"Witchery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intoxicate himself with the felicities of style, with the delicious witchery of the rare epithet which, while remaining precise, yet opens to the imagination of the initiate infinite and distant vistas, he determined to give the finishing touches to the decorations of his home. He would procure ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... road falls in with a damsel, who proves to be Annette, the attendant of Anne of Geierstein. By the former he is conducted to the castle of Arnheim, where he has an interview with Anne, where she, in some measure, explains the cause of her late mysterious appearances, to convince him that the only witchery she possesses is that of female charms and kindness: we give her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... accomplish? Even yet he had learned but little of the secrets of the witch-doctor's craft. Perhaps there was little or nothing to learn? And zu Pfeiffer? He stared across at the portrait of Lucille. And as he gazed a wave of pity rose within him for this boy made mad by the witchery of those eyes and the music of that voice. A sentence in Lucille's letter appeared to stand out from the context: "Mon Dieu, they are as ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... though to force the wanton witchery to do his bidding. Wild cries of riot answer him; the rosy cloud grows denser round him; entrancing perfumes hem him in and steal away his senses. In the most seductive of half-lights his wonder-seeing eye beholds a female form indicible; he hears ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the scent of flowers stole on Duncan Rowallan's senses, quickening his pulses, and making him breathe faster to take it in. He was very near the dark, bird-like head from which the June wind had blown the love-locks. A balmy breath surrounded him like a halo—the witchery of youth's attraction, which is as old as Eden, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... deliberation, decided that it would be safer to receive his Report in writing than in the form of a personal address from a man who played so dangerously upon the nerve-board of the human nature. There hardly could be any hidden witchery in a long paper dealing with so unemotional a subject as finance; but no man could foresee what might be the effect of the Secretary's voice and enthusiasm,—which was perilously communicable,—his inevitable bursts of spontaneous eloquence. But Hamilton had a pen which served him ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... its outside, with its minarets, and Golden Horn, and Bosphorus, Constantinople is, probably, the most glorious spot on earth. Ascend its mountains, and overlook the gulfs of Salerno and Gaeta, as well as its own waters, the Campugna Felici and the memorials of the past, all seen in the witchery of an Italian atmosphere, and the mind becomes perfectly satisfied that nothing equal is to be found elsewhere; but enter the bay of Rio, and take the whole of the noble panorama in at a glance, and even the experienced traveller is staggered with the stupendous as well as bewitching ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... young lady owned that he had never sighted amongst his women aught fairer than this, a model of beauty and loveliness and brilliancy and perfect face and stature of symmetric grace. Her eyes were black and their sleepy lids and lashes were kohl'd with Babylonian witchery, and her eyebrows were as bows ready to shoot the shafts of her killing glances, and her nose was like unto the scymitar's edge, and her mouth for magical might resembled the signet-ring of Sulayman (upon whom be The Peace!), and her lips were carnelians twain, and her teeth union pearls ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... picturesque squalor. It is matter of regret that he, who seemed to need the southern sun to ripen his genius, never made a pilgrimage into the East, and gave to the world pictures of the lands that he would have touched with the charm of their own color and the witchery ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Brook passed several days in anxious expectation Of transformation Into a lovely nymph bedecked with flowers; And longed impatiently to prove those powers— Those dangerous powers—of witchery and wile, That should all mortal men mysteriously beguile; For life as running water lost its charm Before the exciting hope of doing so much harm. And yet the hope seemed vain; Despite the Poet's strain, Though the days came and went, and went and came, The seasons changed, ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... speech, painter supreme Of English landscape! Patriot passion starts A-flame, pricked by the words that glow and gleam In those imperial paeans, which might arm Pale cowards for the fray. Touched by his hand The simple sweetness, and the homely charm Of our green garden-land Take on a witchery as of Arden's glade, Or verdant Vallombrosa's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... softer sound of its syllables. Her debut, September 15, 1757, was one of most brilliant success, and in a night Paris was at her feet. Her genius, her beauty, her voice, her magnificent eyes, her incomparable grace and fascinating witchery of manner, were the talk of the city; and the opera was besieged every night she sang. Freron, in speaking of the waiting crowds, said, "I doubt if they would take such trouble to get into paradise." ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... kindled was rising about his feet. The flames seared and stabbed with a pain that reached his dulled brain. Quivering and shaken, the body of Jerry Foster reacted again to a conscious thought. He leaped quickly as the deadly witchery left him, and he tore at the smoldering cloth about ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the king, spoke then, and because the witchery of the perfect beauty and the magic charm of Deirdre was felt by him even before she was born, he said: "She shall not die. Upon myself I take the doom. The child shall be kept apart from all men until she is of an age to wed. Then shall I take her for my wife, and none shall ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... strange fancy that led a maid into the dark forest at such an hour," said Kenric sternly. "What manner of witchery led you there? But you spoke of Duncan Graham, and now I mind me that he too would have gone forth to the Rock of Solitude had I not warned him against so ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... So lightsomely dropped in thy lordly back, So crisply swaled the feather in thy bonnet, So glanced thy thigh, and spanning palm upon it, That my weak soul took instant flight to thee, Lost in the fondest gush of that sweet witchery! ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... thee watch her, and see that she doesn't coax too much, or come it over them with any unlawful witchery. Take the hay thyself, Emily, and ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... I've been dull lately, and I thought I might go somewhere else." Caught in a witchery no lack of possession could dispel, and which the prospect of loss made only stronger while it lasted, he took little thought of what he said; little thought of anything but of the gladness it was to be ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... prosaic results of witchery this exceeds," said Annie, laughing, "since only a good ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... young woman bite her lip. Mlle. Nadiboff had been a spy quite as long as Mr. Graham had stated. As she looked back over the years she was able to recall man after man whom she had flattered and lured by the witchery of her eyes. Secret after secret she had coaxed from men entrusted with guarding such mysteries. The rewards of the work had kept M. Lemaire and herself both bountifully supplied with money by the foreign governments that they had served as spies. Most men whom she had tried ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... fortune, in the happy years gone by, to have had the personal acquaintance of some of the most eminent of your profession. Under the witchery of this inspiring presence, 'the graves of memory render up their dead.' Again I hear from the lips of Barrett: 'Take away the sword; States can be saved without it!' 'How love, like death, levels all ranks, and lays the shepherd's crook beside ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... his large and rather sickly eyes upon her. For a moment he was in doubt, but belief in the witchery of sound prevailed, for he had yet to meet a being insensible to the "music of the soul," and so with a fond and fatuous murmur he pinched the martyred atmosphere once ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... the following melodramatic description, by Thiebault, of Napoleon's appearance on Sunday, June 11th: "His look, once so formidable and piercing, had lost its strength and even its steadiness: his face had lost all expression and all its force: his mouth, compressed, had none of its former witchery: and his gait was as perplexed as his demeanour and gestures were undecided: the ordinary pallor of his skin was replaced by a strongly pronounced greenish tinge which ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... with such enthusiasm upon her "pretty ways." Her "pretty ways!" ah, how fatal a thing it is for mankind when Nature endows woman with those pretty ways! From the thrall of Grecian noses and Castilian eyes there may be hope of deliverance, but from the spell of that indescribable witchery there is none. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... between her and the earth below seemed full of wonder and mystery. Now and then she fancied some distant sound the cry of the leopard: he might be coming nearer and nearer as they went! but it rather added to the eerie witchery of the night, making it like a terrible story read in the deserted nursery, with the distant noise outside of her brothers and sisters at play. The motion of her progress by and by became pleasant to her. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... landscape found a sweeter and serener spirit to interpret them. In some of his pictures there is a truly religious feeling. His frankness recalls Constable's, but it is more distinguished in being more spiritual. He has not Diaz's elegance, nor Corot's witchery, nor Rousseau's power, but nature is more mysteriously, more mystically significant to him, and sets a deeper chord vibrating within him. He is a sensitive instrument on which she plays, rather than a magician who wins her secrets, or an observer whose ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... granite rising sheer for thousands of feet above the foaming, glistening, roaring rapids; it has also, in striking contrast, orchids and tree ferns, the delectable beauty of luxurious vegetation, and the mysterious witchery of the jungle. One is drawn irresistibly onward by ever-recurring surprises through a deep, winding gorge, turning and twisting past overhanging cliffs of incredible height. Above all, there is the fascination of finding here and there under the swaying vines, or perched ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... when Grace returned with a dainty breakfast, and waited on her with a daughter's gentleness and tenderness, making her smile in spite of herself at her funny speeches, and beguiling her into enjoyment of the present moment with a witchery that none ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... through the glass Of crystal seas, and seeming there to be, As with light share it cuts the azure mass, A fish of the wind, a swift bird of the sea, And being for two elements designed, Flies in the wave and swims upon the wind? But now no witchery Were it to any eyes that sight to see; For lo! the roused-up ocean, Heaving with all its mountain waves in motion, Wrinkles its haughty brow, And suddenly awaking, Neptune, his trident shaking, Ruffles the beauteous face so sweet and calm but now. Well may the sailor in his floating home Expect ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... hospitable contrivance, we approached the "Jasmine harbour," when to our gratifying surprise, we found the tripod table laden with delicious bread and cheese, surmounted by a brown mug of true Taunton ale. We instinctively took our seats; and there must have been some downright witchery in the provisions which surpassed all of its kind; nothing like it on the wide terrene, and one glass of the Taunton, settled it to an axiom. While the dappled sun-beams played on our table, through the umbrageous canopy, the very birds seemed to participate in ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... and frizz as in the days when it was so beautiful and so fair.]—her noble open forehead, eyebrows which could be only blamed for being so regularly arched that they looked as if drawn by a pencil, eyes continually beaming with the witchery of fire, a nose of perfect Grecian outline, a mouth so ruby red and gracious that it seemed that, as a flower opens but to let its perfume escape, so it could not open but to give passage to gentle words, with a neck white and graceful as a swan's, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... brought up in the midst of fashionable life. She had, it is true, no fortune, but that of my friend was ample; and he delighted in the anticipation of indulging her in every elegant pursuit, and administering to those delicate tastes and fancies that spread a kind of witchery about the sex.—"Her life," said he, "shall ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... against her tender feelings, she surrenders herself entirely to him and even succeeds by her charms and her devotion in enthralling him. Meanwhile Bouillon has sent two of his knights, Ubalt and a Danish warrior, to recall Rinaldo to his duty. They are detained by Armida's witchery; the Danish knight meets a demon, who has taken his bride's face and tenderly calls him to her, but Ubalt destroys the charm and both succeed in approaching Rinaldo, who, his love-dream dissipated by the call of honor, resolves ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... a departure from this law on the part of woman, that is to say, her fall, has begun; and, within my memory, it has become more and more the case. Woman, having lost the law, has acquired the belief that her strength lies in the witchery of her charms, or in her skill in pharisaical pretences at intellectual work. And both things are bad for the children. And, within my memory, women of the wealthy classes have come to refuse to bear children. And so mothers who hold the power in their hands ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... their picturesque costumes,—see the wild bulls of the Camargo, the Pampas of the Mediterranean. We are among the growers of the silk-worm; we hear the home-songs and talks of the Mas, listen to the people's legends and tales of witchery, and can study the Middle-Age spirit that still in these regions endows every shrine with miracles, as we follow the pilgrimage to the chapel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... expectation of pleasure. He has heard that it is Paris in miniature; and then Byron has thrown around it his witchery of song. I can see but a dull and dim resemblance to Paris. Brussels, with its suburbs, which are quite large, has only a population of one hundred and thirty thousand. The town is very clean, looks cosy, and has some very beautiful edifices. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... Quakerism, but of ineradicable native growth, was the crime of witchcraft; and, though that crime was known in England too, and occupied English law-courts, Scotland maintained her fearful superiority in witch-trials and witch-burnings. "There is much witchery up and down our land," wrote Baillie: "the English be but too sparing to try it, but some they execute." Against crimes of other orders the English judges were willing enough to act; and nothing is more startling to one who is new to such facts ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... boast in the way of equipment. The only interesting thing in sight is the children themselves, rows of them on the floor, writing letters in the sand. Unwashed they are, uncombed and almost unclothed, but with all the witchery of childhood in their eyes. In that bare room lies the possibility of transforming the life of the Village ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... and logic, the result of this comparison was, that Juliet returned fresh to his imagination in all the first witchery of her loveliness; and presently he found himself for the first time making excuses for her; if she had deceived him she had deceived him from love; whatever her past, she had been true to him, and was, from the moment she loved him, incapable of wrong.—He ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the body to the church for the night and they gather there and watch. He believes the soul rises from the ground on the Resurrection Day. He believes some people can put a "spell" on other people. He said that was witchery. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... diamonds might have worthily sparkled, will look less tempting when the biting winter has hung icicles there for gems. Cheeks formed as fresh for dimpling blushes, eyes as well to sparkle, and lips to smile, as those which shed their brightness and their witchery in the tapestried saloon, will grow pale with want, and forget their dimples, when smiles are not there to wake them; lips become compressed and drawn with anxious thought, and eyes the brightest are quenched of their fires by ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... genius. In an open pavilion, whose roughness the white sand and the white-green surf helped to condone, on a tawdry stage, she appeared, a slight, pale, winsome beauty, clad in green and white gauze, looking like a sprite of the near-by sea. The witchery of her dancing showed rare art, which was lost altogether on the simple crowd. She danced carelessly, as if mocking the rustics, and made her ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... amber. Lammer beads and red thread, when together, were supposed to be a charm with power to repel witchery in former times. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... What witchery of 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 ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... other even as we parted; to feel again the fond kiss, to hear once more the accents of a voice which to us has been for years so still,—a voice that brings with it the gush of memory! Past days flit before us; feelings, thoughts, hopes, we deemed were dead, all rise again, summoned by that secret witchery, the well-remembered though long silent voice. Let years, long, lingering, saddening years drag on their chain, let youth have given place to manhood, manhood to age, still will it be the same—the voice we once have loved, and deemed to us for ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... eyes from earth, who has not sometimes felt "the witchery of the soft blue sky;" who has not watched a cloud floating upward as if on its way ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... they ceased to breathe in her periods; they groaned as the intensity of her fervor pressed upon them for response that they could not shape in words; they wept, they shouted, they prophesied, and over them swept ever the witchery of her wonderful voice, preaching impiety—the worship ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... clash with which such natures might come together, and the girl shuddered when she saw Mademoiselle de Verneuil go up to the young man with a passionate look and, taking him by the hand, draw him close beside her and into the light, with a coquettish glance that was full of witchery. ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... prolix and uninteresting details of this chapter in my life; I need only say, that without falling in love with Mary Kamworth, I felt prodigiously disposed thereto; she was extremely pretty; had a foot and ancle to swear by, the most silvery toned voice I almost ever heard, and a certain witchery and archness of manner that by its very tantalizing uncertainty continually provoked attention, and by suggesting a difficulty in the road to success, imparted a more than common zest in the pursuit. She was little, a very little blue, rather a dabbler ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... throat and began: "Diotti combines tremendous feeling with equally tremendous technique. The entire audience was under the witchery of his art." Diotti slowly negatived that statement with bowed head. "His tone is full, round and clear; his interpretation lends a story-telling charm to the music; for, while we drank deep at the fountain of exquisite melody, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... music of her voice in my ears. I had a magic ring on my finger: a talisman on my arm. My sword was at my side again. All round me lay a misty city of adventures, of danger and romance, full of the richest and most beautiful possibilities; a city of real witchery, such as I had read of in stories, through which those fairy gifts and my right hand should guide me safely. I did not even regret my brothers, or our separation. I was the eldest. It was fitting that the cream of the enterprise should be reserved for me, Anne de Caylus. And ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... the power of a pair of blue eyes, when the black ones were not at hand to counteract their witchery, that Windybank determined straightway to play the honest man that he had determined to become. He whistled for his dogs, called to his groom, got him upon a sturdy pony, and hurried away to the hunt. He was late, but he knew that the quarry was to ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... bitter line, the worn pathway of a sneer, curved at one corner of his mouth. "Unwholesome, anaemic," was Serviss's inward comment as he turned away to address the girl, whose change of manner exerted a new witchery over him. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... with which we gaze upon her lofty career. The oldest, most prudent, man seldom fails of being interested in such enterprises by their novelty; and should we cast away all around whom it gathers its strange witchery, few would be left to toil for human good. He who moves above all such motives must have a mind perfectly trained and a heart perfectly alive to the glory of God. After a due consideration of the subject, Miss Hall ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... with a gratified expression on his dark, wrinkled old face, and bending over the girl, he muttered in a soothing way words in the Indian tongue, as though to quiet her restlessness with Indian witchery. ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the sea-flower close to thee growing, How light was thy heart till love's witchery came, Like the wind of the south o'er a summer lute blowing, And hushed all its music and withered ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Billy! Not even with his blood hot with thoughts of the evening's work, not even with his memory ridden with Arlee's gay witchery, could he keep his restless young eyes from laughing down at her. But there wasn't a notion in the back of his honest head as to the picture he was making in Lady Claire's eyes as he leaned, long-limbed, broad-shouldered, lazily at ease against ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... alone under the star-flecked heavens with the woman he loved, there was all the witchery of the pale moonlight about her, all the sweet perfumes of the summer night to intensify the fascination of her presence. There was a nameless glamour in the luminous dimness—a subtle seduction to the senses in the silence and the ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... the eloquencies and exactitudes of description, he is emphatically a master. His mind, pagan in its bent, is splendidly broad in its comprehension of the arcana of Nature and that of a poet sensitive to all the witchery of a world which at core is inscrutably dark and mysterious. He knows, none better, of the comfort to be got even from the sad when its beauty is made palpitating. No one before him, not Meredith himself, has so interfused Nature with man as to bring out the thought of man's ancient ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... us the way of salvation?' Yes it was, as is evident, for Paul was grieved to hear it. But why did the devil stir up her to cry so, but because that was the way to blemish the gospel, and to make the world think that it came from the same hand as did her soothsaying and witchery? (verse 16-18). 'Holiness, O Lord, becomes thy house for ever.' Let, therefore, whoever they be that profess the name of Christ, take heed that they scandal not that profession which they make of him, since he has so graciously offered us, as we are sinners of the biggest size, in the first ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... girl should not let herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, should be even more careful of her appearance than when she was unmarried, and should fascinate her husband as much as she did before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually powerful part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with delicacy of speech, or with her toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... see the class-room, and the place where I used to sit; I see the faces and hear the voices of my old companions, some dead, one sleeping in the middle of the great Atlantic, many scattered over distant parts of the world, almost all far away. Yes, I feel that I have not quite cast off the witchery of the "Battle of Morgarten." Early associations can give to verse a charm and a hold upon one's heart which no literary excellence, however high, ever could. Look at the first hymns you learned to repeat, and which you used to say at your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... if benighted, would rather have chosen to make a considerable circuit than pass these haunted walls. The lights, often seen around the tower, when used as the rendezvous of the lawless characters by whom it was occasionally frequented, were accounted for, under authority of these tales of witchery, in a manner at once convenient for the private parties concerned and satisfactory to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Girl, thou camest for other things! Thou lovedst his voice? Siren! what was the witchery of thine own? He deftly made up the packet, and placed it in the little hand. She paid for her small purchase, and with a farewell glance of her lustrous eyes, she left him. She passed slowly through the portal, and in a moment was lost in the crowd. It was noon ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... laughingly untangled. At night, when the fires of the village were lighted, and the crimson glow was reflected upon it, strange tales of love and war were mingled with the thread. "The nightingale sang into it, the roses from Persian gardens breathed upon it, the moonlight put witchery into it; the tinkle of the gold and silver on the women's dusky ankles, the scent of sandal wood and attar of rose—it ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... jade," said Belle, "and you practising your horse-witchery upon her. I have been of an unsubdued spirit, I acknowledge, but I was always kind to you; and if you have made me cry, it's a ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... tentative fashion, I propose to apply in some studies in this volume, or other volumes, believing that the company of those who love Shakespeare can never be large enough for his merits, and that many are kept away from the witchery of him because they do not well know the fine art of approaching him. I would, therefore, be a doorkeeper, and throw some doors wide open, that men and women may unhindered enter. This essay aims to stand as a porter at the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... welcome shade they hasten. Tired beast and tired man lave in the lifegiving flood. The horses wade in it as though the snows had melted and run thither to caress and refresh them. Oh, the exhilaration of water! On the margin of the far banks the camp is made for the night. There is witchery in a Western night. Myriads upon myriads of low-hung stars, brilliant, large and lustrous, bend to warm the soul and light the trail. Under these night lamps, amid the speech of leaves and the rush of the river, they bivouac for their last night, bending under the weight ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... foregoing arrangements completed and thoroughly understood, the governor set sail for the Reef, accompanied by his little squadron. It was an exquisitely beautiful day, one in which all the witchery of the climate developed itself, soothing the nerves and animating the spirits. Bridget had lost most of her apprehensions of the natives, and could laugh with her husband and play with her child almost ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... old dame went into an inner room and pricked herself with her spindle until a great red drop of her heart's blood fell into her trembling hand. With witchery of words she blew upon it, and rolled it in her palm, and muttering, turned and turned and turned it. And as the spell was laid upon it, it shrivelled it into a tiny round ball like a seed, and she strung ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... appeared over Blue Hill, they intuitively sought this familiar place. Perhaps the joy in their hearts added a new charm, for the ripples in the brook appeared like so many laughing water sprites dancing there in the silvery light. For a few moments they silently yielded to the magic witchery of the time and place, and then she could contain herself no longer. She had noticed his unusual elation—even more than could be ascribed to his gladness at being once more beside her, and, grown accustomed to his ways, knew there was a surprise ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... coffee-houses, which is a fair criterion, they never know in all their lives what tea, coffee, or cocoa tastes like. The slops and water-witcheries of the coffee-houses, varying only in sloppiness and witchery, never even approximate or suggest what you and I are accustomed to ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... one decked with flowers is due to the same cause that makes you—though you may be staunch Republicans—see more beauty in a queen than in her rivals, though at the bar of an impartial aesthetics the latter would be judged the more beautiful. A certain something, a peculiar witchery, surrounds her—the witchery (excuse the word) of servility; this it is, and not your aesthetic judgment, which cheats you into believing that the diamond lends a higher charm than the rose-wreath. Let the rose become the symbol of authority to be worn only by queens, and you would without ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... dare not take such a confidence; I have said that it is not for myself; I seek such knowledge of what you are, and what you have been, but it is for another so dear to me, that all the charms of life that make up other men's delights, equal not the witchery of one glance from her, speaking as it does of the glorious light from that Heaven which is eternal, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... most vital and leave only the simulacrum of a chorus. Some small effects in the line of the picturesque can be achieved by means of costuming, marching and grouping, but the rest can be nothing but elocution,—a frosty appeal to the ethical sense, offered as a surrogate for the witchery of song and rhythmic motion. One may be pardoned for thinking that a good ballet would have ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... had greatly improved; her slight figure had rounded into more womanly proportions, and her motions were full of the wild, unstudied gracefulness that had always characterized her. There was about her a fascination I cannot explain, a something independent of externals—a witchery to be felt but not defined. Perhaps it was the visible influence of mental gifts, the reflection of that purity of heart and mind which impressed itself on all her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... different sort, in addition to those which at first pervaded the mind of the author, but not less essential to the felicitous realization of his conception. Physical beauty, the magic of voice, look, and manner, the play of countenance, the step of grace, the witchery of love, the accents of despair, combine with the power of language to add a tenfold attraction to the creations of fancy. All the arts seem, in such representations, to combine their efforts to entrance the mind, every avenue to the heart is at once flooded with the highest and most refined enjoyment; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... instance of the hot-blooded youth. How shall he resist temptation, unless he has some fear of God before his eyes? There are moments in the experience of the young, when all power of resistance seems to be taken away, by the very witchery and blandishment of the object. He has no heart, and no nerve, to resist the beautiful siren. And it is precisely in these emergencies in his experience,—in these moments when this world comes up before him clothed in pomp and gold, and the other world is so entirely lost sight of, that it throws ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... with rich store, the teeming earth yields up The increase of her harvest treasury; While golden wine, from Nature's brimming cup, Quickens her pulse to love-toned melody. Full choired praise from countless glad throats break, More dazzling bright doth gleam night's dewy eyes; A newer witchery doth the great moon wake; More mellow languisheth the bending skies: Thus, through the heart Life's Summer-sun comes stealing, Spring's wildest promise ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... that the spell of Nature was greater for him than all other spells in the world combined—greater than love, revelry, pleasure, greater even than study. He had always been afraid to let himself go. His pagan soul dreaded her terrific powers of witchery ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... world; he had often already seen its strange, peaceful face; he had just stood by an open grave; but at the moment, his youth denied it all, and he swung along over the hard-packed roadway thinking of the superb beauty of Suzette Northwick, and the witchery of Louise Hilary's face. It was like her, to come at once to her friend in this anxiety; and he believed a strength in her to help bear the worst, the worst that now ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... one to his face, but reaction had set in and his hands were shaking. And he turned away and stood staring into the empty fireplace, passionately possessed once more by the eternal witchery of this young girl, and under the spell again of the enchanted place wherein ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... it drifted lazily on, far from the noise and the toil and the reek of the world! All times were calm; all waters kind. The days rolled on in ever-changing scenes of beauty; the nights, star-gemmed and mystic, were filled with music and the witchery ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the man in a short time fell miserably sick. In a Norse tale, a man whose bride is about to be carried off by Huldre-folk, rescues her by shooting over her head a pistol loaded with a silver bullet. This has the effect of dissolving the witchery; and he is forthwith enabled to seize her and gallop off, not unpursued. One of the trolls, to retard his flight, held out to him a well-filled golden horn. He took the horn, but cast the liquor away, and rode away ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... upon me too great for all my skill and wit, greater than any laid upon me since I seized the kingship. A maiden unseen has met us, and by her power would take from me my dear, my comely son. If thou help not, he will be taken from thy king by woman's wiles and witchery." ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... wrote ('tis the romantic style, Though of romance therein I fail To see aught—never mind meanwhile) And about dawn upon his breast His weary head declined at rest, For o'er a word to fashion known, "Ideal," he had drowsy grown. But scarce had sleep's soft witchery Subdued him, when his neighbour stept Into the chamber where he slept And wakened him with the loud cry: "'Tis time to get up! Seven doth strike. Oneguine waits on us, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... time, she now pushes boldly to claim the place which will be most effective in serving her as a bath. She has, by general consent, beauty; she must, seeing that she counts influential friends, have witchery. Those who have seen her riding and driving beside her lord, speak of Andalusian grace, Oriental lustre, fit qualification for the fair slave of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... only road to success was to completely fascinate the Intendant, she bent herself to the task with such power of witchery and such simulation of real passion, that Bigot, wary and experienced gladiator as he was in the arena of love, was more than once brought to the brink of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to nature' though they live, they are anything but Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is likely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the wicked full moon in the zenith, and the forest is all whispering with witchery and danger. The eeriness of the world, the mischief and the manyness, the littleness of the forces, the magical surprises, the unaccountability of every agent, these surely are the characters most impressive ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... speckled shell, thou, a mountain-dwelling tortoise? Nay, I will carry thee within, and a boon shalt thou be to me, not by me to be scorned, nay, thou shalt first serve my turn. Best it is to bide at home, since danger is abroad. Living shalt thou be a spell against ill witchery, and dead, then a ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... he named St. Anthony, on which spot now stands the "Flour City," Minneapolis, in the county of Hennepin, Minnesota. He probably heard of the other falls, five miles away, which we know as Minnehaha, and around which the sweetest of American poets has woven the witchery of Indian legend in the wooing of "Hiawatha." It seems almost incredible that where are now the largest flour mills in the world, turning out daily about 40,000 barrels, there was, scarcely fifty years ago, only the cedar strewn wigwam and smoke of the camp fire, the tread of moccasined feet and ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... boots encouraged them with cries and stamped a staccato accompaniment upon the benches or on the floor. It was savage, rasping music, but one player infused into it the ebullient nerve of France, and the other was from the misty land where the fiddler learns the witchery of the clanging reel and the swing of the Strathspey. It is doubtless not high art, but there is probably no music in the world that fires the blood like this and turns the sober dance to rhythmic riot. Perhaps, ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... mobile[Lat], keystone; the why and the wherefore; pro and con, reason why; secret motive, arriere pensee[Fr]; intention &c. 620. inducement, consideration; attraction; loadstone; magnet, magnetism, magnetic force; allectation|, allective|; temptation, enticement, agacerie[obs3], allurement, witchery; bewitchment, bewitchery; charm; spell &c. 993; fascination, blandishment, cajolery; seduction, seducement; honeyed words, voice of the tempter, song of the Sirens forbidden fruit, golden apple. persuasibility[obs3], persuasibleness[obs3]; attractability[obs3]; impressibility, susceptibility; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... from the firelight, her black hair shone like a bird's wing, the jewels on her fingers sent out sparkles of light and flame. As Saint Harry continued to gaze at her the forest with all its haunting, dreaming witchery vanished, the high invitation of the mountains, "Come ye apart," ceased to echo in his ears. The world environed, encompassed her; he seemed to discern the yearning of her spirit for it, the airy rush of her winged feet toward it; and yet her eyes, those eyes ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... authority of Webster, and of Mr. Ewbank, the Commissioner of Patents, in whose report the article in question was published by the Government of the United States, it will not be considered, perhaps, as putting faith in "water-witchery," to suggest that, possibly, Elkington did really possess a faculty, not common to all mankind, of detecting running water or springs, even far below the surface. We have the high authority of Tam o' Shanter for the opinion, that witches cannot cross a stream of ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... why he should send it to you," Wade said, in a low tone, as the Senator turned to bend over an open traveling bag on a nearby chair. "Is he—do you—?" A slight rigor of jealousy seemed to seize upon him, under the witchery of her ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... of spotless white They scattered showers of sparkling light. O, how could my fond heart believe They glittered only to deceive; To visions bright as fairy land. Hope pointed with her magic hand, And love, with soft and speaking eye, And tones of thrilling witchery, A dream like mist around me threw, Ting'd by many a rainbow hue. And friendship, with her smiling face, Clasped me within her warm embrace, And fondly whisper'd in mine ear, Sweet words of hope I loved ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... quick and darting, like those of a humming-bird. Her enunciation, though perfectly distinct, was marvelously rapid. The same quickness characterized her mental operations. Her conclusions, right or wrong, were always instantaneous. Her prompt decisiveness, her talent for mimicry and her witchery of grace and beauty won her a devoted following of school-girls, to whom her tastes and opinions were as authoritative as ever were those of Eugenie to the ladies of her court. School-girls, like college-boys, are very apt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... The weird witchery of mighty bush, the breath of wide sunlit plains, the sound of camp-bells and jingle of hobble chains, floating on the soft twilight breezes, had come to these men and had written a tale on their hearts as had been written on mine. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... and the metropolitan East had faded and become as hazy and vague as the Highwoods. Ten days, and the witchery of the West leaped in her blood and held her fast ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... Red, Gracious sweetness past compare, Beauty's self to thee hath fled, Lilies White and Roses Red: Lover's service bows its head, Awed by witchery so fair, Lilies White and Roses Red, Gracious sweetness ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... murmurs. A sweeter music was in her ears. She seemed under a delicious spell, but soon became conscious that a pair of dark eyes were looking down eagerly, anxiously for her answer. Shyly raising hers, that now were like dewy violets, she said, with a little of her old witchery: ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... did not last. His tropical mind lasted, his chameleon imagination lasted, his compelling personality, his grace, charm, witchery of words—all these lasted; but all these were nothing without that honesty which would make him die rather than speak for a cause in which he did not believe, or be silent when a cause in which he believed was at issue and ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... to you, you may copy it—I don't know whether there is anything in it or not." It was "The Rainbow," which appeared some months later in a popular magazine—a little gem, and a good illustration of his ability to throw the witchery of the ideal around the facts of nature. The lad with us had been learning Wordsworth's "Rainbow," a favorite of Mr. Burroughs, and it was no unusual thing of a morning to hear the rustic philosopher while frying the bacon for ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... bedecks the naked trees With tassels and embroideries, And many blue-eyed violets beam Along the edges of the stream, I hear a voice that seems to say, Now near at hand, now far away, "Witchery—witchery—witchery." ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... sailor men, the scent of the salt water, and all the occult unrecognized, but keenly felt life of the ocean, were ministers to their love, and forever and ever blended in the heart and memory of the youth and maid who had set their early dream of each other to its potent witchery. Time went swiftly, and suddenly Cornelia remembered that she was subject to hours and minutes, A little fear came into her heart, and closed it, and she said, with a troubled air, "My mother will be anxious. I had forgotten. I must go home." ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the thick, spreading branches of a tree, her white apron filled with alpine flowers. "How came she here," I wondered. Her dark bright eyes gazed questioningly into mine, eyes through which one could see the childish spirit and feel the witchery of her magic look; her raven locks fell in clusters over her fair temples and ended in ringlets about her shoulders; on her cheeks were the glowing tints of youth and health. As I spoke she rose and handed me a flower of delicate tint. I ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... There is a witchery in the sea, its songs and stories, and in the mere sight of a ship, and the sailor's dress, especially to a young mind, which has done more to man navies, and fill merchantmen, than all the press-gangs of Europe. I have known a young ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... The lights revealed and interpreted the architecture softening the colors and adding the subtle charm of mystery. A hundred beautiful hues were reflected in the waters of the fountains. The floral effects made by submerged lights in the basin were exquisite, and the witchery of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... hands and arms. But he wondered at himself, and could have laughed at his own blindness. The power of analysis had gone out of him because he was in love. She was merely a soft, dazzling splendour in aspect now, and every look and tone and attitude was a witchery and a wonder. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... girl, and find that she has regularly installed herself in a corner of your heart, there is scarcely a thing she can do you'll not discover a good reason for; and even when your ingenuity fails, go and pay a visit; there is some artful witchery in that creation you have built up about her—for I heartily believe most of us are merely clothing a sort of lay figure of loveliness with attributes of our fancy—and the end of it is, we are about as wise about ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... witchery in the same way as he was yielding to the heavy, languorous perfumes of the place, Claude smiled continuously. "The fat's all in the fire, Rosie," he said, in a loud whisper, as he drew nearer; "so we've nothing to ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... over the lesson, and they stood silent, side by side, leaning on the rail, captivated by the witchery of the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... to save you from something even worse than death that can come to you. I want to return to you the favor that you did me. If you do not listen to me, how can I help you?" Her voice took on a plaintive, charming note; she smiled a half-smile of complete witchery. ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... paid by the American public to the master who had given to it such tales of conjuring charm, of witchery and mystery as "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia"; such fascinating hoaxes as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "MSS. Found in a Bottle," "A Descent Into a Maelstrom" and "The Balloon Hoax"; such tales of conscience as "William Wilson," ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... his love for sweet Bernardine came to him, he told himself that he ought to fly from her; go where the witchery of her face, the charm of her presence, would never set his heart on fire; go where he could never ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... was suffused with wrath at the pleasantry, and he regarded him with a fixed stare. On board the Conqueror there was a witchery in that glance more potent than the spoken word, but in his own parlour the new captain met ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... rugged land, but a nurse of gallant sons; and sweet, ah! very sweet, is the name of home. Never hath my heart been turned from that dear spot, no, not by all the loveliness of Calypso, nor by all the witchery of Circe, but ever I remained faithful to the one lodestar ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... rue the day I fancied first the womenkind; For aye sinsyne I ne'er can hae Ae quiet thought or peace o' mind! They hae plagued my heart, an' pleased my e'e, An' teased an' flatter'd me at will, But aye, for a' their witchery, The pawky things I lo'e them still. O, the women folk! O, the women folk! But they hae been the wreck o' me; O, weary fa' the women folk, For they winna let a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... have done if we were to relate all the incidents of this kind,[25] for the sentiment of nature was innate with him; it was a perpetual communion which made him love the whole creation.[26] He is ravished with the witchery of great forests; he has the terrors of a child when he is alone at prayer in a deserted chapel, but he tastes ineffable joy merely in inhaling the perfume of a flower, or gazing into the limpid ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... older or more experienced in the ways of the world, I would have known that such passion as this evinced was short-lived; that there is no witchery in a smile lasting enough to make men like him forget the lack of those social graces to which they are accustomed. But I was mad with happiness, and was unconscious of any cloud lowering upon our future till the day of our ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... come "the primrose way," Folly, thou and I! Such a glamor and a grace Ever glimmered on thy face, Ever such a witchery Lit the laughing eyes of thee, Could a fool like me withstand Folly's feast and beckoning hand? Drinking, how thy lips' caress Spiced the cup of waywardness! So we came "the primrose way," Folly, thou ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... the winds of the mighty Sierras and plains of the land she inhabited, enveloped and animated her. The rushing, whirling climaxes up to which she worked were startling—tremendous. The subtle, hypnotic influence and witchery of her presence filled her entire surroundings and so held and dominated the spectators that they were swept irresistibly along with her as the rhythm of the dance increased. She swayed and enthralled ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... contrast sure proof of a common sense which denied to the present Earl and Countess the asceticisms of the past. And then it seemed to lose interest in this critical journey, as though longing to clothe all in witchery. For the sun had risen, and through the Eastern windows came pouring its level and mysterious joy. And with it, passing in at an open lattice, came a wild bee to settle among the flowers on the table athwart the Eastern end, used when there was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the poem was less successful, partly for the reason, as the reviewers pointed out, that it undertakes the hardest of tasks, "witchery by daylight." But there were other reasons. Three years had passed since the poem was begun. Coleridge had been to Germany and had settled at Keswick. The poet had been lost in the metaphysician, and he ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers |
