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Spell-bound   /spɛl-baʊnd/   Listen
Spell-bound

adjective
1.
Having your attention fixated as though by a spell.  Synonyms: fascinated, hypnotised, hypnotized, mesmerised, mesmerized, spellbound, transfixed.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Spell-bound" Quotes from Famous Books



... river Lists to the song, spell-bound; Oh! what shall him deliver From danger threat'ning round? The waters deep have caught them, Both boat and boatman brave; 'Tis Loreley's song hath brought them ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... with each other. Men spoke unkindly to their best chums. Others refused to speak at all. Singleton only was not surprised. "Dead—is he? Of course," he said, pointing at the island right abeam: for the calm still held the ship spell-bound within sight of Flores. Dead—of course. He wasn't surprised. Here was the land, and there, on the fore-hatch and waiting for the sailmaker—there was that corpse. Cause and effect. And for the first time that voyage, the old seaman became quite cheery ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... inside the curtain for a full minute before Perpetua had seen him. Spell-bound he had stood there, gazing at the girl as if bewitched. Up to this he had seen her only in ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... two or three sips, paused awhile as though undecided whether she could possibly swallow such nasty stuff and then, with a fine show of reluctance, gulped it all down. Denis was spell-bound; the dose, he artlessly imagined, was enough to kill a horse. Far from being damaged, Miss Wilberforce took a chair beside him, and began to converse. Charmingly she talked; all about England. As ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... well-written story of a pair of Hindu lovers.... Mr. Ramakrishna is extremely felicitous in the choice of his words, and his descriptions are so picturesque and vivid, and his narrative so stirring, that the reader feels as if spell-bound by the author's great skill and power.... There can be no manner of doubt that the hand that wrote these poems is both strong and skilful, and was directed by a true spirit of poesy ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna

... though she was, stood for an instant spell-bound, and for one moment of not unpardonable panic tried to tell herself that she had been mistaken. Almost immediately, however, there came from the direction of the hall a dull chunky sound as though something soft had been kicked, followed ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... had been scoured, or a connoisseur who found his Titian retouched. But, however he came by an opinion, he had no sooner got it than he did his best to make out a legitimate title to it. His reason, like a spirit in the service of an enchanter, though spell-bound, was still mighty. It did whatever work his passions and his imagination might impose. But it did that work, however arduous, with marvellous dexterity and vigour. His course was not determined by argument; but he could defend the wildest course by arguments more plausible than ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... is our pastor at Abbeville, La. His face beamed with grateful joy as he told the story of the meeting and the wonders of the North, and of the warm welcome of Northern friends, while the brethren of the Association were held spell-bound by his graphic recital. It is hard to tell which was the happier, ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 4, April, 1895 • Various

... Piers was thoroughly in his element. He had a marvellous gift for making music, and his audience listened spell-bound. His own love for it amounted to a passion, inherited, so it was said, from his Italian grandmother. He threw his whole soul into the instrument under his hands, and ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... yelling and roaring savagely. He started up, when what was his horror to see the fierce white wolf his father had been pursuing rushing towards him with the chain and trap still trailing at his heels. Spell-bound, he felt unable to rise. In another moment the enraged wolf would be upon him, when a rifle shot rang through the air, and the wolf dropped dead ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston

... moment was so acute it could never leave off being the present and slip into the past; he remembered the first day at St. Renny when he was staring at the sunbeam and feeling that that at least would go on spell-bound for ever; he remembered that moment when, on his return to Cloom, he had gone over the fields with John-James and, looking once more on the same field, had recalled that first moment, and smiled to see how it had slipped away and was gone. He had smiled without thinking that ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... have been able to excel in a description of it! Who has not felt, as he gazes upon the cottage,—the home of his childhood,—his youthful days flash with all the vividness of reality before his mind; and as he stands and muses on the bygone years, numbered with those before the flood, he is almost spell-bound to the spot! All his childish pastimes and youthful pleasures pass in review before his mental vision; while the little trials with which his cup was mixed, are not without their influence in mingling a melancholy with the pleasing reminiscences of the past. ...
— The Village Sunday School - With brief sketches of three of its scholars • John C. Symons

... this notion that he had planned all the good things in store for us. Consequently I was condemned to hear of the success of the plot, until—for I had not the best of consciences—I felt my hand would be spell-bound in the attempt to write to the princess; and with that sense of incapacity I seemed to be cut loose from her, drifting back into the desolate days before I saw her wheeled in her invalid chair along the sands and my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... by a maiden true, And it breath'd and flow'd, to her love who row'd, His path through the seas of blue. As she saw his sail, by the gentle gale, Slow borne to her lofty bower, Her heart it beat, in her high retreat, She sang by a spell-bound power: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various

... stand aside, watching the scene with interest, while RUDOLPH and MIMI remain seated and continue their talk. MARCEL nervously quits his seat, and is about to go, but is spell-bound by MUSETTA'S voice.) ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica

... crowd. Lost to all around me, I wandered carelessly, heedlessly on, neither noticing the glittering throng around, nor feeling a thought in common with the gay and joyous spirits that flitted by. The night wore on, my melancholy and depression growing ever deeper, yet so spell-bound was I that I could not leave the place. A secret sense that it was the last time we were to meet had gained entire possession of me, and I longed to speak a few ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... She sat spell-bound, watching for the event of the contest, which had now begun between the two in real earnest. The people encouraged now the one and now the other. At this moment it seemed probable that the new man, Lucius, would be the winner; at that moment the tide had turned ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... I ken well what the men say. How that poor youth is spell-bound, and that you are casting your glamour over him as of old over my poor old lady and little ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as if spell-bound to his chair, scarce more surprised at the company in which he found himself, than at the opinions to which he was listening, another circumstance reminded him that the proper time of his stay at Black Fort had been expended. Little Fairy, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... and cheering madly, go dashing through the timber towards their persecutors of the day before. Hunter's skirmishers push eastward through the trees for one more crack at the besiegers. Others—cheering too, yet spell-bound—cling to the spot, and go wild with joy as the long blue line comes flashing into view across the bluffs from the south, the just rising sun flaming at their crests and tinting the wild war-bonnets of the foe, who ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... The mob stood spell-bound, still growling fiercely, but not daring to move. Another moment, and she had rushed out, like a very Diana, into the centre of the ring, bow in hand, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Alhambra itself, and the governor gave the author and his companion, permission to occupy his vacant apartments in the Moorish palace: Mr. Wilkie soon returned to England, leaving Mr. Irving at the Alhambra, where he remained "for several months, spell-bound in the old enchanted pile." The result was two volumes of legends and traditions, which for interesting incident, and gracefulness of narrative, have few parallels in our romance-writing.[5] They are dedicated, in good taste, to the ingenious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 584 - Vol. 20, No. 584. (Supplement to Vol. 20) • Various

... bumble-bee crawled into the bell of a bennet and hung there as if enchanted. In the thicket a fox drew near, his head lowered to sniff the ground, and suddenly he too stood still without stirring a muscle and stared into space, his eyes transparent as green glass, spell-bound by the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... and yet not love Him. There are many who at some "hard saying" refuse to walk with Him. Thousands who have a keen appreciation of "loaves and fishes" shrink from "leaving all" and following Jesus. A great concourse is drawn and held spell-bound by a naive, graceful, eloquent, artless preacher who uses "lilies," and the "grass of the field," and the "sower" of seed, and the "sparrow" in the air to enforce his truth. But one may be interested, ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... Her spell-bound intention to speak of Dudley Sowerby to him, was broken by the sounding of the hall-door, thirty minutes later. She had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... face did not lessen its loveliness, and the hair which hung in bright curls on her shoulders and gorgeous apparel, was white and glossy as silver. Helen gazed for a moment spell-bound; for she beheld in that countenance without the possibility of doubt, the resemblance of the deceased Lady Greville, whose portrait, in a similar dress, hung in the picture gallery at Silsea Castle. She shuddered; for the eyes of the ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore

... which were brought against his books and sermons, as the fact that he was a person inconvenient to Pope Alexander VI. On the 23rd of May, 1498, he met his doom in the great piazza at Florence where in happier days he had held the multitude spell-bound by his burning eloquence. There sentence was passed upon him. Stripped of his black Dominican robe and long white tunic, he was bound to a gibbet, strangled by a halter, and his dead body consumed by fire, his ashes being thrown into the river Arno. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... feels. His moving impulse is no flabby yearning to teach, to expound, to make simple; it is that "obscure inner necessity" of which Conrad tells us, the irresistible creative passion of a genuine artist, standing spell-bound before the impenetrable enigma that is life, enamoured by the strange beauty that plays over its sordidness, challenged to a wondering and half-terrified sort of representation of what passes understanding. And jenseits von Gut und Boese. "For myself," says ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... subtle consideration. The items of our common knowledge are regrouped. Here we see clearly revealed the personal conception of life that lay behind Mrs. Havelock Ellis's brilliant novels. We are arrested and spell-bound by the same understanding, the same directness of touch, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... thy native sea, Nor dwell upon thy name, whate'er the tale, So much its magic must o'er all prevail? Who that beheld that Sun upon thee set, Fair Athens! could thine evening face forget? Not he—whose heart nor time nor distance frees, Spell-bound within the clustering Cyclades! 1230 Nor seems this homage foreign to its strain, His Corsair's isle was once thine own domain—[229] Would that with freedom it ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... spell-bound in the brilliant sunshine; then the dogs running down to the water's edge, the gallahs and cockatoos rose with gorgeous sunrise effect: a floating gray-and-pink cloud, backed by sunlit flashing white. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... the child, the growing boy, mothered by her, nursed at her breast, her possession, was a gift to the world, sweet and inspiring. "Angels, ever bright and fair!" She felt the thrill of his tender voice; perceived the impression: the buzz, the subsiding confusion, the spell-bound stillness. "Take, oh, take me to your care!" It was in her heart to strike her breasts—to cry out that this was her son, born of her; her ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan

... The Halsteads, mother and daughter, sat spell-bound, but Willa was outwardly the coolest person in the room. The story in its every detail was stamping itself indelibly upon her mind and for the moment even the presence of Starr ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... all started, carried on their travels by the professional story-tellers who kept the tales alive throughout Asia. In Bagdad and Cairo to-day, that cafe never lacks customers where the blind storyteller relates to the spell-bound Arabs some chapter from the immortal Arabian Nights, the ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... discussing The Raven, Poe observed that he had never heard it correctly delivered by even the best readers—that is, not as he desired that it should be read. That evening, a number of visitors being present, he was requested to recite the poem, and complied. His impressive delivery held the company spell-bound, but in the midst of it, I, happening to glance toward the open window above the level roof of the greenhouse, beheld a group of sable faces the whites of whose eyes shone in strong relief against the surrounding darkness. These ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... perhaps under different circumstances, would have cost many hours to arrange; and I looked with impatience for the morrow, still wondering at the apparent chance that had brought him under my roof. I felt indeed almost spell-bound, without the desire of release. My situation was new, and there was something affecting in the thought, that one of such amiable manners, and at the same time so highly gifted, should seek comfort ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... this for a few years, it happened one day that a Prince was riding through the wood and passed by the tower. As he drew near it he heard someone singing so sweetly that he stood still spell-bound, and listened. It was Rapunzel in her loneliness trying to while away the time by letting her sweet voice ring out into the wood. The Prince longed to see the owner of the voice, but he sought in vain for a door in the tower. He rode home, but he was so haunted by the song ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... transformation in the character of his countrymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination of those writings on whose authors was poured the full splendor of eternal truth? If unassisted human nature, spell-bound by a childish mythology, have done so much, what may we not hope for from the supernatural efforts of preeminent genius, which spake as it was moved by the Holy ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... loving pair were there Who in each other's joys and griefs had share; Grave statesmen, merchants, all in that brief hour, Sat spell-bound ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... awed by the greatness of it all. There were no tears in my eyes; indeed, it seemed too big a thing for tears, a revelation and an outlook upon life so vast that it held me spell-bound. I had never realized that love could be such a thing as that, feeding upon a mere sad memory, able to take this rough viking of a man and toss him, a plaything of its stupendous force, upon these barren rocks. Surely it was arrant ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... enjoyment, and be shortly admitted to fraternity with the gods,"—the exploits of Hoonamunta, the Divine Monkey, are gravely related, with a dramatic force and figurativeness that hold a street audience spell-bound; but to the European imagination the childish drollery of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... world which all these personages inhabit. What are the three hundred ravens of Owen, and the nine sorceresses of Peredur, and the dogs of Annwn the Welsh Hades, and the birds of Rhiannon, whose song was so sweet that warriors remained spell-bound for eighty years together listening to them? What is the Avanc, the water-monster, of whom every lake-side in Wales, and her proverbial speech, and her music, to this day preserve the tradition? What is Gwyn the son of Nudd, king of fairie, the ruler of the Tylwyth Teg, or family of beauty, who ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... from my disappointment. "Be it so," was all he said in reply to some remark addressed to him; but the enunciation of the words was so musical, so soft and winning, yet so clear and authoritative, that I was spell-bound for an instant and quite lost my composure as Miss Kingsley, becoming aware of my presence, proceeded to ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... looked as if a child had drawn them, wandered about among curlicues and odd geometrical patterns. A tiger-skin, head and dangling claws distressingly lifelike, hung in the middle of one wall. She was spell-bound for a few minutes with the strangeness of ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... costume of this strange form. The moonbeams falling on the corpse-like features revealed a face well known to me, that of a friend and relative. The sole and only person in the street beyond myself and this being was the woman already alluded to. She stopped abruptly, as if spell-bound, then rushing towards the man, she gazed intently and with horror unmistakable on his face, which was now upturned to the heavens and smiling ghastly. She indulged in her strange contemplation but during very few seconds, then with extraordinary and unexpected speed ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... and talked at the top of their voices. Five of them were men he had seen before,—artists who lived in the house,—but the sixth was a woman whom he had never seen and whose marvellous beauty held him spell-bound where he stood. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... loved always the visible sign through which the appeal came. I have seen him lean, spell-bound, from our windows on a blue summer night, thrilled by the presence out there of Cleopatra's Needle, the pagan symbol flaunting its slenderness against river and sky, while in the distance the dome of St. Paul's, the Christian symbol, hung a phantom ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... eyes clung together in that strange mingling of glances that sometimes holds even utter strangers spell-bound by its ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... suggests the notorious fact that unordained ministers are equally, if not more, successful in awakening ethical and religious emotion than priests and bishops. Nay, women like Catherine of Siena could hold Europe, its kings, and popes spell-bound, when "mere men" were powerless. Has any one in this generation read more powerful appeals to the religious sense than the fragments of the sermons of Dinah Morris in Adam Bede, more thrilling descriptions of an ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... she answered, and sang two songs, in which she revealed the cause of their misunderstanding; and when Mord pressed her to speak out, she told him how she and Hrut could not live together, because he was spell-bound, and that she wished to ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... and the street wore a more and more gloomy aspect. The rain poured, and now only an occasional carriage or footstep disturbed the sound of its steady pattering. Yet still Ellen sat with her face glued to the window as if spell-bound, gazing out at every dusky form that passed, as though it had some strange interest for her. At length, in the distance, light after light began to appear; presently Ellen could see the dim figure of the lamplighter crossing the street, from side ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... young man in hunting costume emerged from the shrubbery. Hardly could I believe my eyes—it was merry Herr Lionardo! The little girls now opened the circle and stood as if spell-bound on one foot, with the other stretched out, holding the garlands of flowers high above their heads with both hands. Herr Lionardo took the hand of the lovely Lady fair, who had risen, and had only now and then glanced at me, and, leading her up ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... a step forward, balanced herself, and took another. The children stood in spell-bound silence. The girl advanced slowly along the frail bridge until she reached the middle ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... of the guilty!" Peter spoke with an earnestness almost terrible. Tears came into his eyes as he made his appeal, and his two auditors both rose to their feet, under the impulse of his voice even more than of his words. So earnest was he, and so spell-bound were the others, that they failed to hear the door from the dining-room move, or notice the entrance of Mrs. D'Alloi ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... herself the question, the bright rays of Aton shone round a figure in khaki; she saw Michael clearly and beautifully. He was illuminated by a bright and shining light. Margaret remained motionless and spell-bound. Her visualizing was more than a mere mental reproduction of an imaginary scene. The bright light which surrounded Michael revealed to her how instantly his enemies would quail before him, how terrified and amazed ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... pointed to the spot where Edith had stood spell-bound while the contest was going on. O'Hara, although a skillful backwoodsman, was not equal to his savage companion; but he saw at once, from the dainty impress of the earth, that he was correct in supposing that Edith had stood there. They now resumed their pursuit, the hunter bringing all his wood-craft ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... 'Why not?' he thought. 'I love her! But do I really love her? or do I only want her because she is so pretty, and loves me? What am I going to do?' The piano tinkled on, the stars winked; and Ashurst gazed out before him at the dark sea, as if spell-bound. He got up at last, cramped and rather chilly. There was no longer light in any window. And he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... which was "natural," it seems very advanced to hear Mackaye echoing the Delsarte philosophy. This advocacy was nowhere better demonstrated than when, at a breakfast given him at the New York Lotos Club, he talked on the rationale of art for two hours, and held spell-bound the attention of Longfellow, Bryant, Louis Agassiz, James J. Fields, E.P. Whipple, Edwin Booth ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye

... dear to so many now, who are either drawn to him by his lyrics, which open an undreamed-of fountain of sympathy to many a silent and otherwise solitary heart, or who else are held spell-bound by his grand and eloquent poetical utterances of what the human race may aspire to. A being of this transcendent nature seems generally to be more the outcome of his age, of a period, the expression of nature, than the direct scion of his own family. So in Shelley's case there ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... Savage, was an intimate friend of the Kingmans and also a frequent guest of ours. He was an Irish patriot of 1848 and was remarkable for his versatility. He had a fine voice, and I remember seeing him on one occasion hold his audience spell-bound while singing "The Temptation of St. Anthony." He was an accomplished journalist and the author of several books, one of which, "The Modern Revolutionary History and Literature of Ireland," has been pronounced the best work extant "on ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... we prisoners in the 360 miles of the Channel, remaining very often two or three days, as if spell-bound, in the same place, while we were frequently obliged to cruise for whole days to make merely a few miles; and near Start we were overtaken by a tolerably violent storm. During the night I was suddenly called upon deck. I imagined that some misfortune had happened, and hastily throwing a few ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... humid garden. The moonlight became more and more intense and the shadows harder. Crossing the grass, Sanine sat down under a linden-tree and was about to light a cigarette. Then he suddenly stopped and remained motionless, as if spell-bound by the evening calm that the sounds of the piano and of this youthfully sentimental voice in no way disturbed, but rather served ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving

... was almost literally true. She felt that she was like a spirit moving among these people marooned on this island of the West End of London, all spell-bound by the money of this great roaring city, all enslaved, all amphibious, living between two elements, the actual and the imagined, but in neither, because of the spell that bound them, fully and passionately.... Living ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.—"Such historic imagination, such glowing colour, such crashing speed, set forth in such pregnant form, carry me away spell-bound." ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... Crossing, lining figures mystic, (Diagram most mathematic, Simple to these signs erratic,) O'er the seals her quick hands going Loose the rills and set them flowing: Pent up music rushing out Bathes thy spirit all about; Spell-bound nature, freed again, Joyous revels ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... rest in the shade of the camp. She loitered about under the spread of the pine boughs, cleaning and tidying up, and patching the ragged remnants of their clothes. Often, as she sat propped against the trunk, her sewing fell to her lap and she looked out with shining, spell-bound eyes. The men were shapes of dark importance against the glancing veil of water, the soaked sands and the low brushwood yellowing in the autumn's soft, transforming breath. Far away the film of whitened summits ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... glimpse of free blue sky, seen through the window, seemed to fade dimmer and dimmer, farther and farther off. I sprang up, as if to follow it—rushed to the bars, shook and wrenched at them with my thin, puny arms—and stood spell-bound, as I caught sight of the cathedral towers, standing out in grand repose against the horizontal fiery bars of sunset, like great angels at the gates of Paradise, watching in stately sorrow all the wailing and the wrong below. And beneath, beneath—the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... to believe a lie. We may laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also pity and shudder. The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion in its own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule, their spell-bound generation,—the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone, the English Scot, and the New England Calef,—deserve high honors as the benefactors of their race. It is true they were branded through life as infidels and "damnable Sadducees;" but the truth which they uttered lived after them, and wrought ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... cheer, As one that held all hope and fear Wherethrough the spirit of man may steer In life and death less dark or dear, Laid hand thereon, and fared as they. With half a smile his hand he drew Back from the spell-bound thing, and threw With half a glance his heart anew Toward no such ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the Ruby King raised his hand. As if in response to the signal an attendant struck one deep booming rolling note on a great gong. Jack looked eagerly to see what would follow. And that which did follow held him spell-bound with ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... voice not mortal, as her heaving breast Pants, with the approaching Deity possest. "Pray, Trojan," peals her warning utterance, "pray! Cease not, AEneas, nor withhold thy quest, Nor stint thy vows. While dumbly ye delay, Ne'er shall its yawning doors the spell-bound ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... said, speaking in the old long-disused accent of her early days, as she might have spoken to him while she was yet a child. She threw a few logs on the fire, and drew up Canon Pascal's chair to the hearth for him. She felt spell-bound; and as if she had been suddenly thrust ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... teller of stories drew forth a wild clamor from the boys for his services. His first story, a funny one, brought forth delirious applause—a "side-splitter" they voted it. Then he told them a story of adventure which held them spell-bound. They clamored ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo

... if the Lord of Hosts had given him inspiration; as if the angels were pouring words into his mouth just for him to utter," replied Mrs. Boynton. "Your father was spell-bound, and I only less so. When he ceased speaking, the child's mother crossed the room, and swaying to and fro, fell at his feet, sobbing and wailing and imploring God to forgive her sins. They carried her upstairs, and when we looked about after the confusion and excitement the stranger had vanished. ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... who could be kind-hearted and entertaining when not provoked, and of a charming French lady in Madame Decaen. He would have been assisted by the secretary, Colonel Monistrol, who was always as friendly to him as his duty would permit. He would have been able to hold the company spell-bound with the story of the many adventures of his active, useful life. He would have been able to demonstrate his bona fides completely. It is a common experience that the humane feelings of men of Decaen's type are ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... affectation, and he appointed a censor to see that his instructions were carried out. The latter, 'Couci' by name, declared that when he played upon his 'king,' the animals ranged themselves before him spell-bound ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... resulted from the cultivation of literature on a little oatmeal. A few months ago, I had the pleasure of chatting, over a cup of tea, with the suave old gentleman who combines the postmastership of Dunvegan with the office of factor to the Macleod of Macleod. He held me spell-bound for an afternoon as he narrated in graphic language the hardships of the Skye students in former times. Many a Skye youth, I was told, bent on studying the humanities at Aberdeen, would mount his sheltie, traverse ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . . Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O, there where it fades, What grace, what glamour, what wild will, Transfigure the shadows? Whose, Heart of my heart, Soul of ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... rough, uncultivated men, cut off from the whole world, alone with the stormy winds and his stormy thoughts. Wherever his morbid restlessness takes him, whatever part he chooses to assume, whether he wants to move us to laughter or to tears, we can but follow him fascinated and spell-bound, and in harmony with his moods. Daudet when he wrote those letters was already a perfect master of all the resources of the language. What he had seen or felt, he could make us see and feel. He could make old words new with the freshness, ardor, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... it is a temple of the Lord. And that church music may not be wanting, the nightingale flutes his psalm of lament, and the lark trills his song of praise—only better than King David. At a spot where the purple lilacs parted, and the little island-home was visible, Michael stood spell-bound. The little house seemed to swim in a flaming sea, but not of water, only of roses. It was covered with rose-wreaths climbing to the roof, and for five acres round it only roses were visible—thousands of bushes, and six-foot rose-trees, forming pyramids, hedges, and ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... was damp and swollen and mouldy, and the binding was decayed and broken. The inside was dingy and spotted with brown spots, and had too many f's in it, as she thought. Yet the first glance fascinated her. It had opened in the middle of L'Allegro. Mrs Forbes found her standing spell-bound, reading the rhymed poems of the man whose blank-verse, two years before, she had declined as not what poetry ought to be. I have often seen a child refuse his food, and, after being compelled to eat one mouthful, gladly devour the whole. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes fastened in horror on Charlie's face. A great actor had been lost in creating Charlie an Indian. He pictured his father's death, his sister's two attempts at revenge with a vividness and power that held even Levine spell-bound. It seemed to Lydia that the noose was fastened closer round John's neck with every word that ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... residence—now it is otherwise. On reaching Brady's rooms the crowd halted outside and listened. For some time there was silence; and then a laugh—low, monotonous, unmirthful, metallic—coming as it were from some adjacent chamber, and so unnatural, so abhorring, that it held everyone spell-bound. It died away in the reverberations of the stone corridor, its echoes seeming to awake a chorus of other laughs hardly less dreadful. Again there was silence, no one daring to express his thoughts. Then, as if by common ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... Henry that he might take his leave of the portrait, for he would never give it up again for any treasure, and that to possess the favour of the original he would forsake all the world. He fell into many more such passionate and incoherent expressions of rhapsody, as of one suddenly smitten and spell-bound with hapless love, bitterly reproaching the ambassador for never having brought him any answers to the many affectionate letters which he had written to the queen, whose silence had made him so wretched. Sir Henry, perhaps somewhat confounded at being beaten at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... by a throng, hushed and breathless with interest. Sheila was talking volubly. Hardened motorists listened with their mouths open; zealots, feverish to expend their excess profits on motoring because it was a novelty and expensive, stood spell-bound; a rival agent drank in her words with tears in his eyes—tears for his old innocence—and his cheek flushed with a sudden and splendid determination to amalgamate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various

... these few words, before an ominous change appeared in Goisvintha's countenance. Its former expression of ardent curiosity changed to a look of malignant triumph. Her eyes fixed themselves on the girl's upturned face, in glaring, steady, spell-bound contemplation. She gloated over the helpless creature before her, as the wild beast gloats over the prey that it has secured. Her form dilated, a scornful smile appeared on her lips, a hot flush rose on her cheeks, and ever and anon she whispered softly ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... his companions, all but the spell-bound Marcus, could not help laughing at these ridiculous mistakes. But Patching turned upon the crowd, and delivered among them one withering look of scorn, which fully confirmed them in the belief that he was a murderer of the deepest dye. And when the carriage rolled away, it was followed by ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... sweethearts she has, let her pull her fingers, and the number will be equal to the cracks heard. In fact we have nearly as many signs, omens, charms, and freits as our forefathers had. We have legendary lore concerning the supernatural, we have mythological fables, forecasts, fatalities, our spell-bound individuals, our fey persons, and those who have had glamour cast into their eyes. None of us are likely to forget the New Year, Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, Beltane, Hallow-e'en, and many other high days, which come to us, month after month, with ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... my mother's old family recipe had been the chief duty of able-bodied seamen, this could not have elicited more nods of approbation. But we listened spell-bound and immovable to the passion and pathos with which the singer poured forth the conclusion ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... John Magill wheeled as suddenly as he had halted, and galloped back to the Confederates engaged in demolishing the railroad. As fast as he could run, Harry followed. Mrs. Magill comprehended the situation; and, spell-bound, she stood on the veranda, with arms outstretched, a statue of anguish ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... sermons reported by a recent traveller, who, after stating that his oratory made a deep impression on the congregation of the Sailors' chapel in Boston, who sat with their eyes, ears, and mouths open, as if spell-bound in listening to him, thus continues: "He describes a ship at sea, bound for the port of Heaven, when the man at the head sung out, 'Rocks ahead!' 'Port the helm,' cried the mate. 'Ay, ay, sir,' was the answer; the ship obeyed, and stood upon a tack. But in two minutes more, the ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... sat there spell-bound, a shabby-genteel man entered and sat down beside him. He wore a broad wide-awake, very much slouched over his face, and a coat which had once been fine, but now bore marks of having been severely handled—as if recently ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... of folly-painted pleasure; my Angelina's eyes have withstood, yes, without a blink, the dazzling enchantment.—And will she—no, I cannot, I will not think so for an instant—will she now submit her understanding, spell-bound, to the soporific charm of nonsensical words, uttered in an awful tone by that potent enchantress, Prejudice?—The declamation, the remonstrances of self-elected judges of right and wrong, should be treated with deserved contempt by superior minds, who claim the ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... are only to fancy flying bricks, as you saw the slates flying from the roof the other day in the storm; only those slates didn't seem to know where they were going, and, besides, were going where they had no business: but my spell-bound bricks, though they have no wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find their way in the air just where they should settle, into towers and roofs, each flying to his place and fastening there at the right moment, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... but the Germans could not see the hidden peril. On they came. Spell-bound Jacques watched them. He had his hand on the switch but he was so nervous he decided to withdraw it for fear he should set it off too soon. A hundred feet away from him the officer had said the mines were planted. The Germans were over ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay

... thrilled, enraptured, melted. She hung upon his words; and when they ceased, she still sat motionless, spell-bound; loath to believe that accents so divine could really come to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... them moved. The fluter played still more sweet and beautiful strains. The shepherd worked himself up into a storm of passion. He scolded, and pelted the poor creatures with stones. Some of the sheep were hit, and they made up their minds to go on; but the rest remained spell-bound by the music. At last the shepherd was forced to entreat the flute-player to stop his music. He did stop, and the sheep moved off, but still they continued to look behind them occasionally, and ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... Madeira. The flood of water that poured down in one unbroken sheet was enormous. The noise was like that of continual thunder, and Stephen, as he stood watching the swollen waters at his feet and feeling the very ground shake beneath them, felt spell-bound at the grandeur of the scene. The mission-house was inhabited by only two or three old monks, and from them they learned that there had been a bad outbreak of fever there, several had died, and the rest were ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... and the Ghost to awaken horror, and in some degree also a supernatural dread. And to this effect other influences contribute. The pictures called up by the mere words of the Witches stir the same feelings,—those, for example, of the spell-bound sailor driven tempest-tost for nine times nine weary weeks, and never visited by sleep night or day; of the drop of poisonous foam that forms on the moon, and, falling to earth, is collected for pernicious ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... the sharp points of his address began to come, and he had not been speaking for half an hour before his audience seemed wild with enthusiasm." Another account says: "His manner was, to a New York audience, a very strange one, but it was captivating. He held the vast meeting spell-bound, and as one by one his oddly expressed but trenchant and convincing arguments confirmed the soundness of his political conclusions, the house broke out in wild and prolonged enthusiasm. I think I never saw an audience more ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... chapter, of which my text is a sentence, the Lord Jesus addressed his disciples, and the multitude that hung spell-bound upon the words that fell from his lips. He admonished them to beware of the religion of the Scribes and Pharisees, which was distinguished for great professions, while it succeeded in urging them to do but a little, or nothing that accorded ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... a little apart in the shade; we seemed as if spell-bound by the incident, and incapable ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... the man. He was looking down at the woman like a creature spell-bound or possessed by some ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... of kings. His trust in the deepening impression made by the fall of Moscow was fostered by negotiations begun by Kutusoff for the very purpose of delaying the French retreat. For five weeks Napoleon remained at Moscow as if spell-bound, unable to convince himself of his powerlessness to break Alexander's determination, unable to face a retreat which would display to all Europe the failure of his arms and the termination of his career of victory. At length the approach of winter forced ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... young man opened his mouth, and in a magnificent baritone voice declaimed that reverently, and from a great way off, he ventured to worship at his beloved's shrine, while Diana listened spell-bound. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... on the mysterious circumstances of Eustace's interment took a different train from those of Jobson; but as his thoughts never could pursue any other subject when the magic name of Isabel spell-bound them to the secret chamber, where filial piety tended its uncomplaining captive, we will follow their course, and return to the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... that thought which the sight of her had at first suggested came to him. Again he thrust it away. But the woman, with a low moan, suddenly flung herself on the floor before him, and reaching out her hands clasped his feet, and he felt her feeble frame all shaken by sobs and shudders. He sat spell-bound. He looked at her for a moment aghast. Then he reached forth his hands, and without speaking a word took hers, and tried to lift her up. She let herself be raised till she was on her knees, and then raised her head once more. She gave him an indescribable look, and in a low voice, which was little ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... night, entranced, I sat spell-bound, And listened in my place, And made a solemn vow to be A hero ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various

... Paris, Vienna, London, and other famous cities, which to her were merely names. For such a young man he had certainly seen a great deal of life, and, added to this, his skill as a talker was considerable, so that he frequently held Madame, Selina, and McIntosh spell-bound by his fairy-like descriptions and eloquent conversation. Of course, he only talked of the most general subjects to Mrs Villiers, and never by any chance let slip that he knew the seamy side of life—a side with which this versatile young gentleman was pretty ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... on our sister's soul— That by strange motions, incantations, spells, So work you on her spirit that strange sleep, Sombre as Death's dark shadow, presently Steals o'er her fragile body, dulls her sense, And wraps her wholly in its chill embrace; That thus, spell-bound, lost to the living world, She lies till thou again unwind her chain, And wak'st her feebly to this life of earth. Thus dost thou peril her, thou blinded man! Sett'st her dear life against thy moonstruck thought, And slay'st ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... from the religious public. Its secondary merits won audience for it in quarters where evangelical Christianity was nauseated and despised. It disarmed even the keen hostility of Hazlitt, and kept him for a whole forenoon spell-bound beneath its power. "These sermons," he says, "ran like wild-fire through the country, were the darlings of watering-places, were laid in the windows of inns, and were to be met with in all places of public resort.... We remember finding ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... The soldiers stood still—spell-bound. It was not an unfamiliar air, for they had often heard the hated Christians sing it, but the sweet, liquid—we might almost say tiny—tones in which it was conveyed, were such as had never before reached their ears or even entered their imaginations. It was evident ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... party but that Smith should tell the story of his flight. They listened spell-bound as he related his experiences at the various stopping-places, and his adventures at sea. When the story was finished, the cheers broke out again, and the stout little man who accompanied Captain Warren's party, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... trees. Sculptures, basso-relievos, and lines of gorgeous coloring adorned the exteriors. Within, were splendid altars and the appealing charms of incense, fine vestures and fine music; while from the belfreys, bells sweet and resonant called to the savages, who paused spell-bound and half-afraid to listen. ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... the reach of his voice, or at least of the tenor of his remarks; but the boys were on tenterhooks lest their garrulous companion should give offence. But from the moment that the curtain went up, and the mimic scene presented itself to his gaze, he sat spell-bound and silent, perfectly absorbed in the vivid portrayal of the chief character ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... yielded to it, showing her to him one night by the light of a taper at a window where we used to talk to one another. As she appeared to him in her dressing-gown, she drove all the beauties he had seen until then out of his recollection; speech failed him, his head turned, he was spell-bound, and in the end love-smitten, as you will see in the course of the story of my misfortune; and to inflame still further his passion, which he hid from me and revealed to Heaven alone, it so happened that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... from the breast of his coat, tore off a blank leaf; then resting it on the side of a gun carriage, he proceeded to make a sketch. Dolly's eyes followed his pencil point, spell-bound with interest. Under his quick and ready fingers grew, she could not tell how, the figure of a ship,—hull, masts, sails and rigging, deftly sketched in; till it seemed to Dolly she could almost see how the wind blew that was filling out the sails ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... time silent. As she looked up, she met Rachel's eyes fixed full on hers, with the same penetrating gaze which had so disturbed her in their first interview. Rachel did not withdraw her gaze, but continued to look into Hetty's eyes, steadily, piercingly, with an expression which held Hetty spell-bound. Presently ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... as very retiring in company, even among our own people. But if there were children present, she would gather them about her and hold them spell-bound by her talk. Oh, she was a marvellous storyteller! How often have I seen her in the midst of a little group, who, all eyes and ears, gazed into her face and eagerly swallowed every word, while she, intent on ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... by the spectacle, as grand as it was weird and unexplainable, they stood spell-bound, powerless each to take the first stride. Decius, the older man, the veteran, turned to his companion, yielding that unconscious homage to birth and rank and education, that comes in the presence of unknown perils. ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... burning box-car nearer at hand, shone redly through the upper corridor windows, enabling her to go directly to the open door of the superintendent's office. But when she reached the door and looked within, the trembling terror returned and held her spell-bound, speechless, unable to move or ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... paces farther on Edith stopped again—stopped and pointed to a short, dark soldier who was eying the crowd in general, and the tableau of Mr. In and Mr. Out in particular, with a sort of puzzled, spell-bound awe. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... presume to consist in swimming through their cool element in close contiguity with each other. 'A feast of reason and a flow of soul' were not the charms by which Clementina Golightly essayed to keep her admirers spell-bound at her feet. To whirl rapidly round a room at the rate of ten miles an hour, with her right hand outstretched in the grasp of her partner's, and to know that she was tightly buoyed up, like a horse by a bearing-rein, by his other hand behind her back, was for her sufficient. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... unscathed. I stared at the broad line of his shoulders, his dark head, the amazing immobility of his limbs. At his feet the veil dropped by Miss Haldin looked intensely black in the white crudity of the light. He was gazing at it spell-bound. Next moment, stooping with an incredible, savage swiftness, he snatched it up and pressed it to his face with both hands. Something, extreme astonishment perhaps, dimmed my eyes, so that he seemed to ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... effeminate, and voluptuous, seemed to smile back at her from a corner, under the branches of an oleander, across the delicate smoke that curled upwards from a bronze censer on an antique tripod. The beautiful singer was alone. Spell-bound by the music, her beauty, the splendour and sweet fragrance of the night, moved to the heart by the picture of this youthful, serene, and untroubled happiness, I utterly forgot my companion, I forgot the strange way in which I had become a witness of this life, so remote, so completely ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... moment spell-bound—then suddenly rushing forward, flung his hat to the floor, caught the hand of the stranger between his own and pressed it to his heart. (To his lips, I think, he would fain have lifted it, falling on one knee, perchance, at the same time in a knightly fashion of hero-worship that modern ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... kind of spell-bound pause; Then all the Teacups tinkled their applause; When that was hushed no sound the stillness broke Till once again the soft-voiced ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... dim-floating of Idolatry Split and mishap'd the Omnipresent Sire: And first by Terror, Mercy's startling prelude, Uncharm'd the Spirit spell-bound ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... The Spell-bound Fiddler: A Norse Romance. By Kristofer Janson. Translated from the original by Auber Forestier. Chicago: S.C. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... take long to decide: I took my place with the wolves!' Nothing could be more quietly uttered than these words; but there was a savage ferocity in his look as he said them that held Atlee almost spell-bound. 'And you, Mr. Atlee? and you? I need scarcely ask where your choice fell!' It was so palpable that the words meant a compliment, Atlee had only to smile a ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... romance and spell-bound fancy is in the song of the Dordogne as it breaks over its shallows under high rocky cliffs and ruined castles! Everything that can charm the poet and the artist is here. The grandeur of rugged nature combines with the most enticing beauty of water and meadow, and the voices of the past echo with ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... Grantham presented an image of resignation, so perfect, so superhuman, that the disposition to a violent ebullition of grief, which at first manifested itself in the youths, gave place to a certain mysterious awe, that chained them almost spell-bound at the foot of her bed. A strict observer of the ordinances of her religion, she had had every preparation made for her reception of the sacrament, the administering of which was only deferred until the arrival of her children. This duty being ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... After a brief breathing pause, she crept noiselessly down the stairs, and gently opened the door; and at the very instant she did so, Robert Beaufort entered from the other door; she drew back in terror, when, what was her astonishment in hearing a name uttered that spell-bound her—the last name she could have expected to hear; for Lilburne, the instant he saw Beaufort, pale, haggard, agitated, rush into the room, and bang the door after him, could only suppose that something of extraordinary moment had occurred with regard to the dreaded ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... stunning jewel, if correct, will be far more convincing than any number of makeshifts, no matter how attractive in themselves. Paintings, plates and history come to our rescue here. If you think it dry work, try it. The chances are all in favour of your emerging from your search spell-bound by the vistas opened up to you; the sudden meaning acquired by many inanimate things, and a new pleasure added ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... For so strange, so unexpected Are the things you say, that I Need for their due thought some leisure. Let me my lost breath regain, For entranced, aroused, suspended, Spell-bound your strong reasons hold me. Is there then but one sole God In three Persons, one in essence, One in substance, one ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... me than the past, of which every thing reminded me. There was the seat the marquise used to sit in; there the footstool I had so often placed at her feet. How different was the last service I had rendered her! There the pillar, beside which I have stood spell-bound, gazing at that fair face, whose beauty arrested the thoughts that should have wended heavenward, and made my muttered prayers like offerings to herself. The very bouquet of flowers—some peri's hand had placed beneath the shrine—withered and faded, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... shot took off the head of a marine close to him, scattering the unlucky man's brains in his face. Instantly recovering his self-possession, to my great relief, for believing him killed, I was spell-bound with agony, he ran up to me exclaiming, "I am not hurt, papa: the shot did not touch me; Jack says, the ball is not made that can kill mamma's boy." I ordered him to be carried below; but, resisting with all ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... grain in one buzzing maze of whiteness. Thick gathered the milky drifts from bow to stern. Still shouted the captain his savage joy till—a-sudden he paused, gazed as if spell-bound on the mill's mad work, with a cry of terror sprang forward and grasped the check. But, in vain. There was no surcease to its labor. Higher and higher up lifted the mighty salt banks, and, in a twinkling, both destroyed and ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... that night was never known; even the beautiful words of the old song that seemed so appropriate to the occasion, were forgotten before she had sung more than two or three lines, and her listeners sat entranced, spell-bound, by the voice of the singer; a voice of such exquisite sweetness and clearness, and yet possessing such power and depth of expression, that it thrilled the hearts of her listeners, seeming to lift them out of all consciousness of their surroundings, and to transport ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... were borne out by that great friend of liberty, that constitutional philosopher, and that liberal statesman. The sentiments of the ministers, however, were strongly opposed by Lords Temple, Lyttleton, and Mansfield, the latter of whom, though he had once been spell-bound by court influence, "rode the great horse Liberty with much applause." The Earl of Chatham replied, but the constitutional principles which his opposers laid down could not be answered with success, for although parliament passed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... gazed, spell-bound, it seemed to move Its tendril limbs, still swaying tremulously As if in spirit-doubt; then glad and free Crystalled the being won from waiting grove Into a human likeness. There he stood, The vine-browed shape ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley

... Stephen's Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the Grand Old Seafaring Man, and constrained to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various

... expression of it sudden and visible, the effects are extraordinary. Let these shocks of influence be repeated again and again, and all other opinions and ideas are for the moment absorbed or excluded; the whole mind is brought into unison with that of the speaker; and the spell-bound listener, till the cause ceases, is under an entire fascination. Then perhaps the charm ceases, upon reflection, and the infatuated hearer ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... and I will give you rest.' And when it was all done she stood up and said, 'Now I am going to tell you what you must do when you have yourselves accepted the invitation,' and she sang out before that humble spell-bound audience, 'Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King.' ... One person at least was turned to ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... existence agitated by neither hope nor fear. The calm was broken one evening by the sight of a seaman, drawing water from the spring which had brought his former companions to the island. As he came in sight, the man turned his head, and stood for an instant spell-bound by the unexpected vision of a human being on that island, whose matted locks and tattered garments spoke the extreme of misery. There was only one hope for the sad wild boy—it was in flight—and turning, he ran swiftly back; but the path was strewn with rocks, and, in ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... trod on the trail of the buffalo; And little he recked of the hurricanes That swept the snow from the frozen plains And piled the banks of the Bloody River.[40] His bow unstrung and forgotten hung With his beaver hood and his otter quiver; He sat spell-bound by the artless grace Of her star-lit eyes and her moon-lit face. Ah little he cared for the storms that blew, For Wiwaste had found her a way to woo. When he spoke with Wakawa her sidelong eyes Sought the handsome chief in his hunter-guise. Wakawa marked, and the lilies fair ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... speaking. She could not hear what he said, but spell-bound she watched, while a curious sensation of awe tingled through her. The ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... entered the door he stood at first spell-bound at the change in his favourite, then ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... and was just about to step forward, when he caught sight of Gerelda's face. The color of it held him spell-bound. It was as pale as death, and her eyes flashed fire. She was fairly frothing at the mouth, and the look of venomous rage that ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... them. They were dancing and flashing with excitement now, and his whole frame was quivering with enthusiasm; with head thrown back, and tongue, hand, and foot all in motion, he seemed to have his audience completely spell-bound, and they listened with open eyes and ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... uninfluenced by their character, as they now confessedly exist, the modern voyager will be inclined to fancy that the bestowal of this name might have in part originated in that air of spell-bound desertness which so significantly invests the isles. Nothing can better suggest the aspect of once living things malignly crumbled from ruddiness into ashes. Apples of Sodom, after ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... this Titanic mass lied enchained the petrified ocean, whose spell-bound waves appear fired as vast ranges of ice mountains, their blue peaks fading away in the far-off frost smoke, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... with his wild rout, Orpheus playing to a spell-bound audience, Apollo singing to the lyre, Venus in Mars' embrace, Neptune with a host of seamen, scollops, and trumpets, Narcissus by the fountain, Jove and Ganymede, Leda and the swan, wood-nymphs and naiads, satyrs and fauns, masks, hautboys, cornucopiae, flowers and baskets ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... pretty picture that Malcolm stood quite spell-bound: the crimson dais was such a rich background to the soft creamy white of the girl's dress, while the poppies held so carelessly added to the effect; even the sunshine filtering through the partially drawn curtains gilded the fair hair until it shone like gold. Malcolm was ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... fall in air— Had been as signs of life; when, suddenly, As bursts the thunder-peal upon the calm, Whence I had come the clank of feet was heard— A noise remote, which near'd and near'd, and near'd— Even to the threshold of that room it came, Where, with raised hands, spell-bound, I listening stood; And the door opening stealthily, I beheld The embodied figure of the phantom head, Garb'd in the quaint robes of the portraiture— A veritable fiend, a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... sound of music floated on the air; and they stood spell-bound, with heads bowed, as if their souls were hushed in prayer. When it ceased, Mr. Blumenthal drew a long breath, and said, "Ah! that was ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... her gaze was fixed on the star, and even her hands were lifted toward it. The people looked at her; an angel had appeared in their midst—her face, her voice, her upturned eyes, her uplifted hands, held them spell-bound, until some one looking up in the direction she pointed, cried out: "See that star!" Heavenward went the gaze of the multitude, and once more there seemed to come to them a voice, saying: "Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... forests slowly changed To purple. In the valley far before me, Low sunk in sapphire shadows, from its hills, Softer and lovelier than an opening flower, Uprose a city with its sun-touched towers, A bunch of amethysts. Like one spell-bound Caught in the presence of some god, I stood, Nor felt the keen wind and the deadly air, But watched the sun go down, and watched the gold Fade from the town and the withdrawing hills, Their westward shapes athwart ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman

... sworded lightning of immortal fire thou quenched, and on the sceptre of Zeus his eagle sleepeth, slackening his swift wings either side, the king of birds, for a dark mist thou hast distilled on his arched head, a gentle seal upon his eyes, and he in slumber heaveth his supple back, spell-bound beneath thy throbs. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... first verse, responded to it by a mighty cheer, which reverberated through and through the immense building like thunder. The occupants of the stalls and boxes exchanged wondering and half-frightened looks,— then as the cheer subsided, settled themselves again to listen, more or less spell-bound, as the second verse began. Just before this had merged into its accompanying splendid and soul-awakening chorus,— Pequita,—having obtained the consent of the manager to execute her 'Dagger Dance' in the middle of the song, instead of at the end,— suddenly sprang towards the footlights ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... and shook his fist toward his brother, while the servants stared in amazement at the astonishing spectacle. The two brothers stood there before them, the one calm and self-possessed, the other infuriated with excitement; but the wonderful resemblance between them held the servants spell-bound. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... I was to see Griselda's fair face! She is a gem, and I am sure will prove a blessing as she moves about the world in her nobleness and purity, so exceedingly womanly and winning. The book is full of poetry, and held me spell-bound to the close. It is very musical, too, in its rich, pure English. I don't know how much of its poetic charm lies in the original or in your rendering, but as it is, it is "just lovely," as the girls ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... there was a direct purpose in his mind to cultivate her affection and to make her his wife. He thought her a nice girl, sweet and sensible, but she did not enchant him. Perhaps he was under other magic—under other magic, but not spell-bound beyond his strength to break ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr



Words linked to "Spell-bound" :   enchanted



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