"Incantation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... New Zealand. The article is by Miss Tenira Henry, of Honolulu, a young lady of the island. The Council of the Society, not having seen the rite, 'do not guarantee the truth of the story, but willingly publish it for the sake of the incantation.' Miss Henry begins with a description of the ti-plant (Dracaena terminalis), which 'requires to be well baked before being ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... classes of his comedies. Moliere had the art of amalgamating many distinct inventions of others into a single inimitable whole. Whatever might be the herbs and the reptiles thrown into the mystical caldron, the incantation of genius proved ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Druid followed him and suddenly, as we are told, struck him with a druidic wand, or according to one version, flung at him a tuft of grass over which he had pronounced a druidical incantation." ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... wolf at will. There are those who have heard him singing the Chanson de Voyageur to the howling of his wolves away up in the sky. I have seen them, and talked with them, and over on the McLeod I saw a whole tribe making incantation because they had seen Bram and his wolves building themselves a conjuror's house in the heart of a thunder-cloud. So—is it strange that he should snare ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... and sang, such a song I warrant as my lords and ladies had never bent their ears to hear before, a crooning death incantation of the Choctaws, which fell as naturally from my lips as my own ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... became a passion, a passion new and sweet in its incantation out of the lost cravings of childhood. When the nearer freshness of the woods filled her nostrils, there from the live-oak moss in her night's abode, she smiled on the grave young fellow who had left her at the door. And both ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... and sorcery from the Tengus, or long-nosed elves of the mountains, and could fly high in the air with incredible swiftness. Speaking a few words of incantation, he put on the wings of a Tengu, mounted a white cloud and rode on the east wind to India, bought the elixir of the mountain spirits, and returned to Japan in ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... the incantation ere she laid her throbbing head on the pillow. Whether or not she slept, is more than we can divulge. Such, in all probability, was the case; dreams being the echo only of our ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... of the text is fragmentary, and shows that the text formed part of an incantation which was recited in the Temple of E-Zida, possibly the great ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... part as any one else, I endeavoured to resist this species of medical treatment. But it was not so easy a matter to get out of the clutches of the old wizard; he fastened on the unfortunate limb as if it were something for which he had been long seeking, and muttering some kind of incantation continued his discipline, pounding it after a fashion that set me well nigh crazy; while Mehevi, upon the same principle which prompts an affectionate mother to hold a struggling child in a dentist's chair, restrained me in his powerful ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... quarrelled in girlhood, and mutually declared their intention never to speak to each other again, wetting and drying their forefingers to the accompaniment of an ancient childish incantation, and while they lived on the paternal farm they kept their foolish oath with the stubbornness of a slow country stock, despite the alternate coaxing and chastisement of their parents, notwithstanding the perpetual everyday contact of their lives, through every vicissitude of ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... thoughts very different, and separated by civilization, though confounded by the savage, it will not surprise one to find that the medicine-men are conjurers as well as doctors, and that their conjurations partake as much of medical quackery as does their medical practice of affected incantation. As physicians, the medicine-men are below contempt, and, but for the savage cruelty of their ignorance, undeserving of notice. The writer has known a man to have his uvula and palate torn out by a medicine-man. In that case the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the submission with which Perpetua followed the incantation of the fool. "This is the black magic," she said; and then asked Perpetua, "Are you ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... gets within their reach, but they never injure women. One of these of a prodigious size was caught having gold rings in its ears, which was supposed to have been done as some species of witchcraft or incantation by the Kafrs to clear the river from these dangerous animals. In confirmation of this opinion, we read in an Arabian author named Matude, giving an account of prodigies, that about the year 863 a brazen crocodile was found under the ruins of an Egyptian temple, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... the incantation of the heart that would wake them;—which if they once heard, they would start up to meet us in the power of ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... the man was led to the center of the pit. Chains were clamped to his wrists and ankles. Then the guards lifted him, holding him horizontal. One of the priests extended his arms upward, over the prone man, and seemed to be mouthing a prayer or incantation. He appeared to Mike to be asking some deity to accept ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... Certain European peasants will run past a colony of these pure innocent blossoms in the belief that the very air is tainted by them. Yet the Romans ceremonially picked the first anemone of the year, with an incantation supposed to guard them against fever. The identical plant that blooms in our woods, which may be found also in Asia, is planted on graves by the Chinese, who call it the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... on—hours fleeted, and, at last, clear and full rose the blessed English shore—shores charmed by a mighty spell—with one touch to dissolve every incantation of slavery, no matter in what language pronounced, or ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... in making a random cast on the surface of a strange language. You cannot tell what will come up. It is like an experiment in witchcraft. We should not have been at all surprised, I must confess, if our preliminary incantation had brought forth a cow or a ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... incantation, enchantment, conjuration; periapt, amulet, phylactery, talisman, fetich, abraxas; fascination, glamour, witchery, attraction, illusion, rhetoric; breloque (jewel); countercharm. Antonyms: disenchantment, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... In her incantation formulae, the word "Jumala" often occurred, the name of the Bjarmers' old god, whose memory, in the far north, is not so completely eradicated as one would think, and who to this day has perhaps some sacrificial stone or other on the ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... theism, is sorcery. Incantation, dancing, fasting, bodily torture, and ecstasism are practiced. Every tribe has its potion or vegetable drug, by which the ecstatic state is produced, and their venerable medicine-men see visions and dream dreams. No enterprise is undertaken ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... That my playing may be joyous And my wisdom-songs find welcome." Then the ancient sage and singer, Wise and worthy Wainamoinen, Sweetly sang and played, and chanted, Through the long and dreary evening, Ending thus his incantation: "Grant, O Ukko, my Creator, That the people of Wainola May enjoy another banquet In the company of Light-foot; Grant that we may long remember Kalevala's feast with Otso! "Grant, O Ukko, my Creator, That the signs may guide our footsteps, That the notches in the pine-tree May direct my ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... order to win a favour of his beloved, filled his room with skulls and bones like a churchyard?' The most loathsome tasks were prescribed—to draw three teeth from a corpse or a nail from its finger, and the like; and while the hocus-pocus of the incantation was going on, the unhappy participants ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... insects, and reptiles. But the prince having his eyes shut, and his back toward him, could not see his motions, and the enchanter being horribly affrighted, as well as naturally a great blockhead, was so long in recollecting the formula of his incantation, that the prince, seeing by a sly glance over the shoulder, that he was sufficiently near, suddenly turned round, and with one blow severed his head from his shoulders. Then catching it before it fell to the ground, he threw it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... idle Tread of leisurely delay; Fear or doubt it cannot bridle Should it headlong run away; No remorse, no incantation Moves the ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... not know that Borrow used these verses as a kind of incantation we should be sorry to have read them. But one of the original pieces in this book is as good in itself as it is interesting. I mean ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... by myself I swear, And ocean's gods and heaven's gods I adjure, Thou shalt be Tamar's, Tamar shalt be thine." Then she, regarding him long fixed, replied: "I have thy promise, take thou my advice. Gebir, this land of Egypt is a land Of incantation, demons rule these waves; These are against thee, these thy works destroy. Where thou hast built thy palace, and hast left The seven pillars to remain in front, Sacrifice there, and all these rites observe. Go, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... food. Other story- tellers, of more historical accuracy, roundly asserted that Sir Francis himself had been little better than a pirate, and had chosen this spot to conceal quantities of ill-gotten booty taken from neutral bottoms, and had protected his hiding-place by the orthodox means of hellish incantation and diabolic agencies. On moonlight nights a shadowy ship was sometimes seen standing off and on, or when fogs encompassed sea and shore, the noise of oars rising and falling in their rowlocks could ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... twilight of the richly historic past, suddenly crystallized into recognition that it was Ischia which was the home of Vittoria Colonna, the greatest woman poet of the Italian Renaissance. Lines, long since read, arose like an incantation; and like bars of music, each note of which vibrated in the air, came this fragment of ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... man found himself glancing furtively from right to left, starting at every shadow and scrutinising every passerby who was innocently hurrying to his own home. The name "Fehmgerichte" kept repeating itself in his brain like an incantation. He took the middle of the square and hesitated when he came to the narrow street down which his way lay. At the street corner he paused, laid his hand on the hilt of his sword and drew a ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... measured song or cadence." The same peculiarity is observable in all experiments with the moving tables or rapping spirits, which are more successful when accompanied by constant music. Circe fascinated with incantation; and the Psalmist alludes to it as a means of charming. Serpents, as well as men, are thus charmed. Virgil says, that, if to this incantation by words certain herbs are joined, the fascination works ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... merely, like ours, but rising to the loftiest tree-tops with weird illumination, and anon hovering so low that my horse often stepped the higher to avoid them. The dewy Cherokee roses brushed my face, the solemn "Chuckwill's-widow" croaked her incantation, and the rabbits raced phantom-like across the shadowy road. Slowly in the darkness I followed the well-known path to the spot where our most advanced outposts were stationed, holding a causeway which thrust ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... mother's Puritan God, had no difficulty in reconciling God's will and an enchantment. One thing had helped to confirm this belief. Mick and Jane remembered the night their father died—it was the night Honeybird was born—and, thinking back over it now, they were sure they had heard the incantation that had wrought the spell. They had been waked by a noise, a muttering, and a tramp of feet on the gravel beneath the nursery window. They had been frightened, for Lull was not in the nursery, and when they ran out into the passage ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... A blunderer whose incantation had brought the spirit up to face me, I stared at him helplessly, nor could I find words to answer or control the passion that my imbecile scolding had evoked. Whatever the barriers Keredec's training had built for his protection, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... were an invocation to the God of Abraham to bless his endeavours to heal the stranger youth, but which happily were spoken before the arrival of the others, who would certainly have believed them an incantation. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thrill of interest as the old man began to spin slowly on his toes round the column of smoke, chanting slowly some strange mixture of savage music which was, as Frank guessed, an incantation to the fetish that, as he believed, dwelt in the smoke. As the smoke grew thicker he cast some sort of powder from a skin-bag into it and instantly a thick yellow ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... airs, but a certain sparkle in her eyes, she went down on her knees by the pool, stretched her round arm over the water, passed the willow bough slowly across its surface, and recited her incantation: ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... apparition standing erect in the strong red light. Waving her torch with energetic and graceful action, she appeared like an antique sybil at the moment of inspiration, or some Arabian enchantress preparing for an incantation. Their admiration, however, yielded to alarm, when they beheld her dash the torch upon the ground, and her attendants pile upon it straw and fagots, which blazed up instantly to the cavern roof, emitting volumes of smoke that made ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... which frightened the sick person; after this, the fear departs. Sonyashnitza is brewed for giddiness and pain in the bowels. To this end, a bit of stump is burned, thrown into a jug, and turned upside down into a bowl filled with water, which is placed on the patient's stomach: after an incantation, he is given a spoonful ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... island of Mull, one of the largest of the Hebrides, the need-fire was kindled as late as 1767. "In consequence of a disease among the black cattle the people agreed to perform an incantation, though they esteemed it a wicked thing. They carried to the top of Carnmoor a wheel and nine spindles of oakwood. They extinguished every fire in every house within sight of the hill; the wheel was then turned from east to west over the nine spindles long enough to produce fire ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... attributed his conduct to motives low and unworthy, and as groundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism, and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of his muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts between the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of those who start up ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... the thrusts, and the gashes of the many wounds that they had, than to apply to them spells and incantations and charms, in order to staunch their blood, and their bleeding mortal wounds. And for every spell and incantation and charm that was applied to the stabs and the wounds of Cuchulain, he sent a full half westward across the ford to Ferdia; and of each kind of food, and of pleasant, palatable, intoxicating drink that the men of Ireland brought to Ferdia, he sent ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... his ear, and the mayor wiggled his hands behind, as he had on the wharf after the battle of the limes, coal, and potatoes. The lawyer said it must be an incantation, but that it was not Tahitian, for that language had no "d" in its alphabet. M. Lontane and all his squad were given peremptory orders to unriddle ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... mutterings are probably an echo of the "incantation and magic words" ("incantationem et verba quas sibi reperta sunt de quibus ad funem utitur ... quoniam in fune aliquam nec vocem nec gemitum emittit sed solum inter dentes ipse videtur et auditur loqui" [Die beiden Foscari, pp. 160, 161]), which, according to the decree of the Council ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... mind, produced by actual contact with Salem, is subtly akin to the mood from which so many of Hawthorne's visions were projected. A flickering semblance, perhaps, of what to him must have been a constant though subdued and dreamy flame summoning him to potent incantation over the abyss of time; but from this it was easy to conceive it deepened and intensified in him a hundred-fold. Moreover, in his youth and growing-time, the influence itself was stronger, the suggestive aspect of the town more ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... metre from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or incantation, no change of place; but present they burn, absent they desire, by day they follow their loves about, by night they serenade them, sober call for them, and drunken sing about them. And he who said that ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... An incantation used in addressing this god begins: "O Father, Thaulang, who hast enabled me to be born, who hast given me my stature and my life." This is very certain proof that the maternal system among the Khasis has no connection ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... assembled for evening prayer, the north wind seemed to lift the roof as with hands; the windows were shaken; the nuns divined the wrath of God in the wind, and Miss Dingle, who had learned through pious incantation that the Evil One would attempt a descent into the convent, ran to warn the porteress of the danger. At that moment the wind was so loud that the portress listened, perforce, to the imaginings of Miss Dingle's weak brain, thinking, in ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... his lucid and liquid melody, his imagery of moving light and the faintly veiled transparency of air, his vague, wildly romantic subject matter, coming from no one knows where, meaning one hardly knows what; but already a magic, an incantation. "Lewti" is a sort of preliminary study for "Kubla Khan"; it, too, has all the imagery of a dream, with a breathlessness and awed hush, as of one not yet accustomed to be at ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... has limitations. Fire is of course a plaything in magic hands. Water has its docile moments, the earth herself may be tampered with, and an incantation may call man or any of his possessions to attention. But space is too great a thing, space is the inconceivable Hand, holding aloft this fragile delusion that is our world. There is no power that can mock at space, there is no enchantment ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... close guard over her; and it made me shudder to behold, also, the old hag, Ailsie Gourley, crouching down by her bonny mistress, and stroking the lily-white hand which hung so listless at her side, mumbling the while what seemed to me must be some incantation to the Evil One. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... for they contrive that you shall be helpless, that you may not in good form resist their calculated, schemed, coordinated blood-drawing. And I had as lief have a Sioux Medicine man dance a one-step round my camp fire, and chant his silly incantation for my curing, as any of these blood pressure, electro-chemical, pill, powder specialists. Give me an Ipswich witch instead. Let her lay hands on me. Soft hands that turn away wrath. Have you such or did your ancestors, out of fear of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... N. request, requisition; claim &c. (demand) 741; petition, suit, prayer; begging letter, round robin. motion, overture, application, canvass, address, appeal, apostrophe; imprecation; rogation; proposal, proposition. orison &c. (worship) 990; incantation &c. (spell) 993. mendicancy; asking, begging &c. v.; postulation, solicitation, invitation, entreaty, importunity, supplication, instance, impetration[obs3], imploration[obs3], obsecration[obs3], obtestation[obs3], invocation, interpellation. V. request, ask; beg, crave, sue, pray, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the herbs alone," muttered Tom curiously to himself. "She's working up some kind of incantation. I wonder what effect she expects an Indian song to ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... unpleasant in the hot weather, so she stripped to the skin and soon fell asleep. I did the same, but I could not help feeling some regret at having engaged myself not to take advantage of the position before the night of the great incantation. I knew that the operation to unearth the treasure would be a complete failure, but I knew likewise that it would not fail ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... arose before her mind's eye the noble countenance of Henry Howard, ever and again she fancied that she heard his earnest, melodious voice, which made her heart shake and tremble like a magical incantation. She had at first struggled against these sweet fancies, which forced upon her such strange and undreamed-of thoughts; but at length the woman in her got the better of the fanatical Romanist, and, dropping into a seat, she surrendered herself ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... presumed to bow to the Duke. He was very busy about the wine, and dressed the wild fowl in a manner quite unparalleled. Tom Cogit was the man for a sauce for a brown bird. What a mystery he made of it! Cayenne and Burgundy and limes were ingredients, but there was a magic in the incantation with which he alone was acquainted. He took particular care to send a most perfect portion to the young Duke, and he did this, as he paid all attentions to influential strangers, with the most marked consciousness of the sufferance which permitted his presence: never addressing ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... wounded. Kirjipa almost swooning follows, supported by some women who lead her into the house. The Exorcist, who with his two assistants follows Pakh, takes some clay from a coffer carried by one of his men, shapes it into a ball, and begins, then, the incantation. ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... his head, he encountered a face full of the most utter amazement. Little John of Dunster had come into the tent, and stood gazing at him with open eyes and gaping mouth, as if he were perpetrating an incantation. Richard could ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... along mapped roads foredoomed, and its mills went round. Its life was expressed for export. It was on the way to Manchester and success. Of all the infernal uses to which a country can be put there is none like development. Let every good savage make incantation against it, or, if to some extent he has been developed, cross himself against the fructification of the evil. As for us whites, we are eternally damned, for we cannot escape the consequences of our past cleverness. The Devil has us on a complexity of strings, and some day will pull ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... century professed the cure of those "'visseit with frenacies, madness, falling evil (epilepsy), persones distractit in their wittis, and with feirful apparitiones, etc., and utheris uncouth diseases; all done be sorcerie, incantation, devellische charmeing.' Above forty persons are enumerated for whom he had prescribed, for which he was strangled and burnt as too familiar with Satan."[32] The same author relates that a poor woman having become frantic, the alleged author ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... morrow, after that she had slept there through the night. And on the morrow, when the day was far spent, such preparations were made as were necessary to enable her to accomplish her soothsaying. She bade them bring her those women, who knew the incantation, which she required to work her spells, and which she called Warlocks; but such women were not to be found. Thereupon a search was made throughout the house, to see whether any one knew this [incantation]. Then ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... wound: the bleeding at once ceased; squeezing juice from the herbs, she applied an ointment made from it; then, opening a phial attached to her waist-belt, she poured some drops of liquid into the girl's mouth, gently parting her lips. This done, she stood erect and began an incantation, or rather a supplication, in an unknown tongue. As she proceeded her form became rigid, her eye gleamed, her arms, the hands clenched, were raised above her head. The sun flashed on the circlet, glittered on the embossed girdle: ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... not hear this fact advanced to prove the divinity of the Koran or the book of Mormon. If it is a valid argument in the one case it is valid in the others. The trouble with it is it proves too much. It takes in the whole field. It does not leave a weed, from the first incantation of the first aborigine to the last shout of the last convert to Mormonism, out of its range; and it does, and always has done, just as good service for any one of the other religions as it does for ours. It is a free-for-all, go-as-you-please argument; but it is ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... looked the part to horror. The lamp was set on the floor; the crone squatted on the threshold, a green palm-branch in her hand, the light striking full on her aged features and picking out behind her, from the black night, timorous faces of spectators. Our sorceress began with a chanted incantation; it was in the old tongue, for which I had no interpreter; but ever and again there ran along the crowd outside that laugh which every traveller in the islands learns so soon to recognise,—the laugh of terror. Doubtless these half-Christian folk were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... investigation made. In the Caroline archipelago fishing is combined with various rites and religious notions. The chief medicine man owes the authority of his position, not to his knowledge of the art of fishing, but to his knowledge of the formulae of incantation and exorcism employed in fishing. There must be abstinence from the sex relation before a fishing expedition. The men start in silence. Especially, the hoped-for success must not be mentioned. The ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... bottle of beer from the captain, he poured it solemnly over the stern of the vessel into the sea. There were some indications of wind at the time, and accordingly the next morning we had a fine breeze, which the Iowas attributed solely to the Prophet's incantation and ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... terrible words a most singular thing happened. In whatever attitude the creatures were they remained so; and gradually each assumed a stony and lifeless expression, and the spell or incantation which the Ambassador had pronounced ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... Hungary, over Servia, over Southern Greece and the Danubian Provinces, and which would twice within the last twenty-five years have seen its Empire dashed to pieces by an Egyptian vassal but for the intervention of Europe, might be arrested in its decadence by an incantation, and be made strong enough and enlightened enough to govern to all time the Slavic and Greek populations which had still the misfortune to be included within its dominions. Recognising—so ran the words which read like bitter irony, but which were meant for ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... serene calm of an European place of worship in the midst of the distasteful turmoil of the Chinese country. Under the high white arch, where I stood alone with my sailors, the "Dies Iroe," chanted by a missionary priest, sounded like a soft magical incantation. Through the open doors we could see sights that resembled enchanted gardens, exquisite verdure and immense palm-trees, the wind shook the large flowering shrubs and their perfumed crimson petals fell ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... to everybody," said Mrs. Todd kindly; and I felt for a moment as if it were part of a spell and incantation, and as if my enchantress would now begin to look like the cobweb shapes of the arctic town. Nothing happened but a quiet evening and some delightful plans that we made about going to Green Island, and on the morrow there was the clear sunshine and ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... no earthly thing fall upon the pickaxe, as its efficacy would be for ever destroyed. A learned Thug then sits down; and turning his face to the west, receives the pickaxe in a brass dish. After muttering some incantation, he throws it into a pit already prepared for it, where it is washed in clear water. It is then taken out, and washed again three times; the first time in sugar and water, the second in sour milk, and the third in spirits. It is ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... fever and makes it safe for them to return to their houses. To assure them that the real secret is sunshine and soap is only to convince them that you do not care whether they live or die, and wish to save money at their expense. So you perform the incantation; and back they go to their houses, satisfied. A religious ceremony—a poetic blessing of the threshold, for instance—would be much better; but unfortunately our religion is weak on the sanitary side. One of the worst misfortunes of Christendom was that reaction ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... and efficaciousness of will. God, by the agency of an infinite will, created the Universe, and the same sort of power in an inferior degree, limited more or less by external hindrances, exists in all spiritual beings." The higher we ascend in antiquity, the more does prayer take the form of incantation; and that form it still in a great degree retains, since the rites of public worship are generally considered not merely as an expression of trust or reverence, as real spiritual acts, the effect of which is looked ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of its velvet pile in the society of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, who represented to him the world he feared and tried to keep sunny for himself by all the arts he could exercise. She expected him to be the gay Sir Willoughby, and her look being as good as an incantation summons, he produced the accustomed sprite, giving her sally for sally. Queens govern the polite. Popularity with men, serviceable as it is for winning favouritism with women, is of poor value to a sensitive gentleman, anxious ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the window-a man thin and pale, a man with long hair, in a black doublet, who approached the foot of the bed where Sainte-Croix lay. Brave as he was, this apparition so fully answered to his prayers (and at the period the power of incantation and magic was still believed in) that he felt no doubt that the arch-enemy of the human race, who is continually at hand, had heard him and had now come in answer to his prayers. He sat up on the bed, feeling mechanically at the place where the handle ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Lord's Prayer repeated backwards—the incantation usual in proceedings for obtaining unhallowed assistance against an enemy. Susan uttered the lugubrious discourse three times slowly, and when it was completed the image had considerably diminished. As the wax dropped into the fire a long flame arose from ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... such transformations were easily accomplished by the touch of a wand or the incantation of a wizard. In a newer sort of fairy tale, we have seen them produced by marvellous drugs. In real life there have been supposed changes of identity, or rather cases of dual identity, the subject alternating from one to another as he shifts from one to another set of memories. These shifts ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... great hall of the castle, which, on this occasion, was hung with superb new tapestry, representing the exploits of Charlemagne and his twelve peers; here, were seen the Saracens, with their horrible visors, advancing to battle; and there, were displayed the wild solemnities of incantation, and the necromantic feats, exhibited by the magician JARL before the Emperor. The sumptuous banners of the family of Villeroi, which had long slept in dust, were once more unfurled, to wave over the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... iniquitous proceedings by an act of Parliament. Had fate reserved him to our times, four technical terms would have done his business, and saved him all this trouble; he needed nothing more than one short form of incantation:—"Philosophy, Light, Liberality, the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ashes of an heifer, and the juice of hyssop. But I have a far better medicine under my hands here. This moment I will make you a purge to the purpose." And then the learned man, half-doctor, half-divine, chanted again the sacred incantation as he bent over his pestle and mortar, saying: Ex carne et sanguine Christi! Those shrewd old eyes soon saw that, in spite of all their defences and all their denials, damage had been done to the conscience and the heart that nothing would ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... boy in her hand, and, coming again to the grave where Hector Munro was interred alive, demanded of the witch which victim she would choose, who replied that she chose Hector to live and George to die in his stead. This form of incantation was thrice repeated ere Mr. Hector was removed from his chilling bed in a January grave and carried home, all remaining mute as before. The consequence of a process which seems ill-adapted to produce the former effect was that Hector Munro recovered, and after the intervention of twelve ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... this deity. He does not tire of singing her praises, and of speaking of the temple he erected in her honor. Still, Ur-Bau does not stand alone in his devotion; Uru-kagina, Gudea, and others refer to Bau frequently, while in the incantation texts, she is invoked as the great mother, who gives birth to mankind and restores the body to health. In the old Babylonian inscriptions she is called the chief daughter of Anu, the god of heaven. Among her titles, the one most frequently given is that of 'good lady.' She is the 'mother' ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... more at this spectacle, while she stood on the heath with her head uncovered, and her grey hairs streaming in the wind, no bad representation of a superannuated bacchante, or Thessalian witch in the agonies of incantation. She soon discovered Claverhouse at the head of the fugitive party, and exclaimed with bitter irony, "Tarry, tarry, ye wha were aye sae blithe to be at the meetings of the saints, and wad ride every muir in Scotland to find ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... depression in the clearing was suddenly filled with hundreds of shadowy, swiftly gliding forms. Then a door opened in the temple, exposing a brightly illuminated image of the goddess Kali, before which a white-robed priest began a barbarous incantation, while the tribe of worshippers prostrated themselves upon ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... charm, incantation, exorcism, weird, cabala^, exsufflation^, cantrap^, runes, abracadabra, open sesame, countercharm^, Ephesian letters, bell book and candle, Mumbo Jumbo, evil eye, fee-faw- fum. talisman, amulet, periapt^, telesm^, phylactery, philter; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... dead. Love, the immortal, the victorious, Is fallen and vanquished. What charm can raise, what incantation rouse That ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... knew that world-old formula of hate; he knew of its almost innocent use in many a white caban, but its older, deeper meaning of demoniacal incantation rushed to his mind, somehow blending with the wizardry with which he surrounded his ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... incantation an incident which flatters his ambition. Having changed his tobacco from the right to the left side of his mouth, he strangles badly. It takes him just five minutes to get a free breath. This is always a good sign. Thereupon the darkest of negro ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... qui tolis pecata mundi is used as an incantation in which every word more or less incomprehensible has a sacred character so that if one should say that he despises qui tolis, it would be considered a blasphemy because the Qui Tolis is something sacred or divine. A child after saying the trisagio said by way of protest: "I am tired of saying ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... and medicine-men, which resulted in powers of metamorphosis, the effect of incantation, and communion with the dead.—To the savage all nature was animated, all things were persons. The leading ideas of savage peoples have already been referred to in the list of motifs which appear in the different fairy tales, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... music were rather rare, and the nicest sign of all, which spun out the word with endless turns and trills, like the carol of a bird, occurred only a few times in the whole Pentateuch. The child, as he listened to the interminable incantation, thought he would have sprinkled the Code with bird-songs, and made the Scroll of the Law warble. But he knew this could not be. For the Scroll was stern and severe and dignified, like the high members of the congregation who bore it aloft, or furled it, and adjusted its wrapper ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a low tone, the savages gathered around him with looks {300} of terror and frantically signed to him to put away the book. They mistook it for some kind of a fetish, that is, an object inhabited by a powerful spirit, and his muttering they supposed to be a magic incantation. Then a happy thought struck him. He began to sing the service in a loud and cheerful voice. This delighted the savages, who fancied that the book was teaching him to ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... lately made a dash home through the Canal. He had been away six months, and only joined us again just in time for this last trip. We had never seen the box before. His hands hovered above it; and he talked to us ironically, but his face became as grave as though he were pronouncing a powerful incantation over the things inside. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... and antipathies often so obscure that we cannot even explain them to ourselves. We may feel a collective emotion under the impulse of some powerful event or personality. We may ebb and flow as a tide to the rhythm of a great melody or to the incantation of noble oratory. The news of a great victory in these days would move us to our common centre and bring all our separate worlds into a mighty chorus of thanksgiving. But even in these common emotions there are infinite shades of difference, and when they have passed we ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... immovable form of Uncas, placed himself in a dignified attitude before the offender. At that moment, the withered squaw already mentioned moved into the circle, in a slow, sidling sort of a dance, holding the torch, and muttering the indistinct words of what might have been a species of incantation. Though her presence was altogether an ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... names of the Emperor, of the Empress, of the Empress Marie, of the Tsarevitch and of the Grand Duchess herself were thundered out every minute or two—they were the only words that I could understand Listening to the priest's sonorous incantation reverberating through the building that morning, one little dreamt that within less than two years' time the winsome princess—her photograph was to be seen everywhere in the Petrograd streets and she seemed to be especially popular—whose ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... generation; and even now it is a belief that when, for the sake of some small kindness or gratuity, a Gipsy woman has allowed her child to be baptised, she summons her friends, and attempts to undo the effect of the ceremony by subjecting the infant to some weird, horrible incantation of Eastern origin, the original import of which is in all probability a profound mystery to her. There is a quaint story of a Yorkshire Gipsy, a prosperous horse-dealer, who, becoming wealthy, came up to town, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... suddenly become very bright, shining on her glossy hair (for she was bare-headed) gave it a metallic lustre, and it was difficult to say what was the colour, dark bronze or black. So completely absorbed was she in watching the cloud to which her strange song or incantation seemed addressed, that she did not observe me when I rose and went towards her. Over her head, high up in the blue, a lark that was soaring towards the same gauzy cloud was singing, as if in rivalry. As I slowly approached the child, I could see by her forehead (which ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... rose in his wake, but he took no notice, pressing onward to the house of Scundoo. He hammered on the door, beat it with his fists, and howled vile imprecations. Yet there was no response, save that in the lulls Scundoo's voice rose eerily in incantation. Klok-No-Ton raged about like a madman, but when he attempted to break in the door with a huge stone, murmurs arose from the men and women. And he, Klok-No-Ton, knew that he stood shorn of his strength and authority before an alien people. He saw a man stoop for ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... rapture, misery, rage; voluptuous now, and sorrowful; lightnings quiver, storm's roll; and high above the gigantic musician! banning and compelling all things, proudly and firmly wielding them from whirl to whirlpool, to the abyss.— He laughs at himself; for the incantation was, after all, but play to him. Thus night beckons. ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... ritual for the Sacerdotes, flamines, &c. This general term included the more special ones of Libri sacrorum, sacerdotum, haruspicini, &c. Some have confounded with the Annales a different sort of record altogether, the Indigitamenta, or ancient formulae of prayer or incantation, and the Axamenta, to which class the song of the Arval ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... about to uncanny harmonies. A revel of new pranks dies down to chords of muted horns, amid flashing runs of the harp, with a long roll of drums. Here Grave in solemn pace, violas and bassoon strike an ecclesiastical incantation, answered by the organ. Presently a Gregorian plain chant begins solemnly in the strings aided by the organ while a guise of the second profane motive intrudes. Suddenly in quick pace against a fugal tread of lower voices, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... aged—return her any answer. It lulls him into the long spells of sleep so necessary for his first growth. By and by, when he has found his legs, he begins to skip, and even before he has found articulate speech, to croon for himself. Pass a stage, and you find him importing speech, drama, dance, incantation, into his games with his playmates. Watch a cluster of children as they enact "Here we go gathering nuts in May"— eloquent line: it is just what they are doing!—or "Here come three Dukes a-riding," or "Fetch a pail of ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... more than a deep slumber of a single night. When the story ends the tired eyelids are weighed down with sleep. Thus it is that we send the little body of the child floating on the back of sleep over the still water of time, and then in the morning read a few verses of incantation to restore him to the ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Yet must I dote upon thee,—call thee sweet. Sweeter by far than Hybla's honied roses When steep'd in dew rich to intoxication. Ah! I will taste that dew, for me 'tis meet, And when the moon her pallid face discloses, I'll gather some by spells, and incantation. ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... Sualtam, and they called him Setanta, That was his first name. His nurse was Dethcaen, the druidess, daughter of Cathvah the druid, the mighty wizard and prophet of the Crave Rue. His breast-plate [Footnote: A poetic spell or incantation. So even the Christian hymn of St. Patrick was called the lorica or breastplate of Patrick.] of power, woven of druidic verse, was upon Ulla [Footnote: Ulla is the Gaelic root of Ulster.] in his time, upon all the children of Rury in their going out ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... then gently seals her eyes in slumber with tender kisses, lays her softly down upon the green mound, and draws down the visor of her helmet. Then, after covering her with her shield to protect her from all harm, he begins a powerful incantation, summoning Loge to surround her with an impassable barrier of flames. As this incantation proceeds, small flickering tongues of fire start forth on every side; they soon rise higher and higher, roaring and crackling until, as Wotan disappears, ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... wild incantation in which all joined. The old priest would speak some words, and the reply came in barbaric music. The words meant nothing to me; they must have been in some tongue long since dead. But the music told its own tale. It spoke of old kings and great battles, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... patriotism, until the stirring staves ring and resound through those dim caves. The miners, who hold the superstition, that to whisper bodes ill-luck, must have imagined we were exorcising evil spirits with an incantation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... were solemnly tried to hush the wires, and each one usually proved to be as futile as an incantation. What was to be done? Step by step the telephone men were driven back. They were beaten. There was no way to silence these noises. Reluctantly, they agreed that the only way was to pull up the ends of each wire from the tainted earth, and join them by a ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... an incantation, and the water-floods rose and welled as high as mountains. Shikuyu, not in the least frightened, ordered his soldiers to scatter the ashes which he had caused them to make. Every man did as he was bid, and ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... fried jackass to the gods. The second suggested a public procession, headed by the Wampog himself, bearing the Holy Poker on a cushion of cloth-of-brass. Another thought that a scarlet mole should be buried alive in the public park and a suitable incantation chanted over the remains. The advice of the fourth was that the columns of the capitol be rubbed with oil of dog by a person having a moustache on the calf of his leg. When all the others had spoken an Aged Man ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... him, shaking his frightful rattles, and singing songs of incantation, in the hopes to cure him by a charm."—Catlin's North American Indians, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... well timed that it seemed as if the whole south end of the pavilion was rising. As 1,800 scarlet-covered chorus books were hoisted into view, the whole amphitheater seemed aflame as if for an exaggerated incantation scene of Fra Diavolo. Then there was another motion of the baton, with the precision of a machine fifty bows scraped upwards over fifty violins and 150 other instruments, and 1,800 voices ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... monks resumed their seats; there entered clerks in seemly black with pens and parchment; the red-velveted summoner appeared to tell his tale; Nigel was led in with archers pressing close around him; and then, with much calling of old French and much legal incantation and mystery, the court of the Abbey was ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... deaths of the Empress Inokami and her son, Osabe, the heir apparent. They were probably poisoned on the same day, and stories injurious to the lady's reputation—stories going so far as to accuse her of attempting the life of the Emperor by incantation—were circulated in justification of the murder. Certain it is, however, that to Momokawa's exertions the Emperor Kwammu owed his accession, as had his father, Konin. Kwammu, known in his days of priesthood as Yamabe, was Konin's eldest son, and would ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... we have Milton's description of the Moon when affected by the demoniacal practices of the 'night-hag' who was believed to destroy infants for the sake of drinking their blood, and applying their mangled limbs to the purposes of incantation. The legend is of Scandinavian origin and ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... the first sight of a danger not foreseen by the mind I had steeled against far rarer portents of Nature, I cared no more for the lamps and the circle. Hurrying hack to Ayesha I exclaimed: "The phantoms have gone from the spaces in front; but what incantation or spell can arrest the red march of the foe speeding on in the rear! While we gazed on the caldron of life, behind us, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... I affirmed. "His mother was so extravagant and wasteful that his father named him Chryseros Philargyrus as a sort of antidote incantation, in the hope that it might prove a good omen of his disposition and predispose him to parsimony. He certainly has turned out sufficiently ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Reversing the natural order of things, the physician was replaced by the priest. The supernaturalistic theory was revived, and held its own for well on a thousand years. For every complaint the Church provided a specific in the shape of a charm, an incantation, or a saint. St. Apollonia for toothache, St. Avertin for lunacy, St. Benedict for stone, St. Clara for sore eyes, St. Herbert for hydrophobia, St. John for epilepsy, St. Maur for gout, St. Pernel for agues, St. Genevieve for fevers, St. Sebastian for plague, etc.[39] The height ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... waist with a black scarf, and on his head a black, conical-shaped hat, some three feet high. Haying fastened the remains to the extremity of a long, black wand, he held them in the fire of the altar until they were nearly consumed, and then laid the charred mass in the urn, muttering an incantation in Latin. The urn being buried deep in the ground, we formed a ring around the grave, and sung the dirge. Then, lighting our larches by the dying fire, we retraced our steps with feelings suited to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... incantation so serene, So innocent, befits the scene: There's magic in that small bird's note— See, there he flits—the Yellow-throat; A living sunbeam, tipped with wings, A spark of light that shines and ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... lapaau" (medicine man) "when it came to praying to Lonopuha and Koleamoku; read dreams and visions and signs and omens and indigestions to beat the band; make the practitioners under the medicine god, Maiola, look like thirty cents; pull off a pule hee incantation that would make them dizzy; and she claimed to a practice of kahuna hoenoho, which is modern spiritism, second to none. I have myself seen her drink the wind, throw a fit, and prophesy. The aumakuas were brothers to her when she slipped offerings to them across the altars of the ruined heiaus" ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the first bandage on Hermon's eyes with her own weak fingers, at the same time muttering an incantation; but it did not seem to satisfy her. Great excitement had taken possession of her, and as the silver light of the full moon shone into her room she waved her hands before the artist's eyes and fixed her gaze upon the threshold illumined ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... there is a visible, tangible repository of power to whom you can apply. If the repository is in the humour you will get whatever you want done, in the way of justice or injustice. Now in a free country justice is absorbed into the great cosmic forces, and it is apt to be an expensive incantation that wakes the lost elementary spirit. In Russia justice shines by contrast with the surrounding corruption, but there is no mistake about it when you get it. In America it is taken for granted everywhere, and the consequence is that, like most things that are taken for granted, it is a myth. Rousseau ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... right hand from Mrs. Bethune's, that she may point her little forefinger at each one in succession, and begins her incantation with Mr. Gower, who is directly opposite to her, nodding her head at each mystic word; and, indeed, so far as the beginning of it goes, this strange chant of hers mystifies everybody—everybody except Tom Hescott, who ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind, If Winter comes, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Herculean efforts to discredit him personally continue to be successful. Just as slavery was the ghost in the House of the American Democracy during the Middle Period, so Hearstism is and will remain the ghost in the House of Reform. And the incantation by which it will be permanently exorcised has not yet been ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... two!" he said. "Sit tight and listen while I repeat the incantation, and for goodness' sake keep cool if anything happens. Remember we are here with an object—namely—to get everything we can out ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... We cannot, in any real sense, draw away their pains and add them to our own, any more than they, in their turn, can relieve us of our toothache or our sciatica. They are the points, doubtless, at which our environment touches us most closely, but neither incantation nor Act of Parliament, neither priest nor registrar, can make even man and wife really "one flesh." It was necessary for the conservation of the species that a strict limit should be set to the operation of sympathy. Had that emotion been able to pierce the shell of individuality, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... with the intensely dramatic scene with the Witch of Endor, the interview being preluded by the powerful recitative, "Wretch that I am!" The second scene is laid in the Witch's abode, where the incantation is practised that brings up the Apparition of Samuel. The whole scene is very dramatic, and the instrumentation powerful, although the effect, vigorous as it is, is made simply by oboes, bassoons, and strings, instead of by the brass instruments which other ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... preparation,—albeit her interarticular cartilages are somewhat tough, and her lateral ligaments apparently composed of a substance between leather and caoutchouc. As afternoon advances, the porter of the dissecting-room finds them performing an incantation dance round Mr. Muff, who, seated on a stool placed upon two of the tressels, is rattling some halfpence in a skull, accompanied by Mr. Rapp, who is performing a difficult concerto on an extempore instrument of his own invention, composed of the Scotchman's hat, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... withdrawn. And something—what shall I say?—of ironic, supercilious disillusion makes her forehead weary, and her eyelids heavy. But after all, to what exquisite children, like rare, exotic flowers, she has the power to give birth! But did you know, you for whom the syllables "Oxford" are an Incantation, that to the yet more subtle, yet more withdrawn, and yet more elaborate soul of Walter Pater, Oxford Herself appeared, as time went on, a little vulgar ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... saw that the spell which had been on us both at that time in Venice had been nothing but the spell and tremendous incantation of the Thought of Death. The dreary city with its decaying palaces and great tomb-encumbered churches had really seemed, in those dark and desolate weeks, to be the home and metropolis of the great King of Terrors; and the services at dawn and twilight, with their prayers for the Dead, and funereal ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... his own liking, made a number of other tentatives before he could decide to go on in the manner he commenced with. He tried the Guinevere, laughing and galloping in its ballad-movement; he tried the Shallot, with a triple rhyme and a short positive refrain, like a bell rung in an incantation, and brought up every minute by a finger pressed upon the edge. Either of these three—although the metre of the first was the only one endurable by the ear in the case of a long series of poems—either of these had, it may be positively said, a general tone more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various |
