"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the spell, the joyousness of the birds is described, and also the awakening of Christabel as from a trance.—During this rest (her mother) the guardian angel is supposed to have been watching over her. But these passages could not escape coarse minded critics, who put a construction on them which never entered the mind of the author of Christabel, whose poems ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... rather call them. In truth, the intuitions of the night (for they worked still, or tried to work, by night) became the sickly nightmares of the day, in which Prior Saint-Jean slept, or tried to sleep, or lay sometimes in a trance without food for many hours, from which he would spring up suddenly to crowd, against time, as much as he could into his book with pen or brush; winged flowers, or stars with human limbs and faces, still intruding themselves, or mere notes of light and ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... women of now are the attained to-morrow that the world since the beginning has been trying to catch up with. Jane is that, and then the day after, too, and what she has done to Glendale in these two weeks has stunned the old town into a trance of delight and amazement. She has recreated us, breathed the breath of modernity into us, and started the machine up the grade of civilization at a pace that makes me hold my breath for ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the colouring was in its natural unnaturalness; I say natural, because it was perfectly true to the mystic dream, the saintly vision; a more common natural would have ruined it. No one ever, it is true, saw such a sky—but in a gifted trance it is such as would alone be seen, acknowledged, and remembered as of a heavenly vision. All the colouring was like it, rich and glorifying and unearthly, and imitative of the sanctifying light in old cathedrals. The sky was of very mixed tones and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... significance that might lie therein. Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar discipline; and though the effort to interpret this discipline was discouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision during his outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and others that its effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour. A less truthful man than he might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a vision in the form of resurgent memory; a less sane man might have believed in such a creation; but Silas ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... under his successor Nicephorus, persevered peaceably in his practices of penance, and in the functions of his pastoral charge. In his last sickness he still continued to offer daily the holy sacrifice as long as he was able to move. A little before his death he fell into a kind of trance, as the author of his life, who was an eye-witness, relates, wherein he was heard to dispute and argue with a number of accusers, very busy in sifting his whole life, and objecting all they could to it. He seemed in a great fright and agitation on this account, and, defending himself, answered ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... owed him too much of keen enjoyment to see him cut down in swift flight. In the moment that the master's back was turned I hurled a knot at the tangle of brakes. The grouse burst away, and Old Ben, shaken out of his trance by the whirr of wings, dropped obediently to the charge and turned his head to say reproachfully with his eyes: "What in the world is the matter with you back there—didn't I hold him ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... Above, two angels kneel, about to give him the crown of glory which fadeth not away, and Madonna, borne from heaven by the children, comes with her Son to welcome him home. There, in the most characteristic work of the fifteenth century, you find man still thinking about death, not as a trance out of which we shall awaken to some terrible remembrance, but as sleep, a sweet and fragile slumber, that has something of the drooping of the flowers about it, in a certain touching beauty and regret that is never bitter, but, like the ending ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... mountain-side, watched till the pretty confusion of the water, with its half-interpreted voices, had dizzied and dazed her to the point of complete forgetfulness of self. She had entered into a sort of a trance, a Nirvana ... She shook herself out of it, ate her lunch and scrambled quickly back to "Nigger Baby." It was late afternoon when she crossed the mountain glades. Their look had mysteriously changed. There was something almost uncanny now about their brilliance in the sunset light, and when ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... this is all your doing!" Then, as if wakening from a trance, she uttered a long, piercing shriek, darted into the pavilion between the gory corpses, and flung herself headlong out of the open window into ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... I had liefer cast my soul alive to hell Than play a false man false. But were he true And I the traitor—then what heaven should do I wot not, but myself, being once awake Out of that treasonous trance, were fain to slake With all my blood the fire of shame wherein My soul should burn me living ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... one in a trance when he spoke of the brave, bearded Frenchmen, From the green sun-lit valleys of France to the wild Hochelaga [a] transplanted, Oft trailing the deserts of snow in the heart of the dense Huron forests, Or ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... that she was asleep, but yet during all her vigil the white lids had not stirred, no spark of vitality had touched the marble face. She was possessed by a great longing to speak to her, to call her out of that trance-like silence; but she did not dare. She was as one bound by a spell. The great stillness was too holy to break. All her own troubles were sunk in oblivion. She felt as if she moved in a shadow-world where ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... tarpaulin. The sailors heaped pilot-coats upon us. It was a bad ship, they said, to be sick on board of, for no such thing as brandy was allowed in the old Priscilla. Still I am sure I tasted some before I fell into a state of semi-insensibility. As in a trance I heard Temple's moans, and the captain's voice across the gusty wind, and the forlorn crunching of the ship down great waves. The captain's figure was sometimes stooping over us, more great-coats were piled on us; sometimes the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... engulfed in an overwhelming wave of tender and compassionate feeling toward the other: seeing, as if with spiritual vision, a nature unstrung, hardly responsible, and one that invited only the most infinite tenderness and care. This wave of new and perfectly clear perception was like a magnetic trance. It was an hour of absolute spiritual clairvoyance, and the evidence was furnished by a letter received, the next morning, from a mutual friend, which entirely substantiated and corroborated the telepathic impression that had been experienced ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... gloaming gathers round, The silence mellows every sound, The gentle wind, through foliage nigh, Begins to breathe its plaintive sigh; While o'er the hill creeps silver light, Where calm and chaste the queen of night, Awaking from her daily trance, Doth charm all nature with her glance. Her virgin train sweeps down the glade, Kissing the cavern's mouth of shade; She smiles upon the singing brook, With sparkles filling every nook That lurks about its dimpled face, ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... and above all, with the most painful of all suffering, anxiety, solitude and sleep are the only consolations. But then the sleep is not the light, happy, joyous slumber, from which we awake refreshed and strengthened; it is a leaden, sullen, sodden trance, from which we awake with the sensation that the whole weight of the atmosphere has been concentrated on our brows. This was the case with Dumiger: the flickering, dreary light of the lamp kept waving before his eyes as he lay there. He felt like a man whose limbs have been paralyzed by some grievous ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... the Maytide trance Tombs were shining whitely; 'Twas the churchyard met our glance— None ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the nervous twitching of the lids over the protuberant eyeballs and the abrupt outward bulge of the head above the collar at the back. Abimelech Johns was a tin-miner who had spent his days in profane swearing and coursing after hares with greyhounds until the Lord had thrown him into a trance like that which overtook Saul of Tarsus, and not unlike an epileptic fit Abimelech himself had had in childhood. Since the trance he was a changed man; his passion for souls was now as great as his passion for pleasure had been before, and he had a name for working himself ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... roused himself from his trance with a shiver. It was not cold, but in him there was a nervous agitation, making him cold from head to foot; his body seemed as impoverished as his mind. Looking with heavy-lidded eyes across the prairie, he saw in the distance the barracks of the Riders of the Plains and ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... but no water was at hand, and to reach the spring once more was impossible: the qualms continued, deadly pains shot through my whole frame; I could bear my agonies no longer, and I fell into a trance or swoon. How long I continued therein I know not; on recovering, however, I felt somewhat better, and attempted to lift my head off my couch; the next moment, however, the qualms and pains returned, if possible, with greater violence than before. I am dying, thought I, like ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... period of time than in any season since the Reformation. Ministers were painful, people were diligent. At their solemn communions many congregations met in great multitudes, some dozen of ministers used to preach, and the people continued as it were in a sort of trance (so serious were they in spiritual exercises) for three ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... this surprising news caus'd her fall in 'a trance, Life as she were dead, no limbs she could advance, Then her dear brother came, her from the ground he took And she spake up and said, O my poor ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... acting like one in a trance, tried to push past her and reenter the room. Selma stood firm. She said: "If you do not go I shall have these men take you to your carriage. You do not know ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... Sorrows replied, "I am going fast, Cartaphilus; but tarry thou till I come again." After the crucifixion, Cartaphilus was baptized by the same Anani'as who baptized Paul, and received the name of Joseph. At the close of every century he falls into a trance, and wakes up after a time a young man about thirty years of age.—Book of the Chronicles of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... face of Sam Ineson and saw there an expression of trance-like rapture. As though moved by a common impulse, the two soldiers sprang to attention, saluted, and, when the hymn ceased, fell on their knees in prayer. Then the mist closed on them again, the city among the clouds was hidden from view, and the sky lost its translucence. ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... the doorway so that no one could enter the house without noticing it. Then returning to the quiet chimney corner, she sat down in the round-backed oak chair, and clasping her hands on her lap, waited, while over her came the curious trance-like sleep to which she had been subject at intervals all her life. She was accustomed to these trances, and even welcomed their coming for the sake of the clear insight and even the clairvoyance which followed them. They were seasons of refreshing ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... suddenly awaked from her trance, passed her hand over her eyes, and said, as she bowed her head before ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they need freedom from all cares and sufferings. Sweet, lovely beings, let them have husbands to lift them above all earthly cares and trials! Oh! angels of our homes," says he, liftin' his eyes to the heavens, and kinder shettin' 'em, some as if he was goin' into a trance, "fly around, ye angels, in your native haunts! mingle not with rings, and vile laws; flee ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... found a song which they had often sung together, where she might join as much or as little as she chose, under cover of his voice. She had not a thought or sensation beyond the joy of hearing it again, and she stood, motionless, as if in a trance. When it was over, he said to Laura, 'I beg your pardon for making such bad work. I am so much ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pronounce and impossible to remember. Sulimani was quite a study. He had the savage's love of snuff, and when not eating or sleeping he was taking pinches of that narcotic from an old kodak tin. In consequence he had the chronic appearance of being full of dope. He walked along as though in a trance. He never seemed to be looking anywhere except at the stretch of trail directly in front of him. His thoughts were far away, or else there were no thoughts at all. I often watched him and wondered what he was ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... up his hand. "There it is again! The beating of wings." And they listened like men spellbound. McCurdie kept his hand uplifted, and gazed over their heads at the wall, and his gaze was that of a man in a trance, and he spoke: ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... In that cold trance the earth was held It seemed an age, or time was nought. Sure never from that stone-like field Sprang golden corn, nor from those chill Grey granite trees was music wrought. In all the wood Even the tall poplar ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... be fixin' up the advertisement while I'm gone. You can let me see it when I come back. I say, Jerry," he added to the "sacrifice," who sat gazing at the pennies on the table in a sort of trance, "don't feel bad about it. Why, when you come to think of it, it's a providence it turned out that way. Me and Perez are bachelors, and we'd be jest green hands. But you're a able seaman, you know what it is to manage ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone That is at least one definite "false note." —Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour and ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... Who vainly shades his eyes that still must see! Long troops came after of his slaughtered race, Each in his habit, even as he died: The big sweat trickled down the warrior's face, Yet could he move no limb, in that deep trance, Nor turn ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... citoyenne in the line had resented with a vigorous hand the insolence of a lewd admirer, while, pressed close against her neighbour, a young servant girl, with eyes half shut and mouth half open, stood sighing in a sort of trance. At any word, or gesture, or attitude of a sort to provoke the sportive humour of the coarse-minded populace, a knot of young libertines would strike up the Ca-ira in chorus, regardless of the protests of an old Jacobin, highly ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... sloping in the sky, beat down upon them as hot as fire; but neither of them noticed it. Neither did they notice hunger nor thirst nor fatigue, but sat there as though in a trance, with the bags of money scattered on the sand around them, a great pile of money heaped upon the coat, and the open chest beside them. It was an hour of sundown before Parson Jones had begun fairly to examine the books and papers ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... in the hall, and hoarding up her new found happiness she stole away to her room, kindled the alabaster lamp that no broader light should look upon her blushes, and sat down lost in a trance of thought. She veiled her eyes even from the pure light around her, and started covered with blushes, when the happiness flooding her soul broke in ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... you do, by this hand, I'll play the conjuror. Blush, Fortunatus, at the base conceit! To stand aloof, like one that's in a trance, And with thine eyes behold that miscreant imp, Whose tongue['s] more venom['s] than the serpent's sting, Before thy face thus taunt thy dearest friends— Ay, thine own father—with reproachful terms! Thy sister Lelia, she is bought and sold, And learned Sophos, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... blind—has also been adduced for this interpretation. Hagen is explained as the Thorn of Death, the hawthorn (German Hagedorn), with which men are stung into eternal sleep, or rather into a death-like trance. Odin stings Brynhild into her trance with a sleeping-thorn. Hagen, in the sense of death, still lingers in the German expression, "Friend Hain," as a euphemism for the figure which announces that one's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... lovers cry, Alas! Since passion's leaguer shall break through in vain To that cold centre of bright adamas.— Storm through her being, rapturous spears of pain! Ye shall not wound that queen of gracious guile, The soul that with immortal trance keeps troth: For Helen is in Egypt all the while, Learning great magic from the Wife of Thoth. Throned white and high on red-rose porphyry, And coifed with golden wings, she lifts her eyes O'er Nile's ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... horns of a bleached buffalo skull, but Venning stood like one in a trance. His hand had been swallowed up by a huge palm and thick iron-like fingers, and he was staring down on a pair of the broadest shoulders he had seen, with an arching chest to match. This was the pigmy he had imagined—this man with the shoulders of a giant and the chest of a Hercules. Then his eyes ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... visible personality, and is permanently attached to the body; the other has the power of leaving the body, carrying with it an appearance of physical form, which accounts for a person being seen in two different places at once. Cases of catalepsy or trance are explained by the Chinese as the absence from the body of this portion of the soul, which is also believed to be expelled from the body by any violent shock or fright. There is a story of a man who was so terrified at the prospect of immediate execution that his separable soul ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... dumb:[122] No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving; Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving; No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... 'Go; why tarriest thou?' The Messias answered him: 'I indeed am going; but thou shalt tarry until I come'; thereby condemning him to live until the day of judgment. He lives forever, but at the end of every hundred years he falls into a fit or trance, on recovering from which he finds himself in the same state of youth in which he was when Jesus suffered, being then ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... moment, both parties—hunters and game—seemed equally taken by surprise, and stood eyeing each other in mute wonder. It was but for a moment. The men made a rush for their rifles, and the animal, recovering from his trance of astonishment, tossed back his horns, and bounded across the platform. In a dozen springs he had readied the selvedge of the snow, and plunged into its yielding bank; but, at the same instant, several rifles cracked, and the white wreath was ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... tide, oh trust not to the Sea! It will come back to shore with redness of the morrow; O don't believe in me when in the trance of sorrow I swear I am ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... again, and for a chance of doing something to restore his reputation. An infinitely better and more wholesome frame of mind this; by all means let him mend his reputation by achievement, instead of by writing books in a theological trance or stupor, and attempting to prove that he was chosen by the Almighty. He now addressed himself to the better task of getting himself chosen by men to do something which should raise him ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... exactly in a trance, I should say, but rather she seemed absorbed in deep thought—she said, 'I see a man, a fair-haired man with a sunny, boyish smile. Do you recognize that description?' I didn't say much, for I'm no fool to give myself away, you understand, but I nodded assent, and ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... American, is the victim of that sad superstition which associates goblins with the deserted body of man, as ghosts with an abandoned house. How unlike are we made! What to me, in like case, would have been a solemn satisfaction, the bare suggestion, even, terrifies the Spaniard into this trance. Poor Alexandro Aranda! what would you say could you here see your friend—who, on former voyages, when you, for months, were left behind, has, I dare say, often longed, and longed, for one peep at you—now transported with terror at the least thought ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... through the woods in a kind of trance, pausing once to glance through the letter again and to scrutinize the signature. He found the patient up and about, with no reminder of his mishap save the cut on his forehead. He was plainly agitated and expectant as he looked through the woods ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Alessandro's hand; then he turned and walked away, Alessandro still standing as if rooted to the spot, gazing into the palm of his hand, Benito and Baba slowly walking away from him unnoticed; at last he seemed to rouse himself as from a trance, and picking up the horses' reins, came slowly toward her. Again she started to meet him; again he made the same authoritative gesture to her to return; and again she seated herself, trembling in every nerve of her body. Ramona was now sometimes afraid of Alessandro. When these fierce ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... dressed for the grave, he stole silently and alone into her chamber to look once more upon her beautiful face, to kiss once more her sweet lips: while standing by the bedside he is suddenly struck down in a trance, and his description of the scene is one of the noblest prose poems in the English language. But even here, amid the absorbing disclosures of a frantic sorrow, when the mighty swell of passion had reached its culmination, and a solemn Memnonian wind, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... supplied the night before in anticipation of the mission, the three cadets trouped wearily out of their rooms and rode down to the lobby in the vacuum elevator. They walked across the deserted lobby as though in a trance and outside to the quiet street. A jet cab stood at the curb, the driver watching them. He whistled sharply and waved at them. "Hey, cadets! ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... into the habit, when starting on a long journey, of fixing his eye on a high and distant object, commanding his horses to begin, and then going into a sort of a trance of observation. Multitudes of drivers might howl in his rear, and passengers might load him with opprobrium, he would not awaken until some blue policeman turned red and began to frenziedly tear bridles and beat the soft noses of the ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... woke from his trance of watching, it was to turn upon Watton with impatience. How long was this thing going on? The British workman spoke with deplorable fluency. Couldn't they push their way through ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the ford with the men of Erin. [LL.fo.87b.] Cuchulain laid Ferdiad there on the ground, and a cloud and a faint and a swoon came over Cuchulain there by the head of Ferdiad. Laeg espied it, and the men of Erin all arose for the attack upon him. "Come, O Cucuc," cried Laeg; "arise now [2]from thy trance,[2] for the men of Erin will come to attack us, and it is not single combat they will allow us, now that Ferdiad son of Daman son of Dare is fallen by thee." "What availeth it me to arise, O gilla," moaned Cuchulain, "now that this one is fallen ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... was succeeded by a mad beating of her heart. Roy said nothing but clutched his rifle. He jerked it to his shoulder as, out of the shadows, a figure emerged sharp and black against the moonlight. As if she were in a trance Peggy saw Roy's hand slide under the barrel of the little repeater and then came the sharp click of the repeating mechanism, followed by the snap of the hammer as ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... Greeks retire, And launch'd against their navy Phrygian fire. His hair and beard stood stiffen'd with his gore; And all the wounds he for his country bore Now stream'd afresh, and with new purple ran. I wept to see the visionary man, And, while my trance continued, thus began: 'O light of Trojans, and support of Troy, Thy father's champion, and thy country's joy! O, long expected by thy friends! from whence Art thou so late return'd for our defense? Do we behold thee, wearied as we are With length of labors, and with toils of war? After so ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... have not done what I felt that I must do at all risks," he said, as he once more made an effort to rouse himself from the drowsy inertia which was holding him in something resembling a trance. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... a gross insult and a direct lie, and Mulvaney meant it to bring on a fight. But Ortheris seemed shut up in some sort of trance. He answered slowly, without a sign of irritation, in the same cadenced voice as he had used for ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... ejaculated Barney, who stood staring at the whole proceeding like one in a trance. "Did ye ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... when I came in, I thought you were in a trance! I had a wild notion to lose no time in bringing ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... in adoration to Hea; I tried to enter into the light of that Wisdom; a sudden heart-throb of warning drew me back; I thought of Asur instinctively, and thinking of him his image flashed on me. He moved as if in trance through the glassy waves of those cosmic waters which everywhere lave and permeate the worlds, and in which our earth is but a subaqueous mound. His head was bowed, his form dilated to heroic stature, as if he conceived of himself as some great thing or as moving to some high destiny; ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... then the clock in the little church tower struck ten. The village was asleep—and there was no sound of human life anywhere. The faint, subtle scent of sweetbriar stole on the air as he stood in a trance of desperate uncertainty—and as the delicate odour floated by, a rush of ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... as I strive more with this strange lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems daily more amazing to me that men such as these should dare to play with the most precious truths, (or the most deadly untruths,) by which the whole ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... She was the star and drew big houses, she was so beautiful and sang so sweetly, without any apparent effort. It was just like a bird, and when she sang the Southern melodies she seemed to be in a trance, seeing things we could not see. It made me cry to hear her. I know many good women are public singers, but mother shrank from it, and when they cheered like mad there used to be a frightened look in her eyes, as if she wondered why they were ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... tranquil than before. He spoke evenly and almost cheerfully of my career, with every now and then a reference to the lost ship or the treasures it had brought to Aros. For my part, I listened to him in a sort of trance, gazing with all my heart on that remembered scene, and drinking gladly the sea-air and the smoke of peats that had been ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and paid it back to an eternal death. The old cattleman was refusing his payment. It was no state of coma in which he lay; it was no prolonged trance. He was vitally, vividly alive; he was concentrating with a bitter and exhausting vigour day and night, and fighting a battle the more terrible because it was fought in silence, a battle in which he could receive no aid, no reinforcement, a battle in which he could not win, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... boy of black-letter," said the Nabob; "with me you shall go, and we'll bring them to submission to mother-church, I warrant you—Why, the idea of being cheated in such a way, would scare a Santon out of his trance.—What dress will ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Then, when that trance of peace had given them the light sadness which fulfilled beauty brings, they found it good to hasten down the deserted street to the cafes and thronging friendly people. They knew how to live and take their pleasure, those people ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... Eustace, in a trance?" said d'Aubricour. "Waken, and carry this trencher of beef to your brother. Best that you should do it," he added in a low voice, taking up a flask of wine, "and save our comrade from at once making ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought beyond this life. Among these men there arose, about the year 600, a person named Mahomet. He had at first been servant to a rich widow, whom he afterwards married. Either he fancied, or persuaded others that he believed, that the angel Gabriel spoke to him in a trance, and told him that he was chosen as a great prophet, to announce the will of God, and restore the faith to what it had been in Abraham's days. He caused all that he pretended to have been told by the angel, to be set down in writings, which were called ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... delight was to watch the pig-herd and his troop. Early in the morning, at a fixed hour, he issued from his house in one of the small alleys, staff in hand, and with a curious kind of horn or whistle. This he blew as he walked along, from time to time, without turning his head, in that strange trance of passivity which distinguishes the Valencian peasant. Out from dark corners, narrow passages, mud hovels on all sides, came tearing along little pigs, big pigs, dark, light, fat, thin pigs,—pigs of every description,—and joined the procession ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... drowsy trance The dim horizon bounds, Where all the air is resonant With sleepy summer sounds,— The life that sings among the flowers, The lisping of the breeze, The hot cicada's sultry cry, The murmurous dream ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... crops in the flat, rich country gliding past the windows. It was quite evident that not a word of this highly instructive talk reached Sylvia, sitting motionless, absorbing every detail of her fellow-passengers' aspect, in a sort of trance of receptivity. She scarcely glanced out of the windows, except when the train stopped at the station in a large town, when she transferred her steady gaze to the people coming and going from the train. "Just look, Sylvia, at those ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... in what a trance of woe Thee I beheld, upon that highway drawn, Sev'n sons on either side thee slain! Saul! How ghastly didst thou look! on thine own sword Expiring in Gilboa, from that hour Ne'er visited with ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... insects, fragments of minerals, etc., and, hanging these satchels on my arms, called on Copernicus to fulfil his promise. Instantly all things disappeared again from my view; I was floating with my satchels in mid-ether, and fell into a trance. When I awaked, I was in my father's house in New York. How long the passage required, I have no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... again streaked the gloom. The astounded captain did not drop his gun, but he came near it. For a long minute he stood as in a trance. When he attempted to holster his weapon he fumbled three times for the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... to itself as the church assembling in Lantern Yard. He was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith, and a peculiar interest had been centred in him ever since he had fallen at a prayer-meeting into a trance or cataleptic fit, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... in this situation of mind when Mr. Falkland sent for me. His message roused me from my trance. In recovering, I felt those sickening and loathsome sensations, which a man may be supposed at first to endure who should return from the sleep of death. Gradually I recovered the power of arranging my ideas and directing ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... are almost "asides." They ought hardly to be spoken aloud. They denote that Romeo is still in his trance. They have, however, another and unfortunate influence: they retard the action of the play. As we read the play to ourselves, this accompaniment of lyrical feeling on Romeo's part does not interfere with our ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... trance towards an open room, and on entering it they met a fair damsel in the garb of a handmaid, to whom the knight spoke in familiarity, and kittling her under the chin, made her giggle in a wanton manner. By her he was informed that the Archbishop was in the inner ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... hospital came out, and seeing this spectacle, some of them exclaimed, "The pious Canizares is dead! See how emaciated she is with fasting and penance." Others felt her pulse, and finding that she was not dead, concluded that she was in a trance of holy ecstacy; whilst others said, "This old hag is unquestionably a witch, and is no doubt anointed, for saints are never seen in such an indecent condition when they are lost in religious ecstacy; ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... turned upon her husband and said to him, 'What meanest thou, Arriguccio? This is not that so far which thou camest to tell us thou hadst done, and we know not how thou wilt make good the rest.' Arriguccio stood as one in a trance and would have spoken; but, seeing that it was not as he thought he could show, he dared say nothing; whereupon the lady, turning to her brothers, said to them, 'Brothers mine, I see he hath gone seeking to have ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... automatists are aware of the word which they are actually writing, and perhaps of two or three words on either side, though there is rarely any clear perception of the meaning of the whole. Automatic writing may take place when the agent is in a state of trance, spontaneous or induced, in hystero-epilepsy or other morbid states; or in a condition not distinguishable from normal wakefulness. Automatic writing has played an important part in the history of modern spiritualism. The phenomenon first ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... sea. With one hand she clung to the boat; her grandfather lifted his knife and struck. Nerrvik descended into the ocean and became the queen of the fishes. Possessing only one hand she cannot plait her hair. A magician who can go to Nerrvik in a trance and arrange her tresses wins her gratitude and can secure from her for the hunters quantities of fish. It is interesting to note the similarity of the legend of Nerrvik to that of Jonah. But just as the ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... what agonies I felt at such a spectacle! I ran towards the spot in a transport of horror! I clasped my lovely mistress in my arms, and, finding her still breathing, endeavoured, but in vain, to wake her from the trance Antonia was overwhelmed with the same lethargic power. My fancy was immediately struck with the apprehension of their being poisoned. Regardless of my own situation, I alarmed the family, called for assistance, and requested the servants ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and in the whole of that fair landscape never a sign of life, human or animal! Yet, stay; what was that dark film, like a tiny cloud, that came sweeping down toward them from far up the lake? Dick, the practical, was the first to catch sight of it, for Phil was standing like one in a trance gazing at the scene with a retrospective look in his eyes that seemed to say his thoughts were far away. As Dick watched the approaching cloud-like film it resolved itself into a flock of wild ducks, making, as it ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... ill! you suffer!" he said, opening his arms and trying to clasp his friend once more to his breast. But the touch of his hand made Lupinus tremble, and awakened him from his trance. One wild shriek rang from his bosom, a stream of tears gushed from his eyes, and he sank ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... felt seemed nothing. His angel spoke. It seemed as though he heard words spoken from another world in a heaven-like trance. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the Paris streets blindly, the din of my own thoughts louder than all the noises of the city. But I could not remain in this trance forever, and at length I woke to two unpleasant facts: first, I had no idea where I was, and, second, I should be no better ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... with such perfect faith in its truth, as to cause him to walk in his sleep, like a somnambulist. No doubt your dear mother can tell you many strange and extraordinary stories of somnambulists, who do the most wonderful and startling things while in this kind of trance state, of which they are ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... conversation) he seems to be eternally bothered by the fundamental differences that exist among men. He asks 'Why do you do it?' Now imagine the mind of a man who asks an artist why he paints! He will stare at my plate as I work, with his big black brows knitted, as if in a trance. And suddenly he will shrug his shoulders and take up his hat and go off without a word. Sometimes he doesn't come for several days. The last time I saw him was a week ago. I must tell you about it. I felt all cramped and muggy, and as the day was fine, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... I was in a trance not long since, divers matters were present to my sight, which here must not be related. Likewise I heard these words—Work together: Eat bread together: Declare this all abroad. Likewise I heard these words—Whosoever ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... days Sir Launcelot lay as in a trance. At the end of that time he came to himself, and found those about him that had tended him in his swoon. These, when they had given him fresh raiment, brought him to the aged king—Pelles was his name—that owned that castle. The king entertained him right royally, for he knew of the fame of Sir ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... Giusippe's interest in these first glimpses of the new country to which he had come. For the next few weeks he went about as if in a trance, struggling to adjust himself to life in an American city. How different it was from his beloved Venice! How sharp the September days with their early frost! How he missed the golden warmth of the sunny Adriatic and the familiar sights ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... truly one, And every spirit's folded bloom Through all its intervital gloom In some long trance should slumber on; ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... him, the fair maiden merely bows and wrings her hands, exclaiming, 'My hapless brother!' until the king implores her to confide in him. Suddenly her tongue is loosened, and she begins to sing, as if in a trance, of a vision with which she has been favoured, wherein a handsome knight had been sent by Heaven to ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... a scroll, parchment, oracle, prophecy, precedent; do you ask for tablets marked with thought or words cut deep on the marble surface, do you seek measured utterance or the mystic trance? ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... New scenes of Wisdom may each step display, 10 And Knowledge open as my days advance! Till what time Death shall pour the undarken'd ray, My eye shall dart thro' infinite expanse, And thought suspended lie in Rapture's blissful trance. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for the girl's standing as a princess, but to prevent discovery, bloodshed, and, her life. It is also known that these ascetics—infidels, children of the Devil—by charm, or drugs, or otherwise, can cause something like death for days—a trance, and the one who goes thus knows not who he was when ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... muttering, and made a sort of mark with his fingers on my forehead. Hugh told me afterwards that he seemed to trace a kind of zigzag on my left temple. All the time he was muttering he seemed to be half-conscious, almost in a trance, or as if he were mad: he frightened us dreadfully. After he had made the mark upon my brow he came to ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... said Emily, awakening from the pleasing trance, into which the music had lulled her. 'This is the eve of a festival, Signora,' replied Maddelina; 'and the peasants then amuse themselves with ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... grimy hands. A look of heavenly delight dawned over the hirsute and dirt-besmeared countenance, which drooped into tenderness as he drew the bow across the instrument, and wiled from her a thin wail as of sorrow at their long separation. He then retreated into his den, and was soon sunk in a trance, deaf to everything but the violin, from which no entreaties of Robert, who longed for a lesson, could rouse him; so that he had to go home grievously disappointed, and unrewarded for the risk he had run ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... ignorance, such as the story of the Lady of the Tent and the stolen ring; but we have also the sinister figure of the Red Knight with his Witch Mother; the three drops of blood upon the snow, and the ensuing love trance; pure Folk-tale themes, mingled with the more chivalric elements of the rescue of a distressed maiden, and the vanquishing in single combat of doughty antagonists, Giant, or Saracen. One and all of them elements offering widespread popular parallels, and inviting the unwary ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... self-sufficing soul, a pool in trance, Un-stirred by all the spirit-winds that blow From o'er the gulfs of change, content, ere yet On its own crags, which rough peaked limpets fret The last rich colours glance, Content to mirror the sea-bird's wings of snow, Or feel in some small creek, ere sunset fails, A tiny Nautilus ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... not wake up. He lay as one in a trance, absolutely motionless, with his enormous eyes tight closed. The eyelids had big silver scales on them, like all ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the improvised arrangements entailing dismemberment which the Great Powers imposed on Russia during her cataleptic trance are revised, as they may be, whenever she recovers consciousness and strength, what course will events then follow? If she seeks to regather under her wing some of the peoples whose complete independence the League of Nations was so eager ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... from a trance. There was a shuffling of feet. The priest was going away. The solemn rite was ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine |
