|
|
|
More "Elf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he sings the self-same tune Underneath an older moon. Life to him is, plain enough, Still a game of blind man's buff. If we listen we may hear Puckish laughter always near, And the elf's apostrophe, "Lord, what fools ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—do ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... so lovely an elf. A sunbeam had made its home in each lock of her tumbled hair. Her little brown face had the soft bloom of a ripe nectarine; her eyes, the timid ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Scandinavian jarl, who, marrying the princely daughter of some Scottish chieftain, found in her creed at last something more precious than herself; while his brother or his cousin became, at Dublin or Wexford or Waterford, the husband of some saffron-robed Irish princess, 'fair as an elf,' as the old saying was; 'some maiden of the three transcendent hues,' of whom the ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... change this theme, which grows too sad, And lay this sheet of sorrows on the shelf; I don't much like describing people mad, For fear of seeming rather touched myself— Besides, I've no more on this head to add; And as my Muse is a capricious elf, We'll put about, and try another tack With Juan, left ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... down them sure enough; but then a fellow deserves to be of Oxford that talks so." I have heard him at other times relate how he used so sit in some coffee-house there, and turn M—- 's "C-r-ct-c-s" into ridicule for the diversion of himself and of chance comers-in. "The 'Elf-da,'" says he, "was too exquisitely pretty; I could make no fun out of that." When upon some occasions he would express his astonishment that he should have an enemy in the world, while he had been ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... heed— You, as though you would inquire "Can I trust them?" . . . then a jerk, And you'd skipped three branches higher, Jaws again at work; Like a little clock-work elf, With all ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... the wild-wood, and sat down by a spring. She looked in it—her only mirror—at her wan, coarse face, with wild black elf-locks hanging round it, and wondered whether Alftruda, in her luxury and prosperity, was still so very beautiful. Ah, that that fountain were the fountain of Jouvence, the spring of perpetual youth, which all believed in those days to exist somewhere,—how would she ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... caves and the snowy crags, they could see no signs of the cunning fugitive. Then they went back to his house again to consult what next to do. And, while standing by the hearth, Kwaser, a sharp-sighted elf, whose eyes were quicker than the sunbeam, saw the white ashes of the burned net lying undisturbed in the still hot embers, the ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... eleven nouns in f, change the f into v and assume es for the plural: sheaf, sheaves; leaf, leaves; loaf, loaves; leaf, beeves; thief, thieves; calf, calves; half, halves; elf, elves; shelf, shelves; self, selves; wolf, wolves. Three others in fe are similar: life, lives; knife, knives; wife, wives. These are specific exceptions to the general rule for plurals, and not a series of examples coming under a particular rule; for, contrary to the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... clear before me. The moon, moreover, had now quite dispersed the clouds, and shone down with exquisite brilliance. Whatever her other failings, Elsie had been a trustworthy guide; she had brought me out of the depth of elf-land into the material world again. It had been a singular adventure, certainly; and I mused over it with a sense of mysterious pleasure as I sauntered along, humming snatches of airs, and accompanying myself on the strings. Hark! what light step was that behind me? ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... pretty blonde, sweet, serious, timid and a little slow, and Dorothy Rose—a sparkling brunette, quick, elf-like, high tempered, full of mischief ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... concur in expressing (with as much admiration as is possible to naturalists) the kindly and frank disposition of this bird; which for the rest is almost a central type of all bird power with elf gifts added: it flies like a lark, trips on water-lily leaves like a fairy, swims like a duck, and roves like a sea-gull, having been seen sixty miles from land: and, finally, though living chiefly in Lapland and Iceland, and other ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... the grey hair was that fringed the immense pale dome of his head, and venerably haloed though he was for me by his greatness, there was yet about him something—boyish? girlish? childish, rather; something of a beautifully well-bred child. But he had the eyes of a god, and the smile of an elf. In figure, at first glance, he seemed almost fat; but this was merely because of the way he carried himself, with his long neck strained so tightly back that he all receded from the waist upwards. I noticed afterwards that this deportment made the back of his jacket hang quite far away from his ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... sorrow seiz'd those gentle youths, who'd given cureless pain— In haste they sought their priestly sire, in haste return'd again; Return'd to view the elf enthron'd in waters as before, Whose music now was sighs, whose tears gush'd e'en from his heart's core. "Why weeping, Neck? look up, and clear those tearful eyes of blue— Our father bids us say, that thy Redeemer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... played, so delicately, so melodiously, and, withal, with an individuality so elf-like in its quaintness, that Joseph's quivering nerves were stilled and relaxed as by the caresses of a woman's hands. Then, when count of time had ceased, when the room was filled with velvet shadows, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... travels were limited to excursions in the vicinity of her father's residence. Those were days of post-chaises and sedan-chairs, when the rush of the locomotive was unknown. Steam, that genie of the vapor, was yet a little household elf, singing pleasant times by the evening fire, at quiet hearthstones; it has since expanded into a mighty giant, whose influences are no longer domestic. The circles of fashion are changed also. Those were the days of country-dances ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Many a tale of elf and fairy did she tell the dying child, Till his eyes lost half their anguish, and his worn, wan features smiled; Tales herself had heard haphazard, caught amid the Babel roar, Lisped about by tiny gossips playing round ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... meadows, The weird, capricious elf! The buds unfold their perfumed cups For love of her sweet self; And silver-throated birds begin to tune their lyres, While wind-harps lend their strains to ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... was precisely to win the woeful beauty of her that he had set his snares and unleashed his dogs. Did the Abbot know anything? Impossible; his reference forbad the fear. Was the girl something more than a dark woodland elf, a fairy, haggard and dishevelled, whose white shape shining through rags had made his blood stir? The mask of his face safeguarded him through this maze of surmise; nothing out of the depths of him was ever let to ruffle ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... a talk between the King and Carr; and the bodily ear with which he heard grew large and monstrous as by magic, so awful was the secret. And though he had to be loaded with lands and gold and made an ancestor of dukes, the elf-shaped ear is still recurrent in the family. Well, you don't believe in black magic; and if you did, you couldn't use it for copy. If a miracle happened in your office, you'd have to hush it up, now so many bishops are agnostics. But that is not the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... the Birds liked him. They had seen him often in the forest, dancing about like an elf after the eddying leaves, or crouched up in the hollow of some old oak-tree, sharing his nuts with the squirrels. They did not mind his being ugly, a bit. Why, even the nightingale herself, who sang so sweetly ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... herself, "that is a fairy tent, and in it I may find a baby elf sick with whooping-cough or scarlet-fever. How splendid it would be! only I could never ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... 16. The overture to Pfitzner's Christmas play "The Little Christ Elf" given by the ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... an elf or a goblin come, smear his forehead with this salve, put it on his eyes, cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the landing the head of a white man—a countenance of sullen ferocity, with a great scar running across it, and framed in elf locks of staring red. The body belonging to this prepossessing face was swollen and unshapely, and its owner moved with a limp and a muttered curse towards the place assigned him. He was followed by a sallow-faced, long-nosed man, with ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... Made Goddess of the river. Still she retains Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve Visits the herds along the twilight meadows, Helping all urchin blasts, and ill-luck signs That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make, Which she with precious vialed liquors heals: For which the shepherds, at their festivals, Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream Of pansies, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... elf, right beauteous to behold, Whose coat was like a brooklet that the sun Hath all embroider'd with its crooked gold, It was so quaintly wrought and overrun With spangled traceries,—most meet for one That was a warden of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... hated her. Her youngest brother was only five. He was a frail lad, with immense brown eyes in his quaint fragile face—one of Reynolds's "Choir of Angels", with a touch of elf. Often Miriam kneeled to the child and drew ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... little elf. All at once the pretty beauty of her breaks upon Rylton. The reaction from such extreme doubt of her to a clear certainty has made his appreciation of her kinder—has, perhaps, opened his eyes to the perfections she possesses. However this may be, there is, beyond question, a great ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... is an excellent, good woman, just the wife for him, and he knows it, and does as she tells him most faithfully and gratefully. They are pattern-folk from top to toe, and so is the boy. But the girl! He would have his way, and named her Phyllis—Fly he calls her. She is a little skittish elf—Rotherwood himself all over; and doesn't he worship her! and doesn't he think it a holiday to carry her off to play pranks with! and isn't he happy to get amongst a good lot of us, and be his ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... meditative fashion,—its mother slept profoundly. She bent lower and lower over the child. With a beating heart she ventured to touch the small, pink hand that lay outside its wrappings like a softly curved rose-leaf. With a sort of elf-like confidence and contentment the feeble, wee fingers closed and curled round hers,—and held her fast! Weak as a silken thread, yet stronger in its persuasive force than a grasp of iron, that soft, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... poem should be compared with The Elf Bride, printed in The Brother Avenged and Other Ballads, 1913, ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... is an old bachelor elf who successfully resists all efforts of scheming fairy mammas to marry him to young and beautiful fairies, persisting in single blessedness even in exile from his kind, being driven off as a punishment for his heterodoxy on matrimonial subjects. ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... gaunt-haunched swine Growled at their christened playmates o'er the scraps. Shrill mothers cursed; wan children wailed; sharp coughs Rang through the crazy chambers; hungry eyes Glared dumb reproach, and old perplexity, Too stale for words; o'er still and webless looms The listless craftsmen through their elf-locks scowled; These were my people! all I had, I gave— They snatched it thankless (was it not their own? Wrung from their veins, returning all too late?); Or in the new delight of rare possession, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... time the gods kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They swathed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... yet pull them away," they all laughed, "and chuck them in her face! She has got you up in such a way as to make a regular old elf of you!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... The black, straight elf-locks, the swart face, the great wondering eye, with the gay blanket, short gown of woollen-stuff, and brilliant moccasins, made a striking picture to be sure; and I could not help thinking, that if the apparition had chanced upon him ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... th' olde dayes of the King Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye; The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte in ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... to live in; but then a Brownie is a curious creature—a fairy, and yet not one of that sort of fairies who fly about on gossamer wings, and dance in the moonlight, and so on. He never dances; and as to wings, what use would they be to him in a coal-cellar? He is a sober, stay-at-home, household elf—nothing much to look at, even if you did see him, which you are not likely to do—only a little old man, about a foot high, all dressed in brown, with a brown face and hands, and a brown peaked cap, just the ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... jack-an-ape,—for what good part about him I know not, save that as one noble lady will love a messan dog, and another a screaming popinjay, and a third a Barbary ape, so doth it please our noble dame to set her affections upon this stray elf of a page, for nought that I can think of, save that she—was the cause of his being saved (the more's the pity) from drowning." And here Master Wingate ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... humbug of sex superiority because she had seen it fall on its face to howl over a trodden worm, with the result that it discovered itself hollow behind, like the elf-maiden. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... physiognomy an expression in the highest degree repulsive. Deceit, low cunning, and greed of gain, were legibly written upon this unprepossessing countenance; whose wild character was completed by a profusion of coarse dark hair, that hung or rather stuck out in black elf-locks around the receding forehead and tawny sunken cheeks. The dress of this man was in unison with his aspect. He wore a greasy velveteen jacket, loose trousers of the same stuff, and his feet were shod with abarcas—a kind of sandal in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... these small pipes are commonly in England called 'fairy pipes,' or 'Carl's pipes,' or 'old man's pipes;' in Ireland, where they are likewise known as 'fairy pipes,' they are also called 'Dane's pipes;' and in Scotland, where their common name is 'elf pipes,' or 'elfin pipes,' they are, in like manner, known as 'Celtic pipes.' They are also sometimes named 'Mab pipes,' or 'Queen's pipes,' from the same fairy majesty, Queen Mab. Thus, while in each country they are ascribed to the elfin race—the 'small people' of Cornish folk-lore—their ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... in the fairy-stories," he said in a voice Joy did not quite know, "who catches an elf-girl in some unfair way, and finds her turn to a dear human woman in his house. Joy ... ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... look at Treherne. He stood gazing, his head a little bent, and one of his black elf-locks had fallen forward over his forehead. And again she had the sense of a shadow over the grass; she almost felt as if the grass were a host of fairies, and that the fairies were not ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... fellow's usually pale face looked ghastly white in the late dusk, and the strange brightness of his eyes, and his spindle legs and diminutive body, crowned by the hat at least two sizes too large, made him seem a very elf of the woods. At camp or elsewhere, Skinny was always alone, but he seemed more lonely than ever in that still wood, with the night coming on. Nature was so big ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... suggestion. There was also an amusing phase of Nelly's declaration which did not escape him,—the pot calling the kettle black. Etta Robbin-Steele did flirt. She had dancing black eyes that flung a challenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all her baby face. She was like an elf. Her violet eyes were capable of infinite shades of expression. She, herself, had a way of appropriating men who pleased her, to the resentful dismay of other young women. It pleased her to do that with Jack MacRae whenever he was ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... small wings doth fly, And, flying, carry on those wings yourself; Methinks I see you, looking from your eye, As tho' you thought the world a wicked elf. Offspring of summer! brimstone is thy foe; And when it kills ye, soon you lose your breath: They rob your honey; but don't let you go, Thou harmless victim of ambitious death! How sweet is honey! coming from ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... at dominos with eye-bright and the black specks of the trefoil; namely, Pipalee, Nip, Trip, and the lord treasurer (for that was all the party selected by the queen for her travelling cortege), and waiting for her Majesty, who, being a curious little elf, had gone ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... young vixen?" went on the speaker, addressing her husband, the Tio Pedro, who sat with her behind the counter of a small tobacconist's shop—an ugly beldame, shrank and shrivelled, with grey elf-locks, sunk cheeks, and parchment complexion, looking ninety, yet little more than half that age. Women ripen early, are soon at their prime, and fade prematurely, under this ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... incidents or tales are the same as those of the Chippewas, or other tribes, we still feel that there is an incredible difference in the spirit. Its ways are not as their ways. This Wabanaki mythology, which was that which gave a fairy, an elf, a naiad, or a hero to every rock and river and ancient hill in New England, is just the one of all others which is least known to the New Englanders. When the last Indian shall be in his grave, those who come after us will ask in wonder why we had no curiosity as to the romance of ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... frothy slaver, venom'd bites; An equal semblance still to keep, Alike too both conduce to sleep. 50 This diff'rence only, as the god Drove souls to Tart'rus with his rod, With his goosequill the scribbling elf, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... mayst thou own, my winsome elf, Some day a pet just like thyself, Her sanguine thoughts to borrow; Content to use her brighter eyes, Accept her childish ecstacies, And, ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... the door shut on their retainer, and perched herself on the end of the big old-fashioned sofa drawn up at one side of the fire. She wore a loose stockinette brown dress and looked rather like a wood elf of sorts with her golden-brown ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... all the advantages in his power to bestow. Mary and Kate are two sprightly girls, near the respective ages of eight and eleven; and Harry, a quiet, innocent-minded, loving child, is in his sixth year. There is another still, a little giddy, dancing elf, named Lizzy, whose voice, except during the brief periods of sleep, rings through the house all day. And yet another, who has just come, that the home of Mr. Bancroft may not be without earth's purest form of innocence—a ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... laverock climbs the golden steep: Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep? Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... quiet but composed interest. It never occurred to her that she could have any individual concern in the contents of the parcels. She was a tall girl who had outgrown all her frocks, or rather did outgrow them periodically, with dark elf locks about her shoulders, which would not curl or creper, or do anything that hair ought to do. She had her thoughts always in the clouds, forming all sorts of impossible plans, as was natural to her age, and was just the kind of angular, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... human world shut out,— As some detected changeling elf, Doomed, with strange agony and doubt, To enter on his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... whatever. It was a thin, peaked, sallow face, with a discontented expression; her features were small and pinched, her hair, which was of inky blackness, fell on her shoulders in long, straight locks, without a ripple or a wave in them. She looked like an elf, but still this elfish little creature was redeemed from the hideousness which else might have been her doom by eyes of the most wonderful brilliancy. Large, luminous, potent eyes—intensely black, and deep as the depths of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... used to sit down in the pit And see you flit like elf or fairy Across the stage, and I'll engage No moonbeam sprite were half so airy. Lo! everywhere about me there Were rivals reeking with pomatum, And if perchance they caught a glance In song or dance, how ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... self be but last May's elf, wing shifted, eye sheathed— Changeling in April's crib rocked, who lets 'scape rills locked fast since frost breathed— Skin cast (think!) adder-like, now bloom ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he shut, The friar of Rubygill; Where the ghostly elf absolved himself, To follow his own good will: And he had no lack of canary sack, To keep his conscience still. And a damsel well knew, when at lonely midnight It gleamed on the waters, his signal-lamp-light: "Over! over!" she warbled with nightingale throat, And ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... we to do with this self-willed elf? To carry out her father's ideas, and let her nature have unrestrained freedom to develop itself, will be the ruin of her! Unless she is controlled and guided she is just the girl to grow up wild and eccentric, and end in running away with ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of a household elf who torments the cook and gardener, but is a constant joy and delight to the children who love ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett
... thou fond presumptuous Elf, Exclaim'd a thundering Voice, Nor dare to thrust thy foolish self Between me and my choice!" A falling Water swoln with snows Thus spake to a poor Briar-rose, That all bespatter'd with his foam, And dancing high, and dancing low, Was living, as a child might know, ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... To that fair Elf-child other summers came; But Lilith walked, heart-hungered, filled with shame, Naught comforted. And in that shadow-land She sorrowing bore, in after-time, a band Of elfin babes, that waked dim echoes long Forgotten there, and ghastly bursts of song. Then Lilith ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... Felicity was quite well pleased that Cyrus should have passed over her rose-red prettiness to set his affections on that demure elf of a Cecily. She did not want the allegiance of Cyrus in the least, but it was something of a slight that he had not wanted her to ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... It is as though he had a kind of superstition about it. Isn't there a fairy story, in which an elf marries a mortal on condition that if he ever ill-treats her, her people will fetch her back to fairyland? One day the husband lost his temper and spoke crossly; instantly there was a crash of thunder and ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... foot. "The seigneur Alvan appears pressed for time:" She has "letters to write to friends to-day." Stop that! I can't join in play: to-morrow, if she likes; not to-day. Or not till I have her by the hand. She shall be elf and fairy, French coquette, whatever she pleases to-morrow, and I'll be satisfied. All I beg is for plain dealing on a business matter. This is a business matter, a business meeting. I thoroughly know the girl's heart, and know that in winning the interview ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "comprehension," but was silent, feeling the uselessness of further words. How expect understanding of a common human hurt from this being, who alternately appeared in the guise of a god and a gamin? She remembered the old tale of the maiden wedded to the beautiful and strange elf-king. Was the legend symbolic of that mysterious thread—call it genius or what you will—that runs its erratic course through humanity's woof, marring yet illuminating the staid design, never straightened with its fellow-threads, never tied, and never ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... other shadoweth faith again, Such is my lass, with no fond change acquainted. And as nor tyrant sun nor winter weather May ever change sweet amaranthus' hue, So she though love and fortune join together, Will never leave to be both fair and true. And should I leave thee then, thou pretty elf? Nay, first let Damon ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... if the whole man were a moral and physical humbug; his wonderful beauty of face, for aught I knew, might be removable like a mask; and, tall and comely as his figure looked, he was perhaps but a wizened little elf, gray and decrepit, with nothing genuine about him save the wicked expression of his grin. The fantasy of his spectral character so wrought upon me, together with the contagion of his strange mirth on my sympathies, that I soon began to laugh ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Loge an old enemy. Loge's reply to Alberich's, "I know you well enough, you and your kind!" is perhaps, with its cheerful dancing flicker, his prettiest bit of self-description. "You know me, childish elf? Then, say, who am I, that you should be surly? In the cold hollow where you lay shivering, how would you have had light and cheering warmth, if Loge ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... warriors in each. Still they came, shoals of them, like fish, with savages almost naked, the harbor smooth as glass, the grand tyee, or great chief of the tribes, standing erect shouting a welcome, with long elf-locks streaming down his back. Women and children now appeared in the canoes. That meant peace. The women were chattering like magpies; the men gurgling and spluttering their surprise at the white visitors. For safety's sake the guns of the two ships were pointed ready; but the natives did not ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Still she was one of those girls whom society calls a "pretty little thing," and was predestined to marry some large, good-natured man who would imagine that she would make a nice little pet, a household fairy, but who might learn to his dismay that the fairy could be a tormenting elf. She would not marry the young gentleman with whom her name was at present associated by the gossips, and who had driven over that morning to help her entertain the expected guests. Mr. Harcourt and Miss Marchmont understood each other. He was ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... were at least presentable, she inaugurated an acquaintance with us by sending a little box to myself, which proved to contain, on being opened, something in the nature of a valentine. It contained a spray of mimosa packed in cotton wool, and lying like an elf among the petals was a little sleeping bat. Lady Wilton a week before had appeared as the Evening Star at a fancy ball at Nice. In return for her valentine I bought a microscopic puppy, which, packed in cotton wool and inclosed in a box as the bat was, was transmitted to her by a florist ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... laid business on the shelf To give his taste expansion, And, since no man, retired with pelf, The building mania can shun, 10 Knott, being middle-aged himself, Resolved to build (unhappy elf!) A ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... sweetness, friend,' said Farina. 'I think of whispering Fays, and Elf, and Erl, when their odour steals through me. Do ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Laughs to the lip—tears to the eye, In looking on the gifts that lie Like broken playthings scattered o'er Imagination's nursery floor! Did these old hands once click the key That let "Jack's" box-lid upward fly, And that blear-eyed, fur-whiskered elf Leap, as though frightened at himself, And quiveringly lean and stare At me, his ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... truer than any Egyptian.) There was a chair by the table, on which was an empty bowl and some broken bread; but the wise woman sat in the chimney corner, bending over the hearth, though the fire had burnt out, and not an ember glowed. And a strange little elf she looked, being very wizen and small, with one shoulder higher than the other, and a face ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... far before they met Eddie Elf, who was singing happily to himself as he walked along. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling on a rattle!" he said, when ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... footsteps of several persons in the neighbourhood. I was about to inquire, in a whisper, who they could be, when I observed him glance up at the top of the wall above us. I turned my eyes in the same direction, and then I saw, by the light of the fire, the elf-like locks and red-coloured countenance of a wild Indian, who was gazing down upon us. He looked as much surprised to find us there as we ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... brows are bound with bracken-fronds, And golden elf-locks fly above; Her eyes are bright as diamonds And bluer than ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... shown herself, not all the floods of the deluge could have made her think or feel thus: her real self, her divine nature had begun to wake. True, that nature was as yet no more like the divine, than the drowsy, arm-stretching, yawning child is like the merry elf about to spring from his couch, full of life, of play, of love. She had no faith in God yet, but it was much that she felt she was not ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... themselves invisible, but they are invariably "little people," from three to four feet high. It may be that the Gael's conception of humanised spirits may not have been uninfluenced by the traditions of that earlier diminutive race whose arrow-heads of flint were so long regarded as "elf-bolts." The fairies dwelt only in grassy knolls, on the summits of high hills, and inside cliffs. Although capable of living for several centuries, they were not immortal. They required food, and borrowed meal and cooking utensils from ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... Saints" was first published in 1898, when Mr. Canton had already found his audience. The book is a near successor indeed to his "W. V.: Her Book," and to "The Invisible Playmate"; and W. V. again acts as guardian elf and guide to this new region of the child's earthly paradise. The Saints are here treated with a simplicity that is almost or altogether childlike, and with an unforced imagination which is only to be learnt by becoming as a child. And this is perhaps ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... quickly Teddy set to work, but when he had once passed the line round the farmer's body and the tree, he had no difficulty in finishing the work he had begun. Dancing like an elf with the line in his hand, he spun round and round the tree till the line was wound round to its very last extremity, and the farmer looked like some big bluebottle fly entangled in the fine meshes of a spider's web. Still he slept on, ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... and was proceeding to turn the matter over in his mind, when the mental process was arrested by a shout of laughter. The other boys had tied Shargar's feet to the desk at which he sat—likewise his hands, at full stretch; then, having attached about a dozen strings to as many elf-locks of his pale-red hair, which was never cut or trimmed, had tied them to various pegs in the wall behind him, so that the poor fellow could not stir. They were now crushing up pieces of waste-paper, not a few leaves of ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... name, methinks, so popularly known For opposition to the church and crown, Might make the Lusitanian grape to pass, And almost give a sanction to the glass; Especially with thee, whose hasty zeal Against the late rejected commerce bill Made thee rise up, like an audacious elf, To do the speaker honour, not thyself. But if thou soar'st above the common prices, By virtue of subscription to thy Crisis, And nothing can go down with thee but wines Press'd from Burgundian and Campanian ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... always up to some sort of mischief, and his greatest delight was to get other people into trouble. The country people had long wished to be rid of him but he had a long lease of his house and he meant to stay there. He was a homely little elf, with bright red hair, a slight squint in one eye and a wart on his nose. If a lesson had not been prepared, this fellow, who was called "I Forgot," was sure to be on hand in time to whisper into the ear of the culprit, "Say 'I Didn't Think' or 'I Forgot,'" and the minute she opened ...
— Silver Links • Various
... Adopting his portraits, are pleas'd with their own, Say, where has our poet this malady caught? Or wherefore his characters thus without fault? Say, was it that, mainly directing his view To find out men's virtues, and finding them few, Quite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf, He grew lazy at last, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... sure you're not the man," he said, nodding his head until his elf-locks danced around his face. "Of course you're not the man. I know it—ho, ho! you can wager that I know it! A little ruse of mine, Captain Plum. Pardonable—excusable, eh? I wanted to know if you were a liar. I wanted to see if ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... Not the dogmatic elf, Whose great all is himself, Whose alone ipse dixit is law: What a figure he'll make, How like Momus he'll speak With sneering ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... smile, I fancy that the Cloud-Compeller's style Would suit me sweetly; just the line I love; Resolute rule's the appanage of a Jove. But SHELLEY's dismal Demogorgon's self, That solemn, shadowy, stern, oracular elf, Plus obstinate Prometheus, did not play Such mischief as the parties do to-day, With Law and Order. Who would be a god When force forsakes his ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... spectators of the interview. My grandfather entered; I was dressed as genteelly as every effort of the village taylor could contrive; an appearance so different from that of the beaten, bruised, and wounded poor elf he first had seen, with clouted shoes, torn stockings, and coarse coating, dripping with water, and clotted with blood, was so great as scarcely to be credible. The ugliness of my companions did but enhance the superiority of my look; he could not be mistaken in ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... rose-bushes ridged in down, and at last to his favorite winter nook, a thicket of black alders freighted with a wealth of berries. How crimson they were amid the white quiet of the garden! And the brightly colored fruit of the barberry flamed forth from a snowy bush like the cheerful elf-lamps of a wood-gnome. ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... friend in reflective fashion. She called up before her a picture of Rob's great stooping form, his shaggy head, and overhanging brows, and contrasted it mentally with that of the slim little, neat little, prettiest of elf-like figures before her. No, it was not in the least likely that Rob would disappoint Peggy Saville. "Those dreadful Savilles" had now, as ever, the power of ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... of its urbanity and order forces were gathering for its destruction. The ballad-mongers were busy; Blake was drawing and rhyming; Burns was giving songs and lays to his country-side. In the distance—Johnson could not hear them—sounded, like the horns of elf-land faintly blowing, the trumpet calls ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... had to follow, and I found him telling Elf such a tragic tale of how you and Le had gone off and left him tied up, without even looking behind to bid him good-by, that his heart was quite broken, and he had been trying to hang himself on his own chain ever ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... perhaps some of the Nuns look out. Peace and charity within, Never touch't with deadly sin; I cast my holy water pure On this wall and on this door, That from evil shall defend, And keep you from the ugly fiend: Evil spirit, by night nor day, Shall approach or come this way; Elf nor Fairy, by this grace, Day nor night shall haunt this place. ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... of his mother, which crimsoned with painful humiliation while she read. Philip was not now the trim and dainty stripling first introduced to the reader. He had outgrown his faded suit of funereal mourning; his long-neglected hair hung elf-like and matted down his cheeks; there was a gloomy look in his bright dark eyes. Poverty never betrays itself more than in the features and form of Pride. It was evident that his spirit endured, rather than accommodated itself to, his fallen state; and, notwithstanding his soiled and threadbare ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... joy was, when, one day as she wandered alone, gazing on gorgeous blossoms rich in brilliant colours, down at her feet she spied, waving its delicate-tinted elf-bells in the warm, soft breeze, ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... Puff-crumb did not deal in soot, So turned his face about; Nor did he care to soundly drub The imp of dirty flues: "Go change your clothes!" said he, "and then "I'll thrash you when you choose! "It will not do for me to fight "With such a sooty elf; "My jacket's white, 'twould soon be black ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... to a whistled call Hearkens his ready ear, Scarcely waiting to hear; Silk locks, white feet, all Rush, like a furry elf ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... in March—people who had stayed up late by their firesides, talking of their sons at the front or dozing over the Temps, heard a queer music in the streets below, like the horns of elf-land blowing. It came closer and louder, with a strange sing-song note in which ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... hovering in the air, and might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not whence and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child—to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began—to snatch her to her bosom with a close pressure and earnest kisses—not so much from overflowing love as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the meaning of "mirage," and also as another name for H[o]rai, the Elf-land of Far Eastern fable. Various beings in Japanese myth are credited with power to delude mortals by creating a mirage of H[o]rai. In old pictures one may see a toad represented in the act of exhaling from its mouth a vapor that shapes ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... yet withal an Elf Bold, and lavish of thyself, Since we needs must first have met I have seen thee, high and low, 20 Thirty years or more, and yet 'Twas a face I did not know; Thou hast now, go where I may, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... ragged, with the sea-tan on throat and knee. The blue tatters of her skirt hung heavy with brine; the creamy skin on her arms glittered with wet spray, and her hair was wet, too, clustering across her cheeks in damp elf-locks. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... little mouse had finished repeating what the elf had said she laid her staff against the king's breast, and sure enough there sprang forth from it the loveliest flowers. They yielded so strong a perfume that the king commanded that the mice who stood nearest the chimney should stick their tails in the fire, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... likeness, unconcealed by bonnet or shawl, or maternal protection. The pinafore scarcely covered her gaunt neck and long arms; that tremendous head of rough, dusky hair was evidently for the first time gathered into a comb. Thence elf locks escaped in all directions, and were forever being pushed behind her ears, or rubbed (not smoothed; there was nothing smooth about her) back from her forehead, which, Hilary noticed, was low, broad, and full. The rest of her face, except the before-mentioned ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... shrewd, suspicious evermore, Here mew'd his lovely consort, young and fair, And watch'd her with a dotard's bootless care. Sure, Love these dotards dooms to jealous pain, And the world's laugh, when all their toil proves vain. This lord, howe'er, did all that mortal elf Could do, to keep his treasure to himself: Stay'd much at home, and when in luckless hour His state affairs would drag him from his tower, Left with his spouse a niece himself had bred, To be the partner of her board and bed; And one old priest, a barren ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... little one he felt the world was his. He forgot Waldstricker, forgot Madelene, forgot everything, but his elf-like son within his cuddling grasp. He touched his lips to the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... even as he spoke the barbaric copper clock upon the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprang up and turned on the Major one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the face of an elf. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... little ugly nauseous elf, Who judging only from its wretched self, Feebly attempted, petulant and vain, The "Origin of Evil" to explain. A mighty Genius at this elf displeas'd, With a strong critick grasp the urchin squeez'd. For ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... lets in the air; Like thought, I'm in a moment gone, Nor can I ever be alone: All things on earth I imitate Faster than nature can create; Sometimes imperial robes I wear, Anon in beggar's rags appear; A giant now, and straight an elf, I'm every one, but ne'er myself; Ne'er sad I mourn, ne'er glad rejoice, I move my lips, but want a voice; I ne'er was born, nor e'er can die, Then, pr'ythee, tell ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... than we can See from the sea-betroth'd Venetian, Were all of ice, not made to overlast One supper, and betwixt two cowslips cast. A prettier hath not yet been told, So neat the glass was, and so feat the mould. A little spruce elf then (just of the set Of the French dancer or such marionette), Clad in a suit of rush, woven like a mat, A monkshood flow'r then serving for a hat; Under a cloak made of the Spider's loom: This fairy (with them, held a lusty groom) ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—do I wake ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... England, let apothecaries and druggists say what they will." It is a tall, stout, downy plant, from three to five feet high, of the Composite order, with broad leaves, and bright, yellow flowers. Campania is the original source of the plant (Enula campana), which is called also Elf-wort, and Elf-dock. Its botanical title is Helenium inula, to commemorate Helen of Troy, from whose tears the herb was thought to have sprung, or whose hands were full of the leaves when Paris carried her off from Menelaus. This title has become corrupted in some districts to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... in my article and left Mrs. McGurk to deal with Sadie. Finally, after she had worked half-way around the room, she came to a portrait of a little girl occupying a leather frame in the center of the doctor's writing desk—a child with a queer elf-like beauty, resembling very strangely our little Allegra. This photograph might have been a portrait of Allegra grown five years older. I had noticed the picture the night we took supper with ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... edge of the chest. He looked and looked—and did not want to believe his eyes. But the thing, which at first seemed shadowy, became more and more clear to him; and soon he saw that it was something real. It was no less a thing than an elf who sat there—astride the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... came back the pertest little ape That ever affronted human shape; 100 Full of his travel, struck at himself. You'd say he despised our bluff old ways? —Not he! For in Paris they told the elf Our rough North land was the Land of Lays, The one good thing left in evil days; 105 Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time, And only in wild nooks like ours Could you taste of it yet as in its prime, And see true castles, with proper towers, Young-hearted women, old-minded men, 110 And manners ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a careless sentence of Leigh Hunt's. "He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus." Fancy Shelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, correcting proofs of "Laon and Cythna", between the Apollo of the Belvedere and Venus de' Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts by Shout could make them! In this house, Miss Clairmont, with her brother and Allegra, lived as Shelley's guests; and here Clara ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... you if you do,' said Mrs Jo, who was in such a wild state of dishevelment with her varied labours that she might have gone on as Madge Wildlife, without an additional rag or crazy elf-lock. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... came through the keyhole, or in at the casement; And it needs must be one that could both read and write; Yet he did not know, If it were friend or foe, Or whether it came from above or below; Howe'er, it was civil, in angel or elf, For he ne'er could have fill'd it so well of himself. CHO. Let ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... stands on the left-hand side of the road, and was speeding onward fast, with the Taf at some distance on my right, when I saw a strange-looking woman advancing towards me. She seemed between forty and fifty, was bare-footed and bare-headed, with grizzled hair hanging in elf locks, and was dressed in rags and tatters. When about ten yards from me, she pitched forward, gave three or four grotesque tumbles, heels over head, then standing bolt upright, about a yard before me, raised her right arm, and shouted in a most discordant voice—"Give ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the carpet, absorbed in a book, was Robert, a boy on whom the same capacious brow as Janet's sat better than on the feminine creature. He was reading on, undisturbed by the pranks of three younger children, John Lucas, a lithe, wiry, restless elf of nine, with a brown face and black curly head, and Armine and Barbara, young persons of seven and six, on whom nature had been more beneficent in the matter of looks, for though brown was their prevailing complexion, both had well-moulded, childish features, and really fine eyes. The hubbub ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds, and never seeks, Makes such a vision to the sight 660 As fills a father's eyes with light; And pleasures flow in so thick and fast Upon his heart, that he at last Must needs express his love's excess ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... proceeds without break to the Hail of the last elf called in to serve Bottom, but the following speeches between Bottom and the fairies, Cobweb, Mustardseed and Peaseblossom, are all cut, and the scene ends ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... mermaids, who, ethnic daemons though they were, yet cherished a hope of salvation! The myth-spirits of the North were more homely and domestic than those of the South, and had a broader humor and livelier fancies. The Northern Elf-folk were true natives of the soil, grotesque in costume ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Charteris, 'I hardly know. One reason I came alone was, that I believe that little elf of a Cilly has some notion of what is plotting against her. You can't speak a word but that child catches up, and she will not let her father out of her sight ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Man, and tiny Maid, Who love the Fairies in the glade, Who see them in the tangled grass The Gnomes and Brownies, as they pass, Who hear the Sprites from Elf-land call Go, frolic with these Brownies small, And join these merry sporting Elves, But ever be your ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... the charm of a monstrously overgrown elf. His shyly wandering gaze behind thick spectacle panes, his incessant devotion to cigarettes and domestic lager, his whimsical talk on topics that confound the unlettered—these are amiable trifles that endear him to ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... More glorious then The sun in heaven appeareth; And summer's self To meet this elf ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... sacramental sin—to feast. I can't say much for his morality: But for his immortality, Good luck! Why he's bound in calf, and squeezed in boards, And scarcely a good library's shelf But boasts acquaintance with the elf. But now I'll tell you what I should have told before, A grievous illness brought him nigh Death's door. Who, bony wight, Enjoyed the sight— And grinn'd as he thought of the fun there'd be When the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... short names in a voice that was like the tinkle of a little bell. It was a pretty sight,—the tiny woman, all white from cap to toe, standing in the full tide of sunbeams, bunches of honeysuckle and catalpa flowers, half as big as herself, in her arms, the elf-like face smiling out of them at the eagerness of her feathered darlings, darting and glancing and gleaming and humming about her, as if she had been a larger edition of themselves, and not of a different genus. She made me stand by her while this was going on, saying ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... hollow ghost or beckoning elf Far from her homestead to the desert bourn, The vagrant soul returning to herself Wearily wise, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... said the doctor, settling himself to go on with his list; "well, let us see. 'World without Souls.' Why, you Elf! read in two days." ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... "school was out," James's spirits foamed over as naturally as a tumbler of soda water, and he could jump over benches and burst out of doors with as much rapture as the veriest little elf in his company. Then you might have seen him stepping homeward with a most felicitous expression of countenance, occasionally reaching his hand through the fence for a bunch of currants, or over it after a flower, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... locks, commonly called "elf-locks": the various forms "felted," "felter'd" and "feutred" ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... Delighteth in no game or fellowship, Loves no good deeds, and hateth talk; But sitteth in a corner turning crabs, Or coughing o'er a warmed pot of ale. Backwinter th'other, that's his nown[123] sweet boy, Who like his father taketh in all points. An elf it is, compact of envious pride, A miscreant born for a plague to men; A monster that devoureth all he meets. Were but his father dead, so he would reign, Yea, he would go good-near to deal by him As Nebuchadnezzar's ungracious son, Foul ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... The little girl moved with the grace of a child, but Elsie Moss danced like a fairy. Her cheeks glowed, her dark eyes shone, her dimples twinkled, her feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground. Her red hat was like a poppy-cup, and the dark hair tumbling about her little face, elf-locks. Elsie Marley gazed spellbound. ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... The enchanting vision of the prairie flower faded, and Rona Mitchell stood before her in solid fact. Solid was the word for it—no fascinating cinema heroine this, but an ordinary, well-grown, decidedly plump damsel with brown elf locks, a ruddy sunburnt complexion, and ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... gained him from the very cradle every prerogative of eldership (and he did struggle first into life, too, so he was the first-born), had grown to be a swarthy, strong, big-boned man, of the Roman-nosed, or, more physiognomically, the Jewish cast of countenance; with melo-dramatic elf-locks, large whiskers, and ungovernable passions; loud, fierce, impetuous; cunning, too, for all his overbearing clamour; and an embodied personification of those choice essentials to criminal happiness—a hard heart and a good digestion. Charles, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... war of words—for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the delicacy of her native French, in which language she always attacked me—I used to turn upon her with my old decision, and arrest bodily the sprite that teased me. Vain idea! no sooner had I grasped hand or arm than the elf was gone; the provocative smile quenched in the expressive brown eyes, and a ray of gentle homage shone under the lids in its place. I had seized a mere vexing fairy, and found a submissive and supplicating little ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep? Ode ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... myself in my article and left Mrs. McGurk to deal with Sadie. Finally, after she had worked half-way around the room, she came to a portrait of a little girl occupying a leather frame in the center of the doctor's writing desk—a child with a queer elf-like beauty, resembling very strangely our little Allegra. This photograph might have been a portrait of Allegra grown five years older. I had noticed the picture the night we took supper with the doctor, ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... him that no maid will stay with her? That she shows no desire to improve? That she mimics and angers her teachers, refuses to study and plays impish tricks like some mischievous little elf? Am I to ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... roses, gay gladioluses, pure white lilies, bunches of star-like daisies and their soft round white little buds, gaudy marigolds, brown, yellow, and orange, crimson cock's-combs, branches of honeysuckle vines filled with honey, rich fairy trumpets, saucy elf-faced pansies, spicy pinks, hollyhocks in satiny dresses of many colors, bright-eyed verbenas and sweet-williams, brilliant geranium blossoms, and even great honest faithful sunflowers—those flowers that ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Leonard laughed angrily; but when Henry held up the elf-bolt, and he saw its sharp point, he was shocked, and he ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... listen expectantly. Then again he seated himself to wait. Several times, passionately insistent, he shook his head, and it was as if the refusal were being made to an invisible presence. Suddenly he lifted his face as the sound of a weird, wild wail was borne to him, mingling with the elf-like moaning of the wind. He leaned forward slightly, listening intently. From somewhere above him pleading notes from a violin were making the night even more mournful. A change came over the ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... and a white pinafore, his yellow hair flying in the breeze, his chin up, his black eyes wide open, with slate in one hand, his pencil in the other, and the sandy kitten clinging to his shoulder (for Jan never lowered his chin to help her to balance herself), he looked more like some elf than a ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he spoke the barbaric copper clock upon the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprang up and turned on the Major one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the face of an elf. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... sending up their finest incense. It seemed a gala where all was happiness and brilliancy, and misery could find no sympathy. This was the effect it had on Caterina. As she wound among the beds of gold and blue and pink, where the flowers seemed to be looking at her with wondering elf-like eyes, knowing nothing of sorrow, the feeling of isolation in her wretchedness overcame her, and the tears, which had been before trickling slowly down her pale cheeks, now gushed forth accompanied with sobs. And yet there was a loving human being close beside her, whose heart was ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... diminutive wisp of humanity, a starved, slender elf with a freckled face, wizened and peaked, which at times looked a thousand years old. It reminded you of the face of one of those preternaturally aged monkeys that sit motionless in a dark corner of the cage, oppressed ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... senses by a soft luxuriance in which all sharp articulation of parts is merged; but what Browning seizes on in the rose is its "labyrinthine" intricacy, while the moss becomes a little forest of "fairy-cups and elf needles." And who else would have thought of saying that "the fields look rough with hoary dew"?[78] In the Easter-Day vision he sees the sky as a network of black serrated ridges. He loves the intricate play of light and shade, and the irregular, contorted, honeycombed surface ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... ever in thy life, and maintain them all the laws that have stood in my days, and all the good laws that in Uther's days stood. And I will fare to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom, and dwell with the Britons with ...
— Brut • Layamon
... bitterly, because his hope was lost, his praise would never be heard among the fairies, and the beauty he had hoped to create he should never see. The elf that lived in the toad-stool looked up as the tears fell upon him, and gathered them up from his fungous coat, where they sparkled ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... : angilo. effect : efiko, efekto. effective : efektiva. efficacious : efika. effort : peno, klopodo. eiderduck : molanaso. elastic : elast'a, -ajxo. elbow : kubuto. elder : (tree), sambuko. elect : elekti, baloti. electricity : elektro. elegant : eleganta. elf : koboldo, elfo. elm : ulmo. eloquent : elokventa. embalm : balzami. embrace : cxirkauxpreni, enbrakigi; ampleksi. embroider : brodi. emerald : smeraldo. emigrate : elmigri. eminent : eminenta. emotion : kortusxeco. emphasis : emfazo, akcentego empire ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... Ramona, her head bent down to his, their lips together,—what could Baba think? As mischievously as if he had been a human being or an elf, Baba bounded to one side and tore the lovers apart. They both laughed, and cantered on,—Alessandro running; the poor Indian pony feeling the contagion, and loping as it had not ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... failings alone, Adopting his portraits, are pleased with their own. Say, where has our poet this malady caught? Or wherefore his characters thus without fault? Say, was it, that vainly directing his view To find out men's virtues, and finding them few, Quite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf, He grew lazy at last, and drew from himself? Here Douglas retires from his toils to relax, The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks. Come, all ye quack bards, and ye quacking divines, Come, and dance on the spot where your tyrant reclines When satire and censure encircled his throne, ...
— English Satires • Various
... very suddenly the spell was broken. For no apparent reason, he fell headlong from his heights and burst into a merry little jig that set Gracie dancing like an elf. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... do I know myself! By Odin, I look more like a rugged elf than Hother. And who art thou, that knowest me? ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... and tiny Maid, Who love the Fairies in the glade, Who see them in the tangled grass The Gnomes and Brownies, as they pass, Who hear the Sprites from Elf-land call Go, frolic with these Brownies small, And join these merry sporting Elves, But ever ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... bit struck on him. That's more like it. She thinks he's a very tall handsome man. Well, he's not my taste. Funny, if you're tall, I s'pose you want a tall man to fall in love with you. It's different, being small, I suppose. My Elf's only about inch taller than me. You can't hardly see there's any difference between us. If I've got ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... sobriquet could better express her personality: She was little—a dainty, elf-like littleness, with tiny feet and wee hands; she was gray—a soft, silver gray—too gray for her forty years (and this fragment begins when she was forty); and she was a lady in every beat of her warm heart; in every pressure of her white hand; in her voice, speech—in all ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the soft blue-grass lawn, that sloped gently a hundred yards from the cabin, built upon a little rise in the bottom land, down to the water's edge. Often when she was a child, and I a man well toward middle life, did I play with the enchanting little elf upon the blue-grass lawn, and drink the waters of perennial youth at the fountain of her sweet babyhood. Vividly I remember the white-skinned sycamores, the gracefully drooping elms, and the sweet-scented honey-locust ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... ropes that clung round the mainmast seemed to gibber like a man in fever as the gale threaded the mazes; the hollow down-draught from the foresail cried in boding tones; it seemed like some malignant elf calling "Woe to you! Woe for ever! Darkness is coming, and I and Death await you with cold arms." Every timber complained with whining iteration, and the boom of the full, falling seas tolled as a bell tolls that beats out the last minutes of a mortal's life. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... found on rocks and menhirs, on the walls of sepulchral chambers, on stones forming the sides of KISTVAENS, accompanied in many instances with radiated circles, which do not, however, help us to understand them better. In Scandinavia they are known as ELFEN STENAVS, or elf stones, and the inhabitants come and place offerings on them for the LITTLE PEOPLE. According to a touching tradition, these little people are souls awaiting the time of their being clothed once more in human flesh. In Belgium these strangely decorated stones are attributed to the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... I came face to face with the children leaving school. I had been accustomed to seeing these wild, bare-legged mountaineers breaking loose from school in a state of subdued frenzy, leaping up and down the side ditches, screaming, yelling, panting, with their elf-locks blinding their eyes, and their bare feet flashing amid the green of grasses or the brown of the ditch-mould. They might condescend to drop me a courtesy, and then—anarchy, as before. Today they moved slowly, with eyes bent modestly on the ground, three by three, and all chanting ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old, Upon her battered doll's staunch bosom weeps. ("O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.") With tear-burned face, at last the ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... him,—the pot calling the kettle black. Etta Robbin-Steele did flirt. She had dancing black eyes that flung a challenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all her baby face. She was like an elf. Her violet eyes were capable of infinite shades of expression. She, herself, had a way of appropriating men who pleased her, to the resentful dismay of other young women. It pleased her to do that with Jack MacRae whenever ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... last century, but was not entirely completed until 1832. It is, inclusive of the lakes, 118 miles long, and its construction cost $3,750,000, three-fifths of which was contributed by the state. This canal connects the Baltic Sea with Lake Wener, as well as, through the Goeta-Elf, with ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... started with such a roar That the King, his father, was troubled sore, And peevishly muttered within himself— "He'll burst his throat, the unmannerly elf!" But Auster, angry at seeing his brother Astart of him, broke away with another As fearful a yell from the opposite side Of the wind-cave, ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... this much change in him, that to-night Agnes was not even waking him to dispassionate interest; he had no attention to spare her. And yet it was not that Barbara had captured his mind; she was nothing but an elf of mischief, dancing in the sunshine backwards and forwards across his path, pelting him with flowers, vanishing and reappearing. Restlessness or discontent must have peeped from behind the suave mask. He had meant to be more friendly, far more friendly; they had not met ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the two smokers approached; shaggy, uncombed ruffians, whose enormous mustaches were turned back over their ears, and mingled with the wild elf-locks of their hair, much of which was seen under the old beavers which they wore aside upon their heads, while some straggling portion escaped through the rents of the hats aforesaid. Their tarnished plush jerkins, large slops, or trunk-breeches, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... used in the meaning of "mirage," and also as another name for H[o]rai, the Elf-land of Far Eastern fable. Various beings in Japanese myth are credited with power to delude mortals by creating a mirage of H[o]rai. In old pictures one may see a toad represented in the act of exhaling from its mouth a vapor ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... away," they all laughed, "and chuck them in her face! She has got you up in such a way as to make a regular old elf of you!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that on two small wings doth fly, And, flying, carry on those wings yourself; Methinks I see you, looking from your eye, As tho' you thought the world a wicked elf. Offspring of summer! brimstone is thy foe; And when it kills ye, soon you lose your breath: They rob your honey; but don't let you go, Thou harmless victim of ambitious death! How sweet is honey! coming from the Bee; Sweeter than sugar, in the lump ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... the chivalry of France, splendid with silk mantles and gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in their wild costume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds of the German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, stamped an ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On this memorable occasion, as in a show upon some holiday, marched past before them specimens and vanguards ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... recognize a geist; his knees shook, and he dared not utter a word. The elf looked down upon him half displeased, yet chuckling ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... babe, baby, babe in arms; nurseling, suckling, yearling, weanling; papoose, bambino; kid; vagitus. child, bairn [Scot.], little one, brat, chit, pickaninny, urchin; bantling, bratling^; elf. youth, boy, lad, stripling, youngster, youngun, younker^, callant^, whipster^, whippersnapper, whiffet [U.S.], schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, larva, chrysalis, tadpole, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the little mouse had finished repeating what the elf had said she laid her staff against the king's breast, and sure enough there sprang forth from it the loveliest flowers. They yielded so strong a perfume that the king commanded that the mice who stood nearest the chimney should stick their tails in the fire, in order ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... gudeman said heedlessly, little knowing there was any danger of Robin's being carried away to Elf-land. Whether the fairies were at that instant listening under the eaves, will never be known; but it chanced, one day, that Wild Robin was sent across the ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... the tips of her fingers, and told Dorothy in a high, squeaky voice that she was very glad to know her. Elf did the same in an exact copy ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... at last, And, thy shady region pass'd, Upon another shore I stood, And look'd upon another flood; [Footnote 4] Great Ocean's self! ('Tis He, who fills That vast and awful depth of hills;) Where many an elf was playing round, Who treads unshod his classic ground; And speaks, his native rocks among, As FINGAL spoke, and OSSIAN sung. Night fell; and dark and darker grew That narrow sea, that narrow sky, As o'er the ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... there was nothing indeed in the gipsy's appearance to trouble one's calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf- locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... stairs. Her clinging white skirt made a soft, swishing sound as it brushed the tiled floor, and she herself—with her slender figure, graceful neck and crown of golden curls, looked, as the gloom of evening wrapped her in, more like an intangible elf—an apparition—gliding through space, than just a scornful woman who had thought fit to reject the importunate addresses ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... came trooping along. They lived in the further meadow, else they had come sooner. They were somewhat larger than the fairies, yet they were very tiny and very delicate creatures. The elf prince had long flaxen curls, and he was arrayed in a wonderful suit of damask web, at the manufacture of which seventy-seven silkworms had labored for seventy-seven days, receiving in payment therefor as many mulberry leaves as seven blue beetles could carry and stow in seven times ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... society calls a "pretty little thing," and was predestined to marry some large, good-natured man who would imagine that she would make a nice little pet, a household fairy, but who might learn to his dismay that the fairy could be a tormenting elf. She would not marry the young gentleman with whom her name was at present associated by the gossips, and who had driven over that morning to help her entertain the expected guests. Mr. Harcourt and Miss Marchmont understood each other. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... but composed interest. It never occurred to her that she could have any individual concern in the contents of the parcels. She was a tall girl who had outgrown all her frocks, or rather did outgrow them periodically, with dark elf locks about her shoulders, which would not curl or creper, or do anything that hair ought to do. She had her thoughts always in the clouds, forming all sorts of impossible plans, as was natural to her age, and was just the kind of angular, jerky school-girl, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... when all ended, she was in the gayest, the most elf-like spirits. All went well until Marcey dug a hole in the ground, put a stone in it, and, burying it, said it was Laforce's heart. Then Laforce pretended to ventriloquise, and mocked Marcey's slight stutter. That was the beginning of the trouble, and Lucille, like any lady of the world, troubled ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... It seems so selfish to have one. I am anything—a fay, a sprite, an elf." She freed her hands with a sudden twist and ran ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... company was sometimes mellow: And, Although he was a priest, Thought it no sacramental sin—to feast. I can't say much for his morality: But for his immortality, Good luck! Why he's bound in calf, and squeezed in boards, And scarcely a good library's shelf But boasts acquaintance with the elf. But now I'll tell you what I should have told before, A grievous illness brought him nigh Death's door. Who, bony wight, Enjoyed the sight— And grinn'd as he thought of the fun there'd be When the jester had joined ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... as he wrought, that a loving heart Was somehow baffling his evil art; For more than spell of Elf or Troll Is a maiden's prayer for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... remember. Do you know," exclaimed Mr Powell, who clearly must have been, like many seamen, an industrious reader, "do you know what she looked like to me with those big eyes and something appealing in her whole expression. She looked like a forsaken elf. Captain Anthony had moved towards her to keep her away from my end of the table, where the tray was. I had never seen them so near to each other before, and it made a great contrast. It was wonderful, for, with his beard cut to a point, his swarthy, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... things," she announced, calmly, crossing her dainty feet and gazing guilelessly at him. "I'm a witch, a Brownie, a sprite, an elf, ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... Meg for such encounters; and as her noble soul delighted in them, so her outward properties were in what Tony Lumpkin calls a concatenation accordingly. She had hair of a brindled colour, betwixt black and grey, which was apt to escape in elf-locks from under her mutch when she was thrown into violent agitation—long skinny hands, terminated by stout talons—grey eyes, thin lips, a robust person, a broad, though flat chest, capital wind, and a voice that could match ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the road, and was speeding onward fast, with the Taf at some distance on my right, when I saw a strange-looking woman advancing towards me. She seemed between forty and fifty, was bare-footed and bare-headed, with grizzled hair hanging in elf locks, and was dressed in rags and tatters. When about ten yards from me, she pitched forward, gave three or four grotesque tumbles, heels over head, then standing bolt upright, about a yard before me, raised her right arm, and shouted ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Anthropological Institute,' May 1880, p. 451) remarks: "It appears from several papers of the Berlin Society as to the German 'high- fields' or 'heathen-fields' (Hochacker, and Heidenacker) that they correspond much in their situation on hills and wastes with the 'elf-furrows' of Scotland, which popular mythology accounts for by the story of the fields having been put under a Papal interdict, so that people took to cultivating the hills. There seems reason to suppose that, like the tilled plots in the Swedish forest which tradition ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... alike. A work of fiction should carry the hall mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a Velasquez, and a Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations of those masters. This is not to speak of tricks and manners which lend themselves to that facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a certain individual way of seeing and feeling. A young poet once said of another and more popular poet: "Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice." And, when one came to think of it, he did not; a certain flabbiness of spirit, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the self-same tune Underneath an older moon. Life to him is, plain enough, Still a game of blind man's buff. If we listen we may hear Puckish laughter always near, And the elf's apostrophe, "Lord, what fools ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... sailor-idiom to be lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire 'sweet Doric'; and do recollect what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf story ... why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about fairies:—Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite 'Nymphidia,' ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... marvelled. As first I had expected, subconsciously I imagine, the passing of their love. Then I became aware that it was Time that passed and Love that remained. Then I became curious. What was their secret? What were the magic fetters with which they bound Love to them? How did they hold the graceless elf? What elixir of eternal love had they drunk together as had Tristram and Iseult of old time? And whose hand had brewed ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... had him fast in his fist, and fast he held him, till the elf showed him where his treasure ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... sarcastic intellect Herein my portrait should detect, And impiously should declare, To sketch myself that I have tried Like Byron, bard of scorn and pride, As if impossible it were To write of any other elf ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... in Downie Hills, and got meat there from the queen of the fairies, more than I could eat. The queen is brawly clothed in white linen, and in white and brown cloth; and the king is a braw man, well-favoured, and broad-faced. There were plenty of elf bulls rowting and skoyling up and down, and affrighted me." Mr. Kirk says "that in fairyland they have also books of various kinds—history, travels, novels, and plays—but no sermons, no Bible, nor any book of a religious kind." Every reader of Hogg's Queen's Wake ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... trousers and black veils, and babies, and cats, and parrots. Here is a tall, venerable grandfather, with spectacles and a long gray beard, dressed in a black robe with a hood and a yellow scarf; grave, patriarchal, imperturbable: his little granddaughter, a pretty elf of a child, with flower-like face and shining eyes, dances hither and yon among the chaos of freight and luggage; but as the chill of evening descends she takes shelter between his knees, under the folds of his long robe, and, while he feeds her with bread and sweetmeats, keeps ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... rather pretty woman, with a curiously flat head, staring black eyes, and sharp chin. She had a child on her knee of about a year old, an elf with delicately proud features, and a ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a dream, Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallow'd house: I am sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door. Through the house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire: Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier; And this ditty, after me, Sing, and dance it trippingly. First, rehearse your song by rote, To each word a warbling note: Hand in hand, with fairy grace, Will we ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... desk. What was he doing? What a singular attitude he was in! Then, all in a moment, Hilda's heart seemed to stop beating, and her breath came thick and short; for she saw that this man before her was not the farmer. The farmer had not long elf-locks of black hair straggling over his coat-collar; he was not round-shouldered or bow-legged; above all, he would not be picking the lock of his own desk, for this was what the man before her was doing. Silent as her own ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... a glorious Banquet had he prepared; to that bade the prince of men All his noblest thanes. That with mickle haste 10 Did the warriors-with-shields perform; came to the mighty chief The people's leaders going. On the fourth day was that After that Judith, cunning in mind, The elf-sheen virgin, ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... searched high and low, among the rocks and the caves and the snowy crags, they could see no signs of the cunning fugitive. Then they went back to his house again to consult what next to do. And, while standing by the hearth, Kwaser, a sharp-sighted elf, whose eyes were quicker than the sunbeam, saw the white ashes of the burned net lying undisturbed in the still hot embers, the woven meshes ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... their formation to a giant living on a hill who stretched out his hand to pick up shell-fish. This myth remained current until the eighteenth century, and stone axes exhumed from the heaps were called thunder-axes (rai-fu) just as similar relics in Europe were called elf-bolts or thunder-stones. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... but they are invariably "little people," from three to four feet high. It may be that the Gael's conception of humanised spirits may not have been uninfluenced by the traditions of that earlier diminutive race whose arrow-heads of flint were so long regarded as "elf-bolts." The fairies dwelt only in grassy knolls, on the summits of high hills, and inside cliffs. Although capable of living for several centuries, they were not immortal. They required food, and borrowed meal and cooking utensils from human beings, and always ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... and wrath both burning. Here I shall only trace it in relation to ethics. But I need not remind the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let me trace this ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... 'You wicked elf,' said Miss Mary, 'to inveigle people into predicaments, and then go shouting ho! ho! ho! ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sounded in his ears again; but he did not shrink from it now; this was not the circus band he had heard as he left the Square, but a melody like a far-away serenade at night, as of "the horns of elf-land faintly blowing"; and he closed his eyes with the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... a little elf. All at once the pretty beauty of her breaks upon Rylton. The reaction from such extreme doubt of her to a clear certainty has made his appreciation of her kinder—has, perhaps, opened his eyes to the perfections she possesses. However this may be, there is, ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... in Killamet. I'm afraid she'll disgrace us all!" Upon which Sara would comfort her by saying that, as most parrots were trained by rough people, nothing better could be expected, and she was sure nobody would blame them; while Molly, the naughty little elf, would shake her curls with ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... this theme, which grows too sad, And lay this sheet of sorrows on the shelf; I don't much like describing people mad, For fear of seeming rather touched myself— Besides, I've no more on this head to add; And as my Muse is a capricious elf, We'll put about, and try another tack With Juan, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in the air, and might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not whence and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child—to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began—to snatch her to her bosom with a close pressure and earnest kisses—not so much from overflowing love as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was caught, though ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shone so brightly that the children in the garden did not break off their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended the murmur of his song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf gliding from one black shadow to crouch in another. He was himself in the deep shade of a magnolia, over whose outer boughs the moonlight was trickling, as if the whole tree had been ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... — N. man, male, he, him; manhood &c (adolescence) 131; gentleman, sir, master; sahib; yeoman, wight^, swain, fellow, blade, beau, elf, chap, gaffer, good man; husband &c (married man) 903; Mr., mister; boy &c (youth) 129. [Male animal] cock, drake, gander, dog, boar, stag, hart, buck, horse, entire horse, stallion; gibcat^, tomcat; he goat, Billy goat; ram, tup; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... strange—no passion nor eagerness—in thy way of accosting her," whispered Hester. "Our Pearl is a fitful and fantastic little elf, sometimes. Especially, she is seldom tolerant of emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. But the child hath strong affections! She loves ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... exclaimed Rosa. "You look so exactly as you did when you were such a merry little elf, that I never thought to inquire whether you were married. In the joy of this sudden meeting, I forgot how many years had passed since we saw ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... delicate eyebrows which moved about continually with every changeful feeling that filled his breast. When excited his glance was magnificent, and the natural wildness of his whole aspect was increased by the luxuriance of his brown hair, which hung in long elf-locks over his shoulders. Among his intimates he was known by the name ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... time Ivan played, so delicately, so melodiously, and, withal, with an individuality so elf-like in its quaintness, that Joseph's quivering nerves were stilled and relaxed as by the caresses of a woman's hands. Then, when count of time had ceased, when the room was filled with velvet shadows, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... met a little Elf-man once, Down where the lilies blow. I asked him why he was so small ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... was wont to walk and Elf, There now walks the Limiter himself, In every bush and under every tree, There needs no ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... only one of the remaining seventeen nuns, namely, Godgyfu, had a scriptural or Christian name. The old names common among their heathen ancestors still survived, no less than ten being compounded of the word AElf, the modern Elf, or mountain spirit. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... to herself, "that is a fairy tent, and in it I may find a baby elf sick with whooping-cough or scarlet-fever. How splendid it would be! only I could never nurse such ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... Frederick touched the little one he felt the world was his. He forgot Waldstricker, forgot Madelene, forgot everything, but his elf-like son within his cuddling grasp. He touched his ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... as noiselessly as an elf, across the old hall, and softly opened the door of a little, low-ceilinged corner room; Babette, who, overcome by joy and surprise, had not noticed the stranger standing in the shadow, followed her dear Fraeulein. The door was left open, and Willibald could hear a cover laid back ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... dayes of the Kyng Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, All was this land fulfild of fairye. The elf queene with hir joly compaignye Daunced ful ofte in many a greene mede. This was the olde opinion as I rede,— I speke of manye hundred yeres ago,— But now kan no man se none elves mo, For now the grete charitee and prayeres ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... vowed Mr. Cobb solemnly, as he remounted his perch; and as the stage rumbled down the village street between the green maples, those who looked from their windows saw a little brown elf in buff calico sitting primly on the back seat holding a great bouquet tightly in one hand and a pink parasol in the other. Had they been farsighted enough they might have seen, when the stage turned into the side dooryard of the old brick house, a calico yoke rising and falling tempestuously over ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... seemed like a fairy sprite, possessed with a wild spirit of glee. She laughed and clapped her hands incessantly, and when set down on the kitchen-floor spun round like a little elf; and that night it was late and long before her wide, wakeful eyes could be veiled ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... piping of an elfish voice, "Mother, why does the minister keep his hands over his heart?" and the white drawn face of Hester Prynne, with her scarlet elf-child, passed slowly across her vision. The wretched misery of deluded Lucius and his mysterious Lamia she saw, and watched with breathless interest the formation of that "Brotherhood of the Rose." ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... Netherlands. Nay, thank me not, good Giles,' quo' she, 'but my good mother. And I do thank thee for giving of me somewhat to do for her memory. And doesn't she fall a weeping for her mother? And doesn't that set me off a-snivelling for my good brother that I love so dear, and to think that a poor little elf like me could yet speak in the ear of princes, and make my beautiful brother vicar of Gouda; eh, lass, it is a bonny place, and a bonny manse, and hawthorn in every bush at spring-tide, and dog-roses and eglantine in every summer ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... things but with his outer senses then? Has not the inner soul, too, eye and ear, With which it can both see and hearken well? 'Tis true it is with eyes of flesh I see The richly glowing color of the rose; But with the spirit's eye I see within A lovely elf, a fairy butterfly, Who archly hides behind the crimson leaves, And singeth of a secret power from heaven That gave ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... all ages, venerable, bearded men, men in their prime, men with the hard-hammered features and thick, sinewy necks of gladiators, men slender and pallid as dreaming scholars, youths that might have worn the gold-red elf-locks and the shoulder cloak of Venice, youth chiselled in a beauty as dark and fierce as David wore when the mailed giant went crashing earthward under the smooth round pebble ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... fetid mists, which produce agues, low fevers, and moping madness, and are as fatal to cattle as to man. Such disorders are attributed to elves and fairies. This superstition still lingers in some parts of England under the name of elf-shot, whilst, throughout the north, it is called elle-skiod, and elle- vild (fairy wild). It is particularly prevalent amongst shepherds and cow-herds, the people who, from their manner of life, are most exposed to the effects of the elf-shot. Those who wish to know more of this superstition ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... was not dreaming, Fairy, when she was not scheming Wondrous tales of gnome and elf, Oft drew pictures for herself, Fanciful as they could be: Two are here for ...
— Fairy's Album - With Rhymes of Fairyland • Anonymous
... as thought the caps were thrown From every monkey's crown, For, like himself, each little elf Threw his ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... thicket of black alders freighted with a wealth of berries. How crimson they were amid the white quiet of the garden! And the brightly colored fruit of the barberry flamed forth from a snowy bush like the cheerful elf-lamps of a wood-gnome. ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... man in the fairy-stories," he said in a voice Joy did not quite know, "who catches an elf-girl in some unfair way, and finds her turn to a dear human woman in his house. Joy ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... In the latter time, therefore, she used to have in a little child "for the scraps;" that is to say, to eat up the remains of the dinner. It was a child employed in the ballet, one that certainly wanted feeding. The little one used to appear, sometimes as an elf, sometimes as a page; the most difficult part she had to play was the lion's hind leg in the "Magic Flute;" but as she grew larger she could represent the fore-feet of the lion. She certainly only got half a guilder ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... it,) a short-lived tyranny: Xenophon says "Fire burns only when we are near it; but a beautiful face burns and inflames, though at a distance: Plato calls beauty a privilege of nature: Theophrastus (arch fellow,) a silent cheat: Theocritus, (cunning elf,) a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom, (which he doubtless would keep to himself): Domitian says that nothing is more grateful, (not even killing flies); Aristotle affirms that beauty is better than all the letters of recommendation in the world: Homer, that it is a glorious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... Well might this old square be named quarter of the Magi—well might the three towers, overlooking it, own for godfathers three mystic sages of a dead and dark art. Hoar enchantment here prevailed; a spell had opened for me elf-land—that cell-like room, that vanishing picture, that arch and passage, and stair of stone, were all parts of a fairy tale. Distincter even than these scenic details stood the chief figure—Cunegonde, the sorceress! Malevola, the evil fairy. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... joy attended the illumination; nor can I quite forget that child who, wilfully foregoing pleasure, stoops to "twopence coloured." With crimson lake (hark to the sound of it - crimson lake! - the horns of elf-land are not richer on the ear) - with crimson lake and Prussian blue a certain purple is to be compounded which, for cloaks ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unkempt—he wore no hat, and he looked like a brownie, grotesque, though somewhat sad. But even more did he resemble an ape—or say the missing link—and only his eyes seemed human. These were large, dark and brilliant, sparkling like jewels under his elf-locks. He sat cross-legged on the sward and hugged a fiddle, as though he were nursing a baby. And, no doubt, he was as attached to his instrument as any mother could be to her child. It was not difficult for Miss Greeby to guess that this weird, hairy ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Her youngest brother was only five. He was a frail lad, with immense brown eyes in his quaint fragile face—one of Reynolds's "Choir of Angels", with a touch of elf. Often Miriam kneeled to the child and drew ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Fayre—a pretty blonde, sweet, serious, timid and a little slow, and Dorothy Rose—a sparkling brunette, quick, elf-like, high tempered, full of mischief and always getting ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... princely daughter of some Scottish chieftain, found in her creed at last something more precious than herself; while his brother or his cousin became, at Dublin or Wexford or Waterford, the husband of some saffron-robed Irish princess, 'fair as an elf,' as the old saying was; 'some maiden of the three transcendent hues,' of whom the old book of ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... I'll grime with filth, Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots And with presented nakedness outface The winds ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... well and rills, in meadows green, We nightly dance our heyday guise; And to our fairy king and queen We chant our moonlight minstrelsies. When larks 'gin sing, Away we fling, And babes new-born we steal as we go, And elf in bed We leave instead, And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... with this self-willed elf? To carry out her father's ideas, and let her nature have unrestrained freedom to develop itself, will be the ruin of her! Unless she is controlled and guided she is just the girl to grow up wild and eccentric, and end in running ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... that a good play is like a skein of silk, which, if you take by the right end you may wind off at pleasure on the bottom or card of your discourse in a tale or so—how you will; but if you light on the wrong end you will pull all into a knot or elf-lock, which nothing but the shears or a candle will undo ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Wood of the Old Wives' Fables They glittered out of the grey, And with all the Armies of Elf-land I strove like a beast ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... lovable children, in spite of a certain elf-like disobedience which possessed them like a disease. It was quite enough to tell them not to do a thing for them to be eaten up with a desire to do it forthwith. Christine had discovered this, and had learned to manage them in other ways than ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... expression in the highest degree repulsive. Deceit, low cunning, and greed of gain, were legibly written upon this unprepossessing countenance; whose wild character was completed by a profusion of coarse dark hair, that hung or rather stuck out in black elf-locks around the receding forehead and tawny sunken cheeks. The dress of this man was in unison with his aspect. He wore a greasy velveteen jacket, loose trousers of the same stuff, and his feet were shod with abarcas—a kind of sandal in common use in some parts of Navarre and Biscay, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... fancied to make a continuous music in the ears of the tiniest insects, the fall of pollen dust on flowers and grasses, the stealthy creeping of a spider upon his silken web, and even the piping of a pair of love-sick butterflies, or the trumpeting of a bellicose gnat, like the 'horns of elf-land faintly blowing.' ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the welcome singing Of the Meadow Lark and Robin, And above the eastern mountains Flushed the rose-light of the morning; Then again the sky was tinted By the Elf who plays with colors, And the sleeping poppies wakened When the sunbeams kissed ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... 'travail'; 'truth' and 'troth'; 'pennon' and 'pinion'; 'quail' and 'quell'; 'quell' and 'kill'; 'metal' and 'mettle'; 'chagrin' and 'shagreen'; 'can' and 'ken'; 'Francis' and 'Frances'{111}; 'chivalry' and 'cavalry'; 'oaf' and 'elf'; 'lose' and 'loose'; 'taint' and 'tint'. Sometimes the difference is mainly or entirely in the initial consonants, as between 'phial' and 'vial'; 'pother' and 'bother'; 'bursar' and 'purser'; 'thrice' and 'trice'{110}; 'shatter' and 'scatter'; 'chattel' and 'cattle'; 'chant' and 'cant'; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... token," added Hannekin, "the elf lock came out of my hair this very morn, I having, as you bade me, combed it each ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... determined to give him all the advantages in his power to bestow. Mary and Kate are two sprightly girls, near the respective ages of eight and eleven; and Harry, a quiet, innocent-minded, loving child, is in his sixth year. There is another still, a little giddy, dancing elf, named Lizzy, whose voice, except during the brief periods of sleep, rings through the house all day. And yet another, who has just come, that the home of Mr. Bancroft may not be without earth's purest form of innocence—a ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... Elf-child other summers came; But Lilith walked, heart-hungered, filled with shame, Naught comforted. And in that shadow-land She sorrowing bore, in after-time, a band Of elfin babes, that waked dim echoes long Forgotten there, and ghastly bursts of song. Then Lilith saddened more, for that she ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... before yesterday,' I was beginning to say, but I didn't. For I thought to myself, if there was any real trouble about Peterkin, it wouldn't be at all a good time to tease each other. I don't think Elf—that's Elvira's pet name—had understood about him being lost. Indeed, I don't think I had quite taken it in myself, till I saw how grave the two eldest ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... this night, pardie, An elf-queen shall my leman be ... An elf-queen wil I have, I-wis, For in this world no woman is Worthy to be my mate ... Al other women I forsake And to an elf-queen I me take By ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... dazzled laverock climbs the golden steep: Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep? Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... candle. The mystery of this window and the quicksilver dartings of the music—gods, what a touch, what gossamer delicacy!—set his heart throbbing. He forgot his sick nerves. When the trumpet blows, the war-horse lusts for action—and this was not a trumpet, but a horn of elf-land. He moved as closely as he dared to the window, and the music ceased—naturally enough, the movement had concluded. His ears burned with the silence. She came to the window. Arrested by the vision—the casement framed her in a delicious manner—he did not stir. She could not help seeing ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... a limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds, and never seeks, Makes such a vision to the sight 660 As fills a father's eyes with light; And pleasures flow in so thick and fast Upon his heart, that he at last Must needs express his love's excess With words ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... cradle every prerogative of eldership (and he did struggle first into life, too, so he was the first-born), had grown to be a swarthy, strong, big-boned man, of the Roman-nosed, or, more physiognomically, the Jewish cast of countenance; with melo-dramatic elf-locks, large whiskers, and ungovernable passions; loud, fierce, impetuous; cunning, too, for all his overbearing clamour; and an embodied personification of those choice essentials to criminal happiness—a hard heart and a good ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... trim lass, that skims the milky store, To the swart tribes their creamy bowls allots; By night they sip it round the cottage door, While airy minstrels warble jocund notes. 25 There, every herd, by sad experience, knows How, wing'd with fate, their elf-shot arrows fly, When the sick ewe her summer food foregoes, Or, stretch'd on earth, the heart-smit heifers lie. Such airy beings awe the untutor'd swain: 30 Nor thou, though learn'd, his homelier thoughts neglect; Let thy sweet muse the rural faith sustain; These are ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... moment, Tim had him fast in his fist, and fast he held him, till the elf showed him where ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... So turned his face about; Nor did he care to soundly drub The imp of dirty flues: "Go change your clothes!" said he, "and then "I'll thrash you when you choose! "It will not do for me to fight "With such a sooty elf; "My jacket's white, 'twould soon be black "By tussling ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... respect and honour, Both of the beard and the beard's owner, He thought it best to set as good 145 A face upon it as he cou'd, And thus he spoke: Lady, your bright And radiant eyes are in the right: The beard's th' identic beard you knew, The same numerically true: 150 Nor is it worn by fiend or elf, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... bed. Nothing could be more picturesque than her general appearance. She was in the red frock that she usually wore; her wild hair curled in elf-locks all over her head; her eyes, bright as stars, shone in the middle of her little elfin face; her charming lips pouted just for a moment. Then she said in a clear tone, "What if I get up and strike you right across the face? Will you lock the ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... coming, Mrs. Atherton!" she cried; and nimble as a squirrel she climbed the great gate post, where with her elf locks floating about her sparkling face, she sat, while the carriage passed slowly by, then saying to herself, "Pshaw, it wasn't worth the trouble—I never saw a thing," she slid down from her high position, and ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... kept by a Mr Fenton, in the days when the first George was King, might—indeed, he could not have failed to—have made the acquaintance of a "little witch" (as Swift called her) with a voice of gold, who was destined one day to be a Duchess. This little elf with the merry eyes, dancing feet, and the voice of an angel, was none other than Mrs Fenton's daughter by a former husband, a naval officer, and the prime favourite of all the wits and actors whom her fame drew to ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Marit, mother's little one, father's fiddle, the elf in the house, grand-daughter of Ole Nordistuen of the Heide farms, four years old in the autumn, two days after ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... glowed with passion,—the plainness of her features was transformed into momentary beauty. Maryllia was silent. She knew that the aspirations of genius pent up in this elf-like girl were almost too strong for her, and that the very excitability and sensitiveness of her nature were such as to need the greatest care and tenderness in training and controlling. Tactfully she changed the conversation to ordinary subjects, and in a little while Cicely ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... returned. During my work I frequently felt quite well; the thunder-clouds seemed to have cleared away. I often felt beautifully elevated, gently supported; generally I was silent, but it was from inner joy; even hope wound itself softly round my heart; the children of fable came to the weeping elf, saying, "Weep not; thou too mayst still be happy." But the word resounded from farther and farther distance, till at last I could hear it no longer. Silence! now the old night holds me again; let ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... other fair homesteads there," replied Har; "one of them is named Elf-home (Alfheim), wherein dwell the beings called the Elves of Light; but the Elves of Darkness live under the earth, and differ from the others still more in their actions than in their appearance. The Elves of Light are fairer than the sun, but the Elves of Darkness blacker than pitch. There is ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... particularly fond of giving the people, with whom she associated, names of her own, and so called Barbara, whose Christian name she thought frightful, "Babetta," and little slender, pretty Bessie, whose company she specially enjoyed, "the elf." The burgomaster's wife only remained "Frau Maria," and when the latter once jestingly asked the cause of such neglect, Henrica replied that she suited her name and her name her; had she been called Martha, she would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Then came an elf, right beauteous to behold, Whose coat was like a brooklet that the sun Hath all embroider'd with its crooked gold, It was so quaintly wrought and overrun With spangled traceries,—most meet for one That was a warden of the pearly streams;— And as he stept out of the shadows dun, His jewels sparkled ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... calls a "pretty little thing," and was predestined to marry some large, good-natured man who would imagine that she would make a nice little pet, a household fairy, but who might learn to his dismay that the fairy could be a tormenting elf. She would not marry the young gentleman with whom her name was at present associated by the gossips, and who had driven over that morning to help her entertain the expected guests. Mr. Harcourt and Miss Marchmont understood each other. He was a distant relative ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... quite ready to play the elf in the rose-garden of love," replied Heinz gaily. "Moreover, I shall soon need a T and an S embroidered on my own doublet, for——Why don't they bring the light? Another cup of wine, the note, and then with renewed vigour ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... love and wrath both burning. Here I shall only trace it in relation to ethics. But I need not remind the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let me trace this ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... tread, Quiv'ring like dart that trembles in the targe, By a frail crystal stair, whose viewless marge Bears her slight footfall, tim'rous half, yet free, In innocent extravagance of glee The graceful elf alights from out the spheres, While the quick spirit—thing of eyes and ears— As now she goes, now comes, mounts, and anon Descends, those delicate degrees upon, Hears her melodious spirit from ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... hand to pick up shell-fish. This myth remained current until the eighteenth century, and stone axes exhumed from the heaps were called thunder-axes (rai-fu) just as similar relics in Europe were called elf-bolts or thunder-stones. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... The elf queen had met her in green, haunted dells When stars in the zenith were twinkling, And time kept the tramp of her palfry to bells, At her bridle rein merrily tinkling: By Huntley Burn oft, in the gloaming, she strolled Weird shapes, that were ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... kind of hunting-piece, full of the sparkle, the color and romance of bugles and horns,—a spirited fanfare broken by hushed phrases of strings or wood, or an elf-like mystic dance on the softened call of trumpets. The Trio sings apart, between the gay revels, in soft voices and slower pace, like a ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... dashing fellow, held noisy revel during the dazzling winter days, night came every once in so often; and then a quavering call, tremulous yet unafraid, told the listening world that an elf of the moonlight was claiming his own. And if some shivered at the sound, others there were who welcomed it as a challenge to enter the realm of ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... you says better than your tongue," said the groom. "Have with you then, my bold little elf," he added, taking the bridle of the horse on which Ben was still seated. "Or one moment more. You knew me, my lad—are there any others like ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... already quoted, "I owed much to an old maid of my mother's, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country, of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Meilen noch Mich heut ins Brautbett tragen? 130 Und horch! es brummt die Glocke noch, Die elf schon angeschlagen."— "Sieh hin, sieh her! der Mond scheint hell. Wir und die Toten reiten schnell. Ich bringe dich, zur Wette, 135 Noch ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... springs, musical with the harps of moist-haired Elle-women and mermaids, who, ethnic daemons though they were, yet cherished a hope of salvation! The myth-spirits of the North were more homely and domestic than those of the South, and had a broader humor and livelier fancies. The Northern Elf-folk were true natives of the soil, grotesque ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... and the herd are gone. Through channels new the brooklet rushes, Its ancient course conceal'd by bushes. Where the hollow was, a mound Rises from the upheaved ground. Doubting, shouting with surprise, How the fool stares, and rubs his eyes! All's so changed, the simple elf Fancies he is changed himself! Ho! ho! 'tis a merry sight The hag shall have when dawns the light. But see! she halts and waves her hand. All is done ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Tryermaine; we read it in the vision seen in the forest by the minstrel Bard, of the bright green snake coiled around the wings and neck of a fluttering dove; and, finally, we read it in its most startling form, in the conclusion of the poem, "A little child, a limber elf, singing, dancing to itself," etc., wherein is exhibited the strange tendency to express love's excess "with words of unmeant bitterness". This dark principle of evil, we may suppose, after dwelling in the poet's ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... but she was certainly beautiful, and of course young; there were also some bold individuals who asserted that when the moon shone brightly and goldenly, the young fairy was then to be seen in the tops of the trees or upon the edge of the wall. Light as an elf, transparent as a moonbeam, she there swung to and fro, executing the singular dances and singing songs that brought tears to the eyes and compassion to the hearts of those who heard them. On hearing these tales, the Romans would make the sign of the cross, and pass more quickly ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... unprepared as he was for it, prevented him from understanding. If he had been a man of weak or superstitious mind, unacquainted with life and the world, it is impossible to say what he might have imagined. Independently of this—strong-minded as he was—the impression made upon him by the elf-like sprites that ran about so busily, almost induced him, for a few moments, to surrender to the illusion that he stood among individuals who had little or no natural connection with man or the external world which he inhabited. Reflection, however, and the state of the country, came to his ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... with quiet but composed interest. It never occurred to her that she could have any individual concern in the contents of the parcels. She was a tall girl who had outgrown all her frocks, or rather did outgrow them periodically, with dark elf locks about her shoulders, which would not curl or creper, or do anything that hair ought to do. She had her thoughts always in the clouds, forming all sorts of impossible plans, as was natural to her age, and was just the kind of angular, jerky school-girl, very well ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... sun, Following darkness like a dream, Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallow'd house: I am sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door. Through the house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire: Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier; And this ditty, after me, Sing, and dance it trippingly. First, rehearse your song by rote, To each word a warbling note: Hand in hand, with fairy grace, Will we sing, and bless ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... quite decide how to stage-manage her exit; but, whether she went or not, Judy had to go back to her people—Judy who would bear with her the slim little sheaf of poems she had written during her stay, Judy sun-browned, almost more of the elf than the monkey. Killigrew had settled to go the same day to accompany her on the tiresome journey, and then he was for Paris again, his beloved Paris; he vowed that he should burst if he stayed in ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... are associated with this province: Black Vulture, Scaled Quail (C. s. pallida), Turkey, Elf Owl, Green Kingfisher, Hairy Woodpecker (D. v. icastus), Ladder-backed Woodpecker (D. s. cactophilus), Wied's Crested Flycatcher, Buff-breasted Flycatcher, Vermilion Flycatcher (P. r. flammeus), Black-crested Titmouse (P. a. dysleptus), Cactus Wren ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... whom old stories tell, who gave wisdom to the All-Father in exchange for an eye. He is one of the giants, and he still watches his fountain in far-off Jotunheim.[EN2] I claim kinship with the dwarfs, and am sometimes known as an elf, sometimes as a wood-sprite. Men have called me Mimer because of my wisdom and skill, and the learning which I impart to my pupils. Could I but drink from the fountain of the real Mimer, then the wisdom of the world would in truth be ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... was too young—this little elf— With troublesome questions to vex himself; But for many days a thought would rise, And bring a shade to the ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... flew away. Anyone but Tanko-Mankie would have remained to help the wax lady out of the troubles that were sure to overtake her; but this naughty elf thought it rare fun to turn the inexperienced lady loose in a cold and heartless world and leave her to ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... when she was not dreaming, Fairy, when she was not scheming Wondrous tales of gnome and elf, Oft drew pictures for herself, Fanciful as they could be: Two are here ...
— Fairy's Album - With Rhymes of Fairyland • Anonymous
... fours and fives the elfins dance, The elf-king's daughter I see advance. Gaily they ...
— The Serpent Knight - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... from winter's cold. For, oft as famine stung him, would he shoot The shaft that missed no fowl his aim had doomed. Their flesh he ate, their feathers vestured him. And there lay herbs and healing leaves, the which, Spread on his deadly wound, assuaged its pangs. Wild tangled elf-locks hung about his head. He seemed a wild beast, that hath set its foot, Prowling by night, upon a hidden trap, And so hath been constrained in agony To bite with fierce teeth through the prisoned limb Ere it could win back to its cave, and there In hunger and torturing ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... and a deep dusk was falling upon the forest. Ernestine moved, elf-like, in the light of the sinking fire. She took no notice of the man who watched her, being plainly too ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Killamet. I'm afraid she'll disgrace us all!" Upon which Sara would comfort her by saying that, as most parrots were trained by rough people, nothing better could be expected, and she was sure nobody would blame them; while Molly, the naughty little elf, would shake her curls with a solemn air, ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... indeed in the gipsy's appearance to trouble one's calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf- locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with a bold ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... up a street before me, careful, careful where I trod. It was not utterly silent, nor was the quay-square, but haunted by a pretty dense cloud of mosquitoes, and dreamy twinges of music, like the drawing of the violin-bow in elf-land. The street was narrow, pavered, steep, and dark; and the sensations with which I, poor bent man, passed through that dead town, only Atlas, fabled to bear the burden ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... sinful creatures of the earth, but was one of the kane-bairns of the fairies, whilk they had to pay to the enemy of man's salvation every seventh year. The poor lady-fairy—a mother's aye a mother, be she elves' flesh or Eve's flesh—hid her elf son beside the christened flesh in Marion Irving's cradle, and the auld enemy lost his prey for a time. Now, hasten on with your story, which is not a bodle the waur for me. The maiden saw the shape of ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... this house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire; Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier; And his ditty, after me, Sing and ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... bent on mischief, truth to say, Like any little elf, Within the pantry hides to taste The "goodies" on the shelf? Who bothers cook, where'er she goes, And makes her scold, you ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 'clift', now written 'cliff'; 'travel' and 'travail'; 'truth' and 'troth'; 'pennon' and 'pinion'; 'quail' and 'quell'; 'quell' and 'kill'; 'metal' and 'mettle'; 'chagrin' and 'shagreen'; 'can' and 'ken'; 'Francis' and 'Frances'{111}; 'chivalry' and 'cavalry'; 'oaf' and 'elf'; 'lose' and 'loose'; 'taint' and 'tint'. Sometimes the difference is mainly or entirely in the initial consonants, as between 'phial' and 'vial'; 'pother' and 'bother'; 'bursar' and 'purser'; 'thrice' and 'trice'{110}; 'shatter' and 'scatter'; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Mrs. Clayton, with unusual asperity on one occasion, when, holding Ernie in my arms, I lavished endearments upon him; "your king, indeed! your angel! I really believe you admire as well as love that hideous little elf." ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... To persuade her good man The soles for to cobble once more Quoth Jobson you elf He may do them himself For many he's ...
— The Entertaining History of Jobson & Nell • Anonymous
... undertaken. Striped Chipmunk is so spry, and whisks about so, that you need eyes all around your head to keep track of him. Happy Jack found that his two eyes, bright and quick as they are, couldn't keep that little elf of a cousin of his always in sight. Every few minutes he would disappear and then bob up again in the most unexpected place and ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... breast and crossed the work-scarred hands upon it. "It's something by the ordinar' to find a gude auld country body in such a foul place." He stooped and patted Bobby, and noted the bun, untouched, upon the floor. Turning to a wild elf of a barefooted child in the crowd he spoke to her. "Would you share your gude brose with the bit ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... Kit Rhodes was only twenty-three and all of life ahead of him for dreams! He was wondering what he could fetch back from the East that would be acceptable to a witchy elf of a butterfly girl who already had, to his simple estimate, all the ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... chancellor in embryo, Or bard sublime, if bard may e'er be so, As Milton, Shakespeare, names that ne'er shall die! Though now he crawl along the ground so low, Nor weeting how the muse should soar on high, Wisheth, poor starveling elf! his ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... breast, and watched her sleeping. She had always thought of her mother as so long dead as to be no more than a nameless pinch of earth; but now it occurred to her that the once-young woman might be alive, and wrinkled and elf-locked like the woman she had sometimes seen in the door of the brown house that Lucius Harney ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... an element in an Anglo-Saxon recipe, which may be worth quoting as an example of the medicines to which our forefathers submitted. It is given in a Leech Book of the tenth century or earlier, and is thus translated by Cockayne: "If a man is in the water elf disease, then are the nails of his hand livid, and the eyes tearful, and he will look downwards. Give him this for a leechdom: Everthroat, cassuck, the netherward part of fane, a yew berry, lupin, helenium, a head of marsh mallow, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... — N. infant, babe, baby, babe in arms; nurseling, suckling, yearling, weanling; papoose, bambino; kid; vagitus. child, bairn [Scot.], little one, brat, chit, pickaninny, urchin; bantling, bratling^; elf. youth, boy, lad, stripling, youngster, youngun, younker^, callant^, whipster^, whippersnapper, whiffet [U.S.], schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... efektiva. efficacious : efika. effort : peno, klopodo. eiderduck : molanaso. elastic : elast'a, -ajxo. elbow : kubuto. elder : (tree), sambuko. elect : elekti, baloti. electricity : elektro. elegant : eleganta. elf : koboldo, elfo. elm : ulmo. eloquent : elokventa. embalm : balzami. embrace : cxirkauxpreni, enbrakigi; ampleksi. embroider : brodi. emerald : smeraldo. emigrate : elmigri. eminent : eminenta. emotion : kortusxeco. emphasis : emfazo, akcentego empire : imperio. enable : ebligi. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... as though he had a kind of superstition about it. Isn't there a fairy story, in which an elf marries a mortal on condition that if he ever ill-treats her, her people will fetch her back to fairyland? One day the husband lost his temper and spoke crossly; instantly there was a crash of thunder ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reflects itself. This changeful mirror of swift waters spreads a dazzling foreground to valley, hill, and lustrous heaven. There is orange on the far horizon, and a green ocean above, in which sea-monsters fashioned from the clouds are floating. Yonder swims an elf with luminous hair astride upon a sea-horse, and followed by a dolphin plunging through the fiery waves. The orange deepens into dying red. The green divides into daffodil and beryl. The blue above grows fainter, and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of the Old Wives' Fables They glittered out of the grey, And with all the Armies of Elf-land I strove like ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... that Regina had a lover, and a sister who was very disreputable It rather adds than otherwise to the romance of the affair,—the idea that this pretty little elf has no right whatever to the asylum which she has found. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the night before Christmas There came to our house, A right jolly old elf, as still as a mouse; He filled all the stockings, Trimmed each Christmas tree, Made our Christmas ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... of Elf-land, just without 45 Our seeing, marvel ever new, Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt Sketched-in, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Power to whom we bow Has given its pledge that, if not now, They of pure and steadfast mind, By faith exalted, truth refined, Shall hear all music loud and clear, Whose first notes they ventured here. Then fear not thou to wind the horn, Though elf and gnome thy courage scorn; Ask for the castle's King and Queen; Though rabble rout may rush between, Beat thee senseless to the ground, In the dark beset thee round; Persist to ask, and it will come; Seek not for rest in humbler home; So shalt thou see, what few have seen, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... celestial height, Than hath been reached except in dreams or death. Hush, sweetest South! I love thy delicate breath; But hush! methought I felt an angel's kiss! Oh! all that lives is happy in my bliss. That lonely fir, which always seems As though it locked dark secrets in itself, Hideth a gentle elf, Whose wand shall send me soon a frolic troop Of rainbow visions, and of moonlit dreams. Can joy be weary, that my eyelids droop? To-night I shall not seek my curtained nest, But even here find rest. Who whispered ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... Sometimes it seemed to her as if this solemn-eyed child purposely misunderstood, and mocked at her attempts to lead unwilling feet along the path of learning, and she was at a loss to know how to deal with the sprightly elf who danced and flitted about like an elusive will-o'-wisp. The fact that she was the University President's granddaughter was the only thing that had saved her thus far from utter disfavor in the eyes of her teacher; but now even that fact was lost sight of in face of the child's repeated ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... dayes of the King Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye; The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte in ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... said she, "to while away the time till the bright moon goes down, let us each tell a tale, or relate what we have done or learned this day. I will begin with you, Sunny Lock," added she, turning to a lovely little Elf, who lay among the fragrant leaves ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... at this fellow!' cried he, catching from Sarah's arm, and holding aloft an elf, whose round mouth and eyes were all laughter, and sturdy limbs all movement, the moment he appeared. 'There! have we not improved in babies since your time! And here is a round dumpling that calls itself Anna. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... elder', and signifies 'ancestor', just as Uta means 'ancestress'. In the "Thidreksaga" Aldrian is the king of the Nibelung land and the father of Gunther, Giselher, and Gernot, whereas Hagen is the son of an elf by the same mother. (7) Else appears also in "Biterolf"; in the "Thidreksaga" he is called "Elsung", the younger, as his father bore the same name. See Adventure XXV, note 4. (8) "Amelrich" is the ferryman's brother. (9) "Spear". It was the custom to ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... the ban of Canaan! Unforewarned, music sounded in his ears again; but he did not shrink from it now; this was not the circus band he had heard as he left the Square, but a melody like a far-away serenade at night, as of "the horns of elf-land faintly blowing"; and he closed his eyes with ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... windows Of men I serve no more, The groaning of the old great wheels Thickened to a throttled roar; All buried things broke upwards; And peered from its retreat, Ugly and silent, like an elf, The ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... much change in him, that to-night Agnes was not even waking him to dispassionate interest; he had no attention to spare her. And yet it was not that Barbara had captured his mind; she was nothing but an elf of mischief, dancing in the sunshine backwards and forwards across his path, pelting him with flowers, vanishing and reappearing. Restlessness or discontent must have peeped from behind the suave mask. He had meant to be more friendly, far more friendly; they had not met for ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... her damp bed, and looked around her for a little stream where she might wash her face and hands; suddenly she remembered that face and hands were dyed, and that she would do best to leave them alone. She smoothed out as best she could the ragged elf-locks which the gypsy maid had left on her curly head, and then covering her face with her hands, said ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... sunlight, they lodged in her many-braided yellow hair, or fluttered down the long curls that hung in front of her ears. She laughed again under the caressing shower. Then she tore away the remaining petals and tossed them up with an elf-like daintiness, not at the crouched and expectant kitten this time, but so that the whole red rain floated tenderly down upon her upturned face and into the folds of the white kerchief crossed upon her breast. She waited for the last feathery petal. Her hidden ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... misfortune flings Can give me little pain When my narcotic spell has wrought This quiet in my brain: When I can waste the past in taste So luscious and so ripe That like an elf I hug myself; And so ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... ever Awreaked the murder of the slaying of Abel. In that feud he rejoic'd not, but afar him He banish'd, The Maker, from mankind for the crime he had wrought. 110 But offspring uncouth thence were they awoken Eotens and elf-wights, and ogres of ocean, And therewith the Giants, who won war against God A long while; but He gave them ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... fiction should carry the hall mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a Velasquez, and a Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations of those masters. This is not to speak of tricks and manners which lend themselves to that facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a certain individual way of seeing and feeling. A young poet once said of another and more popular poet: "Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice." And, when one came to think of it, he did not; a certain flabbiness of spirit, a lack of temperament, an absence, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Oliver Herford, he is an elf, a sprite, a creature of fantasy, who may be—and, I rejoice to say, is—in this world, but certainly is not of it. This Oliver is in the line of Puck and Mercutio and Lamb and Hood and other lovers and makers of nonsense, and it is we who ask for "more." He had just brought out his irresponsible ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... the grace of an elf. Spurred to pictures by the old brocade, Kenny wished he had some velvet knickerbockers and a satin coat. The thought of his knapsack wardrobe filled him with discontent. Hum! To-morrow he must prevail upon someone to conduct him to the nearest village in wire communication ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... with a start. In the dim light I see a chimpanzee-like face looking up to mine. It is horribly seared and wrinkled, one tooth sticks out from the wide, shrivelled lips, and the beady animal-like eyes glare through grey elf locks. I am speechless with fright, till the dreadful apparition stretches out a skinny arm and with some strange words lays a claw-like hand on my bare wrist. I shrink back, uttering a little ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... charm an elf! Had Crusoe, sick of self, Chanced to view One printed near the tide, Oh, how hard he would ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... numbers prolong, That he warms with his subject, and soars in his song. But whether his lot be unhonour'd and low, Or the wreath of the Laureat encircles his brow, With the world to admire him, mysterious elf! Is a secret of state that he keeps to himself. But come! Zoological wonders require The strains of his genius, his force and his fire; He burns with impatience the scene to display: Hark away, to the Gardens of ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... And jet Hung, in the stately way of old, From the ears' drooping lobes On festivals and Lord's-day of the week, Show all too matron-sober for the cheek,— Which, now I look again, is perfect child, Or no—or no—'t is girlhood's very self, Moulded by some deep, mischief-ridden elf So meek, so maiden mild, But startling the close gazer with the sense Of passions forest-shy and forest-wild, And delicate ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... King Arthur all the land was filled with fairies, and the elf queen and her merry company held many a dance in the green meadows where now you will see never one of them. But that was many ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... it well. I began to comprehend where I was. Well might this old square be named quarter of the Magi—well might the three towers, overlooking it, own for godfathers three mystic sages of a dead and dark art. Hoar enchantment here prevailed; a spell had opened for me elf-land—that cell-like room, that vanishing picture, that arch and passage, and stair of stone, were all parts of a fairy tale. Distincter even than these scenic details stood the chief figure—Cunegonde, the sorceress! Malevola, the evil fairy. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... they searched high and low, among the rocks and the caves and the snowy crags, they could see no signs of the cunning fugitive. Then they went back to his house again to consult what next to do. And, while standing by the hearth, Kwaser, a sharp-sighted elf, whose eyes were quicker than the sunbeam, saw the white ashes of the burned net lying undisturbed in the still hot embers, the ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... thee here my kingdom, and defend thou my Britons ever in thy life, and maintain them all the laws that have stood in my days, and all the good laws that in Uther's days stood. And I will fare to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom, and dwell with ...
— Brut • Layamon
... if you do,' said Mrs Jo, who was in such a wild state of dishevelment with her varied labours that she might have gone on as Madge Wildlife, without an additional rag or crazy elf-lock. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the owlets with their beaks gaping open he began to be frightened, for he feared that Mrs. Owl was going to eat him all up. But he didn't know that a good green elf, who lived in the trunk of the tree, was near at hand, and just as Mrs. Owl opened her beak the leaves rustled and there stood Mr. Elf, who jumped to the ground with ...
— Willie Mouse • Alta Tabor
... never a soul of us knew, And with pencil and book they sat by and took Each action, if false, or if true. White marks for the deeds done for others— Black marks for the deeds done for self. And nobody hid what he said or he did, For no one, of course, sees an elf. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... out of the window from among the flowers that stood there, and no more songs were heard; so May knew that the elf had gone. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... Distorted Elf! to Nature a Disgrace, Thy Mind envenom'd pictur'd in thy Face; Malice with Envy in thy Breast combines, And in thy Visage grav'd those ghastly Lines. Like Plagues, like Death thy ranc'rous Arrows fly, At Good and Bad, at Friend and Enemy. To thy own Breast recoils ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... her. Her youngest brother was only five. He was a frail lad, with immense brown eyes in his quaint fragile face—one of Reynolds's "Choir of Angels", with a touch of elf. Often Miriam kneeled to the child and ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... so singest thou, Not to thyself, Mayn’t there be list’ning now Some fairy elf, Silently sitting near Thy dark retreat, Drinking with grateful ear Thy music ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... comrades—Sergeant Coffin was looking straight at him with his melancholy, bad-tempered eyes—he could not fall out, drop behind! The backs of his hands began to grow cold and his unwashed forehead was damp beneath matted, red-brown elf locks. From considerable experience he knew that presently sick stomach would set in. When the company splashed through Abraham's Creek he would not look at the running water, but when he looked at the slopes he was expected presently ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... amazed—and really startled—the girls most was the figure that sat facing them, as they entered the van. It was that of an old, old crone, sitting on a stool, bent forward with her sharp chin resting on her clenched fists, and her elbows on her knees, while iron-gray elf-locks hung about her wrinkled, ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face, and a little round belly That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself. A wink of his eye and a twist of his head Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings, then turned ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... because his hope was lost, his praise would never be heard among the fairies, and the beauty he had hoped to create he should never see. The elf that lived in the toad-stool looked up as the tears fell upon him, and gathered them up from his fungous coat, where they ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... olde dayes of the King Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye. The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede; This was the olde opinion, as I rede. But now can no man see none elves mo. For now the grete charitee and prayeres Of limitours ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... accounts concur in expressing (with as much admiration as is possible to naturalists) the kindly and frank disposition of this bird; which for the rest is almost a central type of all bird power with elf gifts added: it flies like a lark, trips on water-lily leaves like a fairy, swims like a duck, and roves like a sea-gull, having been seen sixty miles from land: and, finally, though living chiefly in Lapland and Iceland, and other such northern countries, it has been seen serenely swimming ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... hopped far before they met Eddie Elf, who was singing happily to himself as he walked along. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling on a rattle!" he said, when the ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... that fair Elf-child other summers came; But Lilith walked, heart-hungered, filled with shame, Naught comforted. And in that shadow-land She sorrowing bore, in after-time, a band Of elfin babes, that waked dim echoes long Forgotten there, and ghastly bursts of song. Then ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... bright, Gleaming light, Where's the elf of Eldon Low? Sit with me Upon the tree; Sing our ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... invisible, but they are invariably "little people," from three to four feet high. It may be that the Gael's conception of humanised spirits may not have been uninfluenced by the traditions of that earlier diminutive race whose arrow-heads of flint were so long regarded as "elf-bolts." The fairies dwelt only in grassy knolls, on the summits of high hills, and inside cliffs. Although capable of living for several centuries, they were not immortal. They required food, and borrowed meal and cooking utensils from human beings, and always returned what they received ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... covered wagon, of the prairie-schooner type, were from ten to a dozen wild-looking Mexicans, their straggling elf-locks crowned by high-peaked sombreros, and their serapes streaming out wildly about them, whipped into loose folds by the pace at which they rode. As Coyote Pete had said, there was little difficulty ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... had been accustomed to seeing these wild, bare-legged mountaineers breaking loose from school in a state of subdued frenzy, leaping up and down the side ditches, screaming, yelling, panting, with their elf-locks blinding their eyes, and their bare feet flashing amid the green of grasses or the brown of the ditch-mould. They might condescend to drop me a courtesy, and then—anarchy, as before. Today they moved slowly, with eyes bent modestly on the ground, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... air and might vanish, like a glimmering light, that comes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child,—to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began,—to snatch her to her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses,—not so much from overflowing love, as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whole evening for the young man to secure a kiss or two, and have her upon his knee for the space of about five minutes. She nestled closely to him with a little sigh of happiness for a very little while, then she slipped away, and stood looking at him like an elf. "I am not going to do that much," ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... weary, he sat down before the maw Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim To wild uncertainty and shadows grim. There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before, And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore The journey homeward to habitual self! A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf, Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar, Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire, 280 Into the ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... an athletic, and, obviously, a most powerful ruffian. On his face he carried more than one large glazed cicatrix, that assisted the savage expression of malignity impressed by nature upon his features. And his matted black hair, with its elf locks, completed the picturesque effect of a face that proclaimed, in every lineament, a reckless abandonment to cruelty and ferocious passions. Maximilian himself, familiar as he was with the faces of military butchers in the dreadful hours of sack and carnage, recoiled for one instant from ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... absorbed in a book, was Robert, a boy on whom the same capacious brow as Janet's sat better than on the feminine creature. He was reading on, undisturbed by the pranks of three younger children, John Lucas, a lithe, wiry, restless elf of nine, with a brown face and black curly head, and Armine and Barbara, young persons of seven and six, on whom nature had been more beneficent in the matter of looks, for though brown was their prevailing ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Eyes were bright, Grubb was funny and almost witty, and Bert achieved epigrams; the hedges were full of honeysuckle and dog-roses; in the woods the distant toot-toot-toot of the traffic on the dust-hazy high road might have been no more than the horns of elf-land. They laughed and gossiped and picked flowers and made love and talked, and the girls smoked cigarettes. Also they scuffled playfully. Among other things they talked aeronautics, and how thev would come for a picnic together in Bert's flying-machine before ten years were ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... view being correct. For it would then have appeared that no difference of fact could possibly ensue; and the quarrel was as unreal as if, theorizing in primitive times about the raising of dough by yeast, one party should have invoked a 'brownie,' while another insisted on an 'elf' as the true cause of the phenomenon." [Footnote: 'Theorie und Praxis,' Zeitsch. des Oesterreichischen Ingenieur u. Architecten-Vereines, 1905, Nr. 4 u. 6. I find a still more radical pragmatism than Ostwald's ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... feeling which then pervaded me might originate. Who can lie down on Elvir Hill without experiencing something of the sorcery of the place? Flee from Elvir Hill, young swain, or the maids of Elle will have power over you, and you will go elf-wild!—so say the Danes. I had unconsciously laid myself down on haunted ground; and I am willing to imagine that what I then experienced was rather connected with the world of spirits and dreams than with what ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... highest degree repulsive. Deceit, low cunning, and greed of gain, were legibly written upon this unprepossessing countenance; whose wild character was completed by a profusion of coarse dark hair, that hung or rather stuck out in black elf-locks around the receding forehead and tawny sunken cheeks. The dress of this man was in unison with his aspect. He wore a greasy velveteen jacket, loose trousers of the same stuff, and his feet were shod with abarcas—a kind of sandal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... answered the elf, looking terribly frightened and shrinking further into his corner. "Me losa monk'. He come here but gona way. W'en Petri fin', he keel me." The thin face worked pathetically as the little fellow bravely tried to stifle the sobs which shook his feeble body; and Peace, ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... for me!' said she: 'the Rhine grape with the elf in it, and the silver harp and the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... feet high, a mere skeleton covered with a black wrinkled skin. Her dugs were like two dried and puckered ox-bladders; her lips were blackened; her long teeth locked together; her nose was hooked; her eyes starting from her head; her hair hung in elf-locks on her hollow wrinkled cheeks;—in short, she was all over diabolically hideous. I remained gazing on her for a while, and felt myself overcome with horror as I contemplated the hideous spectacle of her body, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... nintau Thalateen Forty Mulu fula Arbae'in Fifty Mulu fula neentan Kumseen Sixty Mulu sebaa Setteen Seventy Mulu sebaa nintan Sebae'in. 374 Eighty Mulu nani T'aramana'een Ninety Mulu nani neentaan Tasa'een One hundred Kemi Mia One thousand Uli Elf ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... quo' she, 'but my good mother. And I do thank thee for giving of me somewhat to do for her memory. And doesn't she fall a weeping for her mother? And doesn't that set me off a-snivelling for my good brother that I love so dear, and to think that a poor little elf like me could yet speak in the ear of princes, and make my beautiful brother vicar of Gouda; eh, lass, it is a bonny place, and a bonny manse, and hawthorn in every bush at spring-tide, and dog-roses and eglantine in every summer ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... tiptoe, as noiselessly as an elf, across the old hall, and softly opened the door of a little, low-ceilinged corner room; Babette, who, overcome by joy and surprise, had not noticed the stranger standing in the shadow, followed her dear Fraeulein. The door was left open, and Willibald could hear a cover laid back ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... I the middling mighty To have a mark of waves' flame; Giver of grey seas? glitter, This gift shalt thou make shift with. If the elf sun of the waters From out of purse thou lettest, O waster of the worm's ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... disadvantages is one of those common but often overlooked truths which serve so well as the themes of fable. Emerson's "Fable," the story of the quarrel between the mountain and the squirrel, is a most excellent presentation of the same idea (see No. 363). "The Little Elf," by John Kendrick Bangs, makes the same point ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... springs May walk on earth, or flap their mimic wings; In tubes of glass mercurial columns rise, Or sink, obedient to the incumbent skies; Or, as they touch the figured scale, repeat The nice gradations of circumfluent heat. But REPRODUCTION, when the perfect Elf Forms from fine glands another like itself, Gives the true character of life and sense, And parts the organic from the chemic Ens.— 30 Where milder skies protect the nascent brood, And earth's warm bosom yields salubrious food; Each ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... sweet, serious, timid and a little slow, and Dorothy Rose—a sparkling brunette, quick, elf-like, high tempered, full of mischief ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... "artistic temperament" is true and not a sham, to the owner at least it must often be a sheer delight, for the elf or "troll" which goes by this name takes such possession of the owner that under his guidance he sees "What man may never see, the star that travels far." "The light" that the poet declares shone on sea or shore, shines for him always, if for no one else: ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... dancers, blowing over and around the floor in the idle designs of sand, floating like scraps of colored paper through a smooth wind heavy with music as the hours run away like light water through the fingers. But outside the house the Italian gardens are open, little lanterns spot them like elf-lights, shining on hedge-green, pale marble; the night is pallid with near and crowded stars, the air warm as Summer water, sweet as ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... for a long while, smiling, preoccupied with his imaginings, which were far adrift in the future. Louis de Soyecourt was a subtle little man, freakish and amiable, and, on a minute scale, handsome. He reminded people of a dissipated elf; his excesses were notorious, yet always he preserved the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of an aging seraph; and bodily there was as yet no trace of the corpulence which marred his ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... churning was easy it was because of the secret help of the "brownie." He was a tiny, elf-like creature who lived in the barn and was never seen of men; but his presence was made known by his many deeds of helpfulness in kitchen and dairy, for which he was rewarded by a daily bowl of milk. Those who ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... deeds,—perhaps the myths of the patron whom superstition supposed to preside over them; that, as the character of the exercises changed, the attributes of the patron would change also, and he who was once celebrated as working wonders with his good axe or his elf-made sword might afterwards assume the character of a skilful bowman; that the scene of his actions would likewise change, and the person whose weapons were the bane of dragons and giants, who sought them in the wildernesses they infested, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... from her hands. She ran around him and danced down the walk before him, laughing like a mocking elf. All at once, she found herself in ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... the morning: Or flush'd Aurora in the roseate dawning! Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream; Or a rapt seraph in a moonlight beam; Or again witness what with thee I've seen, The dew by fairy feet swept from the green, After a night of some quaint jubilee Which every elf and fay had come to see: When bright processions took their airy march Beneath the curved ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... tell him that no maid will stay with her? That she shows no desire to improve? That she mimics and angers her teachers, refuses to study and plays impish tricks like some mischievous little elf? Am ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... they had bits with them, and caught the horses that were in the "town" and rode away on them. They found the stud-horses between two brooks. Skarphedinn caught sight of them, for Sigmund was in bright clothing. Skarphedinn said, "See you now the red elf yonder, lads?" They looked that way, and said ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... events truer than any Egyptian.) There was a chair by the table, on which was an empty bowl and some broken bread; but the wise woman sat in the chimney corner, bending over the hearth, though the fire had burnt out, and not an ember glowed. And a strange little elf she looked, being very wizen and small, with one shoulder higher than the other, and a ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... semi-circular piece of woollen cloth over their heads; it is always black or white, and hangs in agreeable folds over the neck and shoulders. There is but little beauty among them; and alas! how should there be? They are in general filthy; the hair of both old and young is allowed to fall in uncombed elf-locks about their heads; and the old women are often hideous and disgustful in the extreme. The heart bleeds for the women: they have more than their share of the labors of the field; they have all ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... your thoughts!" laughed the elf in the stern, and he came to himself to wonder how old she was. "No, never mind!" she added. "I daresay they are not worth it, and I ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... all day under deep pools in the loneliest marshes, but at night they come up and dance. Each Wild Thing has over its head a marsh-light, which moves as the Wild Thing moves; they have no souls, and cannot die, and are of the kith of the Elf-folk. ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprang up and turned on the Major one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the face of an elf. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... as by some sudden impulse, Quickly ran he to the fire, And while eagerly his bright eyes Watched the flames grow higher and higher, In a brave, clear key, he shouted, Like some lordly little elf, "Santa Kaus, come down the chimney, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... spirit! replied Maimoune, go on, and fear nothing. Dost thou think I am as perfidious an elf as thyself, and that I am capable of breaking the serious oath I have made? No, you may depend on my promise: but be sure you tell nothing but what is true, or I shall clip your wings, and treat you as ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... beauty and sweet with their fragrance. Queenly roses, gay gladioluses, pure white lilies, bunches of star-like daisies and their soft round white little buds, gaudy marigolds, brown, yellow, and orange, crimson cock's-combs, branches of honeysuckle vines filled with honey, rich fairy trumpets, saucy elf-faced pansies, spicy pinks, hollyhocks in satiny dresses of many colors, bright-eyed verbenas and sweet-williams, brilliant geranium blossoms, and even great honest faithful sunflowers—those flowers that love the sun so dearly that they turn to gaze upon him when he is bidding the ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... me imp or elf, . I warn you look well to yourself; If ye call me fairy, Ye 'll find me quite contrary; If good neighbour you call me, Then good neighbour I will be; But if you call me kindly sprite, I 'll be your ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... and the song-form already noticed)—the movement is carried to completion. It is very difficult to play, but when well done is effective and serious. The second movement is a very playful scherzo, which is designated as elf-like—as light and swift as possible. The third movement is designated "tenderly, longingly, yet with passion"; the hero is now in love, very much so; his being is stirred to its utmost core; his rhythm is shaken up so that ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... finder is puzzled about the origin of the objects on which he has lighted. He carries them home, and the village wisdom determines that the wedge-shaped piece of metal is a 'thunderbolt,' or that the bits of flint are 'elf-shots,' the heads of fairy arrows. Such things are still treasured in remote nooks of England, and the 'thunderbolt' is applied to cure certain maladies by ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... altar, sing over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add much holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water. If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night visitors come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on his eyes, and cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the sign of the cross. His condition ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... romance of Huon of Bordeaux, and Auberon is probably merely the French counterpart of Alberich or Albrich, a dwarf occurring in the German Nibelungenlied and other works. Etymologically Alberich is composed of alb elf and rich king. The name Oberon appears first in English literature in Lord Berners' translation of Huon of Bordeaux (c. 1534), and afterwards in Spenser[27] and in Robert Greene's play James IV, which was acted in 1589.[28] But the king of the fairies in ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... and flushed, with a desperate s elf-command in her face, with an angry resolution ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... suddenly the spell was broken. For no apparent reason, he fell headlong from his heights and burst into a merry little jig that set Gracie dancing like an elf. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... not to heed— You, as though you would inquire "Can I trust them?" . . . then a jerk, And you'd skipped three branches higher, Jaws again at work; Like a little clock-work elf, With all the ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
