"Rapture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upward-smiling girl sees the sunshine, hears the bird-song,—a boy dashes by the door and down the path to meet the last, close-lingering embrace of two waiting arms at the gate,—and then there is nothing but Vivia bending and gazing at herself in the glass with a flushed and fevered eagerness of rapture. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... of delight," the "tornadoes of applause," the earthquakes of rapture, or the "breathless breathing" of the entranced audience, would beat Mr. Bunn into fits, and the German company into fiddle-cases; so, like a newspaper legacy, which is the only one that never pays duty, we "leave it to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... immanent qualities of a glorified body. On the contrary, whatever pertained to the gifts, that He had miraculously. The same is to be said, as to the soul, of the vision in which Paul saw God in a rapture, as we have stated in the Second Part (II-II, Q. 175, A. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... more we come upon that keen zest of enjoyment, that pure desire and delight of the eyes, which are the prerogative of the poet,—Emma Lazarus was a poet. The beauty of the world,—what a rapture and intoxication it is, and how it bursts upon her in the very land of beauty, "where Dante and Petrarch trod!" A magic glow colours it all; no mere blues and greens anymore, but a splendor of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... creation's best, Its heart to feel, its eye to see, The crown and complex of the rest, Its aim and its epitome. Nay, might I utter my conceit, 'Twere after all a vulgar song, For she's so simply, subtly sweet, My deepest rapture does her wrong. Yet is it now my chosen task To sing her worth as Maid and Wife; Nor happier post than this I ask, To live her laureate all my life. On wings of love uplifted free, And by her gentleness made great, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... doing this kindness as heartily as she enjoyed receiving it, although he was so thrifty that he made his own meal from equally stale bread and some unsalable dried fish. But, after a momentary rapture at the prospect of such delicious food, Glory's too active conscience interfered, making her say, with a regret almost beyond expression, "I mustn't, I mustn't. Grandpa wouldn't like it, 'cause he says ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... Laurie. To sail before the wind, with the sun shining brightly from the blue sky upon the opal sea; to hold his beloved in his arms; to feel the warmth of her lips on his; to know that in a few short weeks she would be his own, his wife!—the rapture of it made him catch his breath and ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... of flowers so fair. There is a music in the brook Which answers to thy tender look And in thy eyes there is a spell Of soft enchantment too sweet to tell. My heart to thine shall ever turn For thou hast made my soul to burn With rapture ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... will be either rapture or despair, like the coming of a bridegroom, or the fiery ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... human distance. 'Tis the nature of perfection to be attractive, but the excellency of the object refines the nature of the love. It strikes an impression of awful reverence; 'tis indeed that love which is more properly a zeal than passion. 'Tis the rapture which anchorites find in prayer, when a beam of the divinity shines upon them; that which makes them despise all worldly objects; and yet 'tis all but contemplation. They are seldom visited from above, but a single vision so transports them, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... lootenant mustn't blow on me," said Hogan, with rapture in his eyes and a glibness born of poteen on his tongue, "but that court-martial was the makin' of me fortune, sir. Shure not only did the lootenant an' Misther Blake give me a fine charactther ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... permanence, for stability, for trustworthiness lies very deep in human nature. We may—we do—rebel against it, and speak with rapture of an unfettered existence without material ties: but even in material things the nomad is the least creative, the least civilized of his kind. His existence is neither so picturesque nor so human as we imagine. One has only ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... play when young, or the beginning of "Urn Burial," or a chapter (with due improvised skippings) of "Candide"—comes up in conversation; and one reads it rejoicing with one's friends, feeling the special rapture of united comprehension, of mind touching mind, like the little thrill of voice touching voice on the resolving sevenths of the old duets in thirds. Or even when, remembering some graver page—say the dedication of "Faust" to Goethe's dead ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... outburst, he began to read in feverish haste what he had written. His breath came and went quickly,—his cheeks flushed, his eyes dilated,—line after line he perused with apparent wonder and rapture,—when suddenly interrupting himself he raised his head and recited ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... happy fame Well may the Arts a trophy raise, Music grows sweeter in her praise. And, own'd by her, with rapture speaks her name. To touch the brave Cowdenio's heart, The Graces all in her conspire; Love arms her with his surest dart, Apollo ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... replied Jarwin, with pathetic sincerity, and then began to sing in such a touching strain, that his master lay back on his couch and rolled his large eyes in rapture. ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... between them; there was a new note, a something never heard before, in Pons' voice. All the soul, so soon to take flight, found utterance in the words that filled Schmucke with happiness almost like a lover's rapture. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the bearer of gladly tidings which will make you to beshout yourself aloud for joyfulness and leap about and besclaim: 'Pretty fair!' and other words of a grand rapture. For the bird will sing gleesome ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... or, to shorten the catalogue, in his swindling everybody he possibly can, it only remaining to be observed that, the more extensive the swindling is, and the more barefaced the impudence of the swindler, the greater the rapture and ecstasy of the audience. Now it is a most remarkable fact that precisely this sort of thing occurs in real life day after day, and nobody sees the humour of it. Let us illustrate our position by detailing ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to fall in our way? Uncle Tom's Cabin has been read more within the past year, than the Bible had been for the last ten years, immediately preceding its appearance! Thousands of Christians have gloated over its pages with rapture and delight, from the rising till the setting sun, for days and nights in succession, who had not during their lives read a dozen chapters in the Bible! We will now remove the veil and look within. Its high time that the motives which prompt us to action ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... and that a very happy part, of my life has gone with him. When sanity returns to the earth, there will arise other deities of the cricket field, but not for me. Never again shall I recapture the careless rapture that came with the vision of the yellow cap flaming above the black beard, of the Herculean frame and the mighty bared arms, and all the godlike apparition of the master. As I turned out of the little station and passed through the fields and climbed the hill I felt that ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... echoes call! Oh haste, unfold the hospitable hall! That hall, where once, in antiquated state, The chair of justice held the grave debate. Now stain'd with dews, with cobwebs darkly hung, Oft has its roof with peals of rapture rung; When round yon ample board, in due degree, We sweeten'd every meal with social glee. The heart's light laugh pursued the circling jest; And all was sunshine in each little breast. 'Twas here we chas'd ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... doubt, darling?" I murmured, holding her against my breast; and in my rapture almost forgetting that this angelic affection she lavished on me would ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... pickaninny, dressed in an old piece of sacking, standing in the open space between the hollyhock rows, his body rocking automatically, his blind face lifted to the sun and wearing an expression of idiotic rapture. Often she was tempted to tell Martha that the child must be kept at home, but somehow the memory of his foolish, happy face deterred her. She remembered that his sense of hearing was nearly ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... more than sweetest, if not a liberty," exclaimed the housemaid, in a rapture, "your Bella could trust you anywhere, being so steady, and so answerable. The oldest head in this house (me and Cook says), but for its bright hair, is Miss Kimmeens. But no, I will not leave you; for you ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... open a profane play or poem; and my mother had no longer the opportunity to hear me read poetry as formerly. I found, however, in her dressing-room, where I slept at one time, some odd volumes of Shakespeare; nor can I easily forget the rapture with which I sat up in my shirt reading them by the light of a fire in her apartment, until the bustle of the family rising from supper warned me that it was time to creep back to my bed, where I was supposed to have been safely deposited since 9 o'clock." This is a suggestive, as well as ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... universal costume of the Singhalese was the cotton "comboy," worn only on the lower half of the body[2], their grains were sesamum and rice; their food the latter with milk and flesh-meat; and their drink coco-nut toddy, which Marco calls "wine drawn from the trees." He dwells with rapture on the gems and costly stones, and, above all, on the great ruby, a span long, for which Kubla Khan offered the value of a city. With singular truth he says, "the people are averse to a military life, abject and timid, and when they have ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... history or language or architecture or anything else, is best pleased when he gets most completely out of the reach of his own countrymen. The first stage out of the beaten track of tourists is a moment of rapture. For it is the tourists who do the mischief; the residents are a comparatively harmless folk. A colony of English settled down in a town and its neighbourhood do very little to spoil the natives among whom they live. For the very reason that they are residents and not tourists, ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... many ways of saying 'Ah!' You can put joy, amazement, rapture into it; you can also make it sound as if it were a reply to a remark on the weather. James Boyd made it sound just like that. His hair was rumpled, his brow contracted, and his manner absent. The impression he gave Elizabeth was that he had ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... wholesome things on your birthday. And—oh, I say!" Here he relapsed into silence, as the first slice dropped from the side of the great cake, revealing depth upon depth of richness. The two mothers shuddered slightly, and exchanged deploring smiles; but Hugh clasped his hands in rapture, and lifted up his voice ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... outpouring. The constantly enforced recollection that whatever he wrote would be subject to the chilling glance of the eye of Fosdick mater was of itself a check upon the flow. To write a love letter to Madeline had hitherto been a joy, a rapture, to fill pages and pages a delight. Now, somehow, these pages were hard to fill. Omitting the very things you were dying to say, the precious, the intimate things—what was there left? He and she had, at ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... exhaust its possibilities of sensation. At the best, such moments will be few amid the fateful succession of common cares, of lassitudes, of disillusions. Emily had gone deep enough in thought already to understand this; in her rapture there was no want of discerning consciousness. If this morning were to be unique in her life, she would have gained from it all that it had to give. Those subtle fears, spiritual misgivings, which lurked behind her perceptions would again have their day, for it was only by striving that ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... to me. I thought I had composed every thing so completely according to her form, her nature, her manner, and her mind, that I could not refrain from wishing that it were so in reality, and lost myself in rapture at the mere thought that something similar could be sent from her to me. Thus I mystified myself, while I intended to impose upon another; and much joy and much trouble was yet to arise out of the affair. When I was once more summoned, I had finished, promised to come, and did not fail ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... in the moment of his fiercest straining, with the throb of all his being he bursts the barrier, he rends the veil; and infinite passion rolls in in floods upon him, he clutches all existence in his arms; and from his lips there bursts a mad frenzied shout of rapture—that makes his torturers stand ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... reading there, dear friend, the names of those great qualities which have been inherited by you, with queenly beauty thrown in, then it was that a sudden sinking inside robbed your lover of his powers of speech. And how could I see the loveliness of your cousins when my eyes were dwelling with rapture upon the stately form of her I trust to call my own? Be mine, dear friend, for I love you and hope to marry you, to part neither here ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... secure Hogarth's conviction, two doctors had examined this Rachel Oppenheimer, and given the legal certificates by means of which Frankl had put away Margaret; and she during two years of sanity in an atmosphere of lunacy had screamed for pity, till one morning she had shewed the stare, the unworldly rapture, and had started ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... engagement and his bitter judgment, Miss Matoaca had managed to retain her place in his memory. As I looked at him, sitting there like a wounded eagle, huddled under his fur rug, a feeling of thanksgiving that was almost one of rapture swelled in my heart. If I had a plain name, I had also a clean life to offer the woman I loved. When I remembered the strong, pure line of her features, her broad, intelligent brow, her clear, unswerving gaze, I told myself that whatever ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... shadowy hairs, Sweet Maid of Night! to Cynthia's sober beams Glows thy warm cheek, thy polish'd bosom gleams. In crowds around thee gaze the admiring swains, 30 And guard in silence the enchanted plains; Drop the still tear, or breathe the impassion'd sigh, And drink inebriate rapture from thine eye. Thus, when old Needwood's hoary scenes the Night Paints with blue shadow, and with milky light; 35 Where MUNDY pour'd, the listening nymphs among, Loud to the echoing vales his parting song; With measured step the Fairy Sovereign treads, Shakes her high ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... drink for rapture, The delirium to drain, All my fellows drank in plenty At the Three Score Inns and Twenty From the mountains to the main! Give me the old drink for rapture, The ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... Angelic powers Lightens the dusk within The holy of holies, be it thine to win Rare vistas of white light, Half parted lips through which the Infinite Murmurs her ancient story, Harkening to whom the wandering planets hoary Waken primeval fires, With deeper rapture in celestial choirs Breathe, and with fleeter motion Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean. So hearken thou like these, Intent on her, mounting by slow degrees, Until thy song's elation Echoes ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... silence at last. Everychild's eyes were filled with a kind of fearful rapture. But Aladdin's confidence was unshaken. He smiled a little mockingly, as if he were greatly enjoying ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... Carrier was in a state of perfect rapture; and you may be sure Dot was likewise; and you may be sure they all were, inclusive of Miss Slowboy, who wept copiously for joy, and, wishing to include her young charge in the general interchange of congratulations, handed round the ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Scripture has told, Ye Benedicks! hear me, and listen with rapture; If a glimpse of redemption you wish to behold, Of St. MATT.—read the second ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... committed to any one who can inform us of some absorbing fact, and who knows how to make the information valuable. It did not occur to the Regent to punish the witch for her crimes; he thought rather of his older friends' rapture when they talked of the singer Beki's songs and beauty. He looked at the woman, and a cold shiver ran through ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stronger nerves. He now no longer thought his cousin without them, but he thought she knew how to control them; in fact, they had grown to love each other with that certain kind of cousinly affection which one often sees, and which is very true and lifelong, but has not the rapture, the intensity, nor the anguish, which belong to really ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... we, so rich in rapture, fear an end, That ghastly thought would drink up all our joy; And quite ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... keen and practised as that of any modern observer. He enjoys with rapture the panoramic splendor of the view from the summit of the Alban hills—from the Monte Cavo—whence he could see the shores of St. Peter from Terracina and the promontory of Circe as far as Monte Argentaro, and the wide expanse of country round about, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... smile? what means that shiver? The landlord's limbs with rapture quiver, And triumph brightens up his face, His finger yet shall win the race; The clock is on the stroke of nine, And up he starts,—"'Tis mine! 'tis mine!" "What do ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... his mental eye the Four Last Things will have the true earnestness, the horror or the rapture, of one who witnesses a conflagration, or discerns some rich and sublime prospect of natural scenery. His countenance, his manner, his voice, speak for him, in proportion as his view has been vivid and minute. The ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... rapture, and dwelt on thy charms, As link'd in Love's fetters we wander'd each day; And each night I have sought a new life in thy arms, And sigh'd that our union could last not ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... without for the sake of principle was ever rapture to the purist. Sissy placed the pangs of desire to the credit side of Crosby's account; this was only one thing more she owed her victim. In fact, as the party started on, so engaged was she in inventing and perfecting tortures for him that she followed the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... place!" cried Mrs. Dollond in a rapture; "I suppose Monaco is behind that cape. I wish we could see it. And it would not look a bit wicked from here. I declare, I should like ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... little Phillis worthy of you? You give me the greatest joy that I can ever know, of which I have only dreamed in telling myself that it would be folly to hope to have it realized. But just that gives me the strength to beg you to reflect, and to consider whether you will ever regret this moment of rapture ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Birthday-song my heart would sing Its rapture to express; My Father's son must be a king, And share ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... that my white body is a perfect white flower, my hair a shining gold flower, my mouth a fragrant scarlet flower, and my eyes a sacred blue flower, surpassing all others in loveliness. And when I have satisfied him, and the tempest in his blood has abated, then for the rapture he has had I have mine, when, ashamed at his violence, as if it had been an insult to me, he covers his face with my hair and sheds tears of love and contrition on my breasts. O nothing can ever disunite ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... cov'ring, bright with splendid ore, Shall cheat the sight with empty show no more; But lead us inward to those golden mines, Where all thy soul in native lustre shines. So when the eye surveys some lovely fair, With bloom of beauty, graced with shape and air, How is the rapture heightened when we find The form excelled by her ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... all—"I am a man, and you are no more; and why should I not act and speak like one?"—it was remarked, however, that he had not learnt, or did not desire, to conceal his emotions—that he commended with more rapture than was courteous, and contradicted with more bluntness than was accounted polite. It was thus with him in the company of men: when woman approached, his look altered, his eye beamed milder; all that ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... impression had been made she found that it soon disappeared. In ordinary life the people were volatile, quick as fire to resent, and as quick to forgive and forget, and they were the same in regard to higher things. They went into rapture over the Gospel, prayed aloud, clasped their hands, shed tears, and then went back to their drinking, sacrificing, and quarrelling. They kept to all the old ways, in case they might miss the right one. "Yes, Ma," they would say, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... heard that he might call upon the Vicomtesse, his rapture at so soon obtaining the ardently longed-for good fortune was mingled with singular embarrassment. How was he to contrive a ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... could equal the angelic radiance of his smile as he inquired after the unfortunate reporter, (whom, as a piece of private scandal, I should tell you that he was himself supposed to have murdered, in a rapture of creative art:) the answer was, with roars of laughter, from the under-sheriff of our county—"Non est inventus." Toad-in-the-hole laughed outrageously at this: in fact, we all thought he was choking; and, at the earnest request of the company, a musical composer furnished ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... rage had rapture of delight And knew not how he grieved us who stood near And saw the madding tempest ruining him. But now 'tis over and he breathes anew, The counterblast of sorrow shakes his soul, Whilst our affliction vexeth as before, Have we not double for our ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... describes the great atonement work of Jesus Christ, by which we are cleansed from all sin and made a royal, kingly priesthood unto God even in this world. Every soul that has received the blessed experience John here describes will be able to appreciate the unbounded rapture the beloved apostle felt in the contemplation of this wonderful theme of redemption that caused him to ascribe to God, its author, "glory and dominion ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... waters of the great lake, with its towers and temples white and gleaming, and behind it the royal hill of Chapoltepec, the residence of the Mexican kings, crowned with the very same gigantic cypress trees which to this day fling their broad shadows across the land. The Spaniards gazed in rapture over the gay scene, exclaiming, 'It is the promised land!' but presently the evidences of a power and civilisation so far superior to anything they had yet encountered disheartened the more timid among them, they shrank from the unequal contest, and begged ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the charming picture presented by the western side of the island—which seemed to throw all hands down on deck into ecstasies of delight, judging from the continuous exclamations of rapture that reached me from below as fresh beauties swung into view with the progress of the ship—it became apparent that the barrier reef existed only on the eastern side of the island; but the fringing ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... to meet! Till then I fain would sleep; My longings and my thoughts to steep In Lethe's waters dark and deep. My loved one I again shall see, There's rapture in the thought! In the hope tomorrow of thee, My darling, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... A mute ecstasy of hope transfigured her face; a heavenly smile played serenely on her lips. She was among us, and yet apart from us. In the still light of evening, shining in on her from the window, she stood absorbed in her own rapture—the silent creature of another sphere! There was a moment when she overcame me with admiration, and another moment when she overcame me with fear. Both the men felt it. Both signed to me to ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... incipient love for Perigal were forgotten; the full, flowing current of her passion disregarded the trifling obstacles which had once sought to obstruct its progress. Life, nature, the aspect of things took on the abnormally adorable hues of those who love and are beloved. Such was the rapture in her heart, that days, hours, moments were all too fleeting for the enjoyment of her newborn felicity. The radiant happiness which welled within her, in seemingly inexhaustible volume, appeared to fill the universe. Often, with small success, she would ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... disturbed with these thoughts, at length reached Bussorah, where his subjects made extraordinary rejoicings for his return. He went directly to give an account of his journey to his mother, who was in a rapture to hear that he had obtained the ninth statue. "Let us go, my son," said she, "let us go and see it, for it is certainly in the subterraneous chamber, since the sultan of the genii told you you should find it there." The young sultan ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... heart melts to it in a grateful tenderness for the wide, high, blue sky, the flood of white light, the joy of the flocking birds, and the transport of the buds which you can all but hear bursting in an eager rapture. It is a sudden glut of delight, a great, wholesale emotion of pure joy, filling the soul to overflowing, which the more scrupulously adjusted meteorology of England is incapable of at least so instantly imparting. Our weather is of public largeness and universal application, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... captured sheet Eustace had exposed, as it were, the very secret mechanics of his passion. There were written tentative rhymes, one under another, as "Kate—mate—Fate—late"—and eke an unblushing "sate." Also had he, in the frenzy of his poetic rapture, divined and indicated the technical affinities existing among words like "bliss," "kiss," ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... popular writer, who first came into notice by dint of naming a book of essays, "Is Life worth Living?" gave us not long ago a very sweet description of an English country town; and he worked himself up to quite a moving pitch of rapture as he described the admirable social arrangements which may be perceived on a market-day. This enthusiast tells us how the members of the great county families drive in to do their shopping. The stately great horses ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... showers, however, for my proposal that they should accompany us was received with rapture; and, taking their dolls into their arms, they abandoned the perambulators to the care of mammy, who hobbled towards home with them. This bunion was mammy's choice grievance, and she doubtless suffered much from it; ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... so intense that it was almost rapture, made her blood flow faster. He was coming in answer to her desperate summons. He would be with her that very day. She was sure that he would tell her what ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... have I known to be but blissful minutes to him in the cricket-field! How many winter days have I seen him, standing blue-nosed, in the snow and east wind, looking at the boys going down the long slide, and clapping his worsted gloves in rapture! ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... fear His judgment, but I weep For him who slew the lily with a kiss Too full of passion's rapture; if I speak In that transcendent moment when I stand A sinful woman at the bar of God To hear my sentence, I shall answer still: "I loved him; that was all that I could do; I love him; that is all that ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... it is a mistake to feel compassion for persons like Hester, for if they have many evil days and weeks in their usually short lives, they have also moments of sheer bliss, hours of awed contemplation and of exquisite rapture which, possibly, in the long run, equal the more solid joys of a good income and a good digestion, nay, even the perennial glow of that happiest of happy temperaments which limits the nature of others by its own, which sees no uncomfortable difference between a moral and a legal right, and believes ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... satisfied and pleased from her private interview with De Lacy, the joy on the part of the Constable rose to a higher pitch of rapture than he was in the habit of feeling or expressing; and it was augmented by a visit of the leeches who attended his nephew, from whom he received a minute and particular account of his present disorder, with every assurance of a ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Appiani. At an earlier period this garden had been well known to all of them, as it had been a sort of public promenade, and under its shady walks had many a tender couple exchanged their first vows and experienced the rapture of the first kiss of love. But for the four last years all this had been changed; a rich stranger had come and offered to the impoverished old Count Appiani a large sum for this garden with its decaying villa, and the count had, notwithstanding ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... little creature throwing his arms about the trunk of a big tree, and running round and round it, clasping it. This seemed to make him quite inexpressibly happy. His face lit up and beamed with that inner beatitude blind people show—a kind of rapture shining over it, as though nothing could be more altogether delightful. This little boy had the small pox at eight months, and has never been able to see since. He looks sturdy, and may live to be of any age—doomed always, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... threw A chain o'er all she did; that is, a chain Was thrown as 't were about the neck of you,— And Rapture's self will seem almost a pain With aught which looks like despotism in view; Our souls at least are free, and 't is in vain We would against them make the flesh obey— The spirit in the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... queer little cry—half defiance, half appeal—a quick dart, a long, undulating glide—merged herself into the dagger-blade, the nightingale, the grim mountain fortress, the gay mocking brook, all the love, all the rapture, all the ghastly fatalism of ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... restraint vanished and her airy gaiety again welled forth with all its wonted fervor. Once, shortly after Carmen had been enrolled, Harris took her to a concert by the New York Symphony Orchestra. But in the midst of the program, after sitting in silent rapture, the girl suddenly burst into tears and begged to be taken out. "I couldn't stand it!" she sobbed as, outside the door, she hid her tear-stained face in his coat; "I just couldn't! It was heavenly! Oh, it was God that we heard—it was God!" And the astonished fellow respected this sudden outburst ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... gaunt against the light from the window behind him, and though Coryndon could not see his face, he knew that it was lighted with a great rapture of self-denial and ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... patience. And, above all, it needs a resolute determination never on any account whatever to be soured by disappointment. When I am tempted to wind up my line, and give the whole thing up in despair, I revive my flagging enthusiasm by recalling the rapture of my earlier catches. What angler ever forgets the wild transport of landing his first salmon? What minister ever forgets the spot on which he knelt with his first convert? In the long and tedious hours when the waiting is weary, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the haunted hill Touched with the morn's inviolate gleam. All fearfully wild heart and will Drank rapture in the face of ill! Our spirits thrilled to answer thrill, And trembled in ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... with increasing fear. How little she knew the real man! Could it be possible that this lonely, unlettered boy of the streets of lower New York, starved and stunted in childhood, had within him the soul of a great poet? How else could she explain the sudden rapture over the threatening silences and shadows of these mountain gorges which had depressed her? And yet his utter indifference to the glories of beautiful waters, his blindness at noon before the most wonderful panorama ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... warrant the hope of peace and tranquillity. The young Doctor went to her for counsel in the case of a hysteric girl possessed with the idea that she was a born poetess, and covering whole pages of foolscap with senseless outbursts, which she wrote in paroxysms of wild excitement, and read with a rapture of self-admiration which there was nothing in her verses to justify or account for. How sweetly Number Five dealt with that poor deluded sister in her talk with the Doctor! "Yes," she said to him, "nothing can be fuller of vanity, self-worship, and self-deception. But we must be ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Rapture of seraphs bright thou art, Yet kindlest in the human heart The fluid soul's upbreathed emotion, Whose light shines clear as ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... art happy! thou art blessed indeed! Thou lovest, where all love. Thou may'st, unblamed Pour forth thy rapture, and thine inmost heart, Fearless discover to the gaze of man! Thy country's triumph is thy lover's too. The vast, innumerable multitudes, Who, rolling onward, crowd within these walls, Participate thy joy, they hallow it; Thee they salute, for thee they twine the wreath, Thou art a portion of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... cried Polly, clasping her hands in rapture; "mammy, can't I take off this horrid bandage, ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... could you? I'm going to be ever so happy." She drew a long breath of rapture. "It's just like a novelette," she said again fervently. The Beggar Man frowned. He let the window down with a run; the rain ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... that was life, life that was love, A tenure of breath at your lips' decree, A passion to stand as your thoughts approve, A rapture to fall ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... path which led to the porch, intending to tell them of these wonderful blooms, when I saw the two of them on the steps, standing near together, and Danvers's arms were around the girl he loved, and he was looking down into her eyes with rapture in his fond, handsome face, and I heard ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... well-remembered scenes. I say some, for naturally it would be impossible, even with the vastly improved roads of to-day, for my automobile to penetrate everywhere I wandered afoot. Nor would I wish it to; a few disappointments, a few failures to recapture something of that first fine careless rapture, would instill a lyric melancholy; but too many would make one morbid.... Well, then: at Nant, in those old days, I once had a famous dinner; and naturally, returning, I must try to duplicate it, even though it meant going on to Millau ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... enjoy my picture. Now to lock the door, and trim the lamp, and place it up against a pile of books, and sit down before it in silent rapture, like a devotee before the portrait of his patron saint. Now I can gaze, unreproved, into those eyes, and fancy they are hers. Now press my lips, unforbidden, upon that exquisite mouth, and believe it warm. Ah, will her eyes ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... window arrested him. There, open to the gaze of every pedestrian, stood a volume of which the sight made him thrill with rapture; a finely illustrated folio, a treatise on the Cathedrals of France. Five guineas was the price it bore. A moment's lingering, restrained by some ignoble spirit of thrift which the wine had not utterly overcome, and he entered the shop. He purchased the volume. It would have pleased ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... showed him into this room, and at once began to explain that the furniture was better than it looked, was hardly prepared for the rapture with which he stared out of the window. His boyhood had been spent in a sooty Lancashire town, and to him the green garden, the quay-door, the barque, and the stilly water, seemed to ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... seeming interminable struggle through the drifts in the bottom of the coulee, at last a misty, pinkish aura blushed in the snowy night. It was Rina's fire—warmth and shelter! and before it a little animal was roasting on a spit. Garth's senses slipped away in rapture at the smell it ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... two were Maying" Charles Kingsley For He Had Great Possessions Richard Middleton Windle-straws Edward Dowden Jessie Thomas Edward Brown The Chess-board Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Aux Italiens Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Song, "I saw the day's white rapture" Charles Hanson Towne The Lonely Road Kenneth Rand Evensong Ridgely Torrence The Nymph's Song to Hylas William Morris No and Yes Thomas Ashe Love in Dreams John Addington Symonds "A Little While I fain would Linger Yet" Paul Hamilton Hayne Song, "I made another garden, yea" Arthur O'Shaughnessy ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... salad like a drunken god. He doubles like the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nobleman; few princes have equalled him in virtuous worth. Brave, honourable, pious (though Protestant; but this belief is probably your own, and is held by many of those most valuable to me, your honoured brother among them), a faithful and obedient son, a leader beloved to rapture by his soldiers. If more could be to say, I would hasten to cry it aloud. You tell me, with noble frankness, he is a pretender for the hand of my beloved Margarita; already it has been my happiness to be aware of it. Senor Montfort, to see these two admirable ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... The wood had been silent—smitten with that deep stillness which comes when a storm-cloud darkens a forest, and the wild creatures lose heart and are afraid; but now all the birds burst forth into song, and the joy, the rapture, the ecstasy of it was beyond belief; and was so eloquent and so moving, withal, that it was plain it was an act of worship. With the first note of those birds Joan cast herself upon her knees, and bent her head low and crossed her ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... stamped in time and repeated the chorus which, as far as I could hear, sounded like "At am Vaun! At am Vaun!" frequently repeated with prodigious enthusiasm. In another I could make out no intelligible sound but "Bar! bar! bar!" But the boatman's dark eyes were ready to start out of his head with rapture as he sung and stamped, and shook the handkerchief on each side, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... great ideas buzzing in Roger's head, which would never have been there save for the war. At present he is chiefly conscious of his clothes. His mother embraces him with cries of rapture, while Mr. Torrance surveys him quizzically over the paper; and Emma, rushing to the piano, which is of such an old-fashioned kind that it can also be used as a sideboard, plays ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... on her silent majestic course towards the destined anchorage; and as I stood upon the quarter deck, contemplating the magnificent objects that presented themselves wherever I turned my sight, I felt all those thrilling emotions of rapture and delight which such scenes are calculated to inspire, and which constitute a sort of oasis in the memory of those who have experienced them. Here nature and art have gone hand in hand, assisting each other, and scattering ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the understanding, that I might UNDERSTAND the scriptures, was the mighty miracle of grace and truth. There I lay, still as death, my hands still folded over nay eyes, my very soul basking in the pure, calm, holy light, that streamed into it through the appointed channel of God's word. Rapture was not what I felt; excitement, enthusiasm, agitation, there was none. I was like a person long enclosed in a dark dungeon, the walls of which had now fallen down, and I looked round on a sunny landscape of calm and glorious beauty. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Harcourt, to whom I made known my real condition, that he would everywhere state the truth. News like this flies like wildfire; there were too many whom, perhaps, when under the patronage of Major Carbonnell, and the universal rapture from my supposed wealth, I had treated with hauteur, glad to receive the intelligence, and spread it far and wide. My imposition, as they pleased to term it, was the theme of every party, and many ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... work of the moment in that hour of putting to sea, and Mac, perched high on the roof of the wireless cabin, watched it with as much pride and rapture as might an emperor reviewing the grandest of fleets. In single line-ahead, the fourteen great grey ships, their smoke trailing away over the port quarter before a fresh wind, passed down the wild rocky gap of the entrance. The grey seas rolled ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... rapture, of infinite relief and infinite content, she sank upon his doorstep, clasped his knees, and laid her beautiful head down prone on his feet. Only ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... beautiful; he had been as eager as Gabriella to obliterate all memory of the difference between them, though, of course, after his yielding that supreme point she had felt that she must give up everything else—and the giving up had been rapture. He had shown not the faintest disposition to crow over her when at last, after consulting Mrs. Carr, she had told him that her mother really preferred to stay with Jane until summer, though he had remarked with evident relief: "Then we'll put off looking for an apartment. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... streets. The boom of cannon told to the heavens that some great event, full of glory and of blessing, was just happily born into the history of the world. Strains of triumphant music at once expressed and stirred afresh the rapture which the new fruition of a deferred and doubting hope had kindled in myriad breasts. Rejoicing multitudes swarmed before the palace gate, and with congratulatory shouts compelled the presence of the Nation's Head. He stood before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... through Life portray! New scenes of Wisdom may each step display, 10 And Knowledge open as my days advance! Till what time Death shall pour the undarken'd ray, My eye shall dart thro' infinite expanse, And thought suspended lie in Rapture's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... CHEPSTOWE. We note in these outpourings of dramatic passion an audacity, an energy, an enthusiasm, that are calculated to shake Peckham Rye to its centre, and make Balham tremble in its ridiculous carpet slippers. Who—to take only one example—but Mr. CHEPSTOWE or MARLOWE could have written thus of 'Rapture'?— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... sad to me when I see her surround' by your yo'ng captains, your nobles, your rattles, your beaux—ha, ha!—and I mus' hol' far aloof. It is sad for me—but oh, jus' to watch her and to wonder! Strange it is, but I have almos' cry out with rapture at a look I have see' her give another man, so beautiful it was, so tender, so dazzling of the eyes and so mirthful of the lips. Ah, divine coquetry! A look for another, ah-i-me! for many others; and even to you, one day, a rose, while I—I, monsieur, could not even be so blessed ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... after the ceremony was over, Blanka shot a glance of scrutiny from beneath her veil at the young man by her side. His face wore its wonted look of seriousness, the utter opposite of careless indifference, but at the same time wholly unlike the devout rapture of a believer. In fact, his expression betrayed but too clearly that his thoughts were little occupied with ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... brings the lump into your throat; the smile fails from your lip; you pay the tribute of genuine pity and awe. I will not pretend that I was so much moved by the meeting in heaven of a son and father: the spirit of the son in a cutaway, with a derby hat in his hand, gazing with rapture into the face of the father's spirit in a long sack-coat holding his marble bowler elegantly away from his side, if I remember rightly. But here the fact wanted the basis of simplicity so strong in the other scene; in the mixture of the real and the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... citizens crowded in the train of him and his escort, there might be seen a visible difference between those who came with the premeditated intention of tumult, and the greater part, who, like the multitude of every great city, thrust each other and shout for rapture on account of any cause for which a crowd may be collected together. The hope of the conspirators was lodged chiefly in the Immortal Guards, who were levied principally for the defence of Constantinople, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... among men is not so much in their nature and intrinsic power, as in the faculty of communication. Some have the capacity of uttering and embodying in words their thoughts. All men, more or less, feel those thoughts. The glory of genius and the rapture of virtue, when rightly revealed, are diffused and shared among unnumbered minds. When eloquence and poetry speak; when those glorious arts, statuary, painting, and music, take audible or visible shape; when patriotism, charity, and virtue speak with a thrilling ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... with an air of kindness, understanding from the black I had been shipwrecked. As the old man was examining my sores, he discovered on my arm a handsome impression of the Crucifix that had been pricked in with indelible ink, in the East Indies some years before, which he kissed with apparent rapture, saying to me, "Anglois very much of the christian," supposing me to be a Roman Catholic.—This drew around me all the members of the family, who kneeled in succession, kissing the image and manifesting their sensibility by tears, at the sufferings which they perceived by my sores and emaciated ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... again into misty pinks, like tints from a spring sunrise over the ocean—a sunrise that steals the gray mists and snatches up the pearly foam, to paint its unnamed colors on an expectant sky. "Oh, it must be too wonderful to describe," said Cleo, enthused to rapture. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... cried out in sudden rapture. "What a beautiful horse. Why, he looks almost enough like Firefly to be his brother. Where did you get him? What in the world are you going to do ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... till the blue that overskied us Swooned with passion, though the footing seemed sedate; And the mountains, heaving mighty hearts beside us, Sighed a rapture in a shadow, to dilate, And touch the ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... realized that I was standing in front of my shaving mirror, one hand clasping a collar, the other a tie, and that the glass reflected an expression positively disgusting in its rapture. I chucked the collar into a corner and sat down on the edge of the bed to think it out. At the end of twenty minutes I was where I had started in. But my mind was made up. At least she should not find me a coward. I would do exactly ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... as like his grandfather as two splits of a pea!" cried Head-nurse in rapture, and then she went to the tent door ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... and yet I have had all of life. Why, men have lived to see a hundred years, Who have not known the rapture, joy, and strife Of my brief youth, its passion ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox |
