"Elysian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloudclapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... higher register. "Poor man! Enjoy yourself while you may, my dear," she went on. "When youth is gone, what is left? Women should sow their wild oats as well as men. I don't call them wild oats, though, but paradisaical oats. The Elysian ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... curious objects. At the foot of Fifty-fourth street the numerous telegraph lines which connect New York with the States south of it, cross the Hudson. They gain the Jersey shore in the vicinity of the Elysian Fields at Hoboken, and thence continue their way to every ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... is characteristic of Gluck's strenuous struggle for realism. Orpheus appears and pleads his cause in accents of touching entreaty. Time after time his pathetic song is broken by a sternly decisive 'No,' but in the end he triumphs, and the Furies grant him passage. The next scene is in the Elysian fields. After an introduction of charming grace, the spirits of the blessed are discovered disporting themselves after their kind. Orpheus appears, lost in wonder at the magical beauty of all around him. Here again is a remarkable instance ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... racketing! Here was primitive and material comfort, the secret of content, if you liked! Here was this poor hunter-fellow, with enough to eat and to drink, earning it every day by every day's labour, and, like Robinson Crusoe no doubt, living in a serene self- sufficiency and an elysian retirement. Probably he had no responsibilities in the world, with no one to say him nay, himself only to consider in all the universe: a divine conception of adequate life. Yet himself, Charley Steele, an idler, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to old haunts must be made alone. The story of them must be told succinctly. It is like the opium-smoker's showing you the pipe from which he has just inhaled elysian bliss, empty of the precious extract which has given ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... would you have me do?" asked the Macedonian. "The vivid imagination of you artists shows you the future according to your own varying moods. If you hope, you transform a pleasant garden into the Elysian fields; if you fear anything you behold in a burning roof the conflagration of a world. We, from whose cradle the Muse was absent, who use only sober reason to provide for the welfare of the household and the state, as well as for our own, see facts as they are and treat them like figures ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... interrupts your vision With its long, unceasing howl; It dispels your dreams elysian With insistence fresh and foul! O, it summons you at meal-times With a joy that stays and clings, Till you swear it's always de'il-times When the 'phone ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... "The Memnons" call; And still with wailing cries they dart and wheel Above their king's tomb, and they scatter dust Down on his grave, still shrill the battle-cry, In memory of Memnon, each to each. But he in Hades' mansions, or perchance Amid the Blessed on the Elysian Plain, Laugheth. Divine Dawn comforteth her heart Beholding them: but theirs is toil of strife Unending, till the weary victors strike The vanquished dead, or one and all fill up The measure of ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... perchance, that we live on the verge of another and purer realm, from which these odors and sounds are wafted over to us. The borders of our plot are set with flowers, whose seeds were blown from more Elysian fields adjacent. They are the pot-herbs of the gods. Some fairer fruits and sweeter fragrances wafted over to us, betray another realm's vicinity. There, too, does Echo dwell, and there is the abutment ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... now famous panacea for all Standard Oil opposition: "We'll see Standard Oil in hell before we will allow any body of men on earth to dictate how we shall conduct our business!" And the fact that "Standard Oil" still does its business in the Elysian fields of success, where is neither sulphur nor the fumes of sulphur, is additional evidence of whose will it ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... has been made worth three quarters of a million sterling. If the residence cost so much, fancy may try to conceive the amount of hard-earned money squandered on the luxuries and pleasures of which it is the temple—the most Elysian ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer—some, 'tis whispered, down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; Oh, rest ye, brother mariners, we ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... ladyes, To sojourn awhile, and revel In these bowers, far outshining The six heavens of Mohammed, Or the sunbright spheres of Vishnu, Or the Gardens of Adonis, Or the viewless bowers of Irim, Or the fine Mosaic mythus, Or the fair Elysian flower-land, Or the clashing halls of Odin, Or the cyclop-orbs of Brahma, Or the marble realms of Siva, Or the grandly ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... the simple soul of Twenty-seven fifty-four Carmichael, "A" Company, was transferred, on promotion, to another company—the great Company of Happy Warriors who walk the Elysian Fields. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... SCENE—The Elysian Fields, a flower-gemmed bank, by a flowing stream, beneath the sylvan shade of unfading foliage. Mr. PUNCH—who is free of all places, from Fleet Street to Parnassus—discovered, in Arcadian attire, attempting "numerous verse" on a subject of National ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... the moon. Lucian, on the other hand, whose writings for the most part are a pretty faithful mirror of the notions in vogue among his contemporaries, bears testimony to a continuance of the old tradition of the good reaching the Elysian fields, and the great transgressors finding themselves given up to the Erinnys in a place of torment, where they are torn by vultures, crushed on the wheel, or otherwise tormented; while such as are neither great sinners nor distinguished ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... soul is innocent beside the Holiness of Heaven. The gentle happiness of the redeemed, as represented by the blessed Frate Angelico is absent from the scene—it could not appear without destroying the unities of the tragedy. Peace will follow as the blessed walk in the Elysian fields after they have passed, with a fearful joy, from the judgment seat. Michael Angelo has followed the traditional composition of the subject in all its lines and details, adapting it with the least change ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into the Elysian world, of which she has had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last. But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the flattery which once charmed her soul, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... starve with sustenance at hand. Bountiful love lay within his grasp and yet he starved. Full, rich pastures spread out before him wherein he could roam to the end of his days, blissfully gorging himself,—and yet he starved. And Anne, who dwelt in those elysian pastures, was ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... arts. Who will say that Coleridge's "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" are not disembodied music? Lamb said that Coleridge repeated the latter poem "so enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers into any parlor when he says or sings it to me." Mr. Arthur Symons has recently said: "'Christabel' is composed like music; you might set at the side of each section, especially of the opening, 'largo vivacissimo', and as the general expressive signature, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... rattle out of the yard of the Hotel Bristol in the Place Vendome and canter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de Rivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and queen, off by the Place of Concord, and the Elysian Fields, and the Gate of the Star, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... time be stated. The case, indeed, is clear enough from his account of it. The natural tendencies of a poetical temperament (oftener evinced in a like manner than the world in general suppose) not only made the boy-poet fall in love, but, in the truly Elysian state of the heart at that innocent and adoring time of life, made him fancy he had discovered a goddess in the object of his love; and strength of purpose as well as imagination made him grow up in the fancy. He disclosed himself, as time advanced, only by his manner—received ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... allegorized from the names of Egyptian places. Diodorus assures us that by the vast catacombs of Egypt, the dismal mansions of the dead— were the temple and stream, both called Cocytus, the foul canal of Acheron, and the Elysian plains [42]; and, according to the same equivocal authority, the body of the dead was wafted across the waters by a pilot, termed Charon in the Egyptian tongue. But, previous to the embarcation, appointed judges on the margin of the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these latitudes are vexatious, still, when you reach the trade-winds, you are amply repaid for all disappointments and inconveniences. The trade-winds prevail about thirty degrees on each side of the equator. This part of the ocean may be called the Elysian Fields of Neptune's empire; and the torrid zone, notwithstanding Ovid's remark, "non est habitabilis aestu," is rendered healthy and pleasant by these gently-blowing breezes. The ship glides smoothly on, and you soon find yourself within ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... graceful ease into Elysian bowers of sensual joy. There he remained to breathe its poisoned air and feed upon the husks of ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... came Florence Howard, after luxuriating on the picturesque Hudson, and dreaming herself in elysian realms among the "thousand isles" of the queenly St. Lawrence. She was all life and animation. The excitement of travel and vivid enjoyment of the beautiful and sublime had banished every trace of the dejection and gloom which had for many months obscured her brilliancy. Major Howard was delighted ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the fact, as many antiquarians suppose, that much of the Grecian mythology was derived from that of the Egyptians, there can be but little doubt that their system of the Elysian Fields and the Infernal Regions was derived from the Egyptian notions on the future state of man. The story too, of Cerberus is, perhaps, based upon the custom of the Egyptians, who kept dogs to guard the fields or caverns in which they ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... said, 'Let the carrion rot! There are no noble men but Romans!' And he, deprived of funeral rites,—must wander, a hapless ghost, beside the waters of that sluggish river, and look—and look—and look in vain to the bright Elysian fields where dwell his ancestors and noble kindred. And so must you, and so ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... their brothers prospered in New York, and neither being learned in the law nor gifted with the power of nice discrimination between rogueries, all the other knaves in the country took it for granted that they had at last found the Elysian fields and came trooping here by hundreds to ply their various trades. The McCord case stood out like a cabalistic sign upon a gate-post telling all the rascals who passed that way that the city was full of honest folk ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... plant appraised by the Greeks for its almost perennial flowering, and with which they, in their imagination, covered the Elysian fields, called hence ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... our vigils with thy gentle dead Could charm thee from thy night-long agonies, Could steep thy brain in slumber mild, and shed Elysian dreams upon thy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... are the bearers of tidings from the departed. Into the same category fall the ancient practice of releasing a dove (or some other winged creature) at the moment of death of a human being, as a means of transport of his soul to the Elysian fields, and the belief that the soul itself took its flight in the form and semblance ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... deadly mission, and the decapitated trunk of her friend was thrown aside to give place for her. With a placid countenance and a buoyant step, she ascended the platform. The guillotine was erected upon the vacant spot between the gardens of the Tuileries and the Elysian Fields, then known as the Place de la Revolution. This spot is now called the Place de la Concorde. It is unsurpassed by any other place in Europe. Two marble fountains now embellish the spot. The blood-stained guillotine, from which crimson rivulets were ever flowing, then occupied the space ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... communicable to the company: the Temple of Friendship, in which, among twenty memorandums of quarrels, is the bust of Mr. Pitt: Mr. James Grenville is now in the house, whom his uncle disinherited for his attachment to that very Pylades, Mr. Pitt. He broke with Mr. Pope, who is deified in the Elysian fields, before the inscription for his head was finished. That of Sir John Barnard, which was bespoke by the name of a bust of my Lord Mayor, was by a mistake of the sculptor done for Alderman Perry. The statue of the King, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... favour of inferior enjoyment, and usurp the place that belongs to the satisfactions of the intellect. These last differ from those of the body, whose development some may assist and others retard. Into the elysian fields of thought enters no satisfaction but brings with it youth, and strength, and ardour; nor is there a thing in this world on which the mind thrives more readily than the ecstasy, nay, the debauch, of ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... to England. I withdrew my heart from the different little snug rooms I had left it in, and placed it on the right hook. I was so much elated that my dinner went from table untouched. I kept conjuring up Paradises, Elysian fields, and a number of other places never heard of, inhabited by women more beautiful than Eastern imagery can possibly describe—so fair, so chaste, so lovely, and so domestic. "Oh!" said I aloud, to the astonishment of my ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... and the moonlight night seemed to blacken. But within his young breast all was light, new light. He leaned opposite her window in an Elysian reverie, and let the hours go by. He seemed to have vegetated till then, and lo! true life had dawned. He thought he should love to die for her; and, when he was calmer, he felt he was to live for her, and welcomed his destiny with rapture. He ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... mangrove bushes just beyond the town, from which he rushes out in the nick of time to fell the passing ghosts. Whenever he kills a ghost, he cooks and eats him and that is the end of the poor ghost. It is the second death. The highway to the Elysian fields runs, or used to run, right through the town of Nambanaggatai; so all the doorways of the houses were placed opposite each other to allow free and uninterrupted passage to the invisible travellers. And the inhabitants ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... they were tremendous friends. And it was by this friendship—and one other thing which I mean to mention later—that Old Baumgartner hoped, before he died, to attain the wish of his life, and see, not only the Elysian pasture-field, but the whole of the adjoining farm, with the line fences down, a part of his. The other thing I promised to mention as an aid to this ambition—was Seffy. And, since the said Sarah was ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... men, who smoke and drink and spit, Who disgust you by their manners, and oppress you with their wit; A carriage garlic-scented, full of uproar and of heat, To a sleepy, jaded Briton is decidedly not sweet. Then welcome, welcome Paris, peerless city of delights! Welcome, Boulevards, fields Elysian, brilliant days and magic nights! "Vive la gloire, et vive Napoleon! vive l'Empire (c'est la paix); "Vive la France, the land of beauty! vive la Rue St. Honore!" Wildly shouting thus in triumph, I arrived at my Hotel— The exterior was palatial, and the dinner pretty well: O'er ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... me down and bid the World Adieu. When I am gone, remember that you had once a Lover who could sacrifice every thing for our Service, and without you he could enjoy nothing. I have not only concerted my Journey from Ferara, but likewise to the Elysian Groves; if my grizly Ghost should terrify that sordid Wretch your Father, 'tis no more than he deserves, and if my Shade appears to you, look on that unconcern'd which cannot injure you. My last Request to you is to take care ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... on a slope of moss, with a plaid beneath him, and a cushion under his head, and said that the Elysian fields must have been a prevision of this beech-wood. Mrs. Underwood, with Felix and Wilmet, tied up the plates, knives, and forks, and then the mother, taking Angela with her, went to negotiate kettle-boiling ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the lower regions," retorted the king, gayly. "You needn't go in search of the Elysian Fields; you carry them with you ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... ethereal harpsichords, My senses wrought a music exquisite As patterned roses, all my life's accords Were richer, ghostlier than peacocks white. So in my paradise reserved and fair I grew as dreamlike as the Elysian dead; Until a passing Wizard smote me there, And suddenly my soul inherited Some gorgeous terrible dukedom of desire Like those in bright ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... After this excursion into Elysian fields, poor Miss Mapp had to get back to her vulture again, and the hour's rest that she had felt was due to herself as the heroine of a duel became a period of extraordinary cerebral activity. Puzzle as she might, she ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the earth, Surpassing the most fair ideal forms Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed From earth's materials—waits upon my steps; Pitches her tents before me as I move, An hourly neighbor. Paradise, and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields—like those of old Sought in the Atlantic main—why should they be A history only of departed things, Or a mere fiction of what never was? For the discerning intellect of man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... base at the left, demons drag the damned ones to Hell; on the right the elect cast glances of love and faith on the Saviour, and in joyous fraternity enjoy the heavenly guerdon. The Elysian Fields of the blessed are truly celestial, gleaming with gold, irrigated by limpid streams, glorious with beautiful flowerets that bloom amid the verdure, the exuberance of nature harmonizing marvelously with the joy ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... ruth; Have pity either on my tears or youth, And take me in who am in deep distress; But first cast off thy wonted churlