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noun
Seraph  n.  (pl. E. seraphs, Heb. seraphim)  One of an order of celestial beings, each having three pairs of wings. In ecclesiastical art and in poetry, a seraph is represented as one of a class of angels. "As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns."
Seraph moth (Zool.), any one of numerous species of geometrid moths of the genus Lobophora, having the hind wings deeply bilobed, so that they seem to have six wings.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Seraph" Quotes from Famous Books



... look that his eyes had with them, it was no wonder that great ladies and gay lionnes alike gave him the palm as the handsomest man in all the Household Regiments—not even excepting that splendid golden-haired Colossus, his oldest friend and closest comrade, known as "the Seraph." ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... like a seraph strong, Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild; And there the world-worn Dante grasp'd his song, And ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... direction. Sinners, who did not forsake the world entirely, were by him in great multitudes moved to penance, and to distribute great part of their possessions liberally among the poor. The holy man seemed in the midst of them as a seraph incarnate, burning with heavenly ardors of divine love, and inflaming those who heard him speak. If he travelled, he rode or walked at a distance behind his brethren, reciting psalms, and watering his cheeks almost without ceasing with tears that ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... has an ally called the Bheestee. If you ask, Who is the Bheestee? I will tell you. Behisht in the Persian tongue means Paradise, and a Bihishtee is, therefore, an inhabitant of Paradise, a cherub, a seraph, an angel of mercy. He has no wings; the painters have misconceived him; but his back is bowed down with the burden of a great goat-skin swollen to bursting with the elixir of life. He walks the land when ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... a low, but deep tone, "when—when will these hideous disparities be banished from the world? How many noble natures—how many glorious hopes—how much of the seraph's intellect, have been crushed into the mire, or blasted into guilt, by the mere force of physical want? What are the temptations of the rich to those of the poor? Yet see how lenient we are to the crimes of the one,—how relentless to those of the other! It is a bad world; ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... accept," he cried frankly. "I'm not a fool. I know you're right. When are you coming to see Penton Court? I will give a housewarming You say that Dix has settled down here. I'll look him up. I'll be glad to see the muddle-headed seraph again. I'll ask him to come, too, so there will be you and he—and perhaps your sister will honor me, and ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... Padua at an early hour and went to Ottaviani's house; his wife loaded me with caresses. I found there five or six children, amongst them a girl of eight years, named Marie, and another of seven, Rose, beautiful as a seraph. Ten years later Marie became the wife of the broker Colonda, and Rose, a few years afterwards, married a nobleman, Pierre Marcello, and had one son and two daughters, one of whom was wedded to M. Pierre Moncenigo, and the other ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... gossamer lures thee now? What hope, what name Is on thy lips? What dreams to fruit have grown? Thou who hast turned ONE Poet-heart to stone, Is thine yet burning with its seraph flame? Let me give back a warning of thine own, That, falling from thee many moons ago, Sank on my soul like the prophetic moan Of some young Sibyl shadowing her own woe. The words are thine, and will not do thee wrong, I only bind their solemn charge to song. ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... seraph—and forthwith Appeared a shining throng Of angels, praising God, who thus Addressed their joyful song, Addressed their ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... day when first I knew So many peerless beauties blent in one, That, like an eagle gazing on the sun, Mine eyes might fix on the least part of you. That dream hath vanished, and my hope is flown; For he who fain a seraph would pursue Wingless, hath cast words to the winds, and dew On stones, and gauged God's reason with his own. If then my heart cannot endure the blaze Of beauties infinite that blind these eyes, Nor yet can bear to be from you divided, What fate is mine? Who guides ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... Sterett says, these pore aborigines experiences bad luck the moment ever they takes to braidin' in their personal destinies with a paleface. I don't blame 'em none neither. I sees this Caldwell seraph on one o'casion myse'f; she's shore a beauty! an' whenever she throws the lariat of her loveliness that a-way at a gent, she's ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... "Seraph of heaven! too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath the radiant form of woman All that is unsupportable in thee, Of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... the charming Princess Marcelline [Czartoryska], another object of my respect, place at her feet the homage of a poor man who has not ceased to be full of the memory of her kindnesses and of admiration for her talent, another bond of union with the seraph whom we have lost and who, at this hour, charms ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... attendant pages, at a distance, to the Virgin holding Her Son in the centre light commanding the whole perspective of the cathedral; these each contained in a light-toned lancet, a barbarous and grotesque seraph, with sharply-marked features, white wings full of eyes, and robes with jagged, strap-like edges of a pale green colour; their legs were bare, and they were represented as floating. These two angels had jujube yellow aureoles tilted ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... drap'ry betwixt sky and earth, Of blending tints, spans in impulsive birth Th' entranced view! A heav'nly arch it forms— It seems suspended by some seraph's arms! ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... reached most haught estate, * Treading the pathways of the good and great: His justice makes all regions safe and sure, * And against froward foes bars every gate: Bold lion, hero, saint, e'en if you call * Seraph or Sovran [FN493] he with all may rate! The poorest supplicant rich from him returns, * All words to praise him were inadequate. He to the day of peace is saffron Morn, * And murky Night in furious warfare's bate. Bow 'neath his gifts our necks, and by his deeds * As King of freeborn [FN494] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... seraphic fervor of his desires and by the motives of tender and affectionate compassion, transforming himself into Him who, by the excess of His charity, chose to be crucified for us; he saw, as it were, a seraph, having six brilliant wings, and all on fire, descending towards him from the height of heaven. This seraph came with a most rapid flight to a spot in the air, near to where the Saint was, and then was seen between his wings the figure of a crucified man, who had his hands and feet ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... hollow in the centre, Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings, Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter, Streaming from off the sun like seraph's wings, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... this pretty nice," remarked Richard, glancing at the circle of anxious faces leaning over him. "It's worth being shot to have so many ministering angels about one; and a Seraph with a flaming sword at the foot of my couch to guard me," he added, glancing again at Phoebe, now holding a lamp high with a perfectly steady arm, so that the others could see ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... Order in 1570, in the first convent of St. Joseph of Avila, and shortly afterwards became the counsellor and coadjutor of St. Teresa, who called her, "her daughter and her crown." St. John of the Cross, who was her spiritual director for fourteen years, described her as "a seraph incarnate," and her prudence and sanctity were held in such esteem that the most learned men consulted her in their doubts, and accepted her answers as oracles. She was always faithful to the spirit of St. Teresa, and had received from Heaven the ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... Engravings: 1.—The Invitation, with the Emperor and the Empress, and the Buff-tip Moth writing the Cards.—2. The Dance, with the Sphinx Hippophaes, the Pease Blossom, the Mouse, the Seraph, Satellite, Magpie, Gold Spangle, Foresters, Cleap Wings, &c.—3. The Alarm.—4. The Death's Head Moth. These are beautifully lithographed by Gauci. Their colouring, after Nature, is delightfully executed: the finish, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various

... Love! no habitant of earth thou art - An unseen seraph, we believe in thee,— A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see, The naked eye, thy form, as it should be; The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven, Even with its own desiring ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... he winked gently, smiled like a dusky seraph, and held out his hand. In it I saw a roll ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... his arms like a crucifix; his face shone with the brightness of a seraph's; in his voice, as it rose to the last ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... pure and unrepressed; There, all are loved, and love again. Love fills each burning cherub's breast; Love fires each flaming seraph train. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... the seraph; and forthwith Appeared a shining throng Of angels, praising God, and thus Addressed ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... And turn the mournful to the cheerful strain? Cease your complaints, suspend each rising sigh, Cease to accuse the Ruler of the sky. Parents, no more indulge the falling tear: Let Faith to heav'n's refulgent domes repair, There see your infant, like a seraph glow: What charms celestial in his numbers flow Melodious, while the foul-enchanting strain Dwells on his tongue, and fills th' ethereal plain? Enough—for ever cease your murm'ring breath; Not as a foe, but friend converse with Death, Since ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley

... the life of Italian painting the generation of men who flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth century are the mature artists; the men of the fifteenth century are the inexperienced youths; the Giottesques are the children—children Titanic and seraph-like, but children nevertheless; and, like all children, learning more perhaps in their few years than can the youth and the man ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... white raiment, not like unto a ghost risen with its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph descending from the skies to bless—unto thee will we dare to speak, as through the mist of years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, charming us, while we cannot choose but weep, with the self-same vision ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various

... wish I would not breathe; 'Twould cloud with woe that placid brow, Round which a seraph seems to wreathe A crown of ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

... she trembles, and she weeps! Her fair hands folded on her breast: —And now, how like a saint she sleeps! A seraph in the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... done her bidding here, Angels dear! Bear her perfect soul above. Seraph of the skies,—sweet love! Good she was, and fair in youth; And her mind was seen to soar. And her heart was wed to truth: ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... the morning lead thee out To walk upon the cold and cloven hills, To hear the congregated mountains shout Their paean of a thousand foaming rills. Raimented with intolerable light The snow-peaks stand above thee, row on row Arising, each a seraph in his might; An organ each of varied stop doth blow. Heaven's azure dome trembles through all her spheres, Feeling that music vibrate; and the sun Raises his tenor as he upward steers, And all the glory-coated mists that run Below him in the valley, hear his voice, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... safer world in depth of woods embraced, Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To be, contents his natural desire; He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog will ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects, and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... said: "I am the Breaker; I came to break thy chains, and set thee free"? What tho thou art ever so gloomy now, canst thou forget that happy morning, when in the house of God thy voice was loud, almost as a seraph's voice, in praise? for thou couldst sing: "I ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... sepulchral breakfasts, compared with those which I promised myself with her; or which I made when she had been standing an hour by my side, my guardian-angel, my wife, my sister, my sweet friend, my Eve, my all; and had blest me with her seraph kisses! Ah! what I suffer at present only shews what I have enjoyed. But "the girl is a good girl, if there is goodness in human nature." I thank you for those words; and I will fall down and worship you, if you can prove ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt

... Thompson was seraph from the first. You see the very doom burning out of his boy's eyes in the youthful portrait, and you see the logical end in that desperate and pitiful mask, the drawing of the last period in the Meynell ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... know a seraph who has golden eyes, And hair of gold, and body like the snow. Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair Is blowing round me, that desire's sweet glow Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien. And though she steps as one ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... burden of the first message. President Porter once said that the savage visiting London with Livingstone appreciated everything except the libraries. The poor black man understood the gallery, for the face of his child answered to that of Raphael's cherub and seraph. He understood the cathedral, with its aisles and arches, for it reminded him of his own altars and funeral hymns. He understood the city, for it seemed like many little towns brought together in one. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... experience uncontrollable agitation in verifying his principle of balancing systems of worlds, feeling, perhaps, as if he actually saw the creative hand in the act of sending the planets forth on their everlasting way; but this philosopher, solitary seraph, as he may be regarded, amidst a myriad of men, knows at such a moment no emotions so divine as those of the spirit becoming conscious that it is beloved—be it the peasant girl in the meadow, or the daughter of the sage, reposing in her father's confidence, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... vision, lifts me above myself so far that I see the Supreme Essence from which it emanates. Thence comes the joy wherewith I flame, because to my vision, in proportion as it is clear, I match the clearness of my flame. But that soul in Heaven which is most enlightened,[2] that Seraph who has his eye most fixed on God, could not satisfy thy demand; because that which thou askest lies so deep within the abyss of the eternal statute, that from every created sight it is cut off. And when thou retumest to the mortal world, carry this back, so that it may ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... have nothing to do with them, for I was still, I knew, on an iceberg in the Northern Ocean, likely any moment to be overwhelmed beneath it. Then I thought a ship appeared, and Captain Dean was at the helm, and that sweet Mary, dressed in white, and looking like a seraph, stood on the forecastle waving to me to come off to them. I, of course, could not move, for my feet were jammed into a hole in the ice, and I struggled in vain to drag them out. On a sudden a storm arose, and ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... bored a tunnel, and then hollowed out what I may call a negative human shape—the mould, as it were, of a man, of life-size, with his arms thrown out, and his feet stretched straight, like one that had fallen, and lay in weariness. His object was to illuminate it, in the hope of "a man all light, a seraph man," shining through the snow. That very night he had intended, on his return from Muir of Warlock, to light him up; and now that he was driven out by the cold, he would brave, in his own den, in the heart of the snow, the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... in Heaven's glorious sun, And in the glare of Hell; My spirit drank a mingled tone, Of seraph's song, and demon's moan; What my soul bore, my soul alone Within itself ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... eyes, the smile of a seraph, and a halo of yellow hair, and he came from Viper, which is a creek many, many hills away from Happy Valley. He came on foot and alone to St. Hilda, who said sadly that she had no room for him. But she sighed helplessly when ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox

... quies"—Rest, pure, deep, eternal, Peace, in a perfect, blissful, endless calm; Charmed by the beatific joys supernal, Lull'd by the melody of seraph's psalm, ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl

... lifeless and flat, And, by the holy rood! A man all light, a seraph-man, 490 On every corse ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... I, "but more than all, Thy lonely sweetness takes my soul in thrall, O Seraph Lily Blanch! so stately tall: By violets adored, regarded by the rose, Well loved by every ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... in Mr. Brown's room, as we are here, to come in and examine that curiously illuminated missal of yours. How agreeable Mr. Brown is, now that he is getting well! Don't you think so? And Mr. Norton is as good and radiant as a seraph! No doubt, they are pining with homesickness, just as you are, and will be ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... miles of underground workings in Botallack as well, I suppose, as a postman knows his beat; a man who dived into the bowels of the earth with the vigour and confidence of a mole and the simple-minded serenity of a seraph. ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... DESPARD—Why am I not a seraph endowed with musical powers beyond mortal reach? You tell me many things, and never seem to imagine that they are all beyond me. You never seem to think that I am hopelessly commonplace. You are kind in doing what you do, but where is the ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... supposition: Juan being then grown up to man's estate Would fully suit a widow of condition, Even seven years hence it would not be too late; And in the interim (to pursue this vision) The mischief, after all, could not be great, For he would learn the rudiments of love, I mean the seraph way of those above. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... scuttle, fingers fleet, pens work apace; A whipt-up zeal marks every pallid face; One voice austere, sonorous, Chides, threatens, sometimes curses. How they flush, Its victims silent, tame! That voice would hush A seraph-choir in chorus. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various

... prophet Emerson!" she brought a little fist down upon her knee for emphasis, a hand several sizes larger closed upon it and held it fast. "Hear the word—are you listening? 'Only two in the Garden walked and with Snake and Seraph talked.'" ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... that he was so pale, so silent, and so shy? Was it for this that he sat alone in his room for hours, murmuring words of passionate tenderness, and extending his arms to heaven, as if he expected some seraph to visit him in his desolate home? Was it for this that by night he paced the length of a garden-wall, and stood with folded arms before its trellised gates? Had sorrow ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... venture to say this,—if the archangel Gabriel were permitted to descend to Paris and form the best government for France that the wisdom of seraph could devise, it would not be two years—I doubt if it would be six months—before out of this Paris, which you call the Foyer des Idees, would emerge a powerful party, adorned by yourself and other hommes de plume, in favour of a revolution for the benefit ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Piola's does not exist but compared with Mme. de Maufrigneuse, that heavenly creature was a Messalina. Women wondered among themselves how such a giddy young thing had been transformed by a change of dress into the fair veiled seraph who seemed (to use an expression now in vogue) to have a soul as white as new fallen snow on the highest Alpine crests. How had she solved in such short space the Jesuitical problem how to display a bosom whiter than her soul by ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... the "Gorgias," the "Philebus," and especially the "Republic," with what noble joy are we filled on hearing the voice of conscience, like a harp swept by a seraph's hand, uttering such deep-toned melodies! How does he drown the clamors of passion, the calculations of mere expediency, the sophism of mere personal interest and utility. If he calls us to witness the triumph ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... arm. She had laid aside mourning since the ceremony of the fiancailles, and was dressed in a kirtle of white, with an upper robe of pale blue. Her head was covered with a veil of white gauze, so thin, as to float about her like the misty cloud usually painted around the countenance of a seraph. But the face of Eveline, though in beauty not unworthy one of that angelic order, was at present far from resembling that of a seraph in tranquillity of expression. Her limbs trembled, her cheeks were pale, the tinge of red around the eyelids expressed recent tears; yet amidst these natural signs ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... scenes, that calm the troubled breast, 'And woo the weary to profound repose; 'Can passion's wildest uproar lay to rest, 'And whisper comfort to the man of woes! 'Here Innocence may wander, safe from foes, 'And Contemplation soar on seraph wings. 'O Solitude, the man who thee foregoes, 'When lucre lures him, or ambition stings, 'Shall never know the ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... from earthly to celestial love! O reft from me and from my clinging grasp, And circled straightway by the close, warm clasp Of seraph bosoms ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... mindful of them as Browning, — came thus because he had to come thus. There was no time to dress. The poor chalk-fingered poet was miserable the whole evening, hardly roused himself when the talk fell on Blake, and when we took a walk together the next day he made his moan to me about it. A seraph with chalk on his fingers. Somehow, that little incident seems to me an epitome of his life, though I have mentioned it only to ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... the most elaborate workmanship, temples, and majestic columns, and angel figures, were all nothing to Archie compared to the simple mound that told him of an undying love for the lonely and crippled one. No marble arose there in wonderful grace and beauty, no reclining seraph imaged the departed saint; but low down, beneath the green turf was the heart that leaped at the advent of her first-born son, and the eye that overlooked the blemish that all other eyes seemed to dwell upon, and the hand that was laid upon his head in the last sad moment. Naught ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... with crimson—the loveliest creature to be seen for miles around. Her usually mournful face was brightened with an inner kind of bliss which, from the face of the Tragic Muse, made it the face of a youthful seraph serene and blessed; her smile was one of almost unearthly ecstasy, if it still retained that timid, tremulous, fleeting expression which was so beautiful to Edgar; her eyes, no longer sad and sorrowful, but dewy, tender, bashful, shone with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... the ancient father, pausing by the evening sea, "Turn thy face towards the sunset — turn thy face and kneel with me! Prayer and praise and holy fasting, lips of love and life of light, These and these have made thee perfect — shining saint with seraph's sight! Look towards that flaming crescent — look beyond that glowing space — Tell me, sister of the angels, what is beaming in thy face?" And the daughter, who had fasted, who had spent her days ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... the way in which Captain Angus Rothesay contrived to fall in love with Sybilla Hyde; until he woke from the dream to find his seraph of beauty—a baby-bride, pouting like a vexed child, because, in their sudden elopement, she had ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... passed it, and while the farandole was dying out slowly, there crashed down upon us a thunderous outburst of song: as though an exceptionally large-lunged seraph were afloat immediately above us in the open regions of the air. Yet the song was of a gayer sort than seraphs, presumably, are wont to sing; and its method, distinctly, was that of the modern operatic stage. In point of fact, the singer was not a seraph, but ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... better in its place the lowliest bird Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song, Than that a seraph strayed should take the word And sing ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... wrought too powerfully on the recently-regained serenity of his mind, he affectionately inquired for the amiable boy he had seen take so touching an interest in the mournful errand to the church-yard on that ever-remembered day, and who, like a ministering seraph, had so guardingly watched the exposed head of his revered master, under the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... little seraph sister, with her wings and waving hair, And her bright-eyed, cherub brother—a serene, angelic pair— Glide around my wakeful pillow with their praise or mild reproof, As I listen to the murmur of the soft ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... boys, they are not in it! A woman will endure martyrdom with the expression of a seraph,—an extremely aggravating seraph. She looks after her soul as if it were the ultimate fact of the universe. She will trim and preen that ridiculous soul, though the heavens fall and the rest of ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... "dew That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill," 10 Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart Unthought-like thoughts, that are the souls of thought,— Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions Than even the seraph harper, Israfel (Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures"), 15 Could hope to utter. And I—my spells are broken; The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand; With thy dear name as text, though hidden by thee, I cannot write—I ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... come to nothing. And it was this little monster, who looked as fair and as white as a seraph, who had just shattered my first hopes. Huddled up in the cab, an expression of fear on her self-willed looking face and her thin lips compressed, she was gazing at me under her long lashes with ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... mark'd two sunbeams upward driven Till they blent in one in the bosom of heaven; And when closed o'er the eye lid of night, His own mind's eye saw it doubly bright, And as upward and upward it floated on He deemed it a seraph—and anon. Through its light on heaven's floor he made, The shadow bright of his dead love's shade, In her living beauty, and he wrapt her in light, Which dropped from the eye of the Infinite. And as she breathed her heavenward ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various

... her the habitant of some bright planet, such as she pointed out to us in the Bay of Naples—a seraph with a golden lyre—and shrouded in a white cymar! No, no!" would he continue, turning his footsteps towards the adjacent room, where the suffering pangs of Apollo's high priest are painfully told in marble, "let let me rather contemplate the Laocoon! His agony seems to sympathise ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... vanity that sets itself to fiction instantly, and carries its potter's wheel about with it always, (off which there will come only clay vessels of regular shape after all,) instead of the pure mirror that can show the seraph standing by the human body—standing as signal to the heavenly land:[48] with this heed and this charity, there are none of us that may not bring down that lamp upon his path ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... But what unimaginable scenes of horror must first be? What doleful misereres must first ascend to cloud the brightness of the heavens and dim the joy of the blest! Long, long before then, your and my remembrance, Faith, will have perished from the earth. You will be then a seraph, and I—. If there be ever an interval of pain, it will be when I think of your blessedness, and you, if angels sometimes weep, will drop a tear to the memory of your father, and it shall cool ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion, It stood there; Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... a triple coat of paint, and take these two on a long cruise, wherever they wanted to go—Roundhead and Seraph, the blunderbus and the flaming angel. And there was another matter. To have sprung this upon them to-night would have been worth a thousand pounds. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... his great expedition now appeared, Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned Of majesty divine: sapience and love Immense; and all his Father in Him shone. About his chariot numberless were poured Cherub and Seraph, Potentates and Thrones, And Virtues, winged Spirits, and chariots winged From the armoury of God, where stand of old Myriads, between two brazen mountains lodged Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand, Celestial equipage; and now came forth Spontaneous, for within them ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... the internal mysteries of the Divine Essence down to our own sensations and consciousness, from the most solemn appointments of the Lord of all down to what may be called the accident of the hour, from the most glorious seraph down to the vilest and most ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... lightnings. Else, why do these pangs and fears shoot and flash through it, every now and then? Why does the drowning man instinctively ask for God's mercy? Were his conscience pure and clear from guilt, like that of the angel or the seraph,—were there no latent crime within him,—he would sink into the unfathomed depths of the sea, without the thought of such a cry. When the traveller in South America sees the smoke and flame of the volcano, here and there, as he passes along, he is justified ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... hollow in the centre, Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings, Through which the deepened glories once could enter, Streaming from off the Sun like Seraph's wings, Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter, The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire Lie with their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... prophesy the dissolution of the American Confederacy, and, through it, the destruction of that gigantic structure, human slavery! But this knowledge was not the result of a moment's or an hour's gleaning, but nearly half a century's existence in the seraph life. I have carefully watched my country's rising progress, and I am thoroughly convinced that it cannot always exist under the present Federal Constitution, and the pressure of that most ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... altogether unexpected and delightful manner. Her impromptu bataille des fleurs, for example, was still remembered in Woodbridge although it took place nearly sixteen years ago. Somewhere her attention had been caught by the picture of a cherub, or possibly seraph, perched on a cloud and pouring from a cornucopia great masses of flowers upon the delighted earth. The idea seemed such a lovely one that when, in the spring, her mother gave a card party out on the terrace, ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... Seraph and Cherub, careless of their charge And wanton in full ease, now live at large, Unguarded leave the passes of the sky, And all dissolved in Hallelujahs lie. —Dramatic ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... to see what it could be; and he had no sooner viewed it closer, than he threw up his hands with rapture. "It is a seraph," he whispered, "a lovely seraph. Heaven hath witnessed my bitter trial, and approves my cruelty; and this flower of the skies is sent to cheer me, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... cloudless summer sun, With stately port he moves; His guardian seraph eyes with awe The noble ward he loves— Among th' illustrious Scottish sons That chief thou may'st discern; Mark Scotia's fond returning ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... to His is faint; No brother cleaves as close as He; No seraph words could ever paint The love this Friend now bears ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... and flowed in charming disorder down her back. One of her hands grasped the crucifix, and her head rested gracefully upon the other. But, where shall I find words to describe to you the angelic beauty of her countenance, in which the charms of a seraph seemed displayed. The setting sun shone full upon her face, and its golden beams seemed to surround it as with a glory. Can you recall to your mind the Madonna of our Florentine painter? She was here personified, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... bit of a child with bobbed golden hair and the air of a bold young seraph, her white face bravely painted, her cherry lips cherrier even than the cherry for which she had been named. She wore a silk coat reaching to the bottom of her frock, which was shorter than the shortest, and daring little high-heeled ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... low, Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry, Piled gray and tender blue and roseate snow; East—like a fiend, the bolt-breasted, streaming Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail; West—like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming, Venus leads the ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... men nor angels, looks like something, which, If not the last, rose higher than the first, Haughty, and high, and beautiful, and full Of seeming strength, but of inexplicable Shape; for I never saw such. They bear not The wing of Seraph, nor the face of man, Nor form of mightiest brute, nor aught that is Now breathing; mighty yet and beautiful As the most beautiful and mighty which 60 Live, and yet so unlike them, that I scarce Can ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... husband it should be given to behold his Wife—the pure in heart!—walking like a seraph in the Spiritual Life, as the earliest light of morning moves along the hill-tops; her countenance 'beautified with salvation' and joy unfolding itself at her approach: he sees and follows her as she enters into grottoes of shells, compared with which all flowers of Earth are mere attempts ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... and unchanging Substance; all things that are visible are but shadow and appearance, are like bubbles in the water which are now here and now gone.[28] Every created and finite thing, however—from a grain of sand to a radiant sun and from a blade of grass to the Seraph that is nearest God—is a beam or a ray or expression of that eternal Reality, is an angel or messenger that in some minute, or in some glorious fashion, reveals God in space and time; and all created things together, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... proceed from want of feeling, but from the heroism of the highest love: they must previously, in struggles painful beyond expression, have obtained the victory over every earthly tie; and by the exhibition of these struggles, of these sufferings of our mortal nature, while the seraph soars on its flight to heaven, the poet may awaken in us the most fervent emotion. In Polyeucte, however, the means employed to bring about the catastrophe, namely, the dull and low artifice of Felix, by which ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... angel spirit, Bidding tides of gladness flow Through the realms of want and woe; 'Mid lone age and misery's lot, Kindling pleasures long forgot, Seeking minds oppressed with night, And on darkness shedding light, She the seraph's speech doth know, She hath done their deeds below; So, when o'er this misty strand She shall clasp their waiting hand, They will fold her to their breast, More ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... thou hast! An angel from the sky Accepting the bad bargain of a man, Could not have found a worse. You took me up A battered piece of ordnance, broken in spirit, Accursed to myself and to my kind; And underneath me thou hast held an arm Sustaining as the seraph's ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman

... exclaim. Never was transformation quicker, or more complete. But a few seconds before she was, as it were, in the clutches of the devil; now an angel is by her side, a seraph with soft wings to shelter, and strong arms to protect her. She feels as one, who, long lingering at the door of death, has health suddenly and miraculously restored, with the prospect of a ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... rolled their mighty burden of life-records into the pulseless ocean of the past. The pale stars of mid-winter were looking down with meek, seraph glances over the mighty metropolis along whose thousand thoroughfares lay the white carpet of the snow-king; and Boreas, loosed from his ice caverns on the frozen floor of the Arctic, was holding mad revels, and howling with demoniac ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... cigarette, or whistling a tune. Suppose whenever a man lit a cigarette, a towering genie arose from the rings of smoke and followed him everywhere as a huge slave. Suppose whenever a man whistled a tune he "drew an angel down" and had to walk about forever with a seraph on a string. These catastrophic images are but faint parallels to the earthquake consequences that Nature has attached to sex; and it is perfectly plain at the beginning that a man cannot be a free lover; he is either a traitor or a ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... century, and which Tintoret has made unspeakably mean in its unclean and dramatically impotent suggestiveness: the Saviour parleying from a kind of rustic edifice with a good-humoured, fat, half feminine Satan, fluttering with pink wings like some smug seraph of Bernini's pupils. After this it is scarce necessary to speak of whatever is dramatically abortive (because successfully expressing just the wrong sort of sentiment, the wrong situation) in Tintoret's work: his Woman taken in Adultery, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... the Strand. He saw a Seraph standing there, With aspect bright and sainted, Ethereal robe of fabric fair, And wings that might have been the pair Sir Noel ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... only the wife of a 'Merchant of Venice;' but then she is pretty as an antelope, is but two-and-twenty years old, has the large, black, oriental eyes, with the Italian countenance, and dark glossy hair, of the curl and colour of Lady J * *'s. Then she has the voice of a lute, and the song of a seraph (though not quite so sacred), besides a long postscript of graces, virtues, and accomplishments, enough to furnish out a new chapter for Solomon's Song. But her great merit is finding out mine—there is nothing so amiable ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... achieved righteousness. That is to say, being a Philadelphian, she was celebrated for giving successful dinners. The person who achieves celebrity of this sort in Philadelphia is not unlike the seraph who attains to eminence ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... 'The sweet seraph! Oh! why did not my Plantagenet speak to you, Lady Annabel, in the same tone? And he can, if he likes; he can, indeed. It was his silence that so mortified me; it was his silence that led to all. I am so proud of him! ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... it. We don't want him, nor any one else. Any mixture of aid would have marred the spirit of our expedition: besides, remember our friend the Seraph." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... scenes, that calm the troubled breast, And woo the weary to profound repose! Can passion's wildest uproar lay to rest, And whisper comfort to the man of woes? Here Innocence may wander, safe from foes, And Contemplation soar on seraph wings. O Solitude! the man who thee foregoes, When lucre lures him, or ambition stings, Shall never know the source whence ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... in the west a brooding cloud— Departed day's wind-lifted shroud— Waved slowly in the depths of blue, While now and then a world looked through The broken edge, as from above Steals down a seraph's glance of love, Through sorrow's cloud and mortal air, On breaking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... view required of them by Tintoretto in his boldest flights, in the Worship of the Golden Calf and in the Destruction of the World by Water. It is for them to ponder well the flying archangel with the scales of judgment in his hand, and the seraph-charioted Jehovah enveloping ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... the least that they are some day to be made as nothing? Dearest, if it is true that the soul makes this life what it is, a life of restless seeking for an infinite, would it not make the same life anywhere else? Do you remember reading with me Emerson's poem about Uriel, the seraph who sang before God's throne,—how even that could not please him, and how he left it to plunge into the struggle of things imperfect; and how ever after the rest of the seraphim were afraid of Uriel? Do you think, dearest, that this life of love and labor that you and ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... (perfection) 650; good example; hero, heroine, demigod, seraph, angel; innocent &c. 946; saint &c. (piety) 987; benefactor &c. 912; philanthropist &c. 910; Aristides[obs3]; noble liver|!, pattern. brick*, trump*, gem, jewel, good fellow, prince, diamond in the rough, rough diamond, ugly duckling|!. salt of the earth; one in ten ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... a languor falling Out of the gleam of a sunset sky; Peace, deep peace and a seraph's calling, Folded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of deeper pathos? Within him are the appetites of a brute and the attributes of an angel; and when these meet in council to make up the roll of his destiny and seal his fate, shall the beast hound out the seraph? Shall the young man, now conscious of the largeness of his sphere and of the sovereignty of his choice, wed the low ambitions of the world, and seek, with their emptiness, to fill his immortal desires? Because ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... as perfect, in vile man that mourns As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;[316-4] He fills, he ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... sunset of his childish memory; the gorgeous crimson piles of glory in the west, fading away into the cold calm light of the rising moon, while here and there a cloud floated across the western heaven, like a seraph's wing, in its flaming beauty; the earth was the same as in his childhood's days, full of gentle evening sounds, and the harmonies of twilight—the breeze came sweeping low over the heather and ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell

... that I do not appreciate you now. If you will recollect, you praised his verses once. He cherishes that praise amongst his sweetest treasures. Poor dear good old Gwynne, tender, sensitive, shrinking, with the face of a seraph and the heart of a maid. Never were two men more incongruously companioned. I love him for himself. He tolerates me, I do secretly believe, because of you. He longs to meet you,—he knew you well through my father,—and we often ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... treasure And the gentle voice he heard, In the poor forlorn boy's spirit, Joy, the sleeping Seraph, stirred; In his hand he took the flowers, In his heart ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... No seraph's song e'er bore a sweeter sound Breathed in the ear of some expiring saint, Than pardon ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... easier to build a strong ship out of new timber than out of an old hulk that has been ground up in the breakers. If with innocence to start with in this life a man does not become godly, what prospect is there that in the next world, starting with sin, there would be a seraph evoluted? Surely the sculptor has more prospect of making a fine statue out of a block of pure white Parian marble than out of an old black rock seamed and cracked with the storms of a half century. Surely upon a clean, white sheet of paper it is easier to write a deed or a will than ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... midst of these repinings and bitter breathings, it was whispered into the ears of my understanding, as with the voice of a seraph, that the Lord in all things moveth according to His established laws; and I was comforted to think that in the enormities whereof I was a witness and partaker, there was a tempering of the hearts of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... gardostaranto. Sentry gardostaranto. Sentry-box budeto. Separate apartigi, disigi. Separate aparta. Separate malkunigi, disigi. Separately malkune. Separation disigo. September Septembro. Sepulchre tombego. Sequel sekvo, sekveco. Seraph serafo. Sere velkinta. Serenade serenado. Serene trankvila. Serenity trankvileco. Serf servutulo. Sergeant sergxento. Series serio. Serious serioza. Seriousness seriozeco. Sermon prediko. Serpent serpento. Serum serumo. Servant ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... heaven is rich in song: Do not all poets, dying, still prolong Their broken chants amid the seraph throng, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... with one accord, they turned to a dove-like maiden mild, With a seraph's purity of look, and soft graces of a child; "Speak out, speak out now, sweet shy Clare, we anxious wait for thee, Coy, gentle one! fear not to say what thy heart's young ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... chos'n this place After the toyl of Battel to repose Your wearied vertue, for the ease you find 320 To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heav'n? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds Cherube and Seraph rowling in the Flood With scatter'd Arms and Ensigns, till anon His swift pursuers from Heav'n Gates discern Th' advantage, and descending tread us down Thus drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this Gulfe. Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n. 330 They heard, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... bearing, seraph tall, Of indolent imperturbable regard, Stood in the Tavern door to drink. As the first Lifted his glass to let the warm light melt In the slow bubbles of the wine, a sunbeam, Red and broad as smouldering autumn, smote Down through its mystery; and a single ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... The mighty seraph ceas'd. While thus he said, Without a sigh, the old man's spirit fled. Ere yet, enfranchis'd, thro' the air it past, On the lov'd youth one parting look it cast, And gazed on Sweden, then, no more confined, Soar'd thro' the clouds, and mingled ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... with the hot stone and laid it on the lips of the future prophet. Why did he lay it there? Because it was there that Isaiah felt his sin to be lying. He had said, "I am a man of unclean lips." The fire burned the sin away. So the seraph said, speaking in God's name, "Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged." It was the assurance of the Divine forgiveness, which had come swift as a seraph's flight ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... of genius as accomplish this divine utterance. The voice itself may be strong or tiny,—that of a seraph, or that of a song-sparrow; the range and power of combination may be Beethoven's, or only such as are found in the hum of bees; but in this genuineness, this depth of ancestry and purity of growth, this unmistakable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... Gaillarde gravely, "that our Sister Ada is the only perfect being among us. I am not perfect, by any means: and really, I feel oppressed by the company of a seraph. I'm not nearly good enough. Perchance, Sister Ada, you would not mind my sitting a ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of ecstasy, The secrets of the abyss to spy. He passed the flaming bounds of place and time, The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but, blasted with excess ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... would be an insult if you ask me. Out of respect to the Everlasting, I would rather suppose that the earth, being by chance a concern too small for His present purposes, He tosses it, as we toss a dog a bone, to some ingenious archangel with a theory. Then you enjoy the spectacle of that seraph about as busy over this notable world as a child with a mud pie. The winged one sets to work with a will. A little pinch of life; develops under his skillful manipulation; evolution takes its remorseless course through the wastes of Time until—behold! the apotheosis ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts



Words linked to "Seraph" :   Franz Seraph Peter Schubert, seraphical, seraphic



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