"Sprite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hollow were the notes. I burst through the knotted stalks of the ivy, and stooping like some poor travesty of Narcissus, with shaded face pierced down deep—deep into eyes not my own, but violet and unendurable and strange—eyes of the living water-sprite drawing my wits from me, stilling my heart, till I was very near plunging into that crystal oblivion, to ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... up-stairs. The tower door is open, and there is no one to be seen. He keeps on and on until he catches a flutter of a white dress. Cecil is running around the observatory, and his heart beats as he glances at the dazzling little sprite, with her sparkling eyes and her hair a golden mist about her face. He could watch forever, but it is ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... in front of the rest of the villagers was the head man, swarthy-faced, clean-shaved Kusis; beside him Tulpe, his wife, a graceful young woman of about five-and-twenty, and her husband's little daughter by a former wife. This child was named Kinie, a merry-faced, laughing-voiced sprite, ten years of age, with long, wavy, and somewhat unkempt hair hanging down over her shining ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... The merry sprite, laughing almost as heartily as he, though with less noise, reached a dainty hand across the counter and he grasped it. From behind the rack at the front of the store, the gentle mother beamed with a smile. She had ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... station de bains should have, but everything is on a Lilliputian scale. The whole place looked like a huge Nueremburg toy. There is a diminutive hotel, in which, properly, the head waiter should be a pigmy and the chambermaid a sprite, and beside it there is a Casino on the smallest possible scale. Everything about the Casino is so harmoniously undersized that it seems a matter of course that the newspapers in the reading-room should be printed in the very finest type. Of course there is a reading-room, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... is entirely unnerved by a frank confession. If Lillie had said one word in defence, if she had raised the slightest shadow of an argument, John would have roused up all his moral principle to oppose her; but this poor little white water-sprite, dissolving in a rain of penitent tears, quite washed away all his anger ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... seems to be only a mischievous sprite, must not be confounded with Ilmatar, the creatrix of the world in the first ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... figures at the bells are those which once stood out from the facade of St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in Regent's Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy sprite and the candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... little sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for be owed him a grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Sycorax. This Caliban, Prospero found in the woods, a strange ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lowly mind! Thou wondrous sprite, Whose frolics make their master weep; Anon, endowed with eagle's flight, Anon, too impotent to creep, Or ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... since Satan was in the garden of Eden, and ought to know my trade better than this novice of an informer." "Blood of an infernal fire-brand!" said Lucifer, "did I not command you to answer speedily and clearly." "Do but hear me," said the sprite. "As to preaching, by your own command I have been a hundred times preaching, and have forbidden people to follow several of the roads which lead to your territories, and yet silently, in the same breath, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... years old and a most troublesome little sprite. Her mother took her every morning to a school in the Rue Polonceau, to a certain Mlle Josse. Here she did all manner of mischief. She put ashes into the teacher's snuffbox, pinned the skirts of her companions together. Twice the young lady was sent home in disgrace and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... beleue not euery sprit / but proue the sprites / whether they are of Godd or not. For many false prophetes are gone out into the worlde. Hereby shall ye know the spirite of Godd: Euery sprite that confessith that Iesu Christe is comme in the flesh / is of Godd. And euery sprite which confessith not that Iesu Christe is come in the fleshe is not of Godd. And this is that spirite of Antichriste / of whome ye haue herde / howe that ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... approaching the banks of the Ettrick, heard a doleful voice from its waves repeatedly exclaim, "Lost! lost!" They followed the sound, which seemed to be the voice of a drowning person, and, to their astonishment, found that it ascended the river; still they continued to follow the cry of the malicious sprite, and, arriving before dawn at the very sources of the river, the voice was now heard descending the opposite side of the mountain in which they arise. The fatigued and deluded travellers now relinquished the pursuit, and had no sooner ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... cooling than the limpid fount; with breasts strutting from her bosom in pomegranate-like rondure and waist delicate and hips of heavy weight, and stomach soft to the touch as sendal with plait upon plait, and she was one that excited the sprite and exalted man's sight even as said a certain poet ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... most of January Frances kept him very busy. He had never seen her so gay or so beautiful. She was like a fairy sprite ever dancing to dizzy music. He followed her in a sort of daze from dinner to dance, until the strains of music whirled through ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Miss Hazel,' was Dingee's reply, and a heavy drop or two said 'yes, it is coming.' Wych Hazel laughed at him, cantering along on her black pony like a brown sprite, the rising wind making free with her hair and hat ribbands, the rose spray made fast for her buttonhole. But as she dashed out of the woods upon a tract of open country, the distance before her was ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... brands do glow, While the screech-owl, sounding loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets out its sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. MIDSUMMER ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before that heard his name and somewhat of his exploits. In our day, over all Spain, one might find or hear of cavaliers of this brand. War with the Moor had lasted somewhat longer than the old famed war with Troy. It had modeled youth; young men were old soldiers. When there came up a sprite like this one he drank war like wine. A slight young man, taut as a rope in a gale, with dark eyes and red lips and a swift, decisive ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... and Mersey, she (like the "Phoenix") had one on either side, closely lashed to herself, and the other only behind. This terrific monster seemed to be carrying them away arm-in-arm, like two prisoners, to destruction. At all events, it was a position of familiarity and friendship with the "Sprite of Steam" of which I did not at all like the idea; and yet we ourselves were by-and-by to be ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... sound more forcible than respectful. "Had it been a decent person thus married to my young mistress, instead of a mountain sprite, they should have had ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... play I'm a good sprite out of the box, or, what is better, a fairy godmother come down the chimney, and you are Cinderella, and must say what you want," said Rose, trying to ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... a ruffling, careful breath, Has opened the wings of the wild young sprite? Has fluttered her spirit to stumbling flight In her eyes, as ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... from the bluie sea The upswol[85] sayle dyd daunce before his eyne; Swefte as the withe, hee toe the beeche dyd flee. 85 And founde his fadre steppeynge from the bryne. Lette thyssen menne, who haveth sprite of loove, Bethyncke untoe hemselves ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... itself in fantastic patterns on the projecting windows and fretted stone balconies of the quaint and crowded houses. It was not an honest and single-minded snow-storm, such as would seek to shroud the whole city in its delicate white mantle, but rather a tricksy and capricious sprite, that neglected one spot to hurl itself with wanton violence on another. Borne on the breath of a keen and shifting wind, it came tossing gleefully full in the face of a solitary artisan who, wrapped in a heavy cloak, was making the best of ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... Quoth she, thus blind I did him beare, Quoth I, if't be no lye, Then he 's the first blind man Ile sweare, 220 Ere practisd Archery, A man, quoth she, nay there you misse, He 's still a Boy as now, Nor to be elder then he is, The Gods will him alow; To be no elder then he is, Then sure he is some sprite I straight replide, againe at this, The Goddesse laught out right; It is a mystery to me, 230 An Archer and yet blinde; Quoth I againe, how can it be, That he his marke should finde; The Gods, quoth she, whose will it ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... nervous about going out, as Miss Sallie had made dreadful suggestions about wolves and wild cats, yet she slipped out on the tiny porch. Far away through the trees and up the steep hillside she saw flying like a deer, a thin, brown creature. Was it human or a sprite? Mollie could not guess. She caught a glimpse of it, but it had been impossible to observe it accurately, so fast it flew. There was only a whirr of flying feet, and a flash of brown and scarlet to be seen. Could it be the famous ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... change seats a minute with Miss Montague, as if you'd got tired of him—see what I mean? Miss Montague—Miss Montague." The Spanish girl arose, seeming not wholly pleased at this bit of directing. The Montague girl came to the table. She was a blithesome sprite in a salmon-pink dancing frock. Her blonde curls fell low over one eye which she now cocked inquiringly ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... always short: sometimes when driven a little hard in the war of words—for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the delicacy of her native French, in which language she always attacked me—I used to turn upon her with my old decision, and arrest bodily the sprite that teased me. Vain idea! no sooner had I grasped hand or arm than the elf was gone; the provocative smile quenched in the expressive brown eyes, and a ray of gentle homage shone under the lids in its place. I had seized a mere vexing fairy, and found a submissive ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Life and its ills, Duns and their bills, Bid we to flee. Come with the dawn, Blue-devil sprite, Leave us ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... Oliver Herford, he is an elf, a sprite, a creature of fantasy, who may be—and, I rejoice to say, is—in this world, but certainly is not of it. This Oliver is in the line of Puck and Mercutio and Lamb and Hood and other lovers and makers of nonsense, and it is we who ask for "more." He had just brought out his irresponsible ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... he was christened) to open his heavy eyes, and clap his hot hands, and cry, "More, father, more." Will and Dulcie looked gladly into each other's eyes at his animation, and boasted what a stamping, thundering man he would yet live to be—that midge, that sprite, with Dulcie's small skeleton bones, and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... for the sun, or the dry wind, or better still, the frost. Ah, how the biting cold stimulates me! It lashes my lungs with handfuls of needles, and makes a bonbon glace of my charming nose. The rollicking frost-sprite will blow his madness into me. She'll laugh and He too, leaving his scratching-paper, to see me vie with the leaves in bounds, leaps and wild whirlings, resembling a floating flurry of gray smoke rather than a Cat. To the top of a tree! Down ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... labour of love from the busy hands in New Zealand, which had stolen a few hours from their many tasks to send Dr. May the presentment of his namesake grandson. Little Dickie stood before them, a true son of the humming-bird sprite, delicately limbed and featured, and with elastic springiness, visible even in the pencilled outline. The dancing dark eyes were all Meta's, though the sturdy clasp of the hands, and the curl that hung over the brow, brought back the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lovely sprite, Since first from out an ancient lay I saw gleam forth thy fitful light, How hast thou ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... modern taste turns Nature out of door; Who ne'er again her former sway will boast, Till, to complete her works, she starts a ghost. If such the mode, what can we hope to-night, Who rashly dare approach without a sprite? No dreadful cavern, no midnight scream, No rosin flames, nor e'en one flitting gleam. Nought of the charms so potent to invite The monstrous charms of terrible delight. Our present theme the German Muse supplies, But rather aims to soften than surprise. Yet, with her woes she strives some smiles ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... thy brow, thy smile we deem The gladsome mirth of fairy sprite; But for thy smile, thy mien would seem Some angel's from the world ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... immediately the son dropped a tear, and forced himself out of his father's arms, piteously exclaiming: 'Father, father, my mother spoke! You cannot keep me. I must go.' He disappeared, and, reaching home, the father found the sprite again on the hearth." The ghostly father's services were called into requisition a second time; and better luck awaited an effort under his direction after the performance of a second miracle like the first. For this time the mother succeeded in holding her tongue, notwithstanding ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... for it seems impossible to set limits to the future conquests of the latter, which is probably destined to perform miracles un-dreamt of to-day, perhaps coupled in some unthought-of way, with radium, the youngest sprite of the weird, uncanny tribe of mysterious agents. Uranium, the supposed basis of the latest discovery, Radium, has only one-millionth part of the heat of the latter. The slow-moving earth takes twenty-four hours to turn upon its axis. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... pray with all thy might, Here's goblin foul or woodland sprite Come for to steal our souls away, So on thy ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the countess-dowager in a state more easily imagined than described. Some sprite, favourable to the peace of Hartledon, had been writing confidentially from Ireland regarding Kirton and his doings. That her eldest son was about to steal a march on her and marry again seemed almost indisputably clear; and the miserable dowager, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... joyful tenor; wild wistful alto; and leaping up here and there above the throng of sounds, delicate treble shrieks and trills of trembling joy. I know not whether you can fit it into your laws of music, any more than you can the song of that Ariel sprite who dwells in the Eolian harp, or the roar of the waves ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... circle, very properly constructed in the Rotunda. They overpowered us—we dared not stay to see the fireworks, "in the midst of which Signora Rossini was to make her terrific ascent and descent on a rope three hundred feet high." She might have been the sprite of Madame Saqui; in fact, the "Vauxhall Papers" published in the gardens, put forth a legend, which favours such a dreadful supposition! We refer our readers to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... strife, some senior foe, To swell by his defeat the name of Toe!" He spoke—the powers of mischief heard his cries, And steep'd in sullen sleep his rheumy eyes. He slept—but rested not, his guardian sprite Rose to his view in visions of the night, And thus, with many a tear and many a sigh, He heard, or seem'd to hear, the mimic demon cry:—[25] "Is this a time for distant strife to pray, When all my power is melting fast away, Like mists ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... know The same it was, not pale, but white as snow, Which on the tops of hills in gentle flakes Falls in a calm, or as a man that takes Desir'ed rest, as if her lovely sight Were closed with sweetest sleep, after the sprite Was gone. If this be that fools call to die, Death seem'd in her exceeding fair ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... task foredone. Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the scritch owl, scritching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the churchway paths to glide: And we fairies, that do run, By the triple Hecate's team, From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallowed ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... bounced into the barouche with a vigor that made it rock quite unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. It is Juno and Arachne. The divine orbs of the goddess turned haughtily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... well;—no stream Whose heaven-belying surface makes the stars Reel, with its restless idiosyncrasy; But well unstirred, save when at times it takes Tribute of lover's eyelids, and at times Bubbles with laughter of some sprite below. ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... story about a man who hadn't the politeness to perform this little ceremony. He made a cradle for his baby out of the elder tree. But the sprite was offended, and she used to come and pull the baby out of the cradle by its legs, and pinch it and make it cry, so that it was quite impossible to leave the poor little thing in the elder cradle, and they had to weave one of basket-work ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... spiritual entities wrapped in the garments of isolation, robed with questioning. Her genius is in this sense essentially local, as much the voice of the spirit of New England as it is possible for one to hold. If ever wanderer hitched vehicle to the comet's tail, it was the poetic, sprite woman, no one ever rode the sky and the earth as she did in this radiant ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... complained to him of the sprite who carried the bow. "He is behaving badly," said ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Oh, wonder-working Lewis! monk, or bard, Who fain would make Parnassus a church-yard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy Muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou! Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hail'd, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page, To please the females of our modest ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... from fairyland, a being elusive who offered him all the magic of her love, but upon whom he had no claims. But from that night his attitude towards her underwent a change. Very tenderly he took her into his own close keeping. She had become human in his eyes, no longer a wayward sprite, but a woman, eager-hearted, and his own. He gave her reverence because of that womanhood which he had only just begun to visualize in her. Out of his passion there had kindled a greater fire. All that she had in life she gave him, glorying in the gift, and ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... faded from the popular recollection. Then there were certain ancient traditions which might have been lessened in bulk and improved in quality by being subjected to searching historical criticism. More than once, for instance, a leshie, or wood-sprite, had been seen in the neighbourhood; and in several households the domovoi, or brownie, had been known to play strange pranks until he was properly propitiated. And as a set-off against these manifestations of evil powers, there were well-authenticated stories about a miracle-working ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... and from her couch she rose, the following morning, delighted with her dreams, and benevolently disposed towards mankind in general. She lingered at her toilet, grew hypercritical in articles of taste, and found defects in beauty without the shadow of a blemish. Had some wicked sprite but whispered in her ear one thought injurious to the memory of her departed husband, Margaret would have shrunk from its reception, and would have scorned to acknowledge it as her own. Time, she felt and owned with gratitude, had assuaged ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Sprite of Compassions, ask the Immanent! I am but an accessory of Its works, Whom the Ages render conscious; and at most Figure as ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... machree, But you're keeping some poor fellow out in the cowld, Och hone! widow machree. With such sins on your head, Sure your peace would be fled, Could you sleep in your bed, Without thinking to see Some ghost or some sprite, That would wake you each night, Crying, 'Och ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... made me uneasy about her in the autumn had vanished, and her spirits seemed good; still, she was in a degree altered, and one felt in talking to her that she was a child no longer. Like Undine, that graceful creation of La Motte Fouque's genius, she appeared to have changed from a "tricksy sprite" into a thinking and ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... came nearer he saw it was a flock of pigeons. She had been feeding them berries and grains of rye. They arched their glossy necks and cooed in answer. He watched in amaze, drawing nearer. What sprite of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... though she's beautiful, as some blithe sprite met by chance in a forest. It isn't only her youth, for she is too absurdly young. A girl, to be taken seriously by a grown man, should be at least one-and-twenty. She is, I believe, on the lilied edge of eighteen. Ridiculous! Yet where she is, other women, also beautiful and ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sail next month; can I say or do anything for you in the Levant? I am now in all the agonies of equipment, and full of schemes, some impracticable, and most of them improbable; but I mean to fly "freely to the green earth's end," [2] though not quite so fast as Miltons sprite. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... bright as Daisy's, And who as Maud so fair? Who does not sing the praises Of Lucy's golden hair? There's Sophie—she is witty, A very sprite is Nell, And Susie's, oh, so pretty— But Jennie ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... ugly sprite, Bold, wicked, 'I don't care,' In life's long run less harm has done Because he is so rare; And one can be so stern with him, Can make the monster shrink; But, lack a day, what can we say To ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of Georgia "crackers" had been a good deal of a misfit in the Vermont community until Janice had found and interested herself in them. Virginia, a black-haired sprite of eleven or twelve, was the leader of the family in all things, although there were several older children. But "Jinny" was born to be ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... once Nell Gwyn, a frail young sprite, Looked kindly when I met her; I shook my head perhaps—but quite Forgot to ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Blunder Sprite deliberately pits himself against author, proof reader, and all their allies. The books printed by Aldus are famous for their correctness, yet a few errors crept into them, so much to the disgust of the great printer that he said he would gladly have given a gold crown for each one to be ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... always better for his living in it; and because no one can watch the black-capped sprite without catching, for a moment at least, a message of cheer and courage and service, does he not name himself rightly ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... bitter element, As if obedient to his wish, gave way; So, comforting Phraerion, on he went, And a high, craggy arch they reach at dawn of day, Upon the upper world; and forced them through That arch, the thick, cold floods, with such a roar, That the bold sprite receded, and would view The cave before he ventured to explore. Then, fearful lest his frighted guide might part And not be missed amid such strife and din, He strained him closer to his burning heart, And, trusting to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... the Lord de Corasse know by means of this messenger all things that were passing in the different parts of the world;" and for years this invisible mediaeval sprite kept his patron comfortably posted on all current events, in a ghostly adumbration of the modern ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... jump!" she exclaimed, and laughed again, like some weird mite of a water-sprite, pleased to have frightened so sturdy a chap as Jack Harvey. "I won't hurt you," she continued, half-mockingly. "I'm Bess Thornton. Gran' got the supper for you. Oh, but I'm just furious at ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... or water-sprite that resides in the neighbourhood of the Orkneys is popularly known as Tangie, so-called from tang,, the seaweed with which he is covered. Occasionally he makes his appearance as a little horse, and at ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... joyful king turned home again, Headed his host and quelled the Dane; But yearly, when returned the night Of his strange combat with the sprite, His wound must bleed and smart; Lord Gifford then would gibing say, 'Bold as ye were, my liege, ye pay The penance of your start.' Long since, beneath Dunfermline's nave, King Alexander fills his grave, Our Lady give him rest! Yet still ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... briars. Sometimes if I can find a good tangle of briars I build my nest in it several feet from the ground, but as a rule I would rather have it on the ground under a bush or in a clump of weeds. Have you seen my cousin Sprite the ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... sacred fire in fennel stalks Through windy ways is borne and densest night, Till where the outpost shivering sentry walks Beating the minutes into hours, the light Touches the guarded pile and, flaring, balks Beasts padding near and each unvisioned sprite By old dread apprehended; and new gladness Shakes in the village ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... once lived a Neck, or Water Sprite, who desired, above all things, to obtain a human soul. Now when the sun shone this Neck rose up and sat upon the waves and played upon his harp. And he played so sweetly that the winds stayed to listen to him, and the sun lingered ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... dress Minna and then hurry down to help get breakfast—not so easy a task with Minna ever at one's heels. The quick-moving sprite seemed to be everywhere—into the sugar-bowl, the cooky jar, the steaming teakettle—before one could turn about. Urged on by the impatient little girl, the grown-ups made ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" are all in harmony with one another, with Borrow, and with Borrow's world. Jasper Petulengro and his wife, his sister Ursula, the gigantic Tawno Chikno, the witch Mrs. Herne, and the evil sprite Leonora, Thurtell, the fighting men, the Irish outlaw Jerry Grant, who was suspected of raising a storm by "something Irish and supernatural" to win a fight, Murtagh, that wicked innocent, the old apple-woman, Blazing Bosville, Isopel Berners, the jockey who drove one hundred and ten miles ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... lay on the yellow sand. He was so grey and dwarfish that he looked like a mountain sprite. The old fellow was at home in the bare, big rocks. He loved the desert, for it is the home of great thoughts. He loved the desert where he hoped to find the entrance to Nirvana. Now when the disciples ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... making her ready; she'll come strait: you must be witty now!—she does so blush, and fetches her breath so short, as if she were frighted with a sprite; 'tis the prettiest villain! she fetches her breath so short, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... together never recurred to her mind. It seemed unbelievable that such could be the case, and yet, too, it seemed almost equally unbelievable that this beautiful girl was the same disheveled, half naked, little sprite who skipped nimbly among the branches of the trees as they ran and played in the lazy, happy days of the past. It could not be that her memory held more of the past than did ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had her innings; not only was she prettily dressed, presenting the most joyous of pictures, as with golden curls flying about her shoulders she flitted in and out of the rooms like a sprite, but she was withal so polite in her greetings, dropping to everyone a little French courtesy when she spoke, and all in her quaint, broken dialect, that everybody fell in love with her at sight. None of the other mothers had such ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... cried the Japanese doll, pointing excitedly: and indeed they did catch one more glimpse of the fleeting sprite between the shrubs. "He was mighty jolly," said the Brown Teddy-Bear enviously, in his deep, mournful voice; and "Let's go catch him!" cried the Baby, where it sat flat on the bricks, crowing and ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... end of the cabin where Jacqueline was also tasting true democracy in company with the two mountain women. He had lingered outside the door until the three women came in from the lean-to where they had prepared for the night, Jacqueline a tall sprite between her squat, thick-bodied companions, a heavy rope of bronze hair over each shoulder, small feet showing bare and white beneath the severe robe of gray flannel which was the nearest approach to a negligee known to Mrs. Kildare's daughters. The atmosphere of Storm did not lend itself ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... ought not to be made to act the part of Tarquin the Proud. Like Tarquin, however, he had been deposed—one of those fatuous acts which the wisest will commit. No more could the Honourable Hilary well be likened to Pandora, for he only opened the box wide enough to allow one mischievous sprite to take wings—one mischievous sprite that was to prove a host. Talented and invaluable lieutenant that he was, Mr. Tooting had become an exile, to explain to any audience who should make it worth his while the mysterious acts by which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mother—had made living problems harder for her until she had won the confidence of others. The man must be, Travers concluded, a fanatic and an ignoramus, and to think of him holding power over that sprite of the woods! ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... then the bookman is much exhilarated. Because of the mischief that is in him he will not relieve those two excellent men of that disgraceful Italian's company for a little space, but if he finds that the domestic sprite has thrust a Puritan between two Anglican theologians he effects a separation without delay, for a religious controversy with its din and clatter is more than ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... while I lived happy, with a temper haught and high, * My hoarding-place defending like a lion in the fight, I took no rest, and greed of gain forbad me give a grain * Of mustard seed to save from the fires of Hell my sprite, Until stricken on a day, as with arrow, by decree * Of the Maker, the Fashioner, the Lord of Might and Right. When my death was appointed, my life I could not keep * By the many of my stratagems, my cunning and my sleight: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... and knit with tenderest ties To those she loves, and, elsewise, otherwise; For such a sprite, whose birthplace is the skies, Of manly beauty blent with woman's grace, No mortal pen, though ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... made very little alteration here, excepting in the case of Jacquelina, who had grown up to be the most enchanting sprite that ever bewitched the hearts, or turned the heads of men. She was petite, slight, agile, graceful; clustering curls of shining gold encircled a round, white forehead, laughing in light; springs under springs of fun and frolic sparkled up from the bright, blue eyes, whose flashing light ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the flitting sprite Passed their huts in the misty light, Bearing a turret huge and black, And said, "The old sea serpent's back Carting away, By light of day, Uncle Sam's fort from ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... we are never quite willing to give up our little sprite," replied the Colonel with Old World courtesy. "We couldn't get along without ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... sur. Spread (news) disvastigi. Spread (extend) etendi. Sprig vergeto, brancxeto. Sprightly sprita, viva. Sprightliness viveco. Spring salti. Spring (season) printempo. Spring (of watch, etc.) risorto. Springy elasta. Sprinkle sxprucigi sur. Sprinkler sxprucigilo. Sprite feino, koboldo. Sprout (bud) elkreski. Spue vomi. Spume sxauxmo. Spur sprono. Spurious falsa. Spurn eljxeti. Spurt elsxpruci. Spy spioni. Spy ekvidi, esplori. Spyglass vidilo. Squabble malpaceti. Squad tacxmento, roto. Squadron ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... intellecte or vnderstandinge, w{hi}che remayned sounde and good, as apperethe after by the followinge woordes, for when deathe approched, and that all outwarde senses fayled, he (Arcite) yet cast eye vppon Emelye, remembringe her, thoughe the cheifest vitall sprite of his harte and his streng[th]e were gonne from hym. but he colde not haue cast his eye vppon Emelye, yf his intellecte had fayled hym. Yet yf you liste to reade, "and also the intellecte," for saue only ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... soon as they had done eating, the Prince asked all the guests, one after another, what he deserved who had injured that beautiful maiden—pointing to the fairy, who looked so lovely that she shot hearts like a sprite and ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... nothing to say. At last Mills took Dulcie home. She asked him in and he went. Aunt Priscilla was out, and tea was served for the two of them from a lacquered tea cart—Orange Pekoe and Japanese wafers. It was delicious but unsubstantial. Dulcie with her coat off was like a wood sprite in leaf green. Her hair was gold, her eyes wet violets; but Mills missed something. He had a feeling that he wanted to get home and talk things ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... Talmud, day and night, And still the years slipped by on noiseless wing. Then one day as he studied, lo! the sprite, Till then long silent, recommenced to sing. He sighed: "To-day she feasts her eldest boy, And I have robbed my darling of ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... real name—knocked the ashes from his long pipe next day at eleven o'clock in the morning, after his late breakfast and began to arrange his books. His mind was away in a land of classical lore; he had almost forgotten the sprite who had invaded his solitude the previous afternoon, until he heard a tap at the window, and saw her standing there—great, intelligent eyes aflame and ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... a sprite of subtile frame, With rainbow tints invested.— On clouds of dazzling light she came, And stars her forehead crested; Her sparkling eyes of azure hue, Seemed borrowed from ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... surroundings unsuited to her skill. He called it genius. In an open pavilion, whose roughness the white sand and the white-green surf helped to condone, on a tawdry stage, she appeared, a slight, pale, winsome beauty, clad in green and white gauze, looking like a sprite of the near-by sea. The witchery of her dancing showed rare art, which was lost altogether on the simple crowd. She danced carelessly, as if mocking the rustics, and made ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the Tanners' to make a hurried change in her dress and pick up her suit-case, which was already packed. As they rode away from the school-house Margaret looked back and saw Rosa Rogers posing in one of her sprite dances in the school-yard, saw her kiss her hand laughingly toward their party, and saw the flutter of a handkerchief in young Forsythe's hand. It was all very general and elusive, a passing bit of fun, but it left an uncomfortable impression on the teacher's ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... climbed trees to peep into squirrel-holes and birds'-nests; they chased bees and butterflies to ask for news of the elves; they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little people, though all had gay and charming bits of news ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... beach like a squirrel. He had wisdom enough, however, to say and do all this in the quietest possible manner; and when he entered the sea he did so with as much caution as Gascoyne himself had done, insomuch that he seemed to melt away like a mischievous sprite. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... any rate who I am. But I could not flatter them, and I should wish the food to choke them if they did not please me. And you would not come, and if you did,—I may as well say it boldly, —others would not. An ill-natured sprite has been busy with me, which seems to deny me everything which is ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... For saucy sprite, and noble dame, And many a dainty maid of them Will greet me in your mirror frame, And share your kisses ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... was glorious news for her. But, as if to tarnish its delight, like an envious sprite of evil, deep down in her mind lay that other news, just read—the ambiguous remark of old ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... the family who mourned him as dead. He stole a silky tress of Janet's fair hair, and wondered to see the boy weep over it; for brotherly affection is a sentiment which never yet penetrated the heart of a brownie. The dull little sprite would gladly have helped the poor lad to his freedom, but told him that only on one night of the year was there the least hope, and that was on Hallow-e'en, when the whole nation of fairies ride in procession through the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... delighted. Never before had he seen such a sight; never before had he heard so sweet music. Round and round whirled the sprite dancers; the thousand and ten glowworms caught the rhythm of the music that floated up to them, and they swung their lamps to and fro in time with the fairy waltz. The plumes in the hats of the cunning little ladies nodded hither and thither, and the tiny swords of the cunning little ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... of life! God love thee for a merry sprite! Sing on! for though the sun be coy I sense with thee a budding joy, And all my heart with ranging rhyme Is poet for ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... intemperate sprite romps and rollicks, and all the features of prettiness and repose are distraught under the bluster and lateral blur of a cyclone, still do I revel in the scene. Does a mother love her child the less when, contorted ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... of unconscious poetry; of purity so pure that it knew neither the existence of sin nor of its own innocence; of happiness so complete, that the thought, "I am now happy," came not to drive away the wayward sprite which never is, but always is to come! Blessed Childhood! spent in peace and loneliness and dreams; hidden therein lay the ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock) |
