Incense

Incense is an aromatic biotic material that releases fragrant smoke when burnt. The term is used for either the material or the aroma. Incense is used for aesthetic reasons, religious worship, aromatherapy, meditation, and ceremony. It may also be used as a simple deodorant or insect repellent.

And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand ~ Revelation, VIII, 3–5

Quotes

• Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant?
  • Song of Solomon, III, 6 (KJV)

• And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
  And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.
  And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.
  • Revelation, VIII, 3–5 (KJV)

• There were myrrh and cassia with frankincense smoking;
  • Sappho, Fragment 44. Andromache’s Wedding
  • George Allen, transl., The Atlantic Monthly (February 1937), p. 227

• Come, Cnidian, Paphian Venus, come,
    Thy well-beloved Cyprus spurn,
  Haste, where for thee in Glycera's home
        Sweet odours burn.
  • Horace, Odes, I, 30. Ad Venerem
  • John Conington, transl., Odes and Carmen Sæculare (1863)

• Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
  The gods themselves throw incense.
  • Shakespeare, King Lear, V, iii, 22–23

• For Adoration, incense comes
  From bezoar, and Arabian gums,
  • Christopher Smart, A Song to David (1763)

• And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
  Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree;
  • S. T. Coleridge, "Kubla Khan" (1816)

•   Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told
    His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
    Like pious incense from a censer old,
    Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
  Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.
  • John Keats, "The Eve of St. Agnes" (1820)

• No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
    From chain-swung censer teeming; ...
  • John Keats, "Ode to Psyche" (1819)

• O blest unfabled Incense Tree,
  That burns in glorious Araby,
  With red scent chalicing the air,
  Till earth-life grow Elysian there!
  • George Darley, "The Phœnix"
  • Nepenthe (1835)

• Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
    Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
  Smear’d with dull nard an Indian wipes
    From out her hair: such balsam falls
    Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
  From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
  Spent with the vast and howling main,
  To treasure half their island-gain.
  And strew faint sweetness from some old
    Egyptian’s fine worm-eaten shroud
  Which breaks to dust when once unroll’d;
    Or shredded perfume, like a cloud
    From closet long to quiet vow’d,
  With moth’d and dropping arras hung,
  Mouldering her lute and books among,
  As when a queen, long dead, was young.
  • Robert Browning, Paracelsus (1835), Part IV

• A censer’s swing-chain set in her fair hands
  Dances up wreaths of intertwisted blue
  In clouds of fragrant frankincense and myrrh.
  • Lord de Tabley, "Circe" (1893)

• For the tune from thine altar hath sounded
    Since God bade the world's work begin,
  And the fume of thine incense abounded,
    To sweeten the sin.
  • A. C. Swinburne, "Dolores"
  • Poems and Ballads (1866)

• And her hair fell about her in a dim clinging mist,
  Like smoke from a golden incense burned in Paradise.
  • John Masefield, "Vision"
  • Salt-Water Poems and Ballads (1902)

• No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
  Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
  Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
  And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.
  • Anthony Hecht, "More Light! More Light!"
  • Collected Earlier Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990)