"Nymph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Set thyself in silver light, Take thy thoughts of fairest texture, weave them into words of white— Weave the rhyme of rose-lipped Daphne, nymph of wooded stream and shade, Flying love of bright Apollo,—fleeting type of faultless maid! She, when followed from the forelands by the lord of lyre and lute, Sped towards far-singing waters, past deep ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... as he was, Hercules had in time to meet death himself. He had married a nymph named Deianira, and was taking her home, when he came to a river where a Centaur named Nessus lived, and gained his bread by carrying travellers over on his back. Hercules paid him the price for carrying Deianira over, while he himself crossed on foot; but as soon ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... their ankles and wrists are also encircled by bracelets; and indeed to see one of these young and graceful creatures, with her eyes sparkling and her face animated with the exercise of the chase, often recalled to the mind a nymph of Diana, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... akin to Peeping Tom of Coventry. He was utterly at a loss how to act. If he stood up and essayed a hurried retreat, the girl might be frightened, and would unquestionably be annoyed. It was impossible to creep away unseen. He was well below the crest of the slope crowned by the trees, and the nymph now disporting in the lake could hardly fail to discover him, no matter how deftly he ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... gazers strike; And like the sun, they shine on all alike. Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: If to her share some female errors fall. Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all. This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, Nourish'd two locks, which graceful hung behind In equal curls, and well conspir'd to deck With shining ringlets the smooth ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... commonplaces which were easily retained and applied were welcome; but every piece of nonsense was of itself privileged; in this preposterous world Bacchus is applied to for water and the fountain-nymph for wine. Isolated examples even of the political allusions formerly so strictly prohibited in the Roman theatre are found in these mimes.(11) As regards metrical form, these poets gave themselves, as they tell us, "but moderate trouble with the versification"; the language abounded, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... sentences given, in which all the letters (except v and j as consonants) are employed, of which the following is the best: Get nymph; quiz sad brow; fix luck,—which in more sober English would be, Marry; be cheerful; watch your business. There is more edification, more religion, in this than in all ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... perceived no more in the face at that moment, because the man, as he looked up at her, became nothing but a dazzled mirror from which was reflected back to her the most flattering image of her own appearance. Almost actually she saw herself as she appeared to him, a wood-nymph, kneeling by the flowing water, vital, exquisite, strong, radiant in a cool flush, her uncovered hair gleaming in a thousand loosened waves. Like most comely women of intelligence Sylvia was intimately familiar with every phase of her own looks, and ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... exit-way is prepared and the cell upholstered in velvet and closed with a threefold barricade, the industrious worm has concluded its task. It lays aside its tools, sheds its skin and becomes a nymph, a pupa, weakness personified, in swaddling-clothes, on a soft couch. The head is always turned towards the door. This is a trifling detail in appearance; but it is everything in reality. To lie this way or that in the long cell is a matter of great indifference ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... in beauty, like some form of nymph Or naiad, on the mossy, purpled bank Of her wild woodland stream, that at her feet Linger'd, and play'd, and dimpled, as in love. Or like those shapes that on the western clouds Spread gold-dropp'd plumes, and sing to harps of pearl, And teach the evening winds their melody: How shall ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... his back to the wall of his compartment, sweltering in the hot garb of the Missing Link, drowsing and day-dreaming of beer. He thought he was sitting in a sylvian glade, with an attendant nymph, where a cascade splashed over crystal rocks, and the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... Aloof—the spirit, I suppose, that guards This sacred spot; perchance some water-nymph Who laving in the crystal flood her limbs Has taken cold, and so, with raucous voice Afflicts the sensitive membrane of mine ear The while she sings my sentiments. (Enter Pitts-Stevens.) ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... existence; his second, that he beheld an apparition; the third and abiding conviction, that it was Amy herself, paler, indeed, and thinner, than in the days of heedless happiness, when she possessed the form and hue of a wood-nymph, with the beauty of a sylph—but still Amy, unequalled in loveliness by aught which had ever visited ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Lityerses-song connected with this tradition was, like the Linus-song, one of the early, plaintive strains of Greek popular poetry, and used to be sung by the corn reapers. Other traditions represented Daphnis as beloved by a nymph, who exacted from him an oath to love no one else. He fell in love with a princess, and was struck blind by the jealous nymph. Mercury, who was his father, raised him to heaven, and made a fountain spring ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... this day lost my heart to a woodland nymph or fairy. Such a strange encounter had I in the forest today! and with it a warning almost as strange as the being who ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... differ from the adult in possessing long antennae and a pair of powerful fossorial anterior legs, fall to the ground, burrow below the surface, and spend a prolonged subterranean larval existence feeding upon the roots of vegetation. After many years the larva is transformed into the pupa or nymph, which is distinguishable principally by the shortness of its antennae and the presence of wing pads. After a brief existence the pupa emerges from the ground, and, holding on to a plant stem by means of its powerful front legs, sets free the perfect insect ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... these was the young person who upon Louis's summons had served him with fruit, while Quentin made his memorable breakfast at the Fleur de Lys. Invested now with all the mysterious dignity belonging to the nymph of the veil and lute, and proved, besides (at least in Quentin's estimation), to be the high born heiress of a rich earldom, her beauty made ten times the impression upon him which it had done when he beheld in her one whom he deemed the daughter of ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... came home with him—namely, a little dainty flower-pot and pan, with an Etruscan pattern, the very best things that had been turned out of the pottery, adorned with a design in black and white, representing a charming little Greek nymph watering her flowers. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Messalina coarsely patronising a wood-nymph ... the cat striking her claws into a singing bird.... And poor—and old! Neville was, indeed, six years ahead of Rosalind, but she looked the younger of the two, in her slim activity, and didn't need to paint her face either. Mrs. Hilary all but ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... of shyness which belongs to the creature of the woodlands. As she paused, her hands at her sides, her head lifted with tip-tilted chin, unconscious that any one saw her, not seeing the man who squatted by the spring below the bunk-house, he felt vaguely as though he were looking upon a nymph who, if he so much as moved, would turn swiftly and flash away from him into the depths of her ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... was that glorious tower Where that swift-fingered Nymph that spares no hour From mortals' service, draws the various threads Of life in several lengths; to weary beds Of age extending some, whilst others in Their infancy are broke: 'some blackt in sin, Others, the favorites of Heaven, from whence Their origin, candid with innocence; ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... the solemn knell, in Fancy's ear, That called ELIZA to the silent tomb; With her how jocund rolled the sprightly year! How shone the nymph in ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... days when the gods of Olympus were in all their glory, and when those gods were in the habit of disturbing the domestic peace of worthy men, there was born unto an Arcadian nymph a son, for whom no proper father could be found. The father was Mercury, who was a Dieu a bonnes fortunes, and he did not, like some Christian gentlemen in similar circumstances, altogether neglect his boy; for (so goes the story) the child was "such a fright" that his mother was shocked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... glories to diffuse, And to Iarba next her flight pursues, To fan the flame that in his bosom glows. To Jove himself, his birth the monarch owes; A nymph his mother, by a forc'd embrace; 250 And to the God, the author of his race, Their lofty domes an hundred temples raise, An hundred shrines with flames perpetual blaze, Hung round with wreaths: through all his vast ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... the Poet read his pleasing strain, Then it began to rain: He closed his book. "Farewell, fair Nymph!" he cried, as with a lingering look His homeward way he took; And nevermore ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... breathes the spring, Zephyr, with Aurora playing, As he met her once a-maying, There, on beds of violets blue, And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair. Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles— Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport, that wrinkled ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... I could only stare at her in bewildered terror. Far from recognizing me, she seemed to be absorbed in a nymph-like contemplation of her own graces in the pool. Then I called "Consuelo!" and galloped frantically around the spring. But there was no response, nor was there anything to be seen but the all-unconscious ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... dress partially displayed; and as her dark eyes swam with grateful tears, and her cheek flushed with its late excitement, the god of light and music himself never, amidst his Arcadian valleys, wooed, in his mortal guise, maiden or nymph more fair. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... conies to pass, Nor hope, nor praise, nor honour. Her the Sire Gave it in charge to rear the blooming mind, The folded powers to open, to direct The growth luxuriant of his young desires, And from the laws of this majestic world To teach him what was good. As thus the nymph 390 Her daily care attended, by her side With constant steps her gay companion stay'd, The fair Euphrosyne, the gentle queen Of smiles, and graceful gladness, and delights That cheer alike the hearts of mortal men And powers immortal. See the shining pair! Behold, where from his ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... with the first down of manhood upon his lips. He chid the much-enduring one for his rash haste, and gave him what we should call not very good advice; but he also gave him something which was worth more than any good advice, a charm which should prevail against the spells of the Nymph, which he might carry in his ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hill. So precipitous was the fall of the ground, indeed, that Desmond could look right into the garden of the house backing on Mrs. Viljohn-Smythe's. This garden had a patch of well-kept green sward in the centre with a plaster nymph in the middle, while in one corner stood a kind of large summer-house or pavilion built on a slight eminence, with a window looking into ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... early day for their union, but the eloquence has a very practical bearing. While Corydon is piping to Phyllis, he is anxious about the engagements he is missing, and the distance he is losing in the race for life. But Phyllis remains the nymph of passion ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... husbanded sensations. Thus, reaching the base of the black-and-white marble wall supporting the terrace, where, midway in its long length, it was broken by an arched grotto of rough-hewn stonework, in which maiden-hair fern rooted,—the delicate fronds of it caressing the shoulders of an undraped nymph, with ever-dripping water-pitcher upon her rounded hip,—Helen turned sharp to the left, and arrived at the bottom of the descending flight of steps without once looking up. That Richard Calmady still leaned on the balustrade some twelve to fourteen feet above that same cool, green grotto she ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... theatrical screen, stood for a moment between Doctor Franklin and the just entering visitor. And behind that screen, through the crack, Israel caught one momentary glimpse of a little bit of by-play between the pretty chambermaid and the stranger. The vivacious nymph appeared to have affectedly run from him on the stairs—doubtless in freakish return for some liberal advances—but had suffered herself to be overtaken at last ere too late; and on the instant Israel caught sight of her, was with ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... cook secured a bottle of the magic water, but concealed his knowledge. Later he divulged his secret to Alexander's daughter, who thereupon married him. Alexander, when he learned the facts, was furious. He changed his daughter into a sea-nymph and his cook into a sea-monster. Being immortal, undoubtedly they are still disporting themselves in the Indian Ocean. For this story the writer is indebted to Professor George F. Moore, D.D., ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... like a duck, as becomes a tribe of the lake regions. He took her to the lake and taught her not to fear it, and they frolicked in its waves together, and she learned to swim as well as he, and to dive as smoothly as a loon or otter, and was a water nymph such as the creatures of the wood had never seen. He was very vain of her art acquired so swiftly, though in conversation he gave vast credit to her teacher. And in the catching of the black bass there came eventually to the nine-ounce split bamboo in her ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... water when he saw certain maidens of the hermits watering the favourite plants. One of them, an exquisitely beautiful and bashful maiden, named Sakuntala, received him. She was the daughter of the celestial nymph Menaka by the celebrated sage Viswamitra and foster-child of the hermit Kanwa. She is smitten with love at the first sight of the king, standing confused at the change of her own feeling. The love at first sight which the king conceives for her is of too deep a nature to be ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... door of exit in advance is not enough; the grub must also provide for the tranquillity essential to the delicate processes of nymphosis. An intruder might enter by the open door and injure the helpless nymph. This passage must therefore remain closed. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the geometrically-cut paths of hard-beaten sea-shells, white as snow, stood the statue of a faun, a nymph, or dryad, in Parian marble, holding a torch, which illuminated a great vase running over with fresh, blooming flowers, presenting a vista of royal magnificence which bore testimony to the wealth and splendid ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... your objection to 'nympholept.' Nympholepsy is no more a Greek word than epilepsy, and nobody would or could object to epilepsy or apoplexy as a Greek word. It's a word for a specific disease or mania among the ancients, that mystical passion for an invisible nymph common to a certain class of visionaries. Indeed, I am not the first in referring to it in English literature. De Quincey has done so in prose, for instance, and Lord Byron talks of 'The nympholepsy of a fond despair,' though he never was accused ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... thus educated, or rather thus left to its natural growth, assumes a variety of charming characters. In one youthful figure, we see the lineaments of a wood nymph, a form slight and elastic in ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of sight of the station, and then came a steep hill. While the pony was pulling and tugging with all his might, the girl bounced off, landing like a wood-nymph about six feet in the rear of the cariole; when, with strides that perfectly astonished me, she began to march up the hill, singing a lively Norwegian ditty as she sprang over the ruts and ridges of the road. I halted in amazement. This would never do. Respect for the gentler ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... downstairs to the present, In plain facts fresh from critical mangle; But let the nymph make herself pleasant, Here a bracelet, and there with ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... Denmark's warlike prince Let the following health commence, To the nymph whose influence That brought the hero hither; - May their race the tribe annoy, Who the Grandsire would destroy, And get every year a ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... ye deaf, ye rigid rocks, To human sorrow's plaintive tones, While in your dark recesses Echo dwelt, No idle plaything of the winds, But spirit sad of hapless nymph, Whom unrequited love, and cruel fate, Of her soft limbs deprived. She o'er the grots, The naked rocks, and mansions desolate, Unto the depths of all-embracing air, Our sorrows, not to her unknown, Our broken, loud laments ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... was of a warm brown shade, and it made a cloud about her headland face, from which her eyes and smile shone out triumphantly. Exceptionally tall, with clear-cut aquiline features, with the movements and the grace of a wood nymph, the girl carried her beautiful brows and her full throat with a provocative and self-conscious arrogance. One might have guessed that fear was unknown to her; perhaps tenderness also. She looked much older than seventeen, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our modern landscape, from which bit by bit the nymph has been wholly banished. It is the art of a stage, without actors, a scene which is all background, all suggestion. It is an art given us by sheer recoil from science, which has dwarfed actual human life ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... was the Lady Mary Howard, the sister of the Earl of Surrey, a nymph about her own age, and possessed of great personal attractions, having nobly-formed features, radiant blue eyes, light tresses, and a complexion of dazzling clearness. Lady Mary Howard nourished a passion for the Duke of Richmond, whom she saw with secret chagrin captivated by the superior charms ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... programmes, essays, enrolments, payments. M. Colbert had amassed four millions of francs, and dispersed them with sleepless economy. He was horrified at the expenses which mythology involved; not a wood nymph, nor a dryad, that cost less than a hundred francs a day! The dress alone amounted to three hundred francs. The expense of powder and sulphur for fireworks amounted, every night, to a hundred thousand francs. In addition to these, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... we have run our passions' heat, Love hither makes his best retreat: The gods, who mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race: Apollo hunted Daphne so Only that she might laurel grow; And Pan did after Syrinx speed Not as a nymph, but ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... from the houses, the blue pillars all sloping in one angle, float upward as if in sleep. Grave and stern the old castle rises from its emerald banks, which long ago came down to the lake in terrace on terrace, gay with fruits and flowers, and with stone nymph and satyrs hid in every nook. Silent and empty enough to-day! A flock of daws suddenly bursts out from a turret, and round and round they wheel, as if in panic. Has some great scandal exploded? Has a conspiracy been discovered? Has a revolution broken out? The excitement ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... of the discovery! Oh, the thunders of remonstrance with which Hades resounded! The wheel of Ixion might whirl, and the pitchy depths blaze with the fires of indignation, but all this did not dry the tears of the nymph, nor soothe her bitterness of woe. Every tenderness that could reconcile, every enjoyment that could wean, was vainly essayed; mourning for her Orpheus, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... Dunsinane; creating a wood where there never was a shrub; a wood in Scotland! ha! ha! ha!' And he also observed, that 'the clannish slavery of the Highlands of Scotland was the single exception to Milton's remark of "The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty[216]," being worshipped in all hilly countries.'—'When I was at Inverary (said he,) on a visit to my old friend, Archibald, Duke of Argyle, his dependents congratulated me on being such a favourite of his Grace. I ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... great gate with a sweet welcome to passers-by, and lined the avenue, winding through lemon trees and feathery palms up to the villa on the hill. Every shadowy nook, where seats invited one to stop and rest, was a mass of bloom, every cool grotto had its marble nymph smiling from a veil of flowers and every fountain reflected crimson, white, or pale pink roses, leaning down to smile at their own beauty. Roses covered the walls of the house, draped the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the balustrade of the wide terrace, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... race and attributes of that ethereal being. Had I created her? Was she the daughter of my fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep under the lids of children's eyes? And did her beauty gladden me for that one moment and then die? Or was she a water-nymph within the fountain, or fairy or woodland goddess peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost of some forsaken maid who had drowned herself for love? Or, in good truth, had a lovely girl with a warm heart and lips that would bear pressure ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the mists divide with the dawn o'er those glittering waters, Do they gaze over unoared seas— Naiad and nymph and the woodland's rose-crowned daughters And the Oceanides? Do they sing together, perchance, in that diamond splendour, That world of dawn and dew, With eyelids twitching to tears and with eyes grown tender The sweet old songs they knew, The songs of Greece? Ah, with harp-strings mute do ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... call. If he told her to do so, she would come out in her night-dress—she would walk bare-footed through the fields, and plunge with him into the wonderful wood. If he told her to do it, she would go into the stream, and dance and splash—realizing that old dream—the white-bodied nymph of the wood for him to leap at and carry off into the gloom. He wrenched himself round, and made his way rapidly from the garden to the meadow. He could not support his thoughts. The proximity of the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... our country to you gave The meed of thanks that most you crave; It gave a maid with golden hair, Its springtime's image fair. She came from where the fairies dwell, With nixie's charm and wood-nymph's spell, With peace all holy, sweet, and calm, To ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... except your affections that you had; there was no dross, no bad feeling in the composition. You yet even have not seen enough[36] of the world to know the stupendous difference that exists between the women we meet in dayly life and a nymph of the woods such as you were, in whose eyes alone mankind may study for centuries & grow wiser & purer. Those divine lights which shone on me as did those of Beatrice upon Dante, and well might I say with him yet ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... and sheep. In the Brahmanic mythology of India, Salagrama, the fossil ammonite, is recognised as containing the body of Vishnu's wife, and the Binlang stone has much the same relation to Siva; so, too, the nymph Ramba was changed, for offending Ketu, into a mass of sand; by the breath of Siva elephants were turned into stone; and in a very touching myth Luxman is changed into stone but afterward released. In the Buddhist mythology a Nat demon is represented ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... madam, there is not the least danger. The beaux yeux de ma casette are not brilliant enough to make amends for the spectacles which must supply the dimness of my own. I am a little deaf, too, as you know to your sorrow when we are partners; and if I could get a nymph to marry me with all these imperfections, who the deuce would marry Janet McEvoy? and from Janet McEvoy Chrystal ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... two long narrow panels which together purport to represent the story of Adonis and Erys but do not take the duty of historian very seriously. Both are lovely, with a mellow sunset lighting the scene. Here and there in the glorious landscape occurs a nymph, the naked flesh of whom burns with the reflected fire; here and there are lovers, and among the darkling trees beholders of the old romance. The picture remains in the vision much as rich ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... of it, but was frustrated in the attempt, and the maritime Baal secured the permanence of his rule by marrying one of his sisters—the Baalat-Beyrut who is represented as a nymph on Graeco-Roman coins.* The rule of the city extended as far as the banks of the Tamur, and an old legend narrates that its patron fought in ancient times with the deity of that river, hurling stones ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sacred water, and priestesses lived on coral reefs visited by remote lovers in their sundown seas; Schiller's diver goes into the purpling deep and sees the Sea-Horror reaching out its hundred arms; the beautiful Undine is the vivid poetry of the sea. Every fountain has its guardian saint or nymph, and to this day not only the German peasant and benighted English boor thrill at the sight of some nymph-guarded well, but the New Mexican Indian offers his rude pottery in propitiation of the animate existence, the deity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... significance. The best plan seems to be to answer that I have entirely abandoned mere literature, and am contemplating a book on 'The Causes of Early Blight in the Potato,' a melancholy circumstance which threatens to deprive us of our chief esculent root. The inquirer would never be undeceived. One nymph who, like the rest, could not keep off the horrid topic of my occupation, said 'You never write anything but fairy books, do you?' A French gentleman, too, an educationist and expert in portraits of Queen Mary, once sent me a newspaper ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Clymene, a beautiful ocean-nymph, there was born in the pleasant land of Greece a child to whom was given the name of Phaeton, the Bright and Shining One. The rays of the sun seemed to live in the curls of the fearless little lad, and when at noon other children would seek the cool ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... embroidered with every radiant or sparkling colour; in others, the trees, almost bare, met lightly arched above a carpet of intensest green—a tapis vert stretching toward a vaporous distance, and broken by some god, or nymph, on whose white shoulders the autumn leaves were dropping softly one ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the women, Men— In them it is becoming;— I never tire to see them, when Joe Hart his fiddle's strumming, Or Colinet and mild Musard Have set their hearts quadrilling;— Then be each nymph a gay Brocard, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... "Leaf-brown eyes had the nymph, I take it, and satin-cream skin with a rose showin' through and allurin' lashes maybe dipped in ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... throne, 130 As rebels varnish o'er their cause With specious colouring of laws, And pious traitors draw the knife In the king's name against his life; Whether (from cities far away, Where Fraud and Falsehood scorn thy sway) The faithful nymph's and shepherd's pride, With Love and Virtue by thy side, Your hours in harmless joys are spent Amongst the children of Content; 140 Or, fond of gaiety and sport, You tread the round of England's court, Howe'er my lord may frowning go, And treat the stranger ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of Oxford tell us, that St. Edmund, Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, did sometimes converse with an angel or nymph, at a spring without St. Clement's parish near Oxford; as Numa Pompilius did with the nymph Egeria. This well was stopped up since Oxford was ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... the Castle again by the conservatory that Saltash had indicated. It was a mass of flowers, but the public were evidently not admitted here, for it was empty. In the centre a nymph hung over a marble basin under a tinkling fountain. They passed quickly by to an open glass door that led into the house. Here Dick stopped and drew back, looking ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... I won't," he got up, and halting towards the couch on which Mrs. Grizzle reclined in a state of strange expectation, he seized her hand and pressed it to his lips; but this piece of gallantry he performed in such a reluctant, uncouth, indignant manner, that the nymph had need of all her resolution to endure the compliment without shrinking; and he himself was so disconcerted at what he had done, that he instantly retired to the other end of the room, where he sat silent, and broiled ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... thing for a man to do in these days of Jerrybuilt girls, on the same level or a story or two higher than himself. I'm not a tall man: just the dull average five foot ten or eleven that appears taller, while it keeps lean—so naturally I have a hopeless yearning for nymph-like creatures who pretend to be engaged when I ask them to dance. Still, there's consolation and homely comfort in talking with a little woman who makes you feel the next best thing to a giant. Biddy is an old-fashioned five foot four in her highest heels; and as she smiled up at me I saw that ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Muse, the son of Zeus and Maia, Lord of Cyllene, and Arcadia rich in sheep, the fortune-bearing Herald of the Gods, him whom Maia bore, the fair-tressed nymph, that lay in the arms of Zeus; a shamefaced nymph was she, shunning the assembly of the blessed Gods, dwelling within a shadowy cave. Therein was Cronion wont to embrace the fair-tressed nymph in the deep of night, when ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... is called the Great Bear is not so easy to explain. The classical legend has it that the nymph, Calisto, having violated her vow, was changed by Diana into a bear, which, after death, was immortalized in the sky by Zeus. Another suggestion is that the earliest astronomers, the Chaldeans, called these ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... the Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many writers. According to Julius Pollux ('Onomasticon,' I, iv.) and Nonnus ('Dionys.,' XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on the seashore accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom he was enamoured. The dog having found a Murex with its head protruding from its shell, devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained with purple. The nymph, on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained with Hercules to provide ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... But books and time and state affairs Had spoiled his fashionable airs; He now could praise, esteem, approve, But understood not what was love: His conduct might have made him styled A father and the nymph his child. That innocent delight he took To see the virgin mind her book, Was but the master's secret joy In school ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the silvered band ceased playing, and the instruments of the golden side alone were heard, which denoted that the golden party attacked. Accordingly, a new movement was played for the onset, and we saw the nymph who stood before the queen turn to the left towards her king, as it were to ask leave to fight; and thus saluting her company at the same time, she moved two squares forwards, and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... nuptial season which is so fugitive, and during which life is nothing but sweetness and rapture; the expression survives as illusions and errors survive, for it contains the most odious of falsehoods. If this season is presented to us as a nymph crowned with fresh flowers, caressing as a siren, it is because in it is unhappiness personified and unhappiness generally comes during the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... satisfaction had left him and resolved to a boiling geysir of indistinguishable transports. He bubbled, and waggled, and nodded amicably to nothing, and successfully, though not without effort, preserved his uppermost member from the seductions of the nymph, Gravitation, who was on the look-out for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... much venerated oracle had given it as a decree of the gods that Troy could never be taken without his help. This was Achilles, son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons in Thessaly, and of the beauteous ocean nymph, Thetis. Notwithstanding his extreme youth, his father would not disappoint the whole country, and he let him go with those who came for him. But he sent along with him his adopted son, Patroklos, who ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... Wherever the Amonian religion was propagated, names of this sort will occur; being originally given from the mode of worship established[200]. Hence so many places styled Anthedon, Anthemus, Ain-shemesh, and the like. The nymph Oenone was, in reality, a fountain, Ain-On, in Phrygia; and sacred to the same Deity: and, agreeably to this, she is said to have been the daughter of the river [201]Cebrenus. The island AEgina was named [202]Oenone, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... was yellow. Her hair, in some bygone age, had been dipped in the fountain of folly presided over by the merry nymph Hydrogen; but now, except at the roots, it had returned to its natural ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... it is!—ah! she must be sadly changed indeed! At thirty, a woman is no longer a wood-nymph. Even more than thirty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... to their notes they mov'd, then one Becoming of these signs, a little while Did rest them, and were mute. O nymph divine Of Pegasean race! whose souls, which thou Inspir'st, mak'st glorious and long-liv'd, as they Cities and realms by thee! thou with thyself Inform me; that I may set forth the shapes, As fancy doth present them. Be thy power Display'd in this brief song. The characters, Vocal and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... night at the same time I watched that cave. The girl came always, and sat by the pool as I had first seen her. Once she danced with the wild grace of a wood nymph, whirling in and out the shadows, and falling at last in a little heap beside ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... by hunting. He searched the woods carefully round that place, and peered behind every bush and tree; but nothing was to be seen. His heart beat fast, this was a real adventure. Surely if a wood-nymph or fairy were to appear to him here in this lonely forest, it would hardly ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... Hypsipyle alone spared her aged father Thoas, who was king over the people; and she sent him in a hollow chest, to drift over the sea, if haply he should escape. And fishermen dragged him to shore at the island of Oenoe, formerly Oenoe, but afterwards called Sicinus from Sicinus, whom the water-nymph Oenoe bore to Thoas. Now for all the women to tend kine, to don armour of bronze, and to cleave with the plough-share the wheat-bearing fields, was easier than the works of Athena, with which they were busied aforetime. Yet for all that did they often gaze ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... and pines, and ilexes about thirty or forty years old is pointed out as the grove in which Numa used to meet the nymph. In all the views on one side Soracte is a striking ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Elephant; or the Parliament Man Paulus; an Epigram The Answer A Dialogue On burning a dull Poem An excellent new Ballad On Stephen Duck The Lady's Dressing Room The Power of Time Cassinus and Peter A Beautiful young Nymph Strephon and Chloe Apollo; or a Problem solved The Place of the Damned The Day of Judgment Judas An Epistle to Mr. Gay To a Lady Epigram on Busts in Richmond Hermitage Another A Conclusion from above Epigrams Swift's Answer To Swift on his Birthday with a Paper Book from the Earl ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... hands, her arms, Half to the shoulder naked:—what he sees Though beauteous, what is hid he deems more fair. Fleet as the wind, her fearful flight she wings, Nor stays his fond recalling words to hear: "Daughter of Peneus, stay! no foe pursues,— "Stay, beauteous nymph!—so flies the lamb the wolf; "The stag the lion;—so on trembling wings "The dove avoids the eagle:—these are foes, "But love alone me urges to pursue. "Ah me! then, shouldst thou fall,—or prickly thorns "Wound thy fair legs,—and I the cause of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... a prelude as this did we behold the coming of the dawn. Nature had erected an emerald portal for the triumphal entry of the king of day. The curtains of misty green were drawn back at the signal of some nymph. Between the broken ridges of Mount Clinton and Jackson the sun appeared long after his first beams were old on the opposite side of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... herself. A soft light, resembling that of evening, penetrated into a chamber where every thing seemed contrived to exalt the luxury of slumber. The heaps of cushions, which formed a stately bed, seemed rather to be touched than impressed by the form of a nymph of fifteen, the renowned ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... North, unripened beauties of the Norval, my name is Not she with traitorous kiss Notes by distance —, a duel's amang ye takin' Nothing, an infinite deal of —if not critical Notion, foolish Numbers, divinity in odd Nun, the holy time is quiet as a Nutmeg-graters, be rough as Nymph, in thy orisons Nympholepsy of ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... radiant eyes, Whom pleasure keeps too busy to be wise, Whom joys with soft varieties invite, By day the frolic, and the dance by night, Who frown with vanity, who smile with art, And ask the latest fashion of the heart; What care, what rules your heedless charms shall save, Each nymph your rival, and each youth your slave? The rival batters, and the lover mines. With distant voice neglected Virtue calls, Less heard and less, the faint remonstrance falls; Tired with contempt, she quits the slippery reign, And ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... laughed. "'But ... Dione!' you would say. 'Ah, faithless poet, forsworn knight!' you would say. Not so, my friend." He looked far away with shining eyes. "That unknown nymph, that lady whom I praise in verse, whose poet I am, that Dione at whose real name you all do vainly guess—it is thy sister, lad! Nay,—she knows me not for her worshipper, nor do I know that I can win her love. I would ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... still I felt it to be real—that under every change she looked best; if she put on a shawl, then a shawl became the most feminine of ornaments; if she laid aside her shawl and her bonnet, then how nymph-like she seemed in her undisguised and unadorned beauty! Full-dress seemed for the time to be best, as bringing forward into relief the splendour of her person, and allowing the exposure of her arms; a simple morning-dress, again, seemed better still, as fitted to call out the childlike ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... representing the Deluge, a swarming of yellow figures turning topsy-turvy in water of the hue of wine lees. On the left, moreover, there was a pitiable ashen portrait of a general; on the right a colossal nymph in a moonlit landscape, the bloodless corpse of a murdered woman rotting away on some grass; and everywhere around there were mournful violet-shaded things, mixed up with a comic scene of some bibulous ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... in the spendthrift. My dear, I understand. In nature Pevensey gave the gems to some nymph of Sadler's Wells or Covent Garden. For I was out of England. And so he capped his knavery with insolence. It is an additional reason why Pevensey should not live to scratch a gray head. It is, however, an ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... real woman to the girl succeed, No longer tricks and honours fill'd her mind, But other feelings, not so well defined; She then reluctant grew, and thought it hard To sit and ponder o'er an ugly card; Rather the nut-tree shade the nymph preferr'd, Pleased with the pensive gloom and evening bird; Thither, from company retired, she took The silent walk, ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger |
