"Spell-bound" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and repeated feature of all these Imrama is a belief in Atlantic islands fair enough or wonderful enough to tempt the shore dwellers of Ireland far away and hold them spell-bound for years. It is easy to ascribe these pictures to sunset on the ocean, or the wonders of mirage; but all the time, within long sailing distance, there actually were islands of delightful climate and exceeding beauty. These had ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... at that magic scene, And long you will spell-bound gaze, I ween, On mirrors and flowers, and paintings old, And side-boards heaped with vessels of gold; Proud, stately men and women most fair, Glitt'ring in toilets, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... never give it up again for any treasure, and that to possess the favour of the original he would forsake all the world. He fell into many more such passionate and incoherent expressions of rhapsody, as of one suddenly smitten and spell-bound with hapless love, bitterly reproaching the ambassador for never having brought him any answers to the many affectionate letters which he had written to the queen, whose silence had made him so wretched. Sir Henry, perhaps somewhat ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I, whose empty way leads wandering Between high garden-walls that hide the sun, Hear sometimes on the breeze a simple strain Of an old song you once were wont to sing— And then forgetting all, I seem as one Who listens spell-bound to the ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... both laughed; and Paragot bidding me sit on the wreck of a cane-bottomed chair, gave me my first lesson in Greek Mythology. He talked for nearly an hour, and I, ragged urchin of the London streets, my wits sharpened by hunger and ill-usage, sat spell-bound on my comfortless perch, while he unfolded the tale of Gods and Goddesses, and unveiled Olympus before ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... fellows give it now? Dana's men break from their cover, and cheering madly, go dashing through the timber towards their persecutors of the day before. Hunter's skirmishers push eastward through the trees for one more crack at the besiegers. Others—cheering too, yet spell-bound—cling to the spot, and go wild with joy as the long blue line comes flashing into view across the bluffs from the south, the just rising sun flaming at their crests and tinting the wild war-bonnets of the foe, who go tumbling and scurrying away before them; and their old adjutant comes ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... She sat spell-bound, watching for the event of the contest, which had now begun between the two in real earnest. The people encouraged now the one and now the other. At this moment it seemed probable that the new man, Lucius, would be the winner; at that moment ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... spell-bound, and but half real, something cloistral or monastic, as we should say, united to this exquisite order, made the whole place seem to Marius, as it were, sacellum, the peculiar sanctuary, of his mother, who, still in real widowhood, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... the moment was so acute it could never leave off being the present and slip into the past; he remembered the first day at St. Renny when he was staring at the sunbeam and feeling that that at least would go on spell-bound for ever; he remembered that moment when, on his return to Cloom, he had gone over the fields with John-James and, looking once more on the same field, had recalled that first moment, and smiled to see how it had ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... her companions reached, at last, the foot of the present active crater, whence the molten contents of the terrestrial interior are continually pouring forth in a lurid flood. With some difficulty they gained the summit—to stand, silent and spell-bound, in contemplation of a spectacle which more than realizes the terrors of the ancient Phlegethon. The precipice overhung a basin of molten fire, measuring nearly a mile across. With a clang, a clash, and a roar, like that of breakers ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the spell-bound multitude in the streets, for in a moment more the fate of the doomed adventurers must be decided. Suddenly two human forms dropped from the loosened basket and struck with a fearful thud against the elevated railway, then rebounded ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... He stands spell-bound for a moment—then he breaks away headlong. He makes his way to the dining-room. The table, all bright with damask, silver, crystal, and cut flowers, stands spread for dinner. He takes from his pocket ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... sworded lightning of immortal fire thou quenched, and on the sceptre of Zeus his eagle sleepeth, slackening his swift wings either side, the king of birds, for a dark mist thou hast distilled on his arched head, a gentle seal upon his eyes, and he in slumber heaveth his supple back, spell-bound beneath thy throbs. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... past, of which every thing reminded me. There was the seat the marquise used to sit in; there the footstool I had so often placed at her feet. How different was the last service I had rendered her! There the pillar, beside which I have stood spell-bound, gazing at that fair face, whose beauty arrested the thoughts that should have wended heavenward, and made my muttered prayers like offerings to herself. The very bouquet of flowers—some peri's hand had placed beneath the shrine—withered ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Tom Leicester was listening, spell-bound, on the outskirts of the throng, to the songs and humorous tirades of a pedler selling his wares; and was saying to himself, "I too will be a pedler." Hearing the row, he turned round, and saw his master just coming down with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... with his story. I listened, spell-bound. The unhappy man explained to Jack how he had been wrecked on the voyage, and escaped on a raft with one other passenger: how they had drifted far south, before waves and current, till they were cast at last on this wretched island: how they remained ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... thou first in old oak shadows, With that manly brown arm didst wildly grasp me! Spell-bound I read in thy look That ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... tram went on. He looked at the great building like one spell-bound. He had heard, in a vague sort of way, that this was the head-quarters of the Victoria University. He did not know much as to what this meant, but it appealed to him, captivated him. It was the centre of learning—knowledge. Here men taught the knowledge that meant power, progress, achievement. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... theologian, the author of a little book entitled the "Epoch of Creation," in doing me the honour of referring to my convictions on this subject, states, that I "betray indubitable tokens of being spell-bound to the extent of infatuation, by the foregone conclusion of" my "theory concerning the high antiquity of the earth, and the succession of animal and vegetable creations." He adds further, in an eloquent sentence, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... more than ordinary interest to the readers of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY. James R. Gilmore (Edmund Kirke) has put the same power of graphic description, the simple yet thrilling narrative, which held us spell-bound to the last chapters of ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various
... hardier cheer, As one that held all hope and fear Wherethrough the spirit of man may steer In life and death less dark or dear, Laid hand thereon, and fared as they. With half a smile his hand he drew Back from the spell-bound thing, and threw With half a glance his heart anew Toward no such ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... James Fitz-James. Thus watch I o'er insulted laws, Thus learn to right the injured cause.' Then, in a tone apart and low,— 'Ah, little traitress! none must know What idle dream, what lighter thought What vanity full dearly bought, Joined to thine eye's dark witchcraft, drew My spell-bound steps to Benvenue In dangerous hour, and all but gave Thy Monarch's life to mountain glaive!' Aloud he spoke: 'Thou still cost hold That little talisman of gold, Pledge of my faith, Fitz-James's ring,— What seeks ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... great loss, into Carlaveroch; and though harassed by Kirkpatrick himself, were ravaging the country as far as Dumfries. The letter of the brave knight added, "These Southron thieves blow the name of Edward before them, and with its sound have spell-bound the courage of every soul I meet. Come then, valiant Wallace, and conjure it down again, else I shall not be surprised if the men of Annandale bind me hand and foot, and deliver me up to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... remained, however, that I found myself in far closer sympathy with him than ever before. After all that he had said, I should have had a heart of stone if it had not been stirred to profound pity. I had seen an instance both of his spell-bound cowardice and of his almost degrading craft in extrication. That in itself repelled me. But it lost its value in the light that he had cast on the never-ceasing torment that consumed him. At any rate he was at death-grips with himself, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... from the breast of his coat, tore off a blank leaf; then resting it on the side of a gun carriage, he proceeded to make a sketch. Dolly's eyes followed his pencil point, spell-bound with interest. Under his quick and ready fingers grew, she could not tell how, the figure of a ship,—hull, masts, sails and rigging, deftly sketched in; till it seemed to Dolly she could almost see how the wind blew that was filling out the sails ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... with a wild enthusiasm. To the beautiful girl who listened, spell-bound, he seemed as ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... alluded to was too mean for scorn itself, and the sharp stinging enunciation made the words still more scathing. The audience seemed relieved, so crushing was the expression of his face which they held onto as 'twere spell-bound—when he turned to other topics. But the good-natured yet provoking irony with which he described the imaginary, though life-like scene of direct collision between the marshaled army of South Carolina under General Hayne ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... seems, Her voice not mortal, as her heaving breast Pants, with the approaching Deity possest. "Pray, Trojan," peals her warning utterance, "pray! Cease not, AEneas, nor withhold thy quest, Nor stint thy vows. While dumbly ye delay, Ne'er shall its yawning doors the spell-bound house display." ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... scream from Mrs Major Negus, which passed unnoticed, not a single exclamation of terror or alarm was uttered. All seemed completely stupefied by the unexpected shock, their consternation being too great for words—they stood as if spell-bound! ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... heedlessly on, neither noticing the glittering throng around, nor feeling a thought in common with the gay and joyous spirits that flitted by. The night wore on, my melancholy and depression growing ever deeper, yet so spell-bound was I that I could not leave the place. A secret sense that it was the last time we were to meet had gained entire possession of me, and I longed to speak a few words ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of a woman's congress. Paris, gorgeous under the grand monarch who surrounded his royal person with a splendid galaxy of beauty, genius, and chivalry; attractive and influential under the great emperor whose meteoric genius held spell-bound the wondering gaze of a world; to-day, with neither king nor court, nor man of destiny, is grander, more gorgeous, more beautiful and more influential than ever before. To-day this is the shrine toward which the pilgrims from every land turn ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... sense of the words, and be simple and free from affectation, and he appointed a censor to see that his instructions were carried out. The latter, 'Couci' by name, declared that when he played upon his 'king,' the animals ranged themselves before him spell-bound ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... mythological import, in the world which all these personages inhabit. What are the three hundred ravens of Owen, and the nine sorceresses of Peredur, and the dogs of Annwn the Welsh Hades, and the birds of Rhiannon, whose song was so sweet that warriors remained spell-bound for eighty years together listening to them? What is the Avanc, the water-monster, of whom every lake-side in Wales, and her proverbial speech, and her music, to this day preserve the tradition? What is Gwyn the son of Nudd, king of fairie, the ruler of the Tylwyth Teg, or family ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... music floated on the air; and they stood spell-bound, with heads bowed, as if their souls were hushed in prayer. When it ceased, Mr. Blumenthal drew a long breath, and said, "Ah! that was ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... own splendidly with the three retainers, and for an instant Bertrade de Montfort stood spell-bound by the exhibition of swordsmanship ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... them moved. The fluter played still more sweet and beautiful strains. The shepherd worked himself up into a storm of passion. He scolded, and pelted the poor creatures with stones. Some of the sheep were hit, and they made up their minds to go on; but the rest remained spell-bound by the music. At last the shepherd was forced to entreat the flute-player to stop his music. He did stop, and the sheep moved off, but still they continued to look behind them occasionally, and to manifest a desire to return, as often as the ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... show that his views were borne out by that great friend of liberty, that constitutional philosopher, and that liberal statesman. The sentiments of the ministers, however, were strongly opposed by Lords Temple, Lyttleton, and Mansfield, the latter of whom, though he had once been spell-bound by court influence, "rode the great horse Liberty with much applause." The Earl of Chatham replied, but the constitutional principles which his opposers laid down could not be answered with success, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... broad line of his shoulders, his dark head, the amazing immobility of his limbs. At his feet the veil dropped by Miss Haldin looked intensely black in the white crudity of the light. He was gazing at it spell-bound. Next moment, stooping with an incredible, savage swiftness, he snatched it up and pressed it to his face with both hands. Something, extreme astonishment perhaps, dimmed my eyes, so that he seemed to vanish before ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... foot of the fall of the river Madeira. The flood of water that poured down in one unbroken sheet was enormous. The noise was like that of continual thunder, and Stephen, as he stood watching the swollen waters at his feet and feeling the very ground shake beneath them, felt spell-bound at the grandeur of the scene. The mission-house was inhabited by only two or three old monks, and from them they learned that there had been a bad outbreak of fever there, several had died, and the rest were so ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... cold, Mr. Roland," she said, speaking in the old long-disused accent of her early days, as she might have spoken to him while she was yet a child. She threw a few logs on the fire, and drew up Canon Pascal's chair to the hearth for him. She felt spell-bound; and as if she had been suddenly thrust back upon those ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the party but that Smith should tell the story of his flight. They listened spell-bound as he related his experiences at the various stopping-places, and his adventures at sea. When the story was finished, the cheers broke out again, and the stout little man who accompanied Captain Warren's party, and whose spectacles gleamed with ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... calm of an existence agitated by neither hope nor fear. The calm was broken one evening by the sight of a seaman, drawing water from the spring which had brought his former companions to the island. As he came in sight, the man turned his head, and stood for an instant spell-bound by the unexpected vision of a human being on that island, whose matted locks and tattered garments spoke the extreme of misery. There was only one hope for the sad wild boy—it was in flight—and turning, he ran swiftly back; but the path was strewn with rocks, and, in his haste, he stumbled and ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... deck. He was in a sort of panic. But deep down within him his wits were working, and the idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... his dying master, for dying he is, as he staggers feebly from the Palace at Bridewell. It is difficult to call to mind any situation in any play more genuinely affecting in its simplicity than this. The audience is held spell-bound,—yet, for my part, I should have welcomed a greater ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... usual self-possession by this burst of frightful raving; his feet appeared rooted to the floor of the chamber; his colour changed from white to red, and a cold perspiration covered his brows. For my own part, I was moved beyond description; but my faculties seemed spell-bound, and when I strove to speak, my tongue cleaved to my mouth. The delirium of poor Anne continued for some time to find utterance, either by convulsive gesticulation, half-uttered expressions, and, occasionally, loud and vehement ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Witches in Macbeth, though some of the ingredients of their hellish composition savour of the grotesque, yet is the effect upon us other than the most serious and appalling that can be imagined? Do we not feel spell-bound as Macbeth was? Can any mirth accompany a sense of their presence? We might as well laugh under a consciousness of the principle of Evil himself being truly and really present with us. But attempt to bring these beings on to a stage, and you turn them instantly into so many old women, that ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... meal, the Stranger picks up the loaf, and looking up repeats the simple grace, and breaking the loaf reaches the pieces over. But as their hands go out for the bread, their eyes turn toward the Stranger's face. Instantly they are spell-bound—that face—why—it is the Master!! Then He is not there. And they said to each other, "Did you ever hear such talking?" "My heart was burning all the time He was talking." "And mine, too." Then they hasten back to the city. Those miles are so much shorter now! They go straight to the house ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... that night was never known; even the beautiful words of the old song that seemed so appropriate to the occasion, were forgotten before she had sung more than two or three lines, and her listeners sat entranced, spell-bound, by the voice of the singer; a voice of such exquisite sweetness and clearness, and yet possessing such power and depth of expression, that it thrilled the hearts of her listeners, seeming to lift them out of all consciousness of their ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... obeyed, spell-bound with terror. But if the pallor of the priest and the singular fire of his eyes frightened him, his voice, on the contrary, was mild ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... companions, all but the spell-bound Marcus, could not help laughing at these ridiculous mistakes. But Patching turned upon the crowd, and delivered among them one withering look of scorn, which fully confirmed them in the belief that he was a murderer of the deepest dye. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the desperate word, Or pause ere yet the omen thou obey! Bethink, yon spell-bound portal would afford Never to former Monarch entrance-way; Nor shall it ever ope, old records say, Save to a King, the last of all his line, What time his empire totters to decay, And treason digs, beneath, her fatal mine, And, high above, impends ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... very grey, I thought. With his lofty forehead and with his superior, yet propitiatory smile, I was of course familiar. Indeed one saw them on posters in the street. The notables did not want to talk. They wanted to be spell-bound—and they were. Callan sat there in an appropriate attitude—the one in which he was always photographed. One hand supported his head, the other toyed with his watch-chain. His face was uniformly solemn, but his eyes were disconcertingly furtive. He cross-questioned me as ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... 'am; don't come down, Mrs Affery, I know the road to the door,' and steamed out. Mrs Clennam, her chin resting on her hand, followed him with attentive and darkly distrustful eyes; and Affery stood looking at her as if she were spell-bound. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... waited, spell-bound in the brilliant sunshine; then the dogs running down to the water's edge, the gallahs and cockatoos rose with gorgeous sunrise effect: a floating gray-and-pink cloud, backed by sunlit flashing white. Direct to ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... girl, barefooted and naked save for the slightest suggestion of covering about her waist and bust, was the centre of attraction. For five minutes she held the crowd spell-bound with a dance so beautifully sensual no theatrical manager would have dared present it. Yet it was received by the only burst of applause which broke ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... while she was at Miss Deeble's; but if she were backward with her book, her other faculties began to be acute. It was down in that empty kitchen that she first felt the enchantment of music. Some one suddenly played the piano overhead and Beth listened spell-bound. Again and again the player played, and always the same thing, practising it. Beth knew every note. Long afterwards she was trying some waltzes of Chopin's, and came upon one with which she was quite familiar. She knew that she had heard it all, over and over again, but could not think when ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... deep perturbation. As he turned toward the entrance he saw framed in the doorway a picture that appeared like a radiant vision. Miss Hargrove stood there, looking at him so intently that, for a second or two, he stood spell-bound. She was dressed in some white, clinging material, and, with her brilliant eyes, appeared in the uncertain light too beautiful and wraith-like to be human. She saw her advantage, and took the initiative instantly. "Mr. Clifford," she exclaimed, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... upon them in bass-relief. Here I like to take my unknown friend—my scoundrel facchino or rascal gondolier—as he comes to buy his dinner, and bargains eloquently with the cook, who stands with a huge ladle in his hand capable of skimming mysterious things from vasty depths. I am spell-bound by the drama which ensues, and in which all the chords of the human heart are touched, from those that tremble at high tragedy, to those that are shaken by broad farce. When the diner has bought his dinner, and issues ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the Master's order. Success is no concern of ours. But success, because it is His concern, is sure. Every losing battle in His service turns in time to victory. We remember in Count Agenor de Gasparin's "Uprising of a Great People," how spell-bound, awe-struck, he appeared to be before that magnificent ground swell of the loyal nation, rolling on, as a traveling mountain range, to sweep the rebellion as drift-wood before it. The eight millions of the freedmen and their children are rising. If, for the present, there are refluent waves that ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... spell-bound as the street-door closed and the steps ascended the stairs. The room seemed to swim round him, and to his broken nerves it seemed for a moment as though he dreaded rather than longed for what was coming. But as the door opened the spell broke and all the mists ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... not hear what he said, but spell-bound she watched, while a curious sensation of awe tingled through her. The man ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... our sister's soul— That by strange motions, incantations, spells, So work you on her spirit that strange sleep, Sombre as Death's dark shadow, presently Steals o'er her fragile body, dulls her sense, And wraps her wholly in its chill embrace; That thus, spell-bound, lost to the living world, She lies till thou again unwind her chain, And wak'st her feebly to this life of earth. Thus dost thou peril her, thou blinded man! Sett'st her dear life against thy moonstruck thought, And slay'st thy ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... still, as if arrested and spell-bound by the unexpected words. She seemed to find no answer. And as the silence grew long, Amabel went on, slowly, with difficulty, yet determinedly opposing and exposing the folly of the implied accusation. "You don't seem to remember the facts. I betrayed my husband. He might have cast me off. He ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a multitude to the astonished officers. Like the 21st Lancers—three miles away to their left, at the end of the long sandy ridge which runs westward from Surgham—the soldiers remained for a space spell-bound. But all eyes were soon drawn from the thrilling spectacle of the Dervish advance by the sound of guns ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the time being at least—Helen's nature. From a frank, open-hearted, loving girl she became suspicious, morose and secretive. The first words she heard held her spell-bound—an unintentional eavesdropper. And what she heard made her determined to appear to her unkind relatives quite as they expected her ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... halls of folly-painted pleasure; my Angelina's eyes have withstood, yes, without a blink, the dazzling enchantment.—And will she—no, I cannot, I will not think so for an instant—will she now submit her understanding, spell-bound, to the soporific charm of nonsensical words, uttered in an awful tone by that potent enchantress, Prejudice?—The declamation, the remonstrances of self-elected judges of right and wrong, should be treated with deserved contempt by superior minds, who ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... more attention than most novel-readers are inclined to give; he is often repulsive, and not unfrequently dull; but the student who has once submitted to his charm becomes spell-bound. Disgusted for a moment, he returns again and again to the strange, hideous, grotesque, but most interesting world to which Balzac alone can introduce him. Like the opium-eater, he acquires a taste for the visions that are conjured up ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Newton that Mr. Spencer was a teller of stories drew forth a wild clamor from the boys for his services. His first story, a funny one, brought forth delirious applause—a "side-splitter" they voted it. Then he told them a story of adventure which held them spell-bound. They clamored yet ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... restored to youth, transported by some magic spell to the happy days of early girlhood, she forgot her royal dignity and the hundreds of eyes which rested upon him as if spell-bound; and, obedient to an irresistible impulse of the heart, she sank upon the broad, heaving breast of the kneeling hero. Laughing joyously in the clear, silvery tones which are usually heard only in youth, he clasped her in his strong arms, raised her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be kind-hearted and entertaining when not provoked, and of a charming French lady in Madame Decaen. He would have been assisted by the secretary, Colonel Monistrol, who was always as friendly to him as his duty would permit. He would have been able to hold the company spell-bound with the story of the many adventures of his active, useful life. He would have been able to demonstrate his bona fides completely. It is a common experience that the humane feelings of men of Decaen's ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... effects are extraordinary. Let these shocks of influence be repeated again and again, and all other opinions and ideas are for the moment absorbed or excluded; the whole mind is brought into unison with that of the speaker; and the spell-bound listener, till the cause ceases, is under an entire fascination. Then perhaps the charm ceases, upon reflection, and the infatuated hearer resumes his ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... for it was the voice which reached through liquor befuddled brains to find and stir remote and hidden recesses in natures long since hardened to sentiment. Rough speeches, ribald words and oaths died on the lips of those who crowded the doorway of saloons, and they stood spell-bound by the song which was sung as they felt dimly the angels must sing up there in that shadowy land back of the stars in which ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... scandalised with each other. Men spoke unkindly to their best chums. Others refused to speak at all. Singleton only was not surprised. "Dead—is he? Of course," he said, pointing at the island right abeam: for the calm still held the ship spell-bound within sight of Flores. Dead—of course. He wasn't surprised. Here was the land, and there, on the fore-hatch and waiting for the sailmaker—there was that corpse. Cause and effect. And for the first time that voyage, the old seaman became ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.—"Such historic imagination, such glowing colour, such crashing speed, set forth in such pregnant form, carry me away spell-bound." ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... cottage,—the home of his childhood,—his youthful days flash with all the vividness of reality before his mind; and as he stands and muses on the bygone years, numbered with those before the flood, he is almost spell-bound to the spot! All his childish pastimes and youthful pleasures pass in review before his mental vision; while the little trials with which his cup was mixed, are not without their influence in mingling a melancholy with the pleasing ...
— The Village Sunday School - With brief sketches of three of its scholars • John C. Symons
... breathless with interest. Sheila was talking volubly. Hardened motorists listened with their mouths open; zealots, feverish to expend their excess profits on motoring because it was a novelty and expensive, stood spell-bound; a rival agent drank in her words with tears in his eyes—tears for his old innocence—and his cheek flushed with a sudden and splendid determination to amalgamate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... massive square tower, and the long row of clerestory windows that were, then as now, the glory of Sedbergh Church. The tall green grass of the churchyard was already trampled down by the feet of hundreds of spell-bound listeners. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... astonishment among the Franks to behold what seemed to them a miraculous answer to their prayers for peace; and they listened, spell-bound, as the leader of the heathens bowed ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... boy, mothered by her, nursed at her breast, her possession, was a gift to the world, sweet and inspiring. "Angels, ever bright and fair!" She felt the thrill of his tender voice; perceived the impression: the buzz, the subsiding confusion, the spell-bound stillness. "Take, oh, take me to your care!" It was in her heart to strike her breasts—to cry out that this was her son, born of her; ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... Reverend Combermere St. Quintin seemed frozen into stone. The plate between the youngest child and the blackberry-pudding, stood as still as the sun in Ajalon. The morsel between the mouth of the elder boy and his fork had a respite from mastication. The Seven Sleepers could not have been spell-bound more suddenly ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... returned, Carlotta had been soothed down. She was watching some performing dogs with intense wonderment and delight. For the rest of the evening she sat spell-bound. The exiguity of costume in the ballet caused her indeed to glance in a frightened sort of way at Mrs. McMurray, who reassured her with a friendly smile, but the music and the maze of motion and the dazzle of colour soon held her ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the work of a few instants. Abonyi had scarcely had time to utter a cry. Janos sat mute with bewilderment on the box, staring with dilated eyes at the two figures on the ground; the steward turned at the shriek and stood as though spell-bound by the spectacle which presented itself. Abonyi lay gasping, with his blood pouring from several wounds; Panna had straightened herself and, throwing down the bloody knife, stood quietly beside her victim. Instantly ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... and Ariosto had painted the seductions of enchanted gardens, where valor was enthralled by beauty, and virtue dulled by voluptuous delights. It remained for Tasso to give that magic of the senses vocal utterance. From the myrtle groves of Orontes, from the spell-bound summer amid snows upon the mountains of the Fortunate Isle, these lyrics with their penetrative sweetness, their lingering regret, pass into the silence of the soul. It is eminently characteristic of Tasso's mood and age that the melody of both these honeyed songs should thrill with sadness. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... "of all the figures in nature or art, the formal circle is universally the most obnoxious to conversation, and, to me, the most formidable; all my faculties are spell-bound—here I am like a bird in a circle of chalk, that dare not move so much as its head or its eyes, and can't, for the life of ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... seeming mystery about the building and its inhabitants, that Antonio was half inclined to indulge the country people's notions, and to fancy it the den of some powerful sorcerer, and the fair damsel he had seen to be some spell-bound beauty. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... gazing spell-bound upon the spectacle of a flower-decked mansion, brilliant with colored lights and echoing to bewildering strains of music, is apt to forget, in this aggregation of the energies of florist, caterer, and ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... since, Dr. Chalmers, one of the parish ministers of Glasgow, preached several times in London. He was then in the zenith of his popularity as a pulpit orator. Canning and Wilberforce went together to hear him upon one occasion; and after sitting spell-bound under his eloquence, Canning said to Wilberforce when the sermon was done, 'The tarlan beats us; we have no preaching ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Spell-bound, the journeyers pored upon the deathful course beneath their feet, gave a shudder to the horror of being cast upon it, and then hurried over the bridge to the island, in the shadow of whose wildness they sought refuge from the sight ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... then, starting up, they murmured strange fetich words in their diabolical African tongue. John had a whip in his hand, with which he lashed the water furiously, and uttered his eldritch shrieks. Charles paused, spell-bound, hardly knowing what to make of the strange conduct of the negroes, and wishing he could lay the whip about ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... children are attending the day schools, and 100 adults the evening school. About forty of the young men have formed themselves into two classes, and meet for prayer and exhorting each other. The instruments of the medicine-men, which have spell-bound their nation for ages, have found their way into my house, and are most willingly and cheerfully given up. The dark and cruel mantle of heathenism has been rent so that it cannot be healed. Numbers are escaping from under its deadly embrace. Customs, which form the very foundation of Indian ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... BLUE FEELINGS.—Despondency breathes disease, and those who yield to it can neither work, eat nor sleep; they only suffer. The spell-bound, fascinated, magnetized affections seem to deaden self-control and no doubt many suffering from love-sickness are totally helpless; they are beside themselves, irritational and wild. Men and women of genius, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... much the charges of heresy which were brought against his books and sermons, as the fact that he was a person inconvenient to Pope Alexander VI. On the 23rd of May, 1498, he met his doom in the great piazza at Florence where in happier days he had held the multitude spell-bound by his burning eloquence. There sentence was passed upon him. Stripped of his black Dominican robe and long white tunic, he was bound to a gibbet, strangled by a halter, and his dead body consumed by fire, his ashes being thrown into the river Arno. Such ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... for me! A mad captain about to blow the gampus (i.e. souse) a lord of the Admiralty, that same lord, I firmly believed, about to declare himself my father. I was, in a manner, spell-bound. Afraid to interrupt the conference, I bethought me that my Lord Whiffledale would be no less my father wet or dry, and so I determined to let things take their course. So I permitted his lordship to go on with his questions, at every one ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... that nobody but I saw the file; and when he had done it he wiped the file and put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it to be Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment I saw the instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound. But he now reclined on his settle, taking very little notice of me, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... will admit me to the floor of the Senate, where I can hear the matchless oratory of a Webster, of a Clay, of a Calhoun, of a Sumner, of Everett, of Wilson. They will pass me into the Roman Forum, where I can hear Cicero, or to the rostrums of Greece, where I may listen spell-bound to the magic ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... the cruel letter to its close, then dropped it on her lap, and sank back in her chair, helpless, breathless, almost lifeless. Minutes crept into hours, and still she sat there in the same position, without motion, thought, or feeling—stricken, spell-bound, entranced. ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Monarch-maid, I see thee now before me, Searching my soul with those mysterious eyes, Spell-bound I stand, thy presence stealing o'er me, While all unnerved my trembling spirit dies: Oh, what a world of untold wonder lies Within thy silent lips! how rare a light Of conquer'd joys and ecstasies repress'd Beneath thy ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... cried Dr. Thorne again, springing to his feet,—while we, spell-bound, sat still and waited for the end. "Cease! do you not see?" cried he, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... swell lifts! Would you not think the bases of the earth rising beneath it? It falls! Would you not think the foundation of the deep had given way? A plain, broad enough for the navies of the world to ride at large, heaves up evenly and steadily as if it would lie against the sky, rests a moment spell-bound in its place, and falls again as far—the respiration of a sleeping child not more regular and full of slumber. It is only on the shore that it chafes. Blessed emblem! it is at peace with itself! The rocks ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers |
