"Sylph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are superior to any others on the coast, and, internally, exhibit taste in their furniture and ornament. The ladies excite the author's pen into absolute rapture; their sparkling eyes and glossy hair, are, in themselves, sufficient to negative the idea of tameness or insipidity, while their sylph-like figures exhibit fresh graces at every step. This is supported by the more important qualities, of "being by far the more industrious half of the community, and performing their household duties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... Wither'd leaves, one, two, and three, From the lofty Elder-tree! Through the calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think, 10 From the motions that are made, Every little leaf convey'd Sylph or Faery hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. —But the Kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts; First at one and then it's fellow Just as light and just as yellow; 20 There are many now—now one— ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... The fascinating sylph, Madeleine Guimard, broke almost as many hearts and inspired as many duels as the charming Sophie Arnould herself. Plain even to ugliness, and excessively thin, her exquisite dancing and splendid eyes made great havoc among her numerous admirers. Lord Byron said ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... but a heavy westerly gale drove both squadrons to the lower end of the lake, where each entered its own harbor on the 19th. August 29 the American put out again, having an additional newly built schooner, named the "Sylph," large and fast, carrying three or four long 32-pounders. Chauncey reported that he had now nine vessels with ninety-one guns, but that the enemy was still superior. In number of guns, possibly; but it is difficult to accept the statement otherwise, except in the one very ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... hopelessly, my baby?" he asked. "Your hair is beaten gold, your eyes are deep and true, your slender little form has all the symmetry and beauty of a sylph. You are young, radiant, glorious, and your ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... hovering about him. Now and then, she would lay gentle hands upon him, and her soothing touch would send him off to sleep again; but there was a puzzling change in her appearance. He remembered her as slight in figure—sylph-like he had sometimes called her—fastidious and dainty, and always artistically dressed. Now, however, she seemed to have grown taller, stronger, more reserved, and, as he vaguely realized, more capable, while her garments were of a different and coarser ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... one of those sylvan Amazons who could handle any thing, from the hunting-knife to the ponderous axe; and she dressed in the true sylph-like costume of the backwoods. Her robe, which appeared to be the only garment with which she encumbered herself, fitted her, as they say at sea, "like a purser's shirt on a handspike," and looked for ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... And quits on filmy wings its narrow cell. So the pleased Linnet in the moss-wove nest, Waked into life beneath its parent's breast, 415 Chirps in the gaping shell, bursts forth erelong, Shakes its new plumes, and tries its tender song.— —And now the talisman she strikes, that charms Her husband-Sylph,—and calls him to her arms.— Quick, the light Gnat her airy Lord bestrides, 420 With cobweb reins the flying courser guides, From crystal steeps of viewless ether springs, Cleaves the soft air on still expanded ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... everything, even the beautiful. On the other hand, the grotesque seems to be a halting-place, a mean term, a starting-point whence one rises toward the beautiful with a fresher and keener perception. The salamander gives relief to the water-sprite; the gnome heightens the charm of the sylph. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... however, conscious that he now had not much to fear from Sweden, left the conduct of the desultory war with his generals, and set out on another tour of observation to southern Europe. The lovely Catharine, who, with the fairy form and sylph-like grace of a girl of seventeen, had won the love of Peter, was now a staid and worthy matron of middle life. She had, however, secured the abiding affection of the tzar, and he loved to take her with him on all his journeys. Catharine, though ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... and smile when she was talking to men; she did not trouble herself to put on her prettiest gown when the evening train came in, bringing the bachelors from the city. She was tall—five foot eight in her stockings; all her muscles were well developed; there was nothing sylph-like about her waist, but all her motions had a strong, gentle grace of their own that bespoke health and dignity. She had a profession, too, which was much beneath most of the be-crimped and smile-wreathed maidens who basked in ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... elbowed; the fire of her glance shot from the holes in her mask and sank into Lucien's eyes; the thrill of her frame seemed to answer to every movement of her companion. Whence comes this flame that radiates from a woman in love and distinguishes her above all others? Whence that sylph-like lightness which seems to negative the laws of gravitation? Is the soul become ambient? ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... with rosy fingers fine, Purpled o'er those wings of thine? Was it some sylph whose tender care Spangled thy robes so fine and fair, And wove them of the morning air? I feel thy little throbbing heart. Thou fear'st, ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... Than a sylph or a fairy, Sinuous, wary, I passed from the airy Lawns, where the flute Of the winds ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... thy coral lips, Ears and nostrils, crystal-clear, Dainty, sea-shell finger tips, Form, a sylph might love to wear. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... but he discovered, promptly enough, that with Miss Daisy Miller there was no great need of walking on tiptoe. He found her that evening in the garden, wandering about in the warm starlight like an indolent sylph, and swinging to and fro the largest fan he had ever beheld. It was ten o'clock. He had dined with his aunt, had been sitting with her since dinner, and had just taken leave of her till the morrow. Miss Daisy Miller seemed very glad to see him; she declared it was the longest evening ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... feathery antlers quivering with delight, Brush from my lids the hues of heav'n away, And all is Solitude, and all is Night! —Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly, Unsheaths its terrors in the sultry air! No guardian sylph, in golden panoply, Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear. Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings, Thy dragon-scales still wet with human gore. Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful laram flings! —I wake in horror, and ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... up to the last moment of his breath had thought her the most beautiful woman in England, she appeared with golden tresses, a peach-bloom complexion, and a figure which had been so massaged, rubbed, pressed and artistically corseted as to appear positively sylph-like. She danced like a fairy, she who had once been called "old" Lady Fulkeward; she smoked cigarettes; she laughed like a child at every trivial thing—any joke, however stale, flat and unprofitable, was sufficient to stir her light pulses to merriment; and she flirted—oh, heavens!—HOW ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... three— From the lofty elder tree! Through the calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyed Sylph or fairy hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. But the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws and darts! First at one and then its fellow, Just as light and just as ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... crime, my eye was arrested by another lightly and lowly draped figure of the same sex advancing towards us with an uncertain, hobbling step so like the gait of the lovely Chinese maidens of almond eyes that again I watched intently, and I saw that not only was this sylph drawn out of all natural form at the waist, but that she was attempting to walk in little shoes supported upon high pivots called heels under the centre of the feet. It was an ingenious combination of torture and helplessness, to which no social circle in my native land offers a parallel. It ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... rasher, and an egg on special occasions: say on her birthday. Dinner in the middle of the day, one course and nothing else. In the evening, tea and bread-and-butter again. You compare her with your Englishwomen who wolf down from three to five meat meals a day; and naturally you find her a sylph. The difference is not a difference of type: it's the difference between the woman who eats not wisely but too well, and the woman who eats not wisely but ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... too. Sure Granville's luck exceeds all other men's Led through a sad variety of tens;[19] The rest have sometimes eights and nines, but he Is always followed by 'the jolly three;'[20] But the great Skew some guardian sylph protects, His judgment governs, and his hand directs When to refrain, when boldly to put in And catch with happy nine the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... is always a pity; and sometimes not quite right. No,"—and I was amused to see how gravely and doggedly John kept to his point—"though this lady did not look like a sylph or a wood-nymph—being neither very small nor very slight, and having a comfortable woollen cloak and hood over the grey silk gown—still, I don't believe she's an old woman, or ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... lunch was finished, two Indian girls came down the river. The younger, tall, slender and graceful, dressed in bright, clean scarlet, was a picture. With her jet black hair hanging in shining plaits, her piercing eyes and handsome face, she was the most comely, sylph-like Indian ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... This sylph-like person had little in common with a monstrous lady whose adventures in the wildernes Phelps was fond of relating. She was built some thing on the plan of the mountains, and her ambition to explore was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... white-shafted ternlet (STERNA SINENSIS), the most sylph-like of birds, with others of the family, ever on the look-out, follow in circling, screaming mobs the disturbance on the surface of the sea caused by small fish vainly endeavouring to elude the crafty bonito and porpoise, and take ample supplies to the ever-hungry young. How is it that the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... think mourning can be very becoming to Lady Mabel," ruminated Mrs. Tempest. "Those small sylph-like figures rarely ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... melodious Singer; loftiest Serene Highness; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylph-like almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,—has descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of the eater ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... of the tram: Be thine the throne, and thine to reign O'er all the varying year! But ere thou rulest the Fates command; That of our chosen rival band A Sylph shall win thy heart and hand, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... fair As fabled Arcady, the sylph and fay, And all their gentle kindred, shun the air, Where car and steamer make ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... creature?" said John Seymour, as a light, sylph-like form tripped up the steps of the veranda of the hotel where he was lounging away his ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... rarely on field days, For then the gentlemen were rather tired) Displayed some sylph-like figures in its maze; Then there was small-talk ready when required; Flirtation—but decorous; the mere praise Of charms that should or should not be admired. The hunters fought their fox-hunt o'er again, And then ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... sparsely populated mountains of Santa Ana, would astonish any one. Orso and Jenny were dressed in their circus attire. The beautiful girl, clothed in pink tights and short white skirt, appearing so suddenly before him, looked in the firelight like some fairy sylph. Behind her stood the youth with his powerful figure, covered also with pink fleshings, through which you could see his muscles standing out like knots ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Templeton, young American lads, meet each other in an unusual way soon after the declaration of war. Circumstances place them on board the British cruiser, "The Sylph," and from there on, they share adventures with the sailors of the Allies. Ensign Robert L. Drake, the author, is an experienced naval officer, and he describes admirably the many exciting ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... they could not act, speak, or feel otherwise than as he makes them. He has invented for them a language, manners, and sentiments of their own, from the tremendous imprecations of the Witches in MACBETH, when they do 'a deed without a name', to the sylph-like expressions 'of Ariel, who 'does his spiriting gently'; the mischievous tricks and gossiping of Robin Goodfellow, or the uncouth gabbling and emphatic gesticulations of Caliban ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... for the amateur stage, then so much in fashion in France. Somebody said of him, when he was famous as the laureate of the cats, that he had risen in life by never scratching, by always having velvet paws, and by never putting up his back, even when he was startled. Voltaire called him "my very dear Sylph," and he was the ideal of all that was noiseless, graceful, good-humoured, and well-bred. He slipped unobtrusively into the French Academy, and lived to be eighty-three, dying at last, like Anacreon, in the midst of music and dances and fair nymphs of the Opera, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... the core," thought Jack. "Large grey eyes, rich brown hair— the complexion of the lily tinged with the rose—a figure a sylph might envy." ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... this happy valley, sometimes riding across to the dykes, sometimes visiting the neighboring villages, sometimes wandering on foot over the hills to the upper waters of the rivers. And the Gasperau in particular is an attractive little mountain sylph, as it comes skipping down the rocks, breaking here and there out in a broad cascade, or rippling and singing in the heart of the grand old forest. I think my friend Kensett might set his pallet ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... jingle, jangle, jingle, Soft tunes that sweetly mingle, The cows are coming home. Malvine and Pearl and Florimel, Dekamp, Redrose and Gretchen Schnell, Queen Bell and Sylph and Spangled Sue— Across the fields I hear her "loo-oo" And clang her silver bell; Goling, golang, golinglelingle, With faint far sounds that mingle, The cows come slowly home; And mother-songs of long-gone years, And baby joys and childish ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... after mature deliberation,—"suppose we call it the Sylph? There's a, story in the Boys' Own about a ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... Dominie Sampson, whom Mannering recognised at once. Time had made no change upon him, unless that his black coat seemed more brown, and his gaunt cheeks more lank, than when Mannering last saw him. On one side of the old man was a sylph-like form—a young woman of about seventeen, whom the Colonel accounted to be his daughter. She was looking, from time to time, anxiously towards the avenue, as if expecting the post-chaise; and between whiles busied herself in adjusting ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... deftly into unexpected quips and incongruous conjunctions. Her talk ran on like a limpid brook, with a musical ripple playing ever on the surface. As for Bernard, he helped her about the ship like a brother, as she moved lightly around, with her sylph-like little form, among the ropes and capstans. Melissa Hked to be helped, she said; she didn't believe one bit in woman's rights; no, indeed; she was a great deal too fond of being taken care of for that. And who wouldn't take care of her,—that delicate little thing,—like some choice ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... rash speaker turned pale. All our eyes, that had been fixed on his, followed his glance, and we saw a Spaniard, whose glittering eyes shone through a clump of orange-trees. On finding himself the object of our attention, the man vanished with the swiftness of a sylph. A young captain rushed ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... who have the face of a houri, the form of a sylph, and the heart of an angel, will ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... this, the Sylph, one of the East India Company's cruisers, of sixty tons and mounting eight guns, was accompanying the mission under Sir Hartford Jones, from Bombay, to Persia; when being separated from the rest of the squadron, she was attacked in ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... yet with visions bright Of sylph and river, flower and fay, Now through a narrow corridor She ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... now," cried Bull, "it was because he was so fat and so light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It was like the old speculations—what would happen if an elephant could leap up in the sky ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... was a good deal of the time preoccupied, and Podge Byerly, who wrote as neatly as copper-plate, answered these inquiries, and conducted a little conversation of her own. Podge was a slender blonde, with fine blue eyes and a mischievous, sylph-like way of coming and going. Her freedom of motion and address seemed to concern the stranger. One day she wrote, after putting down the answer to a ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... and a wash-sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like women in a paradisaic costume, balancing themselves upon the tips of their toes on the bare backs of frantic and plunging steeds, and kissing their hands to ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... some willows That overhung the sea, And as she view'd the billows, She moan'd most piteously; The storm in all its rigour Swept the bosom of the main, And shook the sylph-like figure Of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... eyes of heavenliest blue, liquid, laughing, brimming with espieglerie; a slim little nose with an upward tilt, which expressed a contemptuous gaiety, an inquiring curiosity; a dimpled chin sloping a little towards the full round throat; the bust and shoulders of a Venus, the waist of a sylph, set off by the close-fitting velvet bodice, with its diamond and turquoise buttons; hair of palest gold, fluffed out into curls that were traps for sunbeams; hands and arms of a milky whiteness ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... not in this wide world," I exclaimed, quite unintentionally quoting Tom Moore; "there never has been, nor can ever be again, so charming a creature. No nymph, or sylph, or winged Ariel, or syren with song and mirror, was ever so fascinating—no daughter of Eve ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... I an artist?—No; I am an author and a plagiarist. Every sketch in my book is taken from some other work, except the "Screecher," which is from the artistic pen of Lady G.M.; and the lovely form and features of the coloured sylph, for which I am indebted to my friend Mr. J.F.C.—You must not be too curious.—I consider myself justified in plagiarizing anything from anybody, if I conceive it will help to elucidate my subject or amuse my reader, provided always I have a reasonable ground for believing the source ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... saint in the golden legend was ever more tortured by temptation, than I have been for the last twenty-four hours ... with the desire of visiting those celebrated places. Thrice has some invisible being—some silver-tongued sylph—not mentioned, I apprehend, in the nomenclature of the Rosicrusian philosophy, whispered the word ... "ROME ..." in mine ear—and thrice have I replied in the response... "VIENNA!" I am therefore firmly fixed: ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the beast, The Words of the Four be addressed: Salamander, shine glorious! Wave, Undine, as bidden! Sylph, be ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... dyed like a peach by the sun, but so as to improve rather than impair its hue; eyes bright, laughing, and blue as a summer sky; ripe, ruddy lips, and pearly teeth; and hair of a light and glossy brown, constituted the sum of her attractions. Her sylph-like figure was charmingly displayed by the graceful exercise on which she was engaged, and her small hands, seemingly scarcely able to grasp an oar, impelled the skiff forwards with marvellous velocity, and apparently without ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... are as gay and fantastic as the wiles of an enamored, yet mischievous sylph; some are soft, playing in undulating light, like the hues of a salamander; some, full of the most profound discouragement, as if the sighs of souls in pain, who could find none to offer up the charitable prayers ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... roaming! I 've been roaming! O'er red rose and lily fair, And like a sylph I 'm coming With their ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... Francesco Gonzago; and the bride alone, of all the beauties who shone in gold and silver, appeared superior in feminine charms to the lovely Beatrice, notwithstanding that her cumbrous robe of grey stuff obscured the delicate proportions of her sylph-like form. Buoyant in spirit, and animated by the scene before her, occasionally a gleam of sunshine would irradiate her brow as she gazed upon the sparkling throng who formed the brilliant pageant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... whole gang didn't go as mum as a lot of railroad hands after a smash-up. Why, they hadn't seen no such lady, cross their hearts they hadn't. Maybe it was old Rosa, yes? And Rosa a sylph that would fit tight in a pork barrel! A ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... secret heart The magic image of the magic Child, Which there he made up-grow by his strong art, As in that crystal[458:1] orb—wise Merlin's feat,— The wondrous 'World of Glass,' wherein inisled 40 All long'd-for things their beings did repeat;— And there he left it, like a Sylph beguiled, To live ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... (Nodier himself explains that he alters the spelling here with pure phonetic intent, so as to keep the pronunciation for French eyes and ears[84]), is a spirit who haunts the cabin of the fisherman Dougal to make a sort of sylph-like love to his wife Jeannie. He means and does no harm, but he is naturally a nuisance to the husband, on whom he plays tricks to keep him away from home, and at length rather frightens the wife. They procure, from a neighbouring monastery, a famous exorcist monk, who, though he cannot ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... for the footer captain to give his eleven a formal tea, Phil arranged the usual preliminaries, sick at heart, and wearily certain as to the result. Three put in an appearance—Vercoe, Baines, and Roberts—and in place of the burly forms of the rest of the St. Amory's eleven, the sylph-like figures of their fags flitted to Phil's hall of entertainment with curt little notes. Worcester and the rest "regretted they were unable to avail themselves of ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... grief, no one could say. He looked at the little Lady, she looked at him, and he felt that he was melting; but he stood firm, shouldering his musket. Then suddenly the door flew open, and the draft of air caught the Dancer, and she flew like a sylph just into the stove to the Tin Soldier, and flashed up in a flame, and then was gone! Then the Tin Soldier melted down into a lump, and when the servant maid took the ashes out next day, she found him in the shape of a ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... image on which it doted into visible 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 ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... months of her abode on the earth, there remained to her only the life of a sylph. I have been interested to record, not a journal of her sickness, but the mental phenomena of such an almost disembodied life. Such may cast light on the period when also our Psyche may unfold her wings, free from bodily bonds, ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... the story of St. Anthony? How he was tempted by the Devil in the semblance of a lovely sylph, until all at once he saw the fiend's hoof appear from under ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... play the tune which Frank had requested. The Sylph was making very good progress through the water, and the rowers kept pulling with a very ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... be the crowning proof. Paternal affection, family pride, the noble instincts to reinstate yourself in the castle of your ancestors, all demand the step. And when you have seen the lady! She has the figure and motions of a sylph, the face of an angel, the eye of love itself. What a sight she is crossing the lawn on a sunny afternoon, or gliding airily along the corridors of the old place the De Stancys knew so well! Her lips are the softest, reddest, most distracting things you ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... shines upon us; preparing ourselves for the blessed spectacle as the eye waits patiently for the rising sun." They and they only can acquire the philosophic imagination, the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are forming within the skin of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in its involucrum for antenna, yet to come. They know and feel, that the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sixteen years of age, dressed in a violet robe with a light cap on his head. His vermilion lips, brilliant white teeth, and arched eye-brows gave him the air of a charming girl. So graceful and airy are his movements, that one might well ask, whether he be mortal or a heavenly spirit. He looks like a sylph formed of the essence of flowers, or a soul descended from the moon. Is it indeed a youth who has come out to divert himself, or is it a sweet perfume from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... espying her, he took it as a matter of course that the lady who taught his heart to leap should be posted by the Fates. And he wondered little at her power, for rarely had the world seen such union of princess and sylph as in that lady's figure. She stood holding by a beech-branch, gazing down ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... like was nowhere to be found in the world. The lady seeing his astonishment said to the Prince, "This mansion is nothing beside all my others which now, of my free will, I have made thine own; and when thou seest them thou shalt have just cause for wonderment. Then that sylph-like being took seat upon a raised dais and with abundant show of affection seated Prince Ahmad by her side. Presently quoth she, "Albeit thou know me not, I know thee well, as thou shalt see with surprise ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... on the gale, Her step upon the wold; And morning diamonds brightly gem Her braided locks of gold. Far up the pine-wood glen, Her sylph-like form is seen, By hunter in the hazy dawn, Or ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Away tripped the sylph—like girl, and in a twinkling reappeared with the desired garment, which in a convulsion of laughter she slipped over my head as I sat on the floor; and having fastened it properly round my waist, I rose and paid my respects ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... up, "the bees are swarming; I shall be stung to death," and out he rushed, with a brighter fire in his eye and a more intense one in his brain. Descending the hill, he watched the sylph like forms as they floated on in the mazy dance, declaring the bees were in terrible commotion, and he should be stung to death. With difficulty he was prevailed upon to return to his house, and ever and anon, as the sound of the music reached his ear, he would start ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the midst of these excited feelings, the ballet; drawing its magic net about the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like form, her scarf floating behind her, as if she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings. Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did her feet touch the earth. She seemed to floatin the air, and the floor to bend and wave under ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a surprised smile. She is very pretty, is Marcia,—bewitchingly pretty,—and she has an air of demure grace and modesty about her that is perfectly charming. Why? oh, why does she not remain in that sylph-like, attitude of questioning silence? But she speaks—and the charm ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... approached the wondrous forest, and was gazing earnestly upwards. Presently one of the trees—as I must call them—unfolded a long ciliary process, with which it seized one of the gleaming fruits that glittered on its summit, and sweeping slowly down, held it within reach of Animula. The sylph took it in her delicate hand, and began to eat. My attention was so entirely absorbed by her, that I could not apply myself to the task of determining whether this singular plant was or was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... quadrille, the waltz succeeds the schottish, the scene presents one bewildering maze of flaunting gossamers and girating bodies, now floating sylph-like into the foreground, then whirling seductively into the shadowy vista, where the joyous laugh dies out in the din of voices. The excitement has seized upon the head and heart of the young,—the child who stood trembling between the first and second downward step finds her reeling brain a captive ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... La Fayette, the woman whose relations with Mme. de Sevigne were the most intimate was Mme. de Coulanges, who merits here more than a passing word. Her wit was proverbial, her popularity universal. The Leaf, the Fly, the Sylph, the Goddess, her friend calls her in turn, with many a light thrust at her volatile but loyal character. This brilliant, spirituelle, caustic woman was the wife of a cousin of the Marquis de Sevigne, who was as witty as herself and more inconsequent. Both were ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... In her coral-shallop bright, Glides the rock-king's dove-eyed daughter, Decked in robes of virgin white. Nymphs and naiads, sweetly smiling, Urge her bark with pearly hand, Merrily the sylph beguiling From the nooks ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... understand, was unbounded. For example, Miss Arabella Pope of Norfolk, in Virginia,—and did I know her? No, I had not that pleasure, though I assured him the Popes of Virginia were famed. Miss Pope danced divinely as any sylph, and the very memory of her tripping at the Norfolk Assembly roused the captain to such a pitch of enthusiasm as I had never seen in him. Marvellous to say, his own words failed him, and he had recourse ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... over my shoulder, Madam, and see these cards! What quaint, odd, old-time figures they are! I wonder if the kings and queens of by-gone centuries were such grotesque-looking objects as these. Look at that Queen of Spades! Why, Dr. Slop's abdominal sesquipedality was sylph-like grace to the Lambertian girth she displays. And note the pattern of her dress, if dress it can be called,—that rotund expanse of heraldic, bar-sinistered, Chinese embroidery. Look at that Jack of Diamonds! What a pair of collar-bones he must have! That ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... travels or whether it was the result of trouble, who can say? He looked at the little lady, she looked at him, and he felt that he was melting; but he remained steadfast, with his gun at his shoulder. Suddenly a door opened, the draught caught up the little Dancer, and off she flew like a sylph to the Tin-soldier in the stove, burst into flames—and that was the end of her! Then the Tin-soldier melted down into a little lump, and when next morning the maid was taking out the ashes, she found him in the shape of a heart. There was ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... April.—The Sylph destroyed several gun-vessels in the Race of Alderney, in which she had one man killed and ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... young adept came in smiling, with her eyes full of fire. She was dressed in a short pelisse, open in front, and an embroidered muslin skirt which did not go beyond her knees. She looked like a sylph. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Rosamond blush with pleasure. But she remained simply serious, turned her long neck a little, and put up her hand to touch her wondrous hair-plaits—an habitual gesture with her as pretty as any movements of a kitten's paw. Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylph caught young and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the symbol expressed by the wings of the air-sylph forming within the case of the caterpillar? Only he who feels in his own soul the same instinct which impels the horned fly to leave room in its involucrum for antennae yet to come." Such a man knows and feels that the potential ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... head. "I don't know about the sylph-like form, but at least I mean to possess a slender figure when I have followed Miss Cullam's ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... in view. A staircase is reserved for women, who are watched over by the elders of their sex. But they could be seen in the distance, frolicking in the water; and they were so hilarious that their shouts could be heard on board of the Sylph, ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... morrow's breakfast. She is young, slim, and active, and wears a string of red corals round her neck. The place is not frequented by plutocratic tourists, and so her tips are meagre. In spite of her long days and her slim perquisites, the girl is affable, smiling, and gay. She trips out and in, sylph-like, can carve fowls most dexterously by the light of nature, never spills the soup, and has a laughing and appropriate word for all. Mary, I hope, will get some decent fellow for husband, and be a stay and comfort to him all the days of his life. Meanwhile, however (to use the historic present), ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the sofa, smoking too many cigarettes, till, punctually at one o'clock, a peal at the bell announced the arrival of Miss Martin. She entered, radiant, smiling, and in her costume of innocence she looked like a sylph. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... truth, a beautiful, sylph-like young woman—one whom I would have looked at with complacency in any circumstances; for who that admires the fair and the lovely in nature—whether it be the wide-spread beauty of sky and earth, or beauty in its minuter modifications, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... A perfect little sylph, resting on the tiniest of feet, with hands so charming that you would feel an almost irresistible desire to fold them caressingly within your own—the rich complexion of a brunette with the bloom ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... strange mother and daughter, whilst the pretty Euphemia paid the same compliment to him. During his stay, he ventured to look once only at her sylph-like figure. There was an unreceding something in her liquid blue eyes, when he chanced to meet them, which displeased him; and he could not help seeing that from the instant she entered the room she had seldom ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... who had been always inclined to be pensive, and took her seat often in these lonesome haunts. From her baby name of Neenizu, my dear life, she was called Leelinau, but she never attained to much size, remaining very slender, but of the most pleasing and sylph-like features, with very bright black eyes, and little feet. Her mother often cautioned her of the danger of visiting these lonely fairy haunts, and predicted, playfully, that she would one day be carried off by the Pukwudjees, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... did the two beautiful sisters differ. The figure of Josephine was tall and majestic; her walk and gestures were imperative and commanding. Sophia's form was slight and sylph-like; her every movement was characterized by exquisite modesty and grace, and her voice had all the liquid melody of the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... her allotted task thoroughly well, and without appearing to find it an exertion. The housekeeping was admirable; to that point the excellence of the breakfast had borne witness. I recollect once falling violently in love with a Massachusetts beauty, possessed of a charming face, a sylph-like figure, and as much sentimentality as would have stocked half a dozen flaxen-haired Germans. It was my ninth serious attachment if I remember rightly, and desperately smitten I was and remained, until one unlucky day when the mamma of my adorata invited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... beholder saw in these eyes, ardor and passion; on this forehead, thought and energetic resolutions; and on this swelling mouth, archness, overflowing spirits, and wit. And the figure of this lovely woman was in full harmony with her ravishing head. She was petite, delicate, and ethereal, like a sylph, and yet her form was well developed and beautiful; if she had been somewhat taller, she might ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... belongs the credit of writing the first English opera, strictly so called, since Arne's 'Artaxerxes.' 'The Mountain Sylph,' which was produced in 1834, fulfils all the requirements of the operatic form. It is besides a work of genuine charm and power, and retained its popularity ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... proved a happy one, until death sundered the tie. Caroline Mary, who thus became the Duchess de Berri, was of sylph-like grace of figure, beautiful in features, and by her affable manners and unaffected amiability won all hearts. Four years glided swiftly away. Two children were born, a son and a daughter; both died in ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... a wide range along the temperate regions of the Cordilleras. The genus of sylph to which it belongs is among the most beautiful and graceful in form of the humming-birds. The body is of a bronzed green, and the crown of the head of a metallic golden green; while the throat is adorned ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... asked: "If images derived from art are as beautiful and sublime as those derived from nature, why was it necessary to bring your ship off the stocks?" He appealed to his adversary whether the description of a game of ombre was as poetical as that of a walk in the forest, and whether "the sylph of Pope, 'trembling over the fumes of a chocolate pot,' be an image as poetical as that of delicate and quaint Ariel, who sings 'Where the bee sucks, there lurk (sic) I.'" Campbell replied in the New Monthly Magazine, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... tempest beats the restless seas, The wind blows loud, fierce from the skies; Sweet, sylph-like Una clasps the shell, Peace brooding in her ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... the Continent, whither she was going for the sake of the health of her youngest daughter, an interesting and attractive young girl some years older than myself, who at this time seemed threatened with imminent consumption. She had a sylph-like, slender figure, tall, and bending and wavering like a young willow sapling, and a superabundant profusion of glossy chestnut ringlets, which in another might have suggested vigor of health and constitution, but always seemed ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... dimly indicated beyond. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues. Or it may be that the heroine is not an heiress—that rank and wealth are the only things in which she is deficient; but she infallibly gets into high society, she has the triumph of refusing many matches and securing the best, and she wears ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... for, though she beamed on Webb as she did on all, she frankly showed her preference for the younger officers who could dance as well as ride, and either dancing or riding was her glory. She danced like a sylph; she seemed to float about the room as though on air; she rode superbly, and shirked no leap that even Ray and Field took with lowered hands and close gripping knees. She was joyous, laughing, radiant with all the officers, and fairly glowed with cordiality for all the women. But it speedily developed ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... by this rattling sylph, cries. 'Oh yes! Do let us resolve ourselves into a Committee of the whole House! So delicious!' Veneering says, 'As many as are of that opinion, say Aye,—contrary, No—the Ayes have it.' But nobody takes the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Grains' in his pocket; he and some women, in carriages belonging to the King. Thitherward slim Louison Chabray has already set forth, with that 'written answer,' which the Twelve She-deputies returned in to seek. Slim sylph, she has set forth, through the black muddy country: she has much to tell, her poor nerves so flurried; and travels, as indeed to-day on this road all persons do, with extreme slowness. President Mounier has not come, nor the Acceptance pure and simple; though six hours with their events have ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... catching a tremendous "crab," the effect of which was to throw him backwards, and almost to upset the boat. Fortunately, however, "tubs" recover their equilibrium almost as easily as tombolas, and "the Sylph" did not belie its character; so the freshman again assumed a proper position, and was shoved off with a boat-hook. At first he made some hopeless splashes in the stream, the only effect of which was to make the boat ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... universal, as it is certainly the most sociable, of all fashionable dances. It admits of pleasant conversation, frequent interchange of partners, and is adapted to every age. The young or old, the ponderous paterfamilias or his sylph-like daughter, may with equal propriety take part in its easy and elegant figures. Even an occasional blunder is of less consequence in this dance than in many others; for each personage is in some degree free as to his own movements, not being compelled by the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... natural ornament which woman seeks much to improve, was of bright glossy brown, and encumbered rather than adorned with a snood, set thick with marine productions, among which the small clear pearl found in the Solway was conspicuous. Nature had not trusted to a handsome shape, and a sylph-like air, for young Barbara's influence over the heart of man; but had bestowed a pair of large bright blue eyes, swimming in liquid light, so full of love and gentleness and joy, that all the sailors from Annanwater to far Saint Bees acknowledged their power, and sung songs ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... in the familiar schoolgirl fashion of Hyde Lodge, Charlotte's arm encircling the waist of her friend. They were both dressed in white muslin, and looked very shadowy and sylph-like in the summer dusk. Mr. Hawkehurst found himself in a new atmosphere in this suburban garden, with these two white-robed damsels by his side; for it seemed to him that Diana with Charlotte's arm round her waist, and a certain shy gentleness of manner which was new to him, was ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... or pale azure of light fabrics do best agree with Majoli's sylph-like form. Pearls and feathers are consonant to her artistic taste. Her emblematic flower is the lily, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... of sylph-like simplicity to one, whose features, though beautiful, were marked by an expression foreign to simplicity, evincing that taste, not sentiment, presided over her toilet, and that, "chez elle, un beau desordre ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... little shy, but not more shy than Bateman, to whom the whole situation was highly embarrassing, and it did not put him at his ease to see this sylph-like thing take a shaker and with a practised hand ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... on the stage of my fancy in foe, leafy seclusion of the grove not as she rode before us on horseback but in an ideal and ethereal fashion, as to AEneas his mother, as Minerva to Callimachus, as the sylph who, afterward became the mother of Libusa to the Bohemian Kroco, as Diana to the son of Aristaeus, as the angels in the valley of Mamre to the patriarch, as the hippocentaur to St. Anthony in ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... through the medium of a cold in the head. So much the worse, but it can't be helped. Let us continue to drown our young girl;" and while his fingers assailed the trembling keys, Schaunard, with sparkling eyes and straining ears, gave chase to the melody which, like an impalpable sylph, hovered amid the sonorous mist which the vibrations of the instrument seemed to let loose ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... from the station, and indeed all the way from New York, he had pictured to himself Edith's sylph-like form running down the steps to meet him; had felt her warm hands in his, heard her sweet voice welcoming him home again, and the world around him was filled with daylight, but Edith was the sun which shone ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... returned John. "She has a sylph-like, aesthetic appearance, but I give you my word she has the most epicurean eye. She hasn't left a prize berry in those fields. Have ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... feet in the witchery of its rhythm and set them moving upon the sand-covered floor of the Temple. Yet there was no smile on her lips as, moved by whatever it is that causes us to do strange things in the East, she danced like a wraith or a sylph, or a leaf in the wind, in and out of the columns and out into the light of the moon, and through the granite door onto the terrace where once had been planted the incense trees which had come with the spoil from Punt to perfume the air to the glory ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... lieth love's delight. Complexion, stature, nature, mateth it, Not with their kinds, but with their opposites. Hence hands of snow in palms of russet lie; The form of Hercules affects the sylph's; And breasts, that case the lion's fear-proof heart, Find their meet lodge in arms where tremors dwell! Haply for this, on Afric's swarthy neck, Hath Europe's priceless pearl been seen to hang, That makes the orient ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... comrade to Hale-lehua, Soul-mate to Kau'kahi-alii. O, Kaili, Kaili! Kaili, leaf of the koa, Graceful as leaf of the koa, 10 Granddaughter of goddess, Whose name is the breath of love, Darling of blooming Lehua. My lady rides with the gray foam, On the surge that enthralls the desire. 15 I pine for the sylph robed in gauze, Who rides on the surf Maka-iwa— Aye, cynosure thou of all hearts, In all of sacred Wailua. Forlorn and soul-empty the house; 20 You pleasure on the beach Ali-o; Your love is up here in ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... light as a sylph's, nothing rattled in the sick-room as she moved about it. She took up a comb and re-arranged her dark, curling hair. She placed a rose in her belt, nodded to her own bright image, and then, seating herself before a small table, began to arrange the flowers. ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... the two vessels lay abreast within easy hail. The brig, with her fine lines and her white sails, looked vaporous and sylph-like in the moonlight. The gunboat, short, squat, with her stumpy dark spars naked like dead trees, raised against the luminous sky of that resplendent night, threw a heavy shadow on the lane of water between ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... spare the four sylph-like Misses Clipper, for with them vanished all hopes of delicious music in the evening. Ah, that was music! The way they played together the "Taking of Tel-el- Kebir" took us by storm. The silent march through the dead of night, the charge, the cheers, the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... agreeable one. The smoothness of the lakes, the softness and purity of the air, the wild and picturesque character of the scenes, and the perfect transparency of the waters, have been so many themes of perpetual remark and admiration. The occasional appearance of the feather-plumed Indian in his sylph-like canoe, or the flapping of a covey of wild-fowl, frightened by the rushing sound of a steamboat, with the quick pulsation of its paddle-strokes on the water, but served to heighten the interest, and to cast a kind of fairy spell over the prospect, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... American ladies in youth are very sylph-like and elegant; and this appearance is obtained without the use of those artificial constraints so justly to be condemned. They are almost too slight for beauty, though this does not signify while ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... better followed. Again the lights were lowered to the faintest glimmer. Soft music played. Forms floated through the air, now here, now there, plucking at a tambourine—touching a sweet chord on the open piano. At last, in evil moment, the most angelic, sylph-like form came all too near our friend who wore the bangle. The temptation was too great for mortal man. He extended his arms and took firm, substantial, desperate hold of the nymph, at the same instant shouting wildly to his brother, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... our privilege to see real peasantry flirt, and it has always struck us as a singularly solid and substantial affair—makes one think, somehow, of a steam-roller flirting with a cow—but on the stage it is so sylph-like. She has short skirts, and her stockings are so much tidier and better fitting than these things are in real peasant life, and she is arch and coy. She turns away from him and laughs—such a silvery laugh. And he is ruddy and curly haired and has on such a ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... and stood waiting for the girl, whose motions were marvellously graceful, especially if her large and vigorous physique be considered. No sylph could have glided with less awkwardness, and yet a spindle more closely resembles the bole of a giant oak than Maggie Windsor the frail damsels who bent beneath the keen blasts of New England a hundred years ago. Her countenance disclosed all ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... breez'y wid'geon cod'i cil ghost greasy pig'eon dom'i cile queer gar'den mal'ice ver'sa tile brief par'don pal'ace hyp'o crite spoke e'vil tor'toise hip'po drome croak ea'gle mor'tise scen'er y self pole'ax sel'vage ple'na ry sylph poult'ry por'ridge ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... physical type which had served Hawthorne so well hitherto no longer responded to his art; neither the bloody footstep, nor the flower that grew upon the grave, which was after all only a fungus and not the real flower of life, had any story in them, either alone or together, and the figure of Sylph, who embodies allegorically this graveyard flower, has no power to win credence such as other, earlier, symbolic characters had won. The power of narration, the rich surface of romantic art, the character ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... she who has the right of seeing you every minute, of speaking to you every instant! would that I were she who might watch over you, she who would have no need of mysterious springs, to summon and cause to appear, like a sylph, the man she loves, to look at him for an hour, and then see him disappear in the darkness of a mystery, still more strange at his going out than at his coming in. Oh! that would be ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to combine them at the piano when breakfast was at an end, though it was Sunday morning, were exasperating to the exquisite lover of music. Mr. Pericles was really suffering torments. Do you know what it is to pursue the sylph, and touch her flying skirts, think you have caught her, and are sure of her—that she is yours, the rapturous evanescent darling! when some well-meaning earthly wretch interposes and trips you, and off she flies and leaves you floundering? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "our own hind legs," we accepted an ankle-deep plod through filth indescribable and treacherous boulders, which turned over when trust and sixteen stone were reposed on them. It was at this part of the journey that I saw for the first time the Mountain Sylph. Some women and children, who looked very frightened, cleared away towards their wretched dwellings, and the place would presently have been deserted had not my driver roared at the top of his voice, "Hullo, the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... professor" in a shooting gallery. And then the assertion—or revelation—that he was of kin not only to the old witch, who had perished in shielding him unintentionally in saving her grandchild, but to the latter. Fair as a sylph but icy-hearted as a woman of five social seasons! But the son of the guillotined wife-murderer should not be fastidious about those relatives who ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... for her to do, even this received such a varnish from her lips, her eyes, her beauties, her irradiating zeal, that reason everlastingly renounce me if I scarcely knew, while she spoke, whether it were not the history of some sylph, some heavenly ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... coal-black hair beside the tall comb, and her exquisitely shaped arms adorned with heavy bracelets. "Oh, what magnificent eyes! What exquisite long lashes!" you exclaim to yourself. See her poise an instant with the grace of a sylph, one slippered foot just touching the floor, then click, click, sound the castanets, as they have sounded for upwards of two thousand years and are likely to do for two thousand more, for their inspiriting click seems necessary to move Spanish feet and give grace ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... superficiality and is liable to degenerate into a mere detailed description of the person. It demands of the writer the ability to catch striking details and to present them vividly and interestingly. Examples: Hawthorne's "Sylph Etherege" and "Old Esther Dudley;" Poe's "The Man of the Crowd;" James' "Greville Fane" and "Sir Edmund Orme;" Stevenson's "Will o' the Mill;" Wilkins' "The Scent of the Roses" and ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... came abreast of the Zephyr's boat-house, they discovered that Uncle Ben was on board the Sylph, which lay moored at a short distance ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... her artless grace and indifferent pose. That she had a burly millionaire husband who still was under her spell and watched her jealously only made her more interesting, and they pitied her for being tied to a man twice her age and bulky as a bale of cotton. She who could dance like a sylph and was light on her little feet as a thistle down. Though wise ones sometimes said that Opal had her young eyes wide open when she married Ed Verrons, and she had him right under her little pink well manicured thumb. And some said she was not nearly so young ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... light of the sun of life; he felt the pressure of no duty—was like a bird of the air lying under its mother's wing, and dreaming of flight; his childhood's most cherished dream had grown fact: there was the sylph, the oriad, the naiad of all his dreams, a living lady before his eyes—nor the less a creature of his imagination's heart; from her, as the centre of power, had all the marvellous transformation ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald |
