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Witchery   Listen
noun
Witchery  n.  (pl. witcheries)  
1.
Sorcery; enchantment; witchcraft. "Great Comus, Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries." "A woman infamous... for witcheries."
2.
Fascination; irresistible influence; enchantment. "He never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky." "The dear, dear witchery of song."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Witchery" Quotes from Famous Books



... Rhone, and the fair daughters of Arles, in their picturesque costumes,—see the wild bulls of the Camargo, the Pampas of the Mediterranean. We are among the growers of the silk-worm; we hear the home-songs and talks of the Mas, listen to the people's legends and tales of witchery, and can study the Middle-Age spirit that still in these regions endows every shrine with miracles, as we follow the pilgrimage to the chapel of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... of old they were civilised: by witchery of the Orphic fiddle-bow, and Euterpean rhythm; by the Graces, by the Smiles! Thermidorian Deputies are there in those soirees; Editor Freron, Orateur du Peuple; Barras, who has known other dances than the Carmagnole. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Edith turned again to the young baronet, the brown eyes luminous with tears, the lips quivering. He bent above her, saying something, he could hardly have told what, himself—carried away for once in his life, by the witchery of two dark eyes. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... to herself she had to confess the magic in Berthe's fingers. Though she pouted over the fresh, rustic effect, yet on her slender figure there was witchery ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... to intoxicate himself with the felicities of style, with the delicious witchery of the rare epithet which, while remaining precise, yet opens to the imagination of the initiate infinite and distant vistas, he determined to give the finishing touches to the decorations of his ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... was not easy. But Sunderland succeeded in obtaining such a measure of favour and influence as excited much surprise and some indignation. In truth, scarcely any mind was strong enough to resist the witchery of his talk and of his manners. Every man is prone to believe in the gratitude and attachment even of the most worthless persons on whom he has conferred great benefits. It can therefore hardly be thought strange that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... purposes, which he would have been more ashamed to avow for himself than I should be to avow for him. It was all vague and vast, and it came out of the books that he read, and that filled his soul with their witchery, and often held him aloof with their charm in the midst of the plays from which they could not lure him wholly away, or at all away. He did not know how or when their enchantment began, and he could hardly recall the names of some of them afterwards. ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... never have done if we were to relate all the incidents of this kind,[25] for the sentiment of nature was innate with him; it was a perpetual communion which made him love the whole creation.[26] He is ravished with the witchery of great forests; he has the terrors of a child when he is alone at prayer in a deserted chapel, but he tastes ineffable joy merely in inhaling the perfume of a flower, or gazing into the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... tribute paid by the American public to the master who had given to it such tales of conjuring charm, of witchery and mystery as "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia"; such fascinating hoaxes as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "MSS. Found in a Bottle," "A Descent Into a Maelstrom" and "The Balloon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... you hearken, you shall hear behind The breaking of a sea whose waves are souls That break upon a human-crying beach. Ever she smileth, yet hath never smiled, And in her lovely laughter is no joy. Yet hath none fairer strayed into the world, Or wandered in more witchery through the air, Since she who drew the dreaming keels of Greece After ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... see thee o'er the golden wire Bend with such lovely witchery, Nor feel each tone like living fire? How ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various

... Hall at the invitation of her husband. He thus met the object of his early idolatry in the very scene of his tender devotions, which, as he says, her smiles had once made a heaven to him. The scene was but little changed. He was in the very chamber where he had so often listened entranced to the witchery of her voice; there were the same instruments and music; there lay her flower garden beneath the window, and the walks through which he had wandered with her in the intoxication of youthful love. Can we wonder that amidst the ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... in that simple phrase, a schoolboy's friendship! Tis some indefinite recollection of these mystic passages of their young emotion that makes grey-haired men mourn over the memory of their schoolboy days. It is a spell that can soften the acerbity of political warfare, and with its witchery can call forth a sigh even amid the callous bustle of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... tentative fashion, I propose to apply in some studies in this volume, or other volumes, believing that the company of those who love Shakespeare can never be large enough for his merits, and that many are kept away from the witchery of him because they do not well know the fine art of approaching him. I would, therefore, be a doorkeeper, and throw some doors wide open, that men and women may unhindered enter. This essay aims to stand as a porter at the gate. We shall never overestimate Shakespeare, because we can not. Some men ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... Tempest fascinate with the witchery of untrammeled existence. Two lines of a song from Twelfth Night give an attractive presentation of the Renaissance philosophy of the present as opposed to an ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... the brighter stars showing in the pale sky, the far hills outlined against it, the nearer hills darkly glimmering in the moon-rays, the valleys all full of pearly moonlit haze, the pleasance about the villa vague in the witchery of the moon's ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... before the public gaze. Nothing was too mundane to be transformed by the holiday's magic into a thing mystic and unreal. Even such a prosaic article as a washtub, borrowing luster from the season's witchery and in shining blue dress became a thing ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... The Colonel held his breath as the long lashes were raised to his level. Even to an ordinary observer that sudden revelation of her eyes seemed to transform her face with subtle witchery. They were large, brown, and soft, yet filled with an extraordinary penetration and prescience. They were the eyes of an experienced woman of thirty fixed in the face of a child. What else the Colonel saw there Heaven only knows! He felt his inmost secrets plucked from him—his ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... prepared for the worst, though she has hoped that the old witchery might be thrown about the ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... the earth with the point of your shovels and let's see what witchery there is concealed there," ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... me not for I * Of thy love and Yamani[FN225] glance the victim lie My heart is cut to pieces by thy cruelty, * My body wasted and my patience done to die: From glances ravishing all hearts with witchery * Reason far flies, the while desire to thee draws nigh; Though at thy call should armies fill the face of earth * E'en now I'd win my wish ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... description, by Thiebault, of Napoleon's appearance on Sunday, June 11th: "His look, once so formidable and piercing, had lost its strength and even its steadiness: his face had lost all expression and all its force: his mouth, compressed, had none of its former witchery: and his gait was as perplexed as his demeanour and gestures were undecided: the ordinary pallor of his skin was replaced by a strongly pronounced ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... bright-leaved horizon of foliage that rose over Bright Spot, the western sky was brilliantly clear; flecked with little reaches of cloud stretching upwards and coloured with fairy sunlight colours, gold, purple, and rose, in a very witchery of mingling. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... note of lute and lyre, The lily's purple, the red rose's glow; It wonders at the witchery of the fire, And marvels at ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman

... not feel, even through the bars and checks of a prison, the soft summer air, 'the witchery of the soft blue sky;' he could not see the leaves bud forth, and mellow into their darker verdure; he could not hear the songs of the many-voiced birds; or listen to the dancing rain, calling up beauty where it fell; or mark at night, through ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Hamsun has published over thirty large works— novels, dramas, travel descriptions, essays, and poems. Every one of them is of a high order. Each is unlike the rest; but through them all flash in vivid gleams a dazzling witchery of style, a bewildering originality, a passionate nature-worship, and an imagination which at times takes away ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... as though to force the wanton witchery to do his bidding. Wild cries of riot answer him; the rosy cloud grows denser round him; entrancing perfumes hem him in and steal away his senses. In the most seductive of half-lights his wonder-seeing eye beholds a female form indicible; he hears a voice that sweetly murmurs out the siren ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... aims as the tribes in the interior did, and as I hoped he would yet know them and me, he would be glad to stay, and see also the pictures of the magic lantern; but, as it was now getting dark, he had evidently got enough of my witchery, and began to use some charms to dispel any kindly feelings he might have found stealing round his heart. He asked leave to go, and when his party moved off a little way, he sent for my spokesman, and told him that, "if we did not add a red jacket and a man to our gift ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... excuse. Who might refuse worship to Lamia, "now a lady bright"? But foul-fanged here, fierce-eyed, a shape of fear, the serpent stands, revealed to general sight, A loathly thing, close knotted ring on ring, of guise unlovely, and infectious breath; And yet strong witchery draws to those wide jaws Whose touch is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various

... was Madeleine's cordial reply; "but to meet this unlooked-for emergency, I thought you might possibly consent to let her exert her witchery in making an intrusive plate ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... we round, Then alight ye on the ground; The heath's wide regions cover ye With your mad swarms of witchery! (They let ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... as strong, as steady, as long as the sail-tree of some huge [W.2623.] prime ship was the straight spout of dark blood which arose right on high from the very ridgepole of his crown, so that a black fog of witchery was made thereof like to the smoke from a king's hostel what time the king comes to be ministered to at ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... way of salvation?' Yes it was, as is evident, for Paul was grieved to hear it. But why did the devil stir up her to cry so, but because that was the way to blemish the gospel, and to make the world think that it came from the same hand as did her soothsaying and witchery? (verse 16-18). 'Holiness, O Lord, becomes thy house for ever.' Let, therefore, whoever they be that profess the name of Christ, take heed that they scandal not that profession which they make of him, since he has so graciously offered us, as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... who testified that he had often seen old Hanne instructing the young woman who was now a prisoner in the art of drugs, in the preparation of images carven in dough—and it might be also in clay—things well known in the art of witchery. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... jade,' said Belle, 'and you practising your horse-witchery upon her. I have been of an unsubdued spirit, I acknowledge, but I was always kind to you; and if you have made me cry, it's a poor thing ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... words may for a time beguile, Professions lull, and oaths deceive a while; But soon the heart, in vague suspicion tost, Must feel a void unfilled, a something lost; Something scarce heeded, and unprized till gone, Felt while unseen, and, tho' unnoticed, known: A hidden witchery, a nameless charm, Too fine for actions and for words too warm; That passing all the worthless forms of art, Eludes the sense, and only woos the heart: A hallowed spell, by fond affection wove, The mute, ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... can sing for him—no, let him sing for thee—thou can ask him to help thee with 'The Banded Men'—and if he goes away before eight o'clock I will say to thee—'take the first man that asks thee for thou hast no woman-witchery with which to pick and choose!' Grant is a fine man. If thou can win him, thou wins something worth while. He has always held himself apart. His father was much like him. All of them soldiers and proud as men are made, these confounded, ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... embroidery, his buckles, glowed, at that instant, with unutterable splendor; the picturesque hues of his attire took a richer depth of coloring; there was a gleam and polish over his whole presence, betokening the perfect witchery of well-ordered manners. The maiden raised her eyes, and suffered them to linger upon her companion with a bashful and admiring gaze. Then, as if desirous of judging what value her own simple comeliness ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... true, no fortune, but that of my friend was ample; and he delighted in the anticipation of indulging her in elegant pursuit, and administering to those delicate tastes and fancies that spread a kind of witchery about the sex.—"Her life," said he, "shall be like ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... watched her unperceived, the slim young figure in the shaded lamplight, the shining hair, the slender neck—all vivid, instinct with life; and she comprehended the witchery that had caught Mordaunt's heart. Of the man himself she knew but little. He was not expansive, and circumstances had not thrown them together. But what she knew of him she liked. She was aware that her brother valued his friendship very highly—a friendship begun on a South African battlefield; ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... remainder wearied coolies, servants, small shopkeepers, and drivers from the hackstand hard by. The scene—a main approach to Lahore city, and the night a warm one in August.' This was all that there was to be seen; but by no means all that one could see. The witchery of the moonlight was everywhere; and the world was horribly changed. The long line of the naked dead, flanked by the rigid silver statue, was not pleasant to look upon. It was made up of men alone. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... a sound of tumultuous feet and Miss Virginia Houston Cary burst upon the scene. She was a tot of seven with sun touched hair and great dark eyes whose witchery made her a piquant little fairy. In spite of her mother's despair over her clothes Virgie was dressed, or at least had been dressed at breakfast time, in a clean white frock, low shoes and white stockings, although ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... been taken Beneath the cold moon, As the spell which no slumber Of witchery may test, The rythmical number ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the most pleasure of all to Soloviev. This big, strong, and negligent man somehow involuntarily, imperceptibly even to himself, began to submit to that hidden, unseizable, exquisite witchery of femininity; which not infrequently lurks under the coarsest covering, in the harshest, most gnarled environment. The pupil dominated, the teacher obeyed. Through the qualities of a primitive, but on the other hand a fresh, deep, and original soul, Liubka was inclined not ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... taste that nature moulded into her composition, has taken a remnant of exquisite silver gauze and drawn it around her forms, with an effect that gives Adam his first idea of the witchery of dress. He beholds his spouse in a new light and with renewed admiration; yet is hardly reconciled to any other attire than her own golden locks. However, emulating Eve's example, he makes free with a mantle of blue velvet, and puts it on so picturesquely that it might seem to have fallen from ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... arrangements, both of dwelling and pleasure grounds, seem to be suggestive rather of another poetical maxim in great favour with anchorites and recluses—"Retire, the world shut out." We cannot agree with Miss Seward, who describes this hermitage as "a retreat which breathes all the witchery of genius, taste, and sentiment." It is rather fantastical than tasteful, and savours more of eccentricity than sentiment. In the Gothic entrance, there are undoubtedly many fine specimens of carved wood-work, ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin

... as faulty, without ever reaching the real fascination of his rival's style. He had not the Lawrence sense of expression and charm; he could not give to his heads the vivacity and flutter, the brilliance and witchery, of Sir Thomas's portraits. They both took up Reynolds's theory about it being 'a vulgar error to make things too like themselves,' as though it were a merit to paint untruthfully. And painting people of fashion, they had to paint—especially ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... better than one decked with flowers is due to the same cause that makes you—though you may be staunch Republicans—see more beauty in a queen than in her rivals, though at the bar of an impartial aesthetics the latter would be judged the more beautiful. A certain something, a peculiar witchery, surrounds her—the witchery (excuse the word) of servility; this it is, and not your aesthetic judgment, which cheats you into believing that the diamond lends a higher charm than the rose-wreath. Let the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... escort," laughed Nancy. In the soft lamplight Goddard caught the witchery of her eyes, and his heart gave a most unaccustomed thump against his ribs. "Take care, sir; you don't know what a grave responsibility ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... free from these reflections. "Lot of chance of all that being true. There's witchery in this moonlight. And yet, stranger things have happened. Whatever you say, Pant's a devil. Who else could see ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell

... three years." In London these daughters of Pleasure are like physicians travelling about to destroy in all sorts of ways, some on foot, others on horseback, and the more finished lolling in their carriages, ogling and attracting by the witchery of bright eyes; the latter may, however, very easily be known, by the usual absence of all armorial bearings upon the panel, the chariot elegant and in the newest fashion, generally dark-coloured, and lined with crimson to cast a rich ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... way of what he eats. Judging from the coffee-houses, which is a fair criterion, they never know in all their lives what tea, coffee, or cocoa tastes like. The slops and water-witcheries of the coffee-houses, varying only in sloppiness and witchery, never even approximate or suggest what you and I are accustomed to ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... Wirt, at the trial of Aaron Burr for treason, and many a schoolboy since has echoed the question, as many a schoolboy will hereafter, while impassioned oratory is music to the ear and witchery to the breast. The eloquent lawyer went on to answer himself, and painted in glowing colors a character which history sees in a colder light. But though Blennerhassett was not the ideal that Wirt imagined, he was the ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... doing in this hour. Last night they had been together. He had marveled at the witchery of the moonlight in her hair and eyes, he had told her of the beauty of it, she had smiled, she had laughed softly with him—for hours they had sat in the spell of the golden night and the glory of the river. And tonight—now—was she with St. Pierre, waiting as they had waited last ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... danced till late, for there was no resisting the hospitality of Hogarth, or the witchery of those vistas and arcades, grand hall and lost grot, salons and conservatories, there in the dark of the ocean, or such an enchantment of music, and fabulousness of table; the host, too, pleaded prettily for himself; and now they pardoned, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... where he might forget. Gambler in England, gambler again in New France, now trading fur-merchant and voyageur, he was, as always, an adventurer. Du Mesne and his hardy crew hailed him already as a new captain of the trails, a new coureur, won from the Old World by the savage witchery of the New. He was their brother; and had he indeed owned longer years of training, his keenness of eye, his strength of arm, his tirelessness of limb could hardly have been greater than they seemed in his first ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... over another girl, and only married her because he could not get the other one, and when the other died, five years after he was married to Ada, he sent flowers, and I should not to this day venture to speak that girl's name to the man. She was a great beauty, and she had a wonderful witchery about her. I was only a child, but I remember how she looked. Why, I fell in love with her myself! Cyrus can never forget a woman like that for a cud-chewing creature like Ada, even if she does keep his house ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... did. When you begin to like a girl, and find that she has regularly installed herself in a corner of your heart, there is scarcely a thing she can do you'll not discover a good reason for; and even when your ingenuity fails, go and pay a visit; there is some artful witchery in that creation you have built up about her—for I heartily believe most of us are merely clothing a sort of lay figure of loveliness with attributes of our fancy—and the end of it is, we are about as wise about our idols as the South Sea savages in ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... fairy tales. Mr. Wells confesses, in the preface to this book, that he has a very tender regard for the "Little People," as fairies used to be called in those days, and now he has given us, under the title of "Witchery Ways," some fairy tales of his own which will prove a never-ending ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... the gloaming by a window, her hands clasped over her head, a smile parting her lips, her eyes haunting in the witchery of their expression. By some occult power her glance fell unconsciously on him; and he beheld, with mingled amazement and speculation, a rosy hue overspread her face and throat; her hands went swiftly to her ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... poetical criticism, he no doubt ranks only with those poets who have expressed easily and acceptably the likings and passions and thoughts and fancies of the average man, and who have expressed these with no extraordinary cunning or witchery. To go further in limitation, the average man, of whom he is thus the bard, is a rather sophisticated average man, without very deep thoughts or feelings, without a very fertile or fresh imagination or fancy, with even a touch—a little touch—of cant and "gush" and other defects ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... hours Little Miss Grouch carried out her programme faithfully and at some pains. Then there came to her the fairy godmother, Sleep, who banished the goblins, Grief and Temper, and worked her own marvelous witchery upon the weary girl to such fair purpose that she awoke in the morning transformed beyond all human, and more particularly all masculine, believing. One look in her glass assured her that the ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... end, never having known, or much cared to know, full summer. Love had taken its revenge on her now for all slighted love offered her in the past; for the one hated love that had to-night been on its knees to her. They said it must always come once to every man and woman—this witchery, this dark sweet feeling, springing up, who knew how or why? She had not believed, but now she knew. And whatever might be coming, she would not have this different. Since all things changed, she must change ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and fight her battles and win her gratitude, at the very same time held him back and bade him avoid her, and tear her image from his heart. For who was he, and what was he, that he should yield to this overmastering spell which had been thrown over him by the witchery of this young girl? Had he not his wife? Was she not at Chetwynde Castle? That odious wife, forced on him in his boyhood, long since grown abhorrent, and now standing up, an impassable barrier between him and the dearest longings ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... politics talked some bewildered nonsense about coming back with their families next summer. For myself, I must count as half-lost the year spent in Venice before I took a house upon the Grand Canal. There alone can existence have the perfect local flavor. But by what witchery touched one's being suffers the common sea-change, till life at last seems to ebb and flow with the tide in that wonder-avenue of palaces, it would be idle to attempt to tell. I can only take you to our dear little balcony at Casa Falier, and comment not very coherently on the scene upon ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... There was witchery in the hour, and Thornton felt its spell, speaking out at last, and asking Anna if she would be his wife. He would shield her so tenderly, he said, protecting her from every care, and making her as happy as love and money could make her. Then he told her of his home in the far-off ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... accomplish? Even yet he had learned but little of the secrets of the witch-doctor's craft. Perhaps there was little or nothing to learn? And zu Pfeiffer? He stared across at the portrait of Lucille. And as he gazed a wave of pity rose within him for this boy made mad by the witchery of those eyes and the music of that voice. A sentence in Lucille's letter appeared to stand out from the context: "Mon Dieu, they are as thick ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... described as the very difficult task of creating witchery by daylight; and 'Kubla Khan,' worthy, though a brief fragment, to rank with these two, is ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... bewitching face; part of its witchery being due to the raza Andalusiana—and beyond that the Moriscan—but as much of it coming from the ancient blood of Anahuac—possibly from the famed Malinche herself. For the young lady delineated was the Condes Almonte—descended from one of Conquistadors who had wedded ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... many times during the season, and with every meeting her witchery over Joe had become more potent. He had stolen a glove from her during one of his visits to Goldsboro, her home town in the South, and during the exciting games of the last World's Series he had worn it close to his heart when he had pitched ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... wind. The stars were brilliant overhead, and the wide void of the air between her and the earth below seemed full of wonder and mystery. Now and then she fancied some distant sound the cry of the leopard: he might be coming nearer and nearer as they went! but it rather added to the eerie witchery of the night, making it like a terrible story read in the deserted nursery, with the distant noise outside of her brothers and sisters at play. The motion of her progress by and by became pleasant to her. Sometimes her feet would brush the tops of the heather; but when they came to rocky ground, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... see Not death and darkness, but life and light, And dream no dream of the witchery The Lotus sheds ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... witchery in the sea, its songs and stories, and in the mere sight of a ship, and the sailor's dress, especially to a young mind, which has done more to man navies, and fill merchantmen, than all the press-gangs of Europe. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... the surpassing witchery of the scene, some time elapsed before either of the travellers cared to break the silence. At length, however, the baronet turned to ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... I confess that I have left the witchery of philtres and potions to those whose trade is in such knowledge, yet am I myself not so dull to beauty but that in earlier youth I may have employed them in my own behalf. I may give thee advice, at least, if thou wilt be candid with me. Tell me then, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... he was hardly aware. There was something huge and static about him, something elemental as an earth-shape, containing in and by itself mysterious rhythms. His songs were things of faun-like humours, terrible, tender, mocking, compassionate. They called for an entire abandon, for witchery, for passion swayed and swaying; but although at times Myra's voice held a Pan-like flutiness, although an occasional note true and sweet as a mate-call stirred that dark fronting mass, she failed to sustain the spell. She was too aware ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... courtship of a girl like that celestial convertite; and her sorrow when she finds that she is only a substitute; and her victory by persuading her lover to paint her as the Magdalen and so work off the witchery.[213] Of course some one may shrug shoulders and murmur, "Always the berquinade?" But I do not think La Morte Amoureuse was ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... to the rear of the box, and then Beatrice, with a touch of teasing witchery in her voice and with laughter still in her eyes, ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman

... he should send it to you," Wade said, in a low tone, as the Senator turned to bend over an open traveling bag on a nearby chair. "Is he—do you—?" A slight rigor of jealousy seemed to seize upon him, under the witchery ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... mountains were cast far upon the sea, long ere the sun had actually gone down, throwing the witchery of eventide over the whole of the eastern coast, some time before it came to grace its western. Corsica and Sardinia resemble vast fragments of the Alps, which have fallen into the sea by some accident of nature, where they stand in sight of their native ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... serious-minded, honorable forester, determined to keep sternly in mind that he was in the presence of the daughter of his chief, and that she was engaged to marry another, Nash was, after all, a man, and the witchery of the hour, the charm of the girl's graceful figure, asserted their power over him. His eyes grew tender, and his voice eloquent in spite of himself. His words he could guard, but it was hard to keep from his speech the song of the lover. The thought that he was to camp in her company, ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... him, and filled him with bitter doubt as to his power. Still he went on boldly. It had been a part of his plan to seem to come eagerly, as a lover should come; and so he came. When he got close to Stephen, all the witchery of her presence came upon him as of old. After all, he loved her with his whole soul; and the chance had come to tell her so. Even under the distressing conditions of his suit, the effort ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... his feet. The flames seared and stabbed with a pain that reached his dulled brain. Quivering and shaken, the body of Jerry Foster reacted again to a conscious thought. He leaped quickly as the deadly witchery left him, and he tore at the smoldering ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... sandwiches in a chair. Mary came in, dressed and radiant. Her gown was of that thin, black fabric whose name through the change of a single vowel seems to summon visions ranging between the extremes of man's experience. Spelled with an "^e" it belongs to Gallic witchery and diaphanous dreams; with an "e" ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... our spirits again; we now enjoyed a new kind of alpine witchery; the clouds were floating around, and below us, and the distant peaks were indistinctly visible as through a white gauze veil, which was gradually lifted up, till the sun arose, and again let in upon us the full glory ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... passion starts A-flame, pricked by the words that glow and gleam In those imperial paeans, which might arm Pale cowards for the fray. Touched by his hand The simple sweetness, and the homely charm Of our green garden-land Take on a witchery as of Arden's glade, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various

... absolute sway over the members of the tribe and when his reputation as a giver of rain, bountiful crops or success in the chase was at stake the tribes were called together and those accused by the witch doctor of being responsible for these conditions through witchery were condemned ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... spring was in his veins, and he bent forward again, sniffing the mild air. The witchery of spring had also drawn his neighbor to her window, where she leaned on the sill, cheeks in her hands, listlessly watching the flight ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... lustrous, dark and pensive, or blue and sparkling with vivacity. Their manners and movements are unaffected and elegant; they dress in exquisite taste; and with a grace peculiarly their own, their manners have a fascination and witchery which is perfectly irresistible. They generally receive their education at the convents, and go into society at a very early age, very frequently before they have seen sixteen summers, and after this time the whirl of amusement precludes them from giving much ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... my theme a while—as lame pens must do—I was a fool of the sentimental sort. I saw May Martha Mangum, and was hers. She was eighteen, the color of the white ivory keys of a new piano, beautiful, and possessed by the exquisite solemnity and pathetic witchery of an unsophisticated angel doomed to live in a small, dull, Texas prairie-town. She had a spirit and charm that could have enabled her to pluck rubies like raspberries from the crown of Belgium or any other ...
— Options • O. Henry

... over the immediate scene. No one seemed to notice the coming of the dark, which stole down on us with an unspeakable mystery. For long we sat still, the clatter of many tongues becoming stilled into the witchery of the scene. Lower the sun sank, till only the ruddiness of the afterglow lit the expanse with rosy light; then this failed in turn, and the ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... with a mocking smile when his steps slackened; a gracefully malicious, tormenting, laughing creature of lace and silk, whose retreat was a challenge, whose every movement and gesture seemed instinct with the witchery of provocation. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... at first pervaded the mind of the author, but not less essential to the felicitous realization of his conception. Physical beauty, the magic of voice, look, and manner, the play of countenance, the step of grace, the witchery of love, the accents of despair, combine with the power of language to add a tenfold attraction to the creations of fancy. All the arts seem, in such representations, to combine their efforts to entrance the mind, every avenue to the heart is at once flooded with the highest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... shoots up, And Love ascends his throne, I cannot hear your songs, O birds, For the witchery of my own. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... to the amateur, in effect:—"What if you have not all advantages of clockwork and observatory equipment. You may know something of the witchery of the heavens even with a little telescope of three to five inches aperture!" "Pleasures of the Telescope" is popular in style rather than technical. For setting forth "the chief attractions of the starry heavens," a complete set of star-maps is included, showing "all the ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... burned by them in return; and invariably, these tales tell us, those who are so bespoken meet some one the next day with plain marks of the injury they had inflicted on the froward cat,—which was sure evidence of witchery and sorcery. Doubtless full many a human being has been put to death, in times past, on no stronger evidence of being a witch. Humanity did not come to the rescue of the cat and bring her out from the shadow of ignominy that hung over her in mediaeval times until 1618, when an interdict ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... they did on the neighbouring hills, and that when the night was far spent. Whenever they heard such a sound as one makes when he splits wood with an axe (a noise that may be heard afar off), they drew thence an omen of evil, and were afraid, and said that the sounds were part of the witchery of Tezeatlipoca, that often thus dismayeth men who journey in the night. Now, when tidings of these things came to a certain brave man, one exercised in war, he drew near, being guided by the sound, till he came to the very cause of the hubbub. And when he came upon it, with difficulty he caught ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... seeming patience. But the music buzzed in his brain and his toes tingled for it; breathing the warm, voluptuous air, he inhaled hints of a thousand agreeable and exciting scenes; watching, he perceived in perturbation the witchery of a hundred exquisite women. And a rancorous discontent gnawed at ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... charm those little London work-girls have, with their short, tossing frocks and tumbling hair! There are no other work-girls in the world to compare with them for sheer witchery of face and character. The New York work-girl is a holy terror. The Parisian grisette has a trim figure and a doughy face. The Berlin work-girl knows more about viciousness, and looks more like a suet dumpling than any one else. But, though her figure may ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... visual quality of the atmosphere with which he pervades his narrative he has no equal among the writers of English prose-fiction until Sir Walter Scott appears. "Apuleius has enveloped his world of marvels in a heavy air of witchery and romance. You wander with Lucius across the hills and through the dales of Thessaly. With all the delight of a fresh curiosity you approach its far-seen towns. You journey at midnight under the stars, listening in terror for the howling of the wolves or the stealthy ambush. At other ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... the ideas embodied in the following lines—ideas of which the crudeness cannot be concealed by all the witchery of Milton's ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd

... The Earthly Paradise not much need be said. "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon" is a fairy tale, in the strain of Morris' prose romances. It was suggested by Thorpe's Yule-tide Stories, the tale coming from the Voelundar Saga. There is a witchery about it that makes it pleasant reading in a dreamy hour, but except the names and a few scenes about the farmstead, there is nothing Icelandic about it. The virile element of the best Icelandic literature is wanting here, and the hero's excuse ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... Borgia, the Gonzaga, D'Este of Ferrara, Riario, Montefeltro, Orsini—by the Saint of Padua, he would face them each with his beautiful wife; charm them, turn their heads, and then—ping! Let the neatest wrist win the odd trick. Very pleasant schemes of witchery and silent murder did he make as the Santa Fina drove him through the dark blue waters on his honeymoon, and at last brought him up to point out to his adoring instrument a low golden shore, a darker line ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... beauty, indeed, that girl! She danced like a fairy, she sang exquisitely, so that every one who knew her seemed amazed at her perfect way of doing everything she attempted. Who was it that thus summoned all this witchery, making such a tumult in young Hawthorne's bosom? She was "daughter to Leontes and Hermione," king and queen of Sicilia, and her name was Perdita! It was Shakespeare who introduced Hawthorne to his first real love, and the lover never forgot his mistress. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... pray you, cease to comb out, Comb out your long hair, For I have heard of witchery ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce

... he could see none. But here she was in his arms, a living, breathing, vital, passionate figure, her heart beating against his own, pleading with him to take her away. Here was love with all its witchery, with all its magic, with all its power, attacking the defenses of his heart; and the woman whom he adored as his very life, with all the passion in his being, was urging, imploring, begging him to take her away. He was weakening, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... There had been witchery in it all. For Gaston lifted the girl on the waves of his music, and did what he pleased with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... captivating, fresh and invigorating and compelling as the winds of the mighty Sierras and plains of the land she inhabited, enveloped and animated her. The rushing, whirling climaxes up to which she worked were startling—tremendous. The subtle, hypnotic influence and witchery of her presence filled her entire surroundings and so held and dominated the spectators that they were swept irresistibly along with her as the rhythm of the dance increased. She swayed and enthralled the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... less faithful; he found means to communicate to me a particular night on which he proposed to attempt to storm the nunnery of Saint Bride, and carry me from hence to freedom and the greenwood, of which Wallace was generally called the king. In an evil hour—an hour I think of infatuation and witchery—I suffered the abbess to wheedle the secret out of me, which I might have been sensible would appear more horribly flagitious to her than to any other woman that breathed; but I had not taken the vows, and I thought ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... gently, 'are you ill?' The old witchery was in her voice, and the sleeping man answered ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... Cherokee characters. A brief examination disclosed the fact that it contained just those matters that had proved so difficult to procure. Here were prayers, songs, and prescriptions for the cure of all kinds of diseases—for chills, rheumatism, frostbites, wounds, bad dreams, and witchery; love charms, to gain the affections of a woman or to cause her to hate a detested rival; fishing charms, hunting charms—including the songs without which none could ever hope to kill any game; prayers to make the corn grow, to frighten away storms, and to drive off witches; prayers ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... It would be absurd to expect that Charles II. had much to do with its completion, for he was, in his own estimation, more pleasantly employed than in watching the flight of time by heavenly luminaries. His attractions were on earth, where the splendour of a wicked court and the witchery of bright eyes eclipsed all other pursuits. Still, the licentious king was not forgotten by the inventer of the dial. Among the pictures on some of the glasses were portraits of the king, the two queens, the duke of York, prince Rupert, &c. In the king's picture, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various

... crookedly dispersed in wandering lines. She took his arm; he felt her heart leap against it; those innocent, trustful throbs upbraided him. At the same time his own heart beat with a sort of fond, protecting tenderness; he felt the witchery of his power to make this young, radiant, and beautiful creature hang flattered and bewildered on his talk; he liked the compassionate worship with which his tacit confidence had inspired her, even while he was not without ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... spell that held me long, The dear, dear witchery of song. I said, the poet's idle lore Shall waste my prime of years no more, For Poetry, though heavenly born, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... a piece of Witch Hazel's witchery, or inspiration, that she named Miss Craydocke; for Miss Craydocke was an old, dear friend of Mrs. Geoffrey's, in that "heart of things" behind the fashions, where the kingdom is growing up. But of course Hazel could not have ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... next poem, "Christabel," the exercise of his power in this line is still more skilful and singular. The thing attempted in "Christabel" is the most difficult of execution in the whole field of romance—witchery by daylight; and the success is complete. Geraldine, so far as she goes, is perfect. She is sui generis. The reader feels the same terror and perplexity that Christabel in vain struggles to express, and the same spell that ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... youthful, mischievous face towards him in the moonlight. The witchery of her blue eyes was still there as of old, the same frank irresponsibility beamed from them; her parted lips seemed to give him back the breath of his youth. He started, but she ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... come to her people if she should succeed, she became so fired with this noble resolve which had taken such complete possession of her that poor Oowikapun, while more and more in love with her, felt himself, while under the witchery of her impassioned words, verily guilty in having dared to make a proposal of marriage which would in any way thwart a purpose so noble, and which might be followed by such ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... the grounds, and soon she yielded to a fancy to see the effect of moonlight through an apple-tree that towered like a mound of snow at some little distance from the house. She would not have been human had the witchery of the May evening been without its influence. If Burt could have understood her, this was his opportunity. If he had come with step and tone that accorded with the quiet evening, and simply said, "Amy, you know—you have seen that I love you; what hope can you give me?" ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... Webster, and of Mr. Ewbank, the Commissioner of Patents, in whose report the article in question was published by the Government of the United States, it will not be considered, perhaps, as putting faith in "water-witchery," to suggest that, possibly, Elkington did really possess a faculty, not common to all mankind, of detecting running water or springs, even far below the surface. We have the high authority of Tam o' Shanter for the opinion, that witches cannot cross a stream ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... White and Roses Red, Gracious sweetness past compare, Beauty's self to thee hath fled, Lilies White and Roses Red: Lover's service bows its head, Awed by witchery so fair, Lilies White and Roses Red, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... inevitable employment of the day. Louisa Kerr dined with us, and Williams looked in. We talked a good deal on Celtic witchery and fairy lore. I was glad to renew my acquaintance with this able ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... did feel it, after all; for no sooner did it roll slowly away, and, ceasing to be a discomfort, turn into scenery, than all its olden witchery came back. I have had no more than a glimpse of the world from a mountain. The evening and the morning were the first day; and, till time shall be no more, the evening and the morning will be all that there is of the day, aesthetically considered. Yet ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... are strangely fair! Fair—for the jewels that sparkle there,— Fair—for the witchery of the spell That ivory keys alone can tell; But when their delicate touches rest Here in my own do I love them best, As I clasp with eager acquisitive spans My glorious ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... represented in all parts of the United States by one of its forms. They are ground loving birds, frequenting swamps and thickets where they can be located by their loud, unmistakable song of "Witchery, w i t c h e r y, witch." They nest on or very near the ground, making their nests of grass, lined with hair; these are either in hollows in the ground at the foot of clumps of grass or weeds, or attached to the weed stalks within a few inches of ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... greater than any laid upon me since I seized the kingship. A maiden unseen has met us, and by her power would take from me my dear, my comely son. If thou help not, he will be taken from thy king by woman's wiles and witchery." ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... seem so safe from change, Nor in such skies benignant hover, As this, beneath whose witchery strange You tread on rose-leaves ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Lord Fingal, in the presence of Lords Clifford and Petre, and reduced to writing and signed by these three noblemen, soon after quitting the Prince's presence. Over the meeting at which this indictment was preferred, Lord Fingal presided, and the celebrated "witchery" resolutions, referring to the influence then exercised on the Prince by Lady Hertford, were proposed by his lordship's son, Lord Killeen. It may, therefore, be fairly assumed, that the existence of the fourth pledge was proved, the first ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... the old man was still shy and constrained; but the warm soft air, the light breeze, and the light shadows, the scent of the grass and the birch-buds, the peaceful light of the starlit, moonless night, the pleasant tramp and snort of the horses—all the witchery of the roadside, the spring and the night, sank into the poor German's soul, and he was himself the first to begin ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... of that girl of yours, that blossom of old Spain, All glamour, grace and witchery, all passion, verve and glow. How maddening she must have been! You made me see her plain, There by our little camp-fire, in the silence and the snow. You loved her and she loved you. She'd a husband, too, I think, A doctor ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... these ladies concentrated in the person of one perfect woman would have had no witchery for the banker. His heart was dead. He had given all the truth, all the passion of which his nature was capable, to the one woman who had possessed ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... flowers stole on Duncan Rowallan's senses, quickening his pulses, and making him breathe faster to take it in. He was very near the dark, bird-like head from which the June wind had blown the love-locks. A balmy breath surrounded him like a halo—the witchery of youth's attraction, which is as old as Eden, ambient ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... large and rather sickly eyes upon her. For a moment he was in doubt, but belief in the witchery of sound prevailed, for he had yet to meet a being insensible to the "music of the soul," and so with a fond and fatuous murmur he pinched the martyred atmosphere ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers

... such natures might come together, and the girl shuddered when she saw Mademoiselle de Verneuil go up to the young man with a passionate look and, taking him by the hand, draw him close beside her and into the light, with a coquettish glance that was full of witchery. ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... was startled to see how the witchery of the scene possessed her companion. His face took on a set, half-smiling expression, and he dropped her arm as if they had arrived at the place of entertainment to which he had been escorting her. He no longer walked with measured ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... down on a box just within the door and looked soberly at him, scanning his face. Her hands lay quietly in her lap and she did not seem to see Thompson's involuntarily extended arms. There was about her none of the glowing witchery of yesterday. She lifted to him a face thoughtful, even a little sad. And Thompson's hands fell, his heart keeping them company. It was as if the somberness of those wind-swept woods had crept into his cabin. It stilled the rush of ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... softer sound of its syllables. Her debut, September 15, 1757, was one of most brilliant success, and in a night Paris was at her feet. Her genius, her beauty, her voice, her magnificent eyes, her incomparable grace and fascinating witchery of manner, were the talk of the city; and the opera was besieged every night she sang. Freron, in speaking of the waiting crowds, said, "I doubt if they would take such trouble to get into paradise." The ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... Mr. Swinburne and Walt Whitman and we cannot help admitting that for common hearts it stands in need of the commendation. The transfer of affection from an all loving Father to an adamantine universe is a process for which we may well seek all the aid that the witchery of poetry can supply. Unluckily we are haunted by the consciousness that the poetry itself is blindly ground out by the same illimitable mill of evolution which grinds out Virtue and affection. We are by no means sure that we ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... noon, when by the forest's edge He lay beneath the branches high, The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart,—he never felt The witchery of ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... What witchery of romance and spell-bound fancy is in the song of the Dordogne as it breaks over its shallows under high rocky cliffs and ruined castles! Everything that can charm the poet and the artist is here. The grandeur of rugged nature combines with the most ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... sails, was splendidly seen from the windows of the lodge. The garden to the left and the orchard to the right had never been so riotous with spring, and had burst into impassioned bloom, as if to accommodate Caroline, though she was certainly the last woman to whom the witchery of Freya could be attributed; the last woman, as her friends affirmed, to at all adequately appreciate and make the most of such a setting for the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... a strange fancy that led a maid into the dark forest at such an hour," said Kenric sternly. "What manner of witchery led you there? But you spoke of Duncan Graham, and now I mind me that he too would have gone forth to the Rock of Solitude had I not warned him against ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... people ever forget the first sight of a palm-tree of any species. I vividly remember seeing one for the first time at Malaga, but the coco-palm groves of the Pacific have a strangeness and witchery of their own. As I write now I hear the moaning rustle of the wind through their plume-like tops, and their long slender stems, and crisp crown of leaves above the trees with shining leafage which revel ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... gap here, roughly choked up by a higgledy-piggledy heap of rubbish. Fraulein von Vieradlers had attacked it before her astonished companion, also alighting, came to her aid. There was witchery in the creature, for her delicate, ungloved hands, covered with rings, tugged at the roughly hewn tree-trunks and misshapen blocks of stone without a scratch and, as her frame offered no suggestion of strength, the swiftness with which they were moved, confirmed the idea of the supernatural. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... year after year at the same fixed point: I think we should be thankful if we find that as regards our favourite books and authors our taste remains unchanged; that the calm judgment of our middle age approves the preferences of ten years since, and that these gather strength as time gives them the witchery of old remembrances and associations. You enthusiastically admired Byron once, you estimate him very differently now. You once thought Festus finer than Paradise Loft, but you have swung away from ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... glittering stars inlaid, Nor gallant ships o'er tranquil ocean dancing, Nor gay careering knights in arms advancing, Nor wild herds bounding through the forest glade, Nor tidings new of happiness delay'd, Nor poesie, Love's witchery enhancing, Nor lady's song beside clear fountain glancing, In beauty's pride, with chastity array'd; Nor aught of lovely, aught of gay in show, Shall touch my heart, now cold within her tomb Who was erewhile my life and light below! So heavy—tedious—sad—my days unblest, That I, with strong desire, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... misery which he most coveted. The old gentleman was cordial, the old lady was effusive, the awakener was what he had always been, and Lilian was what she had always been to Barndale—a bewildering maddening witchery, namely, which set him fairly beside himself. Let it not be prejudicial to him in your judgment that you see him for the first time under these foolish circumstances. Under other conditions you would find much to admire in him. Even now, if you have any taste for live statuary, you shall admire ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray

... Horn, and Bosphorus, Constantinople is, probably, the most glorious spot on earth. Ascend its mountains, and overlook the gulfs of Salerno and Gaeta, as well as its own waters, the Campugna Felici and the memorials of the past, all seen in the witchery of an Italian atmosphere, and the mind becomes perfectly satisfied that nothing equal is to be found elsewhere; but enter the bay of Rio, and take the whole of the noble panorama in at a glance, and even the experienced traveller is staggered with the stupendous ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... fled, how vain The witchery of earth and skies, Love's look, or music's sweetest ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... the witchery of this bittersweet thorn. It is well worth our further careful study. Seen collectively, the thorny rose branch is instantly suggested, but occasionally, when we observe a single isolated specimen, especially in the month of July, he will certainly masquerade in an ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... fairest vision he had ever seen, in spite of her indignation against him, and if she had sought to fascinate him—to weave the spell of her witchery more effectually about him, she could have taken no surer way to ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... entirely to him and even succeeds by her charms and her devotion in enthralling him. Meanwhile Bouillon has sent two of his knights, Ubalt and a Danish warrior, to recall Rinaldo to his duty. They are detained by Armida's witchery; the Danish knight meets a demon, who has taken his bride's face and tenderly calls him to her, but Ubalt destroys the charm and both succeed in approaching Rinaldo, who, his love-dream dissipated by the call of honor, resolves to return to the army with his companions. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... such enthusiasm upon her "pretty ways." Her "pretty ways!" ah, how fatal a thing it is for mankind when Nature endows woman with those pretty ways! From the thrall of Grecian noses and Castilian eyes there may be hope of deliverance, but from the spell of that indescribable witchery there is none. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... eloquencies and exactitudes of description, he is emphatically a master. His mind, pagan in its bent, is splendidly broad in its comprehension of the arcana of Nature and that of a poet sensitive to all the witchery of a world which at core is inscrutably dark and mysterious. He knows, none better, of the comfort to be got even from the sad when its beauty is made palpitating. No one before him, not Meredith himself, has so interfused Nature with man as to bring out the thought ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... dealt the reptile a blow, but the stick being decayed and brittle, inflicted little injury on the serpent, and only caused it to turn itself towards Mrs. Jameson, and fix its keen and beautiful, but malignant eyes, steadily upon her. The witchery of the serpent's eyes so irresistibly rooted her to the ground, that for a moment she did not wish to remove from her ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... unbroken for five full days, during which we sweltered, day and night, in the melting heat of the tropics, with the blazing sun right overhead every day at noon, and a waning moon soaring into the heavens later and still later each night to render the hours of darkness magical with the witchery of her beauty and mystery. And during the whole of this time we never shifted our position by so much as a single mile a day. At length, however, on the sixth day, a few cat's-paws came playing at ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... was different, and the popularity of his poems became almost universal. However, there are the same fire, vivacity, and brilliant coloring in all three of these masterpieces, as they were regarded two generations ago, reminding one of the witchery of Ariosto; yet there is no great variety in these poems such as we find in Byron, no great force of passion or depth of sentiment, but a sort of harmonious rhythm,—more highly prized in the earlier part of the century than in the latter, since Wordsworth and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... Scarabaeus, and the fascination that comes over whoever has ventured to dabble in that kind of wares is as dangerous as the chances of play. Be content with a single one! If you once get into comparison, you have abandoned yourself to the witchery of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... path and separate her from my haughty handsome idol, my king, my love," she thought slowly, her black eyes wearing an intent look, her large lips tightly compressed. Her companion did not break upon her reverie, he sat quiet, studying her profile as he had often done before; there was a certain witchery in the hour, the lateness, the stillness, the roseate lights above them, then what we have all felt, the sweet bliss of sitting in enforced quiet beside a loved one; our brain is quiet, our hands idle; we dread to break the ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... the road till the moon rose and the witchery of night came to make the girlish eyes more brilliant, softening their gayety into a wistful tenderness, only to these did the close of the day seem as sweet and momentous as the morning. While the trusty horse jogged ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... period, when his conference with my father intrenched on our late dinner-hour, and I shall never forget the singular beauty of his face and expression, nor the charm of his manner, as he sat at our board discoursing, with an abandon and witchery I have observed in no one else, on subjects of art and letters, on men and manners, of nations past and present, until hours fled like moments, and time seemed utterly forgotten in the presence of geniality and genius. Then, starting gayly and suddenly ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... comment. Marion cut, and resumed her cigarette. Sylvia dealt with that witchery of rounded wrists and slim fingers fascinating to men and women alike. Then, cards en regle, passed the make. Plank, cautiously consulting the score, made it spades, which being doubled, Grace led a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... secret, which she knows, is told; And, laughing with a lofty bliss Of innocent accord, we kiss: About her neck my pleasure weeps; Against my lip the silk vein leaps; Then says an Angel, 'Day or night, If yours you seek, not her delight, Although by some strange witchery It seems you kiss her, 'tis not she; But, whilst you languish at the side Of a fair-foul phantasmal bride, Surely a dragon and strong tower Guard the true lady in her bower.' And I say, 'Dear my Lord. Amen!' And ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... constantly required renewing, and were never honoured at last. Any application for present relief, in good current coin of the realm, was invariably followed by what Meric Casaubon very significantly calls "sermonlike stuff." The learned professor in witchery, John Stearne, seems to fix six shillings as the maximum of money payment at one time which in all his experience he had detected between witches and their familiars. He was examining Joan Ruccalver, of Powstead, in Suffolk, who ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts



Words linked to "Witchery" :   necromancy, witchcraft, black magic, sorcery



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