"Seraphic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two Jews that met by chance, One old, stern-eyed, deep-browed, yet garlanded With living light of love around his head, The other young, with sweet seraphic glance. Around went on the Town's satanic dance, Hunger a-piping while at heart he bled. Shalom Aleichem mournfully each said, Nor eyed the other straight ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... honour claim'd Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall: Who forthwith from the glittering Staff unfurld Th' Imperial Ensign, which full high advanc't Shon like a Meteor streaming to the Wind With Gemms and Golden lustre rich imblaz'd, Seraphic arms and Trophies: all the while Sonorous mettal blowing Martial sounds: 540 At which the universal Host upsent A shout that tore Hells Concave, and beyond Frighted the Reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... and sit down beside him. He was half lying in a softly cushioned chair; there was a large globe at his side, and an equally large atlas, with other books on a small table near by, and Max's chair was close to the whole arrangement. He was a fair, lovely boy, with the seraphic eyes that sufferers from spinal diseases so frequently possess—eyes with the look in them of a Conqueror of Pain. But also, on his young face there was the solemn Trophonean pallor which signs those who daily dare "to look at death ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... was probably proposing to himself the model of this excellent person, who for his piety was named the Seraphic Doctor. BOSWELL. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... exceptional expression, but highly characteristic; it is one of Fisher's best works. Now he is about our Wiedeman, and if he succeeds as well in painting angels as men, will do something beautiful with that seraphic face. You are to understand that these works are done by the artist for the artist. Oh, we couldn't afford to have such a luxury as a portrait done for us. But I am pleased to have a good likeness of each of my treasures extant in the possession of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... imprison forever the intellect of a La Place, whose telescopic eye, piercing the unfenced fields of immensity, systematized more worlds than there are grains of dust in this globe? the heart of a Borromeo, whose seraphic love expanded to the limits of sympathetic being? the soul of a Wycliffe, whose undaunted will, in faithful consecration to duty, faced the fires of martyrdom and never blenched? the genius of a Shakspeare, whose imagination exhausted worlds and then invented ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... is love? 'Tis not the crown of kings, Nay, nor the fire of white seraphic wings! Is it a child's heart leaping while he sings? Even so say I; Even so ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... of Thomas to Paris he was made doctor of theology, at the same time with Bonaventura the Franciscan, called "the seraphic doctor," between whom and Thomas were intimate ties of friendship. He had now reached the highest honor that the university could bestow, which was conferred with such extraordinary ceremony that it would seem to have been a great event in Paris ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... consideration for me as to let himself be seen with me everywhere in public." This was embarrassing for Swann, who did not know quite to what rhetorical pitch he should screw himself up in speaking of Odette to my uncle. He began by alluding to her excellence, a priori, the axiom of her seraphic super-humanity, the revelation of her inexpressible virtues, no conception of which could possibly be formed. "I should like to speak to you about her," he went on, "you, who know what a woman supreme above all women, what an adorable being, what an angel Odette is. But you know, also, what ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... "I wonder what the bright seraphic beings up there—for surely there must be such in that pure heaven above us—are thinking of the proceedings of us mortals down here below. We have to fight, and it is right to defend our country, but I tell you, Ben, I have seen a good deal of it, and, putting what people call ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... she wrote 'Day after Day,' the story of a dismal and joyless orphan, who dies to the sound of angelic music, faint and farheard, filling the whole chamber. A carefuller study of the phenomenon reveals the fact that the seraphic strains are produced by the steam escaping from the hot-water bottles at the feet ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Doctor Seraphic, maintain, That a word which is only conceived in the brain Is a type of eternal Generation; The spoken ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Rose scornfully, in answer to Agnes's laugh; 'she knows you will give her bread and butter and I won't, out of a double regard for my skirts and her morals. Oh, dear me! Miss Barks was quite seraphic last night; she never made a single remark about my clothes, and she didn't even say to me as she generally does, with an air of compassion, that she "quite understands how hard it must ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the glittering staff unfurled Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanced, Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich imblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host upsent A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. Paradise Lost, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... brought forth what he possessed in the spirit). And he told me further concerning this: that where the universal or general love is born in any one, such would be the true signature and token that this seraphic stone would there be formed and take to itself a bodily shape." (L. G. B., I, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... whirlwind of the passions! How did my frame tremble, and madden, and shiver, and burn! How were my lips at once bursting with frenzy and locked in silence! It was my guardian angel that protected me, that pleaded for me, that awed me to patience, and that repaid by her seraphic praise the virtue ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... dusty clerk or cleric, plodding a telescopic road of poplars, thought for the hundredth time that they were like the plumes of a hearse; when this invisible energy caught and swung and clashed them round his head like a wreath or salutation of seraphic wings. There was in it something more inspired and authoritative even than the old wind of the proverb; for this was the good wind that blows ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... Starting up, he appeared to be astonished at the situation in which he found himself; but a glance around told the whole truth. Advancing toward Ghita, he was about to inquire after the welfare of Raoul, when, struck by the expression of her seraphic countenance, he turned to the body, and read the truth in the appropriate pall. It was no time for self-upbraidings, or for reproaches to others; but arousing the sleepers, in a subdued and respectful manner, he gave to the place the quiet and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The "seraphic Doctor" was rector of Penshurst, near Tunbridge Wells, the seat of the Sydneys. From Hammond, who was a zealous adherent of Charles I., Temple received much of his early education. When the Parliament drove Dr. Hammond from his living, Temple was sent ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... Dolores is asleep here in my stateroom, a smile of seraphic peace on her face, but in the room next door I hear the steady murmur of M.D.'s voice reading to poor Randal, who cannot sleep, who has tried to jump overboard. Michael dares not leave him for an instant, even to ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... of Raphael's personal beauty. Only thirty-seven when he died, his seraphic beauty was never marred ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... home when this telegram came. It was the first he had ever received. With trembling hands he tore it open, his rosy face broke into a seraphic smile, and the tears came into his eyes. He rushed to his mother, threw his arms ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... confirmed him. The words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catharine and St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could-not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife. "Amabat, amare timebat." And it was here that Margaret ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... that were going into Romagna arose, believing that the day had dawned, and saddled and laded their beasts; and going on their way, they saw the said light die out and the material sun arise. In the seraphic vision, Christ, the which appeared to him, spake to St. Francis certain high and secret things, the which St. Francis in his lifetime desired not to reveal to any man; but after his life was done he did reveal them, as it set forth below; and the words were these: 'Knowest thou,' said ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... following Miss Carewe's debut. Mr. Chenoweth wrote that while dancing the mazourka with a Lovely Being, the sweetest feelings of his soul, in a celestial stream, bore him away beyond control, in a seraphic dream; and he untruthfully stated that at the same time he saw her wipe the silent tear, omitting, however, to venture any explanation of the cause of her emotion. Old General Trumble boldly signed his poem in full. It was called "An Ode upon Miss C—'s Waltzing," ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... way like the innkeeper's daughter of Comic Opera. She was a schoolgirl of sixteen, with a long, fair plait, a short serge skirt, and a seraphic oval face. She ought to have been called Fanny or Clara. Unluckily her ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... and also you, "Joint sons of sacred harmony, adieu! "Apollo whispering, prompts me to retire, "And bids me join the bright seraphic choir: ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... while new at any rate, looked as real as any coin of the realm. For a whole week the piebald ponies really worked for their living, grumbling loudly between whiles in their stalls; for a whole week "loyalty" was the note on which the press harped its seraphic praises of monarchy and nation; and for a whole week people actually did drop politics, reduce their hours of labor, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... flights and to the corner, although it was midnight and bitter cold. Then, with a seraphic grin on his countenance, he went to bed and slept the ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... much interest in their own danger is very rarely felt. In writings of fiction, whether novels or biographies, these death-beds are generally depicted as almost seraphic in lucidity of intelligence. Sadly large has been my experience in death-beds, and I can only say that I have seldom or never seen such. Indifference, excepting with regard to bodily suffering, or ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... in humanity; Of all who, on despair's unhallowed bed Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be light!" 10 At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes; Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude Nearest resembles worship, oh, remember The truest, the most fervently devoted, 15 And think that these weak lines are written by him: By him, who, as he pens them, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... glance of disdain, as Beauvayse, his seraphic face agrin, screwed in his supererogatory eyeglass, and lounged over the table. "You artless babes! Did you suppose I should be likely to swallow such a feuille de chou without even oil and vinegar? For pity's sake, leave off winking, Bingo! ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... is this absorbs me quite, Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirit, draws my breath? Tell me, my soul, can this be death? The world recedes, it disappears: Heaven opens on my eyes, my ears With sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings: I mount, I fly; O grave, where is thy victory! O death, where ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... describe her ineffable loveliness, for, like the beauty of a flower, it was incapable of analysis. Nothing that I could write would give you any adequate idea of this girl's seraphic face, for she was like unto no one you have ever seen in this cold Western world. I watched in a wild, nervous transport, I know not how long—time and space had no part in this new ecstasy of mine! I could think of nothing, do nothing—only ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... about his name and the story of his life, that is not likely soon to pass away. He belonged to a class of men who seem to be chosen of Heaven to illustrate the sublime possibilities of Christian attainment—men of seraphic fervor of devotion, and whose one overmastering passion is to win souls for Christ and to become wholly like Him themselves. Into this goodly fellowship he was early initiated. There is something startling in the depth and intensity of his religious emotions, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Hesse Darmstadt; wild boars from Egypt; bush pigs from Africa; peccaries from South America; and two painted pigs from West Africa; all "de grege porci," and in excellent health: to say nothing of two hippopotamuses; four "seraphic" giraffes; antelopes (we did not number them); brush turkeys from Australia; an apteryx from New Zealand; the curious white sheathbills from the South Seas; the refulgent metallic green and purple-tinted monaul, or Impeyan pheasant, strutting with outspread, light-coloured tail, just as he ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... was the friend of God on high; Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire: Or other holy seers that tune ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... went to the stake with more settled purpose than this pure woman, resolved to immolate herself for the sake of the man she loved. He had dared all for her, faced death in many shapes. Now it was her turn. Her eyes were lit with a seraphic fire, her sweet face resigned as that ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... a compliment to mothers in itself. We all felt it, mothers or not. But the great sensation was when he got into the pulpit. The manner in which he dropped on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, and showed his beautiful rings was, as a young lady said behind me, simply seraphic. We understood his celebrity, from that moment—I wonder whether I can remember ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... the same doctrine, and showed how a certain salve thrown into a spring produced whirlwinds. The great Franciscan—the "seraphic doctor"—St. Bonaventura, whose services to theology earned him one of the highest places in the Church, and to whom Dante gave special honour in paradise, set upon this belief his high authority. The lives of the saints, and the chronicles of the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... dispute, that when a lover's voice calls, a lover's arms are likely to be waiting. Earthly lovers, my daughter, by no means resemble those charming cherubs which you may have observed on the carved woodwork in our Cathedral. Otherwise you might have just a voice, flanked by seraphic wings. Some such fanciful creation must have been in your mind for Sister Mary Seraphine; for, until I made mention of the noble Knight who had arrived in Worcester distraught with anguish of heart by reason of his loss, you ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... booms had already been passed. The horses continued to step out freely, making nothing of the light fabric they drew after them. Duke, the white of his coat soiled and muddied by frequent and grateful plunges, loped alongside, his pink tongue hanging from one corner of his mouth, and a seraphic expression on his countenance. Occasionally he rolled his eyes up at his masters in ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... and we know no other, Save self-compelling service to the right, Which is but Love in the seraphic sight. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... darkness, through the streaming deluge of that tropic clime. For the seraphic frenzy had now come upon the mage in good earnest, and all the Thought-reader ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... It would never prove that what it terminated in was a fact, as in my metaphysical faith I had deputed and asserted it to be. The angels would remain notional, while my intent was to have them exist; so that the more earnestly I held to my fable the more grievously should I be deceived. For even if seraphic choirs existed in plenty on their own emotional or musical plane of being, it would not have been their hands—if they had hands—that would have lighted the stars I saw; and this, after all, was the gist and starting-point of my whole fable and its sole witness in my world. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... their boat was third upon the river; their chapel-choir is not inferior to Saint George's itself; and the Boniface ale the best in Oxbridge. In the comfortable old wainscoted College-Hall, and round about Roubilliac's statue of Saint Boniface (who stands in an attitude of seraphic benediction over the uncommonly good cheer of the fellows' table) there are portraits of many most eminent Bonifacians. There is the learned Doctor Griddle, who suffered in Henry VIII.'s time, and Archbishop Bush who roasted him—there ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... inductions both rapid and sagacious, he beheld one of those masterpieces of Nature whose creation appears to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here was a fair young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate pride, like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,—due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which vivified and colored it. Her hair, raised to the top of her head, fell thence with black reflections ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, "Give me money." Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. "Budge's Boots are the Best" simply means "Give me money"; "Use Seraphic Soap" simply means "Give me money." It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... point—but still the unintelligible something disturbed me. I finally concluded that my senses were impressed by a certain air of gravity, sadness, or, still more properly, of weariness, which took something from the youth and freshness of the countenance, only to endow it with a seraphic tenderness and majesty, and thus, of course, to my enthusiastic and romantic temperment, with an ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... seraphic death, towards the close of the year 1891, an epidemic of influenza raged in the Community; I only had it slightly and was able to be about with two other Sisters. It is impossible to imagine the heartrending state of our Carmel ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... became acquainted with Friedrich Schlegel, and remained his most intimate friend. He also came to know Fichte, and eagerly absorbed his Doctrine of Science. A little later he came into close relations with Wilhelm Schlegel and Tieck in Jena. He experienced a seraphic love for a delicate girl of thirteen, whose passing away at the age of fifteen served to transport the youth's interests almost exclusively to the invisible world: "Life is a sickness of the spirit, a passionate Doing." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... H. Moncur, the Ex-provost of the city, I had the satisfaction of preaching in St. Peters Presbyterian Church, whose pastor, sixty years ago, was that ideal minister, Robert Murray McCheyne. The Bible from which he delivered his seraphic sermons was still lying on the pulpit. When I asked a plain woman, the wife of a weaver, what she could tell me about his discourses, her remarkable reply was: "It did me more good just to see Mr. McCheyne walk from ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... no part in the storm that raged round Mr. Tubbs. It is said that in the heart of the tempest there is calm, and this great truth of natural philosophy Mr. Tubbs exemplified. His face adorned by a seraphic, buttery smile, he stood unmoved, while Miss Higglesby-Browne uttered cyclonic exhortations and reproaches, while Aunt Jane sobbed and said, "Oh, Mr. Tubbs!" while Mr. Shaw strove to make himself heard above ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... in his mother's closet a small library of mystical devotion; but it was not suspected, till the fact was discovered, that the effusions of love and religion poured forth in his "Eloisa" were caught from the seraphic raptures of those erotic mystics, who to the last retained a place in his library among the classical bards of antiquity. The accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius first made BOYLE, to use his own words, "in love with other than pedantic ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... sentence was never finished. Bonny's gaze, distracted from the colonel to his sister, glued itself to the lady's face, while the perplexity in the blue eyes changed to delight. With a seraphic smile upon her dainty lips, a smile that would have made her recognizable anywhere, under any disguise, the little creature propelled herself from Glory's arms to the outstretched arms of Miss Laura, shrilling her ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... a glittering hall I heard a voice seraphic call, That bade me "ever reign, All hail!" it said in accent wild, "For thou art Nature's chosen child, Whom wealth nor blood has e'er defil'd, Hail, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... enjoyed the sensation of being carried by somebody else, and lay upon the cushions smoking with a seraphic smile and addressing sarcastic remarks to the bearers, who fortunately did not understand them. Soon, however, he wearied of these novel delights and as he was still determined not to walk until he was obliged, climbed on to the roof of the litter, astride of which he sat ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... in his course, with fire and tenderness breaking out in his face and manner, that gave him a kind of seraphic look, the speaker burst forth into a description of the love of Christ, that before long bowed the heads and hearts of his audience as one man. Sobs and whispers and smothered cries, murmured from all parts of the church; the whole assembly was broken ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... night; But hear in heav'n's blest bow'rs your Nancy fair, And learn to imitate her language there. "Thou, Lord, whom I behold with glory crown'd, "By what sweet name, and in what tuneful sound "Wilt thou be prais'd? Seraphic pow'rs are faint "Infinite love and majesty to paint. "To thee let all their graceful voices raise, "And saints and angels join their songs of praise." Perfect in bliss she from her heav'nly home Looks down, and smiling beckons you to come; Why then, fond parents, ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... speech which harass the enemy like a straggling fire; and could contrive, when it suited her purpose, to make herself as disagreeable as if her face had not been that of a cherub, or her voice seraphic. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... stood amid the forms of light, Seraphic and divine, The painter's wand had summoned from The dim Ideal's shrine; And felt within my fevered soul Ambition's wasting fire, And seized the pencil with a vague ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... seraphic fall upon the ear, From shining ones around th' eternal gates: Glad that man's load of guilt may disappear, Infinite strength ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... a criticism as this, a shining reflection, so to speak, of the work which it exalts; yet MacSilly, the seraphic aesthete of Edinburgh, has expressed in a still more moving and penetrating fashion the impression produced upon his mind by the sight of this primitive painting. "The Madonna of Margaritone," says the revered ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... hour! In yonder heaven deep the stars are lit For evening service of seraphic quires— Eternal pomp of serried, blazing worlds, The heraldry of God, ere yet Time was. The moon hangs low, her golden orb impearl'd In a sweet iris of delicious light, That leaves the eye in doubt, as swelling die Round ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... there came another pastor, as different from him as possible. Mr. Lurton was as gentle as his predecessor had been boisterous. There was a strong substratum of manly courage and will, but the whole was overlaid with a sweetness wholly feminine and seraphic. His religion was the Twenty-third Psalm. His face showed no trace of conflict. He had accepted the creed which he had inherited without a question, and, finding in it abundant sources of happiness, of moral development, and spiritual consolation, he thence concluded it true. He had never ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... her a heavy sigh floated through the grating, and the sweet seraphic face of the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... delicate ear and gathered into a knot behind, her large violet eyes and blooming white skin, her Grecian profile and stately yet flowing form, might have become an Aphrodite of Xeuxis or Praxiteles; but her serene and gracious countenance beamed with a pure seraphic light which is wanting to the classical goddess, and must be sought in the Madonnas of Raphael. Moreover, she had an indescribable look of girlish innocence, winsome sweetness, and pitiful tenderness, which belonged to none of these ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... amusing wrath of pedestrian poets like Mr. Ichabod Wright, and ferocious pedants like Professor Francis Newman, and conventional worshippers of such idols as Scott and Macaulay, when they found him poking his seraphic fun at the notion that Homer's song was like "an elegant and simple melody from an African of the Gold Coast," or at lines so ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... buy season tickets for both your groups, if you will only make your limit of age include me. I am only five feet ten, and I 'll sit very low if you 'll admit me to the charmed circle. Shall you have a stage name? I would suggest 'The Seraphic Sapphira.'" ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... burdened them played hide-and-seek among the hills, startling whole choruses of deep-throated echoes, and attending and retentive ocean, catching the strains on her beryl strings, bore them whither—and how far? To palm-plumed equatorial isles, where dying auricular nerves mistook them for seraphic utterances? To toiling mariners, tossed helplessly by fierce typhoons, who, pausing in their scramble for spars, listened to the weird melody that presaged woe and wreck? To the broken casements of fishermen's huts, on ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... my dear, but I am seasoned; I have great experience: you would not repent, and shall not, by the Face on the Handkerchief! But happen you see my master, happen he wear his brocade of white and gold—it is all peacocks' eyes, my seraphic heart, in gold and blue upon snowy white—happen again he look, 'Come' at you—why, off you trot as a hound to the platter, and I speed you thither with open heart. Thus walks his world, Guarino Guarini, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... perhaps forever, she haunted the canon, transformed it and gave it grace. He could see her face everywhere; he could see it even without shutting his eyes; it made the arrogant and malignant cliffs seraphic. By the way, the vividness of his memory with regard to that fair, sweet, girlish countenance was wonderful, only that such a memory, the memory of the heart, is common. There was not one of her expressions which was not his property. Each and all, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... high advanced, Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... and dashed through the gate at the far end of the orchard. In five minutes Nobbles was given into his hand, and a seraphic smile lit up his face as he hugged his treasure. His uncle did not smile. He sat down on one of the lowest limbs of the apple-tree ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... saints, as at once the deepest root and the ripest fruit of all the divine graces that enter into, and, indeed, constitute the life of God in the heart of man. Humility, evangelical humility, sings Edwards in his superb and seraphic poem the Religious Affections,—evangelical humility is the sense that the true Christian has of his own utter insufficiency, despicableness, and odiousness, a sense which is peculiar to the true saint. But to compensate the true ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... dress'd with springs and forests tall, And pour'd the main engirting all, Long by the loved enthusiast woo'd, Himself in some diviner mood, 30 Retiring, sat with her alone, And placed her on his sapphire throne; The whiles, the vaulted shrine around, Seraphic wires were heard to sound, Now sublimest triumph swelling, 35 Now on love and mercy dwelling; And she, from out the veiling cloud, Breathed her magic notes aloud: And thou, thou rich-hair'd youth of morn, And all thy subject life was born! 40 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... exultation— Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl, Shine and lift up with passion of oblation, Seraphic for an hour; though ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... stood vigorously out on the milky whiteness of the neck. This was neither Norman beauty, where flesh abounds, nor French beauty, as fugitive as its own expressions, nor the beauty of the North, cold and melancholy as the North itself—it was the deep seraphic beauty of the Catholic Church, supple and ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... on her violin, and Sahwah's discontented thoughts took wing, and she went floating out on a magic sea of music, and sat with closed eyes drinking in those wild, seraphic melodies that flowed from Veronica's enchanted bow until it seemed as if it could be no mere violin making that music, it was the Angel Israel, playing on his own heart strings. As Sahwah sat and listened there ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... hare-brained, fox-hunting Amazon—all that was shocking and unwomanly, but, at the same time, all that was bright, beautiful, entrancing, irresistible. His golden-haired ideal, with the azure eyes and seraphic smile was forgotten, and this gray-eyed enchantress, robed in white, crowned with ivy, dancing desperately the whole night long, set brain and heart reeling in ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... foreign institutions of this kind, have a curiosity to see, in its first rudiments, this seat of primitive piety; for such it must be called by future ages, to the eternal honour of the founders. I have read Madonella's excellent and seraphic discourse on this subject." The lady immediately answers, "If what I have said could have contributed to raise any thoughts in you that may make for the advancement of intellectual and divine conversation, I should think myself ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... with no other view than that of the heavens. In front of it is the street in the middle of which is the royal hospital of the Spaniards, which has been administered since its foundation by the religious of our seraphic father St. Francis. There the religious who is vicar of this convent, who administers to us the holy sacraments, had a cell. From the alms given us we provide for his support. Lately, Governor Don Sevastian Hurtado de Corcuera, without cause or reason for it, drove the religious from the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... institution nothing is known here; but it is closer to the heart of Christmas than the tree, being touched with a little of the tender beauty of the event which it represents in so quaint a guise. Its invention is ascribed to Saint Francis of Assisi. The chronicle of his Order tells that this seraphic man, having first obtained the permission of the Holy See, represented the principal scenes of the Nativity in a stable; and that in the stable so transformed he celebrated mass and preached to the people. All this is wholly in keeping with the character of Saint ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... ... ... Her flesh was the soft seraphic screen Of a soul that is meant ... To just see earth, and hardly be seen, And blossom in heaven instead. Yet earth saw one thing, one how fair? One grace that grew to its full ... ... She had ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... whole soul and heart had been at one time (nay, was at the very moment of composition) inspired and suffused with that firm belief in God's goodness and His justice—that full assurance of rewards beyond the grave—that exulting and seraphic cheerfulness which associates joy with the Creator—and that animated affection for the Brotherhood of Mankind, which Christianity—and Christianity alone, in its pure, orthodox, gospel form, needing no aid from schoolman or philosopher—taught and teaches. Would, for objects higher than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... its way towards Malabar Hill, and followed it to the Towers. For a moment after arriving there the face of the corpse was exposed, showing the marble features of a young girl of some fifteen years, wearing upon her pale face an expression of seraphic loveliness. The body was covered with a snow-white sheet, exhibiting the outline of a beautiful, budding form suddenly snatched from life. Over and around the body were white buds and half-blown pale flowers, indicative of youth, recalling to ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... present and to come. Appeals must all be made to him, and his sentence was definitive. Law or gospel, physics or metaphysics; himself alone superior to college, court, or convocation. Before him sunk scholiast and schools. In his presence the doctors all must stand uncapped: the seraphic, the subtle, and the singular; the illuminated, the angelic, and the irrefragable to him, were tyros all. Our censor in private, and in public our familiar: like a malignant demon, no respect, no place, no human barriers could ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... calamities and internal storms of his life. I have heard more persons than I can now distinctly recall, observe of Lamb when sleeping, that his countenance in that state assumed an expression almost seraphic, from its intellectual beauty of outline, its childlike simplicity, and its benignity. It could not be called a transfiguration that sleep had worked in his face; for the features wore essentially ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... to approval were tabu: Quinet was thrice caught reading Voltaire. If criticism of any of the doctrines of Catholic piety was a sin to be expiated hardly even by months of penance: there was nothing sacred to his inquiries, from the authority of the Popes of Avignon to the stigma miracle of the Seraphic St. Francis. He was an enfant terrible; Revolutionist Rousseau had infected him; Victor Hugo the Excommunicate was his literary idol; hidden and forbidden sweets made their way by subterranean passages to his appetite; he was the leader of ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... classical profiles, and glittering dresses, Their large black eyes, and soft seraphic cheeks, Crimson as cleft pomegranates, their long tresses, The gesture which enchants, the eye that speaks, The innocence which happy childhood blesses, Made quite a picture of these little Greeks; So ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Joan of Arc, but with a shaping imagination of the same realizing intensity, the beautiful myths of Romish superstition, which her innocent soul transfigured into gracious ministering spirits of seraphic might and seraphic tenderness, glared in upon his more morbid spiritual vision as menacing angels, or grinning imps, or scoffing fiends. But still the tortured soul toiled sturdily on through the anguish of its self-created hells, the mind crazed and shattered, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... covered, bearing their small bells, and the standard with their insignia in front. The holy families also marched: the brethren of St. John of God, the Recollects of St. Augustine, the Society of Jesus, the hermits of St. Augustine, the seraphic family of St. Francis, and that of the Preachers. These were not so splendid by reason of the candles which they carried in their hands as by the gravity and modesty of their manner, showing in the seriousness and composure ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... even to the mingling contrasts of scales and wings, of feathers and hair. Through the combined lenses of science and imagination, we look back into ancient times, so dreadful in their incompleteness, that it may well have been the task of seraphic faith, as well as of cherubic imagination, to behold in the wallowing monstrosities of the terror-teeming earth, the prospective, quiet, age-long labour of God preparing the world with all its humble, graceful service for his unborn Man. The imagination of the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... forced his way through a passage, stifling, low and laden with the breath of remote mortality like those in the depths of Egypt's pyramids. He came forth into a vast cathedral and stood before the high altar. As the acolyte swung the thurible and incense floated upward to the Cross, he, too, arose seraphic and alighted upon the very top of the dome. Below him stretched a maze of tortuous streets, thronged with men and women of a thousand ages and of all the races of mankind. Minaret, pagoda, dome, propylon, arch, portico jutted up from the labyrinth like ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... seems to shine out in still more truthful vividness from the brow of a young person rapt in religious ecstasy. The hands clasped in prayer,—the upturned eyes,—the expression of humble confidence and seraphic hope, (displayed, let me suggest, on a beautiful face,) constitute a picture of which, having witnessed it, I can never forget the force. Yet I knew it was only a trance. So one knows that village churches are built by common mechanics. Yet when we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... suits you, that's enough. Here's your check. Clear out now and don't let me see you again until you are thoroughly rested, even if it takes a year." He arose and stood smiling. He was mightily pleased with himself. He liked to perform in this way. He was almost seraphic as he thrust the check for ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... from eighty to a hundred waterfalls and rapids in the course of the journey, and the task of avoiding them by pushing through the woods was the harder for him because he saw fit to go barefoot, "in imitation of our seraphic father, Saint Francis." "We often came upon rocks, mudholes, and fallen trees, which we had to scramble over, and sometimes we must force our way with head and hands through dense woods and thickets, without road or path. When the time came, my Indians looked for a good place ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... is a being seraphic, Full of fun, full of frolic and mirth; Who can talk in a manner most graphic Every possible language on earth. When she's roaming in regions Italic, You would think her a fair Florentine; She speaks German like ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... down the stairs. Then, Mr Brass left off writing entirely, and, with his pen in his hand, hummed his very loudest; shaking his head meanwhile from side to side, like a man whose whole soul was in the music, and smiling in a manner quite seraphic. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... sank again, though it was easy to see that a prayer trembled on his lips. As a strain of music fades into silence, his tones fell away, fainter and fainter; and with the same seraphic light on his countenance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Virgin Saint Jacintha Mariscotti, a professed Nun of the Third Order of the Seraphic Father St. Francis, written by the Father Flaminius Mary Hanibal of Latara, Brother Observant of the Order of the Minors. Rome, 1805. Published by Antonio Fulgoni, by permission of ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... words, familiar in street circles, ran through his mind, but did not issue from his lips, and his face remained perfectly calm—almost seraphic in expression. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... pilgrimage to Assisi, the "Seraphic City," prefigures itself almost as a journey to the Mount of Vision. "Any line of truth that leads us above materialism," says Dr. Wilberforce, Venerable Archdeacon of Westminster Abbey, "that forces us to think, that encourages the imagination to pierce the world's cobwebs, that ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... believe in training. No more do I. Never would train for anything," said the Seraph now, pulling the long blond mustaches that were not altogether in character with his seraphic cognomen. "If a man can ride, let him. If he's born to the pigskin he'll be in at the distance safe enough, whether he smokes or don't smoke, drink or don't drink. As for training on raw chops, giving up wine, living like the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Boy found him out,—and, quarrelling with him, (your boy, marvellous to relate! having provoked the quarrel by some mean trick, in spite of his seraphic training,) gave him a black eye,—and afterwards, turning out to be the best-hearted Noisy Boy in the world, taught him to climb trees and hunt for birds' nests,—and stopped him when he was going to kill the little birds, (for your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... and divine words that will spring from my mouth! Hear ye then with the ears of your souls and hearts that the words of the Lord may not fall on the stony soil where the birds of Hell may consume them, but that ye may grow and flourish as holy seed in the field of our venerable and seraphic father, St. Francis! O ye great sinners, captives of the Moros of the soul that infest the sea of eternal life in the powerful craft of the flesh and the world, ye who are laden with the fetters of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... with a seraphic grin. "I suppose it's the gettin' so near home, and all that. I do feel rather festive this mornin. 'Rolls ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... been human nature for Dolly not to have fired a little then, in spite of herself. She was constitutionally good-natured, but she was not seraphic, and her lover's rather excusable jealousy was specially hard to bear, when, as upon this occasion, ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Fipple-Flute, a word Suggestive of seraphic screeches; The Poliphant comes next, and third The Humstrum—aren't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... may be only temporary." Nat endeavoured to assume a seraphic expression, and partially succeeded. "I'm devoting much of my time to my studies," he pursued primly; "but nevertheless feel I should ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... thought it. If William was covetous about anything it was salvation. He was never satisfied with being as good as he was. He was always longing and praying and going about in the effort just to be a better man, more worthy of the message he had to deliver. These were the kind of seraphic pleasures he took in living. And there was no mortal power, no poverty or hardship that could do him out of them. He would come back from feeding some vicious sinner with his gospel substances exhilarated. ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... and sweep the lyre again With touch seraphic to a Saviour slain; A Saviour, worthy of sublimest verse, A Saviour's love too mighty to rehearse; The purest theme that ever fired the tongue, Gave life to genius,—harmony to song; Fill thy enraptured soul with ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... of song, As if for you to choose, Discretion in the interval, With gay delays he goes To some superior tree Without a single leaf, And shouts for joy to nobody But his seraphic self! ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... diverse music. It is necessary to keep in mind this plan of the poet lest thinking the lovely lights, and lovely sounds and lovely movements are only terms descriptive of physical, though impalpable phenomena, we lose the deep and beautiful symbolism that is the magic secret of the seraphic poesy of the Paradiso. Of the brilliancy and movement of the spirits of the Sphere of Venus—spirits who in this life failed in Christian ideals because of their amours, Dante says, and his description is that of an expert musician distinguishing between the singing ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... Christians, quite seraphic in appearance, are far from this! But in this condition, as in all others, there are souls more or less divine. God hides them in His bosom, and under the veil of a most common life, so that they may be known to Him ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... sunny strands, I smite my lyre to sing thy praise unsung; In strains far sweeter than seraphic bands, A lay deep in my bosom's core is sprung. Fair Queen, although my years as yet be young, Deep thoughts and musings of thy history old, Where odes and fiery epics long have hung, Live centuries in my immortal soul And strike sweet Lydian measures on ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen nothing so sad as the look that came into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... twenty-three, to the church at Northampton. There he was ordained February 15, 1727, and thither a few months later he brought his "espoused saint," Sarah Pierpont, consummate flower of Puritan womanhood, thenceforth the companion not only of his pastoral cares and sorrows, but of his seraphic ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... drop a bow or curtsey as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle I can be content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic doctor. ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... short life of Donne has painted a figure of almost seraphic beauty. When Donne was but a boy, he declares, it was said that the age had brought forth another Pico della Mirandola. As a young man in his twenties, he was a prince among lovers, who by his secret marriage with his patron's ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... reflectively at a June-bug on the window-sill. Chang-how stood with folded hands and drooping shoulders, a seraphic calm upon his features, as of one who had stood upon the burning deck when all but he had fled. Evidently he had done his duty. I was so impressed with this fact, and that the responsibility, if not the guilt, was now mine, that I simply said, "Go set the table then, Chang-how. Mr. Smith ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... this sense, in the poem 'At a Solemn Music,' where the 'saintly shout' of the seraphic choir, with 'loud uplifted angel-trumpets,' 'immortal harps of golden wires,' and the singing of psalms and hymns, are collectively called 'that melodious noise.' Also in his Hymn on the Nativity, verse ix., ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... robed in white, was bareheaded and barefooted. The dress, the action, the seraphic face were not infrequent on the water, and especially in the churches; recognition was instantaneous, and through the eager crowded ranks ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Julian thought, "I should have guessed by your writing that you were in some unusual frame of mind, either tired, or—or—" he looked again, and closely, at the writing,—"or in a temper less delightfully calm and seraphic than usual. Yes, it looks actually a bad-tempered hand. Valentine's!" Then he laughed, and tossed the note carelessly into the fire that was crackling upon the hearth. Rip ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... love and peace; Love, that makes all things calm and beautiful, And like the sun, e'en in its setting, flings A glory o'er the cloudy peaks of Time. Peace—that doth hush the throbbing voice of life, Till through the stillness of the Poet's soul, The echoes of Seraphic harmonies Float like a spirit through the blue eterne." I said—"I will sit neath the ancient woods, And list unto the voices of the winds Coming from far o'er spirit lands, and full With stolen snatches of their utterance." I said—"I will ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... longs for a letter from you. He sends cartes de visite of himself and his wife. He looks uncommonly dumpy, with a pair of winged whiskers of astounding effect, and the expression of his face is blandly seraphic. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... way? Now art thou raised beyond this world of cares, This weary wilderness, this vale of tears; 120 Forgetting all thy toils and labours past, No gloom of sorrow stains thy peaceful breast. Now, 'midst seraphic splendours shalt thou dwell, And be what only these pure forms can tell. How cloudless now, and cheerful is thy day! What joys, what raptures, in thy bosom play! How bright the sunshine, and how pure the air! There's no difficulty of breathing there. With willing steps a pilgrim at thy ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... this could not be done by the rasping bass voices of the well-fed monks; women were out of the question in the then social stage of church evolution; so that at last a compromise was effected by admitting the eunuch, who could chant in a most seraphic soprano, as his prototype, the mendicant priests of Cybele, had done ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Man can range From such Seraphic Pleasure? 'Tis want of Charms that make us change, To grasp the Fury, Treasure. What Man of Sense wou'd quit a certain Bliss, For Hopes ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... them in tender and mellifluous threnodies. It would be easy to trace many parallelisms in their prose and poetry, but to have dared to name any man whom we have known in our common life with the seraphic singer of the Nativity and of Paradise is a tribute which seems to savor of audacity. It is hard to conceive of Emerson as "an expert swordsman" like Milton. It is impossible to think of him as an abusive controversialist as Milton was in his controversy with Salmasius. But though Emerson ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of thousands of innocent men and women at the hands of Philip's soldiers in a country at peace with Philip, at the very moment when that monarch was protesting with a seraphic smile on his expiring lips that he had never in his whole life done injury to a single ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... something in the perfect repose of a picture," said I, withdrawing my eyes from my mother's seraphic countenance; "something in its serene, unchanging beauty, that is a type of immortality, of the divine rest of the soul. Life is restless, and grows tremulous ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... and beauty, this gay glory and tremorous ecstasy and effort was here for moth-love of one incarnate fever of frail-winged loveliness! Oh! to what unguessed archangelic observation, to what infinite seraphic compassion, may not our own swarming race, who dare not too much pity ourselves, be but just such dainty ephemera! Splendid in purposes, intelligence, and affections as these in colors and grace, glorious when on the wing, and marvellous still, riddles of wonder, even when crawling and quivering, ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... upon the enormous black pedestal the letters in silver were conspicuous—Tarunta—the Deity. This amazing creation arrested the attention of my friend Chapman, and myself, and we stood half spell-bound under the influence of its seraphic and potent beauty. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... When the soft lute in sweet impassion'd strains Of cruel nymphs or broken vows complains; As on the breeze the fine vibration floats, We drink delighted the melodious notes. But when young Beauty on the realms above Bends her bright eye, and trills the tones of love; 180 Seraphic sounds enchant this nether sphere; And listening angels lean ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... boast of being least; And if to kiss thy Mistress' skirt Amaze thy brain, scorn not the Priest Whom greater honours do not hurt. Stand off and gaze, if more than this Be more than thou canst understand, Revering him whose power of bliss, Angelic, dares to seize her hand, Or whose seraphic love makes flight To the apprehension of her lips; And think, the sun of such delight From thine own darkness takes eclipse. And, wouldst thou to the same aspire, This is the art thou must employ, Live greatly; so shalt thou acquire Unknown ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... odes, again, whose flow And fire were more than Sapphic; Her voice was sweet, and very low; Her singing quite seraphic: ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... his little arms, and stared, and smiled! It seemed a picture of heaven, where the different orders of the blessed, join different voices in one melodious hallelulia! and the babe like a young spirit just that moment arrived in heaven, startled at the seraphic songs, and seized at once with ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... was a boy of energy, very decided, although not very intelligent. His uncle, Fray Jose de Calasanz, when he knew him, grew fond of him. Fray Jose enjoyed great esteem in the Order that is called,—nobody knows whether it is in irony,—the Seraphic Order. Fray Jose consulted several competent persons and they advised him to send his nephew to study outside of Spain. It is known that among her ministers the Church prefers men without a country. Catholicism means universality, and the real ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... sitting on a grassy bank. He was bending toward her with clasped hands, a picture of fervor. She could see him out of the corner of her glance, though she looked into space with her gaze of seraphic worry. Yet her lips were ready to lend themselves to a smile of blissful satisfaction and her eyes to fill with the melting mood of the thought that at last ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... we command enthusiasm; had we an interest with the gods which would light up those sacred fires at will, we should be even seraphic in our influences. But life, if not a complete waste of wearisome hours, must be checkered with them; and I find that just those very times, when I feel all glowing and radiant in the happiness of receiving and giving out again the divine fluid, are preludes to hours of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of that order of angels to whom a knowledge of the future, or the seraphic penetration into the hidden heart of man is forbidden, stayed his wings over the lovely valley in which the main scene of our history has been cast, no spectacle might have seemed to him more appropriate to that lovely ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fragments of his conversation have been preserved, the unquestioned judgements which his hearers loyally received. Of the Schoolmen he was contemptuous, with their honorific titles: 'doctor angelic, doctor seraphic, doctor subtle, doctor irrefragable.' 'Was Thomas (Aquinas) a doctor? So am I. Thomas scarcely knew Latin, and that was his only tongue: I have a fair knowledge of the three languages. Thomas saw Aristotle only as a phantom: I have read him in Greece ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... up at Miss Lord with the innocent, seraphic gaze that always warned those who knew her best that is was wisest to let ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... overflowing, while he pressed to his lips the kind token of her pardon, "can you give to me again a hand so ill deserved? can you look with such compassion on the author of your woes? on the wretch, who for an instant could doubt the purity of a mind so seraphic!" ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... is that wild, sweet face, Which thus and ever gleams, And smiles, with a seraphic grace, Upon my heart's ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... hero did, to get a place by himself in heaven. He was 'a little lower than the angels', like our own Bishop Jewells and Berkeleys; and yet he was no poet. He was too delicately, not to say feebly, absorbed in his devotions, to join in the energies of the seraphic choir. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... woman. His love was not of the blind-little-boy sort, but of a deeper, more exacting, keen-eyed kind, that sees faults where even a true mother will not, so jealous is it of the perfection of the beloved. But one thing was plain, even to this seraphic dragon that dwelt sleepless in him—and there was eternal content in the thought—that such a woman, once started on the right way, would soon leave fault and weakness behind her, and become as one of the grand women of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... first-fruits of the year to God; and secondly, in honoring the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, particularly his birth and circumcision. The church invites us on this day to unite our homage with the seraphic ardors and transports of devotion with which the glorious Mother of God assisted at these wonderful mysteries which we commemorate, but in which she acted herself so great a part. With what sentiments did Mary bear in her womb, bring forth, and serve her adorable son, who was ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... her fancy-work, and her beautiful face took on an almost seraphic expression; she was thinking of George Ramsey. She hardly noticed when the doctor took his leave, and she did not in the least understand her mother's sigh when the door closed. For her the gates of love were wide open, but she had no conception that for her mother ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "And this seraphic ocean-child And heroine was Orlie Wilde: And thus it was I came to hear Her voice's music in my ear— Ay, thus it was Fate paved the way That I walk desolate ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... the young Venetia was not the hereditary gift of her beautiful mother. It was not from Lady Annabel that Venetia Herbert had derived those seraphic locks that fell over her shoulders and down her neck in golden streams, nor that clear grey eye even, whose childish glance might perplex the gaze of manhood, nor that little aquiline nose, that gave a haughty ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... she made, the faint golden radiance, a sort of angelic atmosphere hovering about her! Who could have passionate thoughts or wild desires in the presence of that swaying, white-clothed girl with the seraphic head? She played a thing of Schumann's called "Warum?" Then Halliday brought out a flute, and the spell was broken. After this they made Ashurst sing, Stella playing him accompaniments from a book of Schumann songs, till, in the middle of "Ich grolle nicht," two small figures ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... personage, with a long flowing beard, and dressed in white raiment. His countenance was beautiful, although ancient. Age had stolen on without its imperfections, and time had only invested it with a sweet dignity and solemn grace. The countenance of the king was upraised with a seraphic gaze, and, as he thus looked up on high, with eyes full of love, and thanksgiving, and praise, his consecrated fingers seemed to touch the trembling wires of a ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli |
