"Halcyon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... halcyon days of childhood," we recall an ancient myth, telling how, in an age when even more than now "all Nature loved a lover," even the gods watched over the loves of Ceyx and Halcyone. Ever since the kingfisher has been regarded as the emblem, of lasting ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... those for the penniless, halcyon days for the toady and the sycophant. There was still much of the old oriental munificence about the court, and sovereigns like Mazarin and Louis XIV. granted pensions for a copy of flattering verses, or gave away places as the reward of a judicious speech. Sinecures were legion, yet to many a holder ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... halcyon days could not last long. Even Paradise might pall on such a restless temperament as that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He began to sigh for the outer world in which he felt that it was his destiny to shine, for an arena in which ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... poet; Luigi Pulci, the humorous inventor of burlesque romance—with artists, scholars, students innumerable, all in their own departments capable of satisfying a youth's curiosity, by explaining to him the particular virtues of books discussed, or of antique works of art inspected. During those halcyon years, before the invasion of Charles VIII., it seemed as though the peace of Italy might last unbroken. No one foresaw the apocalyptic vials of wrath which were about to be poured forth upon her plains and cities through the next half-century. Rarely, at any period of the world's ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... matter. It was of little consequence to them, whether the candidate was as wise as he desired to be thought; and since, in political affairs, they knew of no interest which they could have in disputing it, for his gratification they were willing to admit it. These were halcyon days for mere pretenders—though for no very flattering reason: since their claims were allowed chiefly because they were not deemed worth controverting. Those days, thanks to the "progress of intelligence!" are now gone by: the people are better acquainted with the natural history of ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... had to content themselves with going on foot through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon period of their felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as a favor than as a scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and confidential communications were not disturbed by the loud rattle of the ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... your correspondent P.T.W.'s article, entitled "Halcyon Days," in No. 471, I beg to furnish you with the following, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... a halcyon season, dewy dawns wherein I bathed and sparred with Jessamy, long, sunny days full of labour and an ever-growing joy of Diana's radiant loveliness, nights of healthful, dreamless slumber ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... halcyon wings our moments pass, Life's cruel cares beguiling; Old Time lays down his scythe and glass, In gay good-humour smiling: With ermine beard and forelock gray, His reverend part adorning, He looks like Winter turn'd to May, Night soften'd into Morning. How grand in age, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... penetrates her diseased brain, and then the sight of her anguish would soften a heart of stone. Enter, and for the small sum of ten sous you shall hear sobs such as the Odeon never echoed in its halcyon days. The unhappy woman has waked up to the absurdity and inanity of her blind passion; she confesses to herself that she is madly pursuing a phantom. She knows but too well that he, in the vigor and beauty of youth, cannot love a faded ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... countenance bore all the traces of mental alienation. Methought I was inspired by the grand master-spirit; my pirogue bounded along the troubled waters of the ocean as if it possessed wings. One would have said that I had twenty rowers at my disposal, and I cleft the waves with the same rapidity as the halcyon's flight, when wafted away by the hurricane. After a short time's laborious and painful rowing I at last came in view of the corsairs who were carrying away my treasure. At the sight my strength was renewed again, and I was soon up with them. When I was side ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, the philosopher, the historian and the humble listener, there has been a divine melody running through the song, which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.' ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... made by the eaters of bouillabaisse to the eaters of olla podrida. One of the bags of provisions was beside him unpacked. He had lighted over his head an iron lantern, glazed with talc, which swung on a hook from the ceiling. By its side, on another hook, swung the weather-cock halcyon. There was a popular belief in those days that a dead halcyon, hung by the beak, always turned its breast to the quarter whence the wind was blowing. While he made the broth, the Provencal put the neck of a gourd into his mouth, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... departure of Cardenas in 1650, to about 1720, was the halcyon period of the Jesuit missions in Paraguay. During that time things went on in the missions after the fashion I have attempted to describe. The people passed their time in their semi-communistic labour, sweetened by constant prayer; their pastors may or may not have done all that ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... The halcyon days between Mrs. Bell's death and her funeral passed all too quickly. Then came the day of the funeral, and the next morning the iron rule of Lydia Purcell began again. Whatever few words she said to cook, dairymaid, and message-boy, they ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... his home "Halcyon House," and what a suitable and lovely name for one in his business, and one who had settled here after his service in the Revolution. For the halcyon was a fabled bird, whose nest floated upon the sea. It had the power of charming winds and waves, hence, "halcyon ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... not gaudy"?—Soon Despond (Too soon!) at flouted faith and fond, Soon tempests halcyon tides above Shall wreck this raw recruit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... off Cornhill and Lombard Street. I agree, too, with Georgie in deploring the passing of the public-house mid-day ordinary. From his recollections, I learn that the sixties and seventies were the halcyon days for feeding—indeed, the only time when Londoners really lived; and an elderly uncle of mine, who, at that time, went everywhere and knew everybody in the true hard-up Bohemia, tells me that there were then twenty ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... what is known as "the field of honor," Tiltock kept the lieutenant in his eye, and took him finally aside and demanded a meeting in the name of Utie. The naval officer answered that he had simply relieved a lady from a drunken boy; but Tiltock, in the dramatic way common to halcyon old times, refused to accept either "drunken" or "boy" as terms appropriate to "the code," and pressed for an answer. In five minutes the naval officer replied, through his naval companion, that having ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... of the English Roman Catholics at this time was peculiar and not agreeable. But in order to understand it, we must go back for thirty-five years—to the close of that halcyon period, the earliest ten years of Elizabeth, when the few Romanists then left in England generally came to church like other good citizens, and if they chose to practise the rites of their own faith in private, no notice was taken of it. It was not the Protestant Government, but the Papal See, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... orient sun, Had broken its cable, and stood out to space Down some