"Rapture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which he brought up his child is highly significant: "Our hearts clung mostly to our daughter.... I enjoyed the pleasure of possessing her with full consciousness of her worth, gazed upon her with rapture and was delighted when I observed in her a new trait of beautiful womanly character. She recognized by my serious treatment of her the entire depth of my love, repaid it with inner devotion and challenged it with merry ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... Pronounc'd Achaia once again was free; Assembled Greece enrapt with fond belief Heard the false boon, and bless'd the villain Chief; Each breast with Freedom's holy ardor glows, From every voice the cry of rapture rose; Their thundering clamors burst the astonish'd sky, And birds o'erpassing hear, and drop, and die. Thus o'er the Persian dome their plaudits ring, And the high hall re-echoed—live the King! The Mutes bow'd reverent ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... which Adam dreamed his dream. He waked up trembling with joy and feeling the tears run down his face. His watch ticked like the beating of a pulse under his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words no human ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... "Bay Leaves" are fashioned all in goodly measure; and his "Blest man who far from care and strife" well transfers to English the breathlessness of Horace's sham pastoral ecstasy. Of more ambitious translators Bulwer Lytton catches now and then the careless rapture of his original; Sir Theodore Martin is always musical and flowing, sometimes miraculously fortunate in his metres, but intentionally unliteral and free. Conington is rigidly faithful, oftentimes tersely ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... very easy for us, who have lived comfortably at home, or who have travelled only in luxurious railway-cars and handsomely equipped steamers, to realize the joy and rapture with which these far-wandering explorers hailed the sight of the sea,—the sea to which they had so long been journeying, through deserts, mountain-passes, and tangled wildernesses. In his diary Captain Clark thus sets down some indication of his joy on that memorable day, November 8, 1805: "Great ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... listened, propping her exhausted body, her soul surrendered as ever to the violent rapture; caught now and carried away into a place beyond pain, beyond ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... witness. He showed a horrible sincerity of astonishment at having been treated with common Christian kindness in a Christian land. He spoke of Allan's having become answerable for all the expenses of sheltering, nursing, and curing him, with a savage rapture of gratitude and surprise which burst out of him like a flash of lightning. "So help me God!" cried the castaway usher, "I never met with the like of him: I never heard of the like of him before!" In the next instant, the one glimpse of light which the man had let in on his ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... keen and practised as that of any modern observer. He enjoys with rapture the panoramic splendor of the view from the summit of the Alban hills—from the Monte Cavo—whence he could see the shores of St. Peter from Terracina and the promontory of Circe as far as Monte Argentaro, and the wide expanse of country round about, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the flashing blade, The bugle's stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, The din and shout are passed. Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal, Shall thrill with fierce delight Those breasts that nevermore shall feel The rapture ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... befitted a farmer knowing something of grasses on his own account, issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for the end of the peril which had beset the country. The stockmarket recovered from funereal depths and jumped upward. In all the great cities hysterical rapture so heated the blood of the people that all restraints withered. In frantic joy women were raped in the streets, dozens of banks were looted, thousands of plateglasswindows were smashed while millions of celebrants wept tears of 86 proof ecstasy. Torn tickertapes made Broadway impassable ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... so incredulous, Mr. Falconer, if you had seen the rapture with which the count listens to Georgiana when she plays on the harp. He is prodigiously fond ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... not fear His judgment, but I weep For him who slew the lily with a kiss Too full of passion's rapture; if I speak In that transcendent moment when I stand A sinful woman at the bar of God To hear my sentence, I shall answer still: "I loved him; that was all that I could do; I love him; that is ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... two men talked of art, of philosophy, and of history, the discussion of these calling out a light of intelligence and rapture on the old man's face. When, however, the graver questions of theology were broached, his voice became hard and inflexible, a shadow fell, and the radiancy of the man and scholar became lost in the gloom ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... convulsed her—kneeling there in her balcony; her bare arms resting on the balustrade. The new Aruna shrank from thought of death. She craved the fulness of life and love—kisses and rapture and the clinging arms ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... suffering face, grateful thanks broke from her lips. Hastening their steps they passed through the gate, wound along the hill side, and as the broad expanse of ocean with the fresh wind curling it into wavelets burst upon the sight, a flash of rapture beamed on her countenance; a cry of joy rushed from her pallid lips—their feeble burden grew heavier. A murmur of welcoming delight was uttered to some glorious presence, unseen by the maidens, and all became hushed eternally. The Lady ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... leaves spring And flowers are budding on the plain, When nightingales so sweetly sing And through the greenwood swells the strain, Then joy I in the song and in the flower, Joy in myself but in my lady more; All objects round my spirit turns to joy, But most from her my rapture rises high. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... rapture of the sky There bodes, transfigured, far aloof, The veil that hides eternity, With life for ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... outburst, he began to read in feverish haste what he had written. His breath came and went quickly,—his cheeks flushed, his eyes dilated,—line after line he perused with apparent wonder and rapture,—when suddenly interrupting himself he raised his head and recited in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Life portray! New scenes of Wisdom may each step display, 10 And Knowledge open as my days advance! Till what time Death shall pour the undarken'd ray, My eye shall dart thro' infinite expanse, And thought suspended lie in Rapture's blissful trance. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... her but to learn the answer, and this she did, by tugging firmly, coyly, to free her wrist. The answer was rapture; his grip had tightened. She pulled harder, and felt herself being drawn toward him. Yes, yes, her triumph was a fact. Slowly an arm of iron, a tremulous, masterful ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... renowned For prowess with the lob-worm or the grub, Should land a roach of more than half a pound, Then in the leading papers of the hub Full space for that achievement will be found, And clearest type and unaffected rapture ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... and Clementina sat alone on the dune in a reposeful rapture, to which the sleeplessness of the night gave a certain additional intensity and richness and strangeness. She watched the great strides of her fisherman as he walked along the sands, and she seemed not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Ogla-Moga was throwing his arm up in the air with a fierce swing, suddenly crooking his elbow, and bringing his closed hand to his mouth, while he rolled his eyes around the room with a melodramatic ferocity, evidently intended to convey the idea of extreme rapture. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... was lit up, and from it came the sound of music—guitars, and a voice singing. She recognized the throaty tenor of the blind man raised in a spurious and sickly rapture: ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... with delight, flinging himself first on one then on the other, darting back a step or two as if to see them more distinctly and make sure he was not mistaken, then rolling himself upon them again all quivering and shaking with rapture. And the cry of ecstasy that broke from the twins would have gone to the heart of any one ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... Marquis de Ferrieres, "filled my eyes... . In a state of sweet rapture I beheld France supported by Religion" exhorting us all to concord. "The sacred ceremonies, the music, the incense, the priests in their sacrificial robes, that dais, that orb radiant with precious stones. .. I called to my mind the words of the prophet... . My God, my country, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the heart melts to it in a grateful tenderness for the wide, high, blue sky, the flood of white light, the joy of the flocking birds, and the transport of the buds which you can all but hear bursting in an eager rapture. It is a sudden glut of delight, a great, wholesale emotion of pure joy, filling the soul to overflowing, which the more scrupulously adjusted meteorology of England is incapable of at least so instantly imparting. Our weather ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... that first, overpowering jolt of a striking salmon can question the rapture of that first moment. The jolt carried through all the intricacies of the nerves, jarred the soul within the man, and seemingly registered in the germ plasm itself an impression that could be recalled, in dreams, ten generations hence. Fortunately the pole withstood that first, frantic rush, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... just as the bell was calling home the laborers, I entered the courtyard of the sugar-mill, where I caught sight of my youngster sitting on the ground, with his dog at his feet, looking with rapture at some ducks that were enjoying themselves ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... bathed Truth's mountain-springs Quiver'd our glancing wings. Weep for the godlike life we lost afar— Weep!—thou and I its scatter'd fragments are; And still the unconquer'd yearning we retain— Sigh to restore the rapture and the reign, And grow divine again. And therefore came to me the wish to woo thee— Still, lip to lip, to cling for aye unto thee; This made thy glances to my soul the link— This made me burn thy very breath to drink— My life in thine to sink: And therefore, as before the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... you may, you must, set down to me Love that was life, life that was love; A tenure of breath at your lips' decree, A passion to stand as your thoughts approve, A rapture to fall where ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... to them, crushing their flowers and ribbons, and crying—"You two want to talk secrets, I know. I can hear what you say. I'm going to listen, I am. And I shall tell, too;" when perhaps a knock at the door announced the Nurse to take Miss Amelia to bed, and spread a general rapture of relief. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the scene unfold, The gazer's voice could not withhold, The very rapture made him bold: He cried aloud, with clasped hands, "O happy fields! O happy bands, Who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... spoke the rapture was in her voice, and I looked at her—and yes, she was beautiful! The ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... to the name of Noah, which certainly deserves a somewhat careful examination. Lamech was living when Enoch was taken away by God out of this life into the other immortal life. When the great glory of God had become manifest in the extraordinary miracle of the rapture from a lowly estate into life eternal of Enoch who was a man like us, a husband, a man with family, having sons, daughters, household, fields and cattle, the holy fathers were filled and fired with such joy as to conclude that the glad day ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... what the child would like, bless her kind heart," said Mrs. Pecq to herself, and something brighter than the most silvery bead shone on Jack's shirt-sleeve, as she saw the rapture of Jill over the new work ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... told to the heavens that some great event, full of glory and of blessing, was just happily born into the history of the world. Strains of triumphant music at once expressed and stirred afresh the rapture which the new fruition of a deferred and doubting hope had kindled in myriad breasts. Rejoicing multitudes swarmed before the palace gate, and with congratulatory shouts compelled the presence of the Nation's Head. He stood before them proud and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... death has set his changing seal On all that meets the eye, 'Tis rapture, then, within to feel ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... the sudden flowering of sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes—there had been the flowering too, in pain like birth-pangs, of something graver, stronger, fuller of future power, something she had hardly heeded in her first light rapture, but that always came back and possessed her stilled soul when the rapture sank: the deep disquieting sense of something that Nick and love had taught her, but that reached out even ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... old drink for rapture, The delirium to drain, All my fellows drank in plenty At the Three Score Inns and Twenty From the mountains to the main! Give me the old drink for rapture, The delirium ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... rapture out of a shielded port. There were impossibly jagged stones, preposterously steep cliffs. There had been no weather to remove the sharp edge of anything in a hundred million years. The awkward-seeming ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Dante, or reach the graceful tenderness of Petrarch; but he has a visionary invention of his own, to which there is no rival. As long as the language lasts, every richly gifted and richly cultivated mind will read him with intense and wondering rapture; and will not cease to entertain the conviction, from his example, if from no other, that true poetry of the higher orders is ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... her breath in her rapture, her eyes shone with pure happiness, but in the midst of all her rejoicings a sudden memory of little Dan came to ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade
... we both at the same instant descried a sail to the eastward, and evidently coming towards us! We hailed the glorious sight with a long, although feeble shout of rapture; and began instantly to make every signal in our power, by flaring the shirts in the air, leaping as high as our weak condition would permit, and even by hallooing with all the strength of our lungs, although the vessel could not have been less than fifteen miles distant. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... heat pervaded London. There were but few people walking. Few vehicles drove by. Here and there small groups of persons, oddly dressed, and looking vacant in their rapture, stared, round-eyed, on the town. Londoners were in the country, staring, round-eyed, on fields and woods. The policemen looked dull and heavy, as if never again would any one be criminal, and as if they had come to know it. Bits of paper blew aimlessly about, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... them both its presence was alive and evident in the space between them. He saw her bosom rise and fall, her lips part slightly, and a tremor disturb the high serenity of her self-control, and there came to him the memory of their first meeting at the cross-roads and of the mystery and the rapture of his boyish love. He had found her then the lady of his dreams, and now, after all the violence of his revolt against her, she was still to him as he had first seen her—the woman whose soul looked at him from ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... heavenly rapture has no bounds Beside that jasper sea; It is a joy unknown to Lowndes," Says ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future!—how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— To the rhyming and the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... influence, they may have lost the memory of the holy things which once they saw. Few only retain an adequate remembrance of them; and they, when they behold here any image of that other world, are rapt in amazement; but they are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they do not clearly perceive. For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them: they are seen through a glass dimly; and there ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... with the right person! Hours go like moments—the grass is never damp—the air is never cold—there is never time enough to give all the kisses that are waiting to be given; and life is so beautiful, that we are almost able to understand why God created the universe! The rapture passes very quickly, unfortunately—with some people;—but if I ever prayed for anything—which I do not—I should pray that it might remain with Gloria! It surely cannot offend the Supreme Being who is responsible ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Gipsy eye, bright as the star That sends its light from heaven afar, Wild with the strains of thy guitar, This heart with rapture fill. Then, maiden fair, beneath this star, Come, touch me with the light guitar. Thy brow unworked by lines of care, Decked with locks of raven hair, Seems ever beautiful and fair At moonlight's stilly hour. What bliss! beside the leafy maze, Illumined by ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... commenced, addressing Madame Dort with an elaborate bow, sweeping the floor with his hat. "Unto me the greatest and ever-much rapture doth it with added satisfaction bring, to tell you of the glorious success of the German arms over our greatly-overbearing ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and rapture, gave not another thought to Nathan. Nathan was a stepping-stone for him—that was all; and he (Lucien) was happy exceedingly—he thought himself rich. The money brought by Dauriat was a very Potosi for the lad who used to go about ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... cigarettes for a lieutenant who knew no French, and of running errands for British officers who accepted such services as a matter of course. The rank- and-file of the British army which first came into France was also a little careless of French susceptibilities. After the first rapture of that welcome which was extended to anyone in khaki, French citizens began to look a little askance at the regiments from the Highlands and Lowlands, some of whose men demanded free gifts in the shops, and, when a little drunk, were rather crude in their amorous advances to girls ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... behind, and were on the brow of the hill where four roads meet. To the right stood the cosy homestead of Mossgiel, and to the left the whole expanse of lovely country, hill and field and wood, which had so often filled the soul of Burns with the lonely rapture of the poet's soul. Gladys never passed up that way without thinking of him, and it seemed to her sometimes that she shared with him that deep, yearning depression of soul which found a ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... and he had been defeated. It was bitter enough, but after all he had had his turn. The first hot rapture was already passing. Love in the wilderness could not last for ever. It had been fierce enough—too fierce to endure. And characteristically he reflected that Stella's cold beauty would not have held him for long. He preferred something ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... was feeding the machine and must necessarily keep his eyes on his work, while the noise prevented any stray bits of the conversation from reaching his ears. Besides this, Dick was just now full of sympathy. Clara let go her end of the umbrella, and George, with an exaggerated expression of rapture on his face, kissed the place where her hand had held it. The young lady tried to frown and look disgusted. Then for several moments neither spoke. At last Clara said, "I wanted to tell you how proud and glad I am ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... told him. In these days he was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his spirit were really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance of seeing—her. Bosinney—the one man who had possessed her heart, to whom she had given her whole self with rapture! At his age one could not, of course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him a queer vague aching—as it were the ghost of an impersonal jealousy; and a feeling, too, more generous, of pity for that love so early lost. All over in a few poor months! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as a rapture which seized one so that all the world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward to an ecstatic happiness; but this was not happiness; it was a hunger of the soul, it was a painful yearning, it was a bitter anguish, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... and made fast. Then he held up his fore-paw as the Mole stepped gingerly down. "Lean on that!" he said. "Now then, step lively!" and the Mole to his surprise and rapture found himself actually seated in the stern ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... writer, who first came into notice by dint of naming a book of essays, "Is Life worth Living?" gave us not long ago a very sweet description of an English country town; and he worked himself up to quite a moving pitch of rapture as he described the admirable social arrangements which may be perceived on a market-day. This enthusiast tells us how the members of the great county families drive in to do their shopping. The stately great horses paw and champ at their bits, the neat servants bustle about ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... anchored in it a little to the east of the present settlement of San Rafael de Barrancas. Their spirits were high again. They feasted on the eggs of the freshwater turtles which they found in thousands on the sandy islands, and they gazed with rapture on the mountains to the south of them which rose out of the very heart of Guiana. A friendly chieftain carried them off to his village, where, to preserve the delightful spelling of the age, 'some of our captaines garoused of his wine till they were ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... with their quick artistic instinct, understood this, and set in the bride's chamber the statue of Hermes or of Apollo, that she might bear children as lovely as the works of art that she looked at in her rapture or her pain. They knew that Life gains from art not merely spirituality, depth of thought and feeling, soul-turmoil or soul-peace, but that she can form herself on the very lines and colours of art, and can reproduce the dignity of Pheidias as well as the grace of Praxiteles. ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... the dais where she had been standing, and came swiftly across the room, as if his unspoken thought had called her to him. A tender rapture possessed him to see her thus drawing towards him; he longed to stretch out his arms and fold her to his breast. He moved, and his hand came in contact with a small object on the mantel. He picked it up. It was a ring, a band of dull worn gold, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... perch in an apple-tree, then in full bloom, and, while I stood perfectly still close by, he would circle away, quivering round the entire field of five acres, with no break in his song, and settle down again among the blooms, to be hurried away almost immediately by a new rapture of music. He had the volubility of an Italian charlatan at a fair, and, like him, appeared to be proclaiming the merits of some quack remedy. Opodeldoc-opodeldoc-try-Doctor-Lincoln's-opodeldoc! he seemed to repeat ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... slack and fail, what a resource will Baireuth be, compared with Weissenfels! And Wilhelmina entering, her Majesty breaks forth into admiration over the victory, or half-victory, just gained: What a husband for you this, my dear, in comparison! And as Wilhelmina cannot quite join in the rapture on a sudden; and cannot even consent, unless Papa too give his real countenance to the match, Mamma flies out upon the poor young Lady: [Wilhelmina, i. 201.] "Take the Grand Turk or the Great Mogul, then," ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hardly more pleasing than the song of the bird in Tottenham Court Road. It does not raise my spirits, it only depresses them. But when I heard the sound of the bells come up from the valley last evening, it seemed like the bringer of a personal message of good tidings. It had in it the rapture of a thousand memories—memories of summer eves and snowy landscapes, of vanished faces and forgotten scenes. It was at once stimulating and calming, and spoke somehow the language of enduring ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... which he feared he had nearly lost. I gave him Homer, and asked him to read a page; and I found that, like most boys of any talent who had been at the Charterhouse, he was very well grounded in that language. He read with perfect rapture, and has marched off with the book, declaring that he shall never be content till he has finished the whole. This, you will think, is not a bad brother-in-law for a man to pick up in 22 degrees of North latitude, and ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... ourselves. The picture, though full of beauty, is not the finest of the master's; but it serves again as well as another to transport—there is no other word—those of his lovers for whom, in far-away days when Venice was an early rapture, this strange and mystifying painter was almost the supreme revelation. The plastic arts may have less to say to us than in the hungry years of youth, and the celebrated picture in general be more of a blank; but more than ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered; is the business of a modern dramatist. For this, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... from any great wish, then, to see the antiquities or the art treasures of Rome?" asked Lord Chandos, thinking as he spoke with what rapture Leone would have thought of a ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... eyes Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love Fall insignificant on my closing ears, What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind In our inclement city? what return But the image of the emptiness of youth, Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice Of discontent and rapture and despair? So, as in darkness, from the magic lamp, The momentary pictures gleam and fade And perish, and the night resurges - these Shall I remember, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... parts, the entrance of the bright A major, after the gloom of the preceding bars, is very effective. The third movement has the character of a nocturne, and as such cannot fail to be admired. In the visionary dreaming of the long middle section we imagine the composer with dilated eyes and rapture in his look—it is rather a reverie than a composition. The finale surrounds us with an emotional atmosphere somewhat akin to that of the first movement, but more agitated. After eight bold introductory ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... is that Frith's masterpiece, or engravings of it, have provided thousands with half-hours of curious and fanciful pleasure, it is not less certain that no one has experienced before it one half-second of aesthetic rapture—and this although the picture contains several pretty passages of colour, and is by no means badly painted. "Paddington Station" is not a work of art; it is an interesting and amusing document. In it line and colour are used to recount ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... reading Rousseau, among other philosophers, and Voltaire, whose prose delighted and whose verse wearied him. "But the book of books for me," he says, "and the one which that winter caused me to pass hours of bliss and rapture, was Plutarch, his Lives of the truly great; and some of these, as Timoleon, Caesar, Brutus, Pelopidas, Cato, and others, I read and read again, with such a transport of cries, tears, and fury, that if any one had heard me in the next ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... redoubling my own voice by their power. The great sun burning with light; the strong earth, dear earth; the warm sky; the pure air; the thought of ocean; the inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a rapture, an ecstasy, and inflatus. With this inflatus, too, I prayed. Next to myself I came and recalled myself, my bodily existence. I held out my hand, the sunlight gleamed on the skin and the iridescent nails; I recalled the mystery and beauty of the flesh. I thought ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... have indicated as a ruling quality of all these youthful compositions makes itself felt here in its proper place. We might have wished, perhaps, for more of joyous accent in the ode to "Youth," by Mr. Laurence Binyon, which dwells less on the rapture of youth than on its sadness—the melancholy ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... accompaniment to the lyre; and without the mechanical harmony the spoken song is an artifice. Quite as plausibly might it be avowed that music was but added to verse to concentrate and emphasize its rapture, to add poignancy and volume to its expression. But the truth is that these two arts, though sometimes happily allied, are, and always have been, independent. When verse has been innocent enough to lean on music, we may be likely to ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... his peroration it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pisgah of his pulpit, the free, moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a bird-eye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into rapture. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... that. Miss BARBARA HOFFE'S Melisande—a difficult part, because she was the only other-worldly person in the play and the only one in desperate earnest—was very cleverly handled. In her most exalted moments of poetic rapture she was never too precious, and when called upon for a touch of corrective humour was quick ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... who happened to hear the remark, Protested, with tears in its eyes, That not even the rapture of hunting the Snark Could atone for that ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... that glance? What was the emotion that gave it birth in the soul? He knew! It told its own story. To their dying day, the actors in that silent drama remembered that glance with rapture ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Clara's rapture in her new life grew greater every day, and she could not write enough of the grandfather's kindly care and of Heidi's entertaining stories. She told her grandmama that her first thought in the morning always was: "Thank God, I ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... each fastened down by a spike-nail through his trousers, and there to fight it out. Sometimes he expatiated on the delicious flavor of the liagden, a greasy and goose- like fowl, which the sailors catch with hook and line on the Grand Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the Isle of Sables, where he had gladdened himself, amid polar snows, with the rum and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner. And wrathfully did he shake ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... came; a flood of rapture escaped from me while I felt his copious discharge lubricate the very mouth of my womb. I ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... the church of Rome; and in contradiction to the multiplied superstitions with which that communion was loaded, they adopted an enthusiastic strain of devotion, which admitted of no observances, rites, or ceremonies, but placed all merit in a mysterious species of faith in inward vision, rapture, and ecstasy. The new sectaries seized with this spirit, were indefatigable in the propagation of their doctrine, and set at defiance all the anathemas and punishments with which the Roman pontiff endeavored to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... moonlight nights charmed her with a sense of rapture never known before. With the castle brilliantly illuminated, the halls and drawing-rooms filled with gay courtiers, the harpists at their posts, the military band playing in the parade ground, the balconies and porches offering their most inviting allurements, it is no wonder that Beverly was ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... over the boat's bows for a long minute or more, and never shall I forget the look of exquisite rapture that gradually grew in his glassy eyes as he stared. Then suddenly down he dropped again into the bottom of the boat and covered his poor emaciated face with his hands, as he gave vent to a storm of dry, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... moment of hopeless depression he would be possessed anew by the old fair vision, his enthusiasm for the wonderful German army, to belong to which had been his pride and his salvation. With eyes full of rapture he pored over the pages of the military history, and for the thousandth time followed the army on ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Saying this in rapture, he tore off a band from his head, so that his hair fell about his shoulders, and clutching it, he began to weep bitterly, until the princess Anna Danuta was moved to the bottom of her soul for the loss of Danusia, and, pitying him for his sufferings, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of youth its irrecoverable delight. He could not say in reply to his impulses: If that was love which overmastered me, this must be something either more or less exalted. What he did say was something of this kind: If desire and tenderness, if frequency of dreaming rapture, if the calmest approval of the mind and the heart's most exquisite, most painful throbbing, constitute love,—then assuredly I love Sidwell. But if to love is to be possessed with madness, to lose all ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... "played the bear," as they call it, from dusk till the small hours—perfectly happy, in a rapture of adoration which the Squire of Somerset could never have realised. All the romance which, if we may believe Cervantes, once transfigured the life of Spain, and gilded the commonest acts till they seemed confident appeals for the applause of God, feats boldly done ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... Tibbie, contemptuously. "I could slap thee for that." But instead she threw her arms about Janice's neck and kissed her with such rapture and energy as to overbalance the judge from an upright position, and the two roiled over upon the bed laughing with anything but discretion, considering the nearness of their mentor. As a result a voice from a distance ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... by deep cultivation. They and their fathers have planted corn, and yet they have not the remotest idea of what takes place in their fields during the long summer from the seedling to the full ear; and very rarely in the heart of the countryman is there room for rapture. Though they have the breadth of the horizon line and all the skies to breathe in, few ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... spoke out: he spared neither his wit, his humour, nor his sarcasm—he seemed to say to all—"I am a man, and you are no more; and why should I not act and speak like one?"—it was remarked, however, that he had not learnt, or did not desire, to conceal his emotions—that he commended with more rapture than was courteous, and contradicted with more bluntness than was accounted polite. It was thus with him in the company of men: when woman approached, his look altered, his eye beamed milder; all that was stern in his nature underwent a change, and he received them ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... made she found that it soon disappeared. In ordinary life the people were volatile, quick as fire to resent, and as quick to forgive and forget, and they were the same in regard to higher things. They went into rapture over the Gospel, prayed aloud, clasped their hands, shed tears, and then went back to their drinking, sacrificing, and quarrelling. They kept to all the old ways, in case they might miss the right one. "Yes, Ma," they would say, "that is right for ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... thanks to his majesty, which are always dictated by the immediate servants of the crown, were unanimously adopted in both houses, and not only couched in terms of applause, but even inflated with expressions of rapture and admiration. They declared themselves sensible, that the operations of Great Britain, both by sea and in America, had received the most evident and important advantages from the maintenance of the war in Germany, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... last came this entry, which, as the writing showed, was written with a shaking hand. "I have seen her beyond the possibility of a doubt. She appeared, and was with me quite a while; and, oh! the rapture! It has left me weak and faint after all that long, long preparation. It is of the casting forth of spirits that it is said, 'This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting,' but it is also true of the drawing of them down. To see a spirit one must grow akin to spirits, which is not good ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... anxious, it appears, to learn the name of your future husband," she said, sharply; "perhaps the rapture of joy binds your tongue, and prevents you from thanking ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and burst into tears. It was like a change from Paradise into the infernal regions. A few hours before and she had been musing in an ecstasy of joy over her betrothal, and dreaming bright dreams of the future, such perhaps as only a maiden can dream in the rapture of her first love. Now she was sitting in a prison cell, accused of a deadly crime, and her life and good reputation in the most imminent danger. One thing alone buoyed her up—the knowledge that her lover was fully aware of her ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... memorable as one of the first attempts to popularize systematic divinity; and it should undeceive those who deem dulness the test of truth, when they find the theology of Vitringa and Witsius enshrined in one of our finest prose poems. It was hailed with especial rapture by the Seceders of Scotland, who recognized "the Marrow" in this lordly dish, and were justly proud of their unexpected apostle. Many of them, that is, many of the few who achieved the feat of a London journey, arranged to take Weston on their way, and eschewing ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... hated of the world; 4. Christ's love when under temptation and under desertion; 5. Christ's love from first to last.[93] Now was his heart filled with comfort and hope. 'I could believe that my sins should be forgiven me'; and, in a state of rapture, he thought that his trials were over, and that the savour of it would go with him through life. Alas! his enjoyment was but for a season—the preparation of his soul for future usefulness was not yet finished. In ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... my pulses thrilled with joy, Watching the wind's and water's strife,— With sudden rapture,—and I cried, "Oh, sweet is Life! Thank God ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Portland vastly more to me than seas or continents, and that was the house where Longfellow was born. I believe, now, I did not get the right house, but only the house he went to live in later; but it served, and I rejoiced in it with a rapture that could not have been more genuine if it had been the real birthplace of the poet. I got my friend to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... difference in the ideas which they respectively embody as amount to opposition, and make any such theory of the origin of the latter absurdly improbable, I could wish no better foil for the history of the Ascension than the history of Elijah's rapture. The comparison brings out contrasts at every step, and there is no readier way of throwing into strong relief the meaning and purpose of the former, than holding up beside it the story of the latter. The real parallel makes the divergences the more remarkable, for likeness sharpens ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything that is underneath it: it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself. If there were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. If the king is in the palace nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and architecture. The critics who complain of the sickly ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Veuve: a champagne of a sobered sweetness, of a great year, a great age, counting up to the extremer maturity attained by wines of stilly depths; and their worthy comrade, despite the wanton sparkles, for the promoting of the state of reverential wonderment in rapture, which an ancient wine will lead to, well you wot. The silly girly sugary crudity his given way to womanly suavity, matronly composure, with yet the sparkles; they ascend; but hue and flavour tell ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and rapture combined to listen to this unconscious babble—horror, because it spoke of such strange things, and took her with him to such unknown regions, that she trembled at a fever which compelled him to look on at such marvels—and yet it was bliss to hear ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... meant to get all the enjoyment out of it. So he told it with every luxury of circumstance. Mr. Veneer's man heard it all with open mouth. No listener in the gardens of Stamboul could have found more rapture in a tale heard amidst the perfume of roses and the voices of birds and tinkling of fountains than Elbridge in following Abel's narrative, as they sat there in the aromatic ammoniacal atmosphere of the stable, the grinding of the horses' jaws keeping evenly on through it all, with now and then ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Butch Brewster stood in the bunkhouse doorway, his wrath at the pestiferous Hicks forgotten, in his rapture at the glorious dawn, he saw something that showed why his dreams had been of the wild West! The expression of indignation, however, yielded to one of humorous affection, as he gazed toward ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... are great ideas buzzing in Roger's head, which would never have been there save for the war. At present he is chiefly conscious of his clothes. His mother embraces him with cries of rapture, while Mr. Torrance surveys him quizzically over the paper; and Emma, rushing to the piano, which is of such an old-fashioned kind that it can also be used as a sideboard, plays 'See ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... did not seem to matter when the flowers blossomed all over it. The second drawing was even better than the first; and Hetty stood looking at it with flushed cheeks and throbbing heart, wondering what was this new rapture that had suddenly sprung up ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... of the garden. He knew not whither he went, he had no aim; he only knew that to-night he was to be indissolubly united with his beloved—that he would flee with her. Once he must pause, for the loudly beating heart denied him breath, and once, in the blissful rapture of his soul, he must give a loud shout of joy, otherwise his breast would have burst. A merry, musical laugh rang forth near to him, and as he turned to the side whence the sound had proceeded a lovely and ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... not, nor cared, how long this rapture held. She got, and she gave. James, or another, this was Eros who had her now. She heard, "Oh, Lucy, oh, my love, my love," and she thought to have answered, "You have me—what shall I do?" But she had no reply to her question, and seemed to have ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... words a light of complete understanding seemed to dawn upon Mabel, and with a cry of rapture she wound her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... With rapture the Queen gathered him into her arms, and the father kissed him with a vehemence that made him awake and cry. St. Victor had thought it safer that his other attendants should come in by degrees in ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge |
