"Elfin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most rare device Could match this winter palace of ice; 'T was as if every image that mirrored lay In his depths serene through the summer day, Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost. Sad been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... find the same elfin revelry, the same masks, the same music. We seat ourselves, as before, under a gauze tent and sip odd little drinks tasting of flowers. But this evening we are alone, and the absence of the band of mousmes, whose familiar little faces formed ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... a rumbling there is in the elfin hill," said one of the lizards; "I have not been able to close my eyes for two nights on account of the noise; I might just as well have had the toothache, for that always ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... ye maun hold your tongue, Whatever ye may hear or see; For if ye speak word in Elfin land Ye'll ne'er get ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... shouting, so brimful of fun; While the ten-year-old twins, in a somersault mood, Have measured their length from the barn to the wood. A dozen times, yes, or it may be a score, Till their cheeks are as red as the roses, and more; Then the elfin of twelve and the boy of fifteen, Are pelting each other with snowballs so keen, That we, who are older, forget to be staid, {245} And shout, each with each, as the youngsters, arrayed In feathery garments, press on or retreat, Determined to ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... was agreed; and the Elfin King went to a golden chest whence he took a phial that was filled with a blood-red liquor. And with this liquor he anointed the ears and the eyelids, the nostrils, the lips, and the finger-tips ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... softly; and the bare trees shook their branches in the keen air. The pleasant glow of the blazing logs lighted up the circle of happy faces, and peopled the distant corners with elfin shadows. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... observation, viewing the matter at close range, that nearly always fat, like old age or a thief in the dark, steals upon one unawares. I take my own case. As a youngster and on through my teens and into my early twenties—ah, those romping elfin twenties!—I was, in outline, what might be termed dwindly, not to say slimmish. Those who have known me in my latter years might be loath to believe it, but one of my boyhood nick-names—I had several, ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... her slowly up stairs to her own room, where it shut and locked her door. But here her real self resumed control, as she threw herself into an easy chair by the window and stared out at the desolation of December where dead leaves went whirling in elfin eddying clouds. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the tinkle of a distant piano and the tremolo of a violin, so faint as hardly to be distinguished above the plash and gurgle of the fountains. The court, bathed in soft light, seemed a corner of fairyland, the music vanishing elfin strains of some mischievous troop putting sighs and love dreams into a sleeping maid's breast. The night was rich with stars, warm with summer, serene with the peace of the mountains. He was late. They ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... in hesitating fashion from one of the strange visitors to the other—Jill with her elfin locks, shabby hat and thick woollen gloves; Jack with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his school cap at the ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... verdure. I have often passed it," he observes, "in the still night, when the moon was shining brightly, and the leaves of the cocoa and palm threw fringe-like shadows on the walls and the floor, and the elfin lamps of the cocullos swept through the windows and door, casting their lurid, mysterious light on every object, while the air was laden with mingled perfume from the coffee and orange, and the tube-rose and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... Belzoond in sight of the distant peaks of the Hian Min, and I to find my way by strange means back to those hazy fields that all poets know, wherein stand small mysterious cottages through whose windows, looking westwards, you may see the fields of men, and looking eastwards see glittering elfin mountains, tipped with snow, going range on range into the region of Myth, and beyond it into the kingdom of Fantasy, which pertain to the Lands of Dream. Long we regarded one another, knowing that we should meet no more, for my fancy is weakening as the years slip by, ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... very like it. Many a time the little girl, who looked up to and admired the big boy who could compel her to anything when he was so minded, would, for her own ends, work on his sense of responsibility, taking an elfin delight in ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... wicked fairies are apt to carry off men's wives with them to fairyland; but the lost spouses can be recovered within a year and a day when the procession of the fairies is defiling past on Hallowe'en, always provided that the mortals did not partake of elfin food while they were ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... meat in jelly froze! O tender haunch of elfin stag! O rich the odour that arose! O plump with ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... say now that they had these gifts from Odin. I taught them how to fashion the tales of old into rich melodious songs, and with music and sweet-mouthed eloquence to move the minds of their fellow-men. But they say that Bragi taught them this; and they remember me only as Regin, the elfin schoolmaster, or at best as Mimer, the master of smiths. At length my heart grew bitter because of the neglect and ingratitude of men; and the old longing for Andvari's hoard came back to me, and I forgot much of my cunning and lore. But I lived on and on, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... her elfin grot, And there she gazed and sighed deep, And there I shut her wild sad eyes, So kissed ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the question he asked and the answer he received were heard only by the elfin sprites dancing in the brook beside them, so we will leave it to those fairies to tell if they choose. Suffice it to say it was such as filled his heart so full of happiness it could no longer hold a secret, and there, where ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... reigned in the castle. Servants with torches were crossing the courtyard in every direction, and above lights were ascending and descending from landing to landing. I obtained a confused glimpse of vast masses of architecture—columns, arcades, flights of steps, stairways—a royal voluptuousness and elfin magnificence of construction worthy of fairyland. A negro page—the same who had before brought me the tablet from Clarimonde, and whom I instantly recognised—approached to aid me in dismounting, and ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... far down in the valley—a cuckoo called. Out of the depths floated the elfin halloo, the gaily malicious challenge of spring herself, shouted up melodiously from the plains of Alsace—Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!—You poor, sullen, frozen foreigner up there on the snowy rocks!—Cuckoo! ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... the children stealing They stood there hand in hand, For the elfin chimes were pealing Aloud ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... set in the soft earth. Across them other poles had been placed cunningly woven in and out. Still other branches, criss-crossed above, and piled high with foliage, offered a thick mat of verdure to shield one from the hot rays of the sun. Within the elfin chamber was a rustic seat; everywhere, their roots enwrapped in wet earth, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... to its close, through heat, dust, thirst, and relentlessly rapid marching. In the late afternoon occurred a monstrous piling up of thunder clouds, a whistling of wind, and a great downpour of rain. It beat down the wheat and pattered like elfin bullets on the forest leaves. Through this fusillade the army came down to the west fork of the Shenandoah. Pioneers laid a bridge of wagons, and, brigade by brigade, the army crossed. High on the bank in the loud wind and dashing rain, Jackson on Little Sorrel watched the transit. By dusk all ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Where elfin vapors swirled and swayed While the wild pipes of witchcraft played Such clutching music 'twould impel A prophet's self to dance to hell— So spun ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... happened that day, that Neykia, she of woodland grace and beauty, was strolling in the sunshine with her Little Pine; while on every side the trees were shaking their heads and it seemed gossiping about the hunting plans of that reckless little elfin hunter, Hymen, who was hurrying overland and shooting his joyous arrows in every direction, till the very air felt charged with the whisperings of countless lovers. It made me think of the shy ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... right, Karl," added Max. "I may underrate the power of this girl. As you have said, she is a little witch. But beneath her laughter there is a rare show of tenderness and strength, which at times seems pathetic and almost elfin. You are right, Karl. I will devote myself to Twonette hereafter. She is like a feather-bed in that she cannot be injured by a blow, neither can she give one; but Yolanda—ah, Karl, she is like a priceless ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... endless long procession, Formless, countless of their kind Circle us in flying coveys Like the leaves in Autumn wind. Now in ghastly silence deathly, Now with shrilling elfin cry— Is it some mad dance of bridal, Or a death march ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... shape, making rampant growths and carrying a heavy crop. These include: 2 Walters, 4 O.K. Heart, 1 Canoka, 1 Slioka, 1 Rover, 2 Calendar, 1 Westoka, 1 Nursoka, 1 Aloka, 1 Symoka, 15 select unnamed bearing seedlings, yet on trial. All are promising. Also we have three of the Elfin paper shell heartnut hybrids. I have failed to find a good pollinator for these Elfins, so they are shy croppers, although producing plenty of the female blooms. All of the above trees are 6 inches in diameter and up ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... was dark, and there was no other light than a solitary bulb, whose hooded rays were concentrated upon the crystal ball, so that the latter shone with a dead-white glare, somehow baleful, like an elfin moon deeply lost in ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... friendless and parentless, or whose parents are worse than dead to him—he is received into the Home, and the work of transformation—both of body and soul—commences. First he is taken to the lavatory and scrubbed outwardly clean. His elfin locks are cropped close and cleansed. His rags are burned, and a new suit, made by the old women workers, is put upon him, after which, perhaps, he is fed. Then he is sent to a doctor to see that he is internally sound in wind and limb. ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... Now lightly tread As if by elfin minstrels led, And fling no sound upon the air Shall rudely wake my slumbering fair. Softly! Now breathe the symphony, So gently breathe the tones may vie In softness with the magic notes In visions heard; music that floats ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing, Play on, play on, My elfin John! Toss the light ball—bestride the stick, (I knew so many cakes would make him sick!) With fancies buoyant as the thistledown, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk— (He's got the scissors, snipping ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... thus beside her as she slept, Jocelyn heard the stream ripple in the shadows like one that laughed soft but very joyously and, as he gazed up at the solitary star with eyes enraptured, this elfin laughter found its echo in ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... she held the lamp near her face, so that her beauty was illumined and transfigured. 'Twas a beauty most tender—most pure and elfin and religious. 'Tis a mean, poor justification, I know, to say that I was in some mysterious way—by the magic resident in the beauty of a maid, and virulently, wickedly active within its sphere, which is the space the vision of a lad may carry—that I was by this magic incapacitated ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... of the fairy throng, She led the dancing group along Through tangled brakes and fretted bowers, Where grew the richest, rarest flowers, That wooed the bee to banquet there, Or yielded sweets to Summer air. But she who moved with elfin pace, And taught the infant throng to play, Raised to heaven her cherub face, While that bright celestial ray, Which halos the throne of glory round, Illumed her azure, orient eye, That seemed to penetrate the sky. Bending ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... little airy, elfin animal in these woods, and in all the evergreen woods of the Pacific Coast, that is more influential and interesting than even the beaver. This is the Douglas squirrel (Sciurus Douglasi). Go where you will throughout all these ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... me reproachfully. She and I had gone to sleep together on the rug, and had naturally wandered to the dream-forest where dogs and little girls hunt wild game and have strange adventures. We encountered hosts of elfin foes, and it required all the dog tactics at Belle's command to acquit herself like the lady and huntress that she was. Belle had her dreams too. We used to lie under the trees and flowers in the old garden, and I used ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... blue hose and the pretty bronze slippers, then, with elfin grace, she caught the edge of her skirt, and with rosy, bare feet, tripped across the floor in a ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... the grass was lush and long like fine green hair, and crept up the hillside and over the roots of the maple and basswood trees. Here lived the elves; she knew them well, and often lay with her head among the violets, listening for the thin sound of their elfin fiddles. Often she had drowsed the summer noon in the coolness, unheeding the dinner call, until busy Martha roused her with the sisterly scolding she knew she deserved and took in ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... however, drawn back, and Wyllard, who lay facing the opening, could see a triangular patch of dim blue sky with a sharp sickle moon hanging low above a black fir branch. The night was clear and still, but now and then there was a faint elfin sighing among the stunted trees that died away again. He was then, while still determined, moodily discouraged, for they had seen no sign of human life during the journey, and his reason told him that he might search for years before he found the bones of the last ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... a bother indeed. The girl was fair enough in her peaked elfin way; but the fact was that he did not love her—nor anybody. He had nothing to say therefore. She waited a little, and then, with her voice sunk to a low murmur, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... month. I work for a doll with three daughters. Bless you, she's enough to ruin her husband!' The person of the house gave a weird little laugh here, and gave them another look out of the corners of her eyes. She had an elfin chin that was capable of great expression; and whenever she gave this look, she hitched this chin up. As if her eyes and her chin worked together on the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... minuteness and refinement of the mould containing the energetic spirit that glanced in her eyes, quivered on her lips, and pervaded every movement of the elastic feet and hands, childlike in size, statue-like in symmetry, elfin in quickness and dexterity. 'Lucile la Fee,' she might well have been called, as she sat manipulating the gorgeous silk and feathers with an essential strength and firmness of hands such as could hardly have been expected from such small members, and producing such lovely ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seen by the local prophet from the neighbouring mountain-peak, does not strike the eye as having anything uncanny about it. At least I imagine that it requires rather careful scrutiny before the eerie curl of a chimney pot, or the elfin wink of a lonely lamp-post brings home to the startled soul that it is really the City of a Fearful Folk. That the inhabitants are not human in the ordinary sense is quite clear, yet it has only just begun to dawn on me ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... excitement. Edith sang, and Margaret played some of her elfin strains, and Mr. Regulus made music leap joyously from the sounding violin. There was one in the lonely library who might have made sweeter music than all, whose spirit's chords were all jangled and tuneless, and whose ear seemed closed to the concord of melodious sounds. My soul was not tuned ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the sea does, until it rolled before a stronger puff of breeze in waves of ochre, through which the warm bronze gleamed when its rhythmic patter swelled into deeper-toned harmonies. There was that in the elfin music and blaze of color which appealed to the sensual ear and eye, and something which struck deeper still, as it did in the days men poured libations on the fruitful soil, and white-robed priests blessed it, when the ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... wife was a girl who had lived in his own home for years was bound to have an additionally injurious effect on his strange and sensitive temperament. Nobody knew that temperament better than Miss Heredith. It was not the Heredith temperament. It had been the heritage of his mother, a strange, elfin, wayward creature, who had died bringing Phil into the world. Like all sisters, Miss Heredith had wondered what her brother had seen in his wife to marry her. Phil had all along been a disappointment to ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... the companion bed belonged of right to the moonlight, for it was of quite elfin-like beauty. The child had dropped her cover on the floor, and the moonlight looked in at the naked little limbs. Presently she opened her eyes and looked at the moonlight ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... elfin pipings, with sharp pitches and excited shrillnesses, to which Dick and Paula lent delighted ears, till, suddenly, with the abruptness of the trump of doom, all the microphonic chorus of the tiny golden lovers ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... country clustered about a portal, whose frame-work was of shining stones, and whose firm, but slender bars, were of purest gold.