frore Arctic of the aerial ways: And now, back warping from the inclement main, Its vaporous shroudage drenched with icy rain, It swung into its azure roads again; When, floated on the prosperous sun-gale, you Lit, a white halcyon auspice, 'mid ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... recluse, In this green Eden of the leafy West; And felt sweet Peace her softest balm infuse, Into his once too world-disturbed breast: There did he find a deep and quiet rest: The mockbird sang his vespers, while the star Shone sweetly o'er the rippling river's crest; There no rude sound the halcyon calm did mar, And Grief was absent still, and Hate ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... Job himself never suffered such a trial of his patience! In fact, his troubles were scarcely worth mentioning, for he was never cursed with learned servants!" Saying this, the doctor retired, lamenting his hard fate in not having been born in those halcyon days when cooks drew nothing but their poultry; whilst the gentle Celestina's breast panted with indignation at his complaint. An opportunity soon offered for revenge; and seeing the doctor's steam valet ready to be carried to its master's chamber, she treacherously ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... halcyon day, worthy of its motto, "Peace on earth, good-will to men." The air was electric, the sun overflowing with jolly shine, the river smooth and sheeny from the hither bank to the snowy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... extinguished. More often the tankage provided is insufficient, and thousands of barrels escape. Two or three years ago, at the height of the oil production of the Bradford region, 8,000 barrels a day were thus running to waste. But those halcyon days of Bradford have gone forever. Although nineteen-twentieths of the wells sunk in this region "struck" oil and flowed freely, most of them now flow sluggishly or have to be "pumped" two or three times ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... any sucking dove [Midsummer-Night's Dream]. Adj. moderate; lenient &c 740; gentle, mild, mellow; cool, sober, temperate, reasonable, measured; tempered &c v.; calm, unruffled, quiet, tranquil, still; slow, smooth, untroubled; tame; peaceful, peaceable; pacific, halcyon. unexciting, unirritating^; soft, bland, oily, demulcent, lenitive, anodyne; hypnotic &c 683; sedative; antiorgastic^, anaphrodisiac^. mild as mother's milk; milk and water. Adv. moderately &c adj.; gingerly; piano; under easy sail, at half speed; within bounds, within compass; in reason. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pieces of crested plate, which he had neither the temerity to use nor the hardihood to melt or sell. He could but gloat over them behind locked doors, as I used to tell him, and at last one afternoon I caught him at it. It was in the year after that of my novitiate, a halcyon period at the Albany, when Raffles left no crib uncracked, and I played second-murderer every time. I had called in response to a telegram in which he stated that he was going out of town, and must say good-by to me before he went. And I could only think that he was inspired by the same impulse ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... impression, on coming to consider, back to a mere three words she had begun by using about Charlotte Stant. She simply "cleared them out"—those had been the three words, thrown off in reference to the general golden peace that the Kentish October had gradually ushered in, the "halcyon" days the full beauty of which had appeared to shine out for them after Charlotte's arrival. For it was during these days that Mrs. Rance and the Miss Lutches had been observed to be gathering themselves for departure, and it was with that difference made ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... with in the pecuniary transactions of mankind, and little reconcilable with the usual sharp-sightedness of avarice. Reflections of this kind may have trifling weight with men who hope to see realized in America the halcyon scenes of the poetic or fabulous age; but to those who believe we are likely to experience a common portion of the vicissitudes and calamities which have fallen to the lot of other nations, they must ...
— The Federalist Papers
... days of calm between the storms; halcyon days, as they have well been named, in which genius had sufficient freedom in determining its own direction to devote itself with all its strength to ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... natural gifts for which he had now added the wholesome tonic of experience, Peace passed from a poor and obscure lodging in a slum in Lambeth to the state and opulence of a comfortable suburban residence in Peckham. These were the halcyon days of Peace's enterprise in life. From No. 25 Stangate Street, Lambeth, the dealer in musical instruments, as Peace now described himself, sallied forth night after night, and in Camberwell and other parts of South London reaped the reward of skill and vigilance in entering ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... lady to this compliment, "that hemlocke wheresoever it bee planted, will be pestilent [and] that the serpent with the brightest scales shroudeth the most fatall venome." Is there anything more certain? But that does not prevent the halcyon from hatching when the sea is calm, and the phoenix from spreading her wings when the sunbeams shine on her nest. This is what the husband remarks, and, guided by the onyx, the alexander, &c., after a mock trial, he ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... writes Mather in the simplicity of his faith, "is now making one Attempt more upon us; an Attempt more Difficult, more Surprising, more snarl'd with unintelligible Circumstances than any that we have hitherto Encountered; an Attempt so Critical, that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon Days with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under our feet." In sound and structure Mather's style is what the critics call "archaistic." It is all untouched by the influences of another world, and though "the New Englanders ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... the sunshine where country-folk got in with baskets, and talked in an unfamiliar dialect, an English which to us sounded almost like a foreign tongue. Then the first glimpse of the sea; the excitement of noting whether tide was high or low—stretches of sand and weedy pools, or halcyon wavelets frothing at their furthest reach, under the sea-banks starred with convolvulus. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... the manner of his friend Poppins that he could not now expect to receive that high deference which was paid to him about the time that Johnson of Manchester had been in the ascendant. Those had been the halcyon days of the firm, and Robinson had then been happy. Men at that time would point him out as he passed, as one worthy of notice; his companions felt proud when he would join them; and they would hint to him, with a mysterious reverence that was very gratifying, their assurance that he ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... found the moment of indecision to be the moment of completest anguish. When our resolutions are taken with determined firmness, they engross the mind and close the void of misery. Yes, my friend, save the pang of sympathy, I am happy. These are my halcyon days. Let us taste them together. We shall mutually heighten their relish. Let us rescue some moments of rational enjoyment from the wreck of impetuous time. Friendship shall smooth the rugged path of science, and virtue cheer ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... soul With more unrest, and Hebe-like, the bowl Of festal comfort for a moment raise To my poor lips, and then avert thy gaze? Wouldst make me mad beyond the daily curse Of thy displeasure, and in wrath disperse That halcyon draught, that nectar of the mind, Which is the theme I yearn to in ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... eventful day—a day far back in that happy, halcyon age when ships sailed as freely across the ocean as ferry-boats across the North River and men roved at will among the nations of the earth—one sunny August morning, eight years after the day of our coming, we locked the old house behind us and drove away in the car to a New York ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... harvested my first crop of filberts from my experimental garden here in town and my bushes at Halcyon Frunut Gardens (this is the name of my nut farm) are growing nicely and some have catkins for next year's crop. The filberts that I have just harvested were borne from three Cosford bushes of the French strain. I have some German strain that I received from Mr. McGlennon that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... (then enthusiastic about a Repeal of the Legislative Union) said that the picture of Irish misery drawn by Lord John Russell was the result of forty-seven years of union with England. Halcyon days were promised to Ireland at the time of the Union, but he called on the House to contrast the progress of Ireland from 1782 to the Union, with the state of Ireland since. He expressed his opinion that the loss in potatoes, considering the value of offal for ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... secure, more comfortable. The heavens of international politics were as serene as the evening sky; not yet was the storm-cloud that hung over Ireland bigger than a man's hand; east, west, north and south there brooded the peace of the close of a halcyon day, and the amazing doings of the Suffragettes but added a slight incentive to the perusal of the morning paper. The arts flourished, harvests prospered; the world like a newly-wound clock seemed to be in for a spell of serene and orderly ticking, with an occasional chime just ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... For the halcyon days of peace, prosperity, and progress can hardly be assumed as yet, and not even the most distant and self-contained Dominions can afford to ignore the menace of blood and iron. No power, indeed, is likely to find the thousand ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... inhabitants to institutions abhorrent to their souls and fatal to their prosperity, forced upon them at the point of the bowie-knife and the muzzle of the revolver by hordes of sordid barbarians from a hostile soil, their natural and necessary enemies. And the sweet harbinger of this blessed peace, the halcyon which broods over the stormy waves and tells of the calm at hand, is a bribe so cunningly devised that its contrivers firmly believe it will buy up the souls of these much-injured men, and reconcile them to the shame and infamy of trading ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... 'tis a horrible hallucination To grudge our hymns their halcyon harmonies, When in just homage our rapt voices rise To celebrate our heroes in meet fashion; Whose hosts each heritage and habitation, Within these realms of hospitable joy, Protect securely 'gainst humiliation, When hostile ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... cousin to the halcyon of the ancients. If, when next you go to sea, you take its feathers with you, you need ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... the sharp ascent from the town, as well as the still sharper and highly dangerous descent into the valley again, where the little mediaeval village lay nestled. Thus it was enabled to gather to itself a strangely beautiful halcyon calm on the Lord's Day,—and in fair Spring weather like the present, dozed complacently under the quiet smile of serene blue skies, soothed to sleep by the rippling flow of its ribbon-like river, and receiving from hour to hour a fluttering halo of doves' wings, as these traditional ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... there was a terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air dazed them,—a glance downward made their brains reel. But when a great wind filled their wings, and Icarus felt himself sustained, like a halcyon-bird in the hollow of a wave, like a child uplifted by his mother, he forgot everything in the world but joy. He forgot Crete and the other islands that he had passed over: he saw but vaguely that winged thing in the distance before him that was ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... a contempt bred of ignorance, from the whole subject. But if it were only as a mental and intellectual tonic the contemplation of these sixty stately folios, embracing about a thousand pages each, would be a most healthy exercise for the men of this age. This is the halcyon period of primers, introductions, handbooks, manuals. "Knowledge made Easy" is the cry on every side. We take our mental pabulum just as we take Liebig's essence of beef, in a very concentrated form, or as hom[oe]opathists imbibe their medicine, in the shape of globules. I do not desire, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... of murder rendered him less willing, and less able, to forgive. [1018] A horrid narrative of the victims whom he sacrificed by poison or the sword, by the sea or the flames, would be less expressive of his cruelty than the appellation of the halcyon days, which was applied to a rare and bloodless week of repose: the tyrant strove to transfer, on the laws and the judges, some portion of his guilt; but the mask was fallen, and his subjects could no longer mistake the true author of their calamities. The noblest ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... a species of rat. Besides the usual waders on the reef, I found great numbers of doves and honeysuckers, and, among the mangroves, fell in with and procured specimens of a very rare kingfisher, Halcyon sordida. Among the mangroves a rare shell, a species ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Podargus brachypterus, Gould. Eurostopodus guttatus, Gould. Halcyon sanctus, Vig. and Horsf. Merops ornatus, Lath. Hirundo pacifica ? Lath. Collocalia ? leucosterna, Gould. Cotyle pyrrhonota. Cotyle familiaris, Gould. Seisura volitans, Vig. and Horsf. Microeca assimilis, Gould. Rhipidura albiscapa, Gould. Rhipidura isura, Gould. (North-West Coast.) Piezorhynchus ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... stood upon a knoll. At that moment the sound of a cowbell in the contiguous mountain coppice told the slow approach of a dappled dairy, in charge of a swarthy French Canadian youth. All else was quiet about the place, that seemed to be lying in a sort of listless, half dreamy tranquillity and halcyon repose. The mansion itself was spacious, and built of the grey limestone of the district. Woodbine and hop, clematis and the Virginia creeper half concealed its rugged exterior, and clothed in ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... procession of time, but lag behind and hide in some byway of memory, there to remain for ever and ever. It was such a week that tumbled unexpectedly out of Quin's calendar about the first of June, and lived itself in terms of sunshine and roses, of moonshine and melody, seven halcyon days between the time that Eleanor returned from school and the Bartletts went away for the summer. For the first time since he met her, she seemed to have nothing more demanding to do than to emulate "the innocent moon, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... good-natured evening it proved to be. Miss Patsey's coffee was excellent; the little black girl, engaged for the occasion, performed her duties to admiration. Mrs. Taylor thought that she had scarcely passed such a quiet, pleasant afternoon, since the halcyon days before her husband was a rich man; she was much interested in discussing with Miss Patsey, and Miss Wyllys, and Mrs. Van Horne, various recipes for making bread, hoe-cake, and other good things. As for Elinor, she ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... and the grey Halcyon talked from cedar's spray, Drummed the partridge far away;— Ah! could we choose to live ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... memorable day the Sistine chapel and its paintings were kept to the last; and Watts, high though his expectations were, was overwhelmed at what he saw. 'Michelangelo', he said, 'stands for Italy, as Shakespeare does for England.' So the four years went by till in 1847 this halcyon period came to an end. The Royal Commission of Fine Arts was offering prizes for fresco-painting, and Watts felt that he must put his growing powers to the test and utilize what he had learnt. This time he chose for ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Those halcyon days were too serene to last long. When his honour the Laird of Gandercleugh, with his wife and three daughters, the minister, the gauger, mine esteemed patron Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham, and some round ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... in the seventh and eighth centuries, when the arts were fostered in monasteries—the arts of gold-work and illuminated missals—'Ireland's halcyon days,' he said; a deep peace brooded, and under the guidance of the monks Ireland was the centre of learning when England was in barbarism. The first renaissance was the Irish, centuries before a gleam showed in Italy or in France. But in the middle of the ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... been the back parlor of the house. In that densification of population which proceeds so incessantly on Manhattan Island this old house, like many another, was modernly compelled to hold more people than it had been meant for in the halcyon days when Second Avenue was a fashionable thoroughfare. The second floor of the house had been let, without board, to a gentleman and his wife, and the rooms above to single gentlemen. The parlor floor and the basement were made ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... It was that halcyon hour when the Angelus falls like a benediction upon the waning day. Far off the notes were sounding gently, and nature, now that she listened, seemed to have paused also. A scarlet-breasted robin was hopping in short spaces upon the grass before her. A humming bee hummed, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... From such halcyon dreams they were startled one morning, at daybreak, by a savage yell, and jumped for their rifles. The yell was repeated by two or three voices. Cautiously peeping out, they beheld, to their dismay, several Indian warriors among the trees, all armed and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... that they must be up and away, not wait till it should be too late. She, too, saw how many lovers plan under the June honeymoon to sail away after a year or two and see the great world, and, when they wearily die, know that it will still be a year or two before they can flee to the halcyon isles. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... he now resumes his old Reinsberg Program of Life; probably with double relish, after such experiences the other way; and prosecutes it with the old ardor; hoping much that his History will be of halcyon pacific nature, after all. Would the mad War-whirlpool but quench itself; dangerous for singeing a near neighbor, who is only just got out of it! Fain would he be arbiter, and help to quench it; but it will not quench. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... invite the rector to dinner with regularity and 'the ladies' of one's family gave tea and flannel petticoats and baby clothes to cottagers. Men and women were known as 'ladies' and 'gentlemen' in those halcyon days. One Represented things—Parties in Parliament—Benevolent Societies, and British Hospitality in the form of astounding long dinners at which one drank healths and made speeches. In roseate youth one danced the schottische and the polka and the round waltz which Lord Byron ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mishap might not be turned to diversion. The coach would not always traverse sunny byways; the dry leaf floating from the majestic arm of the oak, the sound of an acorn as it struck the earth presaged days less halcyon to come. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... halcyon day he lived to see Unbroken, but by one misfortune dire, When fate had reft his mutual heart—but she Was gone-and Gertrude climbed a widowed father's knee. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... of New York was under the reign of Walter Van Twiller, the first governor of the province, and the best it ever had. In his sketch of this excellent magistrate Irving has embodied the abundance and tranquillity of those halcyon days:— ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... a furore among the musical public of that day as would an opera from Gounod or Verdi in the present. The principal airs were sung throughout the land, and published as harpsichord pieces; for in these halcyon days of our composers the whole atmosphere of the land was full of the flavor and color of Handel. Many of the melodies in these now forgotten operas have been worked up by modern composers, and so have passed into modern music unrecognized. It is a notorious fact that the celebrated ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... earth. The reputation which he lost by being afraid of a naked sword, he more than regained by his courage in combating the devil. The Kirk shewed itself a most zealous coadjutor, especially during those halcyon days when it was not at issue with the king upon other matters ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the rocky cliffs of the sea, halcyon,[144] dost chant thy mournful elegy, a sound well understood by the skilled, namely, that thou art ever bemoaning thine husband in song, I, a wingless bird, compare my dirge with thine, longing for the assemblies[145] of the Greeks, longing for Lucina, who dwells along the Cynthian height, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... absences being made possible by the fact that though he had much to do with the government and regulation of the University of St. Andrews, he was not actively employed in giving instruction. But after this we float at once into a halcyon time. It was in the end of 1569 or beginning of 1570 that he was appointed the governor of the King, and in this capacity and amid peaceful surroundings more appropriate to his character than the rage of politics, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... in ocean; in some it is spelled tion, as in nation; in some it is spelled sion, as in mansion; in some it is spelled cian, as in physician; in some it is spelled cyon, as in halcyon; in some it is spelled ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... waves are strown beneath your prow, Like carpets for a victor's feet; You call slow zephyrs to your brow, In listless luxury complete: Love, the true Halcyon, guides your ship; Oh, might his ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... the Constitution was this: although the several States were morally bound to maintain the compact into which they had voluntarily entered, the obligation, if any one State chose to repudiate it, could not be legally enforced. Their ideal was a Union based upon fraternal affection; and in the halcyon days of Washington's first presidency, when the long and victorious struggle against a common enemy was still fresh in men's minds, and the sun of liberty shone in an unclouded sky, a vision so Utopian perhaps seemed capable of realisation. At all events, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... there of gayety and halcyon days that give brightness to the story so full of tragedy. There was in the very heart of the valley (near the site of St. Louis, where a great world's fair was held a few years ago), Fort Chartres, mentioned above, "the centre of life and fashion in the West" as well as "a bulwark ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... Sue, who have ice-cream, Life is a glowing, halcyon dream, While Tom stands empty by; And says, "Gee! fellers, ain't it prime? Say, I had ice-cream too, one time, And it was ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells
... flower, Light, facile, and free, Be the grasp that would hold it; From a halcyon sea Let the breezes that stir it Blow thoughtlessly; No breath of care should chill it, Nor sad foreboding thrill it, For honey-dew lies hid Beneath a fragile lid, And ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... us, emerging into the channel of a brook that circled along the foot of the descent; and here, turning joyfully to the left, we rode in luxury and ease over the white pebbles and the rippling water, shaded from the glaring sun by an overarching green transparency. These halcyon moments were of short duration. The friendly brook, turning sharply to one side, went brawling and foaming down the rocky hill into an abyss, which, as far as we could discern, had no bottom; so once more we betook ourselves to the detested woods. When next ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... replace the present by the late Government, Mr O'Connell's intention was to have announced his determination to "give England ONE MORE trial"—to place Repeal once more in abeyance—in order to see whether England would really, at length, do "justice to Ireland;" in other words, restore the halcyon days of Lord Normanby's nominal, and Mr O'Connell's real, rule in Ireland, and enable him, by these means, to provide for himself, his family, and dependents; for old age is creeping rapidly upon him—his physical powers are no longer equal to the task of vigorous agitation—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... are looking at her. You see that woman reclining on the cushions of her couch—so beautiful and so contemplative—whose eyes shed tears, and whose lips abound with kisses! It is she! Lovely as in the time of Priam and the halcyon days of Asia, Eunoia is now ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... while ecclesiastical abuses are thus augmenting, ecclesiastical power is diminishing in the Netherlands. The Church is no longer able to protect itself against the secular aim. The halcyon days of ban, book and candle, are gone. In 1459, Duke Philip of Burgundy prohibits the churches from affording protection to fugitives. Charles the Bold, in whose eyes nothing is sacred save war and the means of making it, lays a heavy impost upon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... who, as she now knew, loved her well, and for whom she had always felt at any rate the warmest friendship? Such were not her thoughts, nor were they in any way akin to this. They ran back instantly to years gone by,—over long years, as her few years were counted, and settled themselves on certain halcyon days, in which she had dreamed that he had loved her, and had fancied that she had loved him. How she had schooled herself for those days since that, and taught herself to know that her thoughts had been over-bold! And now it had all come round. The only ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are; A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon; Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone; Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar, Being of its furthest fires oracular;— The evident heart of all life ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... of atmosphere and of a smell at once mouldy and dusty. The room that was called Nelson's, for no very definite reason, and the room in which the ministry used to have their whitebait dinners in the halcyon days before whitebait was extinct in Greenwich, pretended to some state but no beauty, and some smaller dining-rooms that overhung the river had the merit of commanding a full view of the Isle of Dogs, and in the immediate ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... the two great duties of a gentleman. A young man was instructed how to "make his head" early in life, and to acquire the gentle art of pistolling his friends, when now he would be studying Greek under Professor Jowett, or "coaching" for a civil-service examination. It was in bad taste in those halcyon days for a man to leave a pleasant social party in a state of sobriety, and he was liable to be challenged by his aggrieved companions if he did it frequently. The custom of locking the dining-room door and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... present in its memoried past, So wound my spirit, that on all I cast An envied thought who rest in darkness find. My heart Love prostrates, Fortune more unkind No comfort grants, until its sorrow vast Impotent frets, then melts to tears at last: Thus I to painful warfare am consign'd. My halcyon days I hope not to return, But paint my future by a darker tint; My spring is gone—my summer well-nigh fled: Ah! wretched me! too well do I discern Each hope is now (unlike the diamond flint) A fragile ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... halcyon months Yuki San lived in a dream. The ample compensation Merrit insisted upon making for the hospitality extended to him more than met the modest needs of the little household, and once again, as in the earlier days, they went on jolly excursions, visited ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... weather, we found ourselves colliding with an enormous halcyon's nest; it was full seven miles round. The halcyon was brooding, not much smaller herself than the nest. She got up, and very nearly capsized us with the fanning of her wings; however, she went off with a melancholy cry. When it was ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... while the vine twists about the ribs of the cast-iron Pallas, And, on the zephyr afloat, the halcyon soul of the borax Blends with the scent of the soap, the brush of the white-washer's flying E'en as the chicken-hawk flies when ready ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... the halcyon broods through the Sabbath-days of winter, and, looking from her nest, sees the waves of a summer calm and brightness,—now while she meditates, with the eggs under her wings, of a fast-approaching time ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... the Pueblo, where the trappers and hunters had such good times in the halcyon days of the border, like that which befell nearly all the trading-posts and ranches on the Old Santa Fe Trail, was to be partially destroyed by the savages. During the early months of the winter of 1854, the Utes swept down through the Arkansas valley, leaving a track of blood behind them, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Mr. Lincoln yet lingered there, even in the most responsible and glorious days of his administration; over and over again has the great President stolen an hour ... from his life of anxious care to live over again those bygone exhilarating and halcyon days ... with Sweet or me."—Henry C. Whitney ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... contradicts the authentic contemporary records, in picturing as halcyon days one of the most wretched periods of Irish history, but also wrongfully represents one of the saddest episodes of that history. He reminded his clergy 'that the number of Protestants who were massacred by the Roman Catholics during the rebellion was, by ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... ways and in many places, some as eggs, others as larvae, still others as pupae, and a large number as adults—all being able to withstand severe cold and yet retain vitality sufficient to recover, live, grow, and replenish the earth with their progeny when the halcyon days ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... "Capture, Prison-Pen, and Escape," issued soon after the close of the war, having been among the most extensively read annals of the war. The "Sword and Pen" gives a sketch of the early life and adventures of the soldier-author, his school-boy days, and the incidents of that halcyon period of youth, all of which reads like a romance. His academic life is then detailed, after which the stern realities of life are encountered. His military life follows, and his capture by the Confederate troops. Then follows a recital of the dreary and monotonous routine of prison ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... on the eve of a Jubilee Year, when the halcyon shall plume his wing, and we shall hear much oratorical trash and hebetude about the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... prosperous silversmith and live in one of the houses in the College Green, as his uncle did, with Bryda its mistress, with all she liked best about her—plenty of books, and music, and everything she asked for. Lost in the contemplation of that halcyon time, Jack forgot the present, and was only awoke to it by the old man's exclamation of wonder as Mr Bayfield laid the gifts of which he spoke on ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... pinions, and I was as happy as the day was long. Winter made way for spring, spring gave place to summer. The halcyon hours sped brighter and brighter for me, from the time of violets—when nature's sweetest nurslings modestly blossomed ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Bruno enjoyed fair weather, halcyon months, in England. His description of the Ash Wednesday Supper at Fulke Greville's, shows that a niche had been carved out for him in London, where he occupied a pedestal of some importance. Those ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the ocean Own no dear domestic cave, Yet he slumbers without motion On the still and halcyon wave; If on rainy days the loafer Gamble when he cannot roam, The police will help him so far As to ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... beautiful as a poet's dream when they are covered with their great bunches of pale blue blossom. That will not be until Christmas-tide, and, alas! I shall not be here to see, for already my three halcyon days of grace are ended and over, and this very evening we must steam away from a great deal yet unvisited of what is interesting and picturesque, and from friends who three days ago were strangers, but who have made every moment since we landed stand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... should soon have ceased to think of ghosts. Ghosts, forsooth! When all around me vibrated with the sounds of girlish laughter, and the summer sunshine, sparkling on the golden curls of my child-wife, saw itself reflected a millionfold in the alluring depths of her azure eyes. In halcyon days like these who ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... Sydney, who spent nine months on the northern and middle islands, obtained nearly a hundred species of terrestrial and fluviatile mollusca. The scarcity of birds during our walk surprised me, for the only one which I saw on shore was a solitary kingfisher (Halcyon vagans): during our ascent of the Keri-Keri, however, many ducks (Anas superciliosa) flew past the boat, and gulls, terns, and two kinds of ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... August, and the city of *****, a fair is annually held, in which, during those halcyon days of prosperity, my father was an active trafficker. Thither the neighbouring gentry, yeomanry, and dealers in general, repaired, as the best mart in the county, at which to expend their money. It was fifteen miles from ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... second glass was filled; but when that was drunk, and the half hour over, Bunce stood erect, and with a benediction which his patron valued, retired to his own abode. He knew the world too well to risk the comfort of such halcyon moments, by prolonging ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... to take care of bouquets at that moment, however. I was too keenly aware of the difficulty of raising six millions of dollars in the limited period at our disposal. Times have changed since 1896. Then six millions was quite a large sum, larger than sixty millions now. That was before the halcyon period ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Which, like thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough Year just awake 5 In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring, Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn To hoar February born, 10 Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kissed the forehead of the Earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, 15 And breathed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... he dared the watery world, O'er wild or halcyon waves, And saw his snow-white sails ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... needed the money, even the paltry fifty dollars a month, as she had never needed anything in life. If she refrained from spending a dollar for several years, she could hardly clear herself of the accumulated bills from her halcyon days ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... the "discovery" of the field by Mr. Peter Finnerty, old "Taeping," as Gordon's ex-marine engineer had been promptly nicknamed, arrived with his crushing battery, and then indeed were halcyon days for the Flat. From early morn till long past midnight, the little bar of the "Digger's Best" was crowded with diggers, packhorsemen and teamsters; a police trooper arrived and fixed his tent on the ridge overlooking the creek, and then—the very zenith of ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... had joined the rest of the party at Lynstones before returning to their native town of Grovebury. The six weeks by the sea seemed a kind of oasis between the anxious period of the war that was past and gone, and the new epoch that stretched ahead in the future. To Ingred they were halcyon days. To have her father and brothers safely back, and for the family to be together in the midst of such beautiful scenery, was sufficient for utter enjoyment. She did not wish her mind to venture ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... their hands off the clean wallpaper; which was included in leaving be, obviously—not an intrusion of a new stipulation. They would then, being alone, go great lengths in picturing to themselves and each other the pending reappearance of Mrs. Picture and Mrs. Burr, and the delights of resuming halcyon days of old. For this strangely compounded clay, Man, scarcely waits to be quite sure he is landed in existence, before he inaugurates a glorious fiction, the golden Past, which never has been; between which and its resurrection into an equally golden Future—which never will ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... years. All this Jefferson Hope was able to tell him, and in a style which interested Lucy as well as her father. He had been a pioneer in California, and could narrate many a strange tale of fortunes made and fortunes lost in those wild, halcyon days. He had been a scout too, and a trapper, a silver explorer, and a ranchman. Wherever stirring adventures were to be had, Jefferson Hope had been there in search of them. He soon became a favourite with the old farmer, who spoke eloquently of his virtues. On such occasions, ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pocket, I hope, "went out to Hampton Court to lay the matter before his Grace of Newcastle:" "Please your Grace, it is hardly three months since the illustrious Treaty of Vienna was signed; Dutch and we leading in the Termagant of Spain, and nothing but halcyon weather to be looked for on that side!" Grace of Newcastle, anxious to avoid trouble with Spain, answers I can only fancy what; and nothing was done upon Jenkins and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Halcyon the days for Pietro Tobigli, extravagant the jocularity of this betrothed one. And, as his happiness, so did his prosperity increase; the little chestnut furnace became the smallest adjunct of his affairs; for he leaped (almost at one bound) to the proprietorship of a wooden stand, shaped ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... The halcyon days of autumn, that seemed like the last sweet smiles of summer, had come, when one day Albert packed a valise and boarded the early morning train for Maine. An insidious longing to see the girl that had been in his thoughts for four months had come to ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... well, girl, Thou wilt know it yet. I fetter not thy choice, But if thou couldst by loving bind together Not two hearts only, but opposing peoples; Supplant by halcyon days long years of strife, And link them in unbroken harmony;— Were this no glory for a woman, this No worthy ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... the old chaise, which in its halcyon days may have served to carry some dignitary of the Church, did not founder instead of merely groaning under that ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... inaugurate the existence of new republics. One face I shall never forget. It was that of the self-made temporary dictator of a little country whose importance was dwindling to the dimensions of a footnote in the history of the century. I had been acquainted with him personally in the halcyon day of his transient glory. Like his picturesque land, he won the immortality of a day, was courted and subsidized by competing states in turn, and then suddenly cast aside like a sucked orange. Then he sank into the depths of squalor. He was eloquent, resourceful, imaginative, and brimful of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... so. No crisis arose to demand his presence; no business went amiss because of his having to work so hard at love. There came, as there sometimes does in matters pressing, tangled, and exasperating, a quiet period, a gentle lull, a halcyon time when the jaded brain reposes, and the heart may hatch her own mares'-nests. Underneath that tranquil spell lay fond Joe and Bob (with their cash to spend), Widow Precious (with her beer laid in), and Widow Carroway, with a dole at last extorted from the government; while Anerley ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... When he left Monte Alloro the land had worn the bleached face of February, and it was amazing to his northern-bred eyes to find himself, on the sea-coast, in the full exuberance of summer. Seated by this halcyon shore, Genoa, in its carved and frescoed splendour, just then celebrating with the customary gorgeous ritual the accession of a new Doge, seemed to Odo like the richly-inlaid frame of some Renaissance "triumph." But the splendid houses with their marble peristyles, and the painted ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... all smoking so hard, that the canopied howdah, under which we reclined, sent up purple wreaths like a Michigan wigwam. There we sat in a ring, all smoking in council—every pipe a halcyon pipe ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... fine, subtle air that blows from the craggy peaks over the treeless plateau seems to take all superfluous moisture out of the men of Madrid. But it is, like Benedick's wit, "a most manly air, it will not hurt a woman." This tropic summer-time brings the halcyon days of the vagabonds of Madrid. They are a temperate, reasonable people, after all, when they are let alone. They do not require the savage stimulants of our colder-blooded race. The fresh air is a feast. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... They were not halcyon days, those winter months of reporting for the Tribune. I was on trial, and it was hard work and very little pay, not enough to live on, so that we were compelled to take to our little pile to make ends meet. But there was always a bright fire and a cheery welcome for ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Halcyon nights those, and then on Sunday morning we always breakfasted at old Martin's on University Place eggs a la Martin and that wonderful coffee and pain de menage. And what a wrench it was when I tore myself away from the delights of the great city and scurried back ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... deceitful hours Let us enjoy the halcyon wave; Sometimes impending peril lowers Beyond the seaman's skill to save, The Wisdom, infinitely wise, That gives to human destinies Their foreordained necessity, Has made no law more fixed below, Than the alternate ebb and flow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and her husband into kingfishers. By command of Zeus (or Aeolus) the winds ceased to blow during their brooding-time, for seven days before and after the shortest day, that their eggs might not be carried away by the sea. Hence the expression "halcyon days,'' used in ancient and modern times to denote a period of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... long and somewhat anxious day. While we were bowling along in the sweet sunshine and sweeter moonlight of the halcyon time, Uncle Sam might be dethroned by somebody in buckram, or Baltimore burnt by the boys from Lynn and Marblehead, revenging the massacre of their fellows. Every one begins to comprehend the fiery ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... the country for a week or two. Those two weeks are never halcyon days with him. There is a smell about a restaurant that eloquently pleads the sweetness of home, and there is a lack of confidence expressed in a pewter spoon and a general disinclination to believe that anyone ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... plantations to gather birds' nests, the seniors of the village to make a short cut from one point to another, and the lads and lasses for evening rendezvous—all without offence taken or leave asked. But these halcyon days were now to have an end, and a minatory inscription on one side of the gate intimated 'prosecution according to law' (the painter had spelt it 'persecution'—l'un vaut bien l'autre) to all who should be found trespassing on these inclosures. On the other side, for uniformity's ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... made Chopin forget his sorrows. There is not one complaint in the letter in which he gives an account of it; in fact, he seems to have been enjoying real halcyon days. He had a full house, but played with as little nervousness as if he had been playing at home. The first Allegro of the Concerto went very smoothly, and the audience rewarded him with thundering applause. Of the reception of the Adagio and Rondo we learn nothing ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... a huge cheat, and the Red Law of Savages in primeval night is worth all the tomes of jurisprudence, from the Pandects of Justinian to the Commentaries of Blackstone, and the wisdom of Coke and Story. Oh halcyon days of prehistoric humanity! When instead of bowing and smiling, and chatting gracefully with one's deadliest foe, drinking his Amontillado and eating his truffles, people had the sublime satisfaction of roasting his flesh and calcining ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Alexandria. They are quite foreign to her original character and to the habits of the Egyptians, who had no love of the sea. On this hypothesis Sirius, the bright star of Isis, which on July mornings rises from the glassy waves of the eastern Mediterranean, a harbinger of halcyon weather to mariners, was the true Stella Maris, "the Star of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... that is happy and fair, Set gem-like in halcyon seas; The white winters visit not there, To sadden its blossoming leas, More bland than the Hesperides, Or any warm isle of the West, Where the wattle-bloom perfumes the breeze, And ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... herself suddenly plunged into the ardours of the Radway affair; the miraculous meeting on the Clonderriff road; the halcyon days of August, and then ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... packed to its fullest capacity. The cantata was given to the unbounded delight of Mr. Badger, and the audience cheered us all to the utmost. Enthusiasm was at the highest pitch and encomiums of praise were showered upon us. Those were halcyon days for fine singers. We had no lack of voices to call upon at ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... of storm and stress, but there came to them too halcyon days like this when the mayflower bloomed in all the woodland about them, the mourning cloak butterflies danced with joy down the sunny glades, and the bay spread its wonderful blue beneath their feet in the delicious promise of June. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... These were halcyon days, and abundant was the harvest of game which these bold reapers were gathering. During the days thus spent, in shooting the game and curing the meat, the hunters lived upon the fat of the land. The tongue and liver of the buffalo, and the peculiar fat, found along ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... revolving into a chaos of equal sadness, universal strife. It is the relation of the immediate isthmus on which we stand ourselves to a past and (prophetically speaking) to a coming world of calamity, the relation of the smiling and halcyon calm which we have inherited to that darkness and anarchy out of which it arose, and towards which too gloomily we augur its return—this relation it is which enforces the other impulses, whether many ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... called a "hornbill" by foreigners in the Philippines, is probably the halcyon kingfisher (Ceyx euerythra) of the islands. The ground hornbill is confined to Africa; and the tree hornbill of the Philippines does not make its nest at the foot of trees, as in ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... Calico become in these halcyon days. His back and flanks were like the surface of a well-upholstered sofa. His coat of motley told its own story of daily rubbings and good feeding. The white was dazzlingly white and the carrot-red patches ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... (partly on that account, but much more through the sudden birth of perfect independence which so unexpectedly it opened) the value of a revolutionary experience. A new date, a new starting point, a redemption (as it might be called) into the golden sleep of halcyon quiet, after everlasting storms, suddenly dawned upon me; and not as any casual intercalation of holidays that would come to an end, but, for any thing that appeared to the contrary, as the perpetual tenor ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... definitely pledged to one throw of the dice. Imagine one of those contests which you find in the pages of Turgenieff or Tolstoi, which perchance you may have seen at Monte Carlo, which in the last few days may have been observed at Epsom Downs—in which life or death, ruin or halcyon fortune, depended on one throw—and you can have some sense of all that passed through the imagination of the House and that made it almost audibly shiver when Mr. Gladstone made this slight and terse interruption. Mr. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year—one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon (*1),—I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. But, uplifting my eyes, I saw that Berenice ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Dryope and Iole. Lotus Tree. Venus and Adonis. Anemone or Wind Flower. Apollo and Hyacinthus. Game of Quoits. Flower Hyacinthus. Ceyx and Halcyone. Palace of the King of Sleep. Morpheus. Halcyon Birds. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... is not of peasant parentage. His father was a skilled mechanic who had been put in charge of the warehouses of a large banking and importing concern. As a lad Enrico used to frequent the docks in the vicinity of these warehouses and became an expert swimmer at a very early age. In those halcyon days his burning ambition was to be a sailor, and he had a profound distaste for his father's plan to have him learn ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... do it. There is no guise in which he could clothe the idea which would not remind you instantly of me. If he should be poetical: well, so was I when we were twenty-one. If he should give you gifts of great price: well, so did I in those Halcyon days when I had an allowance from my Governor and toiled not. If his is an outdoor wooing, you will inevitably remember that I taught you to ride, to skate, to drive, and to play golf. If he should attack you musically, you will be surprised at the number of operas we've ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... south, but there were creatures enough left in the trees. Sometimes, through the thin forest, in the blue distance, deer were seen; bears began to approach the corn-cribs, and in the unbroken wilderness wolves were heard at night. Early and late the air struck cold, but each midday was a halcyon time. In the last of October, on a still and coloured morning, Rand and Jacqueline, having shaken hands with the overseer and the slaves they were leaving, caressed the dogs, and said good-bye to the cat, quitted the house on the Three-Notched Road. At the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... exulting confidence in their springing step, themselves blithe and radiant with the glory of the dawn. Today, and here, we meet ourselves. Not to these familiar scenes alone—yonder college-green with its reverend traditions; the halcyon cove of the Seekonk, upon which the memory of Roger Williams broods like a bird of calm; the historic bay, beating forever with the muffled oars of Barton and of Abraham Whipple; here, the humming city of the living; there, the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the Strasburg. They were mainly fast vessels and the battle cruisers carried eleven-inch guns. Early in the morning they ran through the nets of a British fishing fleet. Later an old coast police boat, the Halcyon, was shot at a few times. About eight o'clock they were opposite Yarmouth, and proceeded to bombard that naval station from a distance of about ten miles. Their range was poor and their shells did no damage. They ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... sky, between Anti-Libanus rising near the spring, Rasulain, and the Acropolis towering above the poplars, around these majestic ruins, amidst these fascinating scenes of Nature, Khalid spent the halcyon days of his boyhood. Here he trolled his favourite ditties beating the hoof behind his donkey. For he preferred to be a donkey-boy than to be called a donkey at school. The pedagogue with his drivel and discipline, he could not learn to love. The company of muleteers was much ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... farewell to his heart's adored, the mathematical exactitude of his position while embracing her, the cool deliberation which marked his exit—offered a picture of calm stoicism just on the point of tumbling over the precipice of destruction not to be equalled—not, at least, since those halcyon dramatic days when Osbaldiston leased Covent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... suspense grew so, that I longed for some sound to break the stillness; but there was nothing for minute after minute. Then, at last, on the halcyon air of that summer day floated the Angelus from the cathedral tower. Only a moment, in which one could feel, and see also, the French army praying, then came from the ramparts the sharp inspiring roll ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... reputation of a particularly "hanging judge," ended by hanging himself, as the coroner's jury found, under an impulse of "temporary insanity," with a child's skipping-rope, over the massive old bannisters) resided there, entertaining good company, with fine venison and rare old port. In those halcyon days, the drawing-rooms were hung with gilded leather, and, I dare say, cut a good figure, for they were really ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... something highly romantic in the stage-coach travel of this halcyon era. The driver was always a crack whip, a man who called himself an 'old-timer,' though often his years numbered fewer than twenty. Most of the drivers, however, knew the trail from having packed in on shanks's mare and camped under the stars. At the log taverns known {104} ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... given, might take, as fate should be. So prayed he, and Poseidon out of the sea, There where the deep blue into sand doth fade And the long wave rolls in, a bar of jade, Sent him a portent in that sea-blue bird Swifter than light, the halcyon; and men heard The trumpet of his praise: "Shaker of Earth, Hail to thee! Now I fare to death in mirth, As to a banquet!" So when day was come Lightly arose the prince to meet his doom, And kissed ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... office clerk, and in a louder and more fervent voice she thanked Heaven. The two invitations, already sealed and addressed, were immediately dispatched; in due course they were both accepted. The house party of the halcyon hours, as the prospective hostess called ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki |
