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Trance   /træns/   Listen
Trance

noun
1.
A psychological state induced by (or as if induced by) a magical incantation.  Synonyms: enchantment, spell.
2.
A state of mind in which consciousness is fragile and voluntary action is poor or missing; a state resembling deep sleep.



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"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books



... his knife, which he has just seen. The knife slips from his hand, and Antony remains propped against the wall of his cell, his mouth wide open, motionless—like one in a trance. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... her? I will gaze, In sad and silent trance, On those blue eyes whose liquid rays Look love in every glance. But shall I tell her eyes more bright, Though bright her own may beam, Will fling a deeper spell to-night ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... beauty," answered the Greek, as if still in his trance, "and when I hear Euphrosyne, fairest of the Graces, sing with the voice of Erato, the Song-Queen, I grow afraid. For a mortal may not hear things too divine ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... he and Hannah bent over the unconscious young man, Philippa seemed to come out of her trance; slowly, with upraised hands, and head bent upon her breast, she stepped backward, backward, out of the room, out of the house. On the doorstep, in the darkness, she paused and listened for several minutes to certain dreadful ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland

... gave her a final scrutiny. "You might use just a tiny bit more colour, dearie—I'm afraid the excitement's made you a little pale. And you MUST brighten up! There's sort of a look in your eyes as if you'd got in a trance and couldn't get out. You've had it all day. I must run: your father wants me to help him with his studs. Walter hasn't come yet, but I'll look after him; don't worry, And you better HURRY, dearie, if you're going to take any time fixing the ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... as from a trance, and waving his arms, ran towards his enemy; but the savage brute, as if a lion had been rushing on him, turned round, and ran away towards the entrance, where, meeting his keeper, he tossed him high into the air. All were disconcerted except the brave youth, who had resumed his attitude ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... cares and sufferings. Sweet, lovely beings, let them have husbands to lift them above all earthly cares and trials! Oh! angels of our homes," says he, liftin' his eyes to the heavens, and kinder shettin' 'em, some as if he was goin' into a trance, "fly around, ye angels, in your native haunts! mingle not with rings, and vile laws; flee away, flee ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... because a revolution was not made in the constitution? No! Everything was done; because we commenced with reparation, not with ruin. Accordingly the state flourished. Instead of laying as dead, in a sort of trance, or exposed, as some others, in an epileptic fit, to the pity or derision of the world, for her wild, ridiculous, convulsive movements, impotent to every purpose but that of dashing out her brains against the pavement, Great Britain rose ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... also, that this afternoon some of the male workers had added to their usual solidity a singular trance-like intoxication. It had often struck him before as a form of drunkenness peculiar to the St. Kentigern laborers. Men passed him singly and silently, as if following some vague alcoholic dream, or moving through some Scotch mist of whiskey and ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... does not rest exclusively on the phenomena at Hydesville; for since then we have had many additional phenomena, as the varied physical phases, materialisation, slate-writing and drawing, painting, levitation, passing of matter through matter, trance-speaking, clairvoyance, psychometric reading, and numerous other modes of communicating with the spirit world. The correspondent says: William H. Hyde, who recently found the arm and leg bones of a human being at the old Fox homestead, made another search in the cellar ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd

... miss," went on the attendant, "she soon settles after a dose, but this time she seemed to pass into a sort of a trance. Gen'rally her words are broken-like an' wild, an' I pays no heed to 'em; but tonight she talked wonderful clear, all about India at first, an' of a band playin', with sogers marchin' past. Then she spoke about some people called coolies. There was a lot about them, in lines an' tea gardens. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... the country were perhaps in advance of the men in responding to the new influences which were at work upon them. The number of convents increased rapidly, every countryside had its wonder-working nun who could unveil the mysteries of the world while in the power of some ecstatic trance, and women everywhere were the most tireless supporters of the clergy. It was natural that this should be the case, for there was a nervous excitement in the air which was especially effective upon feminine minds, and the Spanish woman in particular was sensitive and impressionable ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... spontaneous ghostly manifestations, could for one moment believe in the genuineness of the phenomena produced at seances. They have never deceived me, and I am of the opinion spirits cannot be convoked to order, either through a so-called medium falling into a so-called trance, through table-turning, automatic writing, or anything else. If a spirit comes, it will come either voluntarily, or in obedience to some Unknown Power—and certainly neither to satisfy the curiosity ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... the name given to a group of low tenement hovels that bounded a long, narrow patio. At this hot hour the men and women, stretched out half naked on the ground, were sleeping in the shade as in a trance. Some women, in shifts, huddled into a circle of four or five, were smoking the same cigar, each taking a puff and passing it ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... to express the feelings of delight with which I gazed upon this little village, after my long banishment from the civilised world. It was like recovering from a trance of four long dreamy years; and I wandered about the streets, gazing in joy and admiration upon everything and everybody, but especially upon the ladies, who appeared quite a strange race of beings to me—and ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... write. When the troop of horses and mules and his companions left, he never spoke a word of farewell to his companions or animals, nor to me. He sat silent and motionless, with his eyes riveted to the ground as if in a trance. Some days later we discovered that he had stolen from our store some 40 lbs. of coffee and a large quantity of sugar, as well as a number of other articles which had ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... cold and snowy when Nimrod and I started out next morning to look for mountain sheep. I followed Nimrod's horse for several miles as in a trance, the white flakes falling silently around me, and wondered how it would be possible for any human being to find his way back to camp; but I had been taught my ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... woke up with a start. There, to either hand, lay the bridges, with the moving figures atop and the hurrying river below. And from one of them his mother had leapt when she destroyed herself. In the trance of thought that followed, it was to him as though he felt her wild nature, her lawless blood, stirring within him, and realised, in a fierce, reluctant way, that he was hers as well as his father's. In a sense, he shared Reuben's hatred; for he, best of all, knew what she had made his ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... according to his wont, of the nearest book (it lay on the table, with an old magazine and a little japanned tray containing Tarrant's professional cards—his denomination as a mesmeric healer), and spent ten minutes in turning it over. It was a biography of Mrs. Ada T. P. Foat, the celebrated trance-lecturer, and was embellished by a portrait representing the lady with a surprised expression and innumerable ringlets. Ransom said to himself, after reading a few pages, that much ridicule had ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... that followed, as every one will readily understand them. Captain Truck listened to Paul like one in a trance, and it was some time after the young man had done before he spoke. With a wish to cheer him, he was told of the ample provision of stores that had been brought off in the launch, of the trade winds that had now apparently set in, and of the great probability of their all reaching the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... fadeth not away, and Madonna, borne from heaven by the children, comes with her Son to welcome him home. There, in the most characteristic work of the fifteenth century, you find man still thinking about death, not as a trance out of which we shall awaken to some terrible remembrance, but as sleep, a sweet and fragile slumber, that has something of the drooping of the flowers about it, in a certain touching beauty and regret that is never bitter, but, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... again, "I know we've got to wake up out of this trance, but I can't figure when it's going ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... Hill victory soon became apparent. The threat of Erasmus sitting on Impati still impended, and Yule moved his camp next day to a site which he believed to be out of range. But in the meantime Erasmus awoke from his trance and, on the afternoon of October 21, opened fire with a six-inch gun,[18] and again Yule was compelled to shift his camp. He had already asked for reinforcements, but White was unable to spare them, and recommended him to fall back upon Ladysmith. Next day Yule was encouraged ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... you, to ask you for your own sakes to be reasonable creatures, your cowardly wrath falls upon her! You do well!' They were silent while he spoke. They were watching, open-eyed and open-mouthed, the thread of dark-red blood which wakened them up from their trance of passion. Those nearest the gate stole out ashamed; there was a movement through all the crowd—a retreating movement. Only one ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... General stopped suddenly, and the splendid claret and honey color of his cheeks went a dark shade more to claret. He had come to from his trance, and remembered me. "I don't know why I'm telling you all these details," he declared abruptly. "I suppose you're tired to death listening." His alert ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... silent, and I also, marvelling on her face and on the words which she spoke. There came a light tap at the door, and she awoke as it were from a trance which possessed her. She drew her hands over her face, with a long sigh; she knelt down swiftly, and crossed herself, making an obeisance, for I deem that her saints had been with her, wherefore I also crossed myself and prayed. Then ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... ear caught this vast Aeolian intonation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the flowers below, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... expression that steals over the face of a smoker who has lighted his after-dinner cigar, or of a drug victim who is being lulled by his opiate. The music seems to satisfy a something within them. Faces dull, eyes lustreless, they listen in a sort of trance. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... her. She would dance round the butchery of the fold, chanting her venomous Gaelic exultation in uncouth rhymes that she strung together as easily as most old people of her kind can do such things in times of passion or trance. She must have lived like a vulture, for no share would she have in our pots, though sometimes she added a relish to them by fetching dainties from houses by the way, whose larders in our ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... his rank generally speak. "The young leddy, they told me, no sooner heard that the vessel was in safety, than she gave way to a sorrow which it was pitiful to witness. They tried to comfort her, but she was not to be comforted. She had gone off into a sort of trance when the vessel brought up this ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... issued from his house in one of the small alleys, staff in hand, and with a curious kind of horn or whistle. This he blew as he walked along, from time to time, without turning his head, in that strange trance of passivity which distinguishes the Valencian peasant. Out from dark corners, narrow passages, mud hovels on all sides, came tearing along little pigs, big pigs, dark, light, fat, thin pigs,—pigs of every description,—and joined the procession ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... your daily occupations,—school, garden, driving, &c.—your Sunday reading, visiting the cottages, &c., and the very thought of it makes me feel like old times. When occasionally I dream, or fall into a kind of trance when awake, and fancy myself walking up from the lodge to the house, and old forms and faces rise up before me, I can scarcely contain the burst of joy and happiness, and then I give a shake and say, "Well, it would be very nice, but look about the horizon, and see how many ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... short ladder had been obtained and placed in the hatchway, carried me up out of the hold and laid me carefully on the quarter-deck: I heard nothing, I saw nothing, I felt nothing, till a shock, as if of cold water dashed in my face, once more aroused me from my trance, and told me that ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... seer, he was as innocent as Boone. Stripped clean, he got out his map, such geological reports as he could find and went into a studious trance for a month, emerging mentally with the freshness of a snake that has shed its skin. What had happened in Pennsylvania must happen all along the great Alleghany chain in the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... It wouldn't have done on Christmas morning. It would have struck a jarring note at the first night of "Hernani." I was trying to account for its wrongness when Soames suddenly and strangely broke silence. "A hundred years hence!" he murmured, as in a trance. ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm

... here, It means new work for him. Ah—notice now The music makes no more pretence to play! Sovereigns and ministers have moved apart, And talk, and leave the ladies quite aloof— Even the Grand Duchesses and Empress, all— Such mighty cogitations trance their minds! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... kinds of things. I could tell you—who knows the old woman was not right after all?—listen to this. Yesterday, this very yesterday, she was standing there by the mantel-piece, talking as quietly as we are talking now. Suddenly, without a word, down she falls in a swoon, or trance, or something unearthly. I had let the maids go out; we two were alone in the house. There she lay, and I thought she was dead. I got up again! No one knows what it cost me, Margaret. I have forgotten how to walk; I merely dragged myself ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... bomb in the idyllic village. Plans were made of the wedding date and elaborate ceremony. The village Luga had never witnessed yet a marriage ceremony of this magnitude. The American bride was like a fairy princess of some ancient times. Petka was like one in a trance. But Vasska, the blacksmith, opposed to the idea of such a strange marriage, pounded his hand ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... grace of her bending neck, informed the silence of the woods with life and charm. Meynell watched her a few moments in a trance of pleasure. But memory broke in upon the trance and scattered all his pleasure. What reasonable hope of winning the daughter of that quiet, indomitable woman, who, at their first meeting, had shown him with such icy gentleness the gulf ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... remember that it had been made to him. But in order to persuade a person that he sees such a thing as a rope being thrown in the air and so forth, that person must be so much under the influence that when he is released from it he is totally unable to remember what he saw when under the trance. How then, can he describe what he saw ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... "are you mad? There are ten thousand devils in you, and we must drive them out by some means." After this discharge of priestly venom, the priest left in a rage giving the door a terrible slam, which awoke my mother from her sorrowful trance. During the whole conversation, such was the electrical power of the priest over my mother's weak and nervous system, that if she attempted to say a word in my behalf, the keen, snakish black eye of the priest would at once make her tremble ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... a man whose mind was cast in a different mould; he had already marked the solicitude and given it his own interpretation, and he had already opened his own eyes upon her beauty. How far this had conscious connection with the condition of actual trance into which he now fell cannot be known. It is probable that what the Psalmist calls the "secret parts" are not in such minds as Smith's open to ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... savage, inexorable music still surges and thunders round her. And just as Achilles is about to leave her, in order to throw himself on the spears of his own men, her trance breaks. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... common, hackneyed. Why, sometimes, out in the hills, in the torrid quiet of summer noons, she had knelt by the shaded pools, and buried her hands in the great slumberous beds of water-lilies, her blood curdling in a feverish languor, a passioned trance, from which she roused herself, weak ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... he subsided into a deep trance, which lasted till the faithful grew tired of waiting, and shuffled slowly out of the door. When the last guest had gone, he rose from his chair, with no pretence of spiritual dignity, and counted his money and ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... another lesson, if that were needed, of our total unimportance. While we were waiting on the roadside, an Australian brigade of artillery passed by. The men's faces were dreary with fatigue; the gunners were dismounted and marched as in a trance. The harness was muddy, the steel rusty, the horses lean and discouraged. We understood that they were pulling out from an offensive in which they had received a bad cutting up. To my overstrained imagination it seemed that the men had the vision of ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... upon him grew A lethargy of sense, a trance, And soon imagination threw Before him her wild game of chance. And now upon the snow in thaw A young man motionless he saw, As one who bivouacs afield, And heard a voice cry—Why! He's killed!— And now he views forgotten foes, Poltroons and ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... resting her elbow upon her divining-box, and leaning her head upon her hand, mutters prayers and incantations until she has summoned the soul of the dead or absent person, which takes possession of her, and answers questions through her mouth. The prophecies which the Ichiko utters during her trance are held in high esteem by the superstitious ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... with facts and figures, but the Cap'n listened with only languid interest. He kept sighing and wrinkling his brows, as though in deep rumination on a matter far removed from the stumpage question. When the agreement of sale was laid before him he signed with a blunted lead-pencil, still in his trance. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... pink-cheeked doll of the white people. In her cheap suitcase which she had carried wrapped in her shawl on her back to the ranch, Annie-Many-Ponies still had that doll. So with her eyes fixed upon the letter, her mind stared trance-like at the vision of that long-ago day which had been ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... forward, too far from the man for him to pull her back; and in too deep a trance for him to have stopped her with safety to her brain. His face was that of one tortured as he rose to his feet and threw out his hands; and the sweat came out in great beads upon his forehead under ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... act not out of affection for the girl's standing as a princess, but to prevent discovery, bloodshed, and, her life. It is also known that these ascetics—infidels, children of the Devil—by charm, or drugs, or otherwise, can cause something like death for days—a trance, and the one who goes thus knows not who he was when he comes ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... aid it. It is aided by everything which makes us feel that a man is, as we say, terribly unlucky; and of this there is, even in Shakespeare, not a little. Here come in some of the accidents already considered, Juliet's waking from her trance a minute too late, Desdemona's loss of her handkerchief at the only moment when the loss would have mattered, that insignificant delay which cost Cordelia's life. Again, men act, no doubt, in accordance with their characters; but what is it that brings them just the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... called Spanish or Italian exists at all—anything but dialects of the lingua rustica showing traces of what Spanish and Italian are to be; though the originals of the great Poema del Cid cannot be far off. German is in something the same trance between its "Old" and its "Middle" state as is English. Only in France, and in both the great divisions of French speech, is vernacular literature active. The northern tongue, the langue d'oil, shows us—in actually known existence, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... always met at the gate upon his return by a sad-faced girl whose blue eyes wore a look of piteous appeal. He tried to comfort her all he could; but it did no good. She could not talk; she could scarcely eat or sleep, but went about her daily work as if in a trance. Occasionally in the evening she would give way to tears, and for three weeks she existed in a state of wretchedness no pen can describe. Then one evening her father handed her a letter in a strange handwriting and turned his face away, for ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... dead his sword she caught, And fell in trance that wist of nought, Swooning: but softly Balen sought To win from her the sword she thought To die on, dying by Launceor's side. Again her wakening wail outbroke As wildly, sword in hand, she woke And struck one swift and bitter stroke That ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... turned south here at the gate and went down the street, a-lookin' neither to the right nor the left. He looked to me like a man in a trance, almost. He keeps right on through Legal Row till he comes to Franklin Street, and then he goes up Franklin to B. Weil & Son's confectionery store; and there he turns in. I happened to be followin' 'long ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Death be truly one, And every spirit's folded bloom Through all its intervital gloom In some long trance ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... What did I know? Nothing! I had never been anywhere, I had never met anybody in particular, I had never been in love. I had never waked up. I was in a sort of trance, surrounded by the traditions of the genteel professional class. Of course, in a dim way I knew that my mother expected me to be something exceptional, but I was too comfortable to make any effort. It seemed to me I was quite unconventional enough in being such a reader and in keeping clear ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... while I still held control of my faculties, and, perceiving a slight movement of the snake's coils, I fired point-blank at the head, letting go the entire chamber of soft-nose bullets. Instantly the other men woke up from their trance and in their turn fired, emptying their Winchesters into the huge head, which by this time was raised to a great height above us, loudly hissing ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... dread, and much of the time, from a positive inability to move without incurring the risk of being driven from the defenceless vessel into the lake. But, as the wind diminished in force, and the motion of the bark became more regular, they rallied their senses, like men who had been in a trance, and one by one they rose to their feet. About this time Adelheid heard the sound of her father's voice, blessing her care, and consoling her sorrow. The north wind blew away the canopy of clouds, and the stars shone upon the angry Leman, bringing with them some such promise of divine aid as ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... from her short trance, and hastened with hurried steps to perform her well-known office. Then came a few minutes of exertion, during which the females transferred all that was necessary to their subsistence, and which had not been already provided in the block, to their little citadel. The glowing light, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... had now lain as it were in a doze for about two hours, and my father and myself, who were anxiously watching every breath, observed her awake up, as if it were from a sound sleep; she appeared to feel as if she had recovered from a trance; she spoke; and to the great joy of my father and myself she was perfectly collected. But our joy was of the most transient nature. She looked around in the most melancholy manner, and having enquired where all ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... Clairaudience, Inspiration, Trance, and Physical Mediumship; Prayer, Mind, and Magnetic Healing; and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... that. That is why a shepherd's pipe is such a splendid thing. To pick out a tune and listen to it starts the mind out of its trance and promotes mental exercise. It does what gymnastics do for ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... in a trance. How was this? The copper bath he had used for months was gone—gone like a shot, with nothing to make it go. Nothing, that is, except an electric cell and a few drops of the unknown solution. He looked at the empty space where it had stood, at the broken glass covering his ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... on, and I read more and more. Sometimes, deep in Scott, before dinner, I did not hear the bell, and had to be hunted up by some one and roused from my trance. I hardly knew where I was, when they called me. I got up from my chair not knowing whether it was for dinner or breakfast or for school in the morning. Sometimes, late at night, even after a long day of play—those violent and never-pausing exertions that ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... point of the plot: in the curt dismissal of the humbled spirit, at the height of his revel, to his place as broom in the corner. Wistful almost is the slow vanishing until the last chords come like the breaking of a fairy trance. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... body was searched for purposes of identification, and there was found upon him a card with the following remarkable inscription:—'I am not dead. Take me to the St. James's Hospital.' To St. James's Hospital accordingly the young man was conveyed. It seems probable he is in a condition of trance—not for the first time—since he was provided with the card, and knew the hospital with which is associated in all men's minds the name of Dr Lefevre, who is so famous for his skill in the treatment of ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... was walking away from the hotel I perceived Rosa's victoria drawing up before the portico. She saw me. We exchanged a long look—a look charged with anxious questionings. Then she beckoned to me, and I, as it were suddenly waking from a trance, raised my ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... unexpectedly she began returning my kisses ... hungrily ... her eyes closed ... breathing deeply like one in a trance.