|
|
|
More "Wraith" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me. It was so thick that objects a few yards away would have been concealed even without a violent wind to confuse the vision. At times Couttet, close ahead of me, was visible only in a kind of gray outline, like a wraith. On an open plain such a storm in such a temperature would have had its dangers for a traveller seeking his way. We were seeking our way, not on an open plain, but two miles and a half above sea level, in a desert of snow and ice, encompassed with precipices, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... vaguely off in the direction of the billiard-room. It was light and warm there, though the place was empty, and he decided upon a cigar as a proximate or immediate solution. He sat smoking before the fire till the tobacco's substance had half turned into a wraith of ash, and not really thinking of anything very definitely, except the question whether he should be able to sleep after he went to bed, when he heard a creeping step on the floor. He turned quickly, with a certain expectance in his nerves, and saw nothing more ghostly than Bushwick standing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Cluricaune^, troll, dwerger^, sprite, ouphe^, bad fairy, nix, nixie, pigwidgeon^, will-o'-the wisp. [Supernatural appearance] ghost, revenant, specter, apparition, spirit, shade, shadow, vision; hobglobin, goblin, orc; wraith, spook, boggart^, banshee, loup-garou [Fr.], lemures^; evil eye. merman, mermaid, merfolk^; siren; satyr, faun; manito^, manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c 503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The wraith-like figure before him was only too clearly flesh and blood, and, as he stepped forward, it moved quickly across, and stood, barring his way, on the top stone ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... portrait and placed it in the flaccid hand. The fingers closed over it. The filmiest wraith of a smile played ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to this, nor did he ask a question then about the return of Ezra. He was satisfied that what he had supposed was the boy's wraith—the disembodied spirit of the lad he had thrown into the Hoghole—was the living Ezra Longman. On his way home from the Skinner hut, Ben had planned a terrible revenge upon the student and Tessibel, but the advent of this unforeseen discovery had placed his enemies beyond ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Against the evening glow of the reflected sky for a single instant they stood out in the bright yellow of the new birch-bark, the glow of warm colour on the women's dress. Then instantaneously, in the darkness of the opposite bank, they faded wraith-like and tenuous. Like phantoms of the past they glided by, a river's width away; then vanished around the upper bend. A moment later ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... enchanting—shall I tell you exactly what she wears—and her every feature and the color of her eyes? The wraith so materializes that I can describe it as accurately as I could describe ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... 'ud draw her sperrit hack to the airth arter she wur dead it 'ud be the sound o' my crwth; but there she wur wrong as wrong could be: Romany music couldn't never touch Gorgio sperrit; 'tain't a bit likely. But it can draw her livin' mullo [wraith].' And as she spoke she began to play her crwth pizzicato and to sing the opening bars of the old Welsh incantation which I had heard on Snowdon on that ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... melodrama with a large admixture of remarkably interesting social philosophy; the intervening acts betray the poet that always underlay the dramatist in Bjornson. The crudity, again, of the melodramatic appearance of the wraith of Clara's father in the third act, contrasts strangely with the mature thoughtfulness of much of the last act and with the tender charm of what has gone before: And—strangest incongruity of all in a play so essentially "actual"—there is in the original, ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... an anguisht wraith; Ah me; ah me! (Sweet squashes, mother!) Wan hope a dolorous musing saith; (Ah me; ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... which, pinned to the clothes-line, was flapping in the breezes. Maddened by this obstruction which hung, veil-like, over her bovine lineaments, she gave a twist of her Texas horns, a tug, and the surplice was released, but from the line only; it twined itself like a white wraith about the horns. ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... they come. Do ye know, Jock, I often think I was born like the Marquis, under an unlucky star, and that all my life things will go ill with me, and with my cause. I dinna think that I'll ever see old age, and I doubt whether I'll leave an heir to succeed me. I dreamed one nicht that the wraith of our house stood beside my bed and said, 'Ye'll be cursed in love and cursed in war, and die a bloody death at the hand ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... his perceiving that real flesh and blood is before him—Charles Clancy himself, and not his wraith. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... bread; Lest, as you look one eighth of an inch beneath The yellow skin of death, You dream yourselves discoverers of the skull That old memento mori of our faith; Lest it be you who hunt a flying wraith Through this dissolving stuff of hill and cloud; Lest it be you, who, at the last, annul Your covenant with your kind; Lest it be you who darken heart and mind, Sell the strong soul in bondage to a dream, And fetter us once ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... particularly kindly and "safe." The most pronounced anarchist among them has long since become a convert to a religious sect, holding Buddhistic tenets which imply little food and a distrust of all action; he has become a wraith of his former self but he still retains ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Elza, I must get you out of this." In the darkness his face glowed wraith-like. Then she felt his ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... the tortured, sobbing girl seemed to be bursting from its pain and suspense. Her beloved father wanted to go away—to follow the wraith mother beckoning from the rafters. How could she open her arms and allow him to leave ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... had been killed by falling down the steep cellar stairs, and the spot on the left side where she was found unconscious and bleeding had been pointed out to me. There, I heard it again! Was it the wraith of the aged dame or the cries of that unfortunate creature? Hush! Ellen can't ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... an oak twig from the ground, and with deliberation broke it into many small pieces. "Almost, but not quite," he said. "There was in that feud nothing illusory or fantastic; nothing of the quality that marked, mayhap, another feud of my own making. If I have found that in this latter case I took a wraith and dubbed it my enemy; that, thinking I followed a foe, I followed a friend instead"—He threw away the bits of bark, and straightened himself. "A friend!" he said, drawing his breath. "Save for this Quaker family, I have had no friend for many a year! And I cannot talk to them of honor and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... in bewilderment; was it himself, or his ghost, his shadow. He tried to think, but everything melted before him in a mist. The girl by his side was a wraith; they were dead, and this was some strange unaccountable happening in another world. The marble felt cold to his knees. Velasco tried to move, to rise, but the hand of the priest held him down. The ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... was, at first a wraith, a suggestion on the point of vanishing, and then illuminated and embodied, a celestial maggot stuck to the round of a cloud like a caterpillar to the edge of a leaf. We gazed at it silently, I cannot say for how long. The beam of light might have pinned the bright larva to the sky for the ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... peaceful electioneering went on throughout the country. Among the last acts of that thin wraith, the Continental Congress, was a decree that Presidential Electors should be chosen on the first Wednesday of January, 1789; that they should vote for President on the first Wednesday in February, and that the new Congress should meet on the first ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... changed trains and were headed for New York, with their destination only a few hours away, Stuart, again in the vestibule of the car, looking out through the closed entrance door upon a dull landscape passing like a misty wraith through the November fog and twilight, found Georgiana at ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... her—an elderly man in a black alpaca jacket that billowed. I saw that she had left a trail of little white things on the asphalt. I watched the efforts of the agonised short fat man to overtake her as she swept wraith-like away to the distant end of the terrace. What was the matter? What had made her so spectacularly angry with him? The three or four waiters of the cafe' were exchanging cynical smiles and shrugs, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the first. I wanted to cross the threshold over which he walked so often, to see the noise-proof room in which he used to write, to look at the chimney-place down which the soot came, to sit where he used to sit and smoke his pipe, and to conjure up his wraith to look in once more upon his old deserted dwelling. That ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... later, Maud was sitting reading in the drawing-room, when the door opened, the servant pronounced a name which thrilled her with surprise, and, looking up, she beheld Ned Talbot standing before her,— Ned Talbot, or the wraith of Ned, for so pale did he appear, so worn and haggard, that it needed no words to tell the ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wreathes stern Coolin like a cloud, The water-wraith is shrieking loud, And blue eyes gush with tears that burn, For thee—who shall no more return! Macrimmon shall no more return, Oh never, never more return! Earth, wrapt in doomsday flames, shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Motherhood always seemed the most sacred, the supreme experience to Robinette; a thing high and beautiful like the topmost blooms of Nurse Prettyman's plum tree. "If one had to choose between that sturdy boy and this wistful wraith, it would be hard," she thought. "All my pride would run out to the boy, but I could die for love and pity if this ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... but Costigan's broad countenance did not harbor the wraith of a smile. "What kin I git for fifty chips? 'Tain't much," mused the pariah, with the prompt inclination to spend that stamps the comparative stranger to ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... the first button of her blouse and kissed her neck harshly, while she watched him, in a maze. He abruptly fastened the button again, sprang up, stared out at the wraith-filled darkness over the river, while his voice droned on, as though it were ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... stocktaking. As often as not by the light of a complete disillusionment. Of the many glorious things one had hoped to do—or to be—nothing was accomplished: the great realisation, in youth breathlessly chased but never grasped, was now seen to be a mist-wraith, which could wear a thousand forms, but invariably turned to air as one came up with it. In nine instances out of ten there was nothing to put in its place; and you began to ask yourself in a kind of horrific amaze: "Can this be all? ... THIS? For this ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... squirrels chattering and playing. He envied them their health and spirits, their happy, care-free existence. That he should contrast their condition with his was inevitable; and that he should question why they were splendidly vigorous while he was a feeble, dying wraith of a man, was likewise inevitable. His conclusion was the very obvious one, namely, that they lived naturally, while he lived most unnaturally therefore, if he intended to live, he must ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... chanced. It seemed that the wraith, or emanation, or the sprite, good or evil, or whatever it may have been, which called itself Eleanor, materialized in a very ugly temper. It complained that it had not been allowed to appear upon the previous Sunday and had been kept away from ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... door stood open (as Peter Rolls observed when he "happened" to pass, about the time the Monarchic neared the Statue of Liberty) and nothing reminiscent remained save a haunting perfume of "Rose-Nadine" sachet powder, a specialty which might have been the lingering wraith ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... whereof earth's diadems and rewards are fashioned, but the incorruptible crown that fadeth not away, which His hand will give, should fire our hope, and shine before our faith. Not Naaman's gifts but God's approval is Elisha's reward. Not the praise from lips that will perish, or the 'hollow wraith of dying fame,' but Christ's 'Well done! good and faithful servant,' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... grew loud apace, The water—wraith was shrieking; And in the scowl of heaven eachface, Grew dark as they ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... conviction. The pale ghost of a laugh is in the dying eyes. The wraith of Beauvayse's old voice comes back again ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Hand at the reel That nobody saw,— Old Hickory there at every keel, In every timber, from stem to stern,— A something in every crank and wheel, That made 'em answer their turn; And everywhere, On earth and water, in fire and air, As it were to see it all well done, The Wraith of the murdered Law,— Old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... divine of Roman days, O spirit of the age of faith, Go with our sons on all their ways, When we long since are dust and wraith. ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... Diana crossed the old log bridge on her homeward way the white flakes were beginning to flutter down over the fields and woods, russet and gray in their dreamless sleep. Soon the far-away slopes and hills were dim and wraith-like through their gauzy scarfing, as if pale autumn had flung a misty bridal veil over her hair and was waiting for her wintry bridegroom. So they had a white Christmas after all, and a very pleasant day it was. In the ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... were wide, the story saith, Out of the night came the patient wraith, He might not speak, and he could not stir A hair of the Baron's minniver—- Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin, He roved the castle to seek his kin. And oh,'twas a piteous thing to see The dumb ghost follow his ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... hemlocks, the hackmatacks, with the low-growing hickories, witch-hazels, and slippery-elms. Their green was the green of early May—yellow-green, red-green, bronze-green, brown-green, but nowhere as yet the full, rich hue of summer. Here and there a choke-cherry in full bloom swayed and shivered like a wraith. In shady places the ferns were unfolding in company with Solomon's-seal, wake-robin, the lady's-slipper, and the painted trillium. There was an abundance of yellow—cinquefoil, crowfoot, ragwort, bellwort, and shy patches ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... hills, his unhurt right hand began crying out for action and a brush to nurse. As he watched, day after day, the unveiling of the monumental hills, and the transitions from hazy wraith-like whispers of hues, to strong, flaring riot of color, this fret of restlessness became actual pain. He was wasting wonderful opportunity and the creative instinct in ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... sheet, Wraith of long-perished wrong and time, Forbear! the spirit starts to meet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... course. The dog, dashing suddenly ahead, stopped at the corner of the shack and growled. So occupied had the herder been with his distracting duties that he had not taken much notice of the shack as he drew nearer to it; but now that the dog raised the alarm he looked and saw a blue wraith of smoke hovering over the roof. His fire-hole, it seemed, was lit. This was not unwelcome news, as any one may imagine who has lived even a few days so utterly alone. But whether the visitor was a stranger ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... water the plants there, and then he stole into the house and up stairs, and threw himself upon the bed. And outside he still heard Sheila singing lightly to herself as she went about her ordinary duties, little thinking in how strange and wild a drama her wraith had that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... up after a while and again watched the fire. Nell's sweet face floated like a wraith in the pale smoke—glowed and flushed and smiled in the embers. Other faces shone there—his sister's—that of his mother. Gale shook off the tender memories. This desolate wilderness with its forbidding silence ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... down altogether and betraying a reckless impulse which lurked at the bottom of her dismay, to seize the head of d'Alcacer's Man of Fate, press it to her breast once, fling it far away, and vanish herself, vanish out of life like a wraith. The Man of Fate sat silent and bowed, yet with a suggestion of strength in his dejection. "If I don't speak," Mrs. Travers said to herself, with great inward calmness, "I shall burst into tears." She said aloud, "What could have happened? What have you dragged me in here ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... black stuff Lowood frock and straw bonnet: for not to me appertained that suit of wedding raiment; the pearl-coloured robe, the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped portmanteau. I shut the closet to conceal the strange, wraith-like apparel it contained; which, at this evening hour—nine o'clock—gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment. "I will leave you by yourself, white dream," I ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... storm grew loud apace, The water-wraith was shrieking; And in the scowl of heaven each face Grew dark as they ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... sinks. Rising, the figures ascend, but now leaf thin, tapering to a dusky wraith, which, fiery tipped, draws its twofold passion from my heart. For me it sings, unseals my sorrow, thaws compassion, floods with love the sunless world, nor, ceasing, abates its tenderness but deftly, subtly, weaves in and out until in this pattern, this consummation, the cleft ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... raised in the wraith-like gloom, and a vengeful shot that sped; A howl that would thrill a cream-faced corpse— and the demon fox lay dead. . . . Yet there was never a sign of wound, and never a drop ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... adown the stairs; and following silent, noiseless like a wraith was Janet, expectant, eager; for she felt she was to see the opening of a great battle. Constance led the way, carrying a taper. As they traversed some passage, their ears caught the sound of music. They listened a ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... appeal to you. His letter was written in deep dejection of spirit, and mentioned that he feared a judgment had come upon him for wishing to appear as a Scotchman on Scottish soil, as he had one moonlight night shortly after his arrival seen his 'wraith'. He evidently alluded to the fact that before his departure he had procured for himself a Highland costume similar to that which we had the honour to supply to you, with which, as perhaps you will remember, he was much struck. He may, however, never have ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... belief. Even those that were well were sure that it was only a mater of days when the sickness would catch them and carry them off. And yet, believing this with absolute conviction, they somehow lacked the nerve to rush the frail wraith of a man with the white skin and escape from the charnel house by the whale-boats. They chose the lingering death they were sure awaited them, rather than the immediate death they were very sure ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... ha'ntin' about one of Enright's Bar-B-8 sign-camps, an' scarin' up the cattle an' drivin' 'em over a precipice, an' all to Enright's disaster an' loss. Nacherally, Enright don't like this spectral play; an' him an' Peets lays for the wraith with rifles, busts its knee some, an' Peets ampytates its laig. Then they throws it loose; allowin' that now it's only got one lai'g, the visitations will mighty likely cease. Moreover Enright regyards ampytation that a-way, as punishment ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... peaks rose sheer and forbidding about a valley through which a narrow river flashed its thin loop of water. Down the steep slopes from a rain-darkened sky hung ragged fringes of cloud-streamer and fog-wraith. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... made you understand?" she returned a wan wraith of a smile, pitiful with entreaty, while one of her hands ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... instinctively, took note of this one. His nerves crisped at the noiseless slide of that form, as it stalked on from lamp to lamp, keeping pace with his own. He felt a sort of awe, as if he had beheld the wraith of himself; and even as he glanced suspiciously at the stranger, the stranger glanced at him. He was inexpressibly relieved when the figure turned down ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Stuart), who was conspiring with Louis XV., as his father had done with Louis XIV., to get to the English throne. We see him flitting about Europe from time to time, landing here and there on the British Coast—until when finally defeated at "Culloden Moor," 1746, this wraith of the House of Stuart disappears—dying obscurely in Rome; and "Wha'll be King but Charlie," and "Over the Water to Charlie," linger only as the echo ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... forsooth weighty argument. Fourthly, beloved, 'tis an ass that—ha! O sweet vision for eyes human or divine! Do I see thee in very truth, thou damsel of disobedience, dear dame of discord, sweet, witching, wilful lady—is it thou in very truth, most loved daughter, or wraith conjured of thy magic ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... words for me, made letters he called mine: what I sent, he retained, gave these in place, all by the mistress messenger! As I recognized her, at potency of truth, so she, by the crystalline soul, knew me, never mistook the signs. Enough of this—let the wraith go to nothingness again, here is the orb, have only thought for her!" What follows admits us to the very HEART of Browning's poetry—admits us to the great Idea which is almost, in these days, strange to say, peculiarly his— which no other poet, certainly, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... pounding against my ribs from the exertion of my efforts to release myself from the anaesthesis which had held me. My breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat stood out from every pore of my body, and the ancient experiment of pinching revealed the fact that I was anything other than a wraith. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... only brother, her father's heir; he was her father's only son, two daughters born between died in infancy. That poor young fellow died at sea, and just at the time (as is supposed) that he expired, his wraith appeared to the old woman, Becky Maddison, then a very young girl. I am sorry to say the old woman has made a gain of this story. People often used to come to hear it, and she certainly does not always tell it exactly ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... I frightful then? I live, though they call it death; I am only cold! Say dear again." But scarce could he heave a breath; Over a dank and steaming fen He floated astray from the world of men, A lost, half-conscious wraith. ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... sight of Leopold, so triumphantly alive, had shown him fully his own change and his weakness had demonstrated to him clearly that he was but the wraith ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... affairs. Did you ever hear of an ogre sighing himself to a shadow for love of a gap-toothed ogress? No. He goes out into the fairy world, and, sending his ogress-wife to Jericho, becomes desperately enamoured of the elfin princess. There he is, great, ruddy, hairy wretch: there she is, a wraith of a creature made up of thistledown and fountain-bubbles and stars. He stares at her, stretches out his huge paw to grab a fairy, feathery tress of her dark hair. Defensive, she puts up her little hand. Its touch is an electric shock to the marauder. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... and slipped out again as noiselessly when she had passed by. A few hens, questing for food under a rick, stole away under a gate at her approach. Sylvia felt that if she had come across any human beings in this wilderness of barn and byre they would have fled wraith-like from her gaze. At last, turning a corner quickly, she came upon a living thing that did not fly from her. Astretch in a pool of mud was an enormous sow, gigantic beyond the town-woman's wildest computation ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... wraith of sin faded, and there was no music in the air, and her cheek was cool, while she looked all the world in the face with the fearless eyes of a child-empress. Again the monotonous, good day rolled in the same grooves, noiselessly, and surely, as ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... away from the arm that held the candle on high. The yellow beams of light struck down across her head and face, and even at the distance the man could see how white she was and hollow-eyed and worn—a pale wraith of the splendid beauty that had walked in ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... a huge shadow floated out of the dark chaos and passed so close over the heads of Neewa and Miki that they heard the menacing purr of giant wings. As the wraith-like creature disappeared there came back to them a hiss and the grating snap of a powerful beak. It sent a shiver through Miki. The instinct that had been fighting to rouse itself within him flared up like ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... lynx, moving with great bounds on his huge swathed paws, shot past between the iron-hard tree-boles; a fox followed, scudding like the wind on the frozen crest; a hare, white as a waste wraith, flashed by, swift as a racing white cloud-shadow; a goshawk screamed, and drew a straight streaking line across a glade. And then came the men, side by side, deadly dumb, with set faces, the pale sun glinting coldly cruel upon the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... summer heat as an Arctic wraith, white as a Norse snow maiden in her flimsy muslin and fluttering lace parasol, came round the corner of the station; and Tom was stripped of his assurance. He became chiefly eyesight clothed in blue jeans, and on the homeward ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... steps into gardens stretching along beside the river—gardens blazing with flowers and sweet with blossomed fruit trees. It was so unexpected, so splendidly beautiful, it surpassed a dream of fairy-land. We passed on, saw a shadowy lady among the flowers on the lawn, knew it was the wraith of the unhappy and guilty Dearvorgill. Stole out of the farther gate—at least I did— feeling naughty and intrusive. Found ourselves in the clean little town of Drumahaire, a pretty little village, straggled over a hillside among ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the lawyer's house just at the hour of sundown, when the heavy clouds were scattering and the sun sent shafts of golden light to turn the mists overhanging the towers and pinnacles of Rome's palaces and temples into filmy veils. It looked like a wraith-city, hung with ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... and the coughing of the big cats mingled with the myriad noises of the lesser denizens of the jungle to fan the savage flame in the breast of this savage English lord. He tossed upon his bed of grasses, sleepless, for an hour and then he rose, noiseless as a wraith, and while the Waziri's back was turned, vaulted the boma wall in the face of the flaming eyes, swung silently into a great tree ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was some years before he would trust himself to tell her of what he had seen, fearing that she might consider it an omen of approaching death, and indeed, though not a superstitious man, he was inclined so to view it himself; but his mother lived for many years after the appearance of her wraith. I also knew a young gentleman to whom the unpleasant experience of beholding his own double was once vouchsafed. He had been spending a quiet evening with some young ladies, and returned home about eleven o'clock, let himself into the house with his latch-key and proceeded to his own room, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... by magic? had a crazed serving-man revived the vanished duties of his warlike predecessor? was the wraith of seneschal or man-at-arms conjuring up a ghostly beacon to stream into the soft air? was an evil spirit about to bewilder and mislead a fated ship to meet its doom on the jagged rocks beneath the dead calm of that glassy sea? So dense was the vapour that suddenly gathered ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the senachie staggered forward. The men, hardly awake, stood staring and trembling, and looking from the senachie to Wallace; at last one, extricating his terror-struck tongue, and falling on his knees, exclaimed: "Blessed St. Andrew! here is the senachie and his wraith." Bruce perceived the mistake of his servants, and explaining to them that a traveling minstrel had obliged the senachie by performing his duty, he bade them retire to rest, and think no more of their alarm. The intoxicated bard threw himself without ceremony ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the daring heart! bright be thy doom As the bodings which light up thy bold spirit now, But the fate of M'Crimman is closing in gloom, And the breath of the gray wraith hath pass'd o'er his brow; Victorious, in joy, thou'lt return to Benaer, And be clasp'd to the hearts of thy best beloved there, But M'Crimman, M'Crimman, M'Crimman, never— ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... here again very soon, unless I get married, or commit a murder or some such enormity," rejoined Helwyse, his long mustache curling to, his smile. They shook hands,—the vigorous young god of the sun and the faded old wraith of Brahmanism,—with a friendly look ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... he was by nature, in vain endeavoured to banish from his mind the gloomy impression which the startling interview with Cesarini had bequeathed. The face, the voice of the maniac, haunted him, as the shape of the warning wraith haunts the mountaineer. He returned at once to his hotel, unable for some hours to collect himself sufficiently to pay his customary visit to Miss Cameron. Inly resolving not to hazard a second meeting with the Italian during the rest of his sojourn at Paris by venturing ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... way again. At last with a cautious glance around, a pause to rub a match skilfully over the woolen cloak, and to light a fuse in a hidden corner, he vanished out upon the street like the passing of a wraith, and was ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... flowing between thinly-inhabited banks, were personified in the beliefs of the people by a frightful goblin, that took a malignant delight in luring into its pools, or overpowering in its fords, the benighted traveller. Its goblin, the "water-wraith," used to appear as a tall woman dressed in green, but distinguished chiefly by her withered, meagre countenance, ever distorted by a malignant scowl. I knew all the various fords—always dangerous ones—where ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... saw his semblance. Manitous, temple, amphitheater—all had vanished—a forest of lofty trees appearing instead, through whose glimmer of lights and shadows the boy now saw himself, or rather his wraith running with incredible swiftness, and glancing furtively over his shoulder at every bound, as if death were a present fear behind him; life a distant ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... when last we met; My passion I as freely told him; Clasp'd in his arms, I little thought That I should never more behold him! Scarce was he gone, I saw his ghost; It vanish'd with a shriek of sorrow; Thrice did the water-wraith ascend, And gave ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... do. But it's a long, long chase—and to tell you the truth, at times I think she's just a wraith! And at times I am lazy and would just sit in the sun and be ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... her it would not be safe for her to wander in the mountain by night. Little White Aster, therefore slept at Buddha's feet, shivering with cold, for her garments were far too thin to protect her from the keen mountain air. As she slept she dreamt of her father, whose wraith appeared to her, explaining that a false step had hurled him down into a ravine, whence he has vainly been trying to escape for three ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... terrified Mr. Cranstoun." The old man was plainly annoyed by these stories, though he merely expressed the opinion that his guest was "light-headed." But when Cranstoun one morning announced that he had been visited in the night, as the clock struck two, by the old gentleman's wraith, "with his white stockings, his coat on, and a cap on his head," Mr. Blandy "did not seem pleased with the discourse," and the subject was dropped. But Mary, mentioning these strange matters to the maids, expressed the fear that such happenings boded no ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... time the wraith of the dead mother moved toward her—the wraith of the weaver moved her way—and round and about her body was wound the shining cloth. Wherever it touched the body of the stepmother, it was as hateful to her as the touch of a monster out of sea-slime, so that her flesh ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... hates the king with the deep hatred of a fanatical Republican. A royal princess, who had come to insult her, is conquered by her candor and truth, and stays to sympathize with her and lend her the support of her presence. But just as the king comes to lead her out to face the populace, the wraith of her father rises upon the threshold and she falls back dead. It is learned afterward that Professor Ernst had died ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the canty auld wife cam till her braith, And she thocht the Bible micht ward aif scaith; Be it benshee, bogle, ghaist, or wraith— ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... I could to bid her be of good cheer, but the comfort of a hopeful spirit was dead within her; and she told me, that by many tokens she was assured her bairn was already slain.—"Thrice," said she, "I have seen his wraith—the first time he was in the pride of his young manhood, the next he was pale and wan, with a bloody and gashy wound in his side, and the third time there was a smoke, and, when it cleared away, I saw him in a grave, with ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... This wraith, brought into being by the gathering blackness in the gulches and crevices of the mountains, filled the hearts of the ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... but this wraith of the mother, he remembered, frightened the child, who clung sobbing ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... bundles on the wharf and climbed into the boat. The water slapped vigorously against its side, for the tide was running, and above, a wraith-like gull occasionally dropped ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... been able to offer him since he joined in which he has shown the slightest interest." Nevertheless, it was generally admitted that Ranson had saved the post. He had been ubiquitous. He had been seen galloping into the advancing flames like a stampeded colt, he had reappeared like a wraith in columns of black, whirling smoke, at the same moment his voice issued orders from twenty places. One instant he was visible beating back the fire with a wet blanket, waving it above him jubilantly, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... busy and he knew it was a favourite seat of hers for, glancing over his rows of corn, he could see the top of her head bent over a book. He did not know how long she pored over a page with eyes that saw him, a wraith of him hovering over the print, nor that when their passionate depths grew hungrier for the actual sight of him, how she threw one glance at his working figure and bent to her book again. As he came suddenly in upon her she sprang up and ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... in anger when a shadowy figure darted for the door. The intruder moved as fast as any wraith but the two former gods were too quick for him. A brief struggle, then they dragged the eavesdropper before the throne where they ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... car, staring back at the wet tracks slipping away behind. When they had changed trains and were headed for New York, with their destination only a few hours away, Stuart, again in the vestibule of the car, looking out through the closed entrance door upon a dull landscape passing like a misty wraith through the November fog and twilight, ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... haunted the house. As this weird sound died away, it was followed by another, sharp, short, blood-curdling in its intensity. Something in this cry seemed familiar to Eliphalet, and he felt sure that it proceeded from the family ghost, the warning wraith of ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... autumn of 1788 peaceful electioneering went on throughout the country. Among the last acts of that thin wraith, the Continental Congress, was a decree that Presidential Electors should be chosen on the first Wednesday of January, 1789; that they should vote for President on the first Wednesday in February, and that the new Congress ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... tears in her eyes and the wraith of a smile on her lips. A little drop escaped and she dashed it away and her ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... uncertain, and philosophically anarchistic. From one point of view it might have been said of him that he was seeking the realization of an ideal, yet to one's amazement our very ideals change at times and leave us floundering in the dark. What is an ideal, anyhow? A wraith, a mist, a perfume in the wind, a dream of fair water. The soul-yearning of a girl like Antoinette Nowak was a little too strained for him. It was too ardent, too clinging, and he had gradually extricated himself, not without difficulty, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... their graceful leafless branches stretching up like dumb pleading hands toward the pitiful sky. I grew so interested seeking out specially picturesque forest growths, and glimpses into the still woodland depths under the white snow wraith which I might come again to study more closely, and put on my canvas, that I so far forgot the business of the hour as to find myself a half hour after the appointment at still some distance from Linden Lane. Shutting my eyes resolutely on the rarest bits of landscape caught ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... not all delusion, That strange intelligence of sorrow Searching the tranquil heart's seclusion, Making us quail before the morrow. 'Tis the farewell of happiness departing, The sudden tremor of a soul at rest; The wraith of coming grief upstarting Within ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... attention, he hardly saw her. She was pretty enough, but very quiet and self-absorbed, a slender, nervous creature with that pathetically eager look peculiar to her age and caste in France, starving for the life she might not live till marriage should set her free. A pale and ineffective wraith beside Eve, whose beauty, relieved in candleglow against the background of melting darkness, burned like some rare exotic flower set before a screen of lustreless black velvet. And like a flower to the sun she responded to the homage ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... of an eerie and mysterious Presence has forced itself upon our mind, and we have been able to understand the emotions in which originated the visions of wraith and phantom of the bards of old. Our travellers, however, passed through the gale unhurt. A tremendous outburst of rain, the final effort of the tempest, cleared the sky, which towards the west was gradually lighted up with gleams ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... a wraith she went, now appearing in the open spaces, now vanishing, beneath the dense gloom of cedar boughs, till she reached a naked, lonely rock which stood almost upon the edge of the gulf. Opposite ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... knew she was speaking, but I could not hear her voice. . . . It was that way while she stood beside me—I could not hear her, Celia. I could not hear what she was saying. It was no spirit I saw—no phantom from the dead there by my bed, no ghost—no restless wraith, grave-driven through the night. I believe she is living. She knows I believe it. . . . As you sat here, a moment ago, reading to me, I saw her reflected for a moment in the mirror behind you, passing into the room beyond. Her hair is perfectly white, Celia—or," he said vaguely ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... psychological effect of what was going on secretly, in his relations to girls and women. In a word, these relations were sentimental only. He often imagined himself in love; but it was imagination only. He was in love with a wraith, not a girl of flesh and blood. He hesitated to regard in any sexual way any girl of whom he had a high opinion; sexual desire and 'love' seemed for him to inhabit different worlds and that it would be a pollution to bring them together. In hours of relaxation ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a hush, as though at sunset the world had really resolved, and had stopped moving. But from the waiting steamer looming over us, a gigantic and portentous bulk, a thin wisp of steam hums from a pipe, and hangs across the vessel, a white wraith. Yet the hum of the steam is too subdued a sound in the palpable and oppressive dusk to be significant. Then a boatswain's pipe rends the heavy dark like the gleam of a sword, and a great voice, awed by nothing, roars from the steamer's bridge. There is a sudden commotion, we hear ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... everything is prophetic of the gentle and noiseless meteor that is approaching, and of the stillness that is to succeed it, when "all the batteries of sound are spiked," as Lowell says, and "we see the movements of life as a deaf man sees it,—a mere wraith of the clamorous existence that inflicts itself on our ears when the ground is bare." After the storm is fairly launched the winds not infrequently awake, and, seeing their opportunity, pipe the flakes a lively dance. I am speaking now ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... insignificant, scrofulous wraith of a man with green eyes and straight, fair hair. He whined complaint of his boss, the ranch, his bad ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... Harvey and the Valley towns, a great open ravine, because you people sitting here who own the property down there won't tax yourselves to enclose those sewers that poison us!" A faint—rather dazed smile ran over the congregation like a wraith of smoke. He felt that the smoke proved that he had struck fire. He went on: "Love, great aspiring love of fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, love stifled by fell circumstance, by cruel events, and love that winces in agony at seeing ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... know that a part of my youth which in some strange way seems to have acquired an individuality, of its own dwells, and will for ever dwell, among these scenes. And I shall never be so ill-advised as to seek it, for the wraith, like a mocking dryad, would flit from tree to tree, as beautiful and ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... not a wraith, no grisly spectre, no half-nebulous Shape. He was Peter Grimm, rugged, homespun, the man whose iron individuality had undergone ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... so, all things discern me, name me, praise me— I walk in a world of silent voices, praising; And in this world you see me like a wraith Blown softly here and there, on silent winds. 'Praise me'—I say; and look, not in a glass, But in your eyes, to see my image there— Or in your mind; you smile, I am contented; You look at me, with interest unfeigned, ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... when she had passed by. A few hens, questing for food under a rick, stole away under a gate at her approach. Sylvia felt that if she had come across any human beings in this wilderness of barn and byre they would have fled wraith-like from her gaze. At last, turning a corner quickly, she came upon a living thing that did not fly from her. Astretch in a pool of mud was an enormous sow, gigantic beyond the town-woman's wildest computation of swine-flesh, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... and closed her eyes. In the moonlight which blanched her streaming robe and her loosened hair that, falling to her knees, wrapped her in a mantle of spun gold, she looked a wraith, a creature woven of the mist of the stream below, a Loerelei sleeping upon her rock. Landless, still upon his knee beside her, watched her with a beating heart, while the Susquehannock, leaning upon his gun, bent his darkly impassive looks upon them both. At ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... and marveled, and smiled to think that, had one stayed at home, one might never know these things. Forgotten was the wraith of Leung Kai Chu, the jungle trail of Hallman, and even the trepidation with which we had awaited the sailing ship's boat. I was soon to be in those enchanted archipelagoes, and to see for myself those mighty swimmers and those sleepers upon the sea. I might even get ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... discourage me," she said, "because I want all the spirits I am capable of to carry it through. It has to be done with a light heart, else it will deceive nobody. And so, my dear, to-morrow you will say 'good-bye' to me, and have a sort of wraith of me instead for a little while. Oh, Alice, I hope it won't take ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... cried, kissing her on both cheeks, "I don't believe you're half properly glad to see me! Did you think it was my wraith? I assure you it's my own self in the flesh, and very cold flesh, too. What a delightful room! I'd no idea atheists' homes were so much like other people's. You cold-hearted little cousin, why don't ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... the wraith of the dead mother moved toward her—the wraith of the weaver moved her way—and round and about her body was wound the shining cloth. Wherever it touched the body of the stepmother, it was as hateful to her as the touch of a monster out of sea-slime, so that her flesh crept away from ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... dead, and would come again Never, though she might honor ineffably The flimsy wraith of him she conjured Out of a dream with ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... really a stranger, and not thy wraith?" said John anxiously. "I hope it was, for Dame Idonea said if it were a wraith, it betokened that thou wouldst not—live long—and oh, Richard! I ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opportunity of fresh experience. The sun sinks out of sight before the sultry atmosphere begins to cool. The weird "gecko," a large lizard which foretells rain, screams "Becky! Becky!" in the garden shadows, and a cry of "Toko! Toko!" echoes from another unseen speaker of a mysterious language, while wraith-like forms of his tiny brethren make moving patterns on the white columns, as the hungry little reptiles hunt ceaselessly for the mosquitos which form their staple diet. Lashing rain and deafening ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... false hair, it seemed to restore her reason though it destroyed her coiffure. "Enough of this!" I cried to her. "Take your place by the boat, and do as you are told." And I saw Helena pass forward, also, as we all reached the deck, herself pale as a wraith, but with no outcry and no spoken word. So, at last, I ranged them all near the boat that swung ready at ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... spoke. Then the little melancholy carriage was wheeled away. Motherhood always seemed the most sacred, the supreme experience to Robinette; a thing high and beautiful like the topmost blooms of Nurse Prettyman's plum tree. "If one had to choose between that sturdy boy and this wistful wraith, it would be hard," she thought. "All my pride would run out to the boy, but I could die for love and pity if this ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a boy was creeping towards him—creeping, as it seemed to him, from the shadows in the tunnel. Who—who was it? Was it really a being of flesh and blood? At first it seemed to him that it must be the wraith of the little fellow about whom he had been speaking—Hibbert—but even as the thought filtered through his mind the boy was kneeling beside him, looking ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... nothing loath. Either he was not the bravest in the party, or else he had the keenest appreciation of the odds against an exposed position. In a very few minutes the dory was a mere gray wraith on the water, but there it hung. Evidently the rower was overruled by others less cautious, or of the certain conviction that at the distance the yacht was a better mark than ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... chosen to pause was at the grave of old Patience Goodyear, and from the corner where we stood we could see their faces plainly as they turned and looked at each other with the moonbeams pouring over them. Was it fancy that made her look like a wraith, and he like some handsome demon given to haunting churchyards? Or was it only the sternness of his air, and the shrinking timidity of hers, which made him look so dark ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... old-world times returned by magic? had a crazed serving-man revived the vanished duties of his warlike predecessor? was the wraith of seneschal or man-at-arms conjuring up a ghostly beacon to stream into the soft air? was an evil spirit about to bewilder and mislead a fated ship to meet its doom on the jagged rocks beneath the dead calm of that ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... of passionate music, A hush and a silence then; The dancers rest in their pleasure quest, And lo! I am old again. Old and alone in my chamber, While the night wears wearily on, And the pallid wraith of a broken faith— Keeps watch with me ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the room adjoining that in which was the body, a pale candle burning near it, I felt as though Peter were walking to and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond, thinking and grieving. His imagined wraith seemed horribly depressed and distressed. Once he came over and moved his hand (something) over my face. I felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies, but he could make no one see, hear, understand. I got up and looked at his cadaver a long ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... wide, the story saith, Out of the night came the patient wraith, He might not speak, and he could not stir A hair of the Baron's minniver—- Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin, He roved the castle to seek his kin. And oh,'twas a piteous thing to see The dumb ghost follow ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... back, threw a prodigious summerset, and when they alighted upon the ground, there! in them again, Sprigg saw his semblance. Manitous, temple, amphitheater—all had vanished—a forest of lofty trees appearing instead, through whose glimmer of lights and shadows the boy now saw himself, or rather his wraith running with incredible swiftness, and glancing furtively over his shoulder at every bound, as if death were a present fear behind him; life ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... silhouetted against the glare of light from the billiard-room. And here she made an effort to efface the vision, shutting her eyes as she rode there in the rain. But clearly against the closed lids she saw the phantoms passing—spectres of dead hours, the wraith of an old happiness masked with youth and wearing ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the mountain goats, On stormy cape and crag, The refuge of the wanderer floats— Our hospitable flag; While alien banners only mock With glory's fleeting wraith, It stands on the eternal rock Of our eternal faith; And handed on from sire and son, It furls not day nor night; So England holds what England won, And God ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... wolf there—close behind me; it does not move; it glares at me with its two red eyes. It is my wraith,[1], Sigurd! Three times has it appeared to me; that bodes that I shall ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... black hulk of a Japanese liner rose black out of the gray fog shadow. But the freighters, the coasters, tramps that went hither and thither over the earth wherever fat cargoes lured them—they were either swallowed in the mist or shadowed to a ghost-like wraith of themselves so tenuous that all detail ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... it is really I, and not my wraith. Miraut was not mistaken. Here I am again, if not richer than when I went away, at least all safe and sound. Come now, lead the way with your torch, and we will go ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... wistfully of the police, now plodding over the hills after my wraith. They at any rate were fellow-countrymen and honest men, and their tender mercies would be kinder than these ghoulish aliens. But they wouldn't have listened to me. That old devil with the eyelids had not taken long to get rid of them. I thought he probably had some kind ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... in the dike, Under the ooze and the slime, Nestles the wraith of a reticent Gryke, Blubbering bubbles of rhyme: Though the reeds touch him and tickle his teeth— Though the Graigroll and the Cheest Pluck at the leaves of his laureate-wreath, Nothing ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Peace seems but a wraith, The glory that was ours seems but a name, And like a rotten reed our broken faith, Our boasted virtue turned to scarlet shame By the low, envious lust of party power; While he upon the heights whence he had led, ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... the name of the dear grandmother's only brother, her father's heir; he was her father's only son, two daughters born between died in infancy. That poor young fellow died at sea, and just at the time (as is supposed) that he expired, his wraith appeared to the old woman, Becky Maddison, then a very young girl. I am sorry to say the old woman has made a gain of this story. People often used to come to hear it, and she certainly does not always tell it ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... But I wasna the only ane that saw ye. Ye micht hae gotten a waur fleg gin I hadna come up, for Mr Beauchamp was takin' the bearin's o' ye throu the window, and whan I gaed up, he slippit awa' like a wraith. There ye lay, wi' yer heid back, and yer mou' open, as gin you and the deid man had been tryin' whilk wad sleep the soun'est. But ye hae ta'en to ither studies sin' syne. Ye hae a freah subject—a bonnie young ane. The Lord hae mercy upo' ye! ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... incorruptible crown that fadeth not away, which His hand will give, should fire our hope, and shine before our faith. Not Naaman's gifts but God's approval is Elisha's reward. Not the praise from lips that will perish, or the 'hollow wraith of dying fame,' but Christ's 'Well done! good and faithful servant,' should ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... far minaret of faithful cloud A wraith-muezzin of the sunset cried Over the sea that swung with sultan pride, "Allah is Beauty, there is none beside! Allah is Beauty, not to be denied By Death or ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... stared, electrified at her appearance. White as a bone, her beautiful violet eyes full of haunting fear; her hair, torn down by the wind and flickering in long black strands about her face, far below her waist, she looked like a wraith ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... love you," he replied, brokenly, and he drew her closer. He had never embraced her, never kissed her. But there was a whiteness about her then—a wraith—a something from her soul, and he ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... impossible that she should be the sea-wraith of the lost child; but, then, it was wholly impossible that she should be, and there she was, smiling at him, and Caius saw in the dark eyes a likeness to the long-remembered eyes of the child, and thought he still read there human wistfulness and sadness, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... since we know in advance that he reached home safely at last. One of the most popular modern books of travel—Eothen—is a poem which gives us the very atmosphere and odor of the Orient, but nothing more; and the author floats before our vision in so dim and wraith-like a manner, that many readers have doubted whether the work was founded on actual experience. On the other hand, those old narratives, of which Robinson Crusoe is the ideal type, bear unmistakable stains of the soil on every page. You not only ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... in the breath of the depths. They would rise to a certain height, then suddenly fall, and rise again, just like a juggler's balls. Sometimes the breathing from below sucked the whole swarm right down, but it rose up again, veering hither and thither like a dancing wraith in the draught from the tunnel-like entry. The little girls would gaze at it, lift their petticoats, and take a few graceful steps. Olsen's Elvira had learned her first dance-steps here, and now she was dancing respectable citizens into ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... away from the business district. It required enormous self-control to go slowly. While among the lighted streets the urge to flee at top speed was strong. But he clenched his teeth. A car makes much less noise when barely in motion. He made it drift as silently as a wraith under the trees and ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... for a brief time had loomed so large in our imaginations, faded into a sort of wraith. Years passed, bringing with them great changes for me. I left California and settled in England. I wrote a book which excited a certain amount of interest, and inspired some of my old school-fellows to renew acquaintance with me. By this time I had forgotten Johnson. He was part of a distant ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... listened seriously, as they always did when their Captain started one of her "sermonettes" as Julie called them; and when she had concluded, Joan said: "In other words, you want us to starve the poor wraith still more by withdrawing any thoughts from ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... were now, to the best of our belief, alone on the island, and a lonesomer spot it would be hard to imagine, or one touched at certain hours with a fairer beauty—a beauty wraith-like and, like a sea-shell, haunted with the marvel of the sea. But we, alas!—or let me speak for myself—were sinful, misguided men, to whom the gleam and glitter of God's making spoke all too seldom, and whose hearts ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... names," I stubbornly protested. "He did not even call the vision he encountered a woman. It was a wraith, you remember, a dream-maiden, a creature of his own imagination, born of ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... now—he is in that room in there! And he has heard everything! And seen everything! And the man who sees his own wraith dies! ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... the after-deck, and under this was arranged with care the main collection of corals and shells, the commoner sorts, such as found a ready sale at low prices. There was pure white coral, in long branches, studded with tiny points, like the wraith of the fairy thorn; there were great piles of the delicate fan-coral, which the sailors call sea-fans, and which Franci would hold out to every girl who had any pretence to good looks, with his most gracious bow, and "Young lady like to fan herself, keep the sun off, here you air, ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... for love of a gap-toothed ogress? No. He goes out into the fairy world, and, sending his ogress-wife to Jericho, becomes desperately enamoured of the elfin princess. There he is, great, ruddy, hairy wretch: there she is, a wraith of a creature made up of thistledown and fountain-bubbles and stars. He stares at her, stretches out his huge paw to grab a fairy, feathery tress of her dark hair. Defensive, she puts up her little hand. Its touch is an electric shock to the marauder. He blinks, and rubs his arm. He has ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... born as the blue swirls and whirls through the resisting medium. Unseen forces and currents, tides and pressures, set up a seething and flowing, pulling and twisting of the drop of ink until it becomes a strange wraith created out of the molecules. A temporary individuality lives ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... auld wife cam till her braith, And she thocht the Bible micht ward aif scaith; Be it benshee, bogle, ghaist, or wraith— ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... swinging like dead leaves on the long swells. The stars came out, the gulls went shoreward for the night, and we were as alone as if on the sea. The woman's slender figure, wrapped in her white cloak, became a silent, shining wraith. She was within touch of my hand, yet unreachably remote. I lost my glib speech. The gray loneliness that one feels in a crowd came over me. If I had been alone with my men, I should have felt well accompanied, master of my craft, and in tune with my condition. It was ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... death, On moonless nights, by lightning shown, How oft they saw the water-wraith, And heard the weeping banshee's groan. How many a barque, at midnight toss'd And in the angry waters lost, In the gray dawn-light seemed to glide ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... the hills. Still, we ought to be able to find in Masonry some trace of Rosicrucian influence, some hint of the lofty wisdom it is said to have added to the order; but no one has yet done so. Did all that high, Hermetic mysticism evaporate entirely, leaving not a wraith behind, going as mysteriously as it came to that far place which no ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... there—in Paris, Bombay, Omaha, with his wife and family, doing this, that and the other. He's still alive. He's still in some kind of human relation with you. You grind your teeth and say that it's all in the day's work. You know where you are. But when a man fades out of your life like a wraith—well—you don't know where you are. It has been maddening—the ghastly seriousness of it. I've done my best to keep sane. I'm a woman with a lot of physical energy—I've run it for all it's worth. But this ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... which she always placed in the window. Then the moon shone full upon his face, and Jessie Bain looked at him with eyes that fairly bulged from their sockets. His features were now clearly visible in the bright moonlight. It was Hubert Varrick in the flesh, surely, or his wraith! ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... she did not exist, and the little wraith floated back to Paris from which she had come, suddenly, on days when she had written him certain letters which had brought ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... one of them could move an eye-lash. Their outlines began to waver; their faces began to be dim and vague, as if covered with close white veils; from their outsides inward they slowly faded, melted, dissolved; nothing remained of any of them but a wraith, a vapor, a puff of smoke, remotely in the shape of a human being; and then that also vanished; nothing remained; the place where they had ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... quarter,—for Michael had stood somewhat in the shadow—and because of the cowardliness of all bullies, for the moment he was able to prevail against all four, just long enough for the girl to slip like a wraith from their grasp ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... themselves into the slumbers of sportsmen who have not treated them as they deserved. I have suffered from it myself. It was only last week that, having said something derogatory to the dignity of my second gun, I woke with a start at two o'clock in the morning, and found its wraith going through the most horrible antics in a patch of moonlight on my bed-room floor. I shot with that gun on the following day, and missed nearly everything I shot at. Could there be a more convincing proof? Take my advice, therefore, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... tell you exactly what she wears—and her every feature and the color of her eyes? The wraith so materializes that I can describe it as accurately as I could describe you ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... great bounds on his huge swathed paws, shot past between the iron-hard tree-boles; a fox followed, scudding like the wind on the frozen crest; a hare, white as a waste wraith, flashed by, swift as a racing white cloud-shadow; a goshawk screamed, and drew a straight streaking line across a glade. And then came the men, side by side, deadly dumb, with set faces, the pale sun glinting coldly cruel upon the snaky, lean barrels of their slung rifles, moving with steady, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Cherokees and his own band, brightly painted for war, move forward to battle under the leadership of a ghostly semblance of himself. Suddenly a musket rang out and a bullet sped from the enemy's line. His wraith was struck full in the forehead and fell to earth in the agony of death. On rejoining his comrades he related his vision and foretold that in the battle about to take place he should meet death. He said also, however, that, if the Indians fought on, ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... black sea of Michiganon a vast black wraith; a thing horrible, tremendous, titanic in organic power. It howled, execrated, menaced; missed its aim, and passed. The little swaying house still stood! Under the sheltered log some tiny sparks of fire still burned, omen of the ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... across the valley deep. Be near to me, for now I need you most. To-night I saw an unsubstantial flame Flickering along those shadowy paths, a ghost That turned to me and answered to your name, Mocking me with a wraith of far delight. ... My lovely one, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... opened them again—wide. The figures were still there, and they had grown clearer, more definite, especially the countenance of each of the two wraith-like women who stood, like sentinels, one on either side ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... figure had suddenly materialized beside the figure of a Jap. Another figure—a gnome, a wraith! The unholy light from the pit painted it an unearthly greenish hue, and accentuated the haggardness of face, and the gleaming eyes, the humped body, its crookedness magnified by the crouched attitude. It looked like some demon come floating up on the wicked light from the "deep ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... and distinct. Then (and what a shiver ran down my back!) I remembered hearing that a woman had been killed by falling down the steep cellar stairs, and the spot on the left side where she was found unconscious and bleeding had been pointed out to me. There, I heard it again! Was it the wraith of the aged dame or the cries of that unfortunate creature? Hush! Ellen can't have ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... this the storm grew loud apace, The water-wraith was shrieking; And in the scowl of heaven each face Grew dark ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... her or her wraith," he swore afterwards. "I'll never forget the moment I looked down and down, and the water seemed to grow clearer, and I saw her walking there at the bottom among the rocks, with him over her back, ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brownie, pixy, elf, dwarf, urchin; Puck, Robin Goodfellow; leprechaun, Cluricaune^, troll, dwerger^, sprite, ouphe^, bad fairy, nix, nixie, pigwidgeon^, will-o'-the wisp. [Supernatural appearance] ghost, revenant, specter, apparition, spirit, shade, shadow, vision; hobglobin, goblin, orc; wraith, spook, boggart^, banshee, loup-garou [Fr.], lemures^; evil eye. merman, mermaid, merfolk^; siren; satyr, faun; manito^, manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c 503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of memory slipped ahead through four years of time, and he was aware of the present, of the books he had opened and the universe he had won from their pages, of his dreams and ambitions, and of his love for a pale wraith of a girl, sensitive and sheltered and ethereal, who would die of horror did she witness but one moment of what he had just lived through—one moment of all the muck of life through which he ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... retorted, and his strong face lost all its anger and found the wraith of a smile. "Dinnae be too hard on the lassie! She's ane of ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... heart! bright be thy doom As the bodings which light up thy bold spirit now, But the fate of M'Crimman is closing in gloom, And the breath of the gray wraith hath pass'd o'er his brow; Victorious, in joy, thou'lt return to Benaer, And be clasp'd to the hearts of thy best beloved there, But M'Crimman, M'Crimman, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... they disobeyed her. They made what search in Venice they could, without rousing a scandal, and Ashe rushed out to join it, using the special means at a minister's disposal. But it was fruitless. Kitty vanished like a wraith in the dawn; and the living world of action and affairs ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... every keel, In every timber, from stem to stern,— A something in every crank and wheel, That made 'em answer their turn; And everywhere, On earth and water, in fire and air, As it were to see it all well done, The Wraith of the murdered Law,— Old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... by the feet of faith Untrodden, bloom not where such deep mist drives. Dead fancy's ghost, not living fancy's wraith, Is now the storied sorrow that survives Faith in the record of these lifeless lives. Yet Milton's sacred feet have lingered there, His lips have made august the fabulous air, His hands have touched and left the ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the map of Massachusetts yet, one does not dispute; but the Andover of New England theology—the Andover of a peculiar people, the Andover that held herself apart from the world and all that was therein—will soon become an interesting wraith. ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... the storm grew loud apace, The water—wraith was shrieking; And in the scowl of heaven eachface, Grew dark as ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... inhospitable chairs and settees whose satin slipperiness offered no inducements to sit down. There were gold-lacquered tables and a curious concert-grand piano, also gold inlaid with mother-of-pearl cupids and flowers. Everything was most elaborate. Gila, in her soft transparencies, looked like a wraith amid it all. The young man chose to think she was too rare and fine ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... rang. It was like a summons. The wraith of his own making vanished. He wiped his eyes, now with one fringed sleeve, now with the other, stooped and felt round just inside the little room for his scrap of mattress and the quilt, took them up, softly shut the door, and ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... in sickness he usually resorted to mental healers, mesmerists, and clairvoyants. Before making investments or embarking in his great railroad ventures, Vanderbilt visited spiritualists; we have one circumstantial account of his summoning the wraith of Jim Fiske to advise him in stock operations. His excessive vanity led him to print his picture on all the Lake Shore bonds; he proposed to New York City the construction in Central Park of a large monument that would commemorate, side ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
