"Nymph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wave o'er silvery sands Winds through the hills afar, Old Crow-nest like a monarch stands, Crowned with, a single star. And there amid the billowy swells Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth, My fair and gentle Ida dwells, A nymph of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... elementary spirits in the French book entitled, "Entretiens de Compte du Gabalis." The ingenious Compte de la Motte Fouqu? composed, in German, one of the most successful productions of his fertile brain, where a beautiful and even afflicting effect is produced by the introduction of a water-nymph, who loses the privilege of immortality by consenting to become accessible to human feelings, and uniting her lot with that of a mortal, who treats her ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... some romantic gossip whispered about her. It was said that she had formerly led Philippe Marsy, the artist, a hard life. This artist was the painter of Charity, the picture so much admired at the Luxembourg, where it hangs between a Nymph by Henner and a Portrait of a Lady by Carolus Duran. She was pretty, free, and sufficiently rich since the sale of the contents of Philippe Marsy's studio. His slightest sketches had fetched enormous sums under Monsieur Pillet's hammer at the Hotel Drouot, and Sabine after an appropriate interval ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... in the shade, And, having seen that lovely Maid, Why should I fear to say [1] That, nymph-like, she is fleet and strong, [2] And down the rocks can leap along 5 Like rivulets in May? [3] She loves her fire, her cottage-home; Yet o'er the moorland will she roam In weather rough and bleak; And, when against the wind she strains, 10 Oh! might I kiss the mountain rains That sparkle ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... I can understand your fancy for that ode. You see an image of ideal beauty in the nymph Cyrene. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... you tantalise me, and I begin to think you are after all a fairy or a wood nymph, or something intangible of ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Tuilleries, Versailles, and the Alhambra, all in one. The only fault to be found with it was that it was not marble. It was a species of weather-proof composition, but very finely carved, and much valued by Mr. Breynton. It was a pretty thing—a water-nymph rising from an unfolded lily, with both hands parting her long hair from a wondering face, that, pleased with its own beauty, was bent to watch ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... where is the eye that could view her alone, The ear that could list to her strain, Nor wish the adorable nymph for his own, Nor double ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... up, I really do not think the craft would keep afloat an hour," exclaimed Adair, with a ruthful countenance, after he had been pumping away for an hour, till he was, as he said, like Niobe, all tears, or a water-nymph. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... used but for great occasions. Generally it was adorned with fruit and flowers; to-day it was empty, and the attendants proceeded to arrange upon it very strange looking things; packages in white paper, books, trinkets, what not; and in the middle of all a little statuette of a Grecian nymph, which was a great favourite of Daisy's. Daisy began to guess that the epergne had something to do with her birthday. But the nymph?—perhaps she came there by her beauty to dignify this use made of the stately old thing. However, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... and her sea-nymph's costume was very becoming, while Nancy's fine dark eyes and graceful figure never looked prettier than in her lovely ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... Greek mythology, the foster-mother of Zeus. She is sometimes represented as the goat which suckled the infant-god in a cave in Crete, sometimes as a nymph of uncertain parentage (daughter of Oceanus, Haemonius, Olen, Melisseus), who brought him up on the milk of a goat. This goat having broken off one of its horns, Amaltheia filled it with flowers and fruits and presented it to Zeus, who placed it together with ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Crete, born of a nymph, fed by the nymphs, if indeed he was fed at all, for no one saw him eat. In his youth, this marvellous Cretan had been sent by his father to bring home some stray sheep, and turning aside into a cave for shelter from the noontide heat, had fallen asleep. He slept on for fifty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... by melting superfluous Welsh ale bottles. He leads you to a table, as round as that at which a famous Conference was held, and points to a little ivory painting. It shows a chubby little boy some two years of age, with rather large head and broad shoulders, sitting at the knee of a young nymph approaching her fifth year. On her knee is a book, and the chubby boy, with dark hair falling low over his forehead, his great brown eyes staring frankly at you, points with his finger to a passage. When ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... "No nymph my heart can wound If favor she divide And smile on all around, Unwilling to decide; I'd rather hatred bear, Than love with ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... "A nymph, they call me, and I practise as such, collecting herbs and curing the diseases of those that come to me, telling fortunes, and making predictions. In return I receive what each can afford, and if they do not pay according ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... the rail of yonder wooden bridge sits, chatting with a sun-browned nymph, her bonnet pushed over her face, her hayrake in her hand, a river-god in coat of velveteen, elbow on knee and pipe in mouth, who, rising when he sees us, lifts his wide-awake, and halloas back a roar of comfort to our ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... cheering wine, And never taste the siren cup, But oh, thou woman, nymph divine, I can not, will not give ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... Renaissance; while her slim lightness and brightness, her gaiety, her expression, her decision, contributed to an effect that might have been felt by a poet as half mythological and half conventional. He could have compared her to a goddess still partly engaged in a morning cloud, or to a sea-nymph waist-high in the summer surge. Above all she suggested to him the reflexion that the femme du monde—in these finest developments of the type—was, like Cleopatra in the play, indeed various and multifold. She had aspects, characters, days, nights—or had them at least, showed them ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... exit-way is prepared and the cell upholstered in velvet and closed with a threefold barricade, the industrious worm has concluded its task. It lays aside its tools, sheds its skin and becomes a nymph, a pupa, weakness personified, in swaddling-clothes, on a soft couch. The head is always turned towards the door. This is a trifling detail in appearance; but it is everything in reality. To lie this way or ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... thus educated, or rather thus left to its natural growth, assumes a variety of charming characters. In one youthful figure, we see the lineaments of a wood nymph, a form slight and elastic in all its parts. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... both, while quite a number are so much alike in markings and habits that it is hard to distinguish them from one another. A few birds remained enigmas to me for a number of years, in spite of the help of the field glass. At intervals for several months you will often catch provoking glimpses of some nymph-like bird before you succeed in determining its true place in the avian system. But patience and persistence will some day overcome the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... softly, agreeably; and the next moment Dolores hailed them. She swam swiftly, with effortless ease, slipping through the sea like a sparkling nymph in her native element. But the schooner traveled fast, and, though she lost no ground, she gained but slowly. She ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Olga came stealing back, and paused nervously in the doorway to look on. Daisy, dressed as a water-nymph, waved her a gay greeting over her husband's shoulder. Olga smiled and waved back, striving to smother away out of sight the sick ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... fairy-book style, the wondrous adventures of the hero and demigod, the great Gandharba-Sena. That son of Indra, who was also the father of Vikramajit, the subject of this and another collection, offended the ruler of the firmament by his fondness for a certain nymph, and was doomed to wander over earth under the form of a donkey. Through the interposition of the gods, however, he was permitted to become a man during the hours of darkness, thus comparing with ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... thence-forth in haste she went, To seek for herbes that mote him remedy; For she of herbes had great intendiment, Taught of the Nymph which from her infancy, Had nursed her in true nobility: There whether it divine Tobacco were, Or Panachae, or Polygony, She found and brought it to her patient deare, Who all this while lay bleeding out ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... was by no means so good as his verse. The Ettrick Shepherd of the "Noctes Ambrosianae" is, I fancy, as much becolored by the wit of Professor Wilson as any daughter of a duchess whom Sir Joshua changed into a nymph. I think of Hogg as a sturdy sheep-tender, growing rebellious among the Cheviot flocks, crazed by a reading of the Border minstrelsy, drunken on books, (as his fellows were with "mountain-dew,") and wreaking his vitality on Gaelic rhymes,—which, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... was practised by the great sculptors to snare the undulating appearance of life. Sculpture, he asserts, is the "art of the hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodelled figures." Finish kills vitality. Yet Rodin can chisel a smooth nymph for you if he so wills, but her flesh will ripple and run in the sunlight. His art is one of accents. He works by profile in depth, not by surfaces. He swears by what he calls "cubic truth"; his ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the dear nymph o'er the plain Come smiling and tripping along! A thousand Loves dance in her train, The Graces around her all throng. To meet her soft Zephyrus flies, And wafts all the sweets from the flowers, Ah, rogue I whilst he kisses her eyes, More sweets ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... ... once, for awhile, to our great fright, we could not re-discover our clothes, that we had lightly tossed aside on the bank of a brook lost and remote,—that had never before laved a human body in its singing recesses of forest foliage ... for I had been playing satyr to her nymph, pursuing her.