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More "Sprite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But this thought-created sprite was there before the message flashed. With his sack wide open, he stood by Monkey, full of importance. A moment he examined her. Then, his long black fingers darting like a shuttle, he discovered ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... towards himself. As the vaporous shape floated nearer, it also grew larger, so that, although Fred could not have said certainly that the size was human, it relieved him from the impression of any fairy or elf or sprite. No, it was nothing of that sort. It was just the gentlest, calmest, serenest face and form in the world,—with the same look of pure sweetness he had noticed on her first entrance,—with a peculiar surprised look in her wide-open eyes, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... flows on long in easy gayety and drollery; where it is not swelled by the tide of poetic feeling, it is continually dashing down the precipice of a witticism. It is not broad and unctuous; it is aerial and sprite-like, a momentary resting-place between his poetry and his wit. In the "Reisebilder" he runs through the whole gamut of his powers, and gives us every hue of thought, from the wildly droll and fantastic to the sombre and the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Dunbar is Manager Morgan's ex-sweetheart; Mrs. Dovie Davis is married; that gay, jolly girl is Daisy Lee, the soubrette of the company; she'd cut out any one of us if she could; but she's so merry a sprite we don't mind her, especially as none of the fellows take ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Called GRANDOLPH GOODFELLOW. Are you not he That did your best to spill Lord S-L-SB-RY? Gave the Old Tory party quite a turn, And office with snug perquisites did spurn? And now you'd make Strong ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... reach home. She accidentally spoke; and immediately the son dropped a tear, and forced himself out of his father's arms, piteously exclaiming: 'Father, father, my mother spoke! You cannot keep me. I must go.' He disappeared, and, reaching home, the father found the sprite again on the hearth." The ghostly father's services were called into requisition a second time; and better luck awaited an effort under his direction after the performance of a second miracle like the first. For this time the mother succeeded in holding her ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... with this litle queane, that hath at me such spite, Saue you from hir maister, it is a very sprite. ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall
... to be scrupulous about details. I am not the Grand Bashaw; and when I pronounced them fit for his harem, I merely meant a compliment to their superlative beauty. That Floracita is a mischievous little sprite. Did you ever see anything more roguish than her expression while she was singing 'Petit ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... me lighter: for the dwarf sprang from my shoulder, the prying sprite! And it squatted on a stone in front of me. There was however a gateway just where ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... these am I, who thy protection claim, A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name. Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air, In the clear mirror of thy ruling star I saw, alas! some dread event impend, Ere to the main this morning sun descend, But heaven ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... a beautiful brown sprite of the rustling pine wood about her, a great flood of color crept suddenly from the brown full throat to the line of her hair, and the scarlet that lingered in her cheeks was wilder than ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... been?" she cried. "You vanished from my side like a sprite. I have been searching ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... are four of the horses that jump," said Mr. Bartholomew. They like this least of any of their feats, and those who can do it best are most timid. At first one horse is jumped over, then two, three, are packed closely together, and little Sprite clears them all at one flying leap, broad-backed and much taller than herself though they are. Those who do not want to try it beg off by a pretty pantomime, and Sprite is encouraged by her master, who pats her first and ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... my thumb and sat there silent and without moving for a long time. I was stunned by the clearness of vision the verse had imparted to me. It was illumination. It was like a bolt of God's lightning in the Pit. They would keep Love, the fickle sprite, the forerunner of young life—young life that ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... distraction had melted away. Not even at the height of his success had he felt so confident, so entirely superior to the rest of mankind as both to command and to deserve their homage. In no play had he ever devised a more romantic finale than this in which he carried his conquered sprite—for so he thought her—back to earth. As he put her down, he threw out his chest and turned to the stars as it was his habit to turn to his audiences, and bowed thrice, to the right, to the left, to the centre, with his hand ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... my cares will be that you do not act upon it too fiercely," said he smiling. "The power being limited so is the duty. But you shall have power enough, Elfie, and work enough. I have precisely what I have needed—my good sprite back again." ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... The king was so much perplexed that he threatened the princess's playfellows with all sorts of punishments if they would not confess something about her disappearance; but as they only repeated the same story he presently put down the whole affair to the work of some sprite or goblin, and tried to console himself for his loss by ordering a grand hunt; for kings cannot bear to be troubled about ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Minot has got to come down to the lot of common mortals and take in a chum!" cried a merry sprite, with a saucy chuckle. "Oh, how you have spread yourself and luxuriated in your solitary magnificence, and how every mother's daughter of us has envied you your spacious quarters! Well, you know what old Sol. said about 'pride' and a 'haughty spirit,' ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the circle, very properly constructed in the Rotunda. They overpowered us—we dared not stay to see the fireworks, 'in the midst of which Signora Rossini was to make her terrific ascent and descent on a rope three hundred feet high.' She might have been the sprite of Madame Saqui; {171} in fact, the 'Vauxhall Papers,' published in the gardens, put forth a legend which favours such a dreadful supposition. We refer our readers to them—they are ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Sprite, the Elks voted the name Fly and the Silver Foxes voted the name Weetonka, on account of me. Then we wrote all these letters down and mixed them all up and arranged them every which way, till we got ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... it is the time of night, That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. Midsummer Night's Dream, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... around them the while and regarding the trees which bore for burthen ambergris and lign-aloes, sandal, cloves, and gelsamine,[FN35] all with flowers and fruits bedrest whose odours broadened the breast and excited the sprite. There also the birds warbled, with various voices, notes ravishing and rapturing the heart by the melodies of their musick. So Mubarak turned to the Prince and asked him saying, "How seest thou this place, O my lord?" and the other ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... up the hill, Captain," interposed Peter Browne hastily, and as he carefully aided the Widow Ford to climb the steep ascent some sprite might have whispered in his ear that this was his own future wife. That night was born Martha Ford, who should from similarity of history have married Peregrine White, but who instead wedded ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the water sprite who gave its name to the Elbe River in Germany, the Neck, from whom the Neckar derives its name, and old Father Rhine, with his numerous daughters (tributary streams), the most famous of all the lesser water divinities is the Lorelei, the siren maiden who sits upon the Lorelei ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... since T was a baby? Wouldn't any girl give her eyes to be queen?" She seemed upon the verge of kissing him, perhaps upon the nose, but changed her mind and went dancing around his chair like some moon-mad sprite. He seized her, barely in time to prevent her from crying the news aloud to Bernie, explaining hastily that she must breathe no word to any one for the time being and must first win her brother's consent. It was very difficult to impress her with the ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... that they spent that day—in leisure approach—the patient Croesus, with his burden, always in the lead, and Czar, like a merry sprite, playing here and there. Several times they stopped to rest beside the road, while provident Croesus gathered a few mouthfuls of grass or weeds. Many times they halted to enjoy the scene that ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... and lovely sprite, Since first from out an ancient lay I saw gleam forth thy fitful light, How hast ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... in fennel stalks Through windy ways is borne and densest night, Till where the outpost shivering sentry walks Beating the minutes into hours, the light Touches the guarded pile and, flaring, balks Beasts padding near and each unvisioned sprite By old dread apprehended; and new gladness Shakes in the ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... used in its radical sense shrew-ed, malicious, like a shrew. Comp. M. N. D. ii. 1, "That shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow." Chaucer has the verb shrew to curse; the ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... another's stead, And act the Saint's and Devil's part With undistinguishable art, They might have done so now, perhaps, And put on one another's shapes 100 And therefore, to resolve the doubt, He star'd upon him, and cry'd out, What art? My 'Squire, or that bold Sprite That took his place and shape to-night? Some busy indepenent pug, 105 Retainer to his Synagogue? Alas! quoth he, I'm none of those, Your bosom friends, as you suppose; But RALPH himself, your trusty 'Squire, Wh' has dragg'd your Dunship out o' th' mire, 110 And from th' ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... be a scene to-night at the castle," said the male to the female sprite, as he tickled her nose ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... allowed so far to indulge the imagination, as to suppose a being entirely confined to the nether world—some 'dusky melancholy sprite,' like Umbriel, who could 'flit on sooty pinions to the central earth,' but who was never permitted to 'sully the fair face of light,' and emerge into the regions of water and of air; and if this being should busy himself in investigating the structure ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Oberon to this little sprite, "fetch me the flower called Love-in-idleness. The juice of that little purple flower laid on the eyes of those who sleep will make them, when they wake, to love the first thing they see. I will put some of the juice of that flower on my Titania's ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... flesh-and-blood woman instead of an eccentric sprite," he remarked, "I suppose you'd want me to make a clean breast of the whole affair, but I can't because, to tell the truth, I've ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... guns approached the scene of carnage, accompanied by the inmates of his dwelling, with rueful countenances, illumined by tapers, when the cause of their disquietude was soon discovered. No apparition or sprite forsooth, but a full grown donkey of the Andalusian breed, lay weltering in gore, yet warm with partial life! By timely liberality the valorous Alonzo escaped detection, though the heroic deed is still remembered in merry Valencia, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... rabbit. After that it came to be a common thing for the dog to trot off by himself in the morning; and the man fell more and more in the way of letting him go alone, as it left his own time the more free for the pursuit of that golden sprite who was ever promising ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... and warlocks," I solemnly intoned, "fra' wurricoos and evil speerits, and fra' a' ferly things that wheep and gang bump in the nicht, Guid Lord deliver us!" And that incantation, I feel sure, cleared the air for both my own sprite-threatened offspring and for the simple-minded Olie himself, although Dinky-Dunk explained that my Scotch was rather ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... mist, a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared: As if it dodged a water-sprite, It plunged, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... whom God gave the sprite To know and utter princes' acts to come, Like to the Jewish prophets did recite In shade of beasts their doings all and some; Expressing plain by manners of the doom That kings and lords such properties should have As have the beasts whose name ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... deities], Odin; Mumbo Jumbo; good genius, tutelary genius; demiurge, familiar; sibyl; fairy, fay; sylph, sylphid; Ariel^, peri, nymph, nereid, dryad, seamaid, banshee, benshie^, Ormuzd; Oberon, Mab, hamadryad^, naiad, mermaid, kelpie^, Ondine, nixie, sprite; denizens of the air; pixy &c (bad spirit) 980. mythology; heathen-mythology, fairy-mythology; Lempriere, folklore. Adj. god-like, fairy-like; sylph-like; sylphic^. Phr. you moonshine revelers and shades of night ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... comforting Phraerion, on he went, And a high, craggy arch they reach at dawn of day, Upon the upper world; and forced them through That arch, the thick, cold floods, with such a roar, That the bold sprite receded, and would view The cave before he ventured to explore. Then, fearful lest his frighted guide might part And not be missed amid such strife and din, He strained him closer to his burning heart, And, trusting to his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... to beware of letting you see the monster, or our joyous muse Balbilla might easily become the sinister Hecate. But the malicious sprite is close at hand, for he is hidden in this ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... For saucy sprite, and noble dame, And many a dainty maid of them Will greet me in your mirror frame, And share your kisses ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... thy Idoll made: In summe giuen vp to Cleopatras eies. Thou breakest at length from thence, as one encharm'd Breakes from th'enchaunter that him strongly helde. For thy first reason (spoyling of their force the poisned cuppes of thy faire Sorceres) Recur'd thy sprite: and then on euery side Thou mad'st againe the earth with Souldiours swarme. All Asia hidde: Euphrates bankes do tremble To see at once so many Romanes there Breath horror, rage, and with a threatning eye In mighty squadrons crosse ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... we not sprite shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us as round the veriest spectre is Eternity, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... a time there was a wicked sprite, indeed he was the most mischievous of all sprites. One day he was in a very good humor, for he had made a mirror with the power of causing all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected therein, to look poor and mean; but that which was good-for-nothing ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Sense! Seen seldom by us mortals dense, Come, sprite, inform, inhabit me And teach me art ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... clasped and sensitive leaf of which a fairy is said to dwell, I fancied she was their queen, and must have dropped from one of the leaves, to gambol and wanton among the flowers below. Running to her, I caught her in my arms, and said, 'I watched your fall, and have you now, dear sprite, and will keep you here!'—pressing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... But I cannot forget him, The fearful Geography Sprite. He has my first thought in the morning, He has my ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... reconciliation, too, with the latter was by no means either sincere or durable,—the renewal of friendship between politicians, on such occasions, being generally like that which the Diable Boiteux describes, as having taken place between himself and a brother sprite,—"We were reconciled, embraced, and have hated ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... my mother's fault if she is,' said Arthur. 'I was determined yesterday to see what she would succeed in making her do, and I declare the sprite drove her about like a slave—"Grandmamma, fetch me this," "grandmamma, you must do that," till at last she brought my poor mother down on her knees, stooping under the table to personate an old cow ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Fool, pray with all thy might, Here's goblin foul or woodland sprite Come for to steal our souls away, So on thy ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Rarely did the arch sprite Adventure need to beckon twice to Rudolf Steiner, his true follower. But twice it had been done, and the quest ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... innings; not only was she prettily dressed, presenting the most joyous of pictures, as with golden curls flying about her shoulders she flitted in and out of the rooms like a sprite, but she was withal so polite in her greetings, dropping to everyone a little French courtesy when she spoke, and all in her quaint, broken dialect, that everybody fell in love with her at sight. None of the other mothers had such a child, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... some paltry, blackguard sprite, Condemn'd to drudgery in the night; Thou hast no work to do in the house, Nor ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... door is open, and there is no one to be seen. He keeps on and on until he catches a flutter of a white dress. Cecil is running around the observatory, and his heart beats as he glances at the dazzling little sprite, with her sparkling eyes and her hair a golden mist about her face. He could watch forever, but it ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... object at the Rink was a tall young man, in all the agonies of a debut on skates, and a bewitching little attendant sprite shooting before and around him, occasionally righting him with a fairy touch when he evinced too wild a desire to dash ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... beleue not euery sprit / but proue the sprites / whether they are of Godd or not. For many false prophetes are gone out into the worlde. Hereby shall ye know the spirite of Godd: Euery sprite that confessith that Iesu Christe is comme in the flesh / is of Godd. And euery sprite which confessith not that Iesu Christe is come in the fleshe is not of Godd. And this is that spirite of Antichriste ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... that Old Mat and his head-lad had parted after more years of association than many cared to recall. And it was clear that the little man felt the rupture. He wandered morosely through the crowd in the train of his fat familiar like a lost soul outside the gates of Paradise. Usually a merry sprite, the life and soul of every group he joined, he was under the weather, as the saying went, and what was still more remarkable he ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... her happy. By the sacrifice of his own inclinations he had achieved this disastrous result. If he had tried to do evil instead of good, he could hardly have wrought more irreparable mischief—and with the thought, pity, which had led him astray, winged off, like an ironic sprite, and left his heart ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... on this airy sprite, the beholder feels an exhilarating influence steal over him, and involuntarily there goes up from his heart, like incense, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... wayward sprite, So young, so tender, and so fair, I dare not trust thee from my sight, Nor let thee breathe the common air! Home to my heart, then, quickly flee, It is the only ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... They climbed trees to peep into squirrel-holes and birds'-nests; they chased bees and butterflies to ask for news of the elves; they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little people, though all had gay and charming bits of news about ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... hone! widow machree, But you're keeping some poor fellow out in the cowld, Och hone! widow machree. With such sins on your head, Sure your peace would be fled, Could you sleep in your bed, Without thinking to see Some ghost or some sprite, That would wake you each night, Crying, 'Och ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... hoary With lone cries that wander Now hither, now yonder, Like souls doomed of old 60 To a mild purgatory; But through noonlight and moonlight The little fount tinkles Its silver saints'-bells, That no sprite ill-boding May make his abode ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... fired up, as there ran to her brain some little sprite out of the House of Memory and told her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... eight dollars, and how, in short, the mound itself had suddenly disappeared. He declared that he knew not in the least how to recover his loss and bring the business to a good ending. The compassionate mountain sprite comforted him, told him who he was, and that he himself had played him the trick, and at the same time bade him be of good cheer, for his losses should be ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... light-gathering he discerns things for which the light falling on his pupil one-fifth of an inch in diameter would not be sufficient. We never have seen any sun or stars; we have only seen the light that left them fifty minutes or years ago, more or less. Light is the aerial sprite that carries our measuring-rods across the infinite [Page 22] spaces; light spreads out the history of that far-off beginning; brings us the measure of stars a thousand times brighter than our sun; takes up into itself evidences of the very constitutional elements ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... reflections while viewing the scenes in the circle, very properly constructed in the Rotunda. They overpowered us—we dared not stay to see the fireworks, "in the midst of which Signora Rossini was to make her terrific ascent and descent on a rope three hundred feet high." She might have been the sprite of Madame Saqui; in fact, the "Vauxhall Papers" published in the gardens, put forth a legend, which favours such a dreadful supposition! We refer our readers to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... choice, by right, In filling up a vacancy; Then Phantom, Goblin, Elf, and Sprite - If all these fail them, they invite The nicest Ghoul ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... always brightened when I came, light feet that flew to welcome me, and hands that loved to minister to every want of mine. Even when I sat engrossed among my books, there was a pleasant consciousness that I was the possessor of a household sprite whom a look could summon and a gesture banish. I loved her as I loved a picture or a flower,—a little better than my horse and hound,—but far less than I loved my most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... doubted and resisted; though she tempted me, making real the dreams of my shy, worshipful childhood, teaching me the meanings of treasured stories which I had listened to from flower-sprite and river-god, leading and wooing me with lovelier lures than even Nature's; for tropical bird-song and falling water was harsh to her voice, and dew-dripped lilies dim to her brow. But I shut my dazzled eyes at first from these, and strove to see only the face whereon, with tender ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... and Meta was skipping about like a sprite finding a basket for the flowers—she had another shake of the hand, another grateful smile, and "thank you," from the doctor; and then, as the carriage disappeared, Mrs. Larpent exclaimed, "What a very nice intelligent boy ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... confidante, as they escorted Miss Mildred back to beautiful Rosebank. The "lass o' Richmond Hill" was no fairer than the happy woman who had seen Major Hardwicke depart for a long conference with that all powerful sprite of the magic pen, Frank Halton, who was now busied in launching his creation, Prince Djiddin. "A single word at the 'F. O.' will legalize our useful myth, 'Prince Djiddin,' and I hope that Hardwicke and Murray will succeed. They can surely lose nothing by the attempt. I am known to be ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... guiltless to the fire, Her veil and mantle plucked they off by force, And bound her tender arms in twisted wire: Dumb was the silver dove, while from her corse These hungry kites plucked off her rich attire, And for some deal perplexed was her sprite, Her damask late, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... strife, some senior foe, To swell by his defeat the name of Toe!" He spoke—the powers of mischief heard his cries, And steep'd in sullen sleep his rheumy eyes. He slept—but rested not, his guardian sprite Rose to his view in visions of the night, And thus, with many a tear and many a sigh, He heard, or seem'd to hear, the mimic demon cry:—[25] "Is this a time for distant strife to pray, When all my power is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... pure truth finds rest. No sacrifice shall he repent of ever! But from a formal, written, sealed attest, As from a spectre, all men shrink forever. The word and spirit die together, Killed by the sight of wax and leather. What wilt thou, evil sprite, from me? Brass, marble, parchment, paper, shall it be? Shall I subscribe with pencil, pen or graver? Among them all ...
— Faust • Goethe
... would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners and pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all color out of storybooks and fairytales. Wasn't it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... here? Come, my dearest, my beauty, be sensible! The blood of a Nixey runs in your veins. Oh, won't you let yourself be one? Give your nature the reins for once in your life; fall head over ears in love with some other water sprite and plunge down head first into a deep pool, so that the Herr Professor and all of us may have our hands ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... with a vigor that made it rock quite unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. It is Juno and Arachne. The divine orbs of the goddess turned haughtily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of, who was thrown at all with her little ladyship. But there was ne'er so beautiful a maiden born in all the broad land of England; nor will be again—not though London Tower be standing when the last trump sounds. Meseemed she was an elf-sprite, so tiny was she; and her face like a fair flower, so fresh and pure. Her hair was shed about her face like sunlight on thistle-down, and her eyes made a shining behind it, like the big blue gems in her mother's jewel-box. When she laughed, it was as water falling into water from a short height, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... had he looked upon her face—the face of a withered sprite, subdued by time. The hurt of that look was still fresh in him, making his mind turn heavily, perhaps a little remorsefully, to the two little boys asleep in the west bedroom. Had the seed of revolt been in her, from his own revolt against his father? Would it presently bear ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... a boy, not six years old, A sprite of birth and lineage high: His birth I did myself behold, His caste is in ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dead men. "Now give me my spear," said Arthur unto Sir Lucan; "for yonder I espy the traitor that hast wrought all this woe." "Sir, let him be," said Sir Lucan; "for if ye pass this unhappy day, ye shall be right well revenged upon him. Remember what the sprite of Sir Gawain told you, and leave off now, for ye have won the field; and if ye leave off now this evil day of destiny is past." "Betide me life, betide me death," said King Arthur, "he shall not now escape my hands." Then the king took his spear ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... is concerned, he cannot defend his taste: he can scarcely account for it. "Beautiful she is, in her feminine grace and strength, set forth by her boyish dress; but with probably no more feeling than a sprite, and no more conscience than a flower. It is likely enough that her antecedents have been execrable, and that her life is in harmony with them." Still, he does not wish it supposed that he admires a body without a soul: and he tries to convince himself that Fifine, after all, is not ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... The lively little sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for be owed him a grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Sycorax. This Caliban, Prospero found in the woods, a ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... nearer he saw it was a flock of pigeons. She had been feeding them berries and grains of rye. They arched their glossy necks and cooed in answer. He watched in amaze, drawing nearer. What sprite of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... in the forest the other day when I was-shouting "Ho! Ho!" "Ah," said he, "you forest sprite with goat's feet!" To-morrow after dinner, all right? (Walks away, sedately at first, but then with ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... spirit riding on the blast. In some parts of Austria a heavy gale is propitiated by the act and speech of a peasant who, as the demon wings his flight in the raging storm, opens the window and casts a handful of meal or chaff to the enraged sprite as a peace offering, ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... iron feet, Hemmed in by a passing cart, Stood the baby boy—the pride and joy Of the man who had broken her heart. Past swooning women and shouting men She fled like a flash of light; With her slender arm she gathered from harm The form of the laughing sprite. ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... or some mischievous sprite, I know not," growled the Hebrew, "but there is no need for more ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... thing which is not true, and do the thing which is not honest; but among the other races of beings who inhabit this world the penalty of mocking and imitating the vices of you, the superior race, is, that if ever one of us can be convicted of it, that one, be it gnome, sprite, or fairy, is never permitted to appear in the likeness of humanity again, nor to walk about on the face of the land which is your inheritance. Now the gnomes hate one another, and if it should be discovered by the brethren of this my enemy ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... clap his hot hands, and cry, "More, father, more." Will and Dulcie looked gladly into each other's eyes at his animation, and boasted what a stamping, thundering man he would yet live to be—that midge, that sprite, with Dulcie's small skeleton bones, and Will's ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... heard what had chanced. It seemed that the wraith, or emanation, or the sprite, good or evil, or whatever it may have been, which called itself Eleanor, materialized in a very ugly temper. It complained that it had not been allowed to appear upon the previous Sunday and had been kept away from its brother, i.e. Godfrey. Then it proceeded to threaten all the ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... whom Clara last remembered with her baby in her lap, beautiful and almost as inanimate as a statue? There was scarcely more change from the long-frocked infant to the bustling important sprite, than from that fair piece of still life to the active house-mother. Unruffled grace was innate; every movement had a lofty, placid deliberation and simplicity, that made her like a disguised princess; and though her beauty was a little worn, what it had ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she complained to him of the sprite who carried the bow. "He is behaving badly," she said; ...
— The Unruly Sprite - The Unknown Quantity, A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Tod," remonstrated Budge; "Joseph's coat was just as bloody as Goliath's head was." Then Budge turned to me and explained that "all Tod likes Goliath for is 'cause when his head was cut off it was all bloody." And then Toddie—the airy sprite whom his mother described as being irresistibly drawn to whatever was beautiful—Toddie glared upon me as a butcher's apprentice might stare at a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... glory, and bounced into the barouche with a vigor that made it rock quite unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... at the edge, reluctant to spring in, he saw the young Englishman dart from his dressing-room like a graceful sprite and make a beautiful dive into the pool. His slender body made no splash, but entered the water like a beam of light, refracting as he swam a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Hawthorne been congratulated by a sympathetic, effusive American, who had clapped him on the back, and who had said, "O, never fear—you will speak well!" he would have said nothing. The shy sprite in his own eyes would have read in his neighbor's eyes the dreadful truth that his sympathetic neighbor would have indubitably betrayed—a fear that he would not do well. The phlegmatic and stony Englishman neither felt nor cared ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Without hope or relief. 36. Thus while the man is in this scare, Death doth still at him lay; Live, die, sink, swim, fall foul or fair,[6] Death still holds on his way. 37. Still pulling of him from his place, Full sore against his mind; Death like a sprite stares in his face, And doth with links him bind. 38. And carries him into his den, In darkness there to lie, Among the swarms of wicked men In grief eternally. 39. For only he that God doth fear Will now be counted wise: Yea, he that feareth him ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow, Towards that sad ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the hill, Captain," interposed Peter Browne hastily, and as he carefully aided the Widow Ford to climb the steep ascent some sprite might have whispered in his ear that this was his own future wife. That night was born Martha Ford, who should from similarity of history have married Peregrine White, but ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... am I, who thy protection claim, A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name. Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air, In the clear mirror of thy ruling star I saw, alas! some dread event impend, Ere to the main this morning sun descend, But heaven reveals ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... icy blast howled up the avenue, but in the glittering dining-room flowers bloomed, and birds sung, and tropical fruits perfumed the air; and radiant under the gas-light, beautiful Miss Dane flashed the light of her blue eyes, and looked like some lovely little sprite from fairy-land. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Eden, and ought to know my trade better than this novice of an informer." "Blood of an infernal fire-brand!" said Lucifer, "did I not command you to answer speedily and clearly." "Do but hear me," said the sprite. "As to preaching, by your own command I have been a hundred times preaching, and have forbidden people to follow several of the roads which lead to your territories, and yet silently, in the same breath, have led them hither safe enough, by some other vain paths; ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... cher grumbler, for I have two ears, and while Sir Lionel's rather mournful notes entered first; your pretty nothings were blown in upon them so quickly, by some more mirthful sprite as to send his to my memory, while yours are in ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... ugly sprite, Bold, wicked, 'I don't care,' In life's long run less harm has done Because he is so rare; And one can be so stern with him, Can make the monster shrink; But, lack a day, what can we say To ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... all the woodland creatures, The quaintest little sprite Is the dainty flying squirrel In vest of shining white, In coat of silver gray, And ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... The gay sprite of the dinner-table seemed to have taken her departure and a dignified and serious hostess filled her place. A hostess who discoursed of gardens, and architecture, and such subjects—and at ten o'clock when the Pere Anselme ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... I picture thee, a dusky sprite, With Dryad hoofs on Thracian ledges drumming, When day is slipping from the arms of night And all the hushed leaves whisper, "Pan is coming!" And thou before him, leaping with delight, Stirring all birds to song, all bees to humming And buds to blossoming—but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... Ones beckon. Quite at the beginning we wink, and promise ourselves that we will put Her Ladyship through her paces, neglect her for a day, turn her own jealous wiles against her, flout and ignore her when she comes wheedling; perhaps there lurks within us all the time a heartless sprite who is never fooled; but in the end all falls away. She beckons, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... time of night, That the graves all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite In the ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... while I lived happy, with a temper haught and high, * My hoarding-place defending like a lion in the fight, I took no rest, and greed of gain forbad me give a grain * Of mustard seed to save from the fires of Hell my sprite, Until stricken on a day, as with arrow, by decree * Of the Maker, the Fashioner, the Lord of Might and Right. When my death was appointed, my life I could not keep * By the many of my stratagems, my cunning ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... sprite from the rug, and stopped her mouth with—no, it wasn't with his hand. And I'd rather say no ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... took therefrom some touchwood, to which he set a light with his knife and a stone, while Amyas watched, a little puzzled and startled, as Yeo's fiery reputation came into his mind. Was he really a salamander-sprite, and going to warm his inside by a meal of burning tinder? But now Yeo, in his solemn methodical way, pulled out of his bosom a brown leaf, and began rolling a piece of it up neatly to the size of his little finger; and then, putting the one ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... put the bulging suit-case on a chair and watched the girl as she whirled about the hall, as graceful as a water sprite, with eyes alight with mischief and animation. The sight of her was so bewitching, the fact that she had come to him for help so good, that his curiosity to know what it was that she had done ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... and a golik, or bath-room whisk, turns into a forest. The towel is used, also, for the purpose of constructing or annihilating a bridge. Similar instruments are found in the folk-tales of every land, whether they appear as the brush, comb, and mirror of the German water-sprite;[164] or the rod, stone, and pitcher of water of the Norse Troll;[165] or the knife, comb, and handful of salt which, in the Modern Greek story, save Asterinos and Pulja from their fiendish mother;[166] or ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... demon, Common Sense! Seen seldom by us mortals dense, Come, sprite, inform, inhabit me And teach me ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... to the brain; And there they made me on my paddle lean, And look at them for hours;—accursed scene! When they would glide to that smooth eddy-space, Then bid me leap and join them in the place; And at my groans each little villain sprite Enjoy'd my pains and vanish'd in delight. "In one fierce summer-day, when my poor brain Was burning hot, and cruel was my pain, Then came this father-foe, and there he stood With his two boys again upon the flood: There was more mischief in their eyes, more glee In their pale faces, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... was right not to lift his hand against his father, even in pretence. What marksman in the whole wide world can say where his bullet shall go, when it is once out of his gun and flying towards a mark that some mischievous sprite may shift at any moment. And to kill his father! Fie! I would rather see Hillner hanged, an innocent man, than ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... many shapes as Prospero's busy sprite. I was once waiting for a train in a small Missouri town, where everybody turns out to "see the keers come in." A big, blustering fellow, well filled with booze, was making himself generally obnoxious, and the village constable approached him kindly ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... obvious pride in the skill, the humanitarian achievement, of her lover. Dr. George must be due here this evening, he fancied. For she was all freshly bedight; her gown was embellished with delicate laces, and its faint green hue gave her the aspect of some water-sprite, posed against that broad expanse of the Mississippi River, that was itself of a jade tint reflected from a green and amber sky; at the low horizon line the vermilion sun was sinking ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... different. Then he looked again at the sea, which was already turning to steel, and in the distance he saw something moving on the waves. As it came nearer he discovered it was a young Nixie, or water sprite, and she held a lyre in her hand, and sang a song which blended with the murmur of the waves and the notes of the bird. And the song put new life and courage into his heart, for it told him that if ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... nor think thou shalt enjoy, Thy Huncamunca undisturb'd; I'll send [1] My ghost to fetch her to the other world; [2] It shall but bait at heaven, and then return. [3] But, ha! I feel death rumbling in my brains: [4] Some kinder sprite knocks softly at my soul, And gently whispers it to haste away. I come, I come, most willingly I come. [5] So when some city wife, for country air, To Hampstead or to Highgate does repair, Her to make haste her husband does ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the arm of the chair at the foot of his couch, just to be glimpsed between the draperies of the balcony. She looked, to his eyes, like something too fragile and lovely to be real. And she was laughing! That did not seem real, either. She might have been pleasant, even cheerful, but this sprite, swinging there and laughing at nothing whatever, almost frightened him. For an awful moment he wondered if he had driven Marjorie mad. . . . He had been unkind to her—hard on ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... no newborn sprite, but a haggard transgression that comes staggering down under a mantle of curses through many centuries. All nations, barbarous and civilized, have been addicted to it. Before 1838, the French government received revenue from gaming houses. In 1567, England, for ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Huggo's in Canada. He writes every week. They're all right now. That other Rosalie that they brought in is looking after them. She's looking after them, that elf, that sprite, that tricksy scrap, that sunshine thing. She calls Harry father and Rosalie she calls mother. She has all her meals with them. There's no nurse. It's breakfast she loves best. She's on the itch all ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Alack! Ah, well-a-day! Alas!) Say, are you what you seem? Or is your life, like other lives, a dream? What time your babbling mocks my mortal moods, Fair Naiad of the stream! And are you, in good sooth, Could purblind poesy perceive the truth, A water-sprite, Who sometimes, for man's dangerous delight, Puts on a human form and face, To wear them with ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... carriage, that "that Frenchwoman was the finest woman, by Jove, he'd ever seen!" to the tiny witch Elise, whom nobody could manage, but who, at the first rustle of Madame's gown, would cease from her mischief, fold her small hands, and, sinking her bead-like black eyes, look as demure as such a sprite could. We all adored Madame,—not that she herself was very good, though she was pious in her way, too. She fasted and went regularly to confession and to all the offices, and sometimes at the passing of the Host I have seen her kneeling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Taylor, Mill was always most devotedly attached. As she grew into childhood he taught her botany, and people who wanted a glimpse of Mill were advised to "look for him with a flaxen-haired little sprite of a girl any ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... woman instead of an eccentric sprite," he remarked, "I suppose you'd want me to make a clean breast of the whole affair, but I can't because, to tell the truth, I've forgotten everything ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... yet asks my sprite, Part we to meet? Ah! is it so? Mans fancy-made Omniscience knows, who made ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... knew not what to do, but stood uncertain, devouring the beauty of the sprite in the water as greedily as he might with eyes that were not audacious, for in truth he had begun to feel ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... insects as bumblebees, butterflies, and moths. First the long-spurred red and yellow columbine and the painted cup, then the coral honeysuckle, jewelweed, trumpet-creeper, Oswego tea, and cardinal flower have the honor of catering to the exacting little sprite from spring to autumn. His sojourn in our gardens is prolonged until his beloved gladioli, cannas, honeysuckles, nasturtiums, and ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... wildly scamper'd, like the swine Excluded from his stye. One reach'd Capocchio, And in the neck-joint sticking deep his fangs, Dragg'd him, that o'er the solid pavement rubb'd His belly stretch'd out prone. The other shape, He of Arezzo, there left trembling, spake; "That sprite of air is Schicchi; in like mood Of random mischief vent he still his spite." To whom I answ'ring: "Oh! as thou dost hope, The other may not flesh its jaws on thee, Be patient to inform us, who it is, Ere it speed hence."—" That is the ancient soul Of wretched Myrrha," he replied, "who ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Dwarf had three servants whom he employed to attend to his most important business. These were a Gryphoness, a Water Sprite, and an Absolute Fool. This last one was very valuable; for there were some things he would do which no one else would think of attempting. The Dwarf called to him the Gryphoness, the oldest and most discreet of the three, and told her of ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... a tear, and forced himself out of his father's arms, piteously exclaiming: 'Father, father, my mother spoke! You cannot keep me. I must go.' He disappeared, and, reaching home, the father found the sprite again on the hearth." The ghostly father's services were called into requisition a second time; and better luck awaited an effort under his direction after the performance of a second miracle like the first. For ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... head-lad had parted after more years of association than many cared to recall. And it was clear that the little man felt the rupture. He wandered morosely through the crowd in the train of his fat familiar like a lost soul outside the gates of Paradise. Usually a merry sprite, the life and soul of every group he joined, he was under the weather, as the saying went, and what was still ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... herself to sleep. No comforting sprite whispered to her that she had won the first round in an arduous campaign. On the contrary, she fully expected ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... story about a man who hadn't the politeness to perform this little ceremony. He made a cradle for his baby out of the elder tree. But the sprite was offended, and she used to come and pull the baby out of the cradle by its legs, and pinch it and make it cry, so that it was quite impossible to leave the poor little thing in the elder cradle, and they had to weave one of ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... callous he whom this stirs not to rage, Punch pictures, with prophetic pen, a brighter cheerier page, Which must be turned, and speedily: Good Mr. PROSPERO BULL, Your Ariel is the Electric Sprite, DIBDIN, of pity full For tempest-tost Poor JACK, descried a Cherub up aloft Watch-keeping o'er his venturous life. That symbol, quoted oft, Must find new form to fit the time. The Ariel of the Spark Must watch around our storm-lashed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... Gray Eagle knew well enough that the little sprite he carried, liked a scamper as well as himself. The animal is quite well, I thank you, and is on good behavior. So are your other acquaintances, Cherry, the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the sun-beams on quivering wing! O prince of the fairies, O pygmy of fire, Will nothing those brave little wings of yours tire? You follow the flowers from southern lands sunny, You pry amid petals all summer for honey! Now rest on a twig, tiny flowerland sprite, Your dear little lady sits near in delight; In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles— Two dots of white eggs to her warm breast she cuddles! Whiz-z! whiff! off to your flowers! Buzz mid the perfume of jasmine bowers! Chatter and chirrup, my king of the fays, And laugh at ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... about him that led us to suspect that he was a chief. We found, upon inquiry, that it was Seattle, the old chief for whom the town was named, and the head of all the tribes on the Sound. He had with him a little brown sprite, that seemed an embodiment of the wind,—such a swift, elastic little creature,—his great-grandson, with no clothes about him, though it was a cold November day. To him, motion seemed ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... to note it; and from her couch she rose, the following morning, delighted with her dreams, and benevolently disposed towards mankind in general. She lingered at her toilet, grew hypercritical in articles of taste, and found defects in beauty without the shadow of a blemish. Had some wicked sprite but whispered in her ear one thought injurious to the memory of her departed husband, Margaret would have shrunk from its reception, and would have scorned to acknowledge it as her own. Time, she felt and owned with gratitude, had assuaged her sorrows—had removed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... more, his coat-tail was respectfully pulled by his attendant sprite with the gooseberry eyes. Mr. Bruff looked where the boy was looking. "Hush!" he ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Roscoe of those days had been a merry, light-hearted personality. She had revelled in games and all outdoor amusements. Moreover, she had been quick to learn, and her lessons had never caused her any trouble. A daring sprite she had been, with a most fertile imagination and a longing for adventure that had never been fully satisfied, possessing withal so tender and loving a heart that the very bees in the garden had been among her cherished ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... risen and dressed herself, and had slipped out betimes," said the Lady of Dynevor, as she took her place at the board. "Methought she would be with thee. She is a veritable sprite for flitting hither and thither after thee. Doubtless she is with some of the others. Who knows where the boys have gone this morning? They are not wont to be ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of turn, he is promptly squelched, and, though his bid may be allowed to stand, the man whose kopek we have drawn must do the work. The winner chee-ee-eeps to his little horse, whose shaggy mane has been tangled by the loving hand of the domovoi (house-sprite) and hangs to his knees. The patient beast, which, like all Russian horses, is never covered, no matter how severe the weather may be, or how hot he may be from exercise, rouses himself from his real or simulated slumber, and takes up the burden of life again, handicapped ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you to ask, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... moonlight evening on the loggia. We were great pals now, Boy and I. I had never met anyone in the least like him. At one moment he was a human boy, almost a child; at another his brain leaped beyond mine, and he became a poet or a philosopher; again he was an elfin sprite, a creature for whom Puck was the one thinkable name. There was a single thing only, about which you could always be sure. He would ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... over the field; their underbodies took on a grayish tint; and the blue openings narrowed. Finally a sharp shower descended; and the voyageurs sought shelter under a bush, where they hung, watching the millions of drops plopping roundly into the surface of the river; each drop with its attendant sprite leaping at its approach. One shower followed another, with intervals of hot and sticky sunshine between. It was more uncomfortable under the steamy, dripping bushes than in the thick of it; and they finally decided to paddle ahead, let it rain ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... play I'm a good sprite out of the box, or, what is better, a fairy godmother come down the chimney, and you are Cinderella, and must say what you want," said Rose, trying to put ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... gloom heavy and profound, and the man who had that morning said good-by forever to China and the wireless game and to ships and the sea, found himself floating in and out upon a sea of gold, with a sprite from elf-land dazzling him ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... chestnut from its roost blown down, Or last year's birds' nests scattered on the lea, Or some stale scandal rampant in the town— Sees everywhere the petty work of night, Of sneaking winds and cunning, coward rats, Of hooting owls, of bugaboo and sprite, Of roaches, wolves, and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... as can be to the Ariel in THE TEMPEST. No other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with a sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad-cap sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads—'Lord, what fools these mortals be!' Ariel cleaves the air, and executes his mission with the zeal of a winged messenger; Puck is borne along ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... up laughingly. The soft yellow hair was blown about her like a cloud, and the great bow under her chin gave her a coquettish air. What a changeful little sprite ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fault that, alone, she fled from the house? That, with her veil thrown over her arm, she ran directly by me, like a sprite in ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... happy, happy elf! (But stop,—first let me kiss away that tear)— Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite! With spirits feather-light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin— (Good Heavens! the child is ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Unseen, and about the young monarch hovered the benignant influences that had watched his infancy, and now rightly interpreted the sorrow of his heart. In sooth, that this sorrow was matter of rejoicing in the Air, I gather from the joyous mien of that river-sprite which one day surprised him as he languidly mused in a balcony that overhung the water, and spoke to him in accents strange to his ear and yet at ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... eager face that always brightened when I came, light feet that flew to welcome me, and hands that loved to minister to every want of mine. Even when I sat engrossed among my books, there was a pleasant consciousness that I was the possessor of a household sprite whom a look could summon and a gesture banish. I loved her as I loved a picture or a flower,—a little better than my horse and hound,—but far less than I loved my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... home to find the countess-dowager in a state more easily imagined than described. Some sprite, favourable to the peace of Hartledon, had been writing confidentially from Ireland regarding Kirton and his doings. That her eldest son was about to steal a march on her and marry again seemed almost indisputably clear; and the miserable dowager, dancing her ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... they had done eating, the Prince asked all the guests, one after another, what he deserved who had injured that beautiful maiden—pointing to the fairy, who looked so lovely that she shot hearts like a sprite and drew souls ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... languish here? Come, my dearest, my beauty, be sensible! The blood of a Nixey runs in your veins. Oh, won't you let yourself be one? Give your nature the reins for once in your life; fall head over ears in love with some other water sprite and plunge down head first into a deep pool, so that the Herr Professor and all of us may have ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... no longer Can I bear him, I will snare him, Knavish sprite! Ah, my terror waxes stronger! What a look! what ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... if out of the black water-deeps, so clear and hollow were the notes. I burst through the knotted stalks of the ivy, and stooping like some poor travesty of Narcissus, with shaded face pierced down deep—deep into eyes not my own, but violet and unendurable and strange—eyes of the living water-sprite drawing my wits from me, stilling my heart, till I was very near plunging into that crystal oblivion, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... may tell! I only know that such a rover there is, and that he is here to-day, and there to-morrow. Some say, it is only a craft of mist, that skims the top of the seas, like a sailing water-fowl, and others think it is the sprite of a vessel that was rifled and burnt by Kidd, in the Indian Ocean, looking for its gold and the killed. I saw him once, myself, but the distance was so great, and his manoeuvres so unnatural, that I could hardly give a good account of his ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... art some paltry, blackguard sprite, Condemn'd to drudgery in the night; Thou hast no work to do in the house, Nor ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... Magic Mirror, The. Meeting of the Ships, The. Meeting of the Waters, The. Melologue. Memorabilia of Last Week. Merrily Every Bosom boundeth. Millennium, The. Mind Not Tho' Daylight. Minstrel-Boy, The. Missing. Morality. Moral Positions. Mountain Sprite, The. Mr. Roger Dodsworth. Musical Box, The. Musings of an Unreformed Peer. Musings, suggested by the Late Promotion of Mrs. Nethercoat. My Birth-Day. My Gentle Harp. My Harp has One Unchanging Theme. My Heart and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Tanners' to make a hurried change in her dress and pick up her suit-case, which was already packed. As they rode away from the school-house Margaret looked back and saw Rosa Rogers posing in one of her sprite dances in the school-yard, saw her kiss her hand laughingly toward their party, and saw the flutter of a handkerchief in young Forsythe's hand. It was all very general and elusive, a passing bit of fun, but it left an uncomfortable ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... finest of roads; high level Pass, of good width, across the Giant Range; pleasant painted hamlets sprinkling it, fine mountain ridges and distant peaks looking on; Schneekoppe (SNOWfell, its head bright-white till July come) attends you, far to the right, all the way:—probably Sprite Rubezahl inhabits there; and no doubt River Elbe begins his long journey there, trickling down in little threads over yonder, intending to float navies by and by: considerations infinitely indifferent to Schwerin. 'The road,' says my Tourist, (is not Alpine; it reminds you of Derbyshire-Peak ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... was changed,—was tinged and interpenetrated with hurrying, spicy fumes, with hints of a bitter bark, of jellied gums, of resin, and a compelling odor which should have been sweet, but was only nauseating. The steam assumed new colors as it rose. Each sprite of aromatic perfume when released plunged into noiseless tumult with opposing fumes. The kitchen was a crucible, and the old dame a mediaeval alchemist. The flames and smoke striving upward, as if to reach ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... and tried to keep sunny for himself by all the arts he could exercise. She expected him to be the gay Sir Willoughby, and her look being as good as an incantation summons, he produced the accustomed sprite, giving her sally for sally. Queens govern the polite. Popularity with men, serviceable as it is for winning favouritism with women, is of poor value to a sensitive gentleman, anxious even to prognostic apprehension on behalf ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when the world was young. Through them, now and then, a little stream goes laughing, fringed with bulrushes and beds of calamus and fragrant mint, a narrow stream that runs chuckling through the stiff sod and spreads dimpling over the road on a bed of white sand, for all the world like a dodging sprite of the wood who laughs suddenly in some ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... most busy and feminine sprite, tortured the Lady Frances with extraordinary perseverance; and, in the end, it suddenly occurred to her that Barbara might know or conjecture something about the matter: accordingly, at night, she dismissed her own women, under some pretext or other, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... prospered in the years that followed, for he was a thrifty, hard-working man. The child, whom they had named Josepha, grew to girlhood, and reached young womanhood as a sprite of the camps—a gypo queen. The Modocks were uneducated people, but knew it, and strove to make amends by educating the girl to the best of their ability. When the contractor had prospered to the point where he needed and could afford a bookkeeper, ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... went, silent and diligent, giving the grace of willingness to every humble or distasteful task the day had brought her; but some malignant sprite seemed to have taken possession of her kingdom, for rebellion broke out everywhere. The kettles would boil over most obstreperously,—the mutton refused to cook with the meek alacrity to be expected ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... home again, Headed his host and quelled the Dane; But yearly, when returned the night Of his strange combat with the sprite, His wound must bleed and smart; Lord Gifford then would gibing say, 'Bold as ye were, my liege, ye pay The penance of your start.' Long since, beneath Dunfermline's nave, King Alexander fills his grave, Our Lady give ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... in astonishment at his host. Was the beautiful maiden only another of the wonderful beings who had bewildered him in the forest? Was she some lovely elf or sprite who had come but to vex them ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... life, at everything. Mixed, tangled masses of images heaped themselves in utter disorder in his brain: passages of verse, bits of his trained laboratory jargon, phrases from half-forgotten books, the delicate curves of the Water Sprite at the exposition, and, above all, a fierce gnawing pain ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... rode: “Thou mayst take thy plighted knight, For I have with my good sword Slain the foul and poisonous sprite.” ...
— King Diderik - and the fight between the Lion and Dragon and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... Heads under wings—all fearless; nor, O Prince! Had Aswatthaman more than marked the birds, When, lo! there fell out of the velvet night, Silent and terrible, an eagle-owl, With wide, soft, deadly, dusky wings, and eyes Flame-coloured, and long claws, and dreadful beak; Like a winged sprite, or great Garood himself; Offspring of Bharata! it lighted there Upon the banian's bough; hooted, but low, The fury smothering in its throat;—then fell With murderous beak and claws upon those crows, Rending the wings from ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Little Jack Sprite. It did not seem quite relevant to the nursery classic which, only a few years back, she had read ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... enough for two, and here she stands, on her tiptoes, reaching up to my window, as if it were not an over-fed girl that stood in her garments, but some airy sprite. We may laugh, but Klea, poor thing, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... him much. "But it serves me right for chasing a harum-scarum thing when I ought to have been minding my own business and collecting bills for Douglas & Co. And she says she's been there, too. I wonder who she is, the handsome sprite. I believe I made her more than half jealous talking of my golden-haired Rose; but she is far more beautiful than Rose, more beautiful than anyone I ever saw. I wish she'd come back again," and, shutting his eyes, he tried to ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... sacrifice of his own inclinations he had achieved this disastrous result. If he had tried to do evil instead of good, he could hardly have wrought more irreparable mischief—and with the thought, pity, which had led him astray, winged off, like an ironic sprite, and left his heart ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... man? Hath the rude wind Chilled thy sweet woodland home, now quite despoiled Of all its summer greenery, and swept The bright, close, sheltering bowers, where merrily Rang out thy notes—as of a haunting sprite, There domiciled—the long blue summer through? Moulders untenanted thy trim-built nest, And do the unpropitious fates deny Food for thy little wants, and Penury, With tiny grip, drive thee to dubious walls,— Though terrors flutter at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... as Daisy's, And who as Maud so fair? Who does not sing the praises Of Lucy's golden hair? There's Sophie—she is witty, A very sprite is Nell, And Susie's, oh, so ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... in effect that his confreres among the book clerks accepted with difficulty the story that he was married. When it was told that he had a son they gasped their incredulity. And when one day this extraordinary elfin sprite remarked that at the time of his honeymoon he had had a beard they felt (I remember) that the world was without power ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... secret of their charm. That eager, radiant elf, the Princess Somdetch Chow Fa-ying, [Footnote: "First-Born of the Skies."] the king's darling (of whom, by and by, I shall have a sadder tale to tell), had become a sprite of sunshine and gladness amid the sombre shadows of those walls. In her deep, dark, lustrous eyes, her simple, trusting ways, there was a springtide of refreshment, a pure, pervading radiance, that brightened the darkest ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... like one in a dream. Her proud, bright face softened, her magnificent eyes grew tender and half sad. Gaspar read on—of the fair and lovely maiden, of the handsome young knight and his love, of the water sprite, grim old Kuhlehorn, and the cottage where Undine dwelt, of the knight's marriage, and then ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... Thoreau gradually grew very strong with Hawthorne, and he quotes Emerson, who called Thoreau "the young god Pan." And this lends much semblance to the statement that Thoreau served Hawthorne as a model for Donatello, the mysterious wood-sprite in the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... do glow, While the screech-owl, sounding loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets out its sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... morning's herald beam Sprang from the bosom of the sea, And every mangled sprite returned In sadness ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... open, and there is no one to be seen. He keeps on and on until he catches a flutter of a white dress. Cecil is running around the observatory, and his heart beats as he glances at the dazzling little sprite, with her sparkling eyes and her hair a golden mist about her face. He could watch forever, but ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... pray with all thy might, Here's goblin foul or woodland sprite Come for to steal our souls away, So on thy knees quick, Fool, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the elfish freak was always short: sometimes when driven a little hard in the war of words—for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the delicacy of her native French, in which language she always attacked me—I used to turn upon her with my old decision, and arrest bodily the sprite that teased me. Vain idea! no sooner had I grasped hand or arm than the elf was gone; the provocative smile quenched in the expressive brown eyes, and a ray of gentle homage shone under the lids in its place. I had seized a mere vexing fairy, and found a submissive ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... me, Amy," he would say, laughing, "of some reckless sprite from the kingdom of misrule, who had flown into the scene, determined to make all the trouble she could. It was very chivalrous of you, to be sure, and I ought to be very grateful—but I must own that I felt exceedingly provoked at being obliged to ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... "What sprite are you?" answered Much, reining in his steed sharply. "Why! 'tis the gipsy lad, as I live; with his face nicely washed...!" He had recognized Robin by his clothes. "Money, forsooth! Do you know that I have not so much as ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Close at his back, or whispering in his ear, There stood a sprite ycleped Phantasy; Which, wheresoe'er he went, was always near: Her look was wild, and roving was her eye; Her hair was clad with flowers of every dye; Her glistering robes were of more various hue Than the fair bow that paints the cloudy sky, Or all the spangled drops of morning ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... civilisation—and yet still lives as a natural power in the people—is represented, on the whole, in pigmy proportions in the south. Here they have a little terror of small hobgoblins, good-natured fairies, a love-sick river-sprite, and so forth, beings who with us in the north, almost go about our houses like superstition's tame domestic animals. You have there, too, good-natured elves, who carry on their peaceful boating and coasting trade invisibly among the people. But then, in ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... the spot where the sturgeon swims, though the watersprites plague him and toss his boat, and the fish and the leeches bunt and drag; but, suddenly, the sturgeon shoots from the water, and ere the arch of mist that he tracks through the air has vanished, the sprite has caught a drop of the spray in a tiny blossom, and in this he washes clean ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... cold as a stone. The chill towards Nichola that the presence of the girl,—sprite, witch, troll that she was—brought with it came like a doom. He knew what a fool he was, as he had said. But he was powerless in the grasp of the idealizing passion. He cared more for Avice's finger-tips than ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... had her innings; not only was she prettily dressed, presenting the most joyous of pictures, as with golden curls flying about her shoulders she flitted in and out of the rooms like a sprite, but she was withal so polite in her greetings, dropping to everyone a little French courtesy when she spoke, and all in her quaint, broken dialect, that everybody fell in love with her at sight. None of the other mothers had ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... both together every day. The younger had commenced practising the same delicate and ingenious craft of embroidery, and the two pursued their industry in company under the same employer. It was amusing to mark the demure assumption of womanhood darkening the brows of the aerial little sprite, as, with all the new-born consequence of responsibility, she walked soberly by her sister's side, frame in hand, and occasionally revealed to passers-by a brief glimpse of her many-coloured handiwork. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... and lead and zinc. The black sprite, the brown sprite, the invisible sprite, the two gray sprites—elemental sprites they were—destined to be bound servants of man. Yet when they came rushing out of the earth there at Harvey, man groveled before them, and sold his immortal soul to these trolls. Naturally enough Daniel Sands was ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... every clasped and sensitive leaf of which a fairy is said to dwell, I fancied she was their queen, and must have dropped from one of the leaves, to gambol and wanton among the flowers below. Running to her, I caught her in my arms, and said, 'I watched your fall, and have you now, dear sprite, and will keep you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... breath and sank into the indicated seat. He'd intended to turn that shanty over from top to bottom, to rip it almost to the ground. But the sight of the red-headed sprite on the cot fondling a woodland owl, and the effect of her smile upon the beating of his heart, dissolved his rage ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... a letter to Maurizio Cataneo, dated December 25, 1585, Tasso gives an account of his sprite (folletto): "The little thief has stolen from me many crowns.... He puts all my books topsy-turvy (mi mette tutti i libri sottosopra), opens my chest and steals my keys, so that I can keep nothing." Again, December 30, with regard to his hallucinations he says, "Know then that in addition ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... example of xylographic printing, but it was a great feat on the part of Retana, who had never seen a copy, to resolve apparently irreconcilable differences of opinion on the part of several unquestioned authorities by deducing that it was all a matter of semantics—what did printing mean? As for the sprite of 1581 introduced by Beristain, Retana dismissed it on the grounds of insufficient evidence. In a word, he concluded that the first book issued in the Philippines was a Doctrina printed ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... wave is edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, Whose screams ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... happy in whose heart pure truth finds rest. No sacrifice shall he repent of ever! But from a formal, written, sealed attest, As from a spectre, all men shrink forever. The word and spirit die together, Killed by the sight of wax and leather. What wilt thou, evil sprite, from me? Brass, marble, parchment, paper, shall it be? Shall I subscribe with pencil, pen or graver? Among them all thy ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Some of violated vowes, twixt the soules of friend, and friend: But vpon the fairest bowes, or at euerie sentence end; Will I Rosalinda write, teaching all that reade, to know The quintessence of euerie sprite, heauen would in little show. Therefore heauen Nature charg'd, that one bodie should be fill'd With all Graces wide enlarg'd, nature presently distill'd Helens cheeke, but not his heart, Cleopatra's Maiestie: Attalanta's better part, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... my face with an effort, and straightened up as the cheery voice hailed me. She was coming towards me like a woodland sprite, floating, it seemed to me, for her gliding step was so free from any pronounced undulation. Her dress of blue checked gingham just escaped the ground, and she wore a gingham sunbonnet with two long strings, which she held in either ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... a stare of some seconds at a strikingly sullen-looking, handsome creature who stood alone, and whom she heard addressed by a pretty sprite of fashion with a "How-do, Lord Byron?" she says: "I was pushed on, and on reaching the centre of the conservatory I found myself suddenly pounced upon a sort of rustic seat, a very uneasy pre-eminence, and there I sat, the lioness of the night, shown off like the hyena of Exeter 'Change, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... European Morals and Law's Serious Call, both admirable books, then the bookman is much exhilarated. Because of the mischief that is in him he will not relieve those two excellent men of that disgraceful Italian's company for a little space, but if he finds that the domestic sprite has thrust a Puritan between two Anglican theologians he effects a separation without delay, for a religious controversy with its din and clatter is more ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... you are safe. Jove! Did you hear that water-sprite gurgling under the boat? It must be ripping to be a water-sprite. Can't you see them, Nan, whisking about down there in couples along the stones? Give me your hand, and we'll dive under ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... genius; demiurge, familiar; sibyl; fairy, fay; sylph,, sylphid; Ariel[obs3], peri, nymph, nereid, dryad, seamaid, banshee, benshie[obs3], Ormuzd; Oberon, Mab, hamadryad[obs3], naiad, mermaid, kelpie[obs3], Ondine, nixie, sprite; denizens of the air; pixy &c. (bad spirit) 980. mythology; heathen-mythology, fairy-mythology; Lempriere, folklore. Adj. god-like, fairy-like; sylph-like; sylphic[obs3]. Phr. "you moonshine revelers and shades ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Danesbury in her gentle voice. "Welcome to Lavender House, love; I am sorry I was not in the hall to receive you. Had I been, this little rencontre would not have occurred. Annie Forest meant no harm, however—she's a wild little sprite, but affectionate. You and she will be the best friends possible by-and-by. Now, let me take you to your room; the gong for tea will sound in exactly five minutes, and I am sure you will be ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... stuck fast in a crack of one of the large timbers, dead, of course, with wings extended, and as dry as a chip. The bird seems to have died, as it had lived, on the wing, and its last act was indeed a ghastly parody of its living career. Fancy this nimble, flashing sprite, whose life was passed probing the honeyed depths of flowers, at last thrusting its bill into a crack in a dry timber in a hay-loft, and, with spread wings, ending ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... uneasy distraction had melted away. Not even at the height of his success had he felt so confident, so entirely superior to the rest of mankind as both to command and to deserve their homage. In no play had he ever devised a more romantic finale than this in which he carried his conquered sprite—for so he thought her—back to earth. As he put her down, he threw out his chest and turned to the stars as it was his habit to turn to his audiences, and bowed thrice, to the right, to the left, to the centre, with his hand upon ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... she would say to Dora,—"insufferably so. She told Madame A. that she looked like an apple-tree; which might have been taken for a compliment, had not the saucy little sprite explained herself by pointing to that old tree in the garden which the flowering shrubbery has decked with every variety of blossom: Mrs. A. is extremely fond of fancy colors. And when I took her to Bowker's the other day, that sick Miss Ellenwood was examining ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... seems like some woodland sprite. She is bubbling over with fun, and is scarcely still a minute. Her spaniel is a gay playfellow,—a beautiful creature, with long silky hair and drooping ears. He is intelligent, too, and devoted to ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... choke him, rob him of his senses; he wanted to cry out. Her name was Chiquita. He repeated it over and over in time to his steps. Was there ever such a beautiful name? Was there ever such a ravishing little wood-sprite? And her sweet, hesitating accent that rang in his ears! How could human tongue make such caressing music of the harshest language on the globe? She had called him "Senor Antonio," and invited him to come ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... stop!" cried the man, and the obedient horses stood still. "I see well enough," said he, "what ails the beast. When first I came through these parts my horses were just as troublesome; because there is a wicked water-sprite living hard by, who takes delight in making them play tricks. But I know a charm for this; if you will give me leave to whisper it in your horse's ear, you will see him as quiet as mine yonder in a moment."—"Try ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... uncle's grave. To tak a wife at once, he thowt Wor th' wisest thing to do, Soa he lukt raand until he browt His choice daan between two. One wor a big, fine, strappin lass, Her name wor Sarah Ann, Her height an weight, few could surpass, Shoo'r fit for onny man. An t'other wor a little sprite, Wi' lots o' bonny ways, An little funny antics, like A kitten when it plays. An which to tak he could'nt tell, He rayther liked 'em booath; But if he could ha pleased hissen, To wed one he'd be looath. A wife he thowt an evil thing, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... which cannot lie because it is unconscious, and by which constellations converse with buttercups, and cedars with the flying drops of rain—there was gesture. For gesture and attitude can convey all the important and necessary things, while speech in the human sense is but an invention of some sprite who wanted people to wonder what they really meant. In sublimest moments it is never used even in the best circles of intelligence; it drops away quite naturally; souls know one another face to ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... formed by mineral incrustations, on the ceiling and walls. On a cloudy background could be traced forms of men and beasts, of forests and flowers, armies, castles, and ships, not sculptured like the figures before described, but designed by the subtile pencil of some sprite, who, Virginia suggested, must have been the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... through smoke-red light I saw her beckoning stand; Anon, like a burning bird in fright, She fled with a shriek through the lurid night, And I wailed like a lost soul banned; And an echo flew like an anguished sprite And wailed in a ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... That sometime these bright stars, that now reply In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night; That warm conscious flesh shall perish quite, And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow; That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal sprite Be lapp'd in alien clay and laid below; It is not death to know this,—but to know That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go So duly and so oft,—and when grass waves Over the past-away, there may be then No resurrection in the minds ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the spear! You feel us near In many a ghastly dream; With fancy's eye Our forms you spy, And hear our fatal scream. With clearer sight Ere falls the night, Just when to weal or woe Your disembodied souls take flight On trembling wing—each startled sprite Our choir of death ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... to cry. I thought we should never arrive. I imagined that the sprite was going to triumph, and I wept those tears that were like a brook that runs ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
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