"Elves" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life; the goat-foot faun, The centaur, or the merry, bright-eyed elves That leave they: dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to Nature's mysteries, for we ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... reverse his film and to run it from the end to the beginning of the action. Every dream becomes real, uncanny ghosts appear from nothing and disappear into nothing, mermaids swim through the waves and little elves climb out of ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... of "Childe Rowland" has also claims on our attention especially with regard to recent views on the true nature and origin of elves, trolls, and fairies. I refer to the recently published work of Mr. D. MacRitchie, "The Testimony of Tradition" (Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co.)—i.e., of tradition about the fairies and the rest. Briefly put, Mr. MacRitchie's view is that the elves, trolls, and fairies represented ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement: they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarreling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... the hunter-star Orion (Or, it may be, Charles his Wain) Tempts the tiny elves to try on All their little tricks again; When the earth is calmly breathing Draughts of slumber undefiled, And the sire, unused to teething, Seeks for errant pins ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the bold Sir Bedivere and spake: "O me, my King, let pass whatever will, Elves, and the harmless glamour of the field; But in their stead thy name and glory cling To all high places like a golden cloud For ever: but as yet thou shalt not pass. Light was Gawain in life, and light in death Is ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... sub-contractor; 'Tisn't machinery. No! In fact, What Sweating is, in a manner exact, After much thinking we cannot define. Who is to blame for it? Well, we incline To think that the Sweated (improvident elves!) Are, at the bottom, to blame themselves! They're poor of spirit, and weak of will, They marry early, have little skill; They herd together, all sexes and ages, And take too tamely starvation wages; And if they will do so, much ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... distinguish'd care Of thousand bright Inhabitants of Air! If e'er one vision touch.'d thy infant thought, Of all the Nurse and all the Priest have taught; 30 Of airy Elves by moonlight shadows seen, The silver token, and the circled green, Or virgins visited by Angel-pow'rs, With golden crowns and wreaths of heav'nly flow'rs; Hear and believe! thy own importance know, 35 Nor bound thy narrow views to things below. Some secret truths, from ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... accounts of the green nooks where jacks-in-the-pulpit preached their little sermons; brooks, beside which grew blue violets and lovely ferns; rocks, round which danced the columbines like rosy elves, or the trees where birds built, squirrels chattered, and woodchucks burrowed, that Thorny was seized with a desire to go and see these beauties for himself. So Jack was saddled, and went plodding, scrambling, and wandering into all manner of ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... yet, that he be alive, and dwelling in Avalon with the fairest of all elves: still look the Britons for the day of Arthur's coming ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... Falstaff readily falls. The closing scene is rich with humor. It opens with a delightful love-song by Fenton ("From those sweet lips a song of love arises"). The conspirators enter one after the other, and at last Falstaff, disguised as the sable hunter. The elves are summoned, and glide about to the delicious fairy music accompanying Nannetta's beautiful song ("While we dance in the moonlight"). From this point the action hastens to the happy denouement, and the work concludes with a fugue which is imbued with ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... once, the most charming little people came marching forth. They were only tall enough to reach to my knee. They looked like men, but were better proportioned: they called themselves elves, and had delicate clothes on, of flower leaves trimmed with the wings of flies and gnats, which had a very good appearance. Directly they appeared, they seemed to be seeking for something—I know not ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... by the wind in wild confusion about the maimed and storm-beaten tree-trunks seemed to assume fantastic shapes and expressions as we approached from different directions, or viewed them under light and shadow of changing weather. Gnarled and twisted, they became elves and goblins, and the huge piles of storm wreckage were transformed into weird old ruins and deserted castles like those which grandma had described to me in legends of the Rhine. At twilight I was often afraid to pass, lest giants and ghosts should show themselves between uncanny arches. ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... red-breast! Sing, birds, in every furrow! And from each bill let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, You pretty elves, among yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow! To give my Love good-morrow! ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... work, she found a letter, and as she could not read, she laid her broom in the corner, and took the letter to her master and mistress, to see what it was about; and it was an invitation from the elves, who wished the maid to come and stand godmother to one of their children. The maid did not know what to do; and as she was told that no one ought to refuse the elves anything, she made up her mind to go. So there came three little ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... name should really be spelled, Aelfred, [Footnote: That is, the rede or councel of the elves. A great many Old-English names are called after the elves or fairies.] was the youngest son of King Aethelwulf, and was born at Wantage in Berkshire in 849. His mother was Osburh daughter of Oslac the King's cup-bearer, who came of the royal ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... "The first of these Christian elements [in Bewulf] is the sense of a fairer, softer world than that in which the Northern warriors lived.... Another Christian passage (ll. 107, 1262) derives all the demons, eotens, elves, and dreadful sea-beasts from the race of Cain. The folly of sacrificing to the heathen gods is spoken of (l. 175).... The other point is the belief in immortality (ll. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... involves the idea of protection against divers kinds of malicious spirits, including the demons of disease, ghosts, fairies, and evil-minded sprites, surly elves, fiends, trolls, pixies, bogies, kelpies, gnomes, goblins, witches, devils, imps, Jinn, et id omne genus. Amulets served as preventives against bodily ailments or ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... from the Anglo-Saxon, refers especially to tiny sprites, fond of mischief and tricks. But there were various kinds of elves, according to the Norse mythology. Consult Gayley's "Classic Myths." Explain ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... or alfer were ethereal beings of great beauty and with voices that had the clearness of silver. During moonlight nights especially they danced in dales and groves. Ljusalfer, light elves, personified the benign influences in nature, especially as they manifest themselves in the realms of light and air. Svartalfer, black elves, lived in the earth and personified the silent forces that operate beneath its surface. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... music has to intoxicate him before he can play with it; then he becomes its comrade, in a kind of very serious game; himself, in short, that is to say inhuman. His fingers have in them a cold magic, as of soulless elves who have sold their souls for beauty. And this beauty, which is not of the soul, is not of the flesh; it is a sea-change, the life of the foam on the edge of the depths. Or it transports him into some mid-region of the air, between hell and heaven, where he hangs listening. He listens at all his ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... margin dear to moonlight elves Where Zephyr-trembling Lilies grow, 50 And bend to kiss their softer selves That tremble in the stream below:— There nightly borne does Laura lie A magic Slumber heaves her breast: Her arm, white wanderer of the Harp, 55 Beneath ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hands on their hearts, their forms bent gracefully as if in salutation. In the middle rose a white throne, and on this sat the prettiest fairy of all, with a crown on her head and a wand in her hand; she was dressed in white and gold, and round her danced a circle of elves; and every elf held ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... glow-worm lend thee, The shooting stars attend thee, And the elves also, Whose little eyes glow Like the sparks of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... course, the first thing that suggested itself. If Miss Matty could teach children anything, it would throw her among the little elves in whom her soul delighted. I ran over her accomplishments. Once upon a time I had heard her say she could play "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman?" on the piano, but that was long, long ago; that faint shadow of musical acquirement had died out years before. She had also once been able to trace out ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that he is cavorting still outside the walls, while the good citizens inside are making sly sport of him. Who, being recently banished from Boyville, has not sought to return? In vain does he haunt the swimming hole; the water elves will have none of him. He hushes their laughter, muffles their calls, takes the essence from their fun, and leaves it ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... work may prove for many a boy and girl (of any age up to a hundred) the Golden Bridge over which they can plunge into that marvelous world of fairies, elves, goblins, kobolds, trolls, afreets, jinns, ogres, and giants that fascinates us all, lost to this world till some one wakes us ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... spirits of the elder world should not yet have been effectually dislodged from their ancient solitudes.... The Pixies, thoroughly mischievous elves, who delight to lead all wanderers astray, dwell in the clefts of broken granite, and dance on the green sward by the side of the hill streams; ... sometimes, but very rarely, they are seen dancing by the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Pros. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 35 When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... bunnies moved solemnly along at intervals over concealed runways, stopping now and then to bow to the amused audience. Winking, gray-bearded elves bobbed up from behind canvas rocks to wave diminutive hands before popping back to their shelters. One sun-bonneted fellow in patched overalls bent spasmodically over a little wooden wash tub on a hill. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... behind Hammerstein Castle, a ring of basking sward, girdled by a silver slate-brook, and guarded by four high-peaked hills that slope down four long wooded corners to the grassy base. Here, it is said, the elves and earthmen play, dancing in circles with laughing feet that fatten the mushroom. They would have been fulfilling the tradition now, but that the place was occupied by a sturdy group of mortals, armed with staves. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Ocean mythologically with the demon that surrounds (swallows) the waters of the sky. The Vedic parallel is rather Ras[a], the far-off great 'stream.' It is rarely that one finds Aryan equivalents in the land of fairies and fays. Yet are the Hindu clever artizan Ribhus[24] our 'elves,' who, even to this day, are distinct from fairies in their dexterity and cleverness, as every ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... shone out from behind the clouds above the dark forest. There was a fragrance of lilies all about, and a gossamer gown floated around her, whiter than the whiteness of the fairest lily. It was fine like the finest lace the frost-elves weave, and softer than the softest ermine of the snow. On her long golden hair ...
— The Legend of the Bleeding-heart • Annie Fellows Johnston
... figure of a youth with hands outstretched in welcome. The moon paused before the door but did not enter. The youth slid to the ground and crouched with head on knee in an attitude of despair. A gigantic figure stood out in the light. Before him danced a circle of elves. The figure in the doorway leaned back and slept. Watching this strange panorama, I ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... all the trees trimmed as carefully and precisely as the lawn, some cut in the shape of pyramids, others in the shape of green columns. There's a lovely fountain and little plaster elves and deer scattered all ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... interest. She visioned herself in the mountain's beautiful crystal halls; seemed to hear the song of the Neck in the rushing of the river; and tree and blossom grew more beautiful in her eyes, as she imagined elves and spirits speaking out ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... agreeable to be true—are nevertheless substantial creatures, whose loves and jokes and quarrels receive our thorough sympathy; and the air they breathe—the lords and the ladies, no less than the mechanics and the elves—is instinct with an exquisite good-humour, which makes us as happy as the night is long. To turn from Theseus and Titania and Bottom to the Enchanted Island, is to step out of a country lane into a conservatory. The roses and the dandelions have vanished ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... a little footpath leading to the lakeside. It was a cold day, with flying clouds and gleams on hill and water. The bosom of Silver How held depths of purple shadow, but there were lights like elves at play, chasing each other along the Easedale fells, and the stony side ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the spirit of the volume before him, lest, on perusal, conviction should compel him to retract the ungracious thought. To be plain, he is not desirous of any higher honorary distinction than the good opinion of his readers. And now, sons and daughters of Fashion! ye cameleon race of giddy elves, who flutter on the margin of the whirlpool, or float upon the surface of the silvery stream, and, hurried forwards by the impetus of the current, leave yourselves but little time for reflection, one glance will convince you that you are addressed by an old acquaintance, and, heretofore, constant ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... thy arm, A pearly vase of fire,—through the shifting Cloud-halls of calm and storm, Pour down thy blossoms! let me hear them come, Pelting with noiseless light the twinkling thickets, Making the darkness audible with the hum Of many insect creatures, grigs and crickets: Until it seems the elves hold revelries By haunted stream and grove; Or, in the night's deep peace, The young-old presence of Earth's full increase Seems telling thee her love, Ere, lying down, she turns to rest, and smiles, Hearing thy heart beat through the ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... they sat at the feet of their kind teacher and together they learned to read. Often they danced on the sward at twilight, when they looked like golden-haired elves in a fairy dance. ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... colour was very soothing to the eye. All at once I saw approaching a set of the most beautiful little people, so little that they would only have reached to my knee; they looked like men and women, but they were better proportioned. They called themselves Elves, and their garments were composed of the leaves of flowers, trimmed with the wings of gnats and flies—not at all ugly. They seemed as if they were searching for something—what I did not know; but when they came a little nearer ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... dryads dancing in the moonlight (as she and I saw them in the same spot to-night), careless that Nature was distilling magic perfume for us from tree and fern and wild flower, our eyes shut to the fact that elves disguised as Indian lilies were ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... him in the twilight. He seems robed in a long cloak, with a peaked cap or hood like the elves in my nursery stories. Sometimes when I look out of the window here, I see him passing round this house like a shadow; and see his pointed hood, dark against the sunset or the rising ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... and as I rode widershins round yon hill, a deep drowsiness fell upon me, and when I awoke, behold! I was in Elfland. Fair is that land and gay, and fain would I stop but for thee and one other thing. Every seven years the Elves pay their tithe to the Nether world, and for all the Queen makes much of me, I fear it is myself that will ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... reader who comes to a perusal with the expectation of getting some substantial diet, will be grievously mistaken; but those who are content if they can catch and hold fast a fleeting flavour will not regret the half-hour spent in listening to the songs of the elves and the prattle of the pages in this quaint ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... proudly, "I'd never go back—I might be frightened, but I'd be ashamed to run. Going to aunt Mirandy's is like going down cellar in the dark. There might be ogres and giants under the stairs,—but, as I tell Hannah, there MIGHT be elves and fairies and enchanted frogs!—Is there a main street to the village, like ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... writes about them. They are not attractive from the outside to those who have no love for quaint scholarship, odd humours, and rare fancies. A lady who had been in a camp had nothing to say of them to me save that they were "dirty—dirty, and begged." But I ever think, when I see them, of Tieck's Elves, and of the Strange Valley, which was so grim and repulsive from without, but which, once entered, was the gay forecourt ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... sturdy and straight like Tom; but he was a very happy little boy all the same, after a strange, quiet fashion of his own, and he liked best of all to be alone with Norah in the woods or by the river, when they would make up all sorts of fancies about queer little elves and fairies who, they said, lived in the trees or bushes, and in the ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... telling you of these singers of the air, read "The Return of The Birds," written in the early spring of 1864, when, as you know, the country was in great trouble, and the birds saw many a sorry sight. If you like a beautiful fairy-tale in verse, all about children and the elves or sprites that children love, read his "Little People of The Snow." There also is the pretty legend of "The White-footed Deer"; or if you bigger boys and girls wish something more weird and exciting, read his tragic story of "The Strange Lady." ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... without being observed, she could see all that passed. Long did she gaze, without taking off her eyes for an instant, on the dance—on the bold and wonderful springs of the little creatures, who seemed to float in the air, and not so much as to touch the ground, while the ravishing melody of the Elves filled her whole soul. The child, meanwhile, which lay in her arms grew sleepy and drew its breath heavily, and, without ever thinking on the promise she had given the old woman, she made, as is usual, the sign of ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... mountains, where the fairies and goblins live, or the forests, which belong to the brownies and elves, or the valleys, where the sunbeams play, or the caves, where the wind-voices hide, or—I do b'lieve she's asleep. Yes, sir! Both eyes are tight shut, and she has dropped the foxglove she ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and climb the hillsides, we are dazzled by the luxuriant beauty of it all. It hardly seems real—it is too green, too perfect, to be believed; and one thinks of some fairy drop-scene, painted by cunning-fingered elves and sprites, who might have a wee folk's way of mixing roses and rainbows, dew-drenched greens and sun-warmed yellows; showing the picture to you first all burnished, glittering and radiant, then ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... human terror could appal, sunk within him; his nerves trembled, and the objects that surrounded him, swam in confusion before his eyes. But it is not for virtue to tremble; it is not for conscious innocence to fear the power of elves and goblins. Edwin presently recollected himself, and a gloomy kind of tranquility assumed the empire of his heart. He was more watchful than ever for his beloved Imogen; he gazed with threefold earnestness upon the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... cried Lottie to one of these sportive zephyrs. "De you call that a gust of wind? I declare it was a viewless sprite, or a party of snow elves, playing their ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... countries, and display the same non-Christian idea of death and of the future world (see "The Lyke-wake Dirge"), the same ghostly superstitions and stories of metamorphosis, and the same belief in elves and fairies, as are found in the ballads of Greece, of Provence, of Brittany, Denmark and Scotland. We shall now examine these supposed common notes of all genuine popular song, supplying a few out of the many instances of curious identity. As to brusqueness of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... each. They recognise their master, they are under his magic spell; the familiar stories from Plutarch and Chaucer and Ovid take on a new meaning; the very holly on the walls seems alive with the fairy folk, as indeed it should be, according to the pretty, old superstition that elves and fairies hover about all Christmas fetes. Hence, branches are hanging in hall and bower in order that these invisible guests may "hang in each leaf and cling on every bough." The holly, its prickly leaves symbolic of ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... a lawless frame, a frame he had fixed on himself by his outrage on precedent; his subsequent excitement had enchanted him more wildly, and any number of imps and elves were ready to rush at his silent word from the caverns of his haunted brain. Again, he felt he must spend his energy, his long idleness reacted on a sudden in prodigious strength of intellect, it stirred like a giant refreshed. Long time ago he had dreamed—he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... recess, particularly grand and solemn amongst the towering cliffs, had a rude stone table and seat placed in it, that might have served for a Druid's haunt, whilst a placid stream below enlivened the flowers on its margin, where light-footed elves would gladly have ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... to the borders of the forest he was almost afraid to venture among the gloomy shadows of the trees. Therein, as he believed, dwelt many strange and mysterious elves, that were wont to lead travellers astray to their destruction. But he must pass through that forest or else go round many miles across the hills; so he braced his girdle tighter about him and boldly plunged into the darkness. As he went forth ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... smiling in his face, 'but where I pray thee are these elves and wood-wights, that we meet them not? Grim things there are in the woods, and things fair enough also: but meseemeth that the trolls and the elves of thy young years ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... of spirit," he replied. "I was one of the large company of the Men of the Sun who used to inhabit the Earth under the names of oracles, nymphs, woodland elves, and fairies. But we abandoned our world in the reign of the Emperor Augustus; your people then became so gross and stupid that we could no longer delight in their society. Since then I have stayed on the Moon. I find its inhabitants more enlightened ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... guilt, the inheritance of guilt, the shadow of guilt darkening innocent posterity. All of its sins and morbid horrors, its specters, its phantasmas, and even its hellish hopelessness play around his pages, and vanishing between the lines are the less guilty Elves of the Concord Elms, which Thoreau and Old Man Alcott may have felt, but knew not as intimately as Hawthorne. There is often a pervading melancholy about Hawthorne, as Faguet says of de Musset "without posture, without noise but penetrating." There is ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... breeze swayed the roses, sending out their perfume in little gusts of sweetness, while across the path the merry sunbeams flickered, like little dancing elves. ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... much better that day, that the good doctor, when he came, was astonished; and when he heard that the fairies had done him the honor to take him to their Midsummer festival, he was delighted, as well as astonished, and laughingly declared that the elves had robbed him of his patient. "Why, Charley," he continued, "if the fairy Queen can put such a rosy color in your cheeks, and such a sparkle in your eyes in one night, she beats me all to pieces at doctoring. ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... half-past ten the Court Astrologer, who was master of ceremonies, gave the order to form in line; and at ten minutes to eleven the splendid procession started for the church. The road was lined with the King's vassals shouting, "Hurrah, hurrah!" Countless little elves with gauzy wings watched from the branches of the trees; and the great cathedral bells went clang, bang, clang, as merrily as ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... the muse steps in and cheer his despondency, by assuring him of undying fame. "Halloween" is a strain of a more homely kind, recording the superstitious beliefs, and no less superstitious doings of Old Scotland, on that night, when witches and elves and evil spirits are let loose among the children of men: it reaches far back into manners and customs, and is a picture, curious and valuable. The tastes and feelings of husbandmen inspired "The old Farmer's Address to his old mare Maggie," which exhibits some pleasing recollections ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck's account of himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhortation to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite, Bottom; or Hippolita's description of a chace, or Theseus's answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this play is like wandering in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... clerk was good, What though he nothing understood? 70 In church and state, the sorry race Grew more conspicuous fools in place. Such heads, as then a treaty made, Had bungled in the cobbler's trade. Consider, patrons, that such elves, Expose your folly with themselves. 'Tis yours, as 'tis the parent's care, To fix each genius in its sphere. Your partial hand can wealth dispense, But never give a blockhead sense. 80 An owl of magisterial air, Of solemn voice, of brow austere, Assumed the pride of human race, And bore his ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... see where all the tiny elves come dancing in a ring, With the merry, merry pipe, and the tabor, and the horn, And the timbrel so clear, and the lute with dulcet string; Then round about the oak they go till peeping of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... general rustle and flutter, as when a covey of wild pigeons has been started; and all the little elves who rejoice in the name of "says he" and "says I" and "do tell" and "have you heard" were speedily flying through the consecrated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... is a corruption of Elbkoenig, i.e., the king of the elves. Notice the difference in the speeches of the three characters: the calm assuaging tone of the father, whose senses seem dead to the supernatural; the luring song of the Erlkoenig, that changes abruptly to an impetuous demand; the ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... sleep from his eyes; and in the spaces between there were a hundred fleeting visions of little and big things to torture him—remembrances of incidents when debts and disasters dogged his footsteps; and behind them all, floating among the elves and gnomes of ill-luck and disappointment, was a woman's face. It was not his wife's face, not a face that belonged to the old life, but one which had been part of his daily existence for over four years. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... translated, "What, you here?" But in one respect the fable is quite as important as the fact. They both testify to the reality of the Roman foundation of our insular society, and show that even the stories that seem prehistoric are seldom pre-Roman. When England is Elfland, the elves are not the Angles. All the phrases that can be used as clues through that tangle of traditions are more or less Latin phrases. And in all our speech there was no ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... these presents be it known, To all who bend before our throne, Fays and fairies, elves and sprites, Beauteous dames and gallant knights, That we, Oberon the grand, Emperor of fairy land, King of moonshine, prince of dreams, Lord of Aganippe's streams, Baron of the dimpled isles That lie in pretty maiden's smiles, Arch-treasurer of all the graces Dispersed through fifty lovely ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... of hers! Drenched irises. And they used to dance like elves of delight. And all through a foolish misunderstanding about a shark. What a tragedy misunderstandings are. That pretty romance broken and over just because Mr. Glossop would insist that ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... looks as if she had been born among white flowers in the moonlight, and because the afterglow of the sunrise, from which the elves flee, crimsoned her cheeks when ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... If any elves had been hovering about the dingy hall just then, they would have seen the mother's tired face brighten beautifully when she discovered the gifts, and found that her little girls had been so kindly remembered. Something more brilliant than the mock diamonds in Miss Kent's best earrings fell and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... road, in practical illustration of Robin's doctrine; comic incidents from the old ballads are reproduced; and so the episode ends merrily of these frolics in the wood. At that point a delicious fairy pageant is introduced, presenting Queen Titania and her elves and illustrating at once the grievance of the fairies against the men whose heavy feet have crushed their toads and bats and flowers and mystic rings, and Marian's dream of love. Sir Arthur Sullivan's music is here ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... own affairs. Rather more than a hundred years ago, for instance, a war broke out in Fairyland because the King of the Fairies, whose name is Oberon, and the Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never to be asked out, because they were trollish. King Oberon said that all that was a wicked prejudice, ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... pointing to the glowing piece of charcoal. "Now, Frederick, you will get to see those ant-like little elves that are called noctiluci or night-lights. They pompously call themselves Toilers of the Light. But whatever their name, it must be admitted that they are the ones that take the light hidden in the entrails of the earth, store it up, and sow it in fields, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Miracles, and Traditions, and Abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else, but to execute what they command them. The Fairies likewise are said to take young Children out of their Cradles, and to change them into Naturall Fools, which Common people do therefore call Elves, and are ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... his "Midsummer-Night's Dream," has mingled the mythologies of Hellas and Scandinavia, of the North and the South, making of them a sort of mythic olla podrida. He represents the tiny elves and fays of the Gothic fairyland, span-long creatures of dew and moonshine, the lieges of King Oberon, and of Titania, his queen, as making an irruption from their haunted hillocks, woods, meres, meadows, and fountains, in the North, into the olive-groves of Ilissus, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the Rhine and the Black Forest and all the other haunts of elves and fairies and hobgoblins; but for good honest spooks there is no place like home. And what differentiates our spook—spiritus Americanus—from the ordinary ghost of literature is that it responds to ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... things that would rouse disdain and laughter and even pity, at anything at once so weak and so malevolent. But they are not like the demons of sin that can hamper and wound; they are just little gnomes and elves that can make a noise, and their strength is a spiteful ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... brownies; and knockers, who worked in mines, and showed rich veins of silver; and elves—all of whom were included in old village superstitions, and many were the tales told of the good deeds they did, and the luck they brought. Nor must we forget the story of the invisible smith who inhabited Wayland Smith's Cave, in Berkshire. Whenever a farmer tied up his horse in ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... gnomes do fly, Drenched across yon rainy sky, With the vex'd moon-mother'd elves, And the clouds ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... the performers retired again downstairs, Picotee of necessity following. Her nerves were screwed up to the highest pitch of uneasiness by the grotesque habits of these men and maids, who were quite unlike the country servants she had known, and resembled nothing so much as pixies, elves, or gnomes, peeping up upon human beings from their shady haunts underground, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill—sometimes doing heavy work, sometimes none; teasing and worrying with impish laughter ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the elves were away from home, a giant came into the glen. He was seeking just such a cool place ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... back of the leper settlement at Molokai, is a ledge that can be reached neither from above nor below, and on it stands a temple of their construction. In Pepeeko, Hilo, the natives labored for a month in quarrying and dressing stone, but when it was ready the elves built their temple in a night. So at Kohala they formed a chain twelve miles long between the quarry and the site, and, passing the blocks from hand to hand, finished ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... story brought back at once the little crib, or the watered blue moreen canopy of the big four-poster to which I was sometimes lifted for a change; even the scrawly pattern of the paper, which my weary eyes made into purple elves perpetually pursuing crimson ones, the foremost of whom always turned upside down; and the knobs in the Marseilles counterpane with which my fingers used to toy. I have heard my mother tell that whenever ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... illustrated my book and tales called "Christmas Elves." Better than "Flower Fables." Now I must try ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... is true that these additions still do not exactly give us the Arthur whom we know, for they still concern the wars with the Saxons and Romans chiefly. But if it were only that we find first[46] in Layamon the introduction of "elves" at Arthur's birth, and his conveyance by them at death in a magic boat to Queen "Argante" at Avalon, it would be almost enough. But there is much more. The Uther story is enlarged, and with it the appearances ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... romance. He has chosen more than occasionally to employ, in the accomplishment of his purposes, what seems at first to be precisely the magical apparatus so necessary to the older Romanticism. Dryads and elves are his intimate companions, and he dwells at times under fairy boughs and in enchanted woods; but for him, as for the poets of the Celtic tradition, these things are but the manifest images of an interior passion and delight. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... year When the heavens were crystal clear, And the skylark's singing sweet Close against the sun did beat,— All the sylphs of all the streams, All the fairies born in dreams, All the elves with wings of flame, Trooping forth from Cloudland came To the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... feature of the Frankish myth is the hoard, the fatal treasure which works never-ending mischief. It is said to represent the metal veins of the subterranean Region of Gloom. There, as is stated in an Eddic record, Dark Elves (Nibelungs, or nebulous Sons of the Night) are digging and working, melting and forging the ore in their smithies, producing charmful rings that remind us of the diadems which bind the brows of rulers; golden ornaments and sharp weapons; all of which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... laughed, such a laugh, big and loud and rollicking, and he said, "Wants a ride, does she? Well, well, shall we take her, Little Elves? Shall we take her, Little Fairies? Shall ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... sweeps below. Divinely swelling On the still air, the distant waterfall Mingles its melody;—and, high above, The pensive empress of the solemn night, Fitful, emerging from the rapid clouds, Shows her chaste face in the meridian sky. No wicked elves upon the Warlock-knoll Dare now assemble at their mystic revels. It is a night when, from their primrose beds, The gentle ghosts of injured innocents Are known to rise and wander on the breeze, Or take their stand by the oppressor's couch, And strike grim terror ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... in me no surprise or even curiosity. It simply sounded homelike and familiar. I gazed abstractedly out of the window at the brilliant blossoms in the garden, that nodded their heads at me like so many little elves with coloured caps on, but I said nothing. I felt that Cellini watched me keenly and closely. ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... to the preservation of the poetry and tradition of the "olden time," it would be unpardonable to omit this opportunity of making some observations upon so interesting an article of the popular creed, as that concerning the Elves, or Fairies. The general idea of spirits, of a limited power, and subordinate nature, dwelling among the woods and mountains, is, perhaps common to all nations. But the intermixture of tribes, of languages, and religion, which has occurred in Europe, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... there is a fire." Mrs. Reece led the way. "Then you can tell us all about these elves." They sat down around the fire, and Mrs. Reece continued, "Don't you think it would be fun to pop corn while we're ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... followed by Jock, made his way as fast as he could toward Jean's hiding-place. To Jean the time that they were gone seemed hours long. The place was lonely, and she was afraid, not only of their finding the man at home in his wild lodge, but even of brownies and elves. ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... he knows most rhymes An' tells 'em, ef I be good, sometimes: Knows 'bout Giunts, an' Griffuns, an' Elves, An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers therselves! An', wite by the pump in our pasture-lot, He showed me the hole 'at the Wunks is got, 'At lives 'way deep in the ground, an' can Turn into me, er 'Lizabuth Ann! Aint he a funny old Raggedy Man? ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... ye now, fond elves, the foliage sear, When the light aphids, arm'd with puny spear, Probe each emulgent vein, till bright below, Like falling stars, clear drops ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... as looking out of the window was forbidden, through these holes the boys could catch glimpses of the outer world—glimpses worth catching, too, for all around stood the great forest, the playground of boys and girls during noon-hour and recesses; an enchanted land, peopled, not by fairies, elves, and other shadowy beings of fancy, but with living things, squirrels, and chipmunks, and weasels, chattering ground-hogs, thumping rabbits, and stealthy foxes, not to speak of a host of flying things, from the little gray-bird that twittered its happy nonsense all day, to the ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... of the harbour loved him very much, for his good-humour and for his tenderness—never more so, however, than when, by night, in the glow of the fire, he told us long tales of the fairies and wicked elves he had dealt with in his time, twinkling with every word, so that we were sorely puzzled to know whether to take him in jest ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... must meet. A moment more, and the pale fugitives Stood at the bottom of those countless steps, Peering into the lowest deep of all. A hell-like spot! and spirits of the doomed Were scarce more haggard than the clumsy elves Who here pursued their coarse ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... blunders, evanescent types Which sages banish from Utopia. "Not worship beauty?" say you. Patience, friend! I worship in the temple with the rest; But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves Who stitched and hammered for the weary man In days of old. And in that piety I clothe ungainly forms inherited From toiling generations, daily bent At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine, In pioneering ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Voltaire's inimitable style had at last found a medium in which it could display itself in all its charm and all its brilliance. The pointed, cutting, mocking sentences laugh and dance through his pages like light-toed, prick-eared elves. Once seen, and there is no help for it—one must follow, into whatever dangerous and unknown regions those magic imps may lead. The pamphlets were of course forbidden, but without effect; they were sold in thousands, and new cargoes, somehow or other, were ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... eye, Who the wildflowers' warders are: Ouphes, that chase the firefly; Elves, that ride the shooting-star: Fays, who in a cobweb lie, Swinging on a moonbeam bar; Or who harness bumblebees, Grumbling on the clover leas, To a blossom or a breeze— That's their faery car. If you care, you too may see There ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... Mangita was kind, so she shall live with me in my island home in the lake. As for you, because you tried to do evil to your good sister, you shall sit at the bottom of the lake forever, combing out the seeds you have hidden in your hair." Then, she clapped her hands and a number of elves appeared and carried ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... phenomena that the Society had investigated came into the discussion, and Malone heard quite a lot about the Beyond, the Great Summerland, Spirit Mediums and the hypothetical existence of fairies, goblins and elves. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... about the divine, the origin of the world, and the continued existence of man after death, conceived in the form of the transmigration of souls. Nor did the people's faith lack the conception of good and evil spirits, fairies, dwarfs, elves, which to the still childish fancy are objects of fear or superstitious veneration. To the service of these divinities the priesthood, the Druids, were consecrated, and beside them the bards, or poets, ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... fair a night as this, methinks, the old fables and romances might well be true that tell of elves that dance on moony nights, and of shapely nymphs and lovely dryads that are the spirits of the trees. Aye, in the magic of so fair a night as this aught ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... in the hall tingled a chime, sweet almost playful music for the elves of midnight and a challenge to baser intruders. Jane must have dozed when she suddenly became ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... as sprites or elves Into blind matter hurled, Or ever could have been to themselves The centre of ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... courteously in good phrases to all their questions; all fear of noble persons and their equipage had passed away from her; for when she measured these halls and forms by the wonders and the high beauty she had seen with the Elves in their hidden abode, this earthly splendor seemed but dim to her, the presence of men was almost mean. The young lords were charmed with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... direction, usually in the form of a circle; at the end of fifteen years some of these circles acquire a diameter of fifteen to twenty feet or more. These are known as fairy rings. Before science dispelled the illusion they were believed to have been the work of witches, elves, or evil spirits, from ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven. Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain. Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... were not a time Beyond a chap's control, When someone else prescribes how I'm To bore my selfish soul; If bags and boxes packed themselves For one who packing loathes; If babes, expensive little elves, Were only ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... strange fantastical shapes, floating like a silver gauze among the tree-stems and foliage, till it gradually wove itself into one close and impervious veil. To such appearances as these must legends of elves and fairies ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Manor looked wonderful—the lawns cut for the first time since the winter, the hedges of blackthorn splashed thick with snow-blossom, and daffodils, as if sackfuls of new-minted gold were emptied underneath the trees and elves had scattered pieces here and there from out the mass. Birds were building in all the thickets, and the young leaves—virgin green—shyly hid their love-making. Everything alive was possessed with a new-found energy. The sparrows—most ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... speculation that the two are identical, but there is promise that the theory may be proved at some later date when the subject is more fully worked out. It is now a commonplace of anthropology that the tales of fairies and elves preserve the tradition of a dwarf race which once inhabited Northern and Western Europe. Successive invasions drove them to the less fertile parts of each country which they inhabited, some betook themselves ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... calling from the dewy branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills shut in by oaks, pines, birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out gentle streams from crystal ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, Sing my fair love good-morrow. To give my love good-morrow, Sing birds, in ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... observations, which I have since repeated. The best plan for observing the order is to make a person first raise his eyebrows, and this produces transverse wrinkles across the forehead; and then very gradually to contract all the muscles round the elves with as much force as possible. The reader who is unacquainted with the anatomy of the face, ought to refer to p. 24, and look at the woodcuts 1 to 3. The corrugators of the brow (corrugator supercilii) seem to be the first muscles to contract; and these draw ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... "unlucky event" for Christians. A Friday moon is considered unlucky for weather. It is the Mohammedan Sabbath and was the day on which Adam was created. The Sabeans consecrated it to Venus or Astarte. According to mediaeval romance, on this day fairies and all the tribes of elves of every description were converted into hideous animals and remained so until Monday. In Scotland it is a great day for weddings. In England it is not. Sir William Churchill says, "Friday is my lucky day. I was born, christened, married, and knighted on that day, and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... As Paul Sartori (528) has recently shown, the use of special or secret languages by various individuals and classes in the communities is widespread both in myth and reality. We find peculiar dialects spoken by, or used in addressing, deities and evil spirits; giants, monsters; dwarfs, elves, fairies; ghosts, spirits; witches, wizards, "medicine men"; animals, birds, trees, inanimate objects. We meet also with special dialects of secret societies (both of men and of women); sacerdotal and priestly tongues; special dialects of princes, nobles, courts; women's languages, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... are often called gnomes, while the water-spirits are spoken of as undines, the air-spirits as sylphs, and the ether-spirits as salamanders. In popular language they are known by many names—fairies, pixies, elves, brownies, peris, djinns, trolls, satyrs, fauns, kobolds, imps, goblins, good people, etc.—some of these titles being applied only to one variety, and others indiscriminately to all. Their forms are many and various, but ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... let them go;" so ran the strain: "Yes; let them go, gain, fashion, pleasure, power, And all the busy elves to whose domain Belongs the nether ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... AEgean shining blue, He turned, and toward the mountain peaks that rose Along the far horizon, capped with snows Of lands Arcadian, pursued his quest. And many days he fared with meagre rest Taken in starlit hours 'neath forest boughs, Where nightly Queen Titania's elves carouse. By day he hasted with unflagging pace Through woodland depths where Dian's hounds gave chase To startled deer, through fields by yeomen tilled, Through vineyards whence the winepress would be filled When teeming Autumn with her ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... elves actually remember that I fed them the other day," again soliloquized Louis. "They want some more biscuit. To-day I forgot to save a fragment. Eager little sprites, I have not ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... justice, he had a string of coronets for his Giton also. The latter and his companions are still only emerging from a long period of oblivion in literature and obscurity in life. Like the pagan deities who have shrunk in peasant mythology to be elves and pooks and suchlike mannikins, these creatures, banished from the polite reading of the Victorians, reappeared instantly in that grotesque microcosm of life which the Victorians invented as an outlet for ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... emblazon with her spruce heraldry that every blowing rod breathes a refreshing madrigal. Its floor is a busy torrent—fretting its everlasting way by wet, grey rocks, the vivid green of ferns, and now and again a little patch of greensward—a tender lawn for baby elves to play on. Here is a green shelf, ladies, stuck all with cowslips; and there, another—radiant with peering daffodils. In this recess sweet violets grow. Look at that royal gallery; it is fraught with crocuses—laden with purple ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... theologically that God was too good to be painted; but they would always try to paint Him. And they felt (very rightly) that representing Him as a rather quaint old man with a gold crown and a white beard, like a king of the elves, was less profane than resisting the sacred impulse to express Him in some way. That is why the Christian world is full of gaudy pictures and twisted statues which seem, to many refined persons, more blasphemous than ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... amusement for them on this broad reach of sand and shingle. Some are groping for shells or for pebbles, which the lapidary will transform for a trifle into dazzling jewels; others are playing ducks and drakes on the waves, or entertaining themselves like Prospero's elves, ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... that turns the mill; to the south the dense pine woods, peopled in our imaginations, with fairy elves, owls, and hobgoblins—now, alas, owing to the rapacity of the sawmills, naught but a howling wilderness of stumps ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... galley-slaves are sprightly elves Who, as they row, And as their shining oars they swing Them to and fro, Keep time to music wafted on The scented air, Made by the mermaids as they ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... Archimagian Walls! In the green hush of Dorian Valleys mark The River Maid her amber tresses knitting; When glow-worms twinkle under coverts dark, And silver clouds o'er summer stars are flitting, With jocund elves invade "the Moone's sphere, Or hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear;"* Or, list! what time the roseate urns of dawn Scatter fresh dews, and the first skylark weaves Joy into song, the blithe Arcadian Faun Piping to wood-nymphs under Bromian leaves, While ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... black braced helmlets For the wild elves' heads of the wild waves wrought. As flowers on the sea are her small green realmlets, Like heavens made out of a child's heart's thought; But these as thorns of her desolate places, Strong fangs that fasten and hold lives fast: And the vizors are framed ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... still shore; all the golden sails are gone. A pale, silver floor in the hugeness of dawn My heart lies once more, and the little ripples beat This small, idle tune, like the fall of elves' feet, "Oh, come, airy dancer—come ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet |
