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Censer   Listen
noun
Censer  n.  A vessel for perfumes; esp. one in which incense is burned. Note: The ecclesiastical censer is usually cup-shaped, has a cover pierced with holes, and is hung by chains. The censer bearer swings it to quicken the combustion. "Her thoughts are like the fume of frankincense Which from a golden censer forth doth rise."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Censer" Quotes from Famous Books



... Entering, she hastened to the altar, knelt,—touched her forehead to the edge—and in a clear but not loud voice crooned an impassioned cry to Christ, to San Jose and to the Virgin. Imperiously turning to her acolyte, she seized the censer filled with copal, and, having lighted it, incensed the figures. Turning to the presidente, she asked whether he were going to placate the saint for invasion by giving aguardiente and candles, both of which appeared, as if by magic, when she was given money. Pouring aguardiente from ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... the monarch of the Road! My court I hold with singing, Each bird a gay ambassador, Each flower a censer, swinging; And every little roadside thing A ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... Juno—not meant for worship—of course not—but simply to conform to the general usages of good society; and so far had this complaisance been carried, that the shrine of a peerless Venus was adorned with garlands and votive offerings, and an exquisitely wrought silver censer diffused its perfume on the marble altar in front. This complaisance on the part of some of the younger members of the family drew from the elder a gentle remonstrance, as having an unseemly appearance for those bearing the Christian name; ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... they stared in amazement. It was made of silver and mother-of-pearl. In the center was carved the figure of the Lady of the Lake, with her arms outstretched in the form of a cross. In one hand she held a sword, and in the other a censer. On both sides of her figure was carved the story of the wars of King Arthur. Above all were the figures of the three queens who were to help Arthur in time ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford

... arrival of the imperial barge from the Great Palace. Both sides of the path were lined by monks of the House, holding lighted tapers, and as soon as the emperor disembarked, the officials at the pier and the crowd of monks, with the abbot at their head, swinging his silver censer of fragrant smoke, led the way up to the gate. There a halt was made for the magistri, patricians, and omphikialioi ([Greek: omphikialioi]) to do homage to the sovereign and join the procession, and then the long train wended its way through the open grounds attached ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much. But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... carried, suspended by thin chains, a large bronze censer, or brazier rather, which sent out a thin continuous wreath of smoke—they came straight on to the pit; and after depositing their burden on the grass, remained standing for some minutes, apparently to rest after their walk, all conversing together, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... Bible I had from the King of France and the beautiful Psalter which the Queen bestowed upon me: my companion at the same time carried the missal and a crucifix; and the clerk, clothed in his surplice, bore a censer in his hand. In this order we presented ourselves ... singing the Salve Regina." It is a strange picture this—the European friars, in all the vestments of their religion, standing before the Eastern prince of this far-off country. They would fain have carried home news of his conversion, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... that has been often remarked in organizations such as his,) as he was removed in time and distance from the scenes in which emotion had obscured his senses, as the clouds from the burning incense envelope the censer, the more vividly the forms and beauties of such scenes stood out in his memory. In the succeeding years, he frequently spoke of them, as though the remembrance was full of pleasure to him. But when so entirely happy, he made no inventory of his bliss. He enjoyed it ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... the oath took place before the censer of Shamash(143) or at the shrine, Sasaru, of Shamash,(144) in Sippara; or before the emblematic dragon sculptured on the doors of the Marduk temple at Babylon.(145) Other places are named which we are not ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... of the past, like the amber haze of a tropical sunset, still environs the poetic tree in the island home where, amid evergreen foliage and waxen flowers, the famous "fruit of gold" still opens each coral-lined censer to exhale a wealth of undying fragrance on the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... Celebrate (solemnize) solenigi. Celebrated fama. Celerity rapideco. Celery celerio. Celestial cxiela. Celibacy frauxleco. Cell (of honeycomb) cxelo. Cellar kelo. Cellular cxela. Cement cemento. Cemetery tombejo. Censer bonodorfumilo. Censor cenzuristo. Censorious cenzura. Censure cenzuri. Censure (blame) riprocxo. Census (take a) sumigi. Cent cendo. Centenarian centjarulo. Centenary centjara festo. Centigramme centigramo. Centime centimo. Centimeter centimetro. Central ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... of road a mile long, and, as I sat on the roadside watching for her, I could tell a mile off whether she had any dinner or not. When there was anything in the bowl, she carried it steadily; when empty, she would swing it like a censer. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... the candle and censer bearers outside the gate forced Sergius nearer it; so when the Panagia was brought to a rest, he, being much taller than its guardians, became an object of general observation, and wishing to escape it if possible, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... swinging a censer before him with a hasty action, admitted him into the sanctuary. "You will find him on the third terrace," he said, "but he is no longer ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... towards the altar. The time-keeping steps of the soldiery upon the marble floor mingled with drum, fife, and organ. Through all this, one caught now and then the monotonous voice of a shaven-headed priest, reciting his prescribed part at the altar, kneeling and reading at intervals. The busy censer boys in white gowns; the flaring candles casting long shadows athwart the high altar; the files of soldiers kneeling and rising at the tap of the drum; the atmosphere clouded with the fumes of burning incense,—all combined to make up a ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... district round, for the parish itself is very small, my father was much beloved, although he did practise confession, wear vestments and set lighted candles on the altar, and was even said to have openly expressed the wish, to which however he never attained, that he could see a censer swinging in the chancel. Indeed the church which, as monks built it, is very large and fine, was always full on Sundays, though many of the worshippers came from far away, some of them doubtless out of curiosity because of its papistical repute, also because, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... minutes, and consisted of reading by the priest and responses by the choir. The censer was repeatedly swung, as in Catholic ceremonials, the priest bowing at the same time toward the sacred picture. Simultaneously all the candles were extinguished, and their several men advanced and kissed a small cross lying ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... savoring of the superstitions of the Scarlet Woman in supreme abomination; and, entertaining such opinions, it can scarcely be supposed that a funeral oration would find much favor in his eyes, accompanied, as it was, with the accessories of censer, candle, and cup; all evidently derived from that period when, under the three-crowned pontiff's sway, the shaven priest pronounced his benediction o'er the dead, and released the penitent's soul from purgatorial flames, while he heavily mulcted the price of his redemption ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... And if at the time he paid the penalty exacted by the sordid unimaginative ones who temporarily rule the roast, he must ever after, one feels sure, have carried inside him some of the white gladness of the acolyte who, greatly privileged, has been permitted to swing a censer at the sacring ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... the censer clouds of fragrance roll, And swelling organs lift the rising soul, One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight, Priests, tapers, temples, swim ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... intercessour, came in sight Before the Father's throne: them the glad Son Presenting, thus to intercede began. See Father, what first-fruits on earth are sprung From thy implanted grace in Man; these sighs And prayers, which in this golden censer mixed With incense, I thy priest before thee bring; Fruits of more pleasing savour, from thy seed Sown with contrition in his heart, than those Which, his own hand manuring, all the trees Of Paradise could have produced, ere fallen From innocence. Now therefore, bend thine ear To supplication; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... idols, which were richer and more numerous than in the former cell, the Hindoos asked us if they should pray for us. We agreed, and the ceremony began. A large muscle shell was washed in the kettle, the plates were set in order at the foot of the altar, a censer began to smoke, the silver plate with candied sugar was set over a lamp Between two bells, whose handles were the most monstrous figures of idols. These bells Amintaas took and began to ring vehemently. The other Hindoos stood behind him and beat two big cymbals, accompanying this noise with ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... he commented. "You are so much more wonderful than your place gives you scope for. You are an individual, not an acolyte to swing a censer for another. Mr. Sohlberg is very interesting, but you can't be happy that way. It surprises me you ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... of from three to a dozen, according to the extent and splendor of the residence, the atmosphere soon becomes close and characterized by an unpleasant odor, suggesting its diminished vitality; for which reason pastilles are burned, or eau de Cologne reduced to vapor in a heated censer, whenever visits are anticipated. It was a question with me, whether or not the advantage of a thoroughly equable temperature was counterbalanced by the lack of circulation. The physical depression we all felt seemed to result chiefly from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious of ease in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, smoking a short, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and which she always kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of an inspiration in her arrangements. It was Dinah's mode ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... He observed that a window was open and lights were in the room; and he climbed up to the window, and just opened the white curtain and looked in. On a bed lay an elderly person, evidently dying, and by the side of the bed were three priests, one of whom held the crucifix in his hand, another the censer, and a third was sitting at a table with a paper, pen, and ink. As Jack understood Spanish, he listened, and heard ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the priest suddenly cried, standing up in the middle of the church. His vestments vanished from his body, and a gray, stern mustache appeared on his face. All the people started to run, and the deacon, flinging the censer aside, rushed forward, seizing his head in his hands like the Little Russian. The mother dropped the infant on the ground at the feet of the people. They ran to the side of her, timidly regarding the naked little body. She fell on her knees and ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... thus shown with its hierarchy, in which the Grand Lama, an infallible representative of the Most High, is surrounded by its minor Lamas, much like cardinals; with its bishops wearing mitres, its celibate priests with shaven crown, cope, dalmatic, and censer; its cathedrals with clergy gathered in the choir; its vast monasteries filled with monks and nuns vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience; its church arrangements, with shrines of saints and angels; ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Saviour? He is the "Wonderful Counsellor." With an exquisitely tender sympathy He can enter into the innermost depths of your need. That need may be great, but the everlasting arms are underneath it all. Think of Him now, at this moment—the great Angel of the Covenant, with the censer full of much incense, in which are placed your feeblest aspirations, your most burdened sighs—the odour-breathing cloud ascending with acceptance before the Father's throne. The answer may tarry;—these your supplications may seem ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... the He-Goat lies the Southern Fish, facing towards the tail of the Whale. The Censer is under the Scorpion's sting. The fore parts of the Centaur are next to the Balance and the Scorpion, and he holds in his hands the figure which astronomers call the Beast. Beneath the Virgin, Lion, and Crab is the twisted girdle formed by the Snake, extending over a whole line of stars, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... thee, waking and sleeping, Young Novice, to him all thy orisons rise. He tinges the heavenly fount with his weeping, He brightens the censer's flame with his sighs. Love is the Saint enshrined in thy breast, And angels themselves would admit such a guest, If he came to them clothed ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Baal, may your house flourish!" And through these people as they lay thus on the ground in the avenue of cypress trees, Abdalonim, the Steward of the stewards, waving a white miter, advanced towards Hamilcar with a censer in his hand. ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... become a part of the room. The ineffably sad, haunting melody of the mass whispered back from the room between the assaults of the enraged wind, while from the altar came the responses in a low, Gregorian chant, and through it all the clinking of the censer chains added intermittent notes. Aloft streamed the vapor of the incense, wavering with the air currents, now lost in the deep twilight of the sanctuary, and now faintly revealed by the glow of the candles, perfuming the air ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... others. Dying myriads are around you. As a member of the Christian priesthood, it becomes you to rush in with your censer and incense between the living and the dead, "that the plague ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... their liberty, beyond even their life; when we proscribed their priests; when we banished them from their assemblies, where they were in the practice of seeing them govern; when we seized their revenues, their domains, and riches, to the profit of the nation; when we carried to the very censer those hands which they regarded as profane? Doubtless these operations were founded on principles; but those principles ought to have had the consent of the Belgians, before they were carried into practice; otherwise they necessarily became our ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... their westering rout. - But lo! at length the day is lingered out, At length my Ariel lays his viol by; We sing no more to thee, child, he and I; The day is lingered out: In slow wreaths folden Around yon censer, sphered, golden, Vague Vesper's fumes aspire; And glimmering to eclipse The long laburnum drips Its honey of wild flame, its jocund spilth ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson

... perfume found Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound No censer idly burned. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the fragrance of incense, with monks, and with the song of the choristers. Now it is still and mute here: the old men in their monastic dresses have passed into their graves; the blooming boys that swung the censer are in their graves; the congregation—many generations—all in their graves; but the church still stands the same. The moth-eaten, dusty cowls, and the bishops' mantle, from the days of the cloister, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... went into the castle to take their repast ... there came a dove to the window, and in her bill was a little censer of gold, and there withall was such a savour as though all the spicery of the world had been there ... and a damsel, passing fair, bare a vessel of gold between her hands, and thereto the king kneeled devoutly and said his prayers.... "Oh, mercy!" said Sir Launcelot, "what may ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... waved before, in crimson pride, 2 The banner of the Cross; The silver rood was then descried, While deacon youths, from side to side, The fuming censer toss. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... "every word you say convinces me that I have done right. Besides, I am busy—you see—you disturb my ideas. If you do not like my house, you can leave it. I will not keep you. I daresay I can educate another artist before I die. You are really only fit to swing a censer behind Paolo, or at the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... disturb aur hally Kirk, laik a sart of saysmatics. Awr gilden Gods ar brought ayen intea awr kirks ilkwhare, That unte tham awr parishioner ma offer thar gude-will. For hally mass in ilk place new thea autars de prepare, Hally water, pax, cross, banner, censer and candill, Cream, crismatory, hally bread, the rest omit ay will, Whilt hally fathers did invent fre awd antiquity, Be new received inte awr kirks with great solemnity. Bay these thaugh lemen been apprest, the clargy all het gean, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... as we gaze, So bright they gleam, so soft they melt away, We scarcely know whether 'tis fancy's play Or artist's skill that wins them to the day) There grew a band of angels on my sight, Wreathing in love around the slighted cross. One swung a censer, hung with bell-like flowers, Whence tones and perfumes mingling charmed the air; Thick clouds of incense veiled their shadowy forms, Yet could I see their wings of rainbow light, The wavings of their white arms, soft and bright. Then she who swung the censer nearer drew— ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... stems the forest glows, I hear a noise of hymns: Then by some secret shrine I ride; I hear a voice but none are there; 30 The stalls are void, the doors are wide, The tapers burning fair. Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, 35 And ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... shore. At Dudino, also, the priests living there held a thanksgiving service for our happy arrival thither. Two of them said mass, while the clerk, clad in a sheepskin caftan reaching to his feet, zealously and devoutly swung an immense censer. The odour from it was at first not particularly pleasant, but it soon became so strong and disagreeable that I, who had my place in front of the audience, was like to choke, though the ceremony was performed in the open air. Soon the clerk was completely concealed in ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... soldiers able to see through both apartments, his movements gave them no concern. It was the custom, however, when any one entered the presence of a great lord, for the servants to throw aromatics into a burning censer. This the prince's attendants did, and such clouds of incense arose as to hide him from the unsuspecting soldiers. Thus obscured, he entered a secret passage which led to a large earthen pipe, formerly employed to bring water to the palace. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... who, on walking in the night, can tell the hour by the smell, the taste, the elusive fine aroma of the quiet air. Before midnight it is like a new-lit censer; in the small hours the smell of old camp fires comes trailing, and the scent of rain ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... the abounding colleges and technical schools. Along the moving platforms of the urban centre, and athwart the shining advertisements that will adorn them, will go the ceremonial procession, all glorious with banners and censer-bearers, and the meek blue-shaven priests and barefooted, rope-girdled, holy men. And the artful politician of the coming days, until the broom of the New Republic sweep him up, will arrange the miraculous planks ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... ordinances of divine service and a worldly sanctuary. [9:2]For the first tabernacle was provided, in which were the candlestick and the table and the show bread, which is called the sanctuary. [9:3]But behind the second vail is the tabernacle, called the inner sanctuary, [9:4]having the golden censer and the ark of the covenant overlaid on every side with gold, in which were the golden vase that had the manna and Aaron's rod that budded and the tables of the covenant, [9:5]and over it were the cherubs of glory, overshadowing the propitiation; ...
— The New Testament • Various

... the wheel was not employed, and that the firing was imperfect, but the variety of vessels was considerable,* and the shapes and decorations were often very praiseworthy. Thus, among the braziers are found shapes obviously the originals of the Japanese choji-buro (clove-censer) and the graceful rice-bowl, while community of conception with Chinese potters would seem to be suggested by some of the forms of these ancient vases. Particularly interesting are earthenware images obtained from these neolithic sites. Many of them have been ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... succession of wrappings. Afterwards he preached from a "text," continuing, of course, to kneel as we did. A flickering light fell upon us from a lamp hanging from a beam. The room was pervaded with incense from an iron censer which the farmer gently swung. The worshippers told their beads, and in intervals between the priest's sentences I heard the murmur of fervent prayer. The priest preached his sermon with his eyes shut, and I could watch him narrowly. It is not so often that one sees ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... prayers of the saints" (Rev. 5: 8). Are you, dear reader, every day filling golden vials around God's throne with the sweet odor of prayer? Again, this disciple, when the seventh seal was opened, saw seven angels standing before God with seven trumpets. Then came another angel, with a golden censer. To him was given incense, which he offered with the prayers of saints upon the golden altar, and the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of saints ascended before God. (See Rev. 8:3, 4.) We have the privilege of mingling our prayers ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... with his censer, And his little cheeks crimson as beets, Your acolyte, perfume-dispenser, Is sweet as a ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... be my fragrant shrine; My temple, Lord! that arch of thine; My censer's breath the mountain airs, And silent ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... heavenly messengers. The billows of the great organ roared among the clustered columns, as the sea breaks amidst the basaltic pillars which crowd the great cavern of the Hebrides. The voice of the alternate choirs of singing boys swung back and forward, as the silver censer swung in the hands of the white-robed children. The sweet cloud of incense rose in soft, fleecy mists, full of penetrating suggestions of the East and its perfumed altars. The knees of twenty generations had worn the pavement; their feet had hollowed the steps; their shoulders had smoothed the columns. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... mode, While a funeral comes down the Rochester road, Palmers twelve, from a foreign strand, Cockle in hat and staff in hand, Come marching in pairs, a holy band! Little boys twelve, dressed all in white, Each with his brazen censer bright, And singing away with all his might, Follow the Palmers—a goodly sight; Next high in air Twelve Yeomen bear On their sturdy backs, with a good deal of care, A patent sarcophagus firmly rear'd Of Spanish mahogany (not veneer'd), And behind walks a Knight ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... occurred to them at all, or, if they have occurred, do not appear to be sufficient to cause them to desist from prosecuting their laudable endeavours. The high mandarins procure the aid of priests of the Taoist sect at their yamuns. These place an incense censer and two large candlesticks for holding red candles or tapers on a table in the principal reception room of the mandarin, or in the open space in front of it ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... communion, the music hushing suddenly to rise in more sonorous volume. Then Father Jimeno, bearing a cross and chanting the rosary, descended the altar steps and walked toward the doors. On either side of him a page swung a censer. Four women neophytes rose from among the worshippers, and shouldering a litter on which rested a square box containing an upright figure of the Holy Virgin followed with bent heads. The Virgin's gown was of ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... corpse, and slung on a pole between two horses, covered, as in a bier, with the pall and trappings. A sword of ceremony was carried in front; the dean rode immediately before the body, the chanters preceding, and a priest with the cross and censer. Behind came the male domestics, and the seneschal of Halton with ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... neck and exhibited her for sale, such sale is perfectly valid in the eyes of the law. Laws such as these inspire horror. Yet they should hardly surprise one among a semibarbarous nation, which does nothing like other peoples, and which deems itself authorised to place the censer in the hands of its monarch, and its monarch in the hands of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... on the horse and gave her a golden censer, similar to those she had already seen at the Viking's house. A sweet perfume arose from it, while the open wound in the forehead of the slain priest, shone with the rays of a diamond. He took the cross from the grave, and held it aloft, and now they ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... fast. Then, in the wall on the right, he pressed the spring which opened the invisible door to the room of the goddess. Entering there, he lighted the two candles at the flame of the burning lamp, and filled the little golden censer that swung before the statue, with incense; noting, the while, with his customary delight, the delicate transparency of the pure Carrara against the soft violet of the hangings behind her and the shadowy black at her feet. Finally, when the thin, fragrant smoke had begun to fill the room with ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... district, wearing their robes of state, the Noah's ark coats in which they were married, bore the baldachin over the head of the Capuchin who elevated the Host: the village priest, in white surplice and Hessian boots, swung the censer at his side. The men were in front, the women, a long, broad file, divided in the procession by the priests from their male relations, followed—a dense black mass, but relieved in color by the whiteness of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... coffee or playing cards, and the gentlemen all smoking. I wished myself a painter, that I might have sent you a sketch of one of the card parties. The long pipe of one gentleman rested on the table, its bole half a yard from his mouth, fuming like a censer by the fish-pool—the other gentleman, who was dealing the cards, and of course had both hands employed, held his pipe in his teeth, which hanging down between his knees, smoked beside his ancles. Hogarth himself never drew a more ludicrous distortion both of attitude and physiognomy, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Like the setting of rubies. The nectarines and the pomegranates Glowing with crimson ripeness, And the orange trees with their blossoms Yielding sweet odour to every breeze, As the incense flows from the censer. ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... goddess stood Upon a pedestal of cedar wood O'erlaid with gold and pearls and uk-ni stones, And near it stands the altar with its cones Of gold adorned with gems and solid pearls,— And from the golden censer incense curls. Beside the altar stands a table grand Of solid metal carved with skilful hand; Upon it stands a mass of golden ware, With wines and fruits which pious hands prepare. The walls are glistening with gold and gems, The priestesses all wear rich diadems. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... It was not like entering upon dawn, or upon the moonlight. It was by no means like going to meet the lights of a city. It was literally "a light better than any light that ever shone," and it wrapped them round first like a veil and then like a mantle. Dimly, as if released from the censer-smoke of a magician's lamp, boughs and glades, lines and curves were set free of the dark; and St. George and Amory could see about them. Yet it did not occur to either to distrust the phenomenon, or to regard it as unnatural or the fruit of any unnatural ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the magnificent vases—"to dream has been the business of my life. I have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the heart of Venice could I have erected a better? You behold ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... gifts that had been received. Mrs. Smith had sent Mrs. Emerson an unusual pair of richly decorated wax candles which she had found at an Italian candlemaker's in New York, and Miss Merriam had sent her and Mrs. Morton each a tiny brass censer and a supply of charcoal and Japanese incense to ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith

... Phoebe's sapphire-regioned star Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heaped with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet, >From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... beautiful fell the light in the worshippers' faces, Softer than lights that stream through the saints on the windows of churches, While the balsamy breath of the hemlocks and pines by the river Stole on the winds through the woodland aisles like the breath of a censer. Loud the people sang old camp-meeting anthems that quaver Quaintly yet from lips forgetful of lips that have kissed them: Loud they sang the songs of the Sacrifice and Atonement, And of the end ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... wind outside the lattice swayed a branch of roses to and fro, shaking out their perfume as from a swung censer. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... of God where love is life. His subjects, not dumb as now, or speaking a language strange to our dull ears, greet him as he comes forth at break of day from his aromatic bower. A thousand feathered songsters drown his soul in melody divine, while every bud and blossom, a living censer, sways in the balmy breath of morn and pours forth its grateful perfume. The forest monarch lays his massy head on Adam's knee, the spotted leopard purrs about him and the fawn nestles between his ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Then mitred bishops, red-clad cardinals, The stalwart Papal Guard with halberds raised, And then, with white head crowned with gold ingemmed, The vicar of the lowly Galilean, Holding his pastoral rod of smooth-hewn wood, With censer swung before and peacock fans Waved constantly by pages, either side. Attended thus, they bore him to his throne, And priests and laymen fell upon their knees. Then, after pause of brief and silent prayer, The ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... the bloom of these mountains is beyond expression delightful. Last visiting these heights ere she vanishes, Spring, like the sunset, flings her sweetest charms upon them. Each tuft of upland grass is musked like a bouquet with perfume. The balmy breeze swings to and fro like a censer. On one side the eye follows for the space of an eagle's flight, the serpentine mountain chains, southwards from the great purple dome of Taconic—the St. Peter's of these hills—northwards to the twin summits ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... was not the chapel but still you had to speak under your breath. It was a holy place. He remembered the summer evening he had been there to be dressed as boatbearer, the evening of the Procession to the little altar in the wood. A strange and holy place. The boy that held the censer had swung it lifted by the middle chain to keep the coals lighting. That was called charcoal: and it had burned quietly as the fellow had swung it gently and had given off a weak sour smell. And then when all were vested he had stood holding out ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... in her old carved pew and amiably sipped her tea beneath a jewelled censer and admired the dark beauty of the slender and graceful Medora. Presently she became so taken by the girl that (despite her own superabundant bulk) she must needs cross over and sit beside her and pat her hand at intervals. In certain extreme cases Eudoxia was willing to waive the matter ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... is not worth the trouble of reading, I didn't finish it, one turns away from such things, one does not spoil one's sense of smell by breathing them. But I do not think that the man to whom one offers that in a censer would be ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... terrible and ruthless import. Cholula, with its great teocalli, was the Mecca of Anahuac, and was veritably a land flowing with milk and honey. Well-built houses, numerous teocallis, or pyramidal temples, well-dressed people with embroidered cloaks, and numbers of censer-swinging priests formed the ensemble which greeted the Spaniards' eyes, whilst the intense cultivation of the ground and the fields of maguey, maiz, and other products, irrigated by canals from ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... a small box or pot for holding incense, as distinct from the turibulum (thurible) or censer in which incense was burned. The name was also given by the Romans to a little altar placed near the dead, on which incense was offered every day till the burial. In ecclesiastical Latin the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... ceremony was concluded the priests marched singing three times around the room, while a bell in the gallery merrily clanged an accompaniment. When the Armenians had withdrawn, a procession of Roman Catholics entered singing. The chanting was accompanied softly by an organ in an adjoining chapel. The censer bearers waved their smoking bowls until the whole place was fragrant with the odor of the incense. Tonsured monks with sandaled feet, in gowns of brown, girt with hempen cord; censer bearers, cross bearers, brazier bearers, and choir boys in white embroidered surplices and skirts of ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... early as 1262, the rules underwent some modification. It was thought that the celebration tended to lower the reputation of the church; so it was ordained that the Boy-Bishop should select his own ministers, who were to carry the censer and the tapers, and they were to be no longer the Canons, but "Clerks of the Third Form," i.e., his fellow-choristers. But the practice remained for the Boy-Bishop to be entertained on the Eve of St. John the Evangelist either at the Deanery or at the house of the Canon-in-residence. ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... Ergo, and the cloud of incense rose from the censer in the priest's hand. Then, at the thin, sweet tinkle of the bell, and the first white gleam of the Unspeakable Mystery upheld by the servant of the Altar, the heads bowed and sank as when a sudden ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... wait at Jerusalem, in prayer and supplication, for "the promise of the Father;" the spiritual blessing of the Great High Priest of his Church, who had entered, not into the splendid temple of Solomon, there to offer the blood of bulls, and of goats, and the smoking censer upon the golden altar, but into Heaven itself, there to present his intercessions, after having "given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor?" Women were among ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... amongst Chaucer's clergy are, however, of a very different kind. There is the parish clerk, who, when he is waving the censer in church thinks more of the pretty women there than of his duty; the monk who loves hunting, and hates work and reading; the friar who is ready to grant absolution to any one who will give money to the friars; who has a word and a jest for every man, and presents ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... all this abomination is carefully hidden under a close veil of tinsel and finery, and foolish, empty ceremonies, in all ages the charlatan's conditio sine qua non. Is not this comparison of mine between the priesthood and the military caste interesting and logical? Here the riassa and the censer; there the gold-laced uniform and the clank of arms. Here bigotry, hypocritical humility, sighs and sugary, sanctimonious, unmeaning phrases; there the same odious grimaces, although its method and means are of another kind—swaggering manners, bold and scornful ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... kneeling extends both hands to receive the sacramental cup. Around them are some fine figures of ecclesiastics, who, robed in magnificent vestments, assist at the ceremony, together with deacons and acolytes, who hold the book and censer. There is, it is true, a great sameness in the heads, which suggests that most of them were studied from the ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... sky, from which his country and the sun are disappearing together, the Giaour standing apart in the gloom of the side aisle, and casting a haggard scowl from under his long hood at the crucifix and the censer, Conrad leaning on his sword by the watch-tower, Lara smiling on the dancers, Alp gazing steadily on the fatal cloud as it passes before the moon, Manfred wandering among the precipices of Berne, Azzo on the judgment- seat, Ugo at the bar, Lambro ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... incense-cloud ascendeth As through calm, crystal air, A pillar reaching unto heaven Of wreathed faith and prayer. For evermore the Angel Of Intercession stands In His Divine High Priesthood With fragrance-filled hands, To wave the golden censer Before His Father's throne, With Spirit-fire intenser, And ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... seasons of the year, And tread, to Autumn's gorgeous hymn of praise, And to the happy Spring's light lilt of pleasure, And to the dirgeful chant of Winter's days, And ever varying, ever suited measure; And in the Summer, when the reeking earth Swings a vast censer, as it is most meet, Praise thou for lavish gifts, new hopes, new birth, Praise with the dancing of thy ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West

... hast thou 'an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and for grinding out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure? I tell thee, Nay! Otherwise, not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold. There, brandishing our frying-pan as censer, let us offer up sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect,' seeing that 'with stupidity and sound digestion, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... aye, thrice daily—well, call it six, then—do I make burnt offering. Now some use censers of clay, others employ censers of rare white earth finely carved and decked with silver and gold. My particular censer, as you see, is a plain, honest briar, a root dug from the banks of the blue Garonne, whose only glory is its grain and color. The original tint, if you remember, was like that of new-cut cedar, but use—I've been smoking this ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... mettle. missal, missel (thrush). orphan, often. putty, puttee. pedal, peddle. police, pelisse. principal, principle. profit, prophet. rigour, rigger. rancour, ranker. succour, sucker. sailor, sailer. cellar, seller. censor, censer. surplus, surplice. symbol, cymbal. skip, skep. tuber, tuba. whirl, whorl. wert, wort (herb, obs.). vial, viol. verdure, verger ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... golden censer glowing, Filled with burning odors rare, All my heart is upward flowing, In ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... sound digestion, man may front much. But what, in these dull, unimaginative days, are the terrors of conscience to the diseases of the liver? Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold. There, brandishing our frying-pan as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the devil and live at ease on the fat things he has ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... here it brings the scattered members of the community of the Israelitish people to the Kingdom of God. [Hebrew: etr] always means "to supplicate," [Pg 359] never "to burn incense." Ezek. viii. 11 must thus be translated: "Every man, his censer in his hand, and the supplication of the cloud of incense went up;" compare remarks on Rev. v. 8. The dispersed members of the Church supplicate that the Lord would again receive them into ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... cleanse him. What is to be done with the 4th of December? How will that difficulty be surmounted? It is far more troublesome to justify than to glorify; the sponge works with greater difficulty than the censer; the panegyrists of the coup d'etat have lost their labor. Madame Sand herself, although a woman of lofty intellect, has failed miserably in her attempt to rehabilitate Bonaparte, for the simple ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... you to sleep; 1170 And she well may defy any mortal to see through it, When once she has mixed up her infinite me through it. There is one thing she owns in her own single right, It is native and genuine—namely, her spite; Though, when acting as censor, she privately blows A censer of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... of your return to England I ventured to hope that some good might come of it to me in my room here, besides the general good, which I look for with the rest of the public, when the censer swings back into the midst of us again. And how good of you, dear Mrs. Jameson, to think of me there where the perfumes were set burning; it makes me glad and grand that you should have been able to do so. Also ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... adopted for the particular benefit of the African. The would-be Leaguer was informed that the emblems of the order were the altar, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the flag of the Union, censer, sword, gavel, ballot box, sickle, shuttle, anvil, and other emblems of industry. He was told to the accompaniment of clanking chains and groans that the objects of the order were to preserve liberty, to perpetuate the Union, to maintain the laws and the Constitution, to secure the ascendancy ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... beginning amongst us, and there is none to take the Censer, and to stand between the living and the dead, that we be not consumed as in a moment; for there is wrath gone out from the Lord. Let us then depart from the tents of these wicked men (who have brought all this upon us) and touch nothing of theirs, ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... Light Thou Thy censer to Thyself, for all our fires are dim, Stamp Thou Thine image on our coin, for Caesar's face grows dim, And a dumb devil of pride and greed ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... are consecrated spheres, made by magic art, resembling the circle of the sun; and when the sun rises, these orbs seem to be inflamed, and whirl round with a great noise[23]. In their orisons, every person carries a censer, in which he burns incense in honour of the sun. But among these people there are about a thousand families of Jews, as black as the rest of the natives, yet good honest men, and strict observers of the law of Moses, and not entirely ignorant of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... whenever I might be overcome by adversity, if I burned one of her feathers, she would instantly appear? Shall we not then solicit assistance in this awful extremity?" So saying, Zal went up to a high place, and burnt the feather in a censer, and in a short time the Simurgh stood before him. After due praise and acknowledgment, he explained his wants. "But," said he, "may the misfortune we endure be far from him who has brought it upon us. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... Christ, but also offer up all your prayers in the name of Jesus, that his name called on them may sanctify them, otherwise your affectionate prayers cannot be acceptable to God, for he loveth nothing but what cometh through the Son. Prayer must have an evil savour, when it is not put in the golden censer that this angel hath to offer up incense with the prayers of the saints. And likewise you would know God's justice and wrath, that you may serve in fear and trembling: and when trembling is joined with the rejoicing of faith, this is acceptable service. You ought to fear to offend his holiness, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers; Nor Virgin-choir to make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... contributions to the progress of Greek sculpture were so great that he left behind him a considerable number of artists devoted to his methods. His son Lykios followed his father closely. In statues on the Acropolis representing two boys, one bearing a basin, one blowing the coals in a censer into a flame, he reminds one of the Ladas, especially in the second, where the action of breathing is exemplified in every movement of the body. Another famous work by a follower of Myron was the boy plucking a thorn from his foot, a copy of which ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... chrism. And thus regally shrived, might I dare Exhale the warm infinite incense of prayer From my deep soul to thine. Nor then couldst thou know The wealth of the censer. Thou wak'st!—must ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... feet, made her features seem more strangely young, more startlingly in contrast with the monastic severity of the room. It was draped round with some dark unfigured hangings. A couch with a coverlet of furs, single chair of carved oak, the little table, and a bronze censer from which a faint aromatic odor escaping filled the air and stole on the sense, completed the furniture of the room, which might rather have been the cell of some aged Druid than the chamber of one of the young maidens of Eri, who were ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... the plain, Cared-for till cock-crow: Look out if yonder be not day again Rimming the rock-row! That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought, Rarer, intenser, 10 Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, Chafes in the censer. Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; Seek we sepulture On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it; No! Yonder sparkle ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... India the initiate wore the "cincture of Munga's herbs"; and Kali had her girdle of hands. Breasted, ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 29) says: "In the oldest fragments we hear of Isis the great, who fastened on the girdle in Khemmis, when she brought her [censer] and burned incense before ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... of hanging cats, and burying them with great ceremony. He used to dress up in a sheet as though it were a surplice, and sang, and waved some object over the dead cat as though it were a censer. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... a burning censer, filled with spice From fairer vales than those of Araby, Breathing such prayers to heaven, that the nice Discriminating ear of Deity Can cull sweet praises from the rare perfume. Man cannot know what starry lights illume ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... left empty. Then the chaplain charged with the care of the crozier advanced, holding it erect, the curved part being towards him. Afterward came two censer-bearers, who walked backwards and swung the censers gently from side to side, each one having near him an acolyte charged with the incense-box. There was a little difficulty before they succeeded in passing by one of the divisions ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... you ask how I live in the Valley? I weep, and I dream, and I pray; But my tears are as sweet as the dew-drops That fall on the roses in May; And my prayer, like a perfume from censer, Ascendeth to God ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... and sensible and moderate in all respects but that of his abhorrence of the Cagots: he would insult them from the very altar, calling out to them, as they stood afar off, "Oh! ye Cagots, damned for evermore!" One day, a half-blind Cagot stumbled and touched the censer borne before this Abbe de Lourbes. He was immediately turned out of the church, and forbidden ever to re- enter it. One does not know how to account for the fact, that the very brother of this bigoted abbe, the seigneur of the village, went and married ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell

... of daily service by the priests was of seven parts. 1st. Fire-making—rubbing the fire sticks, taking the censer, putting incense in it, and lighting it. 2nd. Opening the Shrine—going up to the shrine, loosening the fastening, and breaking the seal, opening the door, seeing the god. 3rd. Praise—various prostrations, and then singing a hymn to the god. 4th. Supplying food and incense—offering oil ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... his choir and many villagers, who occupied one side of the square made by the soldiers standing there in the dusk to do last honors to their dead comrades. With chantings and doleful chorus the choir answered his solemn oratory and devotional intercessions. He swung his sacred censer pot over each body and though we understood no word we knew he was doing reverence to the spirit of sacrifice shown by our fallen comrades. There in the darkness by the edge of the forest, the priest and his ceremony, the firing squad's volley, and the bugler's last call, all united ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... an angel: her upturned head took in the highest of the group of dots; one hand hanging by her side the next; a knee the third; and the flowing hem of her robe the fourth; but the fifth in the corner—what could reach it? With a touch of the pencil the angel's other hand appeared flinging up a censer attached to a long chain, which struck the solitary dot like a shot amid acclamations. To show that he did not consider the feat a tour de force, the artist turned the paper, and taking the same marks drew a devil ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... out alone at night, they must have a blazing torch, and go about waving it like a censer; and then they throw it down wherever they please, and this is usually ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... the mother, having known No separate pleasure, or secreted thought, With deep humility resumed her course Of daily duty and philanthropy, Not murmuring, but remembering His great love Who lent so long that blessing beyond price, And from her broken censer offering still Incense of praise. She deem'd it fearful loss To lose a sorrow, be chastis'd in vain, Not yield our joys, but have them rent away, And make this ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will hide his hideousness in humanitarianism. Victor Hugo was the innermost stench of the humanitarianism, and Mr Swinburne holds his nose with one hand while he waves the censer with the other. Men of inferior genius, Victor Hugo and Mr Gladstone, take refuge in humanitarianism. Humanitarianism is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... Sentiments, he describes in the Beginning of this Book the Acceptance which these their Prayers met with, in a short Allegory, formd upon that beautiful Passage in holy Writ: And another Angel came and stood at the Altar, having a golden Censer; and there was given unto him much Incense, that he should offer it with the Prayers of all Saints upon the Golden Altar, which was before the Throne: And the Smoak of the Incense which came with the Prayers of the Saints, ascended up ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... to mass themselves in the transepts, in fuller view of the pulpits, before the contest began. The Frari had taken their position on the right, under the elaborate hanging tomb of Fra Pacifico—a mass of sculpture, rococo, and gilding; the incense rising from the censer swinging below the coffin of the saint carried the eye insensibly upward to the grotesque canopy, where cumbrous marble clouds were compacted of dense masses of saints' and cherubs' ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... and still the quivering strings, Now Silence hovers on unmoving wings.— —Slow to the altar fair URANIA bends Her graceful march, the sacred steps ascends, High in the midst with blazing censer stands, And scatters incense with illumined hands: 520 Thrice to the GODDESS bows with solemn pause, With trembling awe the mystic veil withdraws, And, meekly kneeling on the gorgeous shrine, Lifts her ecstatic eyes to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... money it would have cost in bringing it back by sea into Italy; and being Governor of Sardinia, he made all his visits on foot, without other train than one officer of the Republic who carried his robe and a censer for sacrifices, and for the most part carried his trunk himself. He bragged that he had never worn a gown that cost above ten crowns, nor had ever sent above tenpence to the market for one day's provision; and that as to his country ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... these splendours, surrounded by the atmosphere of my love, you will forget everything as does he who eats nepenthe. Your past life will appear to you like a dream, your former feelings will vanish as incense upon the coals of the censer. The woman who is loved by the King no longer remembers men. Go, come; accustom yourself to Pharaonic magnificence; help yourself as you please to my treasures; make gold flow, heap up gems; order, make, unmake, raise, destroy; be my mistress, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... courage, new hope. The two girls kissed solemnly. They were going out together and they presently went down-stairs hand in hand. But as an after-flavor there lingered for Imogen, like a faint, flat bitterness after the incense, a suspicion that Mary, in wafting her censer with such energy, had been seeking to fill her own nostrils, also, with the sacred old aroma, to find, as well as ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... the well, and soon reappearing, placed it over the stove, where it was soon purring and steaming, a sort of censer of hospitality and good cheer. The peaches, moreover, in obedience to a few gentle whispers from Rachel, were soon deposited, by the same hand, in a ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... mingled together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds glowed like coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if the dusk of this hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and the garden an enormous censer swinging before the altar of the stars. The colours of the blossoms deepened, losing ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... nose as never was possessed before; a nose modelled by Love himself, and celebrated by ten court poets, and which the censer of praise was as unable to improve as a certain tumble which its owner had in infancy. Hands the most beautiful that could be, and which Madame de Genlis put up for exhibition during twenty years, upon the strings of a harp, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various

... room—but not to sleep. Once more did she attempt the ceremonies used by her mother, changing them each time, as doubtful of her success. Again the censer was lighted—the charm essayed; again the room was filled with smoke as she threw in the various herbs which she had knowledge of, for all the papers thrown aside at her father's death had been carefully collected, and on many were directions found as to the use of those herbs. "The word! ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... number of masses that were said daily, and of the eagerness shown by the boys to obtain an altar. Altar service was rewarded by a large piece of toast for breakfast. Handsome lads of sixteen were chosen for acolytes, the torch-bearers were selected from the smallest boys, the office of censer was filled by John Norton, and he was also the chief sacristan, and had charge of the altar plate and linen and the vestments. He spoke of the organ, and he depreciated the present instrument, and enlarged upon some technical details anent the latest modern improvements ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... times crown the conqueror who overcomes as He overcame. He makes us His soldiers and strengthens us for the war, if we live by faith in Him. He Himself is the Priest—the only Eternal Priest of the world—who wears on His head the mitre and the diadem, and bears in His hand the sceptre and the censer; and He makes us priests, if faith in His only sacrifice and all-prevalent intercession be in our souls. He is the dew unto Israel—and only by intercourse with Him shall we be made gentle and refreshing, silent blessings to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... had a censer in his hands, and another had a little bell; and as they came along you could see the censer swinging in the air, and the volumes of fragrant smoke rising from it, and you could hear the tinkling of the little bell. The priest advanced to the altar before which the ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott

... and the elms before the window no longer lisped, but were eloquent in the softest zephyrs. There was the flash of birds in among the bushes, the occasional droning of bees in and out the open window, and a perpetually swinging censer of flower incense rising from below. The farm had put on its gayest bridal raiment; and looking at the old farm-house shadowed with foliage and green with creeping vines, it was difficult to conceive ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... man go forward with the lantern, and give me your hand. The stairs are crooked and narrow. Gently with your light, friend. You swing it like a censer.' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... I hear a voice, but none are there; The stalls are void, the doors are wide, The tapers burning fair. Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, And solemn chaunts ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... rajil shereef hada, min beled bel scharki." (A holy man this from the kingdoms of the East.) At last I produced the shekel, which I invariably carry about me as a pocket-piece, and asked the capitaz whether he had ever seen that money before. He surveyed the censer and olive- branch for a considerable time, and evidently knew not what to make of it. At length he fell to inspecting the characters round about it on both sides, and giving a cry, exclaimed to the other hamalos: "Brothers, brothers, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... by her toilette battery, her fancy frocks, and picnic parties. Imitate whatever is pretty and you are sure to make a pretty job of it. To make a noble picture, a dining-room piece, you must take the same lady and invest her in a Doric chiton or diploida and himation; give her a pocillum, a censer, a sacrificial ram, and a distant view of Tivoli; round your modelling, and let your brush-strokes be long and slightly curved; affect sober and rather hot pigments; call the finished article "Dido pouring libations to the Goddess of Love." To paint an exhibition picture, the sort preferred ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... the priests gave the prince a golden spoon with burning incense. The heir uttered prescribed prayers, whirled the censer to the height of the divinity's head, and bowed low a ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... professional woman's scorn of raiment. Her apartment is full of old carved furniture and objets d'art, for she had always been a collector. Her most conspicuous treasure is a rare and valuable Russian censer of chased silver. This was on the Germans' list of valuables when they were sure of entering Paris in September, 1914. Through their spies they knew the location of every work of art in the most artistic ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... the mountain, hungry and exhausted, without being asked to taste food or drink. It need not be detailed how sore at heart we felt as we recommenced our dreary journey. It was already evening. Censer masses of fog had gathered on the hill, and lurid streaks spreading far out on the sea, portended a night of storm and gloom. However, we had no resource but to regain the house where we had slept two nights before, which we supposed ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... to an ancient church could alone have maintained for them;—keeping thus holily in reserve, against the hour of struggle, that most stirring of all the excitements to which Freedom can appeal when she points to her flame rising out of the censer of Religion. In addition to these, and all the other moral advantages included in them, for which the Greeks were indebted to their own nature and position, is to be taken also into account the aid and sympathy ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... he loves! Never, not even in the hottest fire of my youth, did my love rise to such a frenzy. I burned, like a censer lighted by a sunbeam; he flames, like a ship set on fire by lightning on the stormy sea. With you, my Maria, I have read more than once Shakspeare's Othello; and only the frantic Othello can give an idea of the tropical passion of Ammalat. He loves to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... leave her; for her kingdom is vaster than my kingdom and she is fairer than Princess Jauharah.'' So he ceased not to drink with her till even tide came, when they lighted the lamps and waxen candles and diffused censer-perfumes; nor did they leave drinking, till they were both drunken, and the singing women sang the while. Then Queen Lab, being in liquor, rose from her seat and lay down on a bed and dismissing her women called to Badr Basim to come and sleep by her side. So he lay with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... wilful or careless destruction. Ven. Bede on his deathbed gave away incense amongst his little parting presents, as his disciple, Cuthbert, relates. Amongst the furniture of the larger Anglo-Saxon churches was a huge censer hanging from the roof, which ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... Babylonians. The consummation of the marriage rite made both the man and the woman impure, as did every subsequent act of the same kind. The impurity was communicated to any vessel that either might touch. To remove it, the pair were required first to sit down before a censer of burning incense, and then to wash themselves thoroughly. Thus only could they re-enter into the state of legal cleanness. A similar impurity attached to those who came into contact with a human corpse. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... orisons and matins of paganism, was again blessed and sprinkled, and called the same hearers to mass and confession; the same lavatory that fronted the temple served for holy water or baptismal font; the same censer that swung before Amida could be refilled to waft Christian incense; the new convert could use unchanged his old beads, bells, candles, incense, and all the paraphernalia of his old faith in ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... up the tracery of the windows and the massive pointed arches in the choir. A few candles burn by the altar beyond the dark mass of figures forming the congregation. A Gregorian chant fills the building with its solemn tones and the smoke of a swinging censer ascends in the shadowy chancel. Then, as the service proceeds, one candle above the altar seems to suddenly ignite the next, and a line of fire travels all over the great erection surrounding the figure of the Virgin, leaving ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. 80 "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... at London, at a feast of Whitsontide, wheare the comyng down of the Holy Gost was set forth by a white pigeon that was let to fly out of a hole that is yet to be seen in the mydst of the roof of the great ile, and by a long censer which, descending out of the same place almost to the very ground, was swinged up and down at such a length that it reached at one swepe almost to the west gate of the church, and with the other to the queer [quire] stairs of the same, breathing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell

... ponds smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, and the green-bronze image of the Teacher of the Law wavering there as it half seems through incense clouds. The earth is all one censer, and myriads of frogs are making the haze ring. It is too warm to do more than to sit on a stone and watch the eyes that, having seen all things, see no more—the down-dropped eyes, the forward droop of the head, and the colossal simplicity ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... whole of the apartments, the dormitory, the refectory, and the chapter-house, in which they beheld a vast sepulchral monument, covered with a superb pall, fringed with gold, and surrounded by twenty waxen tapers in golden candlesticks, while a vast silver censer, constantly burning, filled the air with fumes of incense. The guests naturally inquired concerning the name and quality of the person who reposed in that splendid tomb; and were told it was the late king of that country; the best, the handsomest, the wisest, the most courteous and liberal ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... Florence well, While Florence, now, to love him is content; And, mark ye, that the piercingest sweet smell Of love's dear incense by the living sent To find the dead, is not accessible To lazy livers—no narcotic,—not Swung in a censer to a sleepy tune,— But trod out in the morning air by hot Quick spirits who tread firm to ends foreshown, And use the name of greatness unforgot, To meditate what greatness may ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... before brute forms painted on the walls in a hole in the dark. Their leader bears a name which might have startled them in their apostasy, and choked their prayers in their throats, for Jaazan-iah means 'the Lord hears.' Each man has a censer in his hand—self-consecrated priests of self-chosen deities. Shrouded in obscurity, they pleased themselves with the ancient lie, 'The Lord sees not; He hath forsaken the earth.' And then, into that Sanhedrim of apostates there comes, all unknown ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... the people to behold; and the Behram, which must be seen by none but the chief Dustoor, or priest, and must be screened from the rays of the sun. When required for a new temple, a portion of the sacred fire is procured in a golden censer from Mount Elbourg, near Yezd, where resides the chief pontiff, and where the holy flame is perpetually maintained. The Behram fire is said to have had its origin from the natural bituminous fires on the shores of the Caspian, and to have never been extinguished. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... chapel till she came, listening to the swallows outside, and gazing with parted lips at the pictures on the golden walls; but when she came, I knelt down before the altar, and she knelt down and kissed my lips; and then the priest came in, and the singers and the censer-boys; and that chapel was soon confusedly full of golden raiment, and incense, and ladies and singing; in the midst of which I wedded Alys. And men came into Knights' Gard till we had two thousand men in it, and great store of ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris

... insted of mister Larkin, who is a good feler but a bum eaptin. I aint sayin much but I got a few idees and I woodnt let it sprize you if I was to invent something one of these days, but I cant tell you what it is becaus the censer wood cut it out. I got your egg and I thank you fer it, but say it got me in dutch al-right, it was this way, the postman brot the packidge just as I was going to school and I didn't have time to open it so I took it along and we was havin ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell

... to see the iron crown. After having visited the cathedral thoroughly we were conducted down some steps to the little chapel which contains the crown. The priest is obliged to put on the robes of high mass, and is assisted by another priest and a boy who swings the censer all the time. The cappellano collected the money (twenty lire) from our party before the proceedings. (It is always well to be on the safe side.) The money question settled, the priest read some prayers, knelt many times, then ascended ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... hold of one of the trunks together, and carried it into the museum. When the door opened, Willows almost dropped his end from sheer amazement. He stood in the middle of the room, staring from Venus to altar-cloth, from altar-cloth to censer. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... just say a word, in no disagreeable manner, about your religious principles. There are a great many stories about, and perhaps they are not true, and I am sure I hope they are not. If popery were only just the sign of the cross, and music, and censer-pots, though I think them all superstitious, I'd be free to leave them alone if they would leave me. But popery is a much deeper thing than that, Lothair, and our fathers found it out. They could not stand it, and we should ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... Hans Bosch, who had often carried him in his arms, when he was a child, and still looked on him in the light of one, standing round his bed. His mother held a basin, and Hans a book, and the priest a censer, which he was swinging to and fro, and muttering words, in very doggerel Latin, while ever and anon, he sprinkled him with water from the basin. What Laneta was about, he could not exactly make out, but he thought that ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston

... aside To see my master's grave. All, far and wide, Was silence; so I bent these knees of mine And wept and poured drink-offerings from the wine I bear the strangers, and about the stone Laid myrtle sprays. And, child, I saw thereon Just at the censer slain, a fleeced ewe, Deep black, in sacrifice: the blood was new About it: and a tress of bright brown hair Shorn as in mourning, close. Long stood I there And wondered, of all men what man had gone In mourning to that grave.—My child, 'tis none In Argos. Did there come ... Nay, mark ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides



Words linked to "Censer" :   religion, religious belief, faith, vessel, thurible



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