rapture quotes

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!

- Robert Browning
  Dramatic Romances and Lyrics,'Home- Thoughts, from Abroad'.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man less, but nature more.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza178.

'Is there no more?' She cries.'All this to love, and rapture's due, Must we not paya debt to pleasure too?'

-JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
c.1672  'The Imperfect Enjoyment', l.22^4 (published1680).

Even so for me a vision sanctified The sway of death; long ere my eyes had seen Thy countenancethe still rapture of thy mien When thou, dear Sister! wert become death's bride: No trace of pain or languor could abide That changeage on thy brow was smoothedthy cold Wan cheek at once was privileged to unfold A loveliness to living youth denied. Oh! if within me hope should e'er decline, The lamp of faith, lost Friend! too faintly burn; The may that heaven-revealing smile of thine, The bright assurance, visibly return: And let my spirit in that power divine Rejoice, as, through that power, it ceased to mourn.

-William Wordsworth
  'November1836', complete poem (published1837).