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... leftward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to serve me for a water tap. "In a more sacred or sequestered bower . . . nor 10 nymph, nor faunus, haunted." The trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade; there was no outlook, except northeastward upon distant hilltops or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and private like ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... do, young sir?" rejoined the knight tauntingly, and plucking the flower in pieces. "You can get another from the fair nymph who gave ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... taken off his hat to the ladies of cab No. 2002. You should have seen Fanny Bolton's eyes watching after the dove-colored young lady. Immediately Huxter perceived the direction which they took, they ceased looking after the dove-colored nymph, and they turned and looked into Sam Huxter's orbs with ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... solemn procession), and meant that the officers had charge of such celebrations.] being at the head of them, and the Flamens, Vestal Virgins, and Salii, being subordinate. Numa pretended that he met by night a nymph named Egeria, at a grotto under the Coelian Hill, not far from the present site of the Baths of Caracalla, and that from time to time she gave him directions as to what rites would be acceptable to the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... prefer the taste of the present day in gardening and the arrangement of ground, to the ponderous and tawdry taste of the time of Louis XIV, and I prefer St Cloud to Versailles, just as I should prefer a Grecian Nymph in the simple costume of Arcadia to a fine court lady rouged and dressed out with hoops, diamonds, and headdress of the tune of Queen Anne. Napoleon must ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... naranja orange. nariz f. nose, nostril. narrar to narrate. naturaleza nature. naturalidad f. naturalness. naufragio shipwreck, wreck. naufrago wrecked. nave f. ship, nave. nayade naiad, water nymph. nazareno Nazarene. necesario necessary. necesidad f. necessity. necesitar to need, want. necio foolish. negar to deny, refuse. negativo negative. negociar to negotiate. negocio business, affair. negro black. negruzco blackish. nevar to snow. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... River-god wedded a beautiful water-nymph. Their son, Narcissus, was such a lovely boy to look upon that all who saw him loved him; but the boy did not return their love, for he was full of vanity and ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... them make Lovers, they cannot flatter nor forswear; one kiss makes a long peace for all; but man, Oh that beast man! Come lets be sad my Girles; That down cast of thine eye, Olympias, Shews a fine sorrow; mark Antiphila, Just such another was the Nymph Oenone, When Paris brought home Helen: now a tear, And then thou art a piece expressing fully The Carthage Queen, when from a cold Sea Rock, Full with her sorrow, she tyed fast her eyes To the fair Trojan ships, and having lost them, Just as thine eyes do, down ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... art of purple-dyeing has been attributed to the Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many writers. According to Julius Pollux ('Onomasticon,' I, iv.) and Nonnus ('Dionys.,' XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on the seashore accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom he was enamoured. The dog having found a Murex with its head protruding from its shell, devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained with purple. The nymph, on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained with Hercules to provide her with a robe of like splendour."[293] ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... more secluded than ever. Secluded from society, but not from nature. The forest became her haunt. And a chance traveler passing through it, and meeting her fay-like form, might well suppose he was deceived with the vision of a wood-nymph. ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the boldest was making Birnamwood march to Dunsinane; creating a wood where there never was a shrub; a wood in Scotland! ha! ha! ha!' And he also observed, that 'the clannish slavery of the Highlands of Scotland was the single exception to Milton's remark of "The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty[216]," being worshipped in all hilly countries.'—'When I was at Inverary (said he,) on a visit to my old friend, Archibald, Duke of Argyle, his dependents congratulated me on being such a favourite of his ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... took place between them. This continued for some time. The young man grew exceedingly wealthy, and no one could tell how he became possessed of such riches. He began to cut a dash amongst the lasses, making them presents of strings of diamonds of vast value, the gifts of the fair sea nymph. By and by he began to forget the day of his appointment; and when he did come to see her, money and jewels were his constant request. The mermaid lectured him pretty sharply on his love of gold, and, exasperated at his perfidy in bestowing her ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... battle-maid Matty, becoming bitter Maud (or Maud), noble May, pearl Melania, black Melicent, work, strength Melissa, bee Melony, dark Melva, chief Menie, bitter Mercy, compassion Mercia, work rule Meriel, nymph Milcah, queen Mildred, mild threatener Millicent, work, strength Milly, work, strength Minella, resolute Mingala, soft and fair Minna, memory Minnie, little Miranda, to be admired Miriam, bitter Moina, soft Mencha, adviser Monica, adviser ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Spirit; or else that they themselves were of a higher nature than mere mortalls, that their Lawes might the more easily be received: So Numa Pompilius pretended to receive the Ceremonies he instituted amongst the Romans, from the Nymph Egeria: and the first King and founder of the Kingdome of Peru, pretended himselfe and his wife to be the children of the Sunne: and Mahomet, to set up his new Religion, pretended to have conferences with the Holy Ghost, in forme of a Dove. Secondly, they have had a ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... noise of the revel. The servants bearing away the dishes began to tread the rushes on tiptoe, and a dozen frowns rebuked any clatter. Through the hush, the gleeman began to sing the "Romance of King Offa," the king who married a wood nymph for dear love's sake. It began with the wooing and the winning, out in the leafy greenwood amid bird-voices and murmuring brooks; but before long the enmity of the queen-mother entered, with jarring discords, to send the lovers through ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... she notified her talent for singing, and invited herself up-stairs, to Lady Mary's harpsichord; where, with a voice like thunder, and with as little harmony, she sang to nine or ten people for an hour. "Was ever nymph like Rossvmonde?"-no, d'honneur. We told her, she had a very strong voice. "Lord, Sir! my master says it is nothing to what it was." My dear child, she brags abominably; if it had been a thousandth degree louder, you must have heard ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... nimblest of the nymphs sprang to her feet from the lounging and crouching circle about Westover. She was a young nymph no longer, but with a daughter not so much younger than herself as to make the contrast of her sixteen years painful. Westover recognized the officious, self-approving kind of the woman, but he admired the brisk efficiency with which she had taken possession of the affair ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... important works, including also literary compositions, he achieved here. The irritation he had felt at the superficial meddling, and domineering criticism of his would-be Muse, the Comtesse d'Agoult, was changed to such a communion as the old Roman king Numa enjoyed with his inspiring nymph, Egeria. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... one in this way, singly, playing his instrument, had sung his sistine, they danced altogether in a circle and sang together in praise of the one Nymph with the softest accents a song which I am not sure whether I can ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... and left she swung with a delicate hand curved behind her ear. Suddenly she started, as if she heard an approaching footstep, and in maidenly confusion glided to a distance, where she stood with her hands across her bosom, the very picture of a surprised nymph. Mentally, the dance translated itself to ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... on red? A petticoat without a hoop! Sure, you are not ashamed to stoop! With handsome garters at your knees, No matter what a fellow sees. Filled with disdain, with rage inflamed Both of herself and sex ashamed, The nymph stood silent out of spite, Nor would vouchsafe to set them right. Away the fair detractors went, And gave by turns their censures vent. She's not so handsome in my eyes: For wit, I wonder where it lies! She's fair and clean, and that's the most: But why proclaim her for a ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... would have her downstairs to the present, In plain facts fresh from critical mangle; But let the nymph make herself pleasant, Here a bracelet, and there with ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... the cup, she seated herself on the rock, disposed herself into a composition; and after they had both drunk, she showed no disposition to move from her perch. In fact, she loosened her brown student beri, shook her hair free, and sat there, a wood-nymph framed by the ruddy brown and dark green of redwood and laurel. He crouched his big frame down beside her, so that she leaned back against the rock. A ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... for roaming, but gathered whole handfuls of the lotus or water-lily, with its pale-blue, golden or rose-tinted blooms gleaming up from the sparkling waters like the fabled charms of mermaid or sea-nymph. There are many varieties of this exquisite flower—blue, pink, carnation, bright yellow, royal purple fringed with gold, and, more beautiful than all, pure, virgin white, with the faintest possible rose tinge in the centre of each section of the corolla, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... a Dryad dwelt; The fingers of a nymph were felt In the fine-rippled flood; At drowsy noon, when all was still, Faunus lay sleeping on the hill, And strange and bright-eyed gamesome creatures, With hairy limbs and goat-like features, Peered ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... with great violence. It takes much pleasure in seeing Horace Greeley play a part in a negro farce, and become the victim of designing colored brethren. But what joy, when the beauteous Terpsichorean nymph bounds upon the scene, rosy with paint, glistening with spangles, robust with cotton and cork, and bewildering with a cloud of gauzy skirts! What a vision of beauty to a man who has seen nothing for days and nights but ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... quality from the AEgean or Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The Tritons of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the fierce-eyed youth who blows his conch upon the curled crest of a wave, crying aloud to his comrades, as he bears the nymph away to caverns where the billows ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... off this peculiar habit of huntress when she married. But though she was now considerably past sixty years of age, I believe she thought that airy nymph of the picture could still be easily recognized in the venerable personage who gave an audience to ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... 10th of December, and several times descried the French fleet, the services he rendered did not much exceed that of securing the safe arrival of our West-India convoys. The first encounter between two frigates of the hostile nations took place in the Channel; when the Nymph, of thirty-two guns, commanded by Captain Edward Pel-lew, captured the Cleopatra, of forty guns, commanded by one of the ablest officers in the French service. In the West Indies the French island of Tobago, St. Pierre, Miquelon, and Domingo were reduced; but at Martinique ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... action of heat and light on chaos, especially on the deep sea. It is the "Fiat lux" of Genesis, the first process in the conquest of Fate by Harmony. The island is dedicated to the nymph Rhodos, by whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach [Greek: sophotata noemata]; because the rose is the most beautiful organism existing in matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of light on the earth, giving lovely form and color at once, (compare ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... "You look like a nymph of Botticelli's," commented Alden, with a smile. There was no trace of confusion, or even of consciousness in his manner, and, once again, Edith reproached herself for ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... and bring with thee Food and old festivity, Bread and sugar white as snow, The bacon that we used to know, Apples cheap, and eggs and meat, Dainty cakes with icing sweet, And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain nymph (not much U.P.). Come, and sip it as you go, And let my not-too-gouty toe Join the dance with them and thee In sweet unrationed revelry; While the grocer, free of care, Bustles blithe and debonair, And the milkman lilts his lay, And the butcher beams all day, And every warrior tells his tale ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod thyrsus with a vase or so, The Saviour at His sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... flood with the blue waters of Ontario. The banks, in steep escarpments, crowned with oak and elm and giant walnuts, or in gentle turfclad slopes, sweep in graceful curves around the windings of the stream. The weeping birch trails its tresses in the waters like a wood nymph admiring her own loveliness. The comfortable farmsteads nestle amid their embowering peach and apple orchards, the very types of peace and plenty. The mighty river, after its dizzy plunge at the great cataract, and mad tumultuous rush and eddy at the rapids and ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... itself is a pleasantly Victorian thing for a man to do in these days of Jerrybuilt girls, on the same level or a story or two higher than himself. I'm not a tall man: just the dull average five foot ten or eleven that appears taller, while it keeps lean—so naturally I have a hopeless yearning for nymph-like creatures who pretend to be engaged when I ask them to dance. Still, there's consolation and homely comfort in talking with a little woman who makes you feel the next best thing to a giant. Biddy ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... moon on the Latmos mountain Her pining vigil keeps; And ever the silver fountain In the Dorian valley weeps. But gone are Endymion's dreams; And the crystal lymph Bewails the nymph Whose beauty sleeked ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gentlemen's boots elbowed, or, rather, toed their way among ladies' gear, nor recite the exclamations after runaway property that are heard. "I can't find nothin' of Johnny's shoe!" "Here's a shoe in the water pitcher—is this it?" "My side combs are gone!" exclaims a nymph with dishevelled curls. "Massy! do look at my bonnet!" exclaims an old lady, elevating an article crushed into as many angles as there are pieces in a minced pie. "I never did sleep so much together in my life," echoes a poor little French ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... rustled and glistened, Till it seemed like a musical flame, And I lay and I looked and I listened Till the nymph of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... party was yet more impious than Robespierre."—A deputy having demanded that mention should be made of the Supreme Being in the preamble of the constitution, Vergniaud replied: "We have no more to do with Numa's nymph than with Mahomet's pigeon; reason is sufficient to give France a good constitution."—Buchez et Roux, XIII. 444. Robespierre having spoken of the Emperor Leopold's death as a stroke of Providence, Guadet replies that he sees "no sense in that idea," and blames Robespierre for "endeavoring ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... King desires to know what it deeply concerns the King to know, let him do as this letter bids him. At the end of the New Avenue there stands a house in large grounds. The house has a portico, with a statue of a nymph on it. A wall encloses the garden; there is a gate in the wall at the back. At twelve o'clock tonight, if the King enters alone by that gate, turns to the right, and walks twenty yards, he will find a summerhouse, approached by a flight ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... over the pasture to the copse. And that, indeed, was Sandro's fortune. He caught her in just such a propitious hour. He saw the sweet wild thing, pure and undefiled by touch of earth; caught her in that pregnant pause of time ere she had lighted. Another moment and a buxom nymph of the grove would fold her in a rosy mantle, colored as the earliest wood- anemones are. She would vanish, we know, into the daffodils or a bank of violets. And you might tell her presence there, or in the rustle of the myrtles, or coo of doves mating in the pines; you might feel her ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... her eyes, half smiled, and shrank back, thinking she had never felt anything like the left-handed grasp, so full of warmth and thankfulness. It gave her confidence to venture on the one question on which she was bent. Her father was in the hall, showing Norman his Greek nymph; and lifting her eyes to Dr. May's face, then casting them down, she coloured deeper than ever, as she said, in a stammering whisper, "Oh, please—if you would tell me —do you think—is ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... bright hues of the flowers that garlanded the rocks, all seemed as if the earth had been arrayed for some gala-day; but the moment she had passed the portal, the silent, mossy court, with its pale marble nymph, its lull of falling water, its turf snow-dropt with daisies and fragrant with blue and white violets, and the surrounding cloistered walks, with their pictured figures of pious history, all came with a sad and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... shape he encounters the most surprising experiences. Voltaire makes an ass play a wonderful part in his "Pucelle." And in all these cases it is worth noticing how the profane wits remember the ass's relation to Priapian mysteries, from his fabled interruption of the garden-god's attempt on the nymph Lotis downwards, and assign to him marvellous amatory adventures. Erasmus, in his "Praise of Folly," does not forget the ass, with whom he compares the majority of men for stupidity, obstinacy, and lubricity; nor is the noble animal forgotten ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... evaded him, mocked him when he grabbed at them, befooled him when he captured them. I used to have an idea of nymphs behaving very artistically with really drawing-room manners, but I saw I was wrong. Nymphs are only artistic and alluring singly—one nymph on a ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... he to wait before a light step was heard crushing the fragrant grass; and presently through the arching vines gleamed a face that might well have seemed the nymph, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Georgian design, and unanimously occupied in carrying out the precept of their reverend pastor's text, "Come unto me ... and I will give Rest"—save only those two vigilant old ladies, perhaps pillars of the edifice, and the clerk to whose interest in the sleeping nymph of the next pew I have already alluded—are studies ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... around Fame glories to diffuse, And to Iarba next her flight pursues, To fan the flame that in his bosom glows. To Jove himself, his birth the monarch owes; A nymph his mother, by a forc'd embrace; 250 And to the God, the author of his race, Their lofty domes an hundred temples raise, An hundred shrines with flames perpetual blaze, Hung round with wreaths: through all his vast domain, The soil was rich with blood of victims skin. 255 He, by the dire report, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... the solemn knell, in Fancy's ear, That called ELIZA to the silent tomb; With her how jocund rolled the sprightly year! How shone the nymph ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... with the sublime compositions of their epic muse, the original wildness of Dante, the regular beauties of Tasso, and the boundless variety of the incomparable Ariosto. The merits of the lover I am still less qualified to appreciate: nor am I deeply interested in a metaphysical passion for a nymph so shadowy, that her existence has been questioned; [2] for a matron so prolific, [3] that she was delivered of eleven legitimate children, [4] while her amorous swain sighed and sung at the fountain of Vaucluse. [5] But in the eyes of Petrarch, and those of his graver contemporaries, his love ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the years of youth go by, Shall Colin languish, Strephon die? Nay, cruel nymph! come, choose a mate, And choose him ere it ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... still gazing outward in perplexity, when, through the trees beyond the grassy ledge, he caught the flicker of something white. He pressed closer to the pane for a better view, and a few seconds later a girl, whom he recognized as the nymph of last night, came out of the forest, followed by a fawn-colored collie. She walked smoothly and swiftly, carrying a large basket with her right hand, while with her left she motioned him away from the window. He stepped back, leaping ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... were ye deaf, ye rigid rocks, To human sorrow's plaintive tones, While in your dark recesses Echo dwelt, No idle plaything of the winds, But spirit sad of hapless nymph, Whom unrequited love, and cruel fate, Of her soft limbs deprived. She o'er the grots, The naked rocks, and mansions desolate, Unto the depths of all-embracing air, Our sorrows, not to her unknown, Our broken, loud laments conveyed. And thou, if fame belie thee not, Didst ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... while the damsel slumbered, but sleepless itself: [299][Greek: Hupnalees agrupnon opipteutera koreies]: and in another place he mentions [300][Greek: Phrouron echeis apelethron Ophin]. Such an one guarded the nymph Chalcomeda, [301][Greek: Parthenikes agamoio boethoos.] The Goddess Proserpine had two [302]dragons to protect her, by the ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... the grave there ever was assign'd One like this nymph in body and in minde, We wish here in balme, not vainely spent, To fit this maiden with a monument, For brass, and marble, were they seated here, Would fret, or melt in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... appear and will show you that a small part of the joy of reading consists in the merry tales that you may find in books. One of the English poets somewhere calls upon the spirits of fun and joy, a cheerful nymph and her companions, to drive dull care away. This poet, John Milton by name, wrote many poems and prose works on very serious matters. He lived in a serious time, the time when many Englishmen were leaving their native ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... And merit care by cares; So shall the nymph reward your pain; And Venus crown your prayers. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... as your all obedient thread Does thy bright needle's devious path pursue, So does each thought of my poor brainless head For ever dwell, divinest nymph, on you. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... "L'Apres-midi d'un faune" and "Sirenes." They once wandered through the glades of Ionia and Sicily, and gladdened men with their golden sensuality, and bewitched them with the thought of "the breast of the nymph in the brake." For they are full of the wonder and sweetness of the flesh, of flesh tasted deliciously and enjoyed not in closed rooms, behind secret doors and under the shameful pall of the night, but out in the warm, sunny open, amid grasses and scents ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... how quickly one gets used to the noise. To me it's even less distracting than sheer silence. You don't know, after all, what on earth sheer silence means—even at Widderstone. But one can just realize a water-nymph. They chatter; but, thank Heaven, it's not articulate.' He handed Lawford a cup with a certain niceness and self-consciousness, lifting his eyebrows slightly as ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Easter, regardless of weather. Through the tall windows that opened down to the ground might be seen the long straight garden-walks, none too well kept, and clipped shrubs, with here and them a marble nymph, moss-grown and broken, or a fountain out of repair. The family did not spend much money in the place. There was little to do except in the season for shooting.[Footnote: Taine, L'ancien regime, 17. Mme. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Drawcansir roars, Parthenope weeps, While ev'ry lady cries, and critick sleeps With ghosts, rapes, murders, tender hearts they wound, Or else, like thunder, terrify with sound When the skill'd actress to her weeping eyes, With artful sigh, the handkerchief applies, How griev'd each sympathizing nymph appears! And box and gallery both melt in tears Or when, in armour of Corinthian brass, Heroick actor stares you in the face, And cries aloud, with emphasis that's fit, on Liberty, freedom, liberty and Briton! While frowning, gaping for applause he stands, What generous Briton ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... in the trick of words, then I might say something real cute. As it is, I can only supply a sort of condensed statement,—something about a nymph, a moonlit lake, the spirit of the glen,—nice catchy phrases every one,—with a line thrown in from Shelley about an 'orbed maiden with white fire laden.' Let me go back a hundred yards, Miss Wynton, and I shall return with ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... modern times—fixing upon the famed charger of Calatrava's knight. But here the analogy must end. The charms of the dark-haired Dulcinea can be brought into no comparison with those of the golden-haired wood-nymph of the Obion Bottom. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... resolution is already fixed; hear, therefore, what I have determined:—In the deep recesses of a wood, where formerly the oaks were vocal, and pronounced oracles to mortals, at the foot of a little hill is a grotto, whose structure is nature's master-piece, there a wood nymph passed her quiet days; she was extremely beautiful, and charmed all that beheld her; her looks, her mien, and her behaviour had something of more than human; and indeed she was the daughter of a Dryad, and of a sylvan god. Her chastity and devotion equalled her beauty, she ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... to the creature of the woodlands. As she paused, her hands at her sides, her head lifted with tip-tilted chin, unconscious that any one saw her, not seeing the man who squatted by the spring below the bunk-house, he felt vaguely as though he were looking upon a nymph who, if he so much as moved, would turn swiftly and flash away from him into the depths of ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... maggots, differing in age, so that if more than one Queen is hatched, one will be older than the others. This fact accounts for hearing more than one Queen at the same time, because one comes out a perfect fly, while the other is a nymph, or little younger, and has not yet made her escape from the cell where she was raised; and yet both answer the alarm of the other, the youngest more ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... the waters that covered the earth the sun god saw the nymph Ursula sporting in the waves, and was smitten with a quick and mighty fondness. He nearly consumed himself in the ardor of his affection. She, however, was as cold and pure as the sea. As she swung drowsily on the billows she was like a picture painted in foam on their blue-green depth, and in breathing ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... though their elms and oaks and beeches are often giants, they seem dedicated to the spirit of youth. Their shadows are never black, but only a darker green, or translucent gray; and part of their charm is a nymph-like frivolousness which comes, I think, from their ruffly green dessous. Other woods have no dessous. Their ankles are mournfully bare, and their ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... beside the sacred Nile, And in its waters every day, With but the sun to gaze and smile, Like any nymph was wont to play. ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... on the water nymph. The old man showed no surprise, but pious disgust. His eyes rolled up, and ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... in 1684, is a pastoral masque, enacted before the Countess Dowager of Derby at Harefield, by some noble persons of her family. The Allegro is the song of Mirth, the nymph who brings with her ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... accent when they perform this apparently simple act of politeness.—From the question, "Do you take tea?"—"Will you have some tea?"—"A cup of tea?" coldly asked, and followed by instructions to the nymph of the urn to bring it, to the eloquent poem of the odalisque coming from the tea-table, cup in hand, towards the pasha of her heart, presenting it submissively, offering it in an insinuating voice, with a look full ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... side of the entrance-hall, and just under the archway, was a plaster-of-Paris figure, nearly as large as life—that on the right-hand being a representation of Bacchus, and that on the left of a nymph dancing. But the female image had long since lost its head, and also one of its arms—the latter being still in existence, but being hung for convenience' sake through the raised arm of Bacchus, making him look like one of those Hindu idols which are preposterously figured with a number of superfluous ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... and not his. I don't deny that I laughed at him, and made him wroth by telling him that his doctrine was 'the apotheosis of loafing.' But my heart went with him, and the jolly oyster too. It is very beautiful after all, that careless nymph and shepherd life of the old Greeks, and that Marquesas romance of Herman Melville's—to enjoy the simple fact of living, like a Neapolitan lazzaroni, or a fly upon ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Sulamith, the daughter of the high-priest, to whom the courtier is affianced. Observing his disturbed looks, the King, after dismissing his attendants, inquires the cause. Assad replies that on their journey through the forest he had encountered a nymph bathing whose beauty had so impressed him as to banish even the thoughts of his affianced. The wise Solomon counsels him to marry Sulamith at once. Meanwhile the Queen comes into the King's presence, and as she lifts her veil reveals the unknown fair one. She affects ignorance of Assad's passion; ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... strange chance that he should have made the figure of this Sibyl, of all others in the chapel, the most fleshly and gross, even proceeding to the monstrous license of showing the nipples of the breast as if the dress were molded over them like plaster. Thus he paints the poor nymph beloved of Apollo,—the clearest and queenliest in prophecy and command of all the sibyls,—as an ugly crone, with the arms of Goliath, poring down upon ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... voice, whose tremulous accents were not unobserved by Edward; and while the husband made some further observation, he had leisure to remark, as well as the fading light would allow, the fair outline of her oval face, the modest grace of her movements, her pretty, nymph-like figure—in fact, all those charms which seemed familiar to him through the impassioned descriptions of ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... and descended the dingles, with a foot which daily habit made by degrees almost as steady as a native's. She became the nymph of the scene; and if she sometimes pined in thought for her faithless Strephon, her melancholy was anything but green and yellow: it was as genuine white and red as occupation, mountain air, thyme-fed mutton, thick cream, and fat bacon could make it: to say nothing of an occasional glass of double ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... is in love she tries to conceal her heart in the innermost recesses of her bosom, lest the lover discover her feelings prematurely. In other words, coyness is a trait of feminine love—the only ingredient of that passion which is not, to some extent, common to both sexes. "The cruel nymph well knows to feign, ... coy looks and cold disdain," sang Gay; and "what value were there in the love of the maiden, were it yielded without coy ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... her free and stately step and gesture, told that the spirit of her fathers dwelt strong in the bosom of their lovely daughter. The heart of Allan Cameron bounded and fluttered in his breast, as he advanced to salute this beautiful mountain-nymph. He had braved, undaunted, the brow of man when darkened with the frown of deadly hostility, but he shrank with a new and undefinable tremor before the blushing smile of a youthful maiden's cheek and eye. His self-possession ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... melancholy that endears it. No doubt it was founded on the universal idea in folk-lore of the nixies or water-spirits, one of whom, in Norwegian legend, was seen weeping bitterly because of the want of a soul. Sometimes the nymph is a wicked siren like the Lorelei; but in many of these tales she weds an earthly lover, and deserts him after a time, sometimes on finding her diving cap, or her seal-skin garment, which restores her to her ocean kindred, sometimes ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque |
