"Changeling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... keep his revels here to-night; Take heed the Queen come not within his sight. For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, Because that she, as her attendant, hath A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king; She never had so sweet a changeling: And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild: But she perforce withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... 'have we not children of our own, that thou must needs bring a changeling to sit by the hearth? And who knows if it will not bring us bad fortune? And how shall we tend it?' And she was wroth ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... instinct is manifested in the same manner and degree in the women of both people. I have often asked Native women whether it would be possible for any mother among them to distinguish her own new-born baby from a supposed "changeling" of the same sex and of the same general appearance, and the answer has always been negative. The Native and the white woman alike would continue to cherish the substituted child exactly as they would have cherished the issue ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... fare the worst: For they're a sort of fools which fortune makes, And, after she has made 'em fools, forsakes. With Nature's oafs 'tis quite a diff'rent case, For Fortune favours all her idiot race. In her own nest the cuckoo eggs we find, O'er which she broods to hatch the changeling kind: No portion for her own she has to spare, So much she dotes on ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think that change through illness and organic decay in the thoughts and spirits of those who are dear and close to us is the most evil and distressing and inexplicable. Suddenly he was a changeling, a being querulous and pitiful, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... wast ever alien to our skies, A wistful stray of radiance on this earth, A changeling with deep memories in thine eyes Mistily gazing thro' our loud-voiced mirth To some fair land beyond the gates of birth; Yet as a star thro' clouds, thou still didst shed Through our dark world thy lovelier, rarer glow; Time, like a picture of but little worth, Before thy ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... mother, Callisto, ant. 2. In her hiding-place of the thickets Of the lentisk and ilex In her rough form, fearing The hunter on the outlook, Poor changeling! trembled. Or the children, plucking In the thorn-choked gullies Wild gooseberries, scared her, The shy mountain-bear! Or the shepherds, on slopes With pale-spiked lavender And crisp thyme tufted, Came upon her, stealing At day-break ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that the "Essays of Elia" will be found to have kept their perfume, and the LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB to retain their old sweet savor, when "Sartor Resartus" has about as many readers as Bulwer's "Artificial Changeling," and nine tenths even of "Don Juan" lie darkening under the same deep dust that covers the rarely troubled pages of ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... "It's like a changeling," thought Eleanor, looking with fascinated eyes at the weird little being. Lady Philippa smiled, and laid her hand softly on the furry black head. "This is an unusual sight in your cottage," she said. "Whence ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... she was a changeling; others that she had found the four-leaved clover or the fairy ointment, and rubbed her eyes with it. But it was her own secret; for whenever the people tried to follow her to the "Gardens," whir! whir! whir! ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... other's friendship has not cured him of this. Being seized with a peculiar desire to learn conjuring, he had made the acquaintance of an eerie and supernatural young man, who instructed him in the Black Art: a gaunt Mephistophelian sort of individual, who our subject half thought was a changeling. Our subject has not quite got over the idea yet, though for practical social purposes he calls him Lucian Oldershaw. Our subject met Lucian Oldershaw. 'That night,' as Shakespeare says, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... decent meal since this changeling crept out of the eggshell," said one of them, and when the youngster heard that they were all of the same opinion, he said he was quite willing to go his way; "if they did not want him, he was sure he did not want them," and with ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... the creature for leaving such a unique specimen, at least," laughed Mr. Garth, completely mollified; (if you will not accuse us of an insane desire to make a pun). "Come, fairy changeling, and ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... should like to be acquainted with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle—I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and though the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... with spirit. Isabella mixes in the festive scene, disguised in a domino, made of black sticking-plaster. Czerina overhears that she is a usurper and a changeling, and expresses her surprise in a line most unblushingly stolen from Fitz-Ball and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was that in which Borrow says, when describing the interior of the Mosque at Tangier: "I looked around for the abominable thing, and found it not; no scarlet strumpet with a crown of false gold sat nursing an ugly changeling in a niche." In later editions the words "no scarlet strumpet," etc., were changed to "the besetting sin of the pseudo-Christian Church did not stare me in the face in ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... comprehend your meaning now, and I won't get angry with you. I think I must be a changeling, in spirit probably; there could be no mistake, I presume, in my physical identity, but my heart always claims kindred most with the lean, ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... next night too he dreamed of Emain Macha, and heard voices which were unintelligible, and again the third night he heard the voices and one voice said, "This our labour is vain, let him alone. He is some changeling and not of the blood of Rury. He will be a grazier, I think, and buy cattle and sell them for a profit." And the other said, "Nay, let us not leave him yet. Remember how valiantly he faced the fierce water-dog and slew him at one cast." When he climbed ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... even crawl along was off to the hill, for they were all eager to see the man who was to win the Princess. So the two elder brothers set off with the rest; but as for Boots, they said outright he shouldn't go with them, for if they were seen with such a dirty changeling, all begrimed with smut from cleaning their shoes and sifting cinders in the dust-hole, they said folk would ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... is prophetic,—an anticipation of manhood for this boy, who is the King's son, child of Eternity, and only changeling of Time. Wherever any magnanimity is revealed, I lay claim to it. The courage of heroes, the purity of angels, the generosity of God, is no more than I need. Only show virtue unmixed at the heart of this system, and you open my destiny ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... become to you father and mother and sister and fairy prince? Then what were you to me in those old days? A child fanciful and charming, too fine in all her moods not to breed wonder, to give the feeling that Nature had placed in that mountain cabin a changeling of her own. A child that one must regard with fondness and some pity,—what is called a dear child. Moreover, a child whose life I had saved, and to whom it pleased me to play Providence. I was young, not hard ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... heathen Rome; yet the deposit it has permanently left behind it in the English language is not inconsiderable. 'Lubber,' 'dwarf,' 'oaf,' 'droll,' 'wight,' 'puck,' 'urchin,' 'hag,' 'night-mare,' 'gramary,' 'Old Nick,' 'changeling' (wechselkind), suggest themselves, as all bequeathed to us by that old Teutonic demonology. [Footnote: [But the words puck, urchin, gramary, are not of Teutonic origin. The etymology of puck ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... mother's twilight legend, told Of Horner's pie, or Tiddler's gold, Or fairy hobbling to the door, Red-cloaked and weird, banned and poor, To bless the good child's gracious eyes, The good child's wistful charities, And crippled changeling's hunch to make Dance on his crutch, for ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Just some of them. A few of them—different. Growing up. Placing their young with well-to-do families somehow, and then dropping unobtrusively out of the picture. And the young growing up, and always the natural children dying off in one way or another. The changeling inherits, and the process is repeated, step by step. Can you say it's impossible? Do ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Wesley Barefoot
... play. Onely his Law was Brittle i'th' wrong place: For had our Corah been in Moses Case, The Fury of his Zeal had been employ'd To build that Calf which th'others Rage destroy'd. Thus Corah, Baals true Fayry Changeling made, He Bleated onely as the Pharisees pray'd, All to advance that future Tyrant pow'r, Should Widows Houses gorge, and Orphans ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... more than to the eighteenth or nineteenth year." As a practical application of this, it may be mentioned that Luther advised the drowning of a certain child of twelve years old, on the ground of its being a devil's changeling. Somnambulism is, with Luther, the result of diabolical agency. "Formerly," says he, "the Papists, being superstitious people, alleged that persons thus afflicted had not been properly baptized, or had been baptized by a drunken priest." The irony of the reference to superstition, ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... let us turn back. I have heard that Arthur is not the real king, but a changeling brought from fairyland in a great wave all flame. He has done all his deeds with the ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... Londoners met with little response. Weak rule and the insecurity of life and property turned away the heart of the commons from the king. It was no wonder that men went on pilgrimage to the little hill outside Pontefract, where Earl Thomas had met his doom, or that rumours spread that the king was a changeling and no true son of the great Edward. But though the power of the king and the Despensers was thoroughly undermined, the absence of leaders and the general want of public spirit still delayed the day of reckoning. At last, the threatening ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... child was a seven months' baby—a girl. And she had a face like mine, and like 'Bella Donna,' and like a lynx. There was just that look of deformity I had dreamed—mysterious and dreadful. I hated the creature. I couldn't feel she was mine and Jack's. She was like some changeling in an old witch tale. I couldn't bear it! I knew that I'd rather die than have Jack see that wicked elf after all his hopes. I told the doctor so. I threatened to kill myself. I don't know if I meant it. But he thought I did. He was a young man. I frightened him. While he was trying ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... pause. It seemed to Jack that the whole thing must be a dream. This simply wasn't Frank at all. The wild idea came to him that the man who sat before him with Frank's features was some kind of changeling. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... ornamental arts may sacrifice to fashion, she must be entirely excluded from the art of painting; the painter must never mistake this capricious changeling for the genuine offspring of nature; he must divest himself of all prejudices in favour of his age or country; he must disregard all local and temporary ornaments, and look only on those general habits that are everywhere and always the same. He addresses his ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... "Finlay the Changeling" has similar features. The hero slew first a giant and then the giant's father. Thereafter the Hag came against him and exclaimed, "Although with cunning and deceitfulness you killed my husband last ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... gentleness and kindness, was gone. That fierce, truculent hatred that she had so striven to put from her, now behold! of its own accord, it had seemed to leave her. How had it happened? Before she had dared the ordeal of confession this feeling of hatred, this perverse and ugly changeling that had brooded in her heart, had seemed too strong, too deeply seated to be moved. Now, suddenly, it had departed, unbidden, without ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... aside the affair of my eye, I had a very ugly countenance; my mouth being slightly wrung aside, and my complexion rather swarthy. In fact, I looked so queer that the gossips and neighbours, when they first saw me, swore I was a changeling—perhaps it would have been well if I had never been born; for my poor father, who had been particularly anxious to have a son, no sooner saw me than he turned away, went to the neighbouring town, and did not return for two days. I am by no means certain ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Murat knew what it was to be afraid. He had always felt sure that he should triumph. His rebuff by Josepha, the first he had ever met, he ascribed to her love of money; "he was conquered by millions, and not by a changeling," he would say when speaking of the Duc d'Herouville. And now, in one instant, the poison and delirium that the mad passion sheds in a flood had rushed to his heart. He kept turning from the whist-table towards the fireplace with an action a la ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... And he, Tiburcio of the cunning wits, had just sworn away, not only the Gringo's life, but the possible salvation of the Empire. Coming from Jefferson Davis, the Gringo with his mission could mean nothing else. Then there was Lopez. Tiburcio did not love this changeling Mexican who had red hair. But what could be the mongrel's game? Why had he freed Murguia, if not to unleash a small terrier at Maximilian's heel? Why was he trying the American over again, if not to poison a friendly mastiff? And why either, if Don Miguel Lopez were ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... in a stall in the neighbourhood, offered us some nosegays, ranged round a small basket; by selling of which the poor boy eked out his mother's maintenance of them both: nor was he fit for any other way of livelihood, since he was not only a perfect changeling, or idiot, but stammered so that there was no understanding even those sounds his half-dozen animals ideas, at most, prompted ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... has embodied so many Runic secrets, explained to me what I have often felt toward myself, when he tells of the poor changeling, who, turned from the door of her adopted home, sat down on a stone and so pitied herself that she wept. Yet me also, the wonderful bird, singing in the wild forest, has tempted ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... thinks, if Agnes has a large fortune. To secure the fortune and the lord for her daughter, Mrs. Font determines to get Guy Font out of the way. Her purpose coincides with her peasant belief that he is a "changeling," and is really of the sea people. So she goes with him to a sea cave he is fond of visiting, and only she comes from the cave. She is suspected, but before the officers come for her, she learns that her crime has defeated its own end. Mask is driven ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... me tell thee now another tale: For Bleys, our Merlin's master, as they say, Died but of late, and sent his cry to me, To hear him speak before he left his life. Shrunk like a fairy changeling lay the mage; And when I enter'd told me that himself And Merlin ever served about the King, Uther, before he died; and on the night When Uther in Tintagil past away Moaning and wailing for an heir, the two Left the still King, and passing forth to breathe, Then from ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Yet, of the two, it certainly seems more reasonable to regard the smaller birds as resenting the parasitic habit in the cuckoo than to admit that they can actually welcome the murder of their own offspring to make room in the nest for the ugly changeling foisted on them by ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... turned from his employment, lo! both mother and daughter were weeping. He looked at them with a wondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had been harsh, he flew again to his Familiar. And now you thought you heard the lullaby which a fairy might sing to some fretful changeling it had adopted and sought to soothe. Liquid, low, silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted bow. The most stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal, at times, out came a wild, merry, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... had got in at the window she probably would have strangled me," I returned... "Catharine Linton or Earnshaw, or however she was called—she must have been a changeling, wicked little soul! She told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years; a just punishment for her ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... deride me. I was working in the field the very day it happened, too. The boy was born in the middle of a beet-field, and I carried him back to the farm myself in my apron. He was deformed even then: the mistress's evil eyes had done it. I said to myself that she should always have the changeling in her sight, and refused to go away. The farmer couldn't quite bring himself to turn me out by force, and so he put me into the house down by ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... thee, draw not thy hand away, turn not from me, or by the blood of Christ, by thine own gray hairs, I'll lay thee beside thy woman-son, the puny changeling whose face now is scarce paler than his blood was thin. Now, by the God who made ye, swear 'twill be given out as but an accident, and no man will ever know from ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... human world shut out,— As some detected changeling elf, Doomed, with strange agony and doubt, To enter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... plays, at first purely religious, rapidly developed a comic side, which by degrees became their central theme. The moral purpose of the performance was forgotten; and the Church disowned its evil changeling. To none of these early plays can the term "drama" be accurately applied; for each and all of them lack plot. They are merely a series of disconnected scenes, pictures having small connection and less ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... the Thiodolf whom thou hast loved? no changeling of the Gods, but the man in whom men have trusted, the friend of Earth, the giver of life, ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... the elder Brutus Made his soul iron, though his sons repented. They boasted not their baseness. [Draws his sword. Infamous changeling! Recant this instant, and swear loyalty, 225 And strict obedience to thy sovereign's will; Or, by the spirit of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had touched him with her evil hand! We shut the door and returned to our business, but when the mother put her arms around the body of her son, it turned out that it was only a straw bolster, no heart, no guts, nothing! Of course the witches had swooped down upon the lad and put the straw changeling in his place! Believe me or not, suit yourselves, but I say that there are women that know too much, and night-hags, too, and they turn everything upside down! And as for the long-haired booby, he never got back his own natural color and he died, raving ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... and his eye fell. A certain anger rose within him; here was a Flora he disowned; she was hard; she was of a set colour; a settled, mature, undecorative manner; plain of speech, plain of habit - he had come near saying, plain of face. And this changeling called herself by the same name as the many-coloured, clinging maid of yore; she of the frequent laughter, and the many sighs, and the kind, stolen glances. And to make all worse, she took the upper hand with him, which (as John well knew) was not the ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... may be recognized by tricky habits, constant crying, and other unusual characteristics. It was customary to recover the true child in the following way: The changeling was placed upon an iron shovel over the fire, when it would go shrieking up the chimney, and the bona fide human child would be restored. It was believed that fairy changelings often produced a set of small bagpipes from under the clothes and played ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... she had ever conceived by Satan, and given birth to a changeling, and of what shape?—R. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... my son, thy father favours him. Richard, that vile abortive changeling brat, And Fauconbridge, are fallen at Henry's feet. They woo for him, but entreat my son Gloster may die for ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... powers, what must it have been at a time when I myself was in vain trying, year after year, to write a single Essay, nay, a single page or sentence; when I regarded the wonders of his pen with the longing eyes of one who was dumb and a changeling; and when, to be able to convey the slightest conception of my meaning to others in words, was the height of an almost hopeless ambition! But I never measured others' excellences by my own defects: though a sense of my own incapacity, and of the steep, impassable ascent from ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... must be released at the end of a certain time, unless he tastes fairy food, in which event he can never return. Children in cradles are frequently snatched away by the fairies, who leave, instead, imps of their own called "changelings." A changeling may always be recognized by its peevishness and backwardness in learning to walk and speak. If well treated, the fairies will sometimes show their gratitude by bestowing on their favorites health, wealth, and long life. Lucky the child who can count ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... fair daft," said Margray, looking after her with a perplexed gaze, and dropping her scissors. "Surely, Mary, you shouldn't tease her as you do. She's worn more in these four weeks than in as many years. You're a fickle changeling!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... always clear and pure and crisp and cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ran an undercadence through it like a low-pleading prayer. Half garrulously, and like a shallow brook might brawl across a shelvy bottom, the rhythmic little changeling ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... better cause, declines to believe their report of the cradle's contents, and his wife comes nimbly to his aid with the startling explanation that it is her son without doubt, for she saw him transformed by a fairy into this misshapen changeling precisely on the stroke of twelve. Not so, however, are the shepherds to be persuaded to disbelieve their eyes. Instead Mak gets a good tossing in a blanket for his pains, the exertion of which sentence reduces the three to such drowsiness that soon they ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... very constructively, it had become a fierce though governed passion with both—to learn something of the spiritual life coursing back of the material universe. Equally slowly and inevitably had the two come to believe that the little changeling at the lodge held some wordless clue, some unconscious knowledge as to that outer sphere, that surrounding, peopled ether, in which, under their apparent rationality, the two had come to believe. Yet the banker and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... at the finished Changeling in the front of the book. It will help you to make all the ...
— The Twelve Magic Changelings • M.A. Glen
... to by Augustus! Still do I doubt whether Augustus will ever come forth again. Is this a peace patched up by Livia for the sake of her children, seeing the imbecility of her husband? or is Augustus to own he has been acting changeling, like the first Brutus, for near two years? I do not know, I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... comfort would they find in me! I am a stricken and most luckless deer, Whose bleeding track but draws the hounds of wrath Where'er I pause a moment. He has children Bred at his side, to nurse him in his age— While I am but an alien and a changeling, Whom, ere my plastic sense could impress take Either of his feature ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... eight of clubs! My fingers left it as though it were a snake. It was the eight of clubs! Where I had seen, in fancy, the queen of hearts, there lay like a changeling the eight of clubs, with corner bent as ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... Changeling, tells a preposterous story of Battalia's being born with two pebbles in one hand and one in the other; that he refused both the breast and the pap offered him, but ate the pebbles and continued to subsist on stones for the remainder of his life. ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... this unhappy disagreement was Titania's refusing give Oberon a little changeling boy, whose mother had been Titania's friend; and upon her death the fairy queen stole the child from its nurse and brought him up ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... nevertheless he accorded due praise to her unsurpassed beauty. "No place so brands a man," he declared; and, in his turn, Stevenson left his brand on the romantic city of his birth, for now no book on Scotland's capital is written without mention of the haunts and homes of that changeling-looking son of hers. The door-plate of 17 Heriot Row bore the inscription of R. L. Stevenson, Advocate. No blue-bag laden clerk dropped briefs then into its letter-box. In one of its sun-facing drawing-room windows there stood a big Australian vine, carefully ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... tanned skin, a rotten carcass, crooked back, she stoops, is lame, splay-footed, "as slender in the middle as a cow in the waist," gouty legs, her ankles hang over her shoes, her feet stink, she breed lice, a mere changeling, a very monster, an oaf imperfect, her whole complexion savours, a harsh voice, incondite gesture, vile gait, a vast virago, or an ugly tit, a slug, a fat fustilugs, a truss, a long lean rawbone, a skeleton, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... said the girl, suddenly taking him up in her arms. "I believe you are some little changeling god sent by your master Apollo to put his thoughts into ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... somewhat freakish. Thus, in the fogs and horrors of London, he plays at being an Arabian tale-teller, and his "New Arabian Nights" are a new kind of romanticism—Oriental, freakish, like the work of a changeling. Indeed, this curious genius, springing from a family of Scottish engineers, resembles nothing so much as one of the fairy children, whom the ladies of Queen Proserpina's court used to leave in the cradles of Border keeps or of peasants' cottages. Of the Scot he has little ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... herewith Mr. Shepley and Howe. After dinner to Whitehall Chappell with Mr. Child, and there did hear Captain Cooke and his boy make a trial of an Anthem against tomorrow, which was brave musique. Then by water to Whitefriars to the Play-house, and there saw "The Changeling," the first time it hath been acted these twenty years, and it takes exceedingly. Besides, I see the gallants do begin to be tyred with the vanity and pride of the theatre actors who are indeed grown very proud and rich. Then by link home, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as 'love' and 'darling' on his lips: the best words at my disposal were 'provoking', 'malicious elf,' 'sprite', 'changeling', etc. For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... from his successful sales, he found a changeling. His wife was not so different in looks or words as in a subtle something he could not define. She laughed at his jokes, and even, in a gentle way, ventured pleasantries of her own; but a strange languor hung about her. It ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... count: and oh, but it is fair: The kindly green and rounded trunks, that meet Under the soil with twinings of their feet And in the sky with twinings of their arms: The yellow stools: the still ungathered charms Of berry, woodland herb, and bryony, And mid-wood's changeling child, Anemone. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... whimsical comedian who stops a funeral to make love to the corpse's widow; but when, in the next act, he is replaced by a stage villain who smothers babies and offs with people's heads, we are revolted at the imposture and repudiate the changeling. Faulconbridge, Coriolanus, Leontes are admirable descriptions of instinctive temperaments: indeed the play of Coriolanus is the greatest of Shakespear's comedies; but description is not philosophy; and comedy neither compromises the author nor reveals him. He must be judged by those ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... believe she is my mother's sister," says Miss Wynter calmly. "I have seen my mother's picture. It is lovely! Aunt Jane was a changeling—I'm sure of it. But never mind her. You were going ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... offended Monarch rode apart, With bitter thought and swelling heart, 815 And would not now vouchsafe again Through Stirling streets to lead his train. "O Lennox, who would wish to rule This changeling crowd, this common fool? Hear'st thou," he said, "the loud acclaim, 820 With which they shout the Douglas name? With like acclaim, the vulgar throat Strained for King James their morning note; With like acclaim they hailed the day When first I broke the ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... she bound to play thee False, and betray thee to her arms: I might not Choose, though my heart should rend itself in twain And cleave with ravenous anguish: yet I live. Vex not thy soul too sorely: me, not her, Thy spirit embraced, thine arms and lips made thine Me, not my darkling wraith, my changeling foe, My thief of love, our traitress. This I bid thee, Forget thy fear and shame to have wronged me: night Breeds treacherous dreams that can but poison day If thought be found so base a fool as dares Fear. Did ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
