath ever failed to worship at thy shrine, O Nourisher of steadfast self-control, Of noble ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the course of nature, nature culminated in Christ, and that, of all that exists, He is the one being profoundly human, preeminently natural.' In the dove which descended at His baptism, Mr. Furness 'discovers the presence of a common dove divested of its ordinary appearance, and transfigured by a rapt imagination into a sign and messenger from heaven.' He says 'there is no intrinsic impossibility in supposing that Jesus was naturally possessed of an unprecedented power of will, by which the extraordinary effects attributed to him were produced.' 'The bloody ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cheerful pomp, of sound Melodious, or of motion aptly sped), Detains the enliven'd sense; till soon the soul Feels the deep concord, and assents through all 160 Her functions. Then the charm by fate prepared Diffuseth its enchantment Fancy dreams, Rapt into high discourse with prophets old, And wandering through Elysium, Fancy dreams Of sacred fountains, of o'ershadowing groves, Whose walks with godlike harmony resound: Fountains, which Homer visits; happy groves, Where Milton dwells; the intellectual power, On the mind's throne, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... of another's suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts from exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated her brother "inexorable as death." ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... honour of filling his cup or putting sugar into it. I once went into his shop—a sort of drawing-room hung round with dresses; I found him lolling on a chair, his legs crossed before the fire. Around him were a bevy of women, some pretty, some ugly, listening to his observations with the rapt attention of the disciples of a sage. He called them up before him like school girls, and after inspecting them, praised or blamed their dresses. One, a pretty young girl, found favour in his eyes, and he told her that ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... home." There was a rapt expression on Gregory's lined and weathered face. "We were looking forward to the twenty or maybe thirty good years we had left, talking about what we'd do, where we'd live, wondering what had changed on Earth. At least we had that last night out. All the data was stashed ...
— Homesick • Lyn Venable
... to Sardinia was tardy, owing to calms; but, in other respects, pleasant. About the third day Byron relented from his rapt mood, as if he felt it was out of place, and became playful, and disposed to contribute his fair proportion to the general endeavour to wile away the tediousness of the dull voyage. Among other expedients for that purpose, we had ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... glistening eyes. "It'll be five hundred at least,—p'raps a cool thou,—then I'll buy Octavius and Septimus out, and mother and the old man shall chuck up that dirty selection, and come an' get all the custom here. And the kids can go to school, an' I'll get Polly an' Blarnche a pianner." The rapt look of the ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... skill, there were persons among them of distinguished ability and character; and real eloquence seldom fails to prove peculiarly fascinating to youthful hearers. Who could forget, for example, with what rapt attention he listened, at a somewhat later date, to the glowing language and was stirred by the honest warmth of Saltonstall, incapable by nature of attempting to make the worse appear the better reason; or watched that marvel, the matchless ingenuity ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... Here there were damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five years old upwards. They send even the little ones to meditate, Clarice tells me; and there are these infants kneeling before the flower-bedecked altars, rapt in religious contemplation, like so many Thomas a Kempises. The young meditators glanced shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me everything of special interest in the pleasant old place, Clarice and Madelon ran off ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Mrs. Petherwin to think of such a queer trick as telling romances, after doing so well as a poet?' said a man in the stalls to his friend, who had been gazing at the Story-teller with a rapt face. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... enchantments of courtly love. Ladies were portrayed longing for their lovers. The greatest emphasis was placed on elegance of pose. Fierce distortions were gradually discarded and the whole purpose of painting was to dwell on exquisite figures and to suggest a rapt devotion to the needs ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... her best now. There was dead silence; no one had expected such a glorious voice as this. Hugh Ingelow's rapt face showed what ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Ossawatermy takes place. Old Brown kills Mister Blane, the sinister individooal aforesed. Mister Blane makes a able & elerquent speech, sez he don't see his mother MUCH, and dies like the son of a gentleman, rapt up in the Star Spangled banner. Moosic by the Band. Four or five other Border ruffins air killed, but thay don't say nothin abowt seein their mothers. From Kansis to Harper's Ferry. Picter of a Arsenal is represented. Sojers cum & fire at it. Old Brown cums ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... him to announce that supper was ready, found John, seated in his chamber of dead ladies, his arms folded, his legs crossed, his eyes fixed, a frown upon his prone brow; his spirit apparently rapt in ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... close of the evening there was a little music, which Mr. Tymperley seemed much to enjoy. He let his head fall back, and stared upwards; remaining rapt in that posture for some moments after the music ceased, and at length recovering ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Again the strange, rapt glow suffused her body. Never in all her life had she been so absolutely alone. She might as well have been in her grave. She might have been dead to all earthy things and reveling in spirit in the glory of the physical that had ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... powerful and original vein of genius than his own. It is a masculine, clear, elastic, and varied diction, fitted to express all feelings, save the deepest; all fancies, save the subtlest; all passions, save the loftiest; all moods of mind, save the most disinterested and rapt; to represent incidents, however strange; characters, however contradictory to each other; shades of meaning, however evasive: and to do all this, as if it were doing nothing, in point of ease, and as if it were doing everything in point of felt and rejoicing energy. No poetic style since ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... they came in sight of Catskill Landing. Roy stood on top of the cabin like Columbus, his rapt gaze fixed ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... career, the interest he excited in the vast audiences that followed him was by no means confined to the self-styled "best people." Though he never "played to the gallery," the heart of the gallery was as much with him as the heart of the boxes, and he knew the value of its rapt silence as well ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... romantic thrill from one or the other, is usually on his guard against spurious blandishments and reluctant to admit the claims of new pretenders. Even in poets of the first rank he slurred over a great deal; but what he loved he dwelt on with a kind of rapt inspiration until it became his second nature, its spirit and its language fused intimately with his own. This revolutionist in politics was a jealous aristocrat in the domains of art, and this admission does not impair our earlier assertion ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... way to pray," Said Rev. Doctor Wise, "Is standing straight with outstretched arms And rapt and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the crew listened in rapt attention, consumed nearer six than two, or even five hours. These men were hungry for authentic first-hand information—being too old to have ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... if the room belonged to a single customer or to the whole company. This invasion of his realm was indeed the last straw. Men were brutes, and he conceived an unspeakable scorn for humanity when he saw Logre and Monsieur Lebigre fixing their eyes on Florent with rapt attention. Gavard with his revolver irritated him, and Robine, who sat silent behind his glass of beer, seemed to him to be the only sensible person in the company, and one who doubtless judged people by their real value, and was not led away by mere words. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the garden of Gethsemane, his face was flushed with the rapt stillness of pious ecstasy; hours had vanished during his passionate reverie, and he stared ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... very short time, after handing over his boards to a comrade on the understanding of suitable compensation, and was shown into my study. Sarakoff was present, and he pored over the man's nails and eyes and skin with rapt attention. At last he ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... with the weepers off his cuffs and the crape off his bonnet; he had divested himself of the hateful things whenever he found himself alone, and he was listening with a rapt and inexpressive face to the pensive call of the curlew as it rose over the fields, and the tears were dropping ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... ejaculated; but old Donald Ross rose and said, "Let us call upon the name of the Lord." From his prayer it was quite evident that for him at least all doubts and fears as to poor Mack's state were removed. And even Peter McRae, subdued not so much by any argument of Macdonald Bhain's as by his rapt vision, followed old Donald's prayer with broken words of hope and thanksgiving; and it was Peter who was early at the manse next morning to repeat to the minister the things he had seen and heard the night before. And all next day, where there had been the horror of unnamable ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... unconsciously attracting the attention of their fellow-voyagers, and leading them to believe that this handsome young man, speaking so earnestly in such low tones to his companion, and the lovely youthful widow, who was listening to him with such rapt attention, were a pair of ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... playing he was in tears, and the girl sitting before him was awestricken and rapt as she sat with upturned face with the miracle of song thrilling her soul. Let us leave them there in that first curious, unrealized signaling of soul to soul. And now let us go on into this story, and remember these ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... old carpet. When I came in, he was goggling at it in a sort of glassy way. Absolutely rapt, don't you know. My coming in gave him a start—seemed to rouse him from a kind of trance, you know—and he jumped like an antelope; and, if I hadn't happened to grab him, he would have trampled bang on the thing. It was deuced unpleasant, you know. His manner was rummy. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... to all appearance dead. He chafes and calls and brings her back to consciousness. She is the Kundry of the first act, but so changed,—pale with the strained pallor of one lately exorcised; the wildness and roughness all gone out of her face, and in its place a strange rapt fixity; in her bearing an unknown humility. In silence she recovers remembrance of the facts of her existence; mechanically orders her hair and garments, and without a word leaves Gurnemanz to set about the work of a servant. As she is moving towards the hut, he asks: "Have you no word for me? Is ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... soiled and seamed before the torch Of Eros toucht the heart, and the keen scorch Lickt up the foul misuse of vase so fair As woman's body, Helen flusht and fair Leaned from the wall a fire-hued seraph's face And in one rapt long look gave and took Grace. Deep in her eyes he saw the light divine, Quick in him ran fierce joy of it like wine: Light unto light made answer, as a flag Answers when men tell tidings from one crag Unto ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... seated himself at the monastery table after a long conversation with Clara. The meal had hardly begun when suddenly he seemed to be rapt away in ecstasy. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... by the hope of ridicule, some abhorring the tenets expressed, and nearly all disapproving their principles or doubting their wisdom,—the listeners, certainly not a group previously formed or moulded into enthusiasm, became rapt and earnest; ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a brisk, vivacious man, with a good conceit of himself, and had much that was interesting to say of the new countries he had visited. Gudrid was rapt in attention, for every word he said seemed to make Einar visible to her, with his bright eyes, his ear-rings, his soft eager voice and his white teeth. Einar now stood for all sorts of things besides himself to Gudrid. He stood for home; he stood ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... Uncle Henry's FATHER! And to think he had been a little boy, right there at that desk! She stopped chewing altogether for a moment and stared into space. Although she was only nine years old, she was feeling a little of the same rapt wonder, the same astonished sense of the reality of the people who have gone before, which make a first visit to the Roman Forum such a thrilling event for ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... recognize that we represent but one class in the upward direction towards the stars, and one degree in the descent to the moth and rust that corrupt; and perhaps that worm, that I killed in order to take rapt pleasure in its wings, thought itself the middle of eternity round which the world is whirling like Plato's featherless two-footed animals; and when at the door of death it uttered its last cry, it probably thought that this ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... down upon the regiment before her. It was as if her soul were suddenly freed from her bodily presence, and in a kind of dual consciousness she seemed to be standing upon the little whitewashed porch and walking onward beside Dan at the same moment. The wonder of it glowed in her rapt face, and Virginia, turning to put some trivial question, was startled by ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... the gas burner reading that most beautiful Christmas part of "In Memoriam." She almost heard the "happy bells ring across the snow," so rapt was she in the poets charm. Then something stirred. Her mother ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Long had he tugg'd, "To extricate him from the chain; to free "His captive neck: scarce was he loos'd, so swift "He shot, in vain our eyes his progress mark'd: "In the light dust his feet were printed, he, "Rapt from the view, was vanish'd. Swifter flies "The darted spear not: nor the leaden ball "Hurl'd from the whirling sling;—nor reedy dart "Shot from the Cretan bow. A central hill "High-towering, all ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... wonderfully affect; and don't be made turn your head round, as if it was in disgust with the body; and don't let your stomach be more conspicuous than the head, like a cucumber running to seed. Don't let him put your arm up, as in command, or accompanied with a rapt look as if you were listening to the music of the spheres; don't thrust out your foot conspicuously, as if you meant to advertise the blacking. Some artists are given to fancy attitudes such as best set off the coats, they are but nature's journeymen at the faces; don't fancy that the cut, colour, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... winning than the philosophical complacency with which he feasted on the emotions of those who lost; always serene, and, except in debauch, always passionless,—Majendie, tracing the experiments of science in the agonies of some tortured dog, could not be more rapt in the science, and more indifferent to the dog, than Lord Lilburne, ruining a victim, in the analysis of human passions,—stoical in the writhings of the wretch whom he tranquilly dissected. He wished to ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... withdrew. Then fell he new to crie and vexe himselfe, Vntill a man from Cleopatra came, Who said from hir he had commaundement To bring him to hir to the monument. The poore soule at these words euen rapt with Ioy Knowing she liu'd, prai'd vs him to conuey Vnto his Ladie. Then vpon our armes We bare him to the Tombe, but entred not. For she, who feared captiue to be made, And that she should to Rome in triumph goe, Kept close the gate: but from a window ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... the circumstances. Bevis kept his eyes upon her face, with a look of rapt adoration which turned at length to pain and ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Lucy was glowing and rapt with love for all she beheld from her lofty perch: the green-and-pink blossoming hamlet beneath her, set between the beauty of the gray sage expanse and the ghastliness of the barren heights; the swift Colorado sullenly thundering below in the abyss; ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... But Heaven rapt the heart of little Bell! The waves fell on her finer ear like subtlest music; to her they were harps, and the fingers of angels were touching them, while the thunder was "God ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... therefore, if I may so express it, vegetal. Trees as well as flowers and fruits symbolize for me beings and emotions. Plants as well as animals and stones filled my childhood with a mysterious charm. When I was four years old I remained rapt in contemplation of the broken stones of the mountain, lying in heaps along the roads. When struck they gave forth fire in the twilight. When rubbed against one another they felt the burning heat. I gathered pieces ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... himself with infinite zest to the discussion of aesthetic tittle-tattle over a cup of tea and a toasted bun. "Dear fellow," his friends will say of him at such a moment, "he is so etherial; and his eyes, did you observe that far-away, rapt look in them?" They will then take pleasure in persuading one another without much difficulty, that they are the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... the door-jamb, listened with an amused smile on his lips. His gaze swept the rapt faces of the dozen or more customers seated at the tables, and he found himself wondering if one of these men was the father of the little girl whose mother had described Hart's Tavern as a "shindy." Was it only yesterday that he had ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... them," said the doctor, pointing to an Indian who in the full light of the camp fire was standing erect and, with hand outstretched, was declaiming to the others, who, kneeling or squatting about the fire, were giving him rapt attention. The erect figure and outstretched arm arrested Cameron. A haunting sense of familiarity floated across ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... answer: looked up, with quiet, rapt eyes, through the silent city, and the clear gray beyond. They passed a little church lighted up for evening service: as if to give a meaning to the old man's words, they were chanting the one anthem of the world, the Gloria in Excelsis. Hearing the deep organ-roll, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... consoling; till at last, hearing some uncontrollable sobs, Tibble Steelman rose and found him crouching rather than kneeling before the figure of an emaciated hermit, who was greeting the summons of the King of Terrors, with crucifix pressed to his breast, rapt countenance and outstretched arms, seeing only the Angel who hovered above. After some minutes of bitter weeping, which choked his utterance, Ambrose, feeling a friendly hand on his shoulder, exclaimed in a voice broken by sobs, "Oh, tell me, where may I go ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... come to Budapest all the young women, urged on to insubordination, had removed their veils, and Kalora had boldly invaded another compartment to engage in rapt and feverish dialogue with a little but ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... thitherward strode, In valour in equal to War's fiery god, Then fierce was the fight—dread the deeds that were done, Till, aided by Pallas, the battle he won. So sung the rapt Minstrel the blood-stirring tale, But the check of Odysseus waxed deadly and pale; While the song warbled on of the days that were past, His eyelids were wet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the front and listened with rapt attention while this fine actor declaimed the speech. When he finished Charles said, in his ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... where General Harrison spoke at length. He was the first "great man" I had seen; and, while gazing into his face with an awe which I have never since felt for any mortal, I was suddenly recalled from my rapt condition by the exit of my pocket-book. The number in attendance at this meeting was estimated at two hundred thousand, and I think it could not have been far out of the way. I am sure I have never seen it equaled, although I have witnessed many great meetings within the past ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... body glowed In sunny shallows, splashing them to spray; But when on rippled, silver sand she lay, And over her the little green waves flowed, Coldly translucent and moon-coloured showed Her frail young beauty, as if rapt away From all the light and laughter of the day To some ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... be forgotten. It was like a look into hell. The whole fire seemed below them, a surging, tempest-lashed ocean of flame, with mile-long billows, mile-high breakers and mile-deep shadows. All about the flaming ocean, except to the leeward, was a sea of faces, white and upturned, and rapt as with some unearthly vision. Stretching out for miles were housetops swarming with crowds, gazing appalled at the spectacle in which the fate of every man, woman and child of them was vitally involved. At times the gale, with a strong, steady sweep, would level the billows of fire, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... and I were well acquainted; Time was when we walked ever hand in hand; A saintly youth, with worldly thought untainted, None better loved than I in all the land! Time was, when maidens of the noblest station, Forsaking even military men, Would gaze upon me, rapt in adoration - Ah me, I was a ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... lantern again to the inner wall of the shaft, he set the rod upon its point. It remained motionless, exactly upright, where he placed it; and now, truly, the old man paused to gaze upon it in wordless delight. He was so rapt and still that the girl grew frightened and awestruck, watching his odd behavior, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... York Company and a Mormon train filling up their water casks and growing neighborly in talk of Sublette's cut off and the route by the Big and Little Sandy. A man was a man even if he was a Mormon, and in a country so intent on its own destiny, so rapt in the calm of contemplation, he took his place as a human unit on whom his creed hung ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... dinner he displayed as much reserve as his nature allowed him to, but afterwards, yielding to the solicitations of the women, he abandoned himself, and when twelve o'clock struck they were still gathered round him, listening to him with rapt expression, as if in hearing of delightful music. Awaking suddenly to a sense of the hour and his indiscretion, he bade Lord Spennymoor, who had sat talking all night with his brother in ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... into space; Mr. Mackintosh did not notice a subtle change of expression. That latter gentleman's rapt gaze was wholly absorbed by the half-tumblerful he held in mid air. But only for a moment; the next, he was smacking his lips. "We'll have a bite to eat and then go," he now said more cheerfully. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... distinctness, transmuting the dull tormented earth into towers, domes, and pinnacles of gleaming metal,—and weaves for every distant summit a robe of variegated light, such as the "Delectable Mountains" must have worn for the rapt gaze of weary "Christian;"—and another to plod over the same forty miles, drenched to the skin, seeing nothing but the dim, grey roots of hills, that rise you know not how, and you care not where,—with no better employment than to look at your ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... fairy feet? It is hail—yes, a hail-storm has burst over the city. Leaves are dashed from the trees, mingled with small boughs; windows that lie most opposed to the direct fury of the pelting particles of ice are broken, and the rapt repose that before was so remarkable in its intensity, is exchanged for a noise which, in its accumulation, drowns every cry of surprise or consternation which here and there arose from persons who found their houses invaded ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... humorous undertones, each in turn seeming to turn over the earth of some amusing reminiscence, so rapt, that as far as regarded their perception of it, the assembly might have been nowhere. Perhaps, consequently, they became observed with all but undivided attention. My father's hand was on my shoulder, his head toward Captain DeWitt; instead of subduing his voice, he gave it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... after sunset, and Bisset was rapt in thought, and Walter Espec perplexing his soul about Guy Muschamp, when suddenly they were aroused by the voice of the Muezzin, who, according to the custom of the Saracens, standing on the minaret of a mosque hard by, solemnly proclaimed three times—'There is ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... old savage huddled in his bonds, his baleful eyes glowing in the firelight as he watched every movement; the slender pere close beside him upon his knees, his frayed black gown rendering more conspicuous the rapt, upraised face, his white fingers clasping the crucifix; beyond, Cairnes outstretched on the hard stone, his bulky figure motionless but for nervous twitching, his red hair glaring like a spot of paint. I rejoiced that the fellow slept, for he rasped me with his ceaseless, senseless attacks on ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... substitute in the essays of Addison and Steele; but they required more knowledge of the every-day world for their enjoyment than an infant, bred in such seclusion, could at present afford; and at last Venetia lost herself in the wildering pages of Clelia and the Arcadia, which she pored over with a rapt and ecstatic spirit, that would not comprehend the warning scepticism of her parent. Let us picture to ourselves the high-bred Lady Annabel in the terrace-room of her ancient hall, working at her tapestry, and, seated at her feet, her little daughter Venetia, reading aloud the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... a moment just inside the open door, and stared; he looked about him as though the incredible thing had really happened at last. A rapt expression passed over his face, and his eyes seemed fixed upon something radiant that hung upon the air. He sighed, and caught his breath. His heart grew amazingly light within him. Every thought and feeling that made ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... God," he said quaveringly, "'at every creature on earth was as well fixed as me an' the redbird!" Clasping each other, they listened with rapt faces, as, mellowing across the corn field, came the notes of the Cardinal: "So dear! ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... eggs and a veal kidney that Mrs. Butt had dropped on the floor? He had come to loathe kidney. He had almost come to swearing that no manifestation or incarnation of kidney should ever again pass between his excellent teeth. And now he was ravished, rapt away on the wings of paradisaical ecstasy by a something that consisted of kidney and a few eggs. This omelette had all the finer and nobler qualities of Yorkshire pudding and scrambled eggs combined, together with others beyond the ken of his greedy fancy. Yes, he was a greedy man. He knew ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... had them cold with every meal almost, and he was continually giving us details of what they measured from tip to tip, as though he thought we were going to make them warm under-things for the winter. I used to listen to him with a rapt attention that I thought rather suited me, and then one day I quite modestly gave the dimensions of an okapi I had shot in the Lincolnshire fens. The Major turned a beautiful Tyrian scarlet (I remember thinking at the time that I should like my bathroom hung in that colour), and I think that ...
— Reginald • Saki
... he wrote down what has been preserved; that he was then called out on an errand; and returning after an hour he could recollect only this much. How far do you agree with Swinburne's judgment: 'It is perhaps the most wonderful of all poems. We seem rapt into that paradise revealed to Swedenborg, where music and color and perfume were one, where you could hear the hues and see the harmonies of heaven. For absolute melody and splendor it were hardly rash to call it the first poem ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... villainous-looking lump of lichen-spotted granite, with windows paper-patched, and rotting thatch kept down by stones and straw-banks; and at the back a rambling court-ledge of barns and walls, around which pigs and barefoot children grunted in loving communion of dirt. At the door, rapt apparently in the contemplation of the mountain peaks which glowed rich orange in the last lingering sun-rays, but really watching which way the sheep on the moor were taking, stood the innkeeper, a brawny, sodden-visaged, blear-eyed six feet of brutishness, holding up his hose ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... sat in her bower, her music neglected, her drawing thrown aside. Even her birds were forgotten, and her flowers untended. A soft tumult filled her frame: now rapt in reverie, she leaned her head upon her fair hand in charmed abstraction; now rising from her restless seat, she paced the chamber, and thought of his quick coming. What was this mighty revolution that a few short days, a few brief hours had occasioned? How mysterious, yet how ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... in part and in infancy. I cannot—nor can any man—speak precisely of things so sublime, but it seems to me the wit of man, his strength, his grace, and his tendency, his art, is the grace and the presence of God. It is beyond explanation. When all is said and done, the rapt saint is found the only logician. Not exhortation nor argument becomes our lips, but paeans of joy and praise. But not of adulation; we are too nearly related in the deep of the mind to that we honor. It ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... Int. look!, &c (attention) 457. Phr. the scales falling from one's eyes; an eye like Mars to threaten or command [Hamlet]; her eyes are homes of silent prayer [Tennyson]; looking before and after [Hamlet]; thy rapt soul sitting in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... answered the newspaper description of young Burt. What a lively looking athlete! He was tall, lithe, yet sturdy. He did not need to chase more than two fly balls to win me. His graceful, fast style reminded me of the great Curt Welch. Old Well-Well's face wore a rapt expression. I discovered myself hoping Burt would make good; wishing he would rip the boards off the fence; praying he ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... He gazed with a rapt expression at the preparations before him. "So I'm drowned," something was saying inside him. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Carlo—the hour was roseate and matutinal—Henry had observed Tom staring at the scenery through the window, his coffee untasted, and tears in his rapt eyes. 'What's up?' Henry had innocently inquired. Tom turned on him fiercely. 'Silly ass!' Tom growled with scathing contempt. 'Can't you feel how beautiful it ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... time did he fall into it so surely as when after dinner he sat with his father by the fire. They were the strangest pair at such a time that ever fire-light shone upon. Dombey so erect and solemn, gazing at the blaze; Paul with an old, old face peering into the red perspective with the fixed and rapt attention of a sage, the two so much alike and yet so monstrously contrasted. On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for a long time, little Paul broke the ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the horse, whose bridle he was holding, he forced it to rear, caracole and display its spirit and its paces before Domini, sitting it superbly, and shooting many sly glances at Suzanne, who leaned over the parapet of the verandah watching, with a rapt expression ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the verandah, and thither I brought a large musical box and set it down on the ground to play. Never was there such a success. In a moment they were all down on their knees before it listening with rapt delight, the old man telling them the music was caused by very little people inside the box, who were obliged to do exactly as I bade them. They were in a perfect ecstasy of delight for ever so long, retreating rapidly, however, to a distance ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... now, over and over, wanderingly and at leisure, and I pictured his rapt face above the whining fiddle; the face, say, of the Philosopher Mang, sage of the second degree and disciple of Confucius, who was lifted from earth by the gods in a time we call B.C. but which was then thought to be a fresh, new, late time; the face of subtle ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... darkest grain Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypres lawn Over thy decent shoulders drawn: Come, but keep thy wonted state, With even step, and musing gait, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: There, held in holy passion still, Forget thyself to marble, till With a sad leaden downward cast Thou fix them on the earth as fast: And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Miss Pott," they called her. The biographers didn't take time to give her first name, nor recount her pedigree, so rapt were they with her personality. They only say, "She was tall, willowy and lissome; and Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her picture as a peasant beauty, bearing on her well-poised ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... she did not even smile. She sat down beside Jim's bed and looked seriously at his eager, rapt, shamed little boy-face on the pillow. "Well?" said she, after a minute which seemed ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... see, all sorts of chaps are always doing all sorts of things; and we have to fit them in somehow, don't you know. What I mean is that you can't go cutting everybody; and that's about what it comes to. [Their rapt attention to his eloquence makes him nervous] Perhaps I don't make ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... was rapt in these reflections, he heard the drowsy tinkle of a pastoral bell behind him, and on turning round, he saw a peasant dressed in shaggy skins, driving a few goats from the ruins. The appearance and physiognomy of this peasant struck him as something more ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... story, had no reason thereafter to complain either of interruption or inattention. Neither had he reason to find fault with the wealth of his prolific imagination. It would have done the soul of a painter good to have watched the faces of that rapt, eager, breathless audience, and it would have afforded much material for reflection to a student of mind, had he, knowing the original story of Robinson Crusoe, been permitted to trace the ingenious sinuosities and astounding creations ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the praises of philosophy, and of the freedom which philosophy confers; and expressed his contempt for the vulgar error which sets a value upon wealth and renown and dominion and power, upon gold and purple, and all that dazzles the eyes of the world,—and once attracted my own! I listened with rapt attention, and with a swelling heart. At the time, I knew not what had come over me; my feelings were indescribable. My dearest idols, riches and renown, lay shattered; one moment I was ready to shed bitter tears over the disillusionment, the next, I could have ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... of the soul, than men of a more phlegmatic constitution do; and that they can draw from such intuitions of their own a sort of inspiration, or second-sight of nature, comparable to prophecy, which gives their highest poetic utterance a rapt enthusiasm—and the accuracy of this estimate need not be disputed, but, so far as Ossian is concerned, it must be considerably extended. To read Ossian as we do, from the text of Macpherson, there ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... nor e'er will be; a work exempt From fault to form, as well might man attempt T'explore the vast infinity of space, Or fix mechanic boundaries to grace. Hard is the finish'd Speaker's task; what then Must be our danger, to pursue the pen Of the 'rapt Bard, through all his varied turns, Where joy extatic smiles, or sorrow mourns? Where Richard's soul, red in the murtherous lave, Shrinks from the night-yawn'd tenants of the grave, While coward conscience still affrights his ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... answered, if indeed he heard. Rapt, transported, trembling, he was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... in the fifth form at Eton, and ardently expecting his beard and his commission in a dragoon regiment, was the second partner who was honoured with Miss Bell's hand. He was rapt in admiration of that young lady. He thought he had never seen so charming a creature. "I like you much better than the French girl" (for this young gentleman had been dancing with Miss Amory before), he candidly said to her. Laura laughed, and looked more good-humoured ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a brighter birth Dust and earth, Rapt to glory on your wings, All transfigured in the white Living light Shed from out the soul ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... offered up to pungency of expression than in the above-cited aphorism of Pope. There is an ample variety of tenacious womanly characters between the extremes marked by Miriam beating her timbrels, and Cleopatra applying the asp; Cornelia showing her Roman jewels, and Guyon rapt in God; Lucrezia Borgia raging with bowl and dagger, and Florence Nightingale sweetening the memory of the Crimean war with philanthropic deeds. What group of men indeed can be brought together, more distinct in individuality, more contrasted ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... dare not call thee aloud, nor cry, Thou art so solemn, so rapt in rest, But I will whisper: Dolores, 'tis I: My heart ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... day, she came up to see him, and this time with final instructions. Jimbo listened with rapt attention. ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... FREDDY draws back curtains, revealing part of audience, left. He steals off. OCEANA gradually awakens, raises her head, lifts herself to her knees, stretches out her hands in worship to the Sun-god. Then slowly she rises, rapt in wonder. The robe falls back, revealing a filmy costume, primitive, elemental, naive. She begins to sway, and gradually glides into an ecstatic dance, which portrays the joyful awakening ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... wood-lice were an especial amusement: when Monsieur the Viscount touched them, they shut up into tight little balls, and in this condition he removed them to the stone, and placed them like marbles in a row, Monsieur Crapaud watching the proceeding with rapt attention. After awhile the balls would slowly open and begin to crawl away; but he was a very active wood-louse indeed who escaped the suction of Monsieur Crapaud's tongue, as his eyes glowing with eager enjoyment, he bolted one after another, and ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... had been standing among the crowd all the while, rapt, like them, her eyes fixed on Valencia, and full, too, of tears. They had been called up first by the melody itself, and then, by a chain of thought peculiar to Grace, by the faces ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... was a hopeless task and full of peril for him. There was but one topic of interest to her. Rome and Greece were dull. What cared she about the Romans? Dic was not a Roman. Conversation upon books wearied her, and subjects that a few months ago held her rapt attention, now threw her into revery. I am sorry to say she was a silly, love-lorn young woman, and not in the least entitled to the respect of strong-minded persons. I would not advise you, my dear young ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... awoke with my tongue so parched I could not speak till a spoonful of lemon-juice was inserted, I asked Sophy to sing, and she directly sang, "Dear harp of my country." I never shall forget the sort of pleasure; it soothed, it "rapt my" willing not my "imprisoned soul in elysium," and I was so happy to feel I could again follow a rational chain of ideas, and comprehend the words of the beautiful poetry, to which music added such a charm and ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... give him without whom you cou'd not live? On whose lips your very being hangs? Whom you so love, as I cou'd you." Her words were attended with such a grace at their delivery, and the sweet sound so, charm'd the yielding air, you wou'd have sworne some syren had been breathing melodies. Thus rapt with every thing so amazing, and fancying a glory shin'd in every part, I ventur'd to enquire what name the goddess own'd? "My maid, I perceive," said she, "has not inform'd you, I am call'd Circe; I would not have you believe tho, I bear that name, that I ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... court was celebrated, surrounded by the most distinguished of his subjects, he was engaged in a prophetic relation of the events which were to happen in ages yet to come. His auditors listened, now rapt in wonder, now fired with indignation, burning with shame, or melted into sorrow, as he faithfully detailed the heroism, the injuries, the crimes, and the miseries of their descendants. In the midst of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... faith more than by all other things put together—a faith so rapt that, to our less passionate natures, it seems to have been the very insanity of fanaticism. But it did the work; and that ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... seized the other apparatus connected with the art-gallery and had the wireless receiver over his head. He was listening with rapt ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... them with a hymn. And the Christmas moon, rising high above the mountains of Gilead and Moab, had found for a short space of time an opening in the curtain of mist and had poured down its light upon the hills of Judea, making the city of Bethlehem seem to the rapt minds of the two Yorkshire dalesmen as though it had been the city of the living God let down ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... rapt exaltation the boy's face beamed as he strode swiftly the length of his cell. It would not be long until daybreak now. The judge would understand him, and would not press a man to tell what he had delicate reasons for concealing, when the concealment ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... literal question, put with an air of the most impulsive good faith, John's face slightly changed. The rapt look faded from his eyes, and a reflective smile took its place, as the young man gazed long and earnestly into the bright ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green |
