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Rapt   Listen
verb
Rapt  v.  Imp. & p. p. of Rap, to snatch away.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rapt" Quotes from Famous Books



... divorced; we may be separated, we may be estranged, but we are still man and wife!'" Tears came to Julia's eyes, she shook her head as if to shake them away. "I've hungered for you, Jim, until it seemed as if I must go mad!" she went on, looking far beyond him now, and speaking in a low, rapt voice as if to herself. "I've felt," she said, "as if I'd die for just one more kiss from you, die just to have you take my big coat off once more, and catch me in your arms, as you used to do when we came back from dinner or the theatre! But one can't go on suffering ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... themselves in the other room, where Beethoven was extemporizing. This he kept up for nearly an hour, when, suddenly coming to a realization of the circumstances, and looking around, he saw the entire company listening in rapt attention. He at once got up from the instrument and hastily left the room, either through anger or embarrassment. Such was his haste that he ran against a table containing fine porcelain bric-a-brac, which, of course, was shattered. The Count, with easy good nature, made some reassuring ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... in Greek last year, something in a funeral oration that a fellow in Athens made on the men who died in the Peloponnesian War. 'Such was the end of these men,'" he quoted slowly, pausing now and then for a word while his father looked wonderingly upon his rapt fervor, "'and they were worthy of Athens. The living need not desire to have a more heroic spirit. I would have you fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the love of her; and, when you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... truculence. At any rate she was not half alive; she was alive in every particle of herself. She gave off antipathies as a liquid gives off vapour. Moods passed across her intent face like a wind over a field. Apparently she was so rapt as to be unaware that her sunshade was not screening her. Sadness prevailed among ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... sacred soul!—none holds thee now; No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou Art free and happy in the lands unnamed, About whose gates, with weary wings and maimed, Thou most wert wont to linger, entering there A moment, and returning rapt, with fair Tidings that men or heeded not or blamed; And they would smile and wonder, seeing where Thou stood'st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind, Dreamily murmuring a ballad air, Caught from the Valois peasants; dost thou find Old prophecies ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... pets of aristocratic circles,—those who were conventionally favored, like Sydney Smith; or those who gave banquets to people of fashion, like Lord Lansdowne. These were the people he loved best to associate with, who listened to his rhetoric with rapt admiration, who did not pique his vanity, and who had something to give to him,—position ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... week all the female part of my grandmother's household, as I have before remarked, were at a height above any ordinary state of mind; they moved about the house rapt in a species of prophetic frenzy. It seemed to be considered a necessary feature of such festivals that everybody should be in a hurry, and everything in the house should be turned bottom upwards with enthusiasm—so at least we children understood ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... this comment, at least ONE of them, were quite oblivious. "I trust," said Carmen, timidly, when they had for the fourth time regarded in rapt admiration an abominable something by some Dutch wood-chopper, "I trust I am not keeping you from your great friends:"—her pretty eyelids were cast down in tremulous distress:—"I should never forgive myself. Perhaps it is ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... us all about it, Jerry, will you?' urged Alick, to whom the topic of the North Pole expedition was always attractive; and he threw himself back on the mossy ground to listen in rapt attention. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell

... not hear. Silent and rapt he sat in his old Shaker rocking-chair gazing steadily at the great success of his life, that was moving ceaselessly before his eyes, where motionless failure had sat mocking him but a few minutes ago; and as the ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford

... iv), in speaking of prophetic visions, says that "the wise theologian calls that vision divine which is effected by images of things lacking a bodily form through the seer being rapt in divine things." And these images illumined by the Divine light have more of the nature of a mirror than the Divine essence: since in a mirror images are formed from other things, and this cannot be said of God. Yet the prophet's ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... all women are By love's white purging fire which leaves no scar Where all was soiled and seamed before the torch Of Eros toucht the heart, and the keen scorch Lickt up the foul misuse of vase so fair As woman's body, Helen flusht and fair Leaned from the wall a fire-hued seraph's face And in one rapt long look gave and took Grace. Deep in her eyes he saw the light divine, Quick in him ran fierce joy of it like wine: Light unto light made answer, as a flag Answers when men tell tidings from one crag Unto another, and from ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... her young body glowed In sunny shallows, splashing them to spray; But when on rippled, silver sand she lay, And over her the little green waves flowed, Coldly translucent and moon-coloured showed Her frail young beauty, as if rapt away From all the light and laughter of the day To ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... Temple o'er every other fane divine! Dark Santa Croce, in whose dust recline Their mouldering relics whose immortal wreath. Blooms on, unfaded by Time's withering breath, In these proud ashes what a prize is thine! Sure it is holy ground I tread upon; Nor do I breathe unconsecrated air, As, rapt, I gaze on each undying name. These monuments are fragments of the throne Once reared by genius on this spot so fair, When Florence was the seat of arts ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... curtain across the doorway, and as I passed in my rubber-soled shoes I caught a glimpse through a rent in the fabric. Three young chaps, the second-cabin steward and the two apprentices, were sitting on the settee, their eyes rapt, their mouths open. The Third Mate, an officer, of all the people in the world, was leaning against the wash-stand, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed in the same attentive way. I moved a little and saw my brother on the drawer-tops, smoking a cigarette, ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... harmony? In what way do they congregate? In what order do they address each other? Are the voices of all the deities free and equal? Is plodding Themis from the Home Department, or Ceres from the Colonies, heard with as rapt attention as powerful Pallas of the Foreign Office, the goddess that is never seen without her lance and helmet? Does our Whitehall Mars make eyes there at bright young Venus of the Privy Seal, disgusting that ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... in his swinging stride. For a face, rapt in its intense earnestness, broke in upon his gnawing loneliness. A lovely vision, a ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... hearing a moan, I turned to see my companion stirring in uneasy slumber, his haggard features contorted as by some spasm, whereupon I touched him to wakefulness, bidding him see if we had aught aboard to eat or drink; but he crouched motionless as one rapt in an ecstasy, staring eager-eyed from cloudless heaven to sapphire sea and round about upon the glory of the dawn and fell suddenly a-laughing as from pure joy and as suddenly hid his ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... so bitterly when he did not come, that still she was dazed. Still she was gnawed as by a neuralgia, tormented by his potential absence from her. She had awaited him in a faint delirium of nervous torture. As she stood bearing herself pensively, the rapt look on her face, that seemed spiritual, like the angels, but which came from torture, gave her a certain poignancy that tore his heart with pity. He saw her bowed head, her rapt face, the face of an almost demoniacal ecstatic. Feeling him looking, she lifted her face and sought his eyes, her ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... distinguished poet employed salaried musicians, the joglars (jongleurs), who wandered from court to court, singing their masters' new songs. Others again, the comtaires, related romances of love and adventure, gathering round them a rapt throng of lords and ladies. Courtly manners and lofty principles quickly became the recognised ideal; the man who was satisfied with the pleasures of the senses was held in contempt; the greatest reproach was "vilania"; in the "Yvain" of the French epic poet Chrestien de Troyes, this universal ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... full of peril for him. There was but one topic of interest to her. Rome and Greece were dull. What cared she about the Romans? Dic was not a Roman. Conversation upon books wearied her, and subjects that a few months ago held her rapt attention, now threw her into revery. I am sorry to say she was a silly, love-lorn young woman, and not in the least entitled to the respect of strong-minded persons. I would not advise you, my dear young girl, to assume Rita's faults; but if you should do so, many a good, though ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... not even a bowing acquaintance with any of his favourite plays, Augier, Dumas, Victor Hugo, or anything else, he has been reading aloud to us in the garden, running on from scene to scene and speech to speech, translating as he went—she in rapt attention, and he gesticulating and spouting, and, except for an occasional queer rendering that made us laugh, getting on capitally with his English. She was enchanted; the novelty and the excitement of it absorbed her; and every now and then she would stop Paul with a little imperious ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... with it the story of the building and the hungry little brood it sheltered. Tales of animals, fairies and real folk, busy in simple and familiar occupations hold him entranced, and he will watch with rapt attention the performance of most common tasks. It is noteworthy that his interest in all this is not so much in the end to be accomplished, as in the activity itself. Even in his play, the preparations are often more delightful and satisfying than ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux

... sat at work, absorbed in one of these reveries, she was so far "rapt into future times," that, without perceiving that any body was present, she began to speak her thoughts, and said aloud to herself, "As if my son could ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... Trenor fixed a rapt eye upon her. "You know they say he has eight hundred thousand a year—and spends nothing, except on some rubbishy old books. And his mother has heart-disease and will leave him a lot more. OH, LILY, DO GO SLOWLY," her ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... In rapt attention I watched the delicate shell-pink change to a deeper hue of orange, and then our twilight waned a little and turned a sombre grey. Presently the corona glowed a rich maroon, gradually dying to a luminous purple, which slowly deepened and darkened, and finally ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... can hardly call it speech, so murmurous, yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy breath-sounds at the languid lips. This state was accompanied by an intense contraction of the pupils, absence of the knee-jerk, considerable rigor, and a rapt and arrant expression. I got into the habit of sitting long hours at her bed-side, quite fascinated by her, trying to catch the import of that opiate and visionary language which came puffing and fluttering in ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... this poem is of strong, solemn, and varied music; and it involves in its construction a principle after which perhaps the great composers most work,—namely, spiritual auricular analogy. At first it would seem to defy analysis, so rapt is it, and so indirect. No reference whatever is made to the mere fact of Lincoln's death; the poet does not even dwell upon its unprovoked atrocity, and only occasionally is the tone that of lamentation; but, with the intuitions of the grand art, which is the ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... uncontrollable sobs, Tibble Steelman rose and found him crouching rather than kneeling before the figure of an emaciated hermit, who was greeting the summons of the King of Terrors, with crucifix pressed to his breast, rapt countenance and outstretched arms, seeing only the Angel who hovered above. After some minutes of bitter weeping, which choked his utterance, Ambrose, feeling a friendly hand on his shoulder, exclaimed in a voice broken by sobs, "Oh, tell me, where ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the saints of old When highest rapt and favoured most, Still seeking precious things untold, Not ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... Ransom reacxeti. Rant paroli sensence. Ranunculus ranunkolo. Rap frapeti. Rap frapo, frapeto. Rapacious rabema. Rapacity rabemeco. Rape forrabo. Rapid rapida. Rapidity rapideco. Rapidly rapide. Rapier rapiro. Rapine rabo. Rapt rava, entuziasma. Rapture ravo, entuziasmo. Rare (seldom) malofta. Rare (curious) kurioza. Rare antikva. Rarely malofte. Rareness malofteco. Rarity malofteco. Rarity (dainty) frandajxo. Rascal kanajlo. Rase disjxeti. Rash hazarda. Rashness hazardeco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... of the carol rapt me, As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, And the voice of my spirit tallied the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... a kind of Christianity; and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnestness with which it was believed and laid to heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain janglings about Homoiousion and Homoousion, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead! The truth of it is imbedded in portentous ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... and again she seemed rapt in dreamy contemplation of an air-vision. "The natural beauty of Sampaolo is to my thinking unparalleled. At a distance, as your ship approaches it, Sampaolo lies on the horizon like a beautiful soft cloud, all vague rose-colours ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... the road, and then he walked on beside me in silence. The sun-shot haze of a beautiful autumn day hung over the face of nature, and his eyes wandered down the long stretches of landscape, and into the depths of the distant sky, rapt by the vision that was unfolding before him. The changing phases of the town he regarded with curious interest, which often expressed itself in childish exclamations of surprise as we made our way through ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... the mound and climbs it, and will see if the man be dead Some King of the days forgotten laid there with crowned head, Or the frame of a God, it may be, that in heaven hath changed his life, Or some glorious heart beloved, God-rapt from the earthly strife: Now over the body he standeth, and seeth it shapen fair, And clad from head to foot-sole in pale grey-glittering gear, In a hauberk wrought as straitly as though to the flesh it were grown: But ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... earth's confusion fadeth Like to a dream, and leaves behind A heaven of sweetness which pervadeth My whole rapt being—heart and mind. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... abbot, who had listened in rapt wonderment to the narration. "Two years after your immurement in the cell, the food having been for some time untouched, the wall was opened, and upon the pallet was found a decayed carcase in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... from a consideration of the theory of Copernicus: it was more important, he declared, to think of the immortal soul. In the last years of his short life he sank into a torpor of superstition—ascetic, self-mortified, and rapt in a strange exaltation, like a medieval monk. Thus there is a tragic antithesis in his character—an unresolved discord which shows itself again and again in his Pensees. 'Condition de l'homme,' he notes, 'inconstance, ennui, inquietude.' It is the description of his own state. A profound ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... unfailing interest and always made a point of attending her first appearances and benefits, sitting among the musicians in the orchestra. When she prepared for the character of Lady Macbeth he helped her plan the costumes and sat rapt and breathless during her first performance. This was generally considered her grandest effort, and she used herself to say that after playing it thirty years she never read over the part without discovering in it something new. In this character she bade farewell to her ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... from the wintry deep! With cornucopian Fire thou giv'st me strength, Caresses and golden hours and grace of sleep. My filial song I weave with theirs who roll Afar or close, past thy celestial face, My sister lamps that o'er the Zodiac's scroll From fane to fane in adoration pace. The rapt Equator's crimson cincture holds Me close; my emerald ocean-robes flow free, And purple soar my mountains, folds on folds, With vale and plain. My bondmaid Moon to me Reveals her marbled snow in cusp and shale— Whilst in my flinty womb the valiant strife Of Fire proclaims me thine and bans ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer

... earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen and evil tongues; In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude; yet not alone, while thou Visitest my slumbers nightly, or when morn Purples ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... was stayed by the entrance of Myra, looking rapt and strange, as if in a dream. She did not seem to notice them, but walked across to the window, and, as she went, Guest was shocked by the alteration in her aspect. It was as if she had lately risen from a bed of sickness, while that which struck him most ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... related undulations of color. The permutations and combinations of this truly chromatic scale were marvelous and magical in their infinite variety. It thrilled us with awe and wonder. But none was so rapt as Edmund himself. He gazed as if his soul were in his eyes, and finally he turned to us, with a strange look, and said, ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... like Juba on a cursed design. I could not bear To leave thee in the neighbourhood of death, But flew, in all the haste of love, to find thee; I found thee weeping, and confess this once, Am rapt with joy, to ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison

... the proud and excited father began to give him lessons, and always, too, from that day, whenever Nannerl had her lesson, Wolfgang perched on his father's knee, and listened with rapt absorption, and often when the lesson was over, he would repeat what she had played in exact imitation of her manner ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... Nor was he alone in making this bloody sacrifice. Stirred by the wild barbaric music of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns, and screaming flutes, the inferior clergy whirled about in the dance with waggling heads and streaming hair, until, rapt into a frenzy of excitement and insensible to pain, they gashed their bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowing blood. The ghastly rite probably formed part of the mourning for Attis and may ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... shall be proud of my daughter." She took Elma's disengaged hand and pressed it between her own, and the girl smiled a happy response, but Geoffrey was oblivious of her presence, his eyes fixed upon his love's face, with the rapt, adoring gaze with which a knight of old may have gazed upon the vision of the grail. His mother looked at him, and her lips quivered. Artificial and frivolous though she was, her only son was dear to her heart. Since the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... To Macbeth's brief appeal, 'Speak, if you can: what are you?' they at once reply, not by saying what they are, but by hailing him Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King hereafter. Banquo is greatly surprised that his partner should start as if in fear, and observes that he is at once 'rapt'; and he bids the Witches, if they know the future, to prophesy to him, who neither begs their favour nor fears their hate. Macbeth, looking back at a later time, remembers Banquo's daring, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... bred for dangling from the gallows-tree; To Saint who spends his holy days in rapturous hope ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... and Caper, noticing his rapt air, forbore breaking silence; while the gipsy, who knew that she was the admiration of the forestieri, stood immovable as a statue, looking steadily at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... no mercy in the girl, no more for him than for herself. The big head lay upon her breast; she caressed the gross hair of it ever so lightly. "These are tinsel oaths," she crooned, as if rapt with incurious content; "these are the old empty protestations of all you strutting poets. A word gets you what you desire! Then why do you not speak that word? Why do you not speak many words, and become again as eloquent and as magnificent ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... stout woman, and they together helped a young girl to alight. She was clad all in white. For a moment her thin, delicate figure shrank from the cutting wind. Timid, nervous, she glanced an instant at the crowd and the dark icy stream; but it was only a protest of the poor body; the face had the rapt, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... orderliness, he opened the black case and took out the violin with a care that amounted to tenderness. The first stroke of the bow bespoke the trained hand. He did not sit, but knelt in the sand with his face to the west as he played like some pagan sun-worshiper, his expression rapt, intent. Strains from the world's best music rose and fell in throbbing sweetness on the desert stillness, music which told beyond peradventure that some cataclysm in the player's life had shaken him from his rightful niche. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... And what the charm that at my Laura's kiss, Pours the diviner brightness to the cheek; Makes the heart bound more swiftly to its bliss, And bids the rushing blood the magnet seek— Out from their bounds swell nerve, and pulse, and sense, The veins in tumult would their shores o'erflow; Body to body rapt—and charmed thence, Soul drawn to soul with intermingled glow. Mighty alike to sway the flow and ebb Of the inanimate Matter, or to move The nerves that weave the Arachnean web Of Sentient Life—rules all-pervading Love! Ev'n in the Moral World, embrace and meet Emotions—Gladness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... made the heavens, the Angler oft doth see; Taking therein no little delectation, To think how strange, how wonderful they be: Framing thereof an inward contemplation To set his heart from other fancies free; And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye, His mind is rapt above the ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... always enunciated her remarks in a loud and clear voice, so that Paul Ford could not have failed to hear every word. A faint but beatific smile concealed itself roguishly about Paul Ford's mouth, and he looked with a rapt expression on an advertisement above Mrs Clayton Vernon's head, which assured him that, with a certain soap, washing-day became ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... thus expanded and thus glorified; to have our affections multiplied and magnified a thousandfold, and then girded up and strengthened by immortality to bear the beauty of God to be unveiled before us; and even so strengthened, to be rapt by it into a sublime amazement which has no similitude on earth; to be carried away by the inebriating torrents of love, and yet be firm in the most steadfast adoration; to have passionate desire, yet without ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... humorous undertones, each in turn seeming to turn over the earth of some amusing reminiscence, so rapt, that as far as regarded their perception of it, the assembly might have been nowhere. Perhaps, consequently, they became observed with all but undivided attention. My father's hand was on my shoulder, his head toward Captain DeWitt; instead ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... far To once have felt the barriers unbar, And known the moment in a rapt surprise ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones

... this young woman at the press. He had clearly seen her staring under the gas-jet at the copied letter. And yet in her fierce muscular movements, and in her bendings and straightenings, and in her delicate caressings, and in her savage scowlings and wrinklings, and in her rapt gazings, and in all her awful absorption, he had quite failed to perceive the terrible eager outpouring of a human soul, mighty, passionate, and wistful. He had kept his eyes on her slim bust and tight-girded waist that sprung suddenly ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... Cyrus). "Truely (said he) it euidently nowe appeareth, that I am endewed with two mindes: with the one I haue plaied the philosopher, with loue that vntrue Sophistre: for ther is no one minde which is good and badde, and at one time is rapt with the loue of good and euil thinges, ne yet at one instant can wil and will not together. Wherefore it is manifest, that ther be two mindes; when the good minde ruleth, it doth things that be ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... percipient faculties of the soul, than men of a more phlegmatic constitution do; and that they can draw from such intuitions of their own a sort of inspiration, or second-sight of nature, comparable to prophecy, which gives their highest poetic utterance a rapt enthusiasm—and the accuracy of this estimate need not be disputed, but, so far as Ossian is concerned, it must be considerably extended. To read Ossian as we do, from the text of Macpherson, there was another sort of insight, purely scientific, into the mysteries ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various

... crowning joy she would meet her Lord and Saviour in some secluded place, and sit listening at His feet like Mary of old. Thus, in the strong illusion of her imagination, Christ's words seemed addressed directly to her, while she looked up into His face with rapt attention. Instead of reading her Lord's familiar sayings, she seemed to listen to them as did the early disciples. After a little time she would close the Bible and go back to her hard practical life, awed yet strengthened, and with a hopeful expression, like that which must ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... ten farsakhs an hour." But in order to thoroughly appreciate this travelled and highly enlightened person's narrative, one must have been present in the smoke-permeated room, and by the nickering light of a camel-thorn fire have watched the gesticulations of the speaker and the rapt attention of the listeners; must have heard the exclamations of "Mashal-l-a-h!" escape honestly and involuntarily from the parted lips of wonder-stricken auditors as they endeavored to comprehend how such things could possibly be. And yet there ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... noon whistles began to blow, far and near; and the romancer in the sawdust-box, summoned prosaically from steep mountain passes above the clouds, paused with stubby pencil halfway from lip to knee. His eyes were shining: there was a rapt sweetness in his gaze. As he wrote, his burden had grown lighter; thoughts of Mrs. Lora Rewbush had almost left him; and in particular as he recounted (even by the chaste dash) the annoyed expressions of Mr. Wilson, the wounded detective, and the silken moustached mule-driver, he had felt ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... were gone the Kentons sat silent, Ellen with a rapt smile on her thin, flushed face, till Lottie said, "You forgot to ask him if we might BREATHE, poppa," and paced out of the room in stately scorn, followed by Boyne, who had apparently no words at the command of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... or the other, is usually on his guard against spurious blandishments and reluctant to admit the claims of new pretenders. Even in poets of the first rank he slurred over a great deal; but what he loved he dwelt on with a kind of rapt inspiration until it became his second nature, its spirit and its language fused intimately with his own. This revolutionist in politics was a jealous aristocrat in the domains of art, and this admission does not impair our earlier assertion ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... German, heavy of paunch and with a fat, red face. The third was a spectacled young Jew, poring over a huge volume which he seemed to have brought with him. He had a tremendous head of curling black hair; his clothing was shabby. There was a rapt expression upon his face; plainly nothing existed for him at that moment outside the pages ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... see how his daughter looked while dancing; the husband had evidently no such curiosity concerning his wife; and Colville went with the father, and looked at Miss Graham. She was very beautiful, and she obeyed the music as if it were her breath; her face was rapt, intense, full of an unsmiling delight, which shone in her dark eyes, glowing like low stars. Her abandon interested Colville, and then awed him; the spectacle of that young, unjaded capacity for pleasure touched him with a profound sense of loss. Suddenly Imogene ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... lodgings at the same hotel. He was worn out, and prostrated by a distressing cough which threatened pneumonia. But ever and anon his eagle eye assumed its wonted brilliancy. He was surrounded by a number of his devoted friends, who listened with rapt attention to his surpassing eloquence. A test question, indicative of the purpose of the Convention to adjourn without action, had that day been carried by a decided majority. The governor once rose from his recumbent ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... which thought it knew everybody in the place, could not tell. There was no sign of their existence on the next day. People gathered together and looked at the mischief wrought the night before, and talked everlastingly about it; but the doers of it vanished, rapt away apparently into an invisible world. On Sunday next, at one o'clock, Cowfold Square, save for a few windows not yet mended, looked just as it always looked; that is to say, not a soul was visible in it, and the pump ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... transmuting the dull tormented earth into towers, domes, and pinnacles of gleaming metal,—and weaves for every distant summit a robe of variegated light, such as the "Delectable Mountains" must have worn for the rapt gaze of weary "Christian;"—and another to plod over the same forty miles, drenched to the skin, seeing nothing but the dim, grey roots of hills, that rise you know not how, and you care not where,—with no better employment ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... incident to this first meal among the sisters, but with his voice breaking now and again with emotion, while from time to time he had to steal his handkerchief to his old eyes, Abe passed successfully through the—to him—elaborate breakfast. And Angy sat in rapt silence, but with her face shining so that her quiet was the stillness of eloquence. Once Abe startled them all by rising stealthily from the table and seizing the morning's newspaper which ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... pure a heart.' And we — we felt it, and we loved her so, We treated her as angel and as child. I never heard her speak about the past, I never heard her mention e'en a name Of any in the world. She little spake; She seemed to have rapt moments — then she grew Absent-minded, and would come and ask me To walk alone and say her Rosary Beneath the trees. She had a voice divine; And when she sang for us, in truth it seemed The very heart of song was breaking on her lips. The ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... before, lost twenty pounds of it by her fast. My last news is from a letter written the day after a twenty-five-mile ride among the mountains with a soul as free and joyous as there are freedom and joy with the birds whose songs greeted her rapt ears from every treetop. She writes of a gain of twenty-four pounds since the fast, and states that the glasses she has worn for thirteen ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... and of the doctor who set it so unskilfully that it had to be broken again and re-set; of the beautiful tourmaline crystals which he and his brother found at Mt. Mica; and of his school-days at Hebron Academy; and all with such feeling and such a relish, that for an hour we were rapt listeners. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... the voice has ceased, to record the communicated truth. Place in his hands the thunderbolt, and at his feet the eagle, and the same form would serve for Jupiter the Thunderer, except only that to the countenance of the Jewish prophet there has been imparted a rapt and inspired look, wholly beyond any that even Phidias could have fixed upon the face of Jove. He who wrought this head must have believed in the sublimities of the religion whose chief minister he has made so to speak them forth, in the countenance and in the form; ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... 'tis not with elation I dwell on Hermione's madness; The result of my rapt contemplation Is sadness, ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... the boat-swain, with a rapt expression of face, "in her gratitood, and, proud of my strength and pluck, ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs

... upon his counter. His face was rapt, and he spread his finger-tips a little, as if something within them stirred ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... of this flowing stream, and rapt in the delights of the charming garden, Orlando arrived at the palace, and entering it, found the mistress, clad in white, with a crown of gold upon her head, in the act of viewing herself in the surface of the magic sword. Orlando surprised her ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... quickly growing, tender sympathy for Marguerite Haim. The hardness in him was dissolved almost instantaneously. He saw Marguerite, who had been adamantine in the difference which separated them, as the image of pliancy, sweetness, altruism, and devotion; and he saw her lips and the rapt glance of her eyes as beautiful as in the past. What a soft, soothing, assuaging contrast with the difficult Lois, so imperious and egoistic! (An unforgettable phrase of Lois's had inhabited his mind for over a decade: "Fancy quarrelling over a man!") He had never met Marguerite since their ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... turned in her chair; her eyes were gazing, with rapt attention, toward the purple dusk by the window. She was listening. Nurse, as she had often assured her friends, "was not cursed with imagination," but now fear held her so that she could not stir nor move save that her hand trembled against the wall paper. The chatter ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... a beau!" called back Nat as the Fire Bird rolled into The Cedars and the carload of evergreens was stopped at the door. Dorothy, Tavia and Mrs. White stood in rapt surprise and admiration over the "greenstuff" that had been gathered, in spite of all the difficulties which had been encountered in ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose

... I shall thus add largely to his enjoyments. Let me flatter myself that this sweet little fellow, who is just now running about my desk, will be a man of a melting, ardent, glowing heart; and an imagination, delighted with the painter, and rapt with the poet. Let me figure him wandering out in a sweet evening, to inhale the balmy gales, and enjoy the growing luxuriance of spring; himself the while in the blooming youth of life. He looks abroad on all nature, and through nature up to nature's ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... ocean, the inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a rapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. With this inflatus, too, I prayed.... The prayer, this soul-emotion, was in itself, not for an object: it was a passion. I hid my face in the grass. I was wholly prostrated, I lost myself in the wrestle, I was rapt and carried away.... Had any shepherd accidentally seen me lying on the turf, he would only have thought I was resting a few minutes. I made no outward show. Who could have imagined the whirlwind of passion that was going on in me as I ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... rapt with pleasure and delighte I scarce thynke I am mortall; all the Joys, Wherewith heavens goodnes can inryche a man, Not onlye greete but dwell upon my sence, And whyles I see thee cannot stray from ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... equally unhealthy extreme of coarseness. She looked very pretty as, having left Ruth, she stood by Charles, passing her little pink hand over the lowest carvings, dim and worn with the heat of many generations of fires, and listened with rapt attention to his answers ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... boys gazed in rapt wonder. At last with a deep sigh, Frank broke the silence that had seemed ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... author begs leave to thank his readers for the rapt attention shown in perusing these earnest pages, and to apologize for the tears of sympathy thoughtlessly wrung from eyes unused to weep, by the graphic word-painting and fine education shown by ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... that pride may urge Thy claims to memory's grateful lore, And boast, as rapt from Lethe's surge, The Suliote and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... open, shouting, and the unchecked tears running down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, her mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a silver statue. The people about her struggled along, gazing up at her through their tears with the rapt look of men and women who believe they are seeing one who is divine; and always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk, and such as failed of that privilege touched her horse and then kissed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Thus my mind, wholly rapt, was gazing fixed, motionless, and intent, and ever with gazing grew enkindled. In that Light one becomes such that it is impossible he should ever consent to turn himself from it for other sight; because ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... other hand, the "low-hung lip" and "profound" forehead of the other, the "noticeable Man with large grey eyes," mark him out as S. T. C.; "the rapt One, of the god-like forehead," described in the 'Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg'. The description "Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy," is verified by what the poet and his wife said to Mr. Justice Coleridge ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... Carleton knew where he was he found himself deep in the science of navigation, and making a star-gazer of little Fleda. Sometimes kneeling beside him as he sat on her mattress, with her hand leaning on his shoulder, Fleda asked, listened, and looked; as engaged, as rapt, as interested, as another child would be in Robinson Crusoe, gravely drinking in knowledge with a fresh healthy taste for it that never had enough. Mr. Carleton was about as amused and as interested as she. There is a second taste of knowledge ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... to gaze in rapt silence upon the picture spread out before her. It was, indeed, a place for worship. She pointed to a hill some ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... dropped into the rhythmic intonation of the Indian orator, and his eyes were fixed upon the names that curled, lean and red, among the dry sticks of the camp-fire. Chloe gazed in fascination into the rapt face of this man of many moods. The soul of the girl caught the enthusiasm of his words, and she, too, saw the vision—saw it as she had seen it upon the wave-lapped ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... never saw anything so pretty!" she exclaimed half aloud, as, her task finished, she stood gazing in rapt delight at the result of her labors. "Oh I think it's real mean in Aunt Elsie, to say we sha'n't play with these, and to lock them up away from us. But now for the company!" and running into the closet again, she brought out ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... pictures of the future. These pictures were of married life; that is, married life as William conceived it for himself and Miss Pratt—something strikingly different from that he had observed as led by his mother and father, or their friends and relatives. In his rapt mind he beheld Miss Pratt walking beside him "through life," with her little parasol and her little dog—her exquisite face always lifted playfully toward his own (with admiration underneath the playfulness), and he heard ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... Grace had been standing among the crowd all the while, rapt, like them, her eyes fixed on Valencia, and full, too, of tears. They had been called up first by the melody itself, and then, by a chain of thought peculiar to Grace, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... full into the light. Her face, still pale, was rapt—almost holy. To him, as to Madame earlier in the day, she somehow suggested the light before a shrine. "Thank you," she said. The low, full contralto ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... Tide, When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed, The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride Were gilded o'er by his rich golden head. Their leaves and fruits, seem'd painted, but was true Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue, Rapt were my senses at ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... duties were done in the morning. Mrs. Broderick, who had had a sleepless night of pain, looked more worn and languid than usual, but she brightened up at the sight of the flowers, and poked her long nose into the heart of a rose with an air of rapt enjoyment, but ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... multitude, no one attracted so much attention or received so much praise as Jerrie. For clearness of reasoning, depth of thought, and purity of language, her essay, though a little too metaphysical, perhaps, was accounted the best, and listened to with rapt attention. And when the musical voice ceased, and the young girl, who had never looked more beautiful than she did then, with the sparkle in her eyes and the flush on her cheeks, bowed to the audience, bouquets of flowers ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... probably, on the water than on the land,—and the sea was as smooth as a small lake in summer, merely rippled. The passengers went singing on the deck, as in a parlor, till ten o'clock. We passed a vessel on her beam-ends on a rock just outside the islands, and some of us thought that she was the "rapt ship" which ran ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... eyes were fixed intently on the ceiling. His look was one of rapt inspiration. I stood and waited. "Cumberledge," he said at last, coming back to earth with a start, "I see it more plainly each day that goes. We must ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... quarters, had greeted them with a hymn. And the Christmas moon, rising high above the mountains of Gilead and Moab, had found for a short space of time an opening in the curtain of mist and had poured down its light upon the hills of Judea, making the city of Bethlehem seem to the rapt minds of the two Yorkshire dalesmen as though it had been the city of the living ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... are hints of summer in the air, A sense of restfulness, of rapt repose; And from remote sea gardens, lush and fair, Rich ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard

... of crimes. Metaphysics promised some relief, and I bewildered myself in their not inelegant labyrinth. But to the bold genius and exquisite pathos of some German novelists I hold myself indebted for my largest portion of ideal bliss; for those rapt moments, when sympathy with kindred souls transported me into better worlds, and consigned vulgar ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... the king, in the midst of the ambassador's discourse; but then, mindful of the rules of etiquette, he mastered himself, still listening, however, with rapt attention. ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... ride up and down, Mexican fashion, in front of the house, drawing rein whenever he could get a glimpse of the lady or a word with her. This never failed to annoy her, and also to strike a sudden, sharp terror into her heart. Always his appearance was most unexpected, and always accompanied by the rapt, passionate, dark gaze. Though he was a most clean-souled ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... and all to know That he is joy, awake, aglow, The tumult of the heart to hear Through pureness filtered crystal-clear, And know the pleasure sprinkled bright By simple singing of delight, Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained, Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained Without a break, without a fall, Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, Perennial, quavering up the chord Like myriad dews of sunny sward That trembling into fulness shine, And sparkle dropping ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... volume the reader follows, with rapt attention and hilarious delight, the mishaps, mortifications, confusions, and agonizing mental and physical distresses of a self-conscious, hypersensitive, appallingly bashful young man, in a succession of astounding accidents, and ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de la Paix openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion sat for hours in rapt attention while spectral apparitions in incredible raiment tottered endlessly past them on ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... her best now. There was dead silence; no one had expected such a glorious voice as this. Hugh Ingelow's rapt face showed what he felt ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... conditions may be. At the break of dawn they are afield, simply clothed, free limbed, unhampered by the tawdry harness of degenerate civilization. And as they wander through the verdure," he added with rapt enthusiasm, "plucking shy blossoms, gathering simples and herbs and vegetables for our bountiful and natural repast, they sing as they go, and every tremulous thrill of melody falls like balm on a father's heart." The overpowering sweetness of his smile ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers

... Grim, who was stretched full length on the grass and gazing skywards with a rapt expression in his eyes, "and look over there. How beautiful ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... usurp the throne of our own personal life in those early hours when the sun, the master artist, whose touch has coloured every leaf and tinted every flower, demands her adoration. Then it is, perhaps, that she turns her thoughts from all lesser companionships and, rapt in universal worship, suffers us to pass and repass as unnoticed as the idlers in the cathedral by those who kneel ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emotions of Galileo, when, first raising the newly-constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the moon. It was such another moment as that when the immortal printers ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... act as thou hast begun, we shall meet again. Know that I am the prophet Khizzer, and was sent by heaven to protect thee. Mayest thou deserve its blessings!" Having said this he embraced me in his arms, and then vanished, how I know not, from my sight. For some time I continued rapt in astonishment and wonder, which at length gave place to reverential awe and gratitude to heaven; by degrees I recovered myself, and bowed down with fervent devotion. I have endeavoured to follow the admonitions of my holy adviser. It is unnecessary to say more; you ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... zest to the discussion of aesthetic tittle-tattle over a cup of tea and a toasted bun. "Dear fellow," his friends will say of him at such a moment, "he is so etherial; and his eyes, did you observe that far-away, rapt look in them?" They will then take pleasure in persuading one another without much difficulty, that they are the fine flower ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various

... would I tell of the reception which he deigned to the fairies, and how he told them of his ancient victories over man; how he chafed at the gathering invasions of his realm; and how joyously he gloated of some great convulsion* in the northern States, which, rapt into moody reveries in those solitary woods, the fierce demon broodingly foresaw. All these fain would I narrate, but they are not of the Rhine, and my story will not brook the delay. While thus conversing with the fiend, noon had crept on, and ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a single novel, "The Last of the Mohicans," which everybody will admit to be one of the most interesting of his works,—full of rapid movement, brilliant descriptions, hair-breadth escapes, thrilling adventures,—which young persons probably read with more rapt attention than any other of his narratives. In the opening chapter we find at Fort Edward, on the head-waters of the Hudson, the two daughters of Colonel Munro, the commander of Fort William Henry, on the shores of Lake George; though why ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... before the spectacle, chanting to himself a kind of insane ritual, like a Parsee fire-worshiper making obeisance before his god. He was rapt away to some plane of mystic exaltation, to some hinterland of the soul that merged upon madness. When at length the boat crunched upon the sandy shore he got up unsteadily from the stern and pointed to the pharos ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... with such plaintive sweetness from Arthur's Seat, while Edinburgh and Musselburgh lie rapt in delight, and the mermaids come flapping up to Leith shore to hear the exquisite music? Sweeter piper Edina knows not than Aytoun, the Bard of the Cavaliers, who has given in his frank adhesion to the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of inquiry vanished, none could tell why, and was replaced by an expression of contentment. Amid the rapt attention of the mob of idlers, the magnificent green gentleman deflected himself from his direct course down the centre of the road and walked to one side of it. He came to a halt opposite to a large poster of Colman's Mustard erected ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... interest of this question, he leapt from his hammock, peering into that thing, and his fleet feet were away, running after the truth with that rapt abandonment that had characterized his hunting and football. This was clear: that there was some difference between land and sea as working-grounds for men. Shore people, like a shoemaker, did not have for themselves enough shoes from ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... dreamy gaze leveled at a point far beyond their surroundings, a point that she had never reached in all the time that she had known him. She noticed the lips just parted, the fingers loosely clenched, the whole attitude of rapt contemplation, which fell like a veil between them. She noticed everything about him; if there had been other signs of his utter alienation she would have sought them out, too, for she felt that it was only by heaping one truth upon another that ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... from my first rapt realization, for a dozen ants had lost no time in ascending my shoes, and, as if at a preconcerted signal, all simultaneously sank their jaws into my person. Thus strongly recalled to the realities of life, I realized ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe



Words linked to "Rapt" :   enraptured, ecstatic, joyous



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