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Incense   Listen
noun
Incense  n.  
1.
The perfume or odors exhaled from spices and gums when burned in celebrating religious rites or as an offering to some deity. "A thick cloud of incense went up."
2.
The materials used for the purpose of producing a perfume when burned, as fragrant gums, spices, frankincense, etc. "Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon."
3.
Also used figuratively. "Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride, With incense kindled at the Muse's flame."
Incense tree, the name of several balsamic trees of the genus Bursera (or Icica) mostly tropical American. The gum resin is used for incense. In Jamaica the Chrysobalanus Icaco, a tree related to the plums, is called incense tree.
Incense wood, the fragrant wood of the tropical American tree Bursera heptaphylla.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Incense" Quotes from Famous Books



... gold lace, gave them places over against the choir, where they could hear and see all that passed. Though 'twas midnight, the great church was filled with a throng of worshippers, who knelt and rose and knelt again as mass proceeded. From the altar rose clouds of incense from censers swung by acolytes; now and then could be heard the tinkle of a silver bell at the Elevation of the Host and the voice of the priest, monotonous and indistinct, in that vast edifice. ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... Mulvaney for a very god, is not more absurd than mankind thus ignorantly bringing to this poor martyr throughout the years the very last offering he can have desired. Surely it must have filled his shade with a strange bewilderment to have watched us year by year bringing him garlands and the sweet incense of young love, to have seen this gay company approach his shrine with laughter and roses, a very bacchanal, where he had looked for sympathetic sackcloth and ashes—surely it must have all seemed a silly sacrilegious jest. However, he ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... kings once came on a Christmas eve, The king of the Moors was one, I believe;— The druggist at the sign of the Moor Today with spices raps at your door; Regretting no incense or myrrh to have found, He throws pistachio ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... jewels are sewn. Very beautiful, calm and restful at this hour was "Our Lady's Chapel," with its high, dark intertwisting arches, mutilated statues, and ancient tattered battle-banners hanging from the black roof and swaying gently with every little breath of wind. The air, perfumed with incense-odours, seemed weighted with the memory of prayers and devotional silences,- -and in the midst of it all, surrounded by the defaced and crumbling emblems of life and death, and the equally decaying symbols ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... only one point in which, perhaps, she erred: from not having been early accustomed to flattery, she did not receive it with quite sufficient nonchalance. The adoration paid to her in her triple capacity by crowds of worshippers only increased the avidity of her taste for incense, to receive which she would now and then stoop lower than became a goddess. She had not yet been suspected of a real partiality for any of her admirers, though she was accused of giving each just as much encouragement as was ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... like a saint. He departed this life with the consolation of all the last sacraments. Every cleric in the city helped to waft his soul heavenward with clouds of incense at the solemn obsequies. And, though the rabble—the political opponents of the son, that is—recalled those Wednesdays long before when the flock from the orchards would come to let itself be fleeced in the old Shylock's office, all safe ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... scribbling for magazines and newspapers. Of late he had set up for theatrical censor and satirist, and, in a paper called Thespis, in emulation of Churchill's Rosciad, had harassed many of the poor actors without mercy, and often without wit; but had lavished his incense on Garrick, who, in consequence, took him into favor. He was the author of several works of superficial merit, but which had sufficient vogue to inflate his vanity. This, however, must have been mortified on his first introduction to Johnson; ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... lay caressingly round the young warrior's form; its crushed flowers pressed softly against his cold cheek; the fragrance of the new morning wafted its pure incense gently about his simple grave! Around him flowered the delicate plants that the hand of Antonina had raised to please his eye. Near him stood the dwelling, sacred to the first and last kiss that he had impressed upon her lips; and about him, on all sides, rose the plains and woodlands that ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... rummage of pamphlets and papers. Near it were a coffee-table and two deep arm-chairs. From the ceiling, which was divided into compartments painted in dark red and blue, hung a heavy lamp by a chain of gilded silver. A stick of incense burned in a gilded holder. The dining-room, on the other side of the screen, was fitted with divans running round the walls, and contained a large table and a number of chairs with curved backs. The table was covered with a long and exquisitely embroidered ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... fragrant incense rising, curled the smoke of my cigar, With the lamplight gleaming through it like a mist-enfolded star—; And as I gazed, the vapor like a curtain rolled away, With a sound of bells that tinkled, and the ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... And what is that sneer? Materially it is an acrid saliva, withering where it drops; in the way of fellowship it is a corpse-emanation. As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness; it is the Pharisee's incense, the hypocrite's pity, the post of exaltation of the fat citizen, etc.; but, said M. Livret, the people using it should have a care that they keep powerful: they make no friends. He terminated with this warning to a nation not devoid of superior ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in a less degree in the cults which claim the allegiance of the lower leisure class and of the middle classes. There is a reversion to the use of colored lights and brilliant spectacles, a freer use of symbols, orchestral music and incense, and one may even detect in "processionals" and "recessionals" and in richly varied genuflexional evolutions, an incipient reversion to so antique an accessory of worship as the sacred dance. This reversion to spectacular observances is not confined to the upper-class ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... keep the gift, that, when The parting hour should come, They might have hope to meet again In an eternal home. She said his faith in this would be Sweet incense to her memory. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... sacrifice, should war ever again threaten the Nation's life; generations yet to come will pause to read the inscription which it bears, and the voices of a grateful people will ascend from the consecrated spot on which it stands, as incense rises from holy places, invoking blessings upon the memory of him who had filled to the very full the largest measure of human greatness and covered the earth with his ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... hawthorns, Fleck'd with white or red, Whilst their nutty incense, All around is shed. Bonny drooping Blue-bells, Happy you must be With your beauties sheltered 'Neath ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... own reckoning, and may as well shut up our temples And wield on amidst the incense-steam, the thunder of our cars: For we throw out acclamations of self-thanking, self-admiring, With, at every step, "Run faster, O the wondrous, wondrous age!" Little heeding if our souls are wrought as nobly as our iron, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... self-satisfied, The hitherto of my child-thoughts. Beyond, A sea might roar around its base. Beyond, Might be the depths of the unfathomed space, This the earth's bulwark over the abyss. Upon its very point I have watched a star For a few moments crown it with a fire, As of an incense-offering that blazed Upon this mighty altar high uplift, And then float up the pathless waste of heaven. From the next window I could look abroad Over a plain unrolled, which God had painted With trees, and meadow-grass, and a large river, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... oppressed with this great sense of loving; So much I give, so much receive from thee; Like subtle incense, rising from a censer, So floats the fragrance of thy ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... flowers, was empty. Perfumed lamps burned low, swinging from their bronze and silver standards; in a curtained recess in the wall a marble Minerva gleamed shadowed white, half concealed by curtains of dusky red. A silver jar of incense, burning before the shrine, tinged the air with faint fragrance. All was quiet and peaceful, a safe and sheltered nest. From the other inner rooms he could hear voices; a girl's voice steadily intoning sonorous blank verse; at intervals ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... and at the appointed part of the service the dean of the college took a silver box, containing the heart of Saint George, bestowed upon King Henry the Fifth by the Emperor Sigismund, and after incense had been shed upon it by one of the canons, presented it to the king and the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, Dying in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... For here the incense of the cloistered pines, Stained windows of the sky, The frescoed clouds and mountains' purple shrines, Proclaim God's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... certainly contrived to give one a vivid impression of his greatness. Each cavern one entered seemed greater and more boldly arched than its predecessor. This effect of progressive size was enhanced by a thin haze of faintly phosphorescent blue incense that thickened as one advanced, and robbed even the nearer figures of clearness. I seemed to advance continually to something larger, dimmer, and ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... other gods and also goddesses are frequently combined,—to Marduk, Ishtar, Tashmitum, Nabu, Ramman, and the like. The incantations themselves, consisting of fervent appeals to remove the evil, actual or portending, are preceded by certain ceremonies,—the burning of incense, the pouring out of some drink, or by symbolical acts, as the binding of cords; and the god is appealed to once more to ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... many cases arose. An unsigned paper was presented containing the names of many. But these denied that they were or had been Christians, and I thought it right to let them go, since at my dictation they prayed to the gods and made supplication with incense and wine to your statue, which I had ordered to be brought into the court for the purpose, together with the images of the gods, and in addition to this they cursed Christ, none of which things, it is said, those who are really Christians can be made to do. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... his brain hard in both hands lest it should escape prematurely, the little German went inside to preside over a repast, the distinctively German incense of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... in these matters, my lord. But I have heard that man must make a deity of something. The worse sort of unbeliever, they say, lives in the present and burns incense to himself. The better sort, having no future to ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... the shadows of her eyes uplifted to mine. The mysterious fragrance of late autumn, of dying leaves and bare brown earth, and ripening nuts and late grapes hanging on the vines, and luscious persimmons on the leafless trees, rose like incense to my nostrils and intoxicated me. I hardly knew how I answered as I looked deep into her shadowy eyes, and I was almost glad that, our way crossing the little river by a steep path leading down to a shallow ford, I was compelled once more to ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... Incense, and flesh of swine, and this year's grain, At the new moon, with suppliant hands, bestow, O rustic Phidyle! So naught shall know Thy crops of blight, thy vine of Afric bane, And hale the nurslings of thy flock remain Through the sick apple-tide. Fit victims grow 'Twixt holm ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... the middle of May, when the choirs of Westminster and the Chapel Royal sing selections from Handel and other great masters, is also a day not easily to be forgotten, for St. Paul's is excellent for sound, and the fine music rises like incense to the dome, and lingers there as "loth to die," arousing thoughts that, as Wordsworth beautifully says, are in themselves proofs of our immortality. It is on such occasions we feel how great a genius reared St. Paul's, and cry ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... there, at night, in the dying ring of the bells—leaving the pale half-light of the graveyard full of roses for the starry night of the wax tapers which reigned already in the church, quitting the odor of hay and of roses for that of incense and of the tall, cut lilies, passing from the lukewarm and living air outside to that heavy and sepulchral cold that centuries amass in old sanctuaries—a particular calm came at once to her mind, a pacifying of all her desires, a renunciation ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... more numerous, and after supper the room is packed to suffocation, and a long line is waiting in the corridor, marshalled and kept in good humour by able lieutenants; while Mr. Crewe is dimly to be perceived through clouds of incense burning in his honour—and incidentally at his expense—with a welcoming smile and an appropriate word for each caller, whose waistcoat pockets, when they ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... cool: I will incense Page to deal with poison; I will possess him with yellowness, for the revolt of mine is dangerous: ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... admit that a young girl would be rather apt to credit a man with a face like that with qualities he didn't possess." Then she sat down again with a thoughtful expression. "The fact is, you set him up on a pedestal and burned incense to him when you were not old enough to know any better, and when he came home for a few weeks four years ago you promised to marry him. Now it seems he's ready at last, and wants you to go out. Perhaps it doesn't affect the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... succession. The interior walls are mostly covered with gilding and pictures of saints, from base to cupola. In some of them, which are dimly lighted with tapers, priests, in their gorgeous vestments, were chanting, with fine sonorous voices, the evening service; incense was being waved, and people from all sides were rushing in and bowing and crossing themselves, and as quickly rushing out again. The Russians of the Greek Church seem to think that much virtue exists in visiting a number of churches ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... like an incense rose Up to the sun and perished in his beam; The sky's blue promise brightened through the veil. With her unopened sketch-book in her hand, Linda stood on the summit looking down On Norman's Woe, and felt upon her brow ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... exquisitely with its surroundings, and strangely insensible must that worshiper be who, as he kneels in this Nature shrine, and the organ peals forth its solemn notes, with a wonderful accompaniment of hundreds of singing birds, and the ascending incense of a thousand flowers, does not feel his own soul lifted into a higher and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... spiritual conception of God which was continually cutting and lacerating his wicked and sensual heart. Hiding himself amidst the columns of his idolatrous temples, and under the smoke of his idolatrous incense, he thought like Adam to escape from the view and inspection of that Infinite One who, from the creation of the world downward, makes known to all men his eternal power and godhead; who, as St. Paul taught the philosophers of Athens, is ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... the Sub-Prioress. "Thy comments and thy wailings mend not the matter, and do but incense ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... two days she hasn't said a word to me, she hasn't glanced at me," Raskolnikov thought suddenly. The sunlight was bright in the room; the incense rose in clouds; the priest read, "Give rest, oh Lord...." Raskolnikov stayed all through the service. As he blessed them and took his leave, the priest looked round strangely. After the service, Raskolnikov went up to Sonia. She took both his hands and let her head sink ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... with his mind made up ter slay this man Thornton—an' ther way things hev shaped up now, hit won't no fashion do. He's got ter be halted—an' I kain't afford ter be knowd in ther matter one way ner t'other. Go see him an' tell him he'll incense everybody an' bring on hell's own mischief ef he don't hold his hand. Tell him his chanst'll come afore long but right now, I say he's got ter ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... compensated with a share of the divine honors paid to Jove himself. From Goethe to Carlyle, what a long roll of gods, demigods, and demisemigods it was! It might have been bad for the deities, and the philosopher rather thought it was, but burning incense on the different shrines was an excellent thing for the votaries, and kept them out of all sorts of mischiefs, low pleasures, and vain amusements. Whether that was really so or not, the doubt remained whether authorship was not now a creed outworn. Did tender ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... d'Aiguillon called out for the king's friends; and, trembling from apprehension of results that might follow this latter contingency, they entered the chamber of death. The atmosphere was fearful. Not all the fumes of the incense which was sending its vapory wreaths to the pictured ceilings could overpower the odor of approaching dissolution. In vain the acolytes swung their golden censers—death was there, and the scent of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... to yield a point to the enemy. Yet there were nights when he found himself sleepless, listening for sounds which had seemed to arouse him; imagining sinister whispers in his room—and imagining that he could detect the dreadful odour of the secret incense. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... has sometimes less in common with Shakespeare's than with the humour of Swift, Smollett, and Carlyle. For all his admiration and even imitation of Rabelais, Shakespeare has hardly once or twice burnt but so much as a stray pinch of fugitive incense on the altar of Cloacina; the only Venus acknowledged and adored by those three latter humourists. If not always constant with the constancy of Milton to the service of Urania, he never turns into a dirtier byway or back ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... English language, colonized, not only by Christian missions, but by commerce, in every port, on every shore, accessible to an English keel. The heathen of China or Eastern Inde, whilst buying sandal wood for incense to their deities from English or American merchantmen, or trafficing for poisonous drugs; the sable savages that come out of the depth of Africa, to barter on the seaboard their glittering sand, their ivory, ostrich feathers or apes, for articles of English manufacture; the Red ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt

... washed with warm water, after which they gave me rose-water, and I poured it over me. They next brought in sweet-smelling salves, which I rubbed over me, and then repaired to the hummaum, where I found a royal dress, in which the eunuchs arrayed me; and after perfuming me with incense of sandal wood, brought in confections, coffee, and sherberts of various sorts, with which I refreshed myself. I then left the bath with my attendants, who shewed me into the grand hall of the palace, which was spread with ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... their nearest and dearest, splashed upon the walls. Those statues, those pictured saints they pulled down or covered up, had smiled on persecution. They had to have a kind of frenzied house-cleaning to get out the smell of incense. Oh, I know how they felt when they did it, as if I'd been here myself with ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... the great seaport of Marseilles he had trafficked with sailors from all parts of the world, from Arabia and India, and bought their wares, exposed now for sale, to the wonder of all, at the Easter fair—richer wines and incense than had been known in Auxerre, seeds of marvellous new flowers, creatures wild and tame, new pottery painted in raw gaudy tints, the skins of animals, meats fried with unheard-of condiments. His stall formed a strange, unwonted patch ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... domed and pillared like a temple, stood beside the fountain, and as they ascended its marble steps a strong scent of sandalwood fell like a haze of incense upon ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... may easily conceive then, that my situation has been one of treble peril. Mr. L. is the Censor of his own work, and against the Censor's fiat in Russia there is no appeal; he is moreover a gentleman whom the slightest contradiction never fails to incense to a most incredible degree; and being a strict member of the Greek Sclavonian Church, imagines that the revealed word and will of the Supreme are only to be found in the Sclavonian Scriptures, from which he made ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... tradition any foundation in fact? Why not? Through his numberless works we may easily divine the soul of the artist, and can well understand, how the calm and serene atmosphere of the monastic cell, the church perfumed with incense, and the cloister vibrating with psalms, would develop the mystic sentiment in ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... ovations of the public—the truest and most discriminating of all—came privileged admirers; those, who, from their rank, birth, and fortune, have a right to pass the curtain of the sanctuary, and cast incense at the very foot of the idol; who can compliment the artiste on the stage, and follow her with their commonplaces to her very box. There was no scarcity of sacrificers. The noblest of Naples overwhelmed me with adulations; from compliments they came to declaration, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... made haste and told the Queen, who sent messengers throughout Argos, bidding that men should burn thank-offerings of incense on every altar. Also she would that the old men, who were the chiefs and counsellors of the city, should be gathered together to the palace, that they might know the truth of the matter. And while they waited for the Queen, ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... of this theatre of verdure appeared covered with a carpet of white and crimson, for such were the prevailing colours of the rustic costumes. When I thought of the trackless solitude of the sylvan ridges round me, I seemed to witness one of the early communions of Christianity, in those ages when incense ascended to the Olympic deities in gorgeous temples, while praise to the true God rose from the haunts of the wolf, the lonely ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... HEAR HIMS rose from this side—now they rebellowed from the other; and that party, to whom they fell at length from their tremulous and dancing balance, always received them in a tempest of applause. The fortune of such men was a temptation too great to be resisted by one to whom a single whiff of incense withheld gave much greater pain than he received delight in the clouds of it which daily rose about him from the prodigal superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a candidate for contradictory honours; and his great aim was to ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... above ground, and found the light fifty feet below. While this sort of transit is novel, it is delightful; the air is good, or seems so, and there is a faint earthy smell, somewhat like that of stale incense in Italian churches, which I found agreeable from association at least; besides, I liked to think of passing so far beneath all the superincumbent death and all the superambulant life ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... not all the altars; what harm do they do, so long as incense and perfume is the worst of it? As for Artemis's altar at Tauri, though, and her hideous feasts, I should like it ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... their religion, except by the vague promise of some better thing unknown, mingled with threatening, and obscured by an unspeakable horror—a smoke, as it were, of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense; and amidst the images of tortured bodies and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them, dashed more deeply than for ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... earlier period of Paul's apostleship. Hence the importance of its attestation to this fact that all Christians everywhere, both Jewish, who had been trained in strict monotheism, and Gentile, who had burned incense at many a foul shrine, were perfectly joined together in this, that in all their need they called on the name of Jesus Christ as Lord and brought to Him, as divine, adoration not to be rendered to any creatures. From the day of Pentecost onwards, a Christian was not merely ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... to guard and to educate him; we swell within him to the uttermost every aspiration, catching the first flame of youth and feeding it, until the whole heart glows like an altar, and the soul is a temple bright within, and sweet, by the incense-smoke and aspiring flame of perpetual offerings and divine sacrifices. We have never done with him. We lead him from the cradle to boyhood; we take him then into manhood, and guide him through all its passes; ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... Hanny thought, was burning incense. Mrs. French had several curious incense bowls and jars. She lighted one, and in a little while the room was filled with an indescribable fragrance and a ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... midst of children, must have prosperity in his abode; otherwise a household must sustain decay and destruction. O lord, painted on the walls of thy house is a likeness of myself surrounded by numerous children. Stationed there I am daily worshipped with scents and flowers, with incense and edibles and various objects of enjoyment. Thus worshipped in thy house, I daily think of doing thee some good in return. It chanced, O virtuous king, that I beheld the fragmentary bodies of thy son. When these happened to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... are the friends of this curieux fetiche, as Quinet called democracy? It appears to have none, though it has been the subject of fatuous laudation ever since the time of Rousseau. The Americans burn incense before it, but they are themselves ruled by ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... the family Altar next they meet To worship God by reading, prayer and praise, Which all ascend like richest incense sweet Before the throne of Him who guides their ways. Surely bright Angels might delight to gaze Upon this happy family at such time, And feel those Christians fit to join in lays That they are wont to sing in heavenly clime; In rapturous devotion ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... excellence, appears to every well constituted mind as sordid and unseemly. The reward for the exertion of intellect must partake of intellectual dignity; and hence it is, that esteem, applause, or admiration,—the incense of the mind,—appears to be the natural return for such exertions. In proof of this, we may instance the sensible degradation which is felt, when the reward proffered for mental efforts, even in children, takes the form of food, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... supposed by the ancients to preside over the life of each man; each empire, each province, each town had its titular Genius. Everyone offered sacrifice to his Genius on each anniversary of his birth with wine, flowers and incense. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... gods, they say, have all: not so! This have they—flocks on every hill, the blue Spirals of incense and the amber drip Of lucid honey-comb on sylvan shrines, First-chosen weanlings, doves immaculate, Twin-cooing in the osier-plaited cage, And ivy-garlands glaucous with the dew: Man's wealth, man's servitude, but not himself! ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... The incense trembled as it upward sent Its slow, uncertain thread of wandering blue, As't were the only living element In all the church, so deep the stillness grew; It seemed one might have heard it, as it went, Give out an audible rustle, curling ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... goddes seruice are they not / but only when they haue godds worde to beare and warraunte them. God can not be truly worshipped with out faithe, for if faithe be not in the worshippe that is done vnto god / that worshippe the lorde dothe abhorre / as the Prophet Esaie dothe witnes. Incense is an abhominable thinge vnto me / I maye not awaie with your newe moones. &c. I hate your holie dayes / &c. Thus dothe god reiect the seruice apointed in his worde / because it was done without faithe. If the seruice and worshippe of God taughte in his worde maie be done with out ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr

... what shall I say of the mood he ascribes to being? Man makes the gods in his {290} image; and Hegel, in daring to insult the spotless sophrosune of space and time, the bound-respecters, in branding as strife that law of sharing under whose sacred keeping, like a strain of music, like an odor of incense (as Emerson says), the dance of the atoms goes forward still, seems to me but ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... borne over the Host appeared, with the incense-bearers walking backward before it and swinging out faint clouds of smoke: the voices of the choir grew audible, singing the Pange lingua, and everybody knelt. In a few minutes all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... man Offend them by transgression of their laws, Libation, incense, sacrifice, and prayer, In meekness offered, turn their wrath away. Prayers are Jove's daughters, Which, though far distant, yet with constant pace Follow Offence. Offence, robust of limb, And treading firm the ground, outstrips them all, And over ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... redly. Lingering long upon the ledge before their cabin, it at last slipped away almost imperceptibly, leaving Rand still wrapped in revery. Darkness, the smoke of distant fires in the woods, and the faint evening incense of the pines, crept slowly up; but Ruth came not. The moon rose, a silver gleam on the farther ridge; and Rand, becoming uneasy at his brother's prolonged absence, resolved to break another custom, and leave the summit, to seek him on the trail. He buckled on his revolvers, seized his gun, when ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... these festivities and this homage with all the affability and grace which distinguished her. She had by degrees become familiar with this ceaseless homage, which at first seemed so wearisome; by degrees she took delight in this life of pleasure, in the incense of adulation, and the brilliancies of fame. All the indolence, the dreamy carelessness, the graceful abandonment of the creole had been again awakened in her. She cradled herself playfully on the lulling, bright waves of pleasure as an insect ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... I pray for your safety and I offer to heaven much incense, and also foods, and my hope is that no harm may come near ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.

... than myself! I feel all the dangers to which I shall be exposed. I feel that I am giving you a right to treat me with levity: But I rely upon your love, upon your honour! The step which I am on the point of taking, will incense my Relations against me: Should you desert me, should you betray the trust reposed in you, I shall have no friend to punish your insult, or support my cause. On yourself alone rests all my hope, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... were saddling their mounts and fairly bubbling with a purely animal joy in the open; and Dade, his cigarette sending up a tiny ribbon of aromatic smoke as if he were burning incense before the altar of the soul of him that looked steadfastly out of his eyes, walked among them with that intangible air of good-fellowship which is so hard to describe, but which carries more weight among men than any degree of imperious ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... the first sketch, as it were, of "The Soldiers' Rest". I only wish I had been able to write it as I conceived it. The tale as it stands is, I think, a far better piece of craft than "The Bowmen", but the tale that came to me as the blue incense floated above the Gospel Book on the desk between the tapers: that indeed was a noble story—like all the stories that never get written. I conceived the dead men coming up through the flames and in the flames, and being ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen

... up no living creature in sacrifice, nor do they think it suitable to the Divine Being, from whose bounty it is that these creatures have derived their lives, to take pleasure in their deaths, or the offering up their blood. They burn incense and other sweet odours, and have a great number of wax lights during their worship, not out of any imagination that such oblations can add anything to the divine nature (which even prayers cannot do), but as it is a harmless ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... had taken it ill (which was unlikely, for we know he thought Gloriani an ass, and expected little of his wisdom), he might have been soothed by the candid incense of Sam Singleton, who came and sat for an hour in a sort of mental prostration before both bust and artist. But Roderick's attitude before his patient little devotee was one of undisguised though friendly amusement; and, indeed, judged from a strictly ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... from her, Its quiet porch is lone, And the sunny wind no more shall stir Its streamlet's silver tone. The zephyrs there, their incense wreathe, But, o'er her hair they shall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various

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

... departure. The funeral of a child of Mr. Pease was attended in one of the Greek churches, and the Greek priests led the way in the procession, chanting the funeral dirge, in which there was nothing exceptionable; leaving at home, out of deference to the father, the cross, the cherubim, and the incense. ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... touch to her mother's wrongness—a wrongness that had threatened nothing, had crushed down on nothing, and that yet pervaded more and more the whole of life—that she should bring back to her old deserted home not a touch of penitence and the incense of absurd devotions. Friends of that sort, middle-aged, dull Englishmen, didn't, Imogen had wisely surmised, write to one every week. It wasn't as if they had uniting interests to bind them. Even a literary, a political, a philanthropic, correspondence ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... and before the gods Tender their holy prayers: Let the Temples Burne bright with sacred fires, and the Altars In hallowed clouds commend their swelling Incense To those above us: Let no due be wanting; [Florish of Cornets.] They have a noble worke in hand, will honour The very powers that ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]

... Mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, To rise before me—Rise, O ever rise! Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth! Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven, Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... purest billingsgate; and were impartially applauded from below by an audience whose appreciation seemed faintly tinged with envy. Squawking and yelling children swarmed over the flags and rude cobblestones that paved the ways. Like incense, heavy and pungent, the rich effluvia of stable-yards swirled in air made visible by its ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... feet, lay the cornucopia; in her right hand, she held the Indian calumet of peace supporting the cap of liberty: in the perspective appeared the temple of fame; and on her left hand, an altar dedicated to public gratitude, upon which incense was burning. In her left hand she held a scroll inscribed valedictory; and at the foot of the altar lay a plumed helmet and sword, from which a figure of General Washington, large as life, appeared, retiring down the steps, pointing with his right ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... their compatriots much more than the Europeans themselves. Their presence in the pagoda would have polluted it for ever, whereas the pollution brought by us was only temporary; it would evaporate in the smoke of cow-dung—the usual Brahmanical incense of purification—like a drop of muddy water in the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... warn thee now. The false god has been placed upon the altar, the temple all shining with gems and gold has been built around him, the incense-cup is already swinging; nothing will now turn the idolater from her worship, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... could be seen of the proudly attired men and women who had fled before a tidal wave of tossing horns. Father Osuna, in his coarse brown woollen robes, stood before the altar, chanting the mass of thanksgiving. The church blazed with the light of many candles. The air was thick and sweet with incense. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... will attempt: they do indeed rather deserve themselves to be laughed at, than their conceits. For what can be more ridiculous than we do make ourselves, when we thus fiddle and fool with our own souls; when, to make vain people merry, we incense God's earnest displeasure; when, to raise a fit of present laughter, we expose ourselves to endless wailing and woe; when, to be reckoned wits, we prove ourselves stark wild? Surely to this case we may accommodate that of a truly great wit, King Solomon: ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... commodities.[2] Nevertheless, by the Navigation Act of 1660 colonial exports, part of which had to be carried only to England, were confined to English ships. This was a sufficient limitation of their former freedom of trade to incense the planters in the West Indies but, as a matter of greater importance to them, the king granted to the Company of Royal Adventurers the exclusive trade to the western coast of Africa, thus limiting their supply of Negro slaves to this organization. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... at the door lifted the heavy leather curtain for her and she put a soldo into his outstretched hand as she went in. The church seemed very still, very quiet, after the clamour of the streets. The acrid scent of incense was as the breath of spent prayer. Little yellow flames flickered in the shrine lamps before each altar, but it was early yet and for the moment no mass was being said. An old, white-haired monk was sweeping the worn pavement. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... as soon as I shall have settled up what's left of the old scores and snuffed up a few more of those pleasantly intoxicating clouds of incense, I shall pack and depart homeward. Tell papa I am as fond of him as I am of my new name. I couldn't put it stronger than that. What an inspiration it was! But inspirations come ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... uttering wild cries. They meet, they jostle, they quarrel, they fight; bloody noses, black eyes, and broken heads are freely given and received. All day long, too, from before the peep of dawn till after darkness has fallen, these red-cloaked monks hold services in the dim incense-laden air of the great Machindranath temple, the cathedral of Lhasa; and thither they crowd thrice a day to receive their doles of tea and soup and money. The cathedral is a vast building, standing in the centre of the city, and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... hundred men who called themselves a posse, advanced against Nauvoo, with some small field pieces. Governor Ford had authorized Major Flood, commanding the militia of Adams County, to raise a force to preserve order in Hancock; but the major, knowing that such action would only incense the force of the Antis, disregarded the governor's request. At this juncture Major Parker was relieved of the command at Nauvoo and succeeded by Major B. Clifford, Jr., of the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... fell Like some sweet chant at vespers. The air is heavy With the scent of mignonette and rose, And from the beds of flowers the tall White lilies point like angel fingers upward, Casting on the air an incense sweet, That brings to mind the old, old story Of the alabaster box that loving Mary Broke upon the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... was considered that the same great Creator of the universe was worshipped alike by Protestant and Catholic, what difficulty could the mind have in divesting their pageant of its tinsel, its trappings, and its censers, and joining with sincerity in offering the purest incense, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... luxurious, splendid, and even amusing, than the old existence of the watering-places. To ride in the Park and feel herself one of that brilliant crowd, to be surrounded by a succession of lively companions, to have always "something going on," that delight of youth, and a continual incense of admiration rising around her enough to have turned a less steady head, filled Bice's cup with happiness. But perhaps the most penetrating pleasure of all was that of having carried out the Contessa's expectations and fulfilled her hopes. Had not Madame di Forno-Populo ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; By night star-veiling, and by day Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, And ask the gods to pardon ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... well in so short a time. It was a soul rather than a body that lay there, ablaze with spiritual fire, good will shining through everywhere. He did not pay me any compliment about my work, and I didn't pay him any about his. We did not burn any of the incense before each other which authors so often think it necessary to do, but we were friends instantly. I am not given to speedy intimacies, but I could not help my heart going out to him. It was a wonderfully invested soul, no hedges or fences across ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... formula suten ta hotep to forward them to the other world. The king is seen, therefore, in all parts of the temple, standing, seated, kneeling, slaying the victim, presenting the parts, pouring out the wine, the milk, and the oil, and burning the incense. All humankind acts through him, and through him performs its duty towards the gods. When the ceremonies to be performed required the assistance of many persons, then alone did mortal subordinates (consisting, as much as possible, of his own family) appear by his side. The queen, standing behind ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... things connected with God's chosen people under the old dispensation are considered proper symbols to represent similar things or events in the New Testament dispensation, without special regard to the department from which they are drawn. Thus, the temple, altar, incense, candlesticks, holy city, etc., of the former age, though not taken from the department of human or angelic life, are, nevertheless, clearly used to represent affairs of the church, the analogy in the case being apparent ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... any notice of the prohibition! Now Morgan, dear, I think you've treated her handsomely and she has cause to be grateful to you. You offered her the incense of a profound faith in her genius and a profound admiration of her person. Not content with that, she needs must have the same incense—compounded of the same two essentials, observe you—from the world at large. For this purpose you made her a nice little money ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... women kneeling among the goats and dogs; the men, uncovered, standing in the shadows of the gallery; the altar sparkling with a hundred candles; and the dying sunlight filtering through mediaeval windows. As the resinous incense odor fills the house, through the wide-open doors the sun can be seen setting in its tropical magnificence behind a ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... lower its point, as the robber did to Queen Margaret in the lonely wood. We are conscious of treading on ground where stronger, and wiser, and better men have knelt before us; and own that the altar on which things so rare and precious have been laid has a right to be fastidious as to the quality of incense. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... honours share, Denominated cabinets and bow'rs, In which, from high respect to heav'nly pow'rs, They represent the image of a bird, A pleasing sight, though (what appears absurd) 'Tis bare of plumage, save about the wings; To this each youthful bosom incense brings, While other gods, as I've been often told, They scarcely ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... morn was up again, the dewy morn; With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn, And smiling, as if earth contained no tomb: And glowing ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... sunshine of that Italian August, amid the plaudits of assembled Rome, amid banners and flowers, music and incense, the flash of steel and the blaze of decorations with the Borgian arms everywhere displayed—or, a grazing steer gules—Alexander VI passes to the Vatican, the aim and summit of his ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... incense gloom, In drifting clouds and golden light; Once I was shod with fire, and trod Beethoven's path through storm and night: It is too late now to ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... burthen of idolatrous praise, which to our thinking had all the bad effects of calumny, we should be able to find at bottom something that could be applauded without impairing our veracity, deceiving the public, or joining the multitude in burning the vile incense of flattery under the boy's nose, and hiding him from the world and from himself in a cloud ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... foreign, and especially Greek and Oriental, princes, and contained many examples of beautiful metal-work and Greek illumination. His own Cathedral of Hildesheim was supplied with jewelled service-books, in part at least the work of his own hand. The chalices and incense-burners and the massive golden corona or candelabrum of the cathedral were also the productions of his own workshops. The mural paintings, too, were executed by himself. His handiwork, so lovingly described by his old schoolmaster ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... God for loveliness!' he thought. 'Those poor boys at the front!' And kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began to say his prayers. The same feeling which made him beautify his church, use vestments, good music, and incense, filled him now. God was in the loveliness of His world, as well as in His churches. One could worship Him in a grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by the banks of a bright river. God was in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... before the Cherubins over the Ark, and the Brazen Serpent. For we read not, that the Priest, or any other did worship the Cherubins; but contrarily wee read (2 Kings 18.4.) that Hezekiah brake in pieces the Brazen Serpent which Moses had set up, because the People burnt incense to it. Besides, those examples are not put for our Imitation, that we also should set up Images, under pretence of worshipping God before them; because the words of the second Commandement, "Thou shalt not make ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... of the Christian Pantheon. Statues therein were rechristened, and the sacrificial altars were simply transferred for the use of the eucharistical sacrifice. The vestal virgins became nuns of the church; the Sacerdotes, her priests; the mysteries of Isis, her Agapae. Her incense, her pictures, her image-worship, her holy water, her processions, and her prodigies, too, all came from the same source. Thus were the socialistic and communistic teachings, based on the Philoic-Essenism of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... dolls, and play with faiths as a boy plays with marbles, until the moment comes when the game is over, and the player is faced by the terror of a great lesson; the lunatics who stare away their days behind prancing horses in the Park, who worship in the sacred groves of bonnets, who burn incense to rouged and powdered fashions, who turn literature into a "movement," and art into a cult, and humanity into a bogey, and love into an adulterous sensation; the lunatics who think that to "live" is only another word for to sin, that innocence is a prison ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... it is known as "Oregon pine." In Utah, where it is common on the Wahsatch Mountains, it is called "red pine." In California, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, it forms, in company with the yellow pine, sugar pine, and incense cedar, a pretty well-defined belt at a height of from three to six thousand feet above the sea; but it is only in Oregon and Washington, especially in this Puget Sound region, that it reaches its very grandest development,—tall, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... through. He saw a matting-lined corridor identical with that known as Block A. The door of one apartment, that on the extreme left, was opened. Sickly fumes were wafted out to him, and these mingled with the incense-like odor which characterized the temple ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... the ancients dreaded the powers above when they had been too fortunate, I went with the marquis in high spirits to the Rue Ste. Croix. There were pots of incense sending little wavers of smoke through the rooms, and the people might have peopled a dream. The men were indeed all smooth and trim; but the women had given rein ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... history, too, out of a little book that was all grey slabs of print and dark pictures showing the earth swallowing up Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and Aaron and the sons of Levi with their long beards and high hats and their petticoats, swinging incense in fits of temper. You found out queerer and queerer things about God. God made the earth swallow up Korah, Dathan and Abiram. He killed poor Uzzah because he put out his hand to prevent the ark of the covenant falling out of the cart. Even David said he didn't know how on earth he ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... waited in the arena to be devoured by the lions, and eighty thousand spectators watched their vigil. Those Christians were plain folk—"not many mighty, not many noble"—and every one of them could have escaped that brutal fate if he had been willing to burn a little incense to the Emperor. Turn now to ourselves, eighteen hundred years afterwards. We have had a long time to outgrow the character and fidelity of those first Christians; do we think that we have done so? As we imagine ourselves in their places, are we ready with any glibness ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... am the will o' the wisp that dances thro' the streets; I am the cooing dove of Towns, from the plane trees and the chestnuts' shade. From day to day all changes, where I burn my incense to my thousand little gods. In white palaces I dwell, and passionate dark alleys. The life of men in crowds is mine—of lamplight in the streets at dawn. [Softly] I have a thousand loves. and never one too long; for I am nimbler than your ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... haystack smoldered in what had been a farmstead yard; its thin blue smoke wavered up in the morning, incense over the dead hope of the humble heart that had dreamed it had found a refuge in that spot. At the roadside a little farther on the burned ruins of a cabin lay. It had stood so near the wheel track that the heat of its embers was warm on Frances' face as she galloped by. The wire fence was ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... perished from among the congregation. And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also. And there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense. ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... letters? Would anything happen to save Ourieda from Tahar? The girl brought up to be a Roman Catholic prayed to the Blessed Virgin. The girl brought up to be a Mohammedan prayed to Allah. And the prayers of both, ascending from different altars, like smoke of incense in a Christian church and in a mosque, rose toward the same heaven. Yet no help came; and the summer days slipped by, until at last it was September, the month ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... in a good cause. We went to see Mr. Ruskin at Herne Hill. I find him far more personally lovable than I had expected. Of course he lives in the incense of an adoring circle, but he is absolutely unaffected himself, and with a GREAT charm. So much gentler and more refined than I had expected, and such clear ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... strange hue, as if seen through the sombre medium of a stained casement." While congregations knelt in awe beneath the lifted Host, and the image of the dying Savior stretched on the rood glimmered through clouds of incense, perhaps an army of Flagellants would march by the cathedral, shouting, "The end of the world is at hand!" filling the streets with the echoes of their torture as they lashed their naked backs with knotted cords wet with blood; and no soul ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... fragrance of the garden, so imbued the musky air, Every dew-drop, ere it reaches earth, is turned to attar rare; O'er the parterre spread the incense-clouds a canopy right fair: Gaily live! for soon will vanish, Biding not, the days ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... bought some little rings of perfumed incense. He put them in his sleeve. His sleeves could hold more things than all a boy's ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... to the feeling, what can the loyal poet do, but take the most precious portion of the currency, and impress it with the mint-mark of his own devoted fancy? Perhaps there never was a more panegyrical rhymer than Spenser, and yet, so fine and ethereal is his incense, that the breath of morning is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various

... Campaspe and Mother Bombie are written in this vein; each, as Symonds beautifully puts it, is "a censer of exquisitely chased silver, full of incense to be tossed before Elizabeth upon her throne." In the three plays Sapho and Phao, Endymion, and Midas this element of flattery is more prominent than in the others, inasmuch as they are not only full of compliments unmistakeably directed ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... Perion's nature it is certain that this Perion will come again." Then Demetrios went into the sacred grove upon the hillsides south of Quesiton and made an offering of myrtle-branches, rose-leaves and incense to ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... dearest husband," said Lady Peveril, "cease this wild talk! It can but incense Master Bridgenorth, who might otherwise consider, that ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... be a Gospel thankfulness. Let the incense of a grateful spirit rise not only to the Great Giver of all good, but to our Covenant God in Christ. Let it be the spirit of the child exulting in the bounty and beneficence of his Father's house and home! "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... century before, the medicine-man's fire had blazed in this circle, its smoky incense crackling upward in offering to the gods of the pagan tribe. Here, too, upon this charred, barren spot, had been heaped the blazing fagots about the limbs of the captive brave, and the victim bound to the stake had nerved himself to show the encircling brutes that ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... blue iris, which came up to the foot of the sacred emblem, and wreaths of roses in the corners. When I had bought it, I noticed that there was a faint scent about it, as if it were permeated with the remains of incense, or rather, as if it were still pervaded by those delicate, sweet scents of by-gone years, which seemed to be only the memory of perfumes, the soul ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... face of the day nigh dead, [Epode. What horror hath hidden thy glory, what hand hath muffled thine head? 1380 O sun, with what song shall we call thee, or ward off thy wrath by what name, With what prayer shall we seek to thee, soothe with what incense, assuage with what gift, If thy light be such only as lightens to deathward the seaman adrift With the fire of his house for a beacon, that foemen have wasted with flame? Arise now, lift up thy light; give ear to us, put forth thine hand, Reach toward us thy torch ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... trees, which looked ominous. Having spent a very pleasant day, and enjoyed good cheer and good company, Three-forty was again "hitched to;" joined hands announced the parting moment had arrived; wreaths of smoke from fragrant Havanas ascended like incense from the shrine of Adieu; "G'lang"—the note of advance—was sounded; Three-forty sprang to the word of command; friends, shoes, and shoemakers were soon tailed of; and ere long your humble servant was nestling his nose in ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... it into the mud at the bottom and pushing against it with all his might. Meanwhile, the frail structure on which he sat trembled and wobbled about in the most unseaworthy fashion, causing him almost to repent of his undertaking almost as soon as he had started, although he had the incense of popular admiration to egg him on, for the village boys were cheering and hooraying him like—"like anything," as he ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson

... expense; at his instructions some one of the patients read the hymns of praise in the consulting-room on Sundays, and after the reading Sergey Sergeyitch himself went through the wards with a censer and burned incense. ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... with becoming reverence; there was a slight pause, and then the colonel lifted the cover of the tureen and sent a savory cloud of incense to the ceiling. ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... of the same blood. Both traced their descent from Abraham; it was only on the side of the mother that their origin was different. While the Ishmaelites claimed connection with Egypt, the Midianites were more purely Arabic in race. The name of Keturah their ancestress means "incense," and points to the incense-bearing lands of the south. Midian was properly the district which stretched along the western coast of the Gulf of Aqaba towards Mecca, if not towards Yemen. But Midianite tribes had also ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... to view; but their voices could be heard for ten or fifteen minutes, after which clouds of smoke, probably caused by burning incense, arose ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis

... sufficient penalty; and the calendar was filled with special days for prayer and purification. Priests, monks, and nuns crowded the city, in numbers disproportionate to the lay population. The place was heavy with the incense of a constant worship—the very atmosphere redolent of piety. From the unrestrained hands of the early governors, the administration of justice passed to the Conseil Superieur, a body comprising the governor, the bishop, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... life when in the presence of the supreme in art. I find that a really fine picture induces a feeling of reverence, an emotion akin to the influence of a mountain range, or a dim cathedral. Pray burn incense. I am almost tempted to regret being ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy



Words linked to "Incense" :   chemical compound, odorize, anger, stacte, joss stick, scent, fragrance, incense tree, perfume, exasperate, thurify, incense wood, infuriate, compound



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