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... right, they err: From caprice, not from choice, their favours come; They give, but think it toil to know to whom: The man that's nearest, yawning, they advance: 'Tis inhumanity to bless by chance. If merit sues, and greatness is so loth To break its downy trance, I pity both. I grant at court, Philander, at his need, (Thanks to his lovely wife) finds friends indeed. Of every charm and virtue she's possest: Philander! thou art exquisitely blest; The public envy! Now then, 'tis allow'd, The ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... truth was, that with some vivid boy-touch he had carried his hearer far. The Rat was deadly quiet. Even his eyes had not moved. He spoke almost as if he were in a sort of trance. "It's real," he said. "I'm there now. As high as you—go on—go on. I ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... you don't believe in her, but ... well, anyhow, yesterday she went into a trance. She was quite, quite unconscious. She saw things. She ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... hours at a time with eyes fixed ahead, a wild figure,—ragged and fringed. And we knew that the soul within him was torn with thoughts of his dead wife and of his child in captivity. Again, when the trance left him, he was an addition to our little ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... while Dhoop Ki Dhil came forward, moving like one in a trance, and said to the jungle man, 'Are you a god?' and the jungle man answered her with shame, 'No, I ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... amid the breathless and awed hush of the multitude around. Her eyes were glazing, her limbs were stiffening; but when the rite was over and finished, she raised her gaunt figure slowly up, and her eyes brightened to a strange intensity of joy, as, with the gesture of her finger and the trance-like gleam of her eye, she seemed like one who watched the disappearance of some ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... imagination, playful imagination, lively imagination, fertile imagination, fancy. mind's eye; such stuff as dreams are made of [Tempest]. ideality, idealism; romanticism, utopianism, castle-building. dreaming; phrensy^, frenzy; ecstasy, extasy^; calenture &c (delirium) 503 [Obs.]; reverie, trance; day dream, golden dream; somnambulism. conception, Vorstellung [G.], excogitation^, a fine frenzy; cloudland^, dreamland; flight of fancy, fumes of fancy; thick coming fancies [Macbeth]; creation of the brain, coinage of the brain; imagery. conceit, maggot, figment, myth, dream, vision, shadow, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... ship, and General Humbert. They treated us with great humanity on board the cutter, giving us a little weak brandy and water every five or six minutes, and after that a bason of good soup. I fell on the locker in a kind of trance for near thirty hours, and swelled to such a degree as to require medical aid to restore my decayed faculties. Having lost all our baggage, we were taken to Brest almost naked, where they gave us a rough shift of ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... Of the voiceless sepulcher Comes, or seems to come, a sound; Is't his Grace, the Duke, astir? In his trance he hath been laid As ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... always through the wall, took her in his arms and kissed her. But he might as well have kissed a woman in a trance. All that could be said was that Eve submitted to his embrace, and her attitude was another brilliant illustration of the fact that the most powerful oriental tyrants can be defied by their weakest slaves, provided that the weakest slaves know how ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... and bewildered with the richness of beauty in his productions, that I look forward to a second reading during which I can ponder and muse. The reading closed with a legend, so graphic, so powerful, with such a strain of grace and witchery through it, that I seemed to be in a trance. Such a vision as Alice, with so few touches, such a real existence! The sturdy, handsome, and strong Maule; the inevitable fate, "the innocent suffering for the guilty," seemingly so dark, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... letter, she swooned. When she came to her senses, she awoke as from a trance. But when she beheld the letter again, she read again the opprobrious word "faithlessness" in her husband's handwriting. She did not know what act of disloyalty she had committed. She moved about in her room by fits and starts. At last ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... All perished—all, in one remorseless year, Husband and children! one by one, by sword And ravenous plague, all perished: every tear Dried up, despairing, desolate, on board A British ship I waked, as from a trance restored. ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... at first, but the blood stop'd, His trance forsook him, and on better search We found they were ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... bosom in so deep and profound an expiration that it appeared as though it might never return again. Nor was it until Jonathan had replaced the ball in his pocket that he appeared to awaken from the trance that the sight of the object had sent him into. But no sooner had the cause of this strange demeanor disappeared into our hero's breeches-pocket than he arose as with an electric shock. In an instant he became transformed as by the touch of magic. ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle

... Mother Church acquainted with the wonderful change which had taken place in his sentiments and character, and induced them to admit him to fellowship. During this visit to the holy city, while he prayed in the temple, he was more fully instructed respecting his future destination. In a trance, he saw Jesus, who said to him—"Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles." [62:7] Even had he not received this intimation, the murderous hostility of the Jews would have obliged him to retire. "When he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... fall into a trance from time to time, after which he would recite to his eager listeners the messages which he received from Heaven. These were collected into a volume shortly after his death, and make up the Koran, the Bible of the Mohammedan.[36] This contains ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... the night. At last she crept in at the other side of the bed, and in a few moments was asleep. Once more Brenton struggled to awake, but with no effect. He heard the clock strike three, and then four, and then five, but there was no apparent change in his dream. He feared that he might be in a trance, from which, perhaps, he would not awake until it was too late. Grey daylight began to brighten the window, and he noticed that snow was quietly falling outside, the flakes noiselessly beating against the ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr

... Owain's ear, Her melody he may not hear? No kindly look, or word, or token, His trance of wretchedness has broken, Yet knows she, in that lonely spot, Her presence felt, tho' greeted not; Knows that no foot, save hers, unbidden; Had dared to tread the living tomb, No other hand had waked, unchidden, The echoes of ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... memory. She was very fond of children, and had a girl's love of babies. A boy of three days old was dying or seemed dead, and the girls of Lagny carried it to the statue of Our Lady in their church, and there prayed over it. For three days, ever since its birth, the baby had lain in a trance without sign of life, so that they dared not christen it. 'It was black as my doublet,' said Joan at her trial, where she wore mourning. Joan knelt with the other girls and prayed; colour came back into the child's face, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... Linda, Or by her mortal senses all unheard. Perhaps a finer faculty, removed From the external consciousness afar, Took it all in; for when she woke at last To outward life, and looking round beheld No sign of either parent, she sank back Into a trance, and lay insensible For many hours. Then rallying she once more Seemed conscious; and observing the kind looks Of an old woman and a man whose brow Of thought contrasted with his face of youth, She calmly said: "Don't fear to tell me all; I think I know it all; an accident With loss of ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... church lost worshippers. One Sunday morning Julienne surprised the people by appearing in church and publicly asking pardon for her wrong-doing. It was the first time she had appeared there since her flight, and she was as one who had roused from a trance or fever-sleep. Her father gladly took her home again, and all went well until New-Year's eve, when the young men called d'Ignolee made the rounds of the settlement to sing and beg meat for the poor—a custom descended from the Druids. They came to the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... perform his part of the tragedy, and Lovel stood gazing on the evil of which he had been the active, though unwilling cause, with a dizzy and bewildered eye. He was roused from his trance by the grasp of the mendicant. "Why stand you gazing on your deed?What's doomed is doomedwhat's done is past recalling. But awa, awa, if ye wad save your young blood from a shamefu' deathI see the men out by yonder that ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... long ago,—oh, so long ago, when I was a happy child, and yet I wept then for that solitary mourner as I am not able to weep now for myself, though it suits me just as much," murmured Salome, in the same trance-like manner, still staring on the floor, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... suggestion, then his face took on a dreamy look and he dropped into a trance of thought. After a little, Sellers asked him what he was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... due to the belief that they were the source of the "air of life". It is possible that this conception was popularized by the Semites. Inspiration was perhaps derived from these deities by burning incense, which, if we follow evidence obtained elsewhere, induced a prophetic trance. The gods were also invoked by incense. In the Flood legend the Babylonian Noah burned incense. "The gods smelled a sweet savour and gathered like flies over the sacrificer." In Egypt devotees who inhaled the breath of the Apis ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... to his lips in the form of an inconsequent question. But before he could even frame the sentence, the thought that prompted it had slipped back into the deeper consciousness he had just left behind with the trance of ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... race overshadowed her and possessed her. She felt that, to destroy the destroyer of her peace, she would be willing to meet and suffer all that man could inflict upon her body, or devil do to her soul! And so she brooded, until suddenly out of this trance-like state she started, as if a serpent had ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... think you need reproach yourself on his account. All that the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are doing for him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine lad! This evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and fancy—as we were going in to supper I looked and he had broken everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it himself at once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!" repeated Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... my advice, you'll get back at once to your bungalow and strip off that wet sleeping-suit," I bluntly counseled him, but I might as well have argued with a man in a trance. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving: Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving: No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... subtle and also more consistent than either of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have, and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human life. It will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say in a religious and respectable society?) are more likely to make mistakes ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... 'Let me in. This is Mary. I want to talk to you and tell you where I've been.' The sister's husband opened the door and let her in. This 'oman told 'em that God had brought her to and that she had been in a trance with the Lord. After that every one wuz always afraid of that 'oman and they wouldn't even sit next ter her in the church. They say she ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... listening and smiling. The white boy edged up, and Nancy laughed. "Hunh! I spects dese chillun kin 'member tomorrow every word I tells you today. Dey knows everything." Her bony arm encircled the Negro child. "Jooroosalom oak—we got some and give it to dis lil' thing for worms. She went off in a trance and never come out until 2 o'clock nex' day. I think we got de wrong thing and give her root instead of seed. I never fool wid it no more it skeered me so. Thought we ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... head bowed down upon his breast, tearless and motionless, utterly oblivious to everything save the bier of his beloved. His charger grazed about for a long time where he had left him, but at last he endeavored by a low whinny to attract his master's attention, and Antelope awoke from his trance of sorrow. ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... that at times she suffered severely. She was a reputed witch, averred to have done serious mischief to her neighbours. For this reason, she was indicted for holding communication with demons. She admitted having intercourse with the Queen of Elfland and the good neighbours. When she fell into a trance, which happened often, she saw her cousin, William Sympsoune, of Stirling (who had been conveyed away to the hills by the fairies), from whom she received a salve that could cure every disease; and from this ointment the Archbishop of St. Andrews confessed he derived benefit. In an indictment ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... Snarley's wife as she chafed her husband's hands: "No, sir, don't you believe 'em when they say he's drunk. He's only had two glasses of cider and half a glass o' beer. You can see the other half in his glass now. I counted 'em myself. And it takes quarts to make 'im tipsy. It's a sort of trance, sir, as he's had. I've knowed him like this two or three times before. He was just like it after he'd been to hear Sir Robert Ball on the stars, sir—worse, if anythin'. He's gettin' better now; but I'm afraid he'll ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... she, 'I did not die; but a Marid of the Jinn snatched me up and flew with me hither. She whom thou buriedst was a Jinniyeh, who took my shape and feigned herself dead, but presently broke open the tomb and returned to the service of this her mistress, the princess Husn Meryem. As for me, I was in a trance, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself with the princess; so I said to her, "Why hast thou bought me hither?" "O Zubeideh," answered she, "know that I am predestined to marry thy husband Alaeddin Abou ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... no further. There were limits to what he could endure. He fell into a trance-like state of passivity, his body ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... situation of mind when Mr. Falkland sent for me. His message roused me from my trance. In recovering, I felt those sickening and loathsome sensations, which a man may be supposed at first to endure who should return from the sleep of death. Gradually I recovered the power of arranging my ideas and directing my steps. I understood, that the minute the affair of the fire ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... in a letter dated August 1784, describes the sect as idle and immoral. In 1785 White and Mrs Buchan published a Divine Dictionary, but the sect broke up on the death of its founder in spite of White's attempts to prove that she was only in a trance. Even White was eventually undeceived. Andrew Innes, the last survivor, died in 1848. See J. Train, The Buchanites from First to Last ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... did not move. As though he had never before seen a woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a trance, he stood still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn, Winnie beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery, so overcome by her mere presence as to be struck motionless and inarticulate. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... there were no signs of Chan, Pearl's distress became exceedingly pitiful; and when night came and her mother declared that nothing had been seen of him, she was so stricken with despair that she lost all consciousness, and had to be carried to bed, where she lay in a kind of trance from which, for some time, it ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... and by the fact of their constant intercourse long prevented the growth of local and national variations from the established method. Great teachers like Erasmus passed from country to country, lecturing in Latin at the universities of Italy, Germany, Holland, Trance, and England, teaching pupils of all nationalities, and being everywhere understood without any difficulty, for Latin was the lingua franca of the educated, and one general pronunciation of it prevailed. Even in England, ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck

... the vision passed. Avery sat huddled in her chair as one stricken to the earth, rapt in a trance of dread foreboding from which Jeanie ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... ignoring all the interesting towns and oases on the way to his Timbuctoo. Excessively uncertain about future joy, and too breathlessly preoccupied to think about joy in the present, he just drives obstinately ahead, rather like a person in a trance. Singular conduct for a plain man priding himself ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett

... Clarence, waiting on me, ordering dinner, making the tea, and so forth; but it was quite evident that life began for her on the Saturdays, when Lawrence came down, and ended on the Mondays, when he went away. If, in the meantime, she sat down to work, she went off into a trance; if she was sent out for fresh air, she walked quarter-deck on the esplanade, neither seeing nor hearing anything, we averred, but ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... death of his three sons. Zedekiah, furious at first and then quailing, throws himself on his bed, weeping, and pleading for mercy. Jeremiah goes on unheeding, down to the final curse. Then he awakens from his trance, no less shattered than his victim. Zedekiah, no longer angry, no longer in revolt, recognises the prophet's power; he believes in Jeremiah, believes in ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... to the understanding of the eleventh century, the evidence at hand indicated that he embodied in a high degree the infinite energy. The eleventh century was intensely imaginative and the evidence which appealed to it was those phenomena of trance, hypnotism, and catalepsy which are as mysterious now as they were then, but whose effect was then to create an overpowering demand for miracle-working substances. The sale of these substances gradually drew the larger ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... three principal divisions: first, the instincts of construction or melody, which we share with lower animals, and which are in us as native as the instinct of the bee or nightingale; secondly, the faculty of vision, or of dreaming, whether in sleep or in conscious trance, or by voluntarily exerted fancy; and lastly, the power of rational inference and collection, of both the ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... at the other hand, still muttering, and made a sort of mark with his fingers on my forehead. Hugh told me afterwards that he seemed to trace a kind of zigzag on my left temple. All the time he was muttering he seemed to be half-conscious, almost in a trance, or as if he were mad: he frightened us dreadfully. After he had made the mark upon my brow he ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... on in fear and wonder. It was some time before the congregation dispersed. Dr. Chrystal's body was tenderly carried into the study, and there was nothing more to do; and yet they lingered about as if hoping that perhaps it might prove to be only a faint or trance, after all, for it seemed so hard to ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... soul with hopes of swifter gain, Then sat him down and waited for the rain. He sailed in borrowed ships of usury— foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on a game of Buy-and-Sell, And turned each ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... lashed him into one of the standing bed-places. He there still continued raving as before, now calling on his son to come to him, and then accusing us of his murder. His cries and groans at last awoke the other man out of his drunken trance, but it was some time before he could comprehend what had happened. He was not a father, and when at length he came to his senses, he, with brutal indifference abused his companion for disturbing him. As I stood over the skylight which had been got off to give air ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... with his rude pipe began the country wealth t' advance, To boast of cattle, flocks of sheep, and goats on hills that dance, With much more of this churlish kind, That quite transported Midas' mind, And held him wrapt in trance. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... met an old acquaintance of his, a certain young Herbert Featherstone, who had on any previous chance encounter seemed affected by a kind of trance, during which his eyes lost all power of vision, but was now completely recovered, so much so indeed as to greet Mark with a ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... because I was thinking so intensely of you," he began instantly. "A startlingly vivid thought of you came to me just then. Didn't I look like a man in a trance?" ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... drove the colour from our cheeks; I especially, as in a trance, was a long time speechless; when, trembling with fear, I pull'd Eumolpus by the coat, who was now asleep; and "I beseech you, father," said I, "do you know the owner of this vessel, or who the passengers are?" He was very angry to be disturbed: "And was it for this reason," ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... still in her trance of song, waved them to quiet again as they stood grouped about the Queen, in the very mood of the closing scene, creating an atmosphere of restrained passion, through which the voice of the improvisatrice throbbed and ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... almost exclusively. After a few weeks I succeeded in completely suspending animation in one of them for several hours. There was no life apparently existing during that period. It was not a trance or coma, but the complete simulation of death. No harmful results followed the revivifying of the animal. The contraction of the cells was far more difficult to accomplish; I finished my last experiment ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... gross insult and a direct lie, and Mulvaney meant it to bring on a fight. But Ortheris seemed shut up in some sort of trance. He answered slowly, without a sign of irritation, in the same cadenced voice as he had used for his ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... observer, speaks of a tulip-tree near which he sometimes sat—"the Apollo of the woods—tall and graceful, yet robust and sinewy, inimitable in hang of foliage and throwing-out of limb; as if the beauteous, vital, leafy creature could walk, if it only would"; and mentions that in a dream-trance he actually once saw his "favorite trees step out and promenade up, down and around VERY CURIOUSLY." (1) Once the present writer seemed to have a partial vision of a tree. It was a beech, standing somewhat isolated, and still leafless in quite early ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... final moment the instinct of self-preservation startled me out of my trance, and I moved at last. There was just room for me to roll myself sidewise off the bed. As I dropped noiselessly to the floor, the edge of the murderous canopy touched ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... night, and what I did, I no more expected to feel and do than to be lifted in a trance to the seventh heaven. A keen relish for dramatic expression revealed itself as part of my nature. But the strength of longing must be put by; and I put it by, and fastened it in with the lock of a resolution which neither time nor temptation has ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... spectator of all that had happened, Peveril had become, in the predominating interest of Alice's critical situation, totally forgetful of her presence. But no sooner had he left the room, without noticing or attending to her, than Fenella, starting, as from a trance, drew herself up, and looked wildly around, like one waking from a dream, as if to assure herself that her companion was gone, and gone without paying the slightest attention to her. She folded her hands together, and cast her eyes upwards, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... every emotion petrified; counted the spots on the carpet; looked piteously up at the cornice; heard the fans creak in the pews near him; felt thankful to a fly that lit on his face, as if something familiar at last had come to break an awful trance; heard faintly a reading of the Articles of Faith; wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling more—whether he should go to hell for touching the bread and wine that he did not dare to take nor to refuse; spent the morning service uncertain whether dreaming, or out of the body, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... be worse Than when he smiled, and cried, 'My sons are dead!' And every one looked in his neighbour's face To see if others were as white as he? At the first word he spoke I felt the blood 40 Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance; And when it passed I sat all weak and wild; Whilst you alone stood up, and with strong words Checked his unnatural pride; and I could see The devil was rebuked that lives in him. 45 Until this ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Lisa's handkerchief, which was found in the Count's room. Lisa reddens, and Elvino knows not whom he shall believe, when all of a sudden Amina is seen, emerging from a window of the mill, walking in a trance, and calling for her ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... and if in this way I attained a momentary respite from self-consciousness, no sooner had I reached this enviable state of oblivion, than some internal sting of irritation as rapidly dispersed the whole fickle fabric of sleep; and as if the momentary trance—this fugitive beguilement of my wo—had been conceded by a demon's subtle malice only with the purpose of barbing the pang, by thus forcing it into a stronger relief through the insidious peace preceding it. It is a well-known and most familiar experience to all the sons and daughters ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... night-dress. Even after I shut the door she loomed up enormous, indistinctly rigid and inanimate. I picked up the candelabra, groped for a candle all over the carpet, found one, and lighted it. All that time Dona Rita didn't stir. When I turned towards her she seemed to be slowly awakening from a trance. She was deathly pale and by contrast the melted, sapphire-blue of her eyes looked black as coal. They moved a little in my direction, incurious, recognizing me slowly. But when they had recognized me completely she raised her hands and hid her face in them. A whole minute ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... subdued, and evoking the innocent and tender moods of early youth before worldliness had hardened around his heart. Gradually, as he listened to it, the fires in his brain were allayed, and all yielded to a sense of coolness and repose. He seemed to sink from trance to trance of utter rest, and yet was dimly aware that either something in his own condition, or some supernatural accession of tone, was changing the music from its proper quality to a harmony more infinite ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... dreamily observing the blue sky showing here and there through billowy clouds. Some have made of their helmet a pillow and appear to sleep. Some with jest and story are radiating a subdued merriment. Some, with eyes staring straight ahead, seem as in a trance. ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... rest—and, sooth to say, the sense of security, joined to his complete exhaustion, and the comforts of a warm good bed, gave him such a perception of luxury as he had never conceived before. In a few minutes he fell into a dreamless and unbroken trance. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton



Words linked to "Trance" :   fascination, possession, work, mental condition, captivation, appeal, attract, hold, ecstatic state, psychological condition, psychological state, mental state, unconsciousness



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