"Elf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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
... an elf, full to the brim of laughter and light, little Francette was playing the deepest game of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... 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
... 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 to ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... 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
... 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
... — 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
... 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 ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... 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
... 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
... 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
... "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 ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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
... 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 ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... 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
... 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 ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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 |