—"Favoured mortal!" (the speaker was beside me)—"favoured beyond even thine own conception, know that thou art permitted to behold the Elfin Paradise—the true, the veritable Fairy Land. Pollute it not by the tone of mortal speech; to us are thy thoughts not unknown, and partially are we permitted to gratify thy desire for information. Thinkest thou—so indeed hath man taught thee—that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... Euphorbia canariensis. It is to them—according to Mr. Piazzi Smyth—a demon who would kill them, if it could only run after them; but as it cannot, they shout Spanish curses at it, and pelt it with volleys of stones, "screeching with elfin joy, and using worse names than ever, when the poisonous milk spurts out ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... sustained melody; thrush and mocking bird, thrasher and cardinal, sang from every leafy slope; and through the rushing music of bird and pouring waterfall the fairy drumming of the cock-o'-the-pines rang out in endless, elfin reveille. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... the most wonderful fairy story in the world, but Shakespeare did not create it out of hand; he found the fairy part of it in the traditions of the country people. One of his most intelligent students says: "He founded his elfin world on the prettiest of the people's traditions, and has clothed it in the ever-living flower of his ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... play that I have stolen. For all the many pleasing esthetic qualities you will find in it—dramatic inventiveness, humor and pathos, eloquence, elfin glamor and the like—you must bless the original author: of these things I have only the usufruct. To me the play owes nothing but the stiffening of civistic conscience that has been crammed in. Modest? Not a ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... the starlight draw elfin lines across her face, and my heart suddenly cried through my tongue words that ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... with his chance, might some day achieve greatness, suddenly realized how long and weary the road would be for just such a one as the fascinated little figure on the steps, before he could begin to approach that level which, to a society that Caleb understood, was typified by this exquisite, elfin figure, Dexter ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... as they sat and watched and listened with their pointed ears lifted alertly, watching with soft gray eyes, or the way they handled objects with their little four-fingered hands. They were so remarkably human-like in their elfin way that the colonists couldn't help but be drawn ...
— Image of the Gods • Alan Edward Nourse
... his skill, to reach a chosen point With an unswerving line, I fixed my view Upon the summit of a craggy ridge, The horizon's utmost boundary; far above Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky. She was an elfin pinnace; lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake, And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat Went heaving through the water like a swan; When, from behind that craggy steep, till then The horizon's bound, a ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... love were an earthly knight, As he's an elfin grey, I wad na gie my ain true-love For nae lord that ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... tree-branches as if all the face of the plains was being hurled toward the south in a condition of the wildest turmoil. Hell itself let loose could present no such spectacle as this myriad mass of brute life sweeping over the lonely plain under the wan, elfin light of the new-risen moon. Clouds of steam, wreathing itself into spectral shapes of sullen aspect, rose from the dusky, writhing mass, and the flaming of more than ten thousand eyeballs in the gloom presented a picture more terrible than ever came into ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... composer as requiring advanced technique for performance, are full of poetical thought and tonal beauty that make them worthy of study. Many of them possess that Nature tone painting, that mystic, subtle romanticism of whispering tree-tops and elfin glades, that freshness and open air spirit which distinguish MacDowell's ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... fellowship was, in consequence, never more complete than when they were roaming the woods. In them Easter was at home, and her ardent nature came to the surface like a poetic glow from her buoyant health and beauty. Then appeared all that was wayward and elfin-like in her character, and she would be as playful, wilful, evanescent as a wood-spirit. Sometimes, when they were separated, she would lead him into a ravine by imitating a squirrel or a wild-turkey, and, as he crept noiselessly along with bated breath and eyes peering ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... shadowy hat, was tied a large quantity of the herb which in English is called rosemary, in Spanish romero, and in the rustic language of Portugal, alecrim; which last is a word of Scandinavian origin (ellegren), signifying the elfin plant, and was probably carried into the south by the Vandals. The man seemed frantic with terror, and said that the witches had been pursuing him and hovering over his head for the last two leagues. He came from the Spanish frontier ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... saw, wonder-whist, How from the atmosphere a mist, So it seemed, slow uprist; And, looking from those elfin swarms, I was 'ware How the air Was all populous with forms Of the Hours, floating down, Like Nereids through a watery town. Some, with languors of waved arms, Fluctuous oared their flexile way; Some were borne half resupine On the aerial hyaline, Their fluid limbs and ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... weird it seemed, with its fathomless shadows and its wild grottoes, over which hung, silently waving, long pendants of ivy, while dusky gray aloes uplifted their horned heads from great rock-rifts, like elfin spirits struggling upward out of the shade. Nor was wanting the usual gentle poetry of flowers; for white iris leaned its fairy pavilion over the black void like a pale-cheeked princess from the window of some dark enchanted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... said Elfin, "do as you like about it—the dragon will come and hunt you tomorrow, as likely as not. I don't care if he does, ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... goblet thick inlaid With jewels wrought in golden filigree, An opal from some elfin treasury Burning with fire and flashing every shade; While round the dim horizon, wide displayed The clouds pile up their largess tenderly As if to clothe the beauty of the sea In filmy gossamer ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... in these hills. The sun departs, but the day remains. A sort of weird, dim, elfin day, that dawns at sunset, and envelops and possesses the world. The land is full of light, but it is the light of no heavenly sun. It is a light equal everywhere, as though the earth strove to illumine itself, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... me off to her fairy spring. It's really a lovely little nook she's found and she's made a doll's house in the hollow of an old tree. She's a funny little thing—almost elfin, isn't she? Are you sure she isn't too much trouble for ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... Elfin towers, Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways, And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays, Burns the sloped ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... the prying rain busy at her windows; the ticking of the small French clock, very dull, very far away—or was it her heart? And, faintly ringing in the receiver pressed against her ear, millions of tiny stirrings, sounds like instruments of an elfin orchestra tuning, echoes as of steps passing through the halls of fairy-land, a faint confusion ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... there is a wide triangular spread, and this, gentle friends, is Finn Park, named for a New York boy who was killed in France. The name reminded us also of Elfin Finn, the somewhat complacent stage child who poses for chic costumes in Vogue. We were wondering which was a more hazardous bringing up for a small girl, living on Thompson Street or posing for a fashion magazine. From Finn Square there is a stirring view of the Woolworth Tower. Also of ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... seas, if but one pearl Of art or beauty therefrom may be wrung. No pure-browed pensive nymph his Muse shall be, An amazon of thought with sovereign eyes, Whose kiss was poison, man-brained, worldly-wise, Inspired that elfin, delicate harmony. Rich gain for us! But with him is it well? The poet who must sound earth, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... one of the pilasters a piece of black ship oak, rudely fashioned into something like human form, and which skilful people declared would have been clothed with seeming flesh and blood, and palmed upon him by elfin adroitness for his wife, had he admitted his visitants. A synod of wise men and women sat upon the woman of timber, and she was finally ordered to be devoured by fire, and that in the open air. A fire ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... glow, which marked him as a spirit not to be forgotten. So tenderly boyish was he in effect that his confreres among the book clerks accepted with difficulty the story that he was married. When it was told that he had a son they gasped their incredulity. And when one day this extraordinary elfin sprite remarked that at the time of his honeymoon he had had a beard they felt (I remember) that the world was without power to ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... this place whenas the elfin knight Approached, him seemed that the merry sound Of a shrill pipe, he playing heard on height, And many feet fast thumping the hollow ground, That through the woods their echo did rebound; He nigher drew to wit what it mote ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... quaint, small drawing room which owed its atmosphere quite clearly to Mrs. Camber, for whereas the study was indescribably untidy, this was a model of neatness without being formal or unhomely. Here, in a few moments, Mrs. Camber joined us, an appealing little figure of wistful, almost elfin, beauty. I was surprised and delighted to find that an instant bond of sympathy sprang up between the two girls. I diplomatically left them together for a while, going into Camber's room to smoke my pipe. ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... side The surges of the tumbling tide, When Arthur ranged his red-cross ranks On conscious Camlan's crimsoned banks: By Mordred's faithless guile decreed Beneath a Saxon spear to bleed. Yet in vain a Paynim foe Armed with fate the mightly blow; For when he fell, an elfin queen, All in secret and unseen, O'er the fainting hero threw Her mantle of ambrosial blue, And bade her spirits bear him far, In Merlin's agate-axled car, To her green isle's enameled steep Far in the navel of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... spoke the moody Elfin King,[7] Who woned[8] within the hill,— Like wind in the porch of a ruined church, His ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... and sympathy and a nice appreciation of my honourable discomfort, she laughed; and as her cheeks cooled she laughed the more, tossing back her pretty head while her mirth, now uncontrolled, rippled forth till the wild birds, excited, joined in with restless chirping, and a squirrel sprung his elfin rattle overhead. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... of the Carlist war. It was all wonderful. It had seemed perfect. And yet—and yet. She was not cold, but was she unearthly? Was she, perhaps, some straying angel—some fervid, bright spirit, flame-coloured and intangible, a being of the elfin race? As they stood together looking at the distant coastline a depression which he could neither fathom nor control came over him. His bride seemed so much younger than he had ever realised. She cared for him—how could he doubt it? But was ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... its orbed haze and through its mazy ringlets, Titania may have led her elfin rout, Or Ariel fanned it with his gauzy winglets, Or Puck danced in the ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... distant shores. Oh! leave no little plot of sod 'Mid all her clust'ring vales untrod; But all thy varying gifts unfold In one mad embassy of gold: O'er all the land of beauty fling Bright records of thy elfin wing." ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... Martie had first thought his face odd, then interesting; now she found it strangely attractive. His eyes, between sandy lashes and under thick sandy brows, were of a sea-blue in colour, his head was covered with a cap of thick, lustreless, sand-coloured hair. Something odd, elfin, whimsical, in his crooked smile lent an actual charm to his face, for Martie at least. She told ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... was about to be opened to him. It seemed to him that he heard notes of fitful music leaping upwards a tone and downwards a diminished fourth, upwards a tone and downwards a major third, like triple-branching flames leaping fitfully, flame after flame, out of a midnight wood. It was an elfin prelude, endless and formless; and, as it grew wilder and faster, the flames leaping out of time, he seemed to hear from under the boughs and grasses wild creatures racing, their feet pattering like rain upon the leaves. Their feet passed ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... patched and ragged over-all, which made the only garment of the men he had hitherto seen, the dress of this person was characterised by all the trappings of the national bravery. Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls of which made a notable contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the savages around, was placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel that hung down to his shoulder; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk kerchief of gay hues was twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy throat; a short ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... elfin-like, with the moonlight falling on her fair hair and pointed oval face, and the shimmering green of ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... where acres of feathery grasses flowed in wind-blown furrows; where in the purple obscurity of hollows the strange and aged little forests grew restless and full of echoes; where shadowy reeds like elfin swords clattered and thrust and parried across the darkling pools of haunted waters unstirred save for the swirl of a startled fish or the smoothly spreading wake of some furry creature swimming without ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... small breast showing and hiding among the ragged covert of the laces. At that ambiguous hour, and coming as she did from the great silence of the forest, the man drew back from the Princess as from something elfin. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sympathetic lips, much of the incongruity, otherwise no doubt apparent in the narrative, seemed at those times to disappear altogether. The incongruity, we mean, observable between the queer little ticket-porter and the elfin phantoms of the belfry; between Trotty Veck, in his "breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony-toed, tooth-chattering" stand-point by the old church-door, and the Goblin Sight beheld by him when he had clambered up, up, up among the roof-beams of the great church-tower. As the story was ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the end, and that was in the person of the last descendant, Jean. She bore the name of the Rutherfords, but she was the daughter of their trembling wives. At the first she was not wholly without charm. Neighbours recalled in her, as a child, a strain of elfin wilfulness, gentle little mutinies, sad little gaieties, even a morning gleam of beauty that was not to be fulfilled. She withered in the growing, and (whether it was the sins of her sires or the sorrows of her mothers) came to her maturity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rest, in sweet wood-hardiness. Ready to learn of all and utter naught? What breath may move ye, or what breeze invite To odorous hot lendings of the heart? What wind—but all the winds are yet afar, And e'en the little tricksy zephyr sprites, That fleet before them, like their elfin locks, Have lagged in sleep, nor stir nor waken yet To pluck ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... the wire-grass creeping over them in a dry tide. The boy had taken off his cap; the sea-wind moving under the mat of his damp hair gave it the look of some somber, outlandish cowl. With the night coming on, his solemnity had an elfin quality. He found what he was looking for at last, and his fingers had to ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... many companions; such as elfin-women, elfin-men, dwarfs, imps, nightmares, hobgoblins with red-hot fire-tongs, Var-wolves, giants, spectres, which appear to people when they are about ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... which might well follow the time of turmoil in Shelley's career. May not this poem have been his self-vindication as exhibiting what he might have become had he not followed the dictates of his heart? "Pecksie" and the "Elfin Knight" were the names which still stand written at the end of the first journal, ending with Claire's departure. Mary added some useful receipts for future use. One is: "A tablespoonful of the spirit of aniseed, with a small quantity of spermaceti;" to which Shelley adds the following: ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... As long as she keeps her rosy cheeks and is full of life, a little dreaming can't hurt her. You should have seen her doing the elfin dance this morning. She entered into the spirit of it like a little whirlwind. And, besides, there are no children anywhere near that I can allow her to play with. I have only a few acquaintances in the town, and they are too far from us to make visiting ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the blows of a tall, swarthy woman was a small girl, so fragile as to appear almost elfin. The woman wore the garb of a gipsy, and the presence of some squalid tents and tethered horses showed our young friends at once that it was a gipsy encampment upon which ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... up in 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
... gayest will, of their yellow plumes and green ribbons, and let their big hands fall heavily down at their sides. There the white and the purple morning-glories hang their long festoons and open to the soft midnight winds their elfin trumpets. ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... likely she will cultivate tortoises. When we took them all three back to Torquay with us, squashed in anyhow, she talked about running over to Paris and buying a balloon or an aeroplane! We came by way of the Buckland Chase, as it is called—private property; and an elfin glen of beauty, for mile after mile, with the Dart singing below, and the Lover's Leap so close that it seemed painfully realistic—especially after the adventure of the car which leaped ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... moment Mrs. Scudder opened the pantry-door and put an end to this mysterious conversation, which had already so affected Miss Prissy, that, in the eagerness of her interest, she had rubbed up her cap border and ribbon into rather an elfin and goblin style, as if they had been ruffled up by a breeze from the land of spirits; and she flew around for a few moments in a state of great nervous agitation, upsetting dishes, knocking down plates, and huddling up contrary suggestions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... look, That held as if for grain the summing sieve. Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes Our homely daylight after dread of spells. Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes Of slimy lustres ringing elfin bells About a story of the naked flesh, Intending but to put some garment on, Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh, A traitor lurks and will be known anon. Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt, Stationed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were true what people say!— Would I could find that elfin seed! Then should I win your love, indeed, By being near you night and day— There is no other way, my love, There is no ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... the point. He turned to the staff. Five of them were the same big-boned heavy-framed type that apparently did most of the manual labor. The sixth, the late arrival, was an elegant creature, a bronze-skinned, green-eyed minx with an elfin face half hidden under a wavy mass of red-brown hair. Unlike the others, she had been docked—and in contrast to their heavy eyes and sleep-puffed features she was alert and lively. She flashed him an impish ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... her back she bore, Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; Whose dark eyes flash'd thro' locks of blackest shade, When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bay'd:— And heroes fled the Sibyl's mutter'd call, Whose elfin prowess scal'd the orchard-wall. As o'er my palm the silver piece she drew, And trac'd the line of life with searching view, How throbb'd my fluttering pulse with hopes and fears, To learn the colour of my future years! Ah, then, what honest triumph flush'd my breast! This truth ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... running through the uneven lanes of the country. Ursula nestled near him, into his constant warmth, and watched the pale-lit revelation racing ahead, the visible night. Sometimes it was a wide old road, with grass-spaces on either side, flying magic and elfin in the greenish illumination, sometimes it was trees looming overhead, sometimes it was bramble bushes, sometimes the walls of a crew-yard and the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... bowls, linking that lonely palm to the remote horizon, a thousand elfin fires arose—blue-tongued and spirituous. Grey pencilings of smoke stole straightly upward to the sky, so that look where she would Rita could discern nothing but these countless thin, faintly wavering, ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... its nature, such as the melodious notes of the birds which made their homes year after year amid its bordering thickets, or the gathering together in springtime of thousands of primroses, whose pale, small, elfin faces peeped out from every mossy corner,—or the scent of secret violets in the grass, filling the air with the delicate sweetness of a breathing made warm by the April sun. Or when the thrill of summer drew the wild roses running quickly from the earth skyward, twining their ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... and below Johnsonville, one of the Union army's bases of supplies and a railway terminus, thus blockading the water approach and isolating there eight transports, with barges, and three light-draughts, the Key West, Elfin, and Tawah. Nevertheless, the three boats went down and engaged the lower battery, and though they found it too strong for them they retook one of the transports. Meantime Shirk had telegraphed the Admiral and Fitch, and the latter came to his assistance with three ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... I saw her as plainly as I see you now: a girl in a red cloak, with such an elfin face I shall never forget it; such small piercing black eyes; such black eyebrows, depressed towards the nose, and raised high towards the temples, giving such an eldritch, mischievous, even dangerous expression to the whole dark countenance; and such wild black hair streaming around ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... using the paddle vigorously. She wore no hat and her blond hair was tousled as usual. It seemed impossible for Bet to keep her unruly locks in order at any time, but now as the breeze ruffled it, she looked like some half-wild elfin creature. ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... in the very noon Of solemn midnight like an elfin thing, Charm'd into being by the argent moon— Whose silver light for love of her fair wing Goes with her in the shade, still worshipping Her dainty plumage:—all around her grew A radiant circlet, like a fairy ring; And all behind, a tiny little ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... scrambled from their path; a tiny snake, green as the grass blades that it stirred, slipped from a pool of moonlight into a lake of shadow. Somewhere a small owl, tremulously melodious, called and called: and from the salt meadows, distantly, the elfin whistle ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... comfortably in wrong cabins, and creating a most horrible confusion by having to turn out again; madly bent upon opening locked doors, and on forcing a passage into all kinds of out-of-the-way places where there is no thoroughfare; sending wild stewards, with elfin hair, to and fro upon the breezy decks on unintelligible errands, impossible of execution: and in short, creating the most extraordinary and bewildering tumult. In the midst of all this, the lazy gentleman, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... to everything, pronounced it perfect with gay little pats of quaint panniered costumes, fitting of banded sailor hats o'er white coifs, recurling of ringlets, and dainty polishing of slippers. The graceful little figures seemed elfin and fairy-like in the half sleeves and low corsages of tight bodices from which depended enormously full skirts set off by ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... pillars of fire through the shadowy underwood and the woodbine flaunted its tall head proudly among the leaves. A gentle breeze rustled the fern, and breathed upon the quaking grass, setting its beautiful spikelets in motion until they seemed like fairy bells rung by elfin fingers. The flutter and hum of the wild things served but to intensify the stillness of ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... measures five inches and three-quarters in length, and nearly four inches in greatest breadth, yet the capacity of the bowl hollowed in it for the reception of tobacco is even less than in the smallest of the "Elfin Pipes." In contrast to this, a modern Winnebago pipe recently acquired by me, made of the same red pipe-stone, inlaid with lead, and executed with ingenious skill, has a bowl of large dimensions illustrative of Indian smoking usages ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... of an elfin rally Sudden I stood alone; Far away over the distant valley Fairies and elves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... in a minute, papa, dear," was the response, in a sweet, childlike voice, as the speaker ran up the broad staircase with elfin grace and gaiety. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... beneath the cypress shade, What well might seem an elfin's grave; And every pledge in earth I laid, That ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... said, as she took the chair vacated by the elfin young lady, "you see I can manage it! But perhaps I control myself better when there's no camp-stool to inspire me. You remember my woodland ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... to have been the scene of fairy revels, we should declare that these graceful ferns were well suited to shade the elfin court of Oberon ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... or less made no great difference. But she did understand the sunlit roof, the twilight halls, the patterned floor of the forest. Blossoms drifting down, fleeing shadows, voices of wind and water, and all murmurous elfin life spoke to her. They spoke the language of her land; when she stepped out of the door into the air and faced the portals of her world, they called to her to come. Lithe and slight and light of foot, she ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... thro' the city's tumult and the beat Of hurrying feet, Those whom the god loves hear Pan's pipe, insistent, clear; Echoes of elfin laughter, high and sweet; Catch in the sparrows' cries Those tinkling melodies That sing where brooklets meet, And the wood's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... his work. No wonder that she laughed at the taste of the boy or his employer. Graver heads than hers might question the motive which had set the painter such a model. Imagination suggested that some elfin godmother must have prescribed the task as a condition of her future favor. At all events, the malicious sprite now acting as overseer felt a sense of triumph in this captive boy, perched against the wall, and condemned, like herself, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... South in it, and all Its importunity of love and pain; And he would wait till the last passionate fall Died on the night, and all was still again, — Then to his upland village wander home, Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... natural charms, and appeared simply clad in her favorite green.** Moraig, the pretty grandchild of the steward, walked beside her, like the fairy queen of the scene, so gayly was she decorated in all the flowers of spring. "Here is the lady of my elfin revels, holding her little king in her arms!" As the countess spoke, Moraig held up the infant to Lady Mar, dressed like herself, in a tissue gathered from the field. The sweet babe laughed and crowed, and made a spring to leap into Wallace's arms. The chief took him, and with an ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the Moonlight!" said he, looking up thoughtfully to the sky and stars. Then his hands dropped on the keys, and he began playing a sad and infinitely lovely movement, which crept gently over the instrument, like the calm flow of moonlight over the dark earth. This was followed by a wild, elfin passage in triple time—a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of spirits upon the lawn. Then came a swift agitato finale—a breathless, hurrying, trembling movement, descriptive of flight, and uncertainty, and vague impulsive terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 10 To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... they could not have had if they had lived a century later, or much earlier; and, although their views were very dissimilar, they both bear the characteristic features of the age in which they lived. Spenser dwelt with animation on the gorgeous scenery which covered the elfin land of knighthood and romance, and present realities were lost in his dream of antique grandeur and ideal loveliness. He was the modern poet of the remote past; the last minstrel of chivalry, though incomparably ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta |
