"Mystic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ardour in the general movement of mind in Europe. Free thought there assumed the form of an universal conspiracy. It was enveloped in mystery. Learned and formal Germany liked to give even to its insurrection the appearances of science and tradition. The Egyptian initiations, mystic ceremonies of the middle age, were imitated by the adepts of new ideas. Men thought as they conspired. Philosophy moved veiled in symbols; and that veil was torn away only in secret societies, from which the profane were excluded. The prestiges of the imagination, so powerful in ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the scrap of paper, and glancing alternately from the mystic word to the boy's face—"what on earth is this? ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... course of the year 1656 several of the people called Quakers—led, as they professed, by the inward movement of the spirit—made their appearance in New England. Their reputation as holders of mystic and pernicious principles having spread before them, the Puritans early endeavored to banish and to prevent the further intrusion of the rising sect. But the measures by which it was intended to purge the land of heresy, though more than sufficiently ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and hoping for a different result. It is knowledge that equalizes the social condition of man—that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common and enjoyments which are universal. Knowledge is like the mystic ladder in the patriarch's dream. Its base rests on the primaeval earth—its crest is lost in the shadowy splendour of the empyrean; while the great authors, who for traditionary ages have held the chain of science and philosophy, of poesy and erudition, are the angels ascending ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... why the number 7 is thus deprived of its fair share in the structure. Here is a field of speculation in which two branches of inquirers might unite. There is but one number which is treated with an unfairness which is incredible as an accident; and that number is the mystic number seven! If the cyclometers and the apocalyptics would lay their heads together until they come to a unanimous verdict on this phenomenon, and would publish nothing until they are of one mind, they would earn the gratitude ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... towards our own scientific way of understanding being almost spent. And so, besides myths, we find the same mathematic figures, cosmic graphs which remain among the aboriginal peoples in all continents, mystic figures and signs whose true cosmic or scientific significance is lost, yet which continue in use for purposes of ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... and faced him again, the hungry fires in her eyes burning with mystic radiance. A tiny stream of blood ran down from her lip and stood in the dimple of her chin. She drew a delicate lace handkerchief from her bosom and wiped the blood away until it ceased to flow. And then in ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... well. Sixty converts were baptized on October 3, and the priests rejoiced at the success of their efforts. But the Indians back in the mountains were alarmed and hostile. Who were these white-faced strangers causing their brother aborigines to kneel before a strange God? What was the meaning of that mystic ceremony of sprinkling with water? The demon of priestly jealousy was awakened in the breasts of the tingaivashes—the medicine-men—of the tribes about San Diego, who arranged a fierce midnight attack which should rid them forever of these foreign conjurers, the ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... was more and less than this. He was at once a giant and a dwarf. When he has been sweeping the sky in circles infinitely great, he suddenly shrivels into something indescribably small. There is a moment when Carlyle turns suddenly from a high creative mystic to a common Calvinist. There are moments when George Eliot turns from a prophetess into a governess. There are also moments when Ruskin turns into a governess, without even the excuse of sex. But in all these cases the alteration comes as a thing ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... throne Built on the steadfast centre of the world, And waited for the middle hour of night, Now swiftly coming, to convene her court. Set in an ocean of perpetual calm Was the fair island honoured by her reign; Slowly around her rolled the Frigid Zone, Dim in the mystic moonlight far away,— A silvery ring, circling her nearer realm With the pale lustre of its snowy walls, Defending from all storm and sudden change The sea which bathed the island's level shores. She sat upon her throne, and none might tell Whether her limbs the lambent lustre ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... these people whom he loved; to inspire them to better deeds and to nobler lives. They, in turn, recognized and paid willing homage to a noble soul, a great genius, whose power to sway and control them was not in the least deflected or dimmed by a thought of his deformed body. Under the mystic spell of divine music, which appeals to the highest aspirations of the human heart; which calls forth the hidden forces of the soul: they came in such perfect rapport with him in his inner life, that they sensed with soulful eyes the strong, radiant, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... of this family were taken away; but taken with such features of opportunity in time or pleasant courage in the sufferer, that grief was tempered with a kind of admiration. The effect on Fleeming was profound. His pious optimism increased and became touched with something mystic and filial. 'The grave is not good, the approaches to it are terrible,' he had written in the beginning of his mother's illness: he thought so no more, when he had laid father and mother side by side at Stowting. He had always loved life; ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Christians only in name, the truth was so disfigured and transformed among them, that it exercised no influence over their hearts; and though they believed the Bible to be of value, they regarded it rather in the light of a mystic charm than the word of God. Thus all the great truths of our most holy faith were so travestied and changed as to produce alone a degrading superstition. They believed that the Bible had the power of exorcising spirits of ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... she behaved with a sort of mystic hostility, a holy detachment and displeasure, as if she suspected them of getting over it, or of wanting to get over it if they could. But to her one married daughter and to her grand-children she was soft and gentle. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... regret to find in these particular productions of the great Germanic school a development of that practical tendency which distinguished the Batavian and Flemish branches,—although it might recognize a departure from that mystic principle which, in its efforts to symbolize the strivings of humanity towards the infinite object of worship above, had somewhat disregarded the wants of the worshippers below,—although the spaces might ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... watch the day and night, In vain the world through space may roll: I never see the mystic light Which fills ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... with a simple joy in it, and his pleasure strengthened the mystic bond which had formed itself between us through the confidences he had made me, so flatteringly corroborative of all my guesses concerning him and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... painted for the perfumer Ciano, an eccentric man, but respected after his kind, a sign for his shop, containing a gipsy woman telling the fortune of a lady in a very graceful manner, which was the idea of Ciano, and not without mystic meaning. Another who learnt to paint from the same master was Antonio di Donnino Mazzieri, who was a bold draughtsman, and showed much invention in making horses and landscapes. He painted in chiaroscuro ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... fancy all wild heads bowed in adoration. Certainly the wood thrush's call touches that chord in the human breast. To listen to it with open heart is to know all things are for good and that a peace from mystic spaces far above the woodland is descending upon it. Heard through this song the tone of the brook's voice changes and instead of swift-syllabled gossip I seem to hear it softly ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... take one's lover by the hand and go wandering over those mystic moonlit slopes into some new unreal world where it would not matter whether a man were rich or poor, high-born or low-born, where there should be no such things as rank and state to be won or lost! Lesbia felt to-night as if she would like to live out her life in dreamland. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... came last—the Priest whose functions had so curiously dwindled since the times of the Temples. To be called first to the reading of the Law, to bless his brethren with symbolic spreadings of palms and fingers in a mystic incantation delivered, standing shoeless before the Ark of the Covenant at festival seasons, to redeem the mother's first-born son when neither parent was of priestly lineage—these privileges combined with ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that dazzled and hypnotized her. The theater again took so powerful a hold on Janina that there was no room in her consciousness for anything else. In her hours of ecstasy it appeared to her like a mystic altar suspended high above the gray vale of everyday life and glowing with flames like a second burning bush of Moses; it seemed to her like ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Prescot, and Thomas, officers who had served in the provincial regiments during the last war, put themselves in cantonment, and formed a line nearly twenty miles in extent, with their left leaning on the river Mystic, and their right on the town of Roxburghe, thus enclosing Boston in the centre. Their headquarters were fixed at Cambridge, and they were soon joined by a strong detachment of troops from Connecticut, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... asked if I would go with him to bring in the body. I shook my head. Life out here breeds a higher understanding of the mystic division between soul and body; one learns to contemplate the disfigured dead with a calmness that is not callousness. But this was different. How real a part he had played in my life these last two years! I wanted always ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... who at the same time had head and strength enough to steer the boat among the perplexing currents. Our excursions were sometimes long. Once we went down the Back Bay, thence around Charlestown up the Mystic to Medford, during which trip I steered the Orion without a single rub, going and coming under I think some forty draw-bridges. I have scarcely ever received a compliment in which I took more pride than when ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the queen and garden of the world. Amidst her domestic factions, she was doubtless superior to France both in art and science, in wealth and politeness; but the difference could scarcely support the epithet of barbarous, which he promiscuously bestows on the countries beyond the Alps. Avignon, the mystic Babylon, the sink of vice and corruption, was the object of his hatred and contempt; but he forgets that her scandalous vices were not the growth of the soil, and that in every residence they would adhere to the power and luxury ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... nuance'? And is not the essential part of the poetical theory of Mallarme and of the French Symbolists enunciated in this definition and commendation of 'that class of composition in which there lies beneath the transparent upper current of meaning an under or suggestive one'? To this 'mystic or secondary impression' he attributes 'the vast force of an accompaniment in music.... With each note of the lyre is heard a ghostly, and not always a distinct, but an august soul-exalting echo.' Has anything that has been ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... beneath another man's property, and carried away, to coinage, his gold. Between Bully Presby and the man who tunneled under a bank to loot the safe, there was no moral difference save in the romance of that mystic underground world where men bored like ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... of America form a distinct group. Marked racial differences and their background of the mystic, age-old East leave them separated and apart in a conglomerate civilization whose assimilative power is the wonder of the age. They form thus far the largest body of "irreconcilables," to use Prof. Lowell's term, ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... took up the work without any enthusiasm. She made the first correct mystic passage with needle and thread; when she came to the loop she failed to go right, and the effect was bungled ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... and insect pay grateful homage. In Egypt, India, China, Japan, Persia, and Asiatic Russia, how many millions have bent their heads in adoration of her relative the sacred lotus! From its centre Brahma came forth; Buddha, too, whose symbol is the lotus, first appeared floating on the mystic flower (Nelumbo nelumbo). Happily the lovely pink or white "sacred bean" or "rose-lily" of the Nile, often cultivated here, has been successfully naturalized in ponds about Bordentown, New Jersey, and may be elsewhere. If ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... instantly restored. My vis-a-vis, who was addressed as "Mr. Vice," was, indeed, somewhat grumpy; but I had won the goodwill of the others, and was allowed to look on, a silent spectator, whilst the many mystic rites and usages which distinguished the "commercial table" of that epoch were duly celebrated. Strange to say, that was not only my first but my last experience of the kind, and now I imagine that the old customs of the road—the wine-drinking, the speech-making, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... background. To Helen's mind returned the simile of a huge flaming pit in which multitudes of little imps struggled and fought. She was yet unable to invest them with human attributes like her own, and the mystic and unreal quality in this battle which oppressed her from the first ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... like Pope,—between philosophers like Spinoza, Kant and Coleridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh and Stewart,—between men of the world who are reckoned accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying half insane under the infinitude of his thought,—is that one class speak from within, or from experience, as parties and possessors of the fact; and the other class from without, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted with the fact ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... looked all about him and pondered upon the mystic gloom, he began to believe that at any moment the ominous distance might be aflare, and the rolling crashes of an engagement come to his ears. Staring once at the red eyes across the river, he conceived them to be growing larger, as the orbs of a row of dragons ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... can only thrive or grow in the solitude, And droops and dies in the marts of men, where sights and sounds are rude; That is not a faith at all, but a dream of a mystic's heart; Our faith should point as the compass points, ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... there is the testimony of human witnesses; next, there are the non-human boundaries wherein the action took place, boundaries which, by all our experience, impose fixed limits to action; thirdly, there is that indefinable thing, that mystic power, which all nations deriving from the theology of the Western Church have agreed to call, with the schoolman, common sense; a general appreciation which transcends particular appreciations and which can integrate the differentials of evidence. Of this last it is quite impossible to afford ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... O mystic Nile! Thy secret yields Before us; thy most ancient dreams Are mixed with far Canadian fields And murmur of ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Despite his mystic praise of slumber, Father Brown was up earlier than anyone else except the silent gardener; and was found smoking a big pipe and watching that expert at his speechless labours in the kitchen garden. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... independent mind will find in these essays, much to admire in their elucidation of truth and detection of error, but more in their dauntless defiance of those who represent the Bible as a "sealed book" to all who are not visited with a special faculty for discerning its mystic characters and hidden sense. In that case, the Scriptures are a revelation only to the elect, who, to satisfy themselves and the world, that their interpretation is the only sound one, ought to produce miracles as proof of their own inspiration, not less unequivocal than those which ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... chastisement by the law. Reserved for aristocrats only, the guillotine would have appeared to him in the light of an iniquitous privilege. In his thoughts he was beginning to erect chastisement into a religious and mystic dogma, to assign it a virtue, a merit of its own; he conceived that society owes punishment to criminals and that it is doing them an injustice to cheat them of this right. He declared the woman Meyrion guilty and deserving of ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... only one of our party acquainted with both Thibetan and Hindoostanee, I ascertained that the words carved upon the stones were "Um mani panee," and meant, as far as I could make out, "the Supreme Being." As the old gentleman repeated the mystic syllables, he bobbed and scraped towards a strange-looking monument close by, in an abject, deprecatory way, as if in extreme awe of ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... little more than the height of a man. A clear area of a few yards surrounded the pi-pi, and was enclosed by four trunks of cocoanut trees resting at the angles on massive blocks of stone. The place was sacred. The sign of the inscrutable Taboo was seen in the shape of a mystic roll of white tappa, suspended by a twisted cord of the same material from the top of a slight pole planted within the enclosure*. The sanctity of the spot appeared never to have been violated. The stillness of the grave was there, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... sockets, and his head felt very light and empty, although so heavy that he could not lift it from the pillow. But he managed to shift his gaze from the window until it rested upon a man's face—a gaunt, impassive brown face illuminated by steady and thoughtful eyes, filled with that mystic, unshakable spirit of fatalism that is the real Genius of the eastern peoples. The head itself stood out with almost startling distinctness against the background of pure white. It was swathed with an immaculate white turban. The thin, stringy ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... misty a vapourer as I ever saw; a poetic, self-contradicting and inconsistent orator, a blower of bubbles, a seer of visions, a mystic, and a dreamer—about as scientific as Alice's White Knight! Harman's aunt, who lived in London, the only relative he had left, I believe—and she has died since—put him in Keredec's charge, and he was taken up into the Tyrol and virtually hidden for two years, the idea ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Paul Collaer, who played beautifully; Gilson, the mystic; Henri of Liege; the son of Ysaye, they were all clear to us. There was a splendid fat doctor who felt physical fear, but never shirked his job. He used to go and hide behind the barn, with his pipe, till there was work for him. His wasn't ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... him, a sound that might have been the cry of a child or the scream of a trapped animal. Assuming it to be the latter, Will again hesitated. Often enough he had laughed at the folk-tales of witch hares as among the most fantastic fables of the old; yet at this present moment mystic legends won point from the circumstances in which he found himself. He hurried forward to the edge of a circle from which the sound proceeded. Then, looking before him, he started violently, sank to his knees behind a rock, and so remained, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... very walls are woven of dreams, All undefined by blasphemies of art! Here, pure from finite hues the very night Conceives the mystic harmonies of light, Delicious glooms and gleams; And sorrow falls in rose-leaves on the heart, And pain that yearns upon the passing hour Is but a perfume ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... it was a practice of preachers to rouse their congregation by relating a fable of AEsop. In the British Museum there is a collection of two hundred and fifteen stories, romantic, allegorical, and legendary, evidently compiled for the use of monastic preachers. Mystic similitudes were at this time greatly affected in all branches of learning. In the "Romaunt of the Rose," the difficulties of a lover are represented under the form of a man seeking a rose in an inaccessible garden. This flower, alchemists considered to be emblematic of the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... or cylinders inscribed with their prayers, which they twirl round on an axis, continually pronouncing these mystic words, and they believe that all the prayers on these rolls are virtually pronounced at each turn of the roll; The religion of the Dalai-Lama, is a branch of the Shamanian and Braminical superstitions, and has for its foundation the Manichaean doctrine of the two ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... leaving the world to darkness and to us in the woods. The woods, where Adam and Eve lived and loved, where Pan piped, and Satyrs danced, the opera house of birds; the woods, green, imparadisaical, mystic, tranquillizing—to the poet perhaps when all is well—but to us, they seemed haunted by spirits of evil, the yells of the demons seemed to echo and reecho; but an indefinable something seemed to sympathize with ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... detachment from Saybrooke, determined to march against the enemy. The Piquods had taken two positions which they had surrounded with palisadoes, and had resolved to defend. The nearest was on a small eminence surrounded by a swamp near the head of Mystic river. Against this fort the first attack was made. The Indians, deceived by a movement of the vessels from Saybrooke to Narraghansett, believed the expedition to have been abandoned; and celebrated, in perfect security, the supposed evacuation of their country. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... for. A short time afterwards young T. received a most kind reply from the baron, inviting him to come to Berlin; but, before this letter arrived, the young student had heard that Baron von K. was a pietist or mystic (as true believers are contemptuously called in Germany;) and as young was of a highly philosophical turn of mind, reasoning about every thing, questioning the truth of revelation, yea questioning most sceptically the existence of God, he much disliked ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... (Essay on Pope, ii. 141), 'was a Mystic and a Quietist, and a warm disciple of Fenelon. It was he who brought a Catholic priest to take Pope's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... strange austerity, whose trance appals, Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls. Continue still thy silence high and sure, That something beyond fleeting may endure— Something that shall forevermore allure Imagination on to mystic flights Wherein alone no wing of ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... fearless, but there was something so weird about this mystic sentence, which hinted at capital punishment, that she shrank back nervously. Mother Cockleshell, delighted to see that she had made an impression, climbed on to the gray donkey and made a progress through the camp. Passing by Chaldea's caravan ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... perhaps, interest MR. SANSOM to be informed that the appearance described to him is mentioned as a known fact in one of the works of the celebrated mystic, Jacob Behmen, The Three Principles, chap. 19. "Of the going forth of the Soul." I extract from J. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... be provided," returned the Wise One, smiling. He stepped to an ancient chest, deeply carved with mystic signs, that stood quite by itself in a corner of the hut. From out that chest many magic gifts had come, when need was great. Filled to the brim with treasures as it always was, none saw aught within but those gifts which were for his ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... Her chaplet, wound about her right arm, had beads of a milky whiteness, whilst the links and the cross were of gold. And on her bare feet, on her adorable feet of virgin snow, flowered two golden roses, the mystic roses of this divine ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... mystic pool herdsman and monarchs alike receive summons and admission. The most Christian King must, for his own sake, accomplish his own sanctification; his sanctification provides for that of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... delight of a life of slothful renunciation, self-abnegation, and devotion to "duty." The music of the last scene sings that song in tones of infinite sweetness; but it cannot satisfy you; you turn from the enchanted hall, with its holy cup and spear and dove, its mystic voices in the heights, its heavy, depressing, incense-laden atmosphere; and you hasten into the night, where the winds blow fresh through the black trees, and the stars shine calmly in the deep sky, just as though no ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... delicate hand. From the tip of each of her long taper fingers issued a lambent flame of such surpassing brilliancy as would have plunged a whole gas company into despair—it was a 'Hand of Glory,' [Footnote: One of the uses to which this mystic chandelier was put, was the protection of secreted treasure. Blow out all the fingers at one puff, and you had the money.] such a one as tradition tells us yet burns in Rochester Castle every St. Mark's Eve. Many are the daring individuals who have watched in Gundulph's Tower, ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... that day. And it so happened that, of all Fridays in the year, it fell on the Friday before Easter: that awful anniversary when the altars of the Church are veiled throughout Christendom, and the dark stone is rolled to the door of the mystic sepulchre. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... roadside tree —A murderer's corse it needs must be—, Sever the right hand carefully:— Sever the hand that the deed hath done, Ere the flesh that clings to the bones be gone; In its dry veins must blood be none. Those ghastly fingers white and cold, Within a winding-sheet enfold; Count the mystic count of seven: Name the Governors of Heaven.[2] Then in earthen vessel place them, And with dragon-wort encase them, Bleach them in the noonday sun, Till the marrow melt and run, Till the flesh is pale and wan, As a moon-ensilvered cloud, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the bells at midnight Ring in the dawning year; And above the clanging chorus Of the song, I seemed to hear A choir of mystic voices Flinging echoes, ringing clear, From a band of angels winging Through the haunted atmosphere: "Ring out the shame and sorrow, And the misery and sin, That the dawning of the morrow May in peace be ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... The sweet, subtle aroma of his hair reached her. The subtle warmth of his body met hers. As the mystic eyes opened below her eyes, a crooning lullaby hidden somewhere within her found its way to her throat and there stuck. She grew dizzy and her throat ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... my days divine But flashes back some mystic sign; And every shape that erst was bright Sweeps by me garmented ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the mystic land of spring knows hallowed places in sunny valleys where the tender goddess first reveals herself at Nature's living altars. Yet he can scarcely tell at which shrine she will first appear. She delights ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... by year the Viking's raven Made that mystic spot his rest; Year by year within the eyot Brooded he as on a nest; And no man would ever venture To invade the lone domain Where in solitary scheming The grim bird ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... interested her so much as a low cottage, something like her own, which lay away in the distance. She could not guess how far it might be, because distances are deceiving out there, where the altitude is high and the air is as clear as one of those mystic balls of glass in which the sallow mystics of India see the moving ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... a mystic charm most winsome In th' glance of a speaking eye Whose light shines in dark recesses And ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... in the morning, in a room which she shared with a school teacher, Fanny Elmer read Tom Jones—that mystic book. For this dull stuff (Fanny thought) about people with odd names is what Jacob likes. Good people like it. Dowdy women who don't mind how they cross their legs read Tom Jones—a mystic book; for there is something, Fanny thought, about books ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... and many gainful pursuits are closed against him. He cannot play lawn tennis, or, at least according to my observation, he cannot play lawn tennis oftener than once in two weeks. In between games he limps round, stiff as a hat tree and sore as a mashed thumb. Time was when he might mingle in the mystic mazes of the waltz, tripping the light fantastic toe or stubbing it, as the case may be. But that was in the days of the old-fashioned square dance, which was the fat man's friend among dances, and also of the old-fashioned two-step, and not in these times when dancing is a cross ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... of the coffin-shaped board was roughly drawn, in black paint, a skull and cross-bones and, underneath them, the words "Eliab Hill and Nimbus Desmit," and below these still, the mystic cabala, "K.K.K," a formulary at which, just at that time, a great part of the nation was laughing as a capital illustration of American humor. It was accounted simply a piece of grotesquerie intended to frighten the ignorant ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Dodona, or the God Ammon, or any ancient tradition has sanctioned in whatever manner, whether by apparitions or reputed inspiration of Heaven, in obedience to which mankind have established sacrifices in connexion with mystic rites, either originating on the spot, or derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus or some other place, and on the strength of which traditions they have consecrated oracles and images, and altars and temples, and portioned out a sacred domain ...
— Laws • Plato
... particulars, "gathered from the lips of prominent actors in the battle." This account says, "The first men, so far as remembered, that took stations in the battery, were four, William Lord, Asa Lee, George Fellows, and Amos Denison. Just before six o'clock, six volunteers from Mystic, Jeremiah Holmes, Jeremiah Haley, Ebenezer Denison, Isaac Denison, and Nathaniel Clift, reached the place, on foot, and ran immediately to help to operate the gun in ...
— The Defence of Stonington (Connecticut) Against a British Squadron, August 9th to 12th, 1814 • J. Hammond Trumbull
... idols of lust and ignorance. A kindly warning to you, fellow-prospectors and miners, who delve in the vitals of Mother Earth! Beware Thumb Butte, beware the district of the Sphinx! Have a care, for you know not what you may encounter in this mystic neighborhood! Shun strange gods and set up no idols in your hearts, as you value the salvation of your souls. But if your mine lies in this district, be fearful not to excite the anger of the gnomes of the mountain. Charge lightly, lest ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... he butts in. "My friend, the world-renowed Professor Parducci, is a medium, a mystic and a swami. He's the seventh son of a seventh son, born with a veil and spent two years in Indiana with the yogi. He can peer into the future or gaze back at the past. He is in direct communication with the spirits of the dear departed and as a crystal gazer ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... and held it up proudly to the light. "Will you look at that, now?" she crooned. "The finest ever I brewed. Ah, the mystic droplet! Some swain will be buying that, now, and putting it in a lassie's cup o' tea, and she'll be pining away for love of him ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... introduction of the fortunate phrase is due to Secretary Chase. President Lincoln placed the act upon a legal basis, justifying it in law and in history. The sentence is what we might have expected from the head and heart of the man who wrote the final sentence of the first inaugural address: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... clock-case at the Royal Rosicrucian Lodge at Bungay, Suffolk, to spy the proceedings of the Society, of which her husband was a member, and being frightened by the sudden whirring and striking eleven of the clock (just as the Deputy-Grand-Master was bringing in the mystic gridiron for the reception of a neophyte), rushed out into the midst of the lodge assembled; and was elected, by a desperate unanimity, Deputy-Grand-Mistress for life. Though that admirable and courageous female never subsequently breathed a word with regard to the secrets of the initiation, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she's at home; widow of a bishop most likely. Those girls have been carefully reared, you can see that, but full of the spirit of mischief. The moment I tackled that stupid innkeeper about his monstrous pie they felt the drawing of the mystic tie that binds us together with silken cords. Very likely they, like us, are in search of adventure, and if our own affairs were less urgent I should certainly cultivate ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... all his half-formed resolutions vanished into air. He sat in a corner of the curious, dimly-lit and old-fashioned chamber, and, lying back in the chair, abandoned himself to dreams as Sheila sang the mystic songs of the northern coasts. There was something strangely suggestive of the sea in the room itself, and all her songs were of the sea. It was a smaller room than the large apartment in which they had dined, and it was filled with curiosities ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... as he journeyed home beneath fading heavens. Somehow the barriers of wealth had fallen, and there had been—he could not phrase it—a general assertion of the wonder of the world. "My conviction," says the mystic, "gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it," and they had agreed that there was something beyond life's daily grey. He took off his top-hat and smoothed it thoughtfully. He had hitherto supposed the unknown to be books, literature, clever conversation, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... in the south. The black-robed scholars knelt on one side of the dead, the novices on the other, the relatives and friends behind. But art had perfected itself in the gallery above the lower end of the chapel. This also was draped with black which seemed to absorb, then shed forth again the mystic brilliance of the candles; and kneeling, well apart, were the nuns in their ivory white robes and black veils, their banded softened features as composed and peaceful as if ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... The unusual form of the house, filled with such groups {p.073} of crowded spectators, themselves forming an extraordinary spectacle to the eye which has never witnessed it before, yet all intent upon that wide and mystic curtain, whose dusky undulations permit us now and then to discern the momentary glitter of some gaudy form, or the spangles of some sandalled foot, which trips lightly within: Then the light, brilliant as that of day; then the music, which, in itself ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... The school of Hermes Trismegistus, Who uttered his oracles sublime Before the Olympiads, in the dew Of the early dawn and dusk of Time, The reign of dateless old Hephaestus! As northward, from its Nubian springs, The Nile, forever new and old, Among the living and the dead, Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled; So, starting from its fountain-head Under the lotus-leaves of Isis, From the dead demigods of eld, Through long, unbroken lines of kings Its course the sacred art has held, Unchecked, unchanged ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... muscular effort. In the light of knowledge gained in later years, I can now see in that long, slouching, shuffling figure, in that tallow-colored face with the bloodless, loose lips and the wandering, mystic eyes of periwinkle blue—I can see in that girl-face framed by a trashy picture-hat, and in that girl-form wrapped in the old golf-cape, one of the earth's unfortunates; a congenital failure; a female creature doomed from her mother's womb—physically, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... of the old world forlorn A mystic child is set in these still hours. I keep this time, even before the flowers, Sacred to all the young and ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... never anybody a-going to tell anybody else about it. He made them boys cross they hearts and bodies not to. I didn't cross mine 'cause I knew I had to tell you, but I do it now." And Eliza stood up and solemnly made the mystic sign, thus locking the barn door of her secret chambers after having quartered the troublesome steed of confidence on the ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... through the cottage door, And blushed as she sought the plant of power; Then silver glow-worm, O lend me thy light, I must gather the mystic St. John's Wort to-night, The wonderful herb whose leaf must decide If the coming year shall make me a bride. And the glow-worm came With its silvery flame, And sparkled and shone Through the night of St. John; While it shone on the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... amber mosses, and the flowers that hung from craggy ledges, had wisdom to impart. A borderman lived under the green tree-tops, and, therefore, all the nodding branches of sassafras and laurel, the grassy slopes and rocky cliffs, the stately ash trees, kingly oaks and dark, mystic pines, together with the creatures that dwelt among them, save his deadly red-skinned foes, he loved. Other affection as close and true as this, he had not known. Hearkening thus with single heart to nature's teachings, he learned her secrets. Certain ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... their veins, and Slavonic hearts beat high with hope in their bosoms. They had all the delightful Slavonic zeal, the Slavonic dash, the Slavonic imagination. They were easy to stir, they were swift in action, they were witty in speech, they were mystic and poetic in soul, and, like the Irish of the present day, they revelled in the joy of party politics, and discussed religious questions with the keenest zest. With them religion came first and foremost. All their poetry ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... XVII Corps Light Railway Company, Royal Engineers, went to Brigade Headquarters to learn Staff work. The transport vehicles had somewhat camouflaged themselves, having been decorated on all sides by wonderful and mystic signs, so as to show to the initiated to what unit they belonged. If you enquired you would be told that the dark blue square meant "First Line Transport," the narrow light green oblong edged with white placed on the left ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... of the war there was, we were told, in England and France a revival of "religion," and indeed many of the books then written gave evidence of having been composed in exalted, mystic moods. I remember one in particular, called "En Campagne," by a young French officer. And then, somehow, the note of mystic exaltation died away, to be succeeded by a period of realism. Read "Le Feu," which is most typical, which has sold in numberless editions. Here is a picture ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ever that she went there, and it was not in order to be alone with her sorrow, though that would have been a natural and human impulse; nor was it because she felt herself drawn to an existence of asceticism and mystic meditation. ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... Coney Island. This is the favorite resort of clams and little jokers. Here you may daily fill your bread-basket with bivalves, and then observe the mysteries of that mystic game, now you see it, now ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... devils, and gave unto them grace through the very thing that had been disclosed to his own sight as a sign of victory against the onrush of foes; and how on the third day the Glory 185 of men and Lord of all mankind rose from the tomb and from death, and ascended into heaven. Men wise in the mystic things of the Spirit thus said unto the victory-inspired monarch as they had 190 learned from Silvester. And at their hands the prince of the people received baptism, and held to the faith according to the will of the Lord from that time ...
— The Elene of Cynewulf • Cynewulf
... for its possible help to build fires, it would have come no farther with me. The great levels around me lay cooled and freed of dust by the wet weather, and full of sweet airs. Far in front the foot-hills rose through the rain, indefinite and mystic. I wanted no speech with any one, nor to be near human beings at all. I was steeped in a revery as of the primal earth; even thoughts themselves had almost ceased motion. To lie down with wild animals, with elk and deer, would have made my waking dream complete; and since ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... result being that a rapid, though only temporary, recovery took place. Had he relaxed his efforts somewhat, the cure might have been a permanent one, but Dr. Pascal, with the penetrating vision of the mystic, saw how pressing were the needs of the age, and how few the pioneers of this new presentation of the Truth, so that, at whatever cost of personal sacrifice, he plunged once more into the midst of ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... yet unreveal'd to human sight, Ye gods, who rule the regions of the night, Ye gliding ghosts, permit me to relate The mystic wonders of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... affected to believe that he took second place in the name. But the three B's were there; did they not point psychically to the golden bees of the Corsican? Indeed, an astrologist in Chicago had once told him, for a paltry half-dollar, that those B's in his name were of a profoundly mystic significance. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... to Mussulmen three mystic significations; it denotes providence; it is the expression of law; and thirdly, of power; it restores the courage of the faithful and strikes terror to the hearts of ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... left him benumbed in his baseness, cowardliness and weakness. Now he understood that love, in order to triumph, must first humble its own power, still its own movement and soften its brutal will. Now he comprehended that he must carve mystic runes of passion upon his own heart as upon a glowing rose and fling it into the mighty sea of feeling, praying it to bring the maiden Gro into ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... every mark of care, In every wrinkle's mystic line, I fancied jewels gleaming there That wore ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... for tribal instincts and passions. The passionate loves and hatreds of the clans, their pride of race, their deathless lealty; and more than all, and better than all, their religious instincts, faiths and prejudices; these, with the mystic, wild loveliness of heather-clad hill and rock-rimmed loch, of roaring torrent and jagged crags, of lonely muir and sunny pasture nuiks; all these, and ten thousand nameless and unnamable things united in the weaving of the spell of the Glen upon the hearts of its people. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... their credit, not for being just, but because they are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools, still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity, but always by men, vain and irresolute authors. There ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... represent clearly, that we may fairly suppose that the authority which absolute monism undoubtedly possesses, and probably always will possess over some persons, draws its strength far less from intellectual than from mystical grounds. To interpret absolute monism worthily, be a mystic. Mystical states of mind in every degree are shown by history, usually tho not always, to make for the monistic view. This is no proper occasion to enter upon the general subject of mysticism, but I will quote one mystical pronouncement to show just what I mean. The paragon ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... silently the fruitful seed, As softly o'er the tilth ye tread, For hands that delicately knead The consecrated bread— The mystic loaf that crowns the board. When, round the table of their Lord, Within a thousand temples set, In memory of the bitter death Of Him who taught at Nazareth, His followers are met, And thoughtful eyes with tears are wet, As of the Holy One they think, The glory of whose rising yet ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... night was coming on, but He, in the plenitude of His divine compassion, turned you not away, but gives you a princely reward—even Himself. Like the Prodigal, destitute and naked, you return, and receiving you, He spreads a mystic feast, in which He gives you heavenly food; and while the shadow of death falls around you, lo! He comes to go with you towards those dismal portals, and admit you to a region of probation and everlasting hope. Humbly confiding, and strong in faith, receive Him, not as ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... grip. Their voices had fallen, they suffocated in the silence. Ulick had mentioned Blake's name, and she had accepted an artistic discussion as an escapement, but their hearts were overloaded, and it was in answer to his own thoughts that Ulick had spoken of the eighteenth-century mystic. For the question had arisen in him whether the passions of the flesh are not destructive of spiritual exaltation, and he told her that exaltation was the gospel according to Blake. We must seek to exalt ourselves, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... break and falter in the darkness,— Break, falter, and are still; And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending, The sun sinks from ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... more. When in the tomb I stood,— And faltered on the path that separates This life from death, at any moment ready To greet the underworld,—lo, seized me then An eerie shuddering; I know not what—; I felt in me a mystic transformation;— Away flowed hate, revenge, my very soul; Each memory vanished and each earthly longing;— Only the name of "Catiline" remains Written in ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... predicate concerning him. If the physical adequately could have revealed that Power, there never would have been anything but the physical to reveal him. The fact that spiritual life is here is evidence that it takes spiritual life fully to display the truth about creation's reality. As an old mystic put it: "God sleeps in the stone, he dreams in the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the Life—the blessed well, With living waters gushing o'er, Which those that drink shall ever dwell Where sin and thirst are known no more. Thou art the mystic pillar given, Our lamp by night, our light by day; Thou art the sacred bread from heaven; Thou ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... seem'd swelling The panting heart to burst its bound, And wandering Fancy found a dwelling In every shape—thought—deed, and sound. Germ'd in the mystic buds, reposing, A whole creation slumber'd mute, Alas, when from the buds unclosing, How scant and blighted sprung ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... trying to do the same thing ourselves. I was concentrating upon a V, with a film on my forehead, and the others were trying it either with film or plate. Only one other secured anything at all, and that was but a blur. Our subject who did get the Cross result is a very highly developed mystic with remarkable powers of concentration, but modest about his powers and for that reason, and because he is extremely busy, we have not been able to repeat the experiment ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... hitherto lacking. Its appearance too suggests the famous allegory, the unsolved riddle of human existence which so puzzled the divine Plato and the ancient philosophers of Athens and Syracuse. Here are we, the living men of to-day, watching the corpse of a departed world upon which the mystic symbol of Psyche has just alighted. Tempus breve est is the simple little truism that rises to our reflecting minds. Eighteen centuries between the Vettii and ourselves! They are gone like a flash, and we are amazed to note ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... him. She only lowered her eyes to the deft hands that were disposing the cards in mystic array upon the table. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... picture is deepened by the effects of the twilight on the plains. A wide outlook across a level country, like a view of the sea, is always impressive, but it has peculiar power in the vague light which follows the sunset. Many poetic natures have felt this mystic spell of the gloaming as it descends upon the plain. Robert Louis Stevenson was one of these, and upon visiting Barbizon he described vividly his feelings at such an hour. We are told also that Millet loved to walk abroad at nightfall and note the ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... the night when you Had kissed me first. (Ah, your eyes were blue, And very tender, and Heaven-true, There in the candlelight!) I thought of a misty summer night, When a shower fell on the vivid grass (There, through the rain, I watched you pass!) I thought of a mystic summer night That never ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... This way, that way, forward, back, Swings the pendulum to and fro, Always regular, always slow. Grave and solemn on the wall,— Hear it whisper! hear it call! Little Ginx knows naught of Time, But has heard the mystic rhyme,— "Hickory, dickory, dock! The mouse ran ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... exclusively with the writings of Pouchkine, Gogol, Dostoievsky, Tourguenef, who was the inventor of the word Nihilism, and the mystic Tolstoy, who was the principal apostle of the doctrine. All these, with the possible exception of Tourguenef, had one characteristic in common. Their intellects were in a state of unstable equilibrium. As poets, they could ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... will look on me," (for hitherto the king had been so busy, first with the dogs, and then with the mystic operation of breaking, in vulgar phrase, cutting up the deer, that he had scarce given his assistant above a transient glance,) "you will see whom necessity makes bold to avail himself of an opportunity which ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... "The mystic cord of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... step is accompanied with danger; we look round and above in despair; suddenly we feel within us a new impulse and a new power! we feel a vague sympathy with that unknown region which spreads beyond this great net,—that limitless beyond hath a mystic affinity with a part of our own frame; we unconsciously extend our wings (for the soul to us is as the wings to the fly!); we attempt to rise,—to soar above this perilous snare, from which we are unable to crawl. The old spider watcheth us in self-hugging quiet, and, looking ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "I am an American citizen, Mr. Knox, which is tantamount to stating that I belong to the greatest community of traders which has appeared since the Phoenicians overran the then known world. America has not produced the mystic, yet Judaea produced the founder of Christianity, and Gautama Buddha, born of a royal line, established the creed of human equity. In what way did these magicians, for a miracle-worker is nothing but a magician, differ from ordinary men? In one respect only: They had learned to control that ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... flood and every form of quackery is welcome, we need not wonder that a theosophy having so respectable a core—something, indeed, like a true logic misunderstood—should gain many adherents. Out of the names of things and of virtues a mystic ladder could be constructed by which to leave the things and the virtues themselves behind; but the sagacity and exigencies of the school would not fail to arrange the steps in this progress—the end of which was unattainable except, perhaps, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... it was a hen bird, for he saw the male fly to the net, and tear the meshes one by one with its beak, until it had made an opening by which its mate could escape. The holy man watched this incident, and as, by virtue of his holiness, he easily comprehended the mystic sense of all occurrences, he knew that the captive bird was no other than Thais, caught in the snares of sin, and that—like the plover that had cut the hempen threads with its beak—he could, by pronouncing the word of power, break ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... in the Leonine Elegiacs, in Claribel, and several other poems. Qualities which were not for long to find public expression, speculative powers brooding, in various moods, on ultimate and insoluble questions, were attested by The Mystic, and Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind not in Unity with Itself, an unlucky title of a remarkable performance. "In this, the most agitated of all his poems, we find ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... great heritage of song which Yorkshire bequeathed to the nation between the seventh century and the fifteenth. After the Caedmonic poems, its chief glories are the religious lyrics of Richard Rolle, the mystic, and the great cycles of scriptural plays which are associated with the trade-guilds of York and Wakefield. But in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the all-conquering Standard English spread like a mighty ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... upon the worn and weary soul as it drifted lazily on, far from the noise and the toil and the reek of the world! All times were calm; all waters kind. The days rolled on in ever-changing scenes of beauty; the nights, star-gemmed and mystic, were filled with music and the witchery ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... scribe of Osiris. Chapters XCVI and XCVII also placed him under the protection of Thoth. The recital of Chapter XCVIII provided the deceased with a boat in which to sail over the northern heavens, and a ladder by which to ascend to heaven. Chapters XCIX-CIII gave him the use of the magical boat, the mystic name of each part of which he was obliged to know, and helped him to enter the Boat of Ra and to be with Hathor. The Bebait, or mantis, led him to the great gods (Chapter CIV), and the Uatch amulet from the neck of Ra provided his double (ka) and his heart-soul (ba) with offerings (Chapters ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... and then punish him for not standing upright." Why, that statement of the "Autocrat" appears to me at least as certain as that two and two make four. It may, indeed, contain some recondite and malignant reference which the stupid American divines know, and which I do not; it may be a mystic Shibboleth, indicating far more than it asserts; as at one time in Scotland it was esteemed as proof that a clergyman preached unsound doctrine, if he made use of the Lord's Prayer. But, understanding it simply as meaning that the Judge of all the Earth will do right, it appears ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... as love) I say I appear indeed, and give my voice in public business; but oh my heart more kindly is employed; that and my thoughts are Sylvia's! Ten thousand times a day I breathe that name, my busy fingers are eternally tracing out those six mystic letters; a thousand ways on every thing I touch, form words, and make them speak a thousand things, and all are Sylvia still; my melancholy change is evident to all that see me, which they interpret ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn |
