"Sprite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Margaret dismissed school ten minutes early and went back with them to the Tanners' to make a hurried change in her dress and pick up her suit-case, which was already packed. As they rode away from the school-house Margaret looked back and saw Rosa Rogers posing in one of her sprite dances in the school-yard, saw her kiss her hand laughingly toward their party, and saw the flutter of a handkerchief in young Forsythe's hand. It was all very general and elusive, a passing bit of fun, but ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... book on my thumb and sat there silent and without moving for a long time. I was stunned by the clearness of vision the verse had imparted to me. It was illumination. It was like a bolt of God's lightning in the Pit. They would keep Love, the fickle sprite, the forerunner of young life—young life that is imperative ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... shoulder-comrade in stress of fight when warriors clashed and we warded our heads, hewed the helm-boars; hero famed should be every earl as Aeschere was! But here in Heorot a hand hath slain him of wandering death-sprite. I wot not whither, {20a} proud of the prey, her path she took, fain of her fill. The feud she avenged that yesternight, unyieldingly, Grendel in grimmest grasp thou killedst, — seeing how long these liegemen mine ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... kind-hearted doctor had broken the news to the sorrowing family, almost the first thought of each was, How would she bear it? How would she, the little restless sprite, always flitting about here and there, endure perhaps a long life of crippled helplessness? And oh! how were they to tell her of the sad future, stretching far into the coming years? It was all very well to waive her ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... most indisputably true that Scott has not by any means truly represented Euphuism, is good and amusing in itself; while there are those who boldly like the White Lady personally. She is more futile than a sprite beseems; but ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... A fairy or water-sprite that resides in the neighbourhood of the Orkneys is popularly known as Tangie, so-called from tang,, the seaweed with which he is covered. Occasionally he makes his appearance as a little horse, and at other times as ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Isabel whom Clara last remembered with her baby in her lap, beautiful and almost as inanimate as a statue? There was scarcely more change from the long-frocked infant to the bustling important sprite, than from that fair piece of still life to the active house-mother. Unruffled grace was innate; every movement had a lofty, placid deliberation and simplicity, that made her like a disguised princess; and though her beauty was a little worn, what it had lost ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... can be to the Ariel in THE TEMPEST. No other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with a sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad-cap sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads—'Lord, what fools these mortals be!' Ariel cleaves the air, and executes his mission with the zeal of a winged messenger; Puck is borne along on his ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the rising sun the day reveal'd, Scarce had his heat the pearly dews dispell'd, When from the woods there bolts, before our sight, Somewhat betwixt a mortal and a sprite, So thin, so ghastly meager, and so wan, So bare of flesh, he scarce resembled man. This thing, all tatter'd, seem'd from far t' implore Our pious aid, and pointed to the shore. We look behind, then view his shaggy beard; His clothes were tagg'd with thorns, and filth his limbs ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... rise twenty-five?" cried Erma. She was running about excitedly like a water-sprite. Her red sweater gleamed in the sullen gray light. The rain was trickling from her Tam-o-Shanter; but she was oblivious of all, save ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... Rarely did the arch sprite Adventure need to beckon twice to Rudolf Steiner, his true follower. But twice it had been done, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... electricity cannot be told, for it seems impossible to set limits to the future conquests of the latter, which is probably destined to perform miracles un-dreamt of to-day, perhaps coupled in some unthought-of way, with radium, the youngest sprite of the weird, uncanny tribe of mysterious agents. Uranium, the supposed basis of the latest discovery, Radium, has only one-millionth part of the heat of the latter. The slow-moving earth takes twenty-four hours to turn upon its axis. Radium ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... his twentieth birthday, and he considered it disgraceful that he had never visited the "Big City," as New York was always known at Sanford. Norry met him at Grand Central, a livelier and more robust Norry than Hugh had ever seen. The boy actually seemed like a boy and not a sprite; his cheeks were tanned almost brown, and his gray eyes danced with excitement when he spotted Hugh in ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... cried the man, and the obedient horses stood still. "I see well enough," said he, "what ails the beast. When first I came through these parts my horses were just as troublesome; because there is a wicked water-sprite living hard by, who takes delight in making them play tricks. But I know a charm for this; if you will give me leave to whisper it in your horse's ear, you will see him as quiet as mine yonder in a moment."—"Try your charm, if it will do any good!" ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... have seen,[85] Nashe confounds elves with fairies in deriving all alike from fauns and dryads. Robin is "mad-merry," "jocund and facetious," "a cozening idle friar or some such rogue" [in origin], and so forth—simply described by Shakespeare as a "shrewd and knavish sprite." The forms of mischief in which he delights are described in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. i. 33-57, and all these "gests" may be found in the contemporary Robin Goodfellow literature;[86] though we have observed that some of the functions attributed to Queen ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... chestnut from its roost blown down, Or last year's birds' nests scattered on the lea, Or some stale scandal rampant in the town— Sees everywhere the petty work of night, Of sneaking winds and cunning, coward rats, Of hooting owls, of bugaboo and sprite, Of roaches, wolves, and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... heart, and knit with tenderest ties To those she loves, and, elsewise, otherwise; For such a sprite, whose birthplace is the skies, Of manly beauty blent with woman's grace, No mortal pen, though fain, can ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and Meta was skipping about like a sprite finding a basket for the flowers—she had another shake of the hand, another grateful smile, and "thank you," from the doctor; and then, as the carriage disappeared, Mrs. Larpent exclaimed, "What a very ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... changed into the present is too deep for explanation. Perhaps Annie left a door or window open—such neglect fitting with her other heedlessness—and notwithstanding this means of entry, it was found in the morning that no sprite or ooph had got in to pinch the noses of the sleepers. At least, there was no evidence of such a visitation, unless the snoring that abounded all the night did proceed from the pinching of the nose ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... many shapes as Prospero's busy sprite. I was once waiting for a train in a small Missouri town, where everybody turns out to "see the keers come in." A big, blustering fellow, well filled with booze, was making himself generally obnoxious, and the village constable ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a restless, wayward sprite, So young, so tender, and so fair, I dare not trust thee from my sight, Nor let thee breathe the common air! Home to my heart, then, quickly flee, It is the only place ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... paltry, blackguard sprite, Condemn'd to drudgery in the night; Thou hast no work to do in the house, Nor halfpenny ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... arises from the dark, Where it fell back in silence when you went To seaward, and a sprite malevolent Sat laughing in the white sails ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he That frights the maidens of the villagery; Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern, And bootless make the breathless housewife churn; And sometime make the drink to ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... widow machree,— But you're keeping some poor fellow out in the cowld, Och hone! widow machree! With such sins on your head, Sure your peace would be fled; Could you sleep in your bed Without thinking to see Some ghost or some sprite, That would wake you each night, Crying "Och hone! ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in the middle of civilisation—and yet still lives as a natural power in the people—is represented, on the whole, in pigmy proportions in the south. Here they have a little terror of small hobgoblins, good-natured fairies, a love-sick river-sprite, and so forth, beings who with us in the north, almost go about our houses like superstition's tame domestic animals. You have there, too, good-natured elves, who carry on their peaceful boating and coasting trade invisibly among the people. ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... enjoyment should breed annoy! Tryntje grew fickle or cold or coy; Rambout, possessed of a jealous sprite, Scowled like the sky on a stormy night, Snarled a good-bye from his sullen throat, Blustered away to his tugging boat. After him hastened Jacobus Horn: "Stay with us, Rambout, till Monday morn. Soon in the east will the dawn be gray, Rest from thy ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... more, his coat-tail was respectfully pulled by his attendant sprite with the gooseberry eyes. Mr. Bruff looked where the boy was looking. "Hush!" he ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... sed, whan from the bluie sea The upswol[85] sayle dyd daunce before his eyne; Swefte as the withe, hee toe the beeche dyd flee. 85 And founde his fadre steppeynge from the bryne. Lette thyssen menne, who haveth sprite of loove, Bethyncke untoe hemselves how ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... continue * Whether good or graceless wight: Abstain from all reproaching, * An he joy or vex thy sprite: Seest not that what thou lovest * And what hatest go unite? That joys of longer life-tide * Ever fade with hair turned white? That thorns on branches growing * For the plucks fruit catch thy sight? Who never hath done evil,* Doing good for sole delight? When tried the sons of worldli-* ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... sprite from the rug, and stopped her mouth with—no, it wasn't with his hand. And I'd rather say no ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... this Lightning-Bug, so is Buffalo Bill. When Cathy first arrived—it was in the forenoon— Buffalo Bill was away, carrying orders to Major Fuller, at Five Forks, up in the Clayton Hills. At mid-afternoon I was at my desk, trying to work, and this sprite had been making it impossible for half an hour. At ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... than the mountains," said the count. "They are haunted by some mysterious sprite, who fairly delights in playing tricks with venturesome people; but 'all's well that ends well.' Before setting out from here you need something to revive you. The rarefied atmosphere of these high regions makes the stomach frightfully hollow. More prudent ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... fairy to appear was Green Feather, an elfin page or messenger, and Reginald made a perfect sprite, in his green suit, and cap ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... be your married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you to ask, thing,—out ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... spoke to Merton's companion. "You change seats a minute with Miss Montague, as if you'd got tired of him—see what I mean? Miss Montague—Miss Montague." The Spanish girl arose, seeming not wholly pleased at this bit of directing. The Montague girl came to the table. She was a blithesome sprite in a salmon-pink dancing frock. Her blonde curls fell low over one eye which she now cocked inquiringly at ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... girls hurried on. With a sister's instinct Hazel never stumbled, but seemed to get over every obstacle like some wood sprite called ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... "crackers" had been a good deal of a misfit in the Vermont community until Janice had found and interested herself in them. Virginia, a black-haired sprite of eleven or twelve, was the leader of the family in all things, although there were several older children. But "Jinny" was born to be ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... follow and judge all the mental processes of an Indian)—yes, though it expressly sweep all his devils away, out of the sick, out of the wind and storm, from off every grave mound, though it leave him no paltry net-tearing or trap-springing sprite to work upon with his conjurations; yet the old superstition dies hard, often crops up when one had thought it perished, and even sometimes maintains itself, sub rosa, side by side with definite, regular ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... sprite, to thy sunny dwelling! Is it where brooklets are softly welling Amid the greenwoods with many a fall, Making the lily-cups musical? Is it where mosses and violets meet, And blend their lives in an union ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... "Now you are safe. Jove! Did you hear that water-sprite gurgling under the boat? It must be ripping to be a water-sprite. Can't you see them, Nan, whisking about down there in couples along the stones? Give me your hand, and we'll dive under ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... a letter to Maurizio Cataneo, dated December 25, 1585, Tasso gives an account of his sprite (folletto): "The little thief has stolen from me many crowns.... He puts all my books topsy-turvy (mi mette tutti i libri sottosopra), opens my chest and steals my keys, so that I can keep nothing." Again, December 30, with regard to his hallucinations he says, "Know then that in addition ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... account of the yech or yâch of Kashmîr see Ind. Ant. vol. xi. pp. 260-261 and footnotes. Shortly, it is a humorous though powerful sprite in the shape of an animal smaller than a cat, of a dark colour, with a white cap on its head. The feet are so small as to be almost invisible. When in this shape it has a peculiar cry—chot, chot, chû-û-ot, ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... hair and beard, whose lower part was a fish; or, rather, each leg a fish." He charmed them so with his singing that they followed him, unconsciously, and reached America. We find in Canada the tale of a dusky Undine, a soulless water sprite, who, through love of a mortal, became human. Some of the beings of the sea were of more than human power and authority,—gods, in fact; barbarian Neptunes. Such was the Pacific god, Rau Raku, who, being entangled in ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... passing cart, Stood the baby boy—the pride and joy Of the man who had broken her heart. Past swooning women and shouting men She fled like a flash of light; With her slender arm she gathered from harm The form of the laughing sprite. ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in fennel stalks Through windy ways is borne and densest night, Till where the outpost shivering sentry walks Beating the minutes into hours, the light Touches the guarded pile and, flaring, balks Beasts padding near and each unvisioned sprite By old dread apprehended; and new gladness Shakes in the village prone ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... When she was seventeen she married Jack Spaulding—he was part genius, but more fool. He was caught by the girl's spirituality and brightness and he couldn't any more comprehend her than a raw-boned Indian could understand a water sprite. To him she was a woman he wanted—nothing more. He got her and when he wasn't lost in the maze of invention he permitted her—Good God!—he permitted her to supply the needs and yearnings of the—the man in him. Poor, little entrapped soul! She struggled between duty ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... handkerchief was enough. Was it a dream? thought the dear old lady. What the ocean had refused, was this sprite who had lived between earth and air to fulfil? Miss Martha bent softly over the bedside, resting her clean glove on the only dirty mattress it had ever touched, and quietly kissed the child. Then she looked up with a radiant face of ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... which doth conspissate active is; Wherefore not matter but some living sprite Of nimble Nature which this lower mist And immense field of Atoms doth excite, And wake into such life as best doth fit With his own self. As we change phantasies The essence of our soul not chang'd a whit, So do these Atoms change their energies Themselves ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... its roots would sever? Thrice happy in whose heart pure truth finds rest. No sacrifice shall he repent of ever! But from a formal, written, sealed attest, As from a spectre, all men shrink forever. The word and spirit die together, Killed by the sight of wax and leather. What wilt thou, evil sprite, from me? Brass, marble, parchment, paper, shall it be? Shall I subscribe with pencil, pen or graver? Among them all ...
— Faust • Goethe
... once bought and brought into the house, will resolve into the shapes desired, and fit themselves to the children's backs, like Cindarella's suit in the nursery tale. Now, I never did claim to be a sprite; and I am not sure that the experience of all housekeepers will bear me out in the opinion that the longer a woman is married, the less she becomes ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot
... happiness is in a mood rather than in a moment. How eagerly we prepare for and pursue the fickle sprite, only to find our preparations and chase giving nothing but dullness, fatigue, and ennui. But then how often without exertion or warning, the sprite is upon us, and tinges the whole atmosphere. So it was at this moment, ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... go out. I'll wait for the sun, or the dry wind, or better still, the frost. Ah, how the biting cold stimulates me! It lashes my lungs with handfuls of needles, and makes a bonbon glace of my charming nose. The rollicking frost-sprite will blow his madness into me. She'll laugh and He too, leaving his scratching-paper, to see me vie with the leaves in bounds, leaps and wild whirlings, resembling a floating flurry of gray smoke rather than a Cat. To the top of a tree! Down again! Then seven turns after my tail! A perilous backward ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... bains should have, but everything is on a Lilliputian scale. The whole place looked like a huge Nueremburg toy. There is a diminutive hotel, in which, properly, the head waiter should be a pigmy and the chambermaid a sprite, and beside it there is a Casino on the smallest possible scale. Everything about the Casino is so harmoniously undersized that it seems a matter of course that the newspapers in the reading-room should ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the water sprite who gave its name to the Elbe River in Germany, the Neck, from whom the Neckar derives its name, and old Father Rhine, with his numerous daughters (tributary streams), the most famous of all the lesser water divinities is the Lorelei, the siren maiden who sits ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Swell me a bowl with lus'y wine, Till I may see the plump Lyoeus swim Above the brim: I drink as I would write, In flowing measure fill'd with flame and sprite. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... is Christmas Eve, and the dance is o'er: "Good night—good night all round!" And the red light streams through the open door, Like a sprite on the snowy ground. And faces peer down the glowing dell From the cottage warm and bright, To see the last of the village belle Who stands in the pale moonlight. And waving her hand with a last farewell, Is lost from their yearning sight. But not alone is that maiden fair Of the pearl-white ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... her, indeed, and sometimes paid her compliments,—the friars as well as the cavaliers, the prebendaries as well as the magistrate,—as a prodigy of beauty, an honor to her Creator, and as a coquettish and mischievous sprite, who innocently enlivened the most melancholy of spirits. "She is a handsome creature," the most virtuous prelate used to say. "She looks like an ancient Greek statue," remarked a learned advocate, who was an Academician ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Oliver Herford, he is an elf, a sprite, a creature of fantasy, who may be—and, I rejoice to say, is—in this world, but certainly is not of it. This Oliver is in the line of Puck and Mercutio and Lamb and Hood and other lovers and makers of nonsense, and it is we who ask for "more." He had just brought out his irresponsible but ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... fourth time. And lo! advancing to me eagerly along the causeway seemed the very sprite of Alastor himself! There was a star upon his forehead, and around his young face there glowed an aureole of gold and roses—to speak figuratively, for the star upon his brow was hope, and the gold and ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... In sum, her countenance you still might know The same it was, not pale, but white as snow, Which on the tops of hills in gentle flakes Falls in a calm, or as a man that takes Desir'ed rest, as if her lovely sight Were closed with sweetest sleep, after the sprite Was gone. If this be that fools call to die, Death seem'd in her exceeding ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... had her innings; not only was she prettily dressed, presenting the most joyous of pictures, as with golden curls flying about her shoulders she flitted in and out of the rooms like a sprite, but she was withal so polite in her greetings, dropping to everyone a little French courtesy when she spoke, and all in her quaint, broken dialect, that everybody fell in love with her at sight. None of the other mothers had such a child, and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... him, choke him, rob him of his senses; he wanted to cry out. Her name was Chiquita. He repeated it over and over in time to his steps. Was there ever such a beautiful name? Was there ever such a ravishing little wood-sprite? And her sweet, hesitating accent that rang in his ears! How could human tongue make such caressing music of the harshest language on the globe? She had called him "Senor Antonio," and invited him to come again to-morrow. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... of guns approached the scene of carnage, accompanied by the inmates of his dwelling, with rueful countenances, illumined by tapers, when the cause of their disquietude was soon discovered. No apparition or sprite forsooth, but a full grown donkey of the Andalusian breed, lay weltering in gore, yet warm with partial life! By timely liberality the valorous Alonzo escaped detection, though the heroic deed is still remembered in merry Valencia, and often cited as an instance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... could I picture thee, a dusky sprite, With Dryad hoofs on Thracian ledges drumming, When day is slipping from the arms of night And all the hushed leaves whisper, "Pan is coming!" And thou before him, leaping with delight, Stirring all birds to song, all bees to humming And buds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... the Queen. You really mustn't keep her away from us at Christmas—on the contrary, we ought to make some opportunities for watching her dance; she must be as pretty as a sprite." ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... sprite, Since first from out an ancient lay I saw gleam forth thy fitful light, How hast ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Downe with this litle queane, that hath at me such spite, Saue you from hir maister, it is a very sprite. ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall
... world is always better for his living in it; and because no one can watch the black-capped sprite without catching, for a moment at least, a message of cheer and courage and service, does he not ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... were the son of a witch, if curds and cream won his heart, and new clothes put an end to his labours, it does not pretend to tell. His history is less known than that of any other sprite. It may be embodied in some oral tradition that shall one day be found; but as yet the mists of forgetfulness hide it from the storyteller of to-day as deeply as the sea fogs are wont to lie between Lingborough and ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... mist of a memory came with it; nothing tangible, nothing definite, but something very far away and shadowy, yet just poignant enough to give him a queer feeling that he was really keeping an appointment here. Was it with some water-sprite that would rise from the river? Was it with a dryad of the sycamores? He knew too well that he might expect strange fancies to get hold of him this morning, and, as this one grew uncannily stronger, he moved his head briskly as if ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... afar the angry sprite, That rode upon the storm of night, And loud the waves were heard to roar That lash'd on Jura's ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... element, As if obedient to his wish, gave way; So, comforting Phraerion, on he went, And a high, craggy arch they reach at dawn of day, Upon the upper world; and forced them through That arch, the thick, cold floods, with such a roar, That the bold sprite receded, and would view The cave before he ventured to explore. Then, fearful lest his frighted guide might part And not be missed amid such strife and din, He strained him closer to his burning heart, And, trusting to his strength, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... new-creating me with joy. Afar off in earth-meadows, the love-note of the thrush—not for me, yet passing dear and sweet. That slender, languorous moon pointed me to humble village spires and grass-grown paths, pale lovers whispering at a rustic gate. I, poor sprite, stooped down and loved and blessed them, though I sped away to sail forever and ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... us, or some mischievous sprite, I know not," growled the Hebrew, "but there is no need for more ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... he takes delight,— In the street from morn till night: Don't I tell the story right, Rowdy-dowdy, noisy sprite? ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... or Bard, Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou; Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... at its ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... with ruddy morning faces, an absent-minded professor carrying his shoes under his arms and looking wise, followed by cronies, fairies, goblins, and all the troops just loosed from Noah's storm-tossed ark. They walked, they strutted, they soared, they swam, and some came in through fire. One sprite climbed up to the moon on a ladder made of leaves and frozen dew-drops. A peacock with a great hooked bill flew in and out among the branches of a pomegranate-tree pecking the rosy fruit. He screamed so loud that Apollo turned in his chariot of ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Beyond Mr. Bell's own magnetic personality there was only slender foundation for his faith for in spite of the efforts of both men the harmonic telegraph failed to take form. Instead, like a tantalizing sprite, it danced before them, always beckoning, never materializing. In theory it was perfectly consistent but in practise it could not be coaxed into behaving as it logically should. Had it but been possible for those working on it ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... the son never return to his father!" for he was annoyed that he should presume to teach a Halachah in his presence, and then and there he condemned him to death. (See Berachoth, fol. 31, col. 2.) Thereupon Ben Temalion (an evil sprite or imp) came, and greeting him, said, "Do ye wish me to accompany you?" Rabbi Shimon wept and said, "Alas! a maid-servant of my ancestor (Abraham) was assisted by three angels, and I have not one to attend me! However, let a miracle be worked for us anyhow." Then the evil spirit ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... stand in two lines facing each other, with a large open space representing a river between. One player, representing the water sprite, stands in the middle of the river and beckons to one on the bank to cross. This one signals to a third player on the opposite bank or side of the river. The two from the banks then run across to exchange places, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... was so strong. So loud and so long, 'Twas surely some robber, or sprite, Who without any doubt Was prowling about To fill ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "Come back, you little hazel-sprite!" cried Mrs. Geoffrey; and when she got her within reach again, she put her hands one each side of the little blushing, gleaming face, and ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... surprising fact, that Cupid planted himself in the midst of this party, and, with his fat little legs, in imminent danger of capsizing the dishes, began to draw his bow and let fly his arrows right and left. Being an airy sprite, though fat, and not at any time particularly visible, a careless observer might have missed seeing him; but to any one with moderate powers of observation, he was there, straddling across a dish of salad as plain as the salt-cellar before Captain ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... thy sunshine bravery back, O wretched sprite! Let me hear thy voice through this deep and black ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to various fishes of distinct families, chiefly sharks. In Australia, it is used for the fish Scyllium lima, family Scylliidae. In New South Wales it is Scyllium maculatum, Bl. The Sprite Dog-fish of New Zealand is Acanthias maculatus, family Spinacidae. The Spotted Dog-fish of New South Wales is Scyllium anale. The Dusky Dogfish of New South Wales is Chiloscyllium modestum, Gunth., and there are others ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... tongue-tied. Yes, by George, she was a beauty! Her carriage was regal, and there was about her an air of competence, of authority. She was not disturbed by her surroundings—she laughed. What had she called the storm? A puff! She seemed, by George, like a sprite of the storm! Like the steersman yonder, she seemed to belong to this setting of laboring ship and tumultuous sea. Here she came ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... sprite had decidedly the advantage. You could "gar her greet," but you could not "gar her know." She had only to hold out; and when Miss Martindale found it time to go home to dinner, and began to grow ashamed of her position, the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mumbo Jumbo; good genius, tutelary genius; demiurge, familiar; sibyl; fairy, fay; sylph, sylphid; Ariel^, peri, nymph, nereid, dryad, seamaid, banshee, benshie^, Ormuzd; Oberon, Mab, hamadryad^, naiad, mermaid, kelpie^, Ondine, nixie, sprite; denizens of the air; pixy &c (bad spirit) 980. mythology; heathen-mythology, fairy-mythology; Lempriere, folklore. Adj. god-like, fairy-like; sylph-like; sylphic^. Phr. you moonshine revelers and shades of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... herself seems like some woodland sprite. She is bubbling over with fun, and is scarcely still a minute. Her spaniel is a gay playfellow,—a beautiful creature, with long silky hair and drooping ears. He is intelligent, too, ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... thrown at all with her little ladyship. But there was ne'er so beautiful a maiden born in all the broad land of England; nor will be again—not though London Tower be standing when the last trump sounds. Meseemed she was an elf-sprite, so tiny was she; and her face like a fair flower, so fresh and pure. Her hair was shed about her face like sunlight on thistle-down, and her eyes made a shining behind it, like the big blue gems in her mother's ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... glad to hear so good an account of your activity and interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in the flesh. Please remember me to your wife and to the four-year-old sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher matters. Do you know where the road crosses the burn under Glencorse Church? Go there, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out of the wagon, like a bird let loose from an imprisoning hand. He saw her running like a swift sweet sprite along ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... ye call me imp or elf, . I warn you look well to yourself; If ye call me fairy, Ye 'll find me quite contrary; If good neighbour you call me, Then good neighbour I will be; But if you call me kindly sprite, I 'll be your friend both day ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... hunted! They climbed trees to peep into squirrel-holes and birds'-nests; they chased bees and butterflies to ask for news of the elves; they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little people, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... sun-beams on quivering wing! O prince of the fairies, O pygmy of fire, Will nothing those brave little wings of yours tire? You follow the flowers from southern lands sunny, You pry amid petals all summer for honey! Now rest on a twig, tiny flowerland sprite, Your dear little lady sits near in delight; In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles— Two dots of white eggs to her warm breast she cuddles! Whiz-z! whiff! off to your flowers! Buzz mid the perfume of jasmine bowers! Chatter and chirrup, my king of the fays, And laugh ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... too, daughter, Since thou com'st alone. But thy frenzied husband Suits another shrine; He is no partaker Of this feast of mine. He who walks in darkness Loves no deeds of light: He who herds with demons Shuns each kindly sprite. Let him wander naked.— Wizard weapons wield,— Dance his frantic measure Round the funeral field. Art thou yet delighted With the reeking hide, Body smeared with ashes. Skulls in necklace tied? Thou to love this monster? Thou ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... being shown, and is tying a handkerchief round her head. Ruhinie, an India-rubber-ball sort of baby, has suddenly bounced up from her seat, and is starting a chorus, of which she is fond, at the top of her not very gentle voice; and Komala, a perfect sprite, is tickling the child who sits next to her. "Sittie!" exclaims the distracted teacher, "they won't learn anything!" Or if she happens to be the Mouse, she is calmly engaged with the one good ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... and immediately the son dropped a tear, and forced himself out of his father's arms, piteously exclaiming: 'Father, father, my mother spoke! You cannot keep me. I must go.' He disappeared, and, reaching home, the father found the sprite again on the hearth." The ghostly father's services were called into requisition a second time; and better luck awaited an effort under his direction after the performance of a second miracle like the first. For this time the mother succeeded in holding her tongue, notwithstanding that at ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... also laughed, amused at her word, And at her light-hearted view of him. "Let's get him made so—just for a whim!" Said the Phantom Ironic. "'Twould serve her right If we coaxed the Will to do it some night." "O pray not!" pleaded the younger one, The Sprite of the Pities. "She said it ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... than marked the birds, When, lo! there fell out of the velvet night, Silent and terrible, an eagle-owl, With wide, soft, deadly, dusky wings, and eyes Flame-coloured, and long claws, and dreadful beak; Like a winged sprite, or great Garood himself; Offspring of Bharata! it lighted there Upon the banian's bough; hooted, but low, The fury smothering in its throat;—then fell With murderous beak and claws upon those crows, Rending ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... whence I hear the quick voices of my beautiful and vivacious young friends. You ought to see these girls. Emma might look like a Madonna, were it not for her wicked wit; and as to Anna and Lizzie, as they glance by me, now and then, I seem to think them a kind of sprite, or elf, made to inhabit shady old houses, just as twinkling harebells grow in old castles; and then the gracious mamma, who speaks French, or English, like a stream of silver—is she not, after all, the fairest of ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to the place Be steadfast once, or else at least be true. By tasted sweetness, make me not to rue The sudden loss of thy false feigned grace. By good respect in such a dangerous case Thou brought'st not her into these tossing seas But mad'st my sprite to live, my care to increase,[2] My body in tempest her delight to embrace. The body dead, the sprite had his desire: Painless was th' one, the other in delight. Why then, alas! did it not keep it right, But thus return to leap into the fire? And where it was at ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for he owed him a grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Scyorax. This Caliban Prospero ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire; Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier; And his ditty, after me, Sing and dance ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... thy brow, thy smile we deem The gladsome mirth of fairy sprite; But for thy smile, thy mien would seem Some angel's from ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... that man who had conjured up some kind of opposition to his mother—had made living problems harder for her until she had won the confidence of others. The man must be, Travers concluded, a fanatic and an ignoramus, and to think of him holding power over that sprite of the woods! ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... was lieutenant-general and lord-marshal. He was to be the chief adviser of the Earl of Essex, and to have the command of operations on shore. The ships of war consisted of the Ark- Royal, the Repulse, Mere-Honour, War-Sprite, Rainbow, Mary, Rose, Dreadnought, Vanguard, Nonpareil, Lion, Swiftsure, Quittance, and Tremontaine. There were also twelve ships belonging to London, and the twenty-two Dutch vessels. The fleet, ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... maiden tender, From stool all golden bound, Her waist is trim and slender, Her bosom full and round, Each dimpled cheek encloses An Astrild, roguish sprite, As when on ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... But such lamentings should be heard no more, For modern taste turns Nature out of door; Who ne'er again her former sway will boast, Till, to complete her works, she starts a ghost. If such the mode, what can we hope to-night, Who rashly dare approach without a sprite? No dreadful cavern, no midnight scream, No rosin flames, nor e'en one flitting gleam. Nought of the charms so potent to invite The monstrous charms of terrible delight. Our present theme the German Muse supplies, But rather aims to soften than ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... she complained to him of the sprite who carried the bow. "He is behaving badly," ...
— The Unruly Sprite - The Unknown Quantity, A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... had a special affection for poor Sprite, the pony which threw her,—special, I mean, since the accident,—regarding him as in some sense the angel which had driven her out of paradise into a better world. If ever he got loose, and Connie was anywhere about, he was sure to find her: he was an omnivorous animal, and she had always something ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... care in prison keeps, Or sickness doth suppress, Or secret sorrow breaks your sleeps, Or dolours do distress; Yet bear a part in doleful wise; Yea, think it good accord, And acceptable sacrifice, Each sprite to praise the Lord. ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... sprite, Friend and associate of this clay, To what unknown region borne Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... fire, Her veil and mantle plucked they off by force, And bound her tender arms in twisted wire: Dumb was the silver dove, while from her corse These hungry kites plucked off her rich attire, And for some deal perplexed was her sprite, Her damask late, now ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... up the hill, Captain," interposed Peter Browne hastily, and as he carefully aided the Widow Ford to climb the steep ascent some sprite might have whispered in his ear that this was his own future wife. That night was born Martha Ford, who should from similarity of history have married Peregrine White, but who ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... lowly mind! Thou wondrous sprite, Whose frolics make their master weep; Anon, endowed with eagle's flight, Anon, too impotent to ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... he lay. Shorn of human companions my wretchedness sought a lonely comradeship with the piece of mortal clay. Turning now and again to beat back some skinny hand which snatched my garments, to slap in the face some evil sprite which thrust its sneer upon me, I walked in resolution across the floor. I fancied again I heard the tread of men in the passage. Pleased at the babble of the children of my own imagination, I stood to listen. Yes, by the wit of a fool, I'll indulge ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... pretty little sprite, and the selfish hag of a sister only left orders that I was to take care of the bike! I could see where there was a stone as well ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... me in the forest the other day when I was-shouting "Ho! Ho!" "Ah," said he, "you forest sprite with goat's feet!" To-morrow after dinner, all right? (Walks away, sedately at first, but then with a sort of ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... of life! God love thee for a merry sprite! Sing on! for though the sun be coy I sense with thee a budding joy, And all my heart with ranging rhyme Is poet ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... absolutely contradict you," replied Danhasch; "but, my pretty lady, you must give me leave to be of opinion, till I have seen your prince, that no mortal upon earth can equal my princess in beauty." "Hold thy tongue, cursed sprite," replied Maimoune. "I tell thee once more thou art wrong." "I will not contend with you," said Danhasch, "but the way to be convinced, whether what I say be true or false, is to accept of my proposal to go and see my ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... caught Coco's eye, and it has consequently been caught up by his chop-stick beak. With the agility of a sprite, he had hopped upon my open writing-desk, and having duly overhauled the contents and carefully transplanted each particular sheet of paper, envelope, pen and pencil, he devotes his attention to the ink; half of which he must surely have imbibed, for his beak remains parti-coloured for many ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... this while; and his Majesty, had he liked the mountain-passes, and unlevel ways of the Giant Mountains, might have found a shorter road and a much more picturesque one. Road abounding in gloomy valleys, intricate rock-labyrinths, haunts of Sprite RUBEZAHL, sources of the Elbe and I know not what. Majesty likes level roads, and interesting rock-labyrinths built by man rather than by Nature. Majesty makes a wide sweep round to the east of all that; leaves the Giant Mountains, and their intricacies, as a blue Sierra far on ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... grave. To tak a wife at once, he thowt Wor th' wisest thing to do, Soa he lukt raand until he browt His choice daan between two. One wor a big, fine, strappin lass, Her name wor Sarah Ann, Her height an weight, few could surpass, Shoo'r fit for onny man. An t'other wor a little sprite, Wi' lots o' bonny ways, An little funny antics, like A kitten when it plays. An which to tak he could'nt tell, He rayther liked 'em booath; But if he could ha pleased hissen, To wed one he'd be looath. A wife he thowt an evil thing, An sewer to prove a pest; Soa after sometime studyin ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... constructed in the Rotunda. They overpowered us—we dared not stay to see the fireworks, 'in the midst of which Signora Rossini was to make her terrific ascent and descent on a rope three hundred feet high.' She might have been the sprite of Madame Saqui; {171} in fact, the 'Vauxhall Papers,' published in the gardens, put forth a legend which favours such a dreadful supposition. We refer our readers to them—they are only ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... The merry sprite, laughing almost as heartily as he, though with less noise, reached a dainty hand across the counter and he grasped it. From behind the rack at the front of the store, the gentle mother beamed with a smile. She had heard ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... very witching time of night, When church-yards groan, and graves give up their dead, And many a mischievous, enfranchised Sprite Had long since burst his bonds of stone or lead, And hurried off, with schoolboy-like delight, To play his pranks near some poor wretch's bed, Sleeping, perhaps, serenely as a porpoise, Nor dreaming of this ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... what we are? The sprite of a star, I lure thee above where the destinies bar My plumes their full play Till a ruddier ray Than my pale one announce there is withering away Some... Scatter the vision forever! And now, As of old, I am I, thou ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... "Joseph's coat was just as bloody as Goliath's head was." Then Budge turned to me and explained that "all Tod likes Goliath for is 'cause when his head was cut off it was all bloody." And then Toddie—the airy sprite whom his mother described as being irresistibly drawn to whatever was beautiful—Toddie glared upon me as a butcher's apprentice might stare at ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... by their gifts make up the life of the little babe within. The good fairy gives him a wonderful blessing, perhaps it is the power to write poems or paint pictures. Then the bad fairy, ugly little sprite that he is, adds a portion of evil, perhaps it is envy that eats the soul like a canker. And so they alternate, the good and evil, until the sum of a human life is made up, and the child grows up to live out his years, marked by joy and sorrow as every ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... had been of old. The king was so much perplexed that he threatened the princess's playfellows with all sorts of punishments if they would not confess something about her disappearance; but as they only repeated the same story he presently put down the whole affair to the work of some sprite or goblin, and tried to console himself for his loss by ordering a grand hunt; for kings cannot bear to ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... constructed in the Rotunda. They overpowered us—we dared not stay to see the fireworks, "in the midst of which Signora Rossini was to make her terrific ascent and descent on a rope three hundred feet high." She might have been the sprite of Madame Saqui; in fact, the "Vauxhall Papers" published in the gardens, put forth a legend, which favours such a dreadful supposition! We refer our readers to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of air and fire" rather than one of earth; that he was abundantly given to all kinds of quirk and laughter; and that there was no jest (saving the unkind) he would not make and relish. The late Mr. J. A. Symonds always called him Sprite; qualifying the name, however, by the epithets "most fantastic, but most human." To me the essential humanity was always the thing most apparent. In a fire well nourished of seasoned ship-timber, the flames glance fantastically and of many colours, but the glow at heart is ever deep and strong; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his, "Don't you think so?" she could only murmur without breath, "You mustn't love me so much—not yet, not yet!" but he pressed her the nearer and laughed his joy of her. "What! After eight years! And if I don't hold her very close, Mab, the tricksy sprite, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... endured of him[FN110] and yet it came to light, * And nightly sleep mine eyelids fled and changed to sleepless night: Oh world! Oh Fate! withhold thy hand and cease thy hurt and harm * Look and behold my hapless sprite in colour and affright: Wilt ne'er show ruth to highborn youth who lost him on the way * Of Love, and fell from wealth and fame to lowest basest wight. Jealous of Zephyr's breath was I as on your form he breathed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... History of European Morals and Law's Serious Call, both admirable books, then the bookman is much exhilarated. Because of the mischief that is in him he will not relieve those two excellent men of that disgraceful Italian's company for a little space, but if he finds that the domestic sprite has thrust a Puritan between two Anglican theologians he effects a separation without delay, for a religious controversy with its din and clatter is more than ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... one, thy name, and say What thou desirest. Seeing thee so fair, So worthy, yet so sorrowful, our minds Are lost in wonder. Weep not. Comfort take. Art thou the goddess of the wood? Art thou The Mountain-Yakshi, or, belike, some sprite Which lives under the river? Tell us true, Gentle and faultless form!" Whereat reply Thus made she to the Rishis: "None of these Am I, good saints. No goddess of the wood, Nor yet a mountain nor a river sprite; A woman ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... common object at the Rink was a tall young man, in all the agonies of a debut on skates, and a bewitching little attendant sprite shooting before and around him, occasionally righting him with a fairy touch when he evinced too wild a desire to dash his ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... its ills, Duns and their bills, Bid we to flee. Come with the dawn, Blue-devil sprite, Leave us ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... was a sprite of subtile frame, With rainbow tints invested.— On clouds of dazzling light she came, And stars her forehead crested; Her sparkling eyes of azure hue, Seemed borrowed from the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... earth the sunset skies Are painting their own Eden dyes; The stars come down and trembling glow, Like blossoms in the waves below; And like an unseen sprite, the breeze Seems lingering midst these orange trees, Breathing its music round the spot,— But I am ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... went, silent and diligent, giving the grace of willingness to every humble or distasteful task the day had brought her; but some malignant sprite seemed to have taken possession of her kingdom, for rebellion broke out everywhere. The kettles would boil over most obstreperously,—the mutton refused to cook with the meek alacrity to be expected from the nature of a sheep,—the stove, with ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... in its radical sense shrew-ed, malicious, like a shrew. Comp. M. N. D. ii. 1, "That shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow." Chaucer has the verb shrew to curse; the current ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... from which he finally comes off victorious by his brother's use of a talisman, and so secures possession of the coveted magic book. The fourth act—which I have here only summarised—shows how Na.nefer.ka.ptah resorts to a bewitchment of Setna by a sprite, by subjection to whom he loses his magic power. The fifth act shows Setna as subjected to Na.nefer.ka.ptah, and ordered by him to bring the bodies of his wife and child ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... unlucky Sprite! Like Will-a-whisp, a wandring light, Through ditch, thro' bog, who lead astray Benighted swains, who lose their way; You pinch the slattern black and blue, You silver drop in huswife's shoe; For call you Robin and sweet Puck, You do their ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... in all her glory, and bounced into the barouche with a vigor that made it rock quite unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the strife Of sailor and storm and billow! Far be my bed from the lubberly dead That sleep near the wailing willow, But give me the grave of the mutinous wave With its heaving and whistling pillow. Down from the skies look the spectral eyes Of our kelpie, sprite and bewailer, And gathering in crowds by the shivering shrouds, They croon while our cheeks grow paler, And they sing as they sweep o'er the clamorous deep: "We love the hot ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... part; yet asks my sprite, Part we to meet? Ah! is it so? Mans fancy-made Omniscience knows, who made ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... of grace and beauty that had passed through his fervid fancy during so many years of absence from his native land. Something there was of the features of the young girl who had ridden with flying locks, like a sprite, through the woods of Tilly. But comparing his recollection of that slight girl with the tall, lithe, perfect womanhood of the half-blushing girl before him, he hesitated, although intuitively aware that it could be no other than the idol of his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... when blushes pass To be so poor and weak, He falls into the dewy grass, To cool his fevered cheek; And hears a music strangely made, That you have never heard, A sprite in every rustling blade, That sings like ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... thou beest a true man, then quoth the miller, I swear by my toll-dish, I'll lodge thee all night. Here's my hand, quoth the king; that was I ever. Nay, soft, quoth the miller, thou may'st be a sprite. Better I'll know thee, ere hands we will shake; With none but honest men ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... heard the voice of the Water-Fairy;[28] I saw her form in the moon-lit mist, As she sat on a stone with her burden weary, By the foaming eddies of amethyst. And robed in her mantle of mist the sprite Her low wail poured on the silent night. Then the spirit spake, and the floods were still— They hushed and listened to what she said, And hushed was the plaint of the whippowil In the silver-birches above her head: 'Wiwaste, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... made me lighter: for the dwarf sprang from my shoulder, the prying sprite! And it squatted on a stone in front of me. There was however a gateway just ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a raging Foaming torrent through the forests To the Rhine—its name is Wehra. In the narrow valley standeth 'Midst the rocks a single fir-tree; In the branches sat the haggard Wicked wood-sprite Meysenhartus, Who to-day behaved quite badly: Showing his sharp teeth and grinning, Tore a branch off from the fir-tree, And kept gnawing at a pine-cone; Clambered often quite indignant Up and down just like a squirrel; From the wings of a poor night-owl Roughly plucked out several feathers; ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... happy, happy elf! (But stop,—first let me kiss away that tear)— Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite! With spirits feather-light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin— (Good Heavens! the child ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... know? Canst tell where it comes from, or where it will go? Is it the soul, released from clay, Over the earth that takes its way, And tarries a moment in mirth and glee Where the corse it hath quitted interred shall be? Or is it the trick of some fanciful sprite, That taketh in mortal mischance delight, And marketh the road the coffin shall go, And the spot where the dead shall be soon laid low? Ask him who can answer these questions aright; I know not the cause of that ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... birdlike on the arm of the chair at the foot of his couch, just to be glimpsed between the draperies of the balcony. She looked, to his eyes, like something too fragile and lovely to be real. And she was laughing! That did not seem real, either. She might have been pleasant, even cheerful, but this sprite, swinging there and laughing at nothing whatever, almost frightened him. For an awful moment he wondered if he had driven Marjorie mad. . . . He had been unkind to her—hard on ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... Merlin whom God gave the sprite To know and utter princes' acts to come, Like to the Jewish prophets did recite In shade of beasts their doings all and some; Expressing plain by manners of the doom That kings and lords such properties should have As have the beasts whose ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the region round, wherever the rejected travelled. It is true that Mr. Erne had often expressed his film of dissatisfaction with the conventual results, and had planned an attack on matters of more solid learning; but, tricksy as a sprite, Eloise had escaped his designs, broken through his regulations, implored, just out of shackles, a year's gambol in liberty, and had made herself too charming to be resisted in her plea; and if, feeling his health fail, he had at first insisted,—in the fear that there might be left but brief ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... your sloth, Too lazy or wilful to learn; Ye courtiers, who crowd round the king, nothing loth By base flattery his favor to earn; Ye doctors, who laugh at us cowards, and sell Long words and wise oracles dear— Beware lest some night a mischievous sprite Should give you a ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... amid the phenomena of time and space; for the forms of Nature have given place to volumes, there are no objects but pages, and passions have been supplanted by paragraphs. We no longer see the whirling universe, or feel the pulsing of life. Thought itself has ceased to be a sprite, and flows through the mind only in the leaden shape of printed sentences. The symbolism of letters is over us all. An all-pervading nominalism has completely masked whatsoever there is that is real. More and more it is not the soul and Nature, but the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Raleigh, leaping from the other side of the brook to the mossy trunk, "is it you? I have been seeking you, and what sprite sends you to me?" ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Cleopatras eies. Thou breakest at length from thence, as one encharm'd Breakes from th'enchaunter that him strongly helde. For thy first reason (spoyling of their force the poisned cuppes of thy faire Sorceres) Recur'd thy sprite: and then on euery side Thou mad'st againe the earth with Souldiours swarme. All Asia hidde: Euphrates bankes do tremble To see at once so many Romanes there Breath horror, rage, and with a threatning eye In mighty squadrons crosse ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... Sprite Columns" in the Court of Ages bring the somber symbolism of this court back to the gay spirit of festival. The sprites are the work of Leo Lentelli; they have a quaint elfin quality that is very engaging. The amusing and lovely group seated about ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... sketch, a labour of love from the busy hands in New Zealand, which had stolen a few hours from their many tasks to send Dr. May the presentment of his namesake grandson. Little Dickie stood before them, a true son of the humming-bird sprite, delicately limbed and featured, and with elastic springiness, visible even in the pencilled outline. The dancing dark eyes were all Meta's, though the sturdy clasp of the hands, and the curl that hung over the brow, brought back the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... why, when he had finished his second ballad, and sometimes even sooner, concupiscent looks appeared in their eyes. The boatman of their dreams, the water-sprite of fairy tales, vanished in the mist of their childish recollections, and the singer re-assumed his real shape, that of musician and strolling player, whom they wished to pay, to be their lover. And the coppers and small silver were showered ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant |
