Careful Words

rapture (n.)

rapture (v.)

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 the less, but Nature more.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 178.

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): Home-Thoughts from Abroad. ii.

The keenest pangs the wretched find

Are rapture to the dreary void,

The leafless desert of the mind,

The waste of feelings unemployed.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Giaour. Line 957.

Who hath not own'd, with rapture-smitten frame,

The power of grace, the magic of a name?

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 5.