"Sprite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Prince! Had Aswatthaman more than marked the birds, When, lo! there fell out of the velvet night, Silent and terrible, an eagle-owl, With wide, soft, deadly, dusky wings, and eyes Flame-coloured, and long claws, and dreadful beak; Like a winged sprite, or great Garood himself; Offspring of Bharata! it lighted there Upon the banian's bough; hooted, but low, The fury smothering in its throat;—then fell With murderous beak and claws upon those crows, Rending the wings from this, the legs from that, From some the heads, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... sprite{6} or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... unlike as can be to the Ariel in THE TEMPEST. No other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with a sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad-cap sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads—'Lord, what fools these mortals be!' Ariel cleaves the air, and executes his mission with the zeal of a winged messenger; Puck is borne along on his fairy errand like the light and glittering ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... imagining the impossible, it is not worth while to be scrupulous about details. I am not the Grand Bashaw; and when I pronounced them fit for his harem, I merely meant a compliment to their superlative beauty. That Floracita is a mischievous little sprite. Did you ever see anything more roguish than her expression while she was singing 'Petit blanc, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... of campers passing through the valley to settle north on the Caymus ranchos, this little sprite must be one of their children who has strayed ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison
... Thus while the man is in this scare, Death doth still at him lay; Live, die, sink, swim, fall foul or fair,[6] Death still holds on his way. 37. Still pulling of him from his place, Full sore against his mind; Death like a sprite stares in his face, And doth with links him bind. 38. And carries him into his den, In darkness there to lie, Among the swarms of wicked men In grief eternally. 39. For only he that God doth fear Will now be counted wise: ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hurries 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
... Range; pleasant painted hamlets sprinkling it, fine mountain ridges and distant peaks looking on; Schneekoppe (SNOWfell, its head bright-white till July come) attends you, far to the right, all the way:—probably Sprite Rubezahl inhabits there; and no doubt River Elbe begins his long journey there, trickling down in little threads over yonder, intending to float navies by and by: considerations infinitely indifferent to Schwerin. 'The road,' says my Tourist, (is not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... one-fifth of an inch in diameter would not be sufficient. We never have seen any sun or stars; we have only seen the light that left them fifty minutes or years ago, more or less. Light is the aerial sprite that carries our measuring-rods across the infinite [Page 22] spaces; light spreads out the history of that far-off beginning; brings us the measure of stars a thousand times brighter than our sun; takes up into itself evidences of the very constitutional ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... be heard no more, For 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, ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... once, he now knew not what to do, but stood uncertain, devouring the beauty of the sprite in the water as greedily as he might with eyes that were not audacious, for in truth he had begun to ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... sent us, or some mischievous sprite, I know not," growled the Hebrew, "but there is no need for more than ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... Percy Blakeney guess that for the space of one second his most cherished secret hovered upon his wife's lips, one turn of the balance of Fate, one breath from the mouth of an unseen sprite, and Marguerite was ready ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... when I reach'd a winding of the stream, By hazels overarch'd, whose swollen nuts Hung in rich clusters, from his marginal bank Of yellow sand, ribb'd by receding waves, I scared the ousel, that, like elfin sprite, Amid the water-lilies lithe and green, Zig-zagg'd from stone to stone; and, turning round The sudden jut, reveal'd before me stood, Silent, within that solitary place— In that green solitude so calm ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... black wings, one by one, Cut the blue wave that o'er them breaks in liquid pearls? Is it some hovering sprite with whistling scream that hurls Down to the deep from yon old tower ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... never wert"; "like a cloud of fire"; "like an unbodied joy"; "like a star of heaven"; "like a poet hidden in the light of thought"; "like a highborn maiden in a palace tower"; "like a glowworm golden"; "like a rose embowered"; "sprite and bird"; "thou scorner of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... busy and feminine sprite, tortured the Lady Frances with extraordinary perseverance; and, in the end, it suddenly occurred to her that Barbara might know or conjecture something about the matter: accordingly, at night, she dismissed her own women, under some pretext or other, to their ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... happiness is in a mood rather than in a moment. How eagerly we prepare for and pursue the fickle sprite, only to find our preparations and chase giving nothing but dullness, fatigue, and ennui. But then how often without exertion or warning, the sprite is upon us, and tinges the whole atmosphere. So it was at this moment, with two of the four. The coffee might have ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... is edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, Whose screams forbode that wreck ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... lethargy of kindness was creeping over him. He didn't want to be at enmity with anybody, least of all with this dainty sprite of a woman with the cornflower eyes and the flaxen hair. He no longer wondered that three men in succession, weary of the mud of fighting, had come to her for rest. He could even comprehend Adair's treachery, if it had gone so far as treachery. Adair had found his wife fretful—she ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... time he was prancing round his discovery, saying, "I'm one, too—so am I—dagont, does yer hear? dagont!" which so alarmed the boy that he picked up his marble and fled, Tommy, of course, after him. Alas! he must have been some mischievous sprite, for he lured his pursuer back into London and then vanished, and Tommy, searching in vain for the enchanted street, found his ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... this world, my restless sprite; Turn, turn thy thoughts to Heaven; There must thou soon direct thy flight If errors ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, Whose screams forebode that ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... sprite: 'Tis the middle wane of night, His task is hard, his way is far, But he must do his errand right Ere dawning mounts her beamy car, And rolls her chariot wheels of light; And vain are the spells of fairy-land, He must work with ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... could hardly inaugurate a year of promised activity more auspiciously than it has by the sterling issue of its president's Sprite. It is just about everything that one could ask for in amateur journalism. The modest grey of the cover, the excellence of the paper stock, the flawlessness of the typography, the exquisite taste with which the component parts ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Sprang from the bosom of the sea, And every mangled sprite returned In sadness to her ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for he owed him a grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Sycorax. This Caliban, Prospero found in the woods, a strange misshapen thing, far less ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a mist, a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared: As if it dodged a water-sprite, 155 It plunged and tacked ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a boy, not six years old, A sprite of birth and lineage high: His birth I did myself behold, His caste is in ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... object at the Rink was a tall young man, in all the agonies of a debut on skates, and a bewitching little attendant sprite shooting before and around him, occasionally righting him with a fairy touch when he evinced too wild a desire to dash his brains ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... sprite from the rug, and stopped her mouth with—no, it wasn't with his hand. And I'd rather ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Heine's humor is never persistent, it never flows on long in easy gayety and drollery; where it is not swelled by the tide of poetic feeling, it is continually dashing down the precipice of a witticism. It is not broad and unctuous; it is aerial and sprite-like, a momentary resting-place between his poetry and his wit. In the "Reisebilder" he runs through the whole gamut of his powers, and gives us every hue of thought, from the wildly droll and fantastic to the sombre and the terrible. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... we have seen, the telephone as Bell invented it, was merely a brilliant beginning in the development of the art of telephony. It was an elfin birth—an elusive and delicate sprite that had to be nurtured into maturity. It was like a soul, for which a body had to be created; and no one knew how to make such a body. Had it been born in some less energetic country, it might have remained feeble and undeveloped; but not ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... little more than half smoked. We were crossing the Calendaro, a sluggish stream which carefully collects all the waters of this region only to lose them again in a swamp not far distant; and it was positively as if some impish sprite had leapt out of those noisome waves, boarded the train, and flung himself into me, after the fashion of the "Horla" in ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... account of the yech or yâch of Kashmîr see Ind. Ant. vol. xi. pp. 260-261 and footnotes. Shortly, it is a humorous though powerful sprite in the shape of an animal smaller than a cat, of a dark colour, with a white cap on its head. The feet are so small as to be almost invisible. When in this shape it has a peculiar cry—chot, chot, chû-û-ot, chot. All this probably refers to some night animal ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... 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
... street he takes delight,— In the street from morn till night: Don't I tell the story right, Rowdy-dowdy, noisy sprite? ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... 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 ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... A sprite of a child entered; a perfect sunbeam irradiating the whole room. If, under the confidence induced by the vision I had had of him on his knees the night before, any suspicion remained in my mind of his being Gwendolen Ocumpaugh ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... constructed in the Rotunda. They overpowered us—we dared not stay to see the fireworks, 'in the midst of which Signora Rossini was to make her terrific ascent and descent on a rope three hundred feet high.' She might have been the sprite of Madame Saqui; {171} in fact, the 'Vauxhall Papers,' published in the gardens, put forth a legend which favours such a dreadful supposition. We refer our readers to them—they are ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... talked seriously to the sprite, and told him how impolite he had been, and arranged a plan for his schooling in botany, diplomacy, music, psychology, ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... many-sided nature!" she suddenly exclaimed. "It was a wicked sprite made me blow that kiss. Prissie, my dear, I am cold: race ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... arch sprite Adventure need to beckon twice to Rudolf Steiner, his true follower. But twice it had been done, and the quest ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... used to sit down in the pit And see you flit like elf or fairy Across the stage, and I'll engage No moonbeam sprite were half so airy. Lo! everywhere about me there Were rivals reeking with pomatum, And if perchance they caught a glance In song or dance, how did I ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... and if I throw thee, 'twill be booty and booty enough for me!" Rejoined the damsel, "I am content herewith!" and Sharrkan was astounded at her words and said, "And by the truth of the Apostle (whom Allah bless and keep!) I too am content on the other part!" Then said she, "Swear to me by Him who sprite in body dight and dealt laws to rule man kind aright, that thou wilt not offer me aught of violence save by way of wrestling; else mayst thou die without the pale of Al- Islam." Sharrkan replied, "By Allah! were a Kazi to swear me, even though he were a Kazi of the Kazis,[FN171] he would not impose ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 words ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... nostrils are "touched up" by an artist. Their hair is dressed by another artist, and every defect of face and figure is overcome as far as is possible. Thus adorned, the dull and jaded girl of the morning becomes, under the magical influence of the footlights, a dazzling sprite, and the object of the admiration of the half-grown boys and brainless men who crowd the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... match would never have taken place but for opposition or interference. Parents are mostly to be blamed for these elopements. Their children marry partly out of sprite and to be contrary. Their very natures tell them that this interference is unjust—as it really is—and this excites combativeness, firmness, and self-esteem, in combination with the social faculties, to powerful and even blind resistance—which ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... And the fine invisible sprite which dwells In cups and discs, in blossoms and bells, Fleeter than Ariel's wing hath flown Beyond this cloudy and frozen zone, To the summer land of the South, Beyond those rugged sentinels Which winter seta in the snow-capped hills, From ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... me in the forest the other day when I was-shouting "Ho! Ho!" "Ah," said he, "you forest sprite with goat's feet!" To-morrow after dinner, all right? (Walks away, sedately at first, but then with a sort ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... alarmed by the violence which he threw into his words. At the same time, she was indignant. And yet a mischievous sprite within her led her on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... two great chiefs die, Their last breaths like the sigh Of the zephyr-sprite that wantons on the rosy lips of morn; No envy-poisoned darts, No rancour, in their hearts, To unfit them for their ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... region with Orga and Frolich; but the girls found plenty of people to tell them what they could not learn from Erica. Besides what everybody knows who lives in the rural districts of Norway,—about Nipen, the spirit that is always so busy after everybody's affairs,—about the Water-sprite, an acquaintance of every one who lives beside a river or lake,—and about the Mountain-Demon, familiar to all who lived so near Sulitelma; besides these common spirits, the girls used to hear of a multitude of others from old ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... with this litle queane, that hath at me such spite, Saue you from hir maister, it is a very sprite. ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall
... 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 ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... be your married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... that pale blue flame dost know? Canst tell where it comes from, or where it will go? Is it the soul, released from clay, Over the earth that takes its way, And tarries a moment in mirth and glee Where the corse it hath quitted interred shall be? Or is it the trick of some fanciful sprite, That taketh in mortal mischance delight, And marketh the road the coffin shall go, And the spot where the dead shall be soon laid low? Ask him who can answer these questions aright; I know not the cause of that ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the young man walked beside the woodland sprite, with his goods and chattels thrown across his shoulders, and found himself falling—yes, tumbling—headlong in love. Such an airy, fairy, exquisite piece of humanity it had never ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... intoned, "fra' wurricoos and evil speerits, and fra' a' ferly things that wheep and gang bump in the nicht, Guid Lord deliver us!" And that incantation, I feel sure, cleared the air for both my own sprite-threatened offspring and for the simple-minded Olie himself, although Dinky-Dunk explained that my Scotch was ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... it is the time of night, That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... this little sprite, "fetch me the flower called Love-in-idleness. The juice of that little purple flower laid on the eyes of those who sleep will make them, when they wake, to love the first thing they see. I will put some of ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... poor, but with something about him that led us to suspect that he was a chief. We found, upon inquiry, that it was Seattle, the old chief for whom the town was named, and the head of all the tribes on the Sound. He had with him a little brown sprite, that seemed an embodiment of the wind,—such a swift, elastic little creature,—his great-grandson, with no clothes about him, though it was a cold November day. To him, motion seemed as natural ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... imp and sprite! Elf of eve! and starry fay! Ye that love the moon's soft light, Hither—hither wend your way; Twine ye in a jocund ring; Sing and trip it merrily, Hand to hand and wing to wing, Round ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... listened, a beautiful brown sprite of the rustling pine wood about her, a great flood of color crept suddenly from the brown full throat to the line of her hair, and the scarlet that lingered in her cheeks was wilder than the red ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... warm up to her," contradicted Mademoiselle Eloise, a pale, light-haired sprite, who had arrived late and was making undignified efforts to get out of her clothes by way of her head. She was Polly's understudy and next in line for the star ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... sprite, but a haggard transgression that comes staggering down under a mantle of curses through many centuries. All nations, barbarous and civilized, have been addicted to it. Before 1838, the French government received revenue from gaming houses. In ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... young ladies and their lovers were the ghost. Mrs. Wesley then fell back on the theory of rats, and employed a man to blow a horn as a remedy against these vermin. But this measure only aroused the emulation of the sprite, whom Emily ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... cried cheerily. 'I bring monsieur his coffee.' And her announcement was followed by a fragrance—the softly-sung response of the coffee-sprite. Her tray, with its pretty freight of silver and linen, primrose butter, and gently-browned pain-de-gruau, she set down on the table at my elbow; then she crossed the room and drew back the window-curtains, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... could be said of him, had no Influence upon him, to make him doubt of the Matter; and he dreamt of nothing but Spectres and Devils: The very Habit of his Mind was got into his Face, that he was so pale, and meagre and dejected, that you would say he was rather a Sprite than a Man: And in short, he was not far from being stark mad, and would have been so, had it not been ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... elder brother, my sage adviser and stay in council, shoulder-comrade in stress of fight when warriors clashed and we warded our heads, hewed the helm-boars; hero famed should be every earl as Aeschere was! But here in Heorot a hand hath slain him of wandering death-sprite. I wot not whither, {20a} proud of the prey, her path she took, fain of her fill. The feud she avenged that yesternight, unyieldingly, Grendel in grimmest grasp thou killedst, — seeing how long these liegemen mine he ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... eerie tremor; for the mist of a memory came with it; nothing tangible, nothing definite, but something very far away and shadowy, yet just poignant enough to give him a queer feeling that he was really keeping an appointment here. Was it with some water-sprite that would rise from the river? Was it with a dryad of the sycamores? He knew too well that he might expect strange fancies to get hold of him this morning, and, as this one grew uncannily stronger, he moved his head briskly as if to shake it off. The result surprised him; the fancy remained, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... shapes as Prospero's busy sprite. I was once waiting for a train in a small Missouri town, where everybody turns out to "see the keers come in." A big, blustering fellow, well filled with booze, was making himself generally obnoxious, and the village constable approached him kindly and tried to quiet him. Instead of subsiding, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the winds were hushed and the hour was dread With the walking ghosts of the silent dead. I heard the voice of the Water-Fairy;[28] I saw her form in the moon-lit mist, As she sat on a stone with her burden weary, By the foaming eddies of amethyst. And robed in her mantle of mist the sprite Her low wail poured on the silent night. Then the spirit spake, and the floods were still— They hushed and listened to what she said, And hushed was the plaint of the whippowil In the silver-birches above her head: ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... yet asks my sprite, Part we to meet? Ah! is it so? Mans fancy-made Omniscience knows, who made Omniscience nought ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... crocean and amethystine In their pristine Lustre linger on its coat. Therefore must my song-bower lone be, That my tone be Fresh with dewy pain alway; She, who scorns my dearest care ta'en, An uncertain Shadow of the sprite of May. And is my song sweet, as they say? Tis sweet for one whose voice has no reply, Save silence's sad cry: And are its plumes a burning bright array? They burn for an unincarnated eye A bubble, charioteered ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... it on every hand, leaving it lying in a pool of amber sunshine. The yellow trees were mirrored in the placid stream, with now and then a leaf falling on the water, mayhap to drift away and be used, as Uncle Blair suggested, by some adventurous wood sprite who had it in mind to fare forth to some far-off, legendary region where all the ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Suddenly this pretty, mischievous sprite was left fatherless; Mr. Earnshaw died quietly, sitting in his chair by the fireside one October evening. Mr. Hindley, now a young man of twenty, came home to the funeral, to the great astonishment of the household bringing a wife ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... mother walked alongside, though from time to time the little sprite would insist on taking Phil's hand; or it might be that of stout Lub. She had made him promise he would send her his picture when he got home; and Lub always grinned when X-Ray Tyson or Ethan tried to joke him ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... Common Sense! Seen seldom by us mortals dense, Come, sprite, inform, inhabit me And teach ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... inclinations he had achieved this disastrous result. If he had tried to do evil instead of good, he could hardly have wrought more irreparable mischief—and with the thought, pity, which had led him astray, winged off, like an ironic sprite, and left his heart empty ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... I tried hard to be my own old self, and could not but hope that even my sharp-eyed sister was blinded. But no sooner had I entered my room for the night, no sooner had I thrown myself into my deep-cushioned arm-chair, than this lively sprite entered, on her way to bed. She seated herself on the trunk close by me, laid her hand upon my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... rise twenty-five?" cried Erma. She was running about excitedly like a water-sprite. Her red sweater gleamed in the sullen gray light. The rain was trickling from her Tam-o-Shanter; but she was oblivious of all, save ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... as with a fine pencil the outlines of her noble forehead, sweet mouth, and rounded chin. It touched the scarlet of her bodice, and brightened the quaint old silver clasps she wore at her waist and throat, till she seemed no longer an earthly being, but more like some fair wondering sprite from the legendary Norse kingdom of Alfheim, the "abode of ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... stream goes laughing, fringed with bulrushes and beds of calamus and fragrant mint, a narrow stream that runs chuckling through the stiff sod and spreads dimpling over the road on a bed of white sand, for all the world like a dodging sprite of the wood who laughs ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... played was indeed wonderful. This was not for the delight of children: no happy sprite with dancing feet could maintain this measure. It was music for the most advanced, enlightened intelligence,—for the soul that music had quickened to far depths,—for the heart that had suffered, triumphed, and gained the kingdom of calm,—for a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... old man 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 passed ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... The young man looked toward the top of the hill. "A wonderful spring," he thought. "Never have the trees flowered so blood-red and bright, nor the brook sung so merrily, nor the cuckoo called so near. 'T would be no surprise to see the wood-sprite herself come out from ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... Stood the baby boy—the pride and joy Of the man who had broken her heart. Past swooning women and shouting men She fled like a flash of light; With her slender arm she gathered from harm The form of the laughing sprite. ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... what was this sprite, this Brownie? What was she doing in his father's house? Were materialized ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... this Lightning-Bug, so is Buffalo Bill. When Cathy first arrived—it was in the forenoon— Buffalo Bill was away, carrying orders to Major Fuller, at Five Forks, up in the Clayton Hills. At mid-afternoon I was at my desk, trying to work, and this sprite had been making it impossible for half an hour. At last ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... a time there was a wicked sprite, indeed he was the most mischievous of all sprites. One day he was in a very good humor, for he had made a mirror with the power of causing all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected therein, to look poor and mean; but that ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... here? Come, my dearest, my beauty, be sensible! The blood of a Nixey runs in your veins. Oh, won't you let yourself be one? Give your nature the reins for once in your life; fall head over ears in love with some other water sprite and plunge down head first into a deep pool, so that the Herr Professor and all of us may have our hands ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... 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 a child, and few ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 was That he should want ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... 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 her ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... bustle in the outer room—rapid voices and laughing questions—then the door is suddenly thrown open and in steps a young Aurora, habited in a fur-trimmed cloak, with a jaunty black velvet cap and snowy feather set upon her dark clustering curls. What sprite is this, whose eyes flash and sparkle with a thousand happy thoughts, whose dimples and rosy lips and white teeth make so charming a picture? "My dear Anna," says Susan, starting up, and there's a shower of kisses. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... laughingly. The soft yellow hair was blown about her like a cloud, and the great bow under her chin gave her a coquettish air. What a changeful little sprite she was! ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... there was an eager face that always brightened when I came, light feet that flew to welcome me, and hands that loved to minister to every want of mine. Even when I sat engrossed among my books, there was a pleasant consciousness that I was the possessor of a household sprite whom a look could summon and a gesture banish. I loved her as I loved a picture or a flower,—a little better than my horse and hound,—but far less than I loved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of Tiverton is a village called Sampford Peverell, which in the early part of the nineteenth century suddenly sprang into notice through the strange proceedings of a mysterious spirit, known as the Sampford Ghost. This 'goblin sprite,' as one account calls it, declared itself in a manner well known to psychical researchers, by violent knockings, and by causing a sword, a heavy book, and an iron candlestick to fly about the room. Two maid-servants received heavy blows while they were in bed, and there were ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... like some woodland sprite. She is bubbling over with fun, and is scarcely still a minute. Her spaniel is a gay playfellow,—a beautiful creature, with long silky hair and drooping ears. He is intelligent, too, and devoted ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... fallen solemn, "haven't time. I'm going to take Marsh and the SPRITE and go to town. Old Heinzman," he added as an afterthought, "is stringing booms across ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... blackguard sprite, Condemn'd to drudgery in the night; Thou hast no work to do in the house, Nor ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... thing to do, Soa he lukt raand until he browt His choice daan between two. One wor a big, fine, strappin lass, Her name wor Sarah Ann, Her height an weight, few could surpass, Shoo'r fit for onny man. An t'other wor a little sprite, Wi' lots o' bonny ways, An little funny antics, like A kitten when it plays. An which to tak he could'nt tell, He rayther liked 'em booath; But if he could ha pleased hissen, To wed one he'd be looath. A wife he thowt ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... happy elf! (But stop,—first let me kiss away that tear)— Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite! With spirits feather-light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin— (Good Heavens! the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... a single stone, To the vulgar eye no stone of price: Whisper the right word, that alone— Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice. And lo, you are lord (says an Eastern scroll) Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole Through the power in ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... special affection for poor Sprite, the pony which threw her,—special, I mean, since the accident,—regarding him as in some sense the angel which had driven her out of paradise into a better world. If ever he got loose, and Connie was anywhere ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... ills, Duns and their bills, Bid me to flee. Come with the dawn, Blue-devil sprite, Leave us to-night, ...
— Christmas Sunshine • Various
... we are? The sprite of a star, I lure thee above where the destinies bar My plumes their full play Till a ruddier ray Than my pale one announce there is withering away Some... Scatter the vision forever! And now, As of old, I am ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... 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
... For saucy sprite, and noble dame, And many a dainty maid of them Will greet me in your mirror frame, And share ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... by a sympathetic, effusive American who had clapped him on the back, and who had said, "Oh, never fear—you will speak well!" he would have said nothing. The shy sprite in his own eyes would have read in his neighbor's eyes the dreadful truth that his sympathetic neighbor would have indubitably betrayed—a fear that he would not do well. The phlegmatic and stony Englishman neither ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... potent wand doth Sorrow wield; What spell so strong as guilty Fear! Repentance is a tender Sprite; If aught on earth have heavenly might, 'Tis lodged ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... superior to that of Sarasate. But come and judge for yourself,—if you have never heard him, it will be a sort of musical revelation to you,—he is not so much a violinist, as a human violin played by some invisible sprite of song. London listens to him, but doesn't know quite what to make of him,—he is a riddle that only poets can read. If we start now, we shall be just in time,—I have two stalls. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and her mouth-dews sweeter than honey and more 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 in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... to suffuse him, choke him, rob him of his senses; he wanted to cry out. Her name was Chiquita. He repeated it over and over in time to his steps. Was there ever such a beautiful name? Was there ever such a ravishing little wood-sprite? And her sweet, hesitating accent that rang in his ears! How could human tongue make such caressing music of the harshest language on the globe? She had called him "Senor Antonio," and invited him to come again to-morrow. Would he come? ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... Offering in fealty thy sweet simple songs To the abode of man? Hath the rude wind Chilled thy sweet woodland home, now quite despoiled Of all its summer greenery, and swept The bright, close, sheltering bowers, where merrily Rang out thy notes—as of a haunting sprite, There domiciled—the long blue summer through? Moulders untenanted thy trim-built nest, And do the unpropitious fates deny Food for thy little wants, and Penury, With tiny grip, drive thee to dubious walls,— Though terrors flutter at thy panting heart,— To stay the pangs which must be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... sail more willing bent to shore, Never tired pilgrim's limbs affected slumber more, Than my wearied sprite now longs to fly out of my troubled breast. O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... dreaming, unconscious of time, forgetful of the companions of her days, intoxicated by the moonlight until her blood raced madly through her veins and she was filled with an intense desire to go out and dance in the garden and flit in and out among the trees like a moon sprite. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... hunted! They climbed trees to peep into squirrel-holes and birds'-nests; they chased bees and butterflies to ask for news of the elves; they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... northern superstition; or the Shield-maidens, the "mighty women" who, an old rime tells us, "wrought on the battle-field their toil and hurled the thrilling javelins." Nearer to the popular fancy lay deities of wood and fell, or hero-gods of legend and song; Nicor, the water-sprite who survives in our nixies and "Old Nick"; Weland, the forger of weighty shields and sharp-biting swords, who found a later home in the "Weyland's smithy" of Berkshire; AEgil, the hero-archer, whose ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... glad to hear so good an account of your activity and interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in the flesh. Please remember me to your wife and to the four-year-old sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher matters. Do you know where the road crosses the burn under Glencorse Church? Go there, and say a prayer for me: moriturus ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... cuckoo! O viewless sprite, Your song enchants the sighing South, It wooes the wild-flower to the light, And curls the smile round ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... she went, silent and diligent, giving the grace of willingness to every humble or distasteful task the day had brought her; but some malignant sprite seemed to have taken possession of her kingdom, for rebellion broke out everywhere. The kettles would boil over most obstreperously,—the mutton refused to cook with the meek alacrity to be expected from the nature of a sheep,—the stove, with unnecessary warmth of temper, would glow ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... the Eden of which the sacred legends of the Semites tell, so in the folk-thought does some evil sprite or phantom ever and anon intrude itself in the Paradise of childhood and seek ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... no longer Can I bear him, I will snare him, Knavish sprite! Ah, my terror waxes stronger! What a look! ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp |
