"Elysian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloudclapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... is wrought up into a quietude and harmony that seem eternal. This is also one of the mysterious charms in the Holy Families of Raffaelle and of the early painters before him: the faces of the Madonnas are beyond the discomposure of passion, and their very draperies betoken an Elysian atmosphere where wind never blew. The best painter of the unideal Christ is, I think, Rembrandt: as one may see in his picture at the National Gallery, and that most wonderful one of our Saviour and the Disciples at Emmaus in the Louvre: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... was a dream-garden, a sort of panoramic phantasm, and that the real garden lay behind it somehow, hidden from material eyesight, eluding material touch, but there all the same, unearthly and elysian, more beautiful a great deal than the one in which he was standing, and teeming with gracious presences. It seemed a revelation to him, this sudden perception of a real world underlying the apparent ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... violets fermented in the sun, a hot boudoir perfume, enervating, weakening, which called up before de Gery's eyes feminine visions, Aline, Felicia, gliding across the enchanted landscape, in that blue-tinted atmosphere, that elysian light which seemed to be the visible perfume of such a multitude of flowers in full bloom. A sound of doors closing made him open his eyes. Some one had entered the adjoining room. He heard a dress ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... as a paragon of virtue. 'Her sweet name flies high on the wings of glory, her very glance promises immortality. Her life is the loveliest harmony, irradiated by a thousand virtuous deeds.' And so on. As poetic spokesman of the girls he pours out those 'Elysian feelings' which he supposes them to cherish toward ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... in a state of Elysian beatitude, these young people. Love worked strange metamorphoses, as he does always. They found new joys in Tennyson, and rejoiced in the wonderful colours of the waves. I am not laughing at them for these things. I first read Tennyson when I was in love, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... read; they are written for my own consolation and warning. They are landmarks in my past; and some of the landmarks are funeral crosses, stone pyramids, withered stalks grown green again, white pebbles, coins—all of them helpful toward finding one's way again through the Elysian fields of the soul. The pilgrim has marked his stages in it; he is able to trace by it his thoughts, his tears, his joys. This is my traveling diary: if some passages from it may be useful to others, and if sometimes even I have communicated such passages to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... if it lightened, An unwonted splendour brightened All within him and without him In that narrow cell of stone; And he saw the Blessed Vision 15 Of our Lord, with light Elysian Like a vesture wrapped about Him, Like a garment round Him thrown. Not as crucified and slain, Not in agonies of pain, 20 Not with bleeding hands and feet, Did the Monk his Master see; But as in the village street, In the house or harvest-field, Halt and lame and blind He ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... sap; the imagination aids the heart. One can still be happy at table even though one eats no longer. Is it love? is it simply a memory? is it friendship? All that is composed of something indescribable. It is an obscure feeling resembling the fantastic passions retained by the dead in the Elysian fields. The heroes who, during their lifetime, shone in the chariot races, drove imaginary chariots when they were dead. Heloise lived with you on illusions and supplements. She kissed you sometimes, and with all the more pleasure that having ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Proserpina back, provided that she had not tasted of any food that grew in the regions below. Ceres accordingly went in search of her daughter. She found, unfortunately, that Proserpina, in walking through the Elysian fields with Pluto, had incautiously eaten a pomegranate which she had taken from a tree that was growing there. She was consequently precluded from availing herself of Jupiter's permission to return to Olympus. Finally, however, Jupiter consented that she should divide her time between the ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... literary spirit I was when I went to make my home in Cambridge, I do not see how I could well have been more content if I had found myself in the Elysian Fields with an agreeable eternity before me. At twenty-nine, indeed, one is practically immortal, and at that age, time had for me the effect of an eternity in which I had nothing to do but to read books and dream of writing them, in the overflow ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... separate them, which instantly inspired me with a yearning to pluck them apart, and see what came of it. But, remembering through what fear and tribulation I had obtained them, I curbed Satan's promptings, and, clutching my prize, as if it were my pass to the Elysian Fields, I hurried home. Dinner was rapidly consumed; Joan enlightened, comforted, and kissed; the dearest of apple-faced cousins hugged; the kindest of apple-faced cousins' fathers subjected to the same process; and I mounted the ambulance, baggage-wagon, ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... suppressed by frequent disappointments. The youth has not yet discovered how many evils are continually hovering about us, and when he is set free from the shackles of discipline, looks abroad into the world with rapture; he sees an elysian region open before him, so variegated with beauty, and so stored with pleasure, that his care is rather to accumulate good, than to shun evil; he stands distracted by different forms of delight, and has no other doubt, than which path to follow of those ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... interrupts your vision With its long, unceasing howl; It dispels your dreams elysian With insistence fresh and foul! O, it summons you at meal-times With a joy that stays and clings, Till you swear it's always de'il-times When ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... truly lofty expression. And the style of Scripture has awakened the attention even of infidels. Rousseau was struck with the majesty of the Scriptures. His eloquent eulogium on the Gospel and its author is well known. Dr. Tillotson observes "The descriptions which Virgil makes of the Elysian Fields and the Infernal Regions fall infinitely short of the majesty of the holy Scriptures when describing heaven and hell, so that in comparison they are childish and trifling;" and yet, perhaps, he had the most regular and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... breezes, and where spring perpetual reigned—to which, after death, the blessed were conveyed, and where they were permitted to enjoy it happy destiny. In the Fourth Book of the Odyssey the sea god Pro'teus, in predicting for Menelaus a happier lot than that of Hades, thus describes the Elysian plains: ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Elysian island of the west, Still be thy gardens brighten'd by the rose Of a perennial spring, and winter's snows Ne'er chill the warmth of thy maternal breast! May calms for ever sleep around thy coast, And desolating ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... rapid rivulet rushing over a pebbly descent—it was a quiet, languid brook, gliding along through clumps of trees. Under this mass of luminous vapour, between the bushes which seemed to bathe and float therein, it was like an Elysian stream ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... form, in spite of my surprise, I could not fail to recognise. "My friend," said she, "beware Lest funeral pomp about my bier, When I shall go with gods to share, Compel thine eye to drop a tear. With kindred saints I rove In the Elysian grove, And taste a sort of bliss Unknown in worlds like this. Still, let the royal sorrow flow Its proper season here below; 'Tis not unpleasing, I confess."' The king and court scarce hear him out. Up goes the loud and welcome shout— 'A miracle! an apotheosis!' And such at once the fashion is, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... North-eastward without beholding as an eye the glow of whitebait's bow-window by the riverside, to the front of the summer sunset, a league or so down stream; where he sees, in memory savours, the Elysian end of Commerce: frontispiece of a tale to fetch us up the out-wearied spectre of old Apicius; yea, and urge Crispinus to wheel his purse into the market for the purchase ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a visit to the great island, as they called Europe. From him the narrator learned many things about the state of men after death—the conclusion being that the souls of men arrive at the Moon, wherein lie the Elysian ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... reason tells us they are not. But when pure passion possesses our hearts, then we see tangible visions, then our dreams become no dreams but realities; we mount up on wings, we fly, we soar to Olympus, to Atlantis, to the Elysian fields; we no longer wish to know, we feel; we no longer wish to prove, we see; and what our reason bids us to reject, a surer monitor bids us to receive: the dangers and perils of this life of shades upon the earth are of no account, for we are transformed into immortals in whose veins courses the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... fit against her coming there. If any ask me why so soon I came, I'll hide her sin and say it was my lot. In life and death I'll tender her good name; My life nor death shall never be her blot. Although this world may seem her deed to blame, The Elysian ghosts shall ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... On the twentieth of July they met in the Elysian Fields, with Robespierre at their head, and petitioned for the dethronement of the king. Four thousand troops fired upon them and killed several hundred. Then and there, in the exasperation of the people and the appearance of Robespierre, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... contemplation of the splendid scene by which they are surrounded. Two noble buildings, the Garde Meuble and the Hotel de la Marine, which may be styled palaces, adorn each side of the Rue Royale, and form one side of the magnificent square, whilst another is occupied by the Elysian Fields, and that immediately opposite to the Tuileries gardens; but so beautiful, so wonderful is the whole combined, that accustomed as I have been to frequent it for upwards of twenty years, I cannot now traverse it without remaining some time ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... whether in the bright Elysian bowers, Where the tall vine its lavish mantle spreads, Thou crown'st the goblet with unfading flowers, Sooth'd by the murmuring stream, that ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... transmigrations into the bodies of animals and human beings and thus passes through a purgatorial process which entitles it to appear again before the judgment-seat of Osiris. If found pure it is conveyed to Aalu, the Elysian fields, or the 'Pools of Peace.' After three thousand years of sowing and reaping by cool waters it returns to its old body (the preserved mummy), suffers another period of probation, and is ultimately absorbed into the godhead. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... meanwhile I act pretty well the part of a County Squire, id est, hunting, shooting, fishing, walking every day without to lay aside the ever charming conversation of Horace Virgil Homer and all our noble friends of the Elysian fields. They are allways faithfull to me, with their aid I find very well how to employ my time, but I want in this country a true bosom friend like my dear Wilkes to converse with, but my pretenssions ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... made worth three quarters of a million sterling. If the residence cost so much, fancy may try to conceive the amount of hard-earned money squandered on the luxuries and pleasures of which it is the temple—the most Elysian ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... adoration; hatred and envy themselves were put to silence, for it was thought a sign of a cruel and inhuman disposition to speak evil of the dead, and prosecute revenge beyond the grave. The ancient Greeks were strongly persuaded that their souls could not be admitted into the Elysian fields till their bodies were committed to the earth; therefore the honours (says Potter) paid to the dead were the greatest and most necessary; for these were looked upon as a debt so sacred, that such as neglected to discharge it were thought accursed. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... spirits, destined to enjoy the delights of Elysium, passed out on the right, and proceeded to the golden palace where Aides and Persephone held their royal court, from whom they received a kindly greeting, ere they set out for the Elysian Fields which lay beyond.[47] This blissful region was replete with all that could charm the senses or please the imagination; the air was balmy and fragrant, rippling brooks flowed peacefully through the smiling meadows, which glowed with the varied hues of a thousand flowers, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... happy time abroad, again in dreams is all gone o'er— Again in Paris, as it seems, they watch the crowd once more. The "Elysian Fields," beneath the trees, are peopled with a throng Of loveliest dolls, which at their ease converse, or ride along; And wondrous "Easter Eggs" in nests, abundant lie around, And "April Fish" with golden vests and silver coats, abound! Such fleeting ...
— Abroad • Various
... the edge of the grass-plot and dropped a final curtsey to them, their hands beat together. The clapping travelled across the dusk of the quadrangle to the two watchers, and reached them faintly, thinly, as though they listened in wonder at ghosts applauding on the far edge of Elysian fields. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not the gift of vision, I have not the psychic ear, And the realms that are called Elysian I neither see nor hear; Yet oft when the shadows darken And the daylight hides its face, The soul of me seems to hearken For the ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... best literary work was done late at night, after a day of drudgery. It is well to remember that, while Carlyle was preaching about labor, Arnold labored daily; that his work was cheerfully and patiently done; and that after the day's work he hurried away, like Lamb, to the Elysian fields of literature. He was happily married, loved his home, and especially loved children, was free from all bitterness and envy, and, notwithstanding his cold manner, was at heart sincere, generous, and true. We shall appreciate his work better if we can see the man himself behind ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me—they lead me through the years— They are my ministers—yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle— My duty, to be saved by their bright light, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in Heaven—the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still—two sweetly scintillant ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Elk Mountain and find its giant mass towering into the eternal snows three thousand feet farther above our heads,—this plateau is a prairie fifty miles square, lifted bodily eight thousand feet into the air. It is difficult for us to roll over this Elysian mead walled in by these tremendous ranges, and think of the commercial uses to which the level might be put; but from its elevation and its natural crop we may pronounce it a grazing tract of splendid capabilities, unsuited to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... hand Sibylla's golden boughs to guard them, Through hell and horror, to the Elysian springs." Massinger's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... love, which is the source of law, And, like a king, can do no wrong; Then open'd Hyde, where loyal hearts, With faith unpropp'd by precedent, Began to play rebellious parts. O, mighty stir that little meant! How dull the crude, plough'd fields of fact To me who trod the Elysian grove! How idle all heroic act By the least suffering of love! I could not read; so took my pen, And thus commenced, in form of notes, A Lecture for the Salisbury men, With due regard to Tory votes: 'A road's a road, though worn to ruts; They speed who travel straight ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... heart of the Main Street the Elysian Fields Hotel, and theatre, and dance hall stood out a glittering star of the first magnitude, dimming the lesser constellations with which it was surrounded. A hundred arc lamps flung out their challenge to all roysterers and vice-seeking souls. Thousands of small globular lights, like ropes ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... spent yet more time in conversing with the shades of his former comrades; but the Sibyl reminded him that the hour was approaching when he must return to the upper world. "Here," she said, "the path is divided. To the right, past the palace of Pluto, lies our way to the Elysian Fields; on the left is the way to Tartarus, the place of punishment for ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... her when from her dream Elysian She wakes to see the empty crib, and weep; Knowing her joy was but a sleeper's vision, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... plain, and he knew his class was held by these people as base. His Elysian gardens, thought he, were about ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... more, Max Maria von Weber writes that his father's improvisations on the piano were like delightful dreams. "All who had the good fortune to hear him," he says, "testify that the impression of his playing was like an Elysian frenzy, which elevates a man above his sphere and makes him marvel at the glories ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... my temples, to buy myself the pleasure of one noontide sleep, the blessing of a single tear. There was a time too, when I could weep—O ye days of peace, thou castle of my father, ye green lovely valleys!—O all ye Elysian scenes of my childhood! will ye never come again, never with your balmy sighing cool my burning bosom? Mourn with me, Nature! They will never come again, never cool my burning bosom with their balmy sighing. They are gone! gone! and may ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of thy Fountain[495] still are sprinkled With thine Elysian water-drops; the face Of thy cave-guarded Spring, with years unwrinkled, Reflects the meek-eyed Genius of the place, Whose green, wild margin now no more erase Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep Prisoned in marble—bubbling from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... And, for those simple times, his garments were A chieftain king's: beneath his breast, half bare, Was hung a silver bugle, and between His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen. A smile was on his countenance; he seem'd, To common lookers on, like one who dream'd Of idleness in groves Elysian: But there were some who feelingly could scan A lurking trouble in his nether lip, And see that oftentimes the reins would slip 180 Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh, And think of yellow leaves, of ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... The Canary Islands—the "Elysian Fields" and "Fortunate Islands" of antiquity—have perhaps figured in fabulous lore more extensively than any others, and have been discovered, invaded, and conquered more frequently than any country in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... under the curiosity-provoking title of fashionable novels, we have hardly more than one or two generally recognised true and faithful pictures of really fashionable life. The caricatures of caricatures of this Elysian state are numberless—imagination has been exhausted, sense confounded, grammar put on the rack, the "well of English undefiled" stirred up from the very dregs, to give the excluded pictures of the life of the exclusives—yet, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... carry them to the pawnbroker, that discreet and forbidding-looking friend of youth; but when it was a question of paying for board or lodging, or for the necessary implements for the cultivation of his Elysian fields, his imagination and pluck alike deserted him. There was no inspiration to be found in vulgar necessity, in debts contracted for past requirements. Like most of those who trust to their luck, he put off till the last moment the payment of debts ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... fairest sky, a dark cloud; and, as Cain upon the earth, an eternal fear would pursue him. Yes, if all the woods upon this earth were groves of pleasure; if all the valleys were Kampaner valleys; if all the islands were blessed, and all the fields Elysian; if all eyes were cheerful and all the hearts joyful,—yes, then—no! even then, had God, through this very blessedness, made to our spirits the promise, the oath of eternal duration! But, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Cocytus, and the gloomy Hades, were either invented or allegorized from the names of Egyptian places. Diodorus assures us that by the vast catacombs of Egypt, the dismal mansions of the dead— were the temple and stream, both called Cocytus, the foul canal of Acheron, and the Elysian plains [42]; and, according to the same equivocal authority, the body of the dead was wafted across the waters by a pilot, termed Charon in the Egyptian tongue. But, previous to the embarcation, appointed judges on the margin of the Acheron listened to whatever accusations were preferred ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... walking in the noblest of temples, will conceive new gratitude to his fellowmen, and a new estimate of their nobility. The imaginative scholar will find few stimulants to his brain like these writers. He has entered the Elysian Fields; and the grand and pleasing figures of gods and daemons and demoniacal men, of the "azonic" and the "aquatic gods," daemons with fulgid eyes, and all the rest of the Platonic rhetoric, exalted a little under the African sun, sail before his eyes. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... seemed to lie far away, broken up dreams in some outside world where the way was rough and the sky always grey. A little table covered with a damask cloth was dragged out. There were cakes and sandwiches—for Ennison a sort of Elysian feast, long to be remembered. They talked lightly and smoked cigarettes till Anna, with a little laugh, threw open the window and let in ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from this island of woes." And acting on that decision, By that odor of rose I was led by the nose, For 'twas truly, ah! truly, Elysian. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... wedding or a christening, To teach her ears the art of listening, And please her more to hear them tattle, Than the Dean storm, or Stella rattle. Late be her death, one gentle nod, When Hermes,[3] waiting with his rod, Shall to Elysian fields invite her, Where there will be no cares to ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... The Elysian days rolled on. Zoe was in heaven, and Severne in a fool's paradise, enjoying everything, hoping everything, forgetting everything, and fearing nothing. He had come to this, with all his cunning; he was intoxicated and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... eternal Summer dwells, And west winds with musky wing About the cedarn alleys fling 990 Nard and cassia's balmy smells. Iris there with humid bow Waters the odorous banks, that blow Flowers of more mingled hue Than her purfled scarf can shew, And drenches with Elysian dew (List, mortals, if your ears be true) Beds of hyacinth and roses, Where young Adonis oft reposes, Waxing well of his deep wound, 1000 In slumber soft, and on the ground Sadly sits the Assyrian queen. But far above, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... foresight, repeating in chorus, "Didn't I tell you?" But the music had broken into a waltz, which precluded any argument, and on the mistress remarking "You young folks are missing a fine dance," involuntarily my arm encircled my old sweetheart, and we drifted away into elysian fields. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... full of such incidents; and so inspiring are they that Death comes to be regarded as a most stirring adventure. The archaeologist, too, better than any other, knows the vastness of the dead men's majority; and if, like the ancients, he believes in the Elysian fields, where no death is and decay is unknown, he alone will realise the excellent nature of the company into which he will ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... let love-making alone, or if you must make love, do it as other gods do—my messenger. Otherwise your Elysian dignity is in jeopardy. You are not the kind of man that women love, mon cher. Come, it is time that ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... and misery; for how few can forbear to relate their troubles and distresses? If we judge by the account which may be obtained of every man's fortune from others, it may be concluded, that we all are placed in an elysian region, overspread with the luxuriance of plenty, and fanned by the breezes of felicity; since scarcely any complaint is uttered without censure from those that hear it, and almost all are allowed to have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... these mentally blind creatures. Sometimes, though this is not a frequent occurrence, a crocodile takes away a bather; but such persons are rather envied than regretted, since to die in those waters is in their estimation simply to be at once wafted to the elysian fields of paradise. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... the creature should jump out and patter on the boards as live things will. But at last the gas was turned off at the main, and he cautiously groped for his pet among his little heap of clothes under the bed. That night Clem's most outrageous story could not attract him. He roamed Elysian fields with his dog. Like all toys, it was something better than alive. And certainly no mortal setter ever played so many parts. It hunted rats up the nightgown sleeves, and caught burglars by the throat as they stole ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... national recollections, and therefore may be desecrated at will. Never lose sight for a moment of the manifold advantages derivable from a free use of the trap-door and the flying-wires; throw in a transparency, an Elysian field, a dissolving view, and a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... characters, their astronomy, and their religion. Of that delightful region (for such it appeared to the eyes of a native) the Atlantis of Plato, the country of the Hyperboreans, the gardens of the Hesperides, the Fortunate Islands, and even the Elysian Fields, were all but faint and imperfect transcripts. A clime so profusely favored by Nature could not long remain desert after the flood. The learned Rudbeck allows the family of Noah a few years to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... day you may bestow your penny or halfpenny on two veiled girls playing on the guitar or harp—the one the daughter of a ci-devant Duke, and the other of a ci-devant Marquis, a general under Louis XVI. They, are usually placed, the one on the Boulevards, and the other in the Elysian Fields; each with an old woman by her side, holding a begging-box in her hand. I am told one of the women has been the nurse of one of those ladies. What a recollection, if she thinks of the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... Kaiser, prodigal of verbal boons, Congratulates his brave Bayreuth Dragoons Upon their prowess, which, he tells them, yields Joy "to old Fritz up in Elysian fields." Perhaps; but what if he is down below? In any case what we should like to know Is how his modern namesake, Private Fritz, Enjoys the fun of being blown to bits Because his Emperor has ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... changed. He will still be shaggy and old and chubby, and will wear the same frock-coat, with the same creases in it. Swinburne, on the other hand, will be quite, quite young, with a full mane of flaming auburn locks, and no clothes to hinder him from plunging back at any moment into the shining Elysian waters from which he will have just emerged. I see him skim lightly away into that element. On the strand is sitting a man of noble and furrowed brow. It is Mazzini, still thinking of Liberty. And anon the tiny young English amphibian comes ashore to fling himself dripping at the feet of the patriot ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... will in these Elysian fields is to be presumed, since we have this amusing picture of three High Street belles and beauties in ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Faded in distance till his aching sight No longer knew them. Then his wearied frame Sank in the arms of sleep. But Julia's shape, In mournful guise, dread horror on her brow, Rose through the gaping earth, and from her tomb Erect (1), in form as of a Fury spake: "Driven from Elysian fields and from the plains The blest inhabit, when the war began, I dwell in Stygian darkness where abide The souls of all the guilty. There I saw Th' Eumenides with torches in their hands Prepared against thy battles; and the fleets (2) Which by the ferryman of the flaming stream Were made to ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... go to the lower regions," retorted the king, gayly. "You needn't go in search of the Elysian Fields; you carry them with ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... looking about me with delight. "Could there, can there, be in Rome a more Elysian spot in which to feel health being restored ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... been severally made, by the former of which it was insinuated that the African, unhappy in his own country, found in the middle passage, under the care of the merchants, little less than an Elysian retreat, it was now proper to institute a severe inquiry into the truth of them. Mr. Pitt, Sir Charles Middleton, Mr. William Smith, and Mr. Beaufoy, took a conspicuous part on this occasion, but particularly the two latter, to whom much praise was due for the constant attention ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Before the war, to cross the Place de la Concorde and go into the Champs Elysees was an adventure of a life time. One took one's chances. One survived, but he had his thrills. But that morning we might have walked safely with bowed head and hands clasped behind us through the Place, across the Elysian fields; there we sat for a moment in one of the Babylonian cafes and saw nothing more shocking than the beautiful women of France gathering in the abandoned cafes and music halls to assemble surgical ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals is love; or a going out ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... I venture to deplore A great tradition cheaply prized, And yonder, on the Elysian shore, The ghost of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... he had come back, full of Elysian dreams, to his Sophy,—his Enchanted Princess. Gone, taken away, and with the Mayor's consent,—the consent of the very man upon whom he had been relying to secure a livelihood and a shelter! Little ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had been humanly possible for Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett to lug her place in Hyndsville, South Carolina, along with her into the next world, plump it squarely in the middle of the Elysian Fields, plaster it over with "No Trespassing" signs, and then settle herself down to a blissful eternity of serving writs upon the angels for flying over her fences without permission, and setting the saved by the ears in general, she would have done so ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... bushes just beyond the town, from which he rushes out in the nick of time to fell the passing ghosts. Whenever he kills a ghost, he cooks and eats him and that is the end of the poor ghost. It is the second death. The highway to the Elysian fields runs, or used to run, right through the town of Nambanaggatai; so all the doorways of the houses were placed opposite each other to allow free and uninterrupted passage to the invisible travellers. And the inhabitants spoke to each other in low tones and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Perfection, in thy purest ray, Free from the clogs and taints of clay, Hovers divine the Archetypal Man! Dim as those phantom ghosts of life that gleam And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream,— Fair as it stands in fields Elysian, Ere down to Flesh the Immortal doth descend:— If doubtful ever in the Actual life Each contest—here a victory crowns the end Of every ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... realms sidereal, Clothed with the immaterial, Far as the fields elysian In starry bloom extend, The stretch of angel vision ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... have, as much as one can in so short a time as I have lived within the great heart of this beautiful place. Rome is great, but Ephesus is lovely—the very air seems laden with rejoicings. Surely this must be the Elysian city on earth!' ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... is breaking into prismatic rays. Into the dusty highway of Ancient History all at once sweeps the pageantry of Mythology. Philemon bends above old Baucis at the High School gate, though hitherto they have been sycamores. Olympus is just beyond the clouds. The Elysian Fields lie only the surrender of the will away, if one but droops, with absent eye, head propped on hand, ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... strange endurance. Life, the passing of the years, could not change it, could not still it. Those eternal hungers of which Hermione had spoken to Artois—they must have their meaning. Somewhere, surely, there are the happy hunting-grounds, dreamed of by the red man—there are the Elysian Fields where the souls that have longed and suffered will ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... and clear, and loud, It seemed a thousand harp strings ringing. And the Monk Felix closed his book, And long, long, With rapturous look, He listened to the song, And hardly breathed or stirred, Until he saw, as in a vision, The land Elysian, And in the heavenly city heard Angelic feet Fall on the golden flagging of the street. And he would fain Have caught the wondrous bird, But strove in vain; For it flew away, away, Far over hill and dell, And instead of its sweet singing He heard the convent bell ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... some prescrib'd Lyceum's petty sphere; And pleased to mark the grin from space to space Spread epidemic o'er a town's broad face.— O might old Betterton or Booth return To view our structures from their silent urn, 10 Could Quin come stalking from Elysian glades, Or Garrick get a day-rule from the shades— Where now, perhaps, in mirth which Spirits approve, He imitates the ways of men above, And apes the actions of our upper coast, 15 As in his days of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sarcophagi, mingled with the freshness of the youthful nature of the South. The ancient mythology here seems revived; the naiades are placed on the borders of rivers, the nymphs in woods worthy of them, the tombs beneath Elysian shades, and the statue of Esculapius in the middle of an isle, while that of Venus appears to rise out of the waters: Ovid and Virgil might walk in this enchanting spot, and still believe themselves in the Augustan age. The masterpieces ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... despairing wail— And the bright banquets of the Elysian Vale Melt every care away! Delight, that breathes and moves for ever, Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river! Elysian life survey! There, fresh with youth, o'er jocund meads, His youngest west-winds blithely leads The ever-blooming May. Thorough gold-woven dreams goes the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... wide street, and it is nearly two miles long.[A] It begins at the palace of the Tuileries, in the middle of the city, and extends through the whole length of the gardens of the Tuileries; and then, passing out through great gates at the foot of the garden, it extends through the Elysian Fields, away out to the great Triumphal Arch of the Star, which you saw from the cars when you were coming ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... and relations, arranged according to clans and tribes. Among these he recognized his own father, dressed in the clothes in which he was buried; and it must have been comforting to the son to have such good evidence that his parent was safely installed in the Elysian Fields. In a few moments ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... brothers stood on the margin of the Elysian lake. King Henry, the Prince of Conde, and a selection of the younger and gayer Huguenots, were the assailants,—storming Paradise to gain possession of the nymphs. It was a very illusive armour that they wore, thin scales of gold or silver as cuirasses ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the rowing-dress, dash under the green translucent wave, return to the garb of civilization, walk through my Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common, and, reaching my habitat, in consideration of my advanced period of life, indulge in the Elysian abandonment ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to rewrite a single stanza, even though an allusion to 'Oom Paul' cries out to be altered or suppressed. But, after all, the allusion is not likely to trouble President Kruger's massive shade as it slouches across the Elysian fields; and after all, though he became our enemy, he remained a sportsman. So I hope we may glance at his name in jest without a suspicion of mocking at the tragedy of ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... negotiations with foreign countries are reserved to him. While the Assembly itself is constantly acting upon the stage, and is exposed to the critically vulgar light of day, he leads a hidden life in the Elysian fields, only with Article 45 of the Constitution before his eyes and in his heart daily calling out to him, "Frere, il faut mourir!" [1 Brother, you must die!] Your power expires on the second Sunday of the beautiful month of May, in the fourth year after your election! The glory is then ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... a-boiling in his old mother's home. Through years of gloom and sickness he kept the wolf away; for him no tailored slickness, for him no brave array; for him no cheerful vision of wife and kids a few; for him no dreams Elysian—just toil, the long years through! Forever trying, straining, to sidestep debtors' woes, unnoticed, uncomplaining, the little ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... exclusively by the natives, without remarking among them, the diversity which exists in Europe; or being impressed with the contrast which a visit across the Pyrennes would exhibit, between the affability and vivacity of a Frenchman at a theatre or in the Elysian fields, and the hauteur and reserve of a Spaniard at their bloody circus, when "bounds with one lashing ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the strange exaltation of spirit with which the New England Puritan regarded death. To him thoughts of mortality were indeed cordial to the soul. Death was the event, the condition, which brought him near to God and that unknown world, that "life elysian" of which he constantly spoke, dreamed and thought; and he rejoiced mightily in that close approach, in that sense of touch with the spiritual world. With unaffected cheerfulness he yielded himself to his own fate, with unforced resignation he bore the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... I little thought that when I next corrected my type, the "existing" war best illustrative of the sentence would be between Frenchmen in the Elysian Fields of Paris.] ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... in ancient time, from Jubal's tongue, The tuneful anthem filled the morning air, To sacred hymnings and Elysian song His music-breathing shell the minstrel woke— Devotion breathed aloud from every chord, The voice of praise was heard in every tone, And prayer and thanks to Him the Eternal One, To Him, that, with bright inspiration touched The high and gifted ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... were comprehended under the name of Ades, as all the five might be under that of Orcus, was a prince or judge: Minos for the regions of Erebus; Rhadamanthus for Tartarus; and AEacus for Elysium, Pluto and Proserpine had their palace at the entrance of the road to the Elysian fields, and presided as sovereigns ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... tastes, feelings, habits of this life. The other world is this one, shaded off and toned down. It is gray in its hue, wanting the color of this world; and is really inferior to it, and only its pale reflection. To the gods of Olympus the doings of men are matters of chief interest. Tartarus and the Elysian Fields are occupied by lymphatic ghosts, misty spectres, unsubstantial and unoccupied. When a living man enters, like Ulysses, AEneas, or Dante, they throng around him, delighted to have something in which they can take a real interest. "Better be a plough-boy on earth than a king among the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... by men, or reduced to mere dust, will meet and be united again with their souls? We, during our abode in the world, from the inductions of reason, believed the immortality of the souls of men; and we also assigned regions for the blessed, which we call the elysian fields; and we believed that the soul was a human image or appearance, but of a fine and delicate nature, because spiritual." After this, the assembly turned to the other stranger, who in the world ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the Breakfast Table"? Here the subtle, dainty, delicate thought is continually reinforced by the allusion or the analogy which shows the wide, accurate knowledge behind it. What work it is! how wise, how witty, how large-hearted and tolerant! Could one choose one's philosopher in the Elysian fields, as once in Athens, I would surely join the smiling group who listened to the human, kindly words of the Sage of Boston. I suppose it is just that continual leaven of science, especially of medical science, which has ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with thy gentle dead Could charm thee from thy night-long agonies, Could steep thy brain in slumber mild, and shed Elysian ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... rate I missed it, and we went on farther. Copple showed me old bear sign, an old wolf track, and then fresh turkey tracks. The latter reminded me that we were out hunting. I could carry a deadly rifle in my hands, yet dream dreams of flower-decked Elysian fields. We climbed a wooded bench or low step of the canyon slope, and though Copple and I were side by side I saw two turkeys before he did. They were running swiftly up hill. I took a snap shot at the lower ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... individual, so is it the best discipline of a state. Honourable industry travels the same road with duty; and Providence has closely linked both with happiness. The gods, says the poet, have placed labour and toil on the way leading to the Elysian fields. Certain it is that no bread eaten by man is so sweet as that earned by his own labour, whether bodily or mental. By labour the earth has been subdued, and man redeemed from barbarism; nor has a single step ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Elysian, Fortunate Fields—like those of old Sought in the Atlantic Main, why should they be A history only of departed things, Or a mere ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... might put as the first three—with the caution that Mrs. Grundy had better keep away from them—Les Soeurs Rondoli,[506] for which I feel certain that, when Maupassant reached the Elysian Fields, Aristophanes and Rabelais jointly requested the pleasure of introducing him to the company, and crowned him with the choicest laurels; Mouche, which is really touching as well as tickling at the end, though the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a fortnight passed at what the Earl now calls the Elysian Lake (instead of Siberia), a westerly wind compelled me to get under sail yesterday afternoon; and it was fortunate that I did so, as it has blown a gale since that time. By the Megaera, which has joined me this evening, I find the fleet ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... is clear enough from his account of it. The natural tendencies of a poetical temperament (oftener evinced in a like manner than the world in general suppose) not only made the boy-poet fall in love, but, in the truly Elysian state of the heart at that innocent and adoring time of life, made him fancy he had discovered a goddess in the object of his love; and strength of purpose as well as imagination made him grow up in the fancy. He ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... struck on the sad, leaden ear of the monk much as we might fancy the carol of a robin over a grave might seem, could the cold sleeper below wake one moment to its perception. If it woke one regretful sigh and drew one wandering look downward to the elysian paradise that lay smiling at the foot of the mountain, he instantly suppressed the feeling, and set his face in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... "not thine the life Elysian, Live thou the world's life, holding yet thy vision A hope and memory, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... rapturous vision, Oh, purple, impalpable Cow, Do you browse in a Dream Field Elysian, Are you purpling pleasantly now? By the side of wan waves do you languish? Or in the lithe lush of the grove? While vainly I search in my ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Friendship, in which, among twenty memorandums of quarrels, is the bust of Mr. Pitt: Mr. James Grenville is now in the house, whom his uncle disinherited for his attachment to that very Pylades, Mr. Pitt. He broke with Mr. Pope, who is deified in the Elysian fields, before the inscription for his head was finished. That of Sir John Barnard, which was bespoke by the name of a bust of my Lord Mayor, was by a mistake of the sculptor done for Alderman Perry. The statue ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in front of her, moss-carpeted, and close-roofed by oak-wood in its first rich leaf. After the hot sun on the straight and shadeless road outside, these cool avenues stretching away into a forest infinity, seemed to beckon a visitant towards some distant Elysian scene—some glade ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would not, for all Rome, it should be thought I veil bright Julia underneath that name: Julia, the gem and jewel of my soul, That takes her honours from the golden sky, As beauty doth all lustre from her eye. The air respires the pure Elysian sweets In which she breathes, and from her looks descend The glories of the summer. Heaven she is, Praised in herself above all praise; and he Which hears her speak, would swear the tuneful orbs Turn'd in ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... place you fit yourself for, I must also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this:—it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portieres of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief question, Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... house going up made Cowperwood feel of more weight in the world, and the possession of his suddenly achieved connection with the city treasurer was as though a wide door had been thrown open to the Elysian fields of opportunity. He rode about the city those days behind a team of spirited bays, whose glossy hides and metaled harness bespoke the watchful care of hostler and coachman. Ellsworth was building an attractive stable in the little side street back ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... says the knight, "is of gold, her forehead the Elysian fields, her eyebrows two celestial arches, her eyes a pair of glorious suns, her cheeks two beds of roses, her lips two coral portals that guard her teeth of Oriental pearl, her neck is alabaster, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... you draw the Face And Shape of Venus, and with equal Grace In some Elysian Field the Figure place? Your Fancy, warm'd by TEA, with wish'd success, Shall Beauty's Queen in all her Charms express; With Nature's Rural Pride your Landscape fill The Shady Grotto, and the Sunny Hill, The Laughing ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... the so called Elysian Fields and Avernus: and wandered through various ruined temples, baths, and classic spots; at length we entered the gloomy cavern of the Cumaean Sibyl. Our Lazzeroni bore flaring torches, which shone red, and almost dusky, in the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... 140 With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that ty The hidden soul of harmony. That Orpheus self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear Such streins as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half regain'd Eurydice. 150 These delights, if thou canst give, Mirth with thee, I mean ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... happy thing It was, when life was in its spring, To peep through Love's betrothal ring At Fields Elysian, To move and breathe in magic air, To think that all that seems is fair!— Ah, ripe young mouth and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem Dropp'd from its foil; and through the beamy list Like flame in alabaster, glow'd its course. So forward stretch'd him (if of credence aught Our greater muse may claim) the pious ghost Of old Anchises, in the' Elysian bower, When he perceiv'd his son. "O thou, my blood! O most exceeding grace divine! to whom, As now to thee, hath twice the heav'nly gate Been e'er unclos'd?" so spake the light; whence I Turn'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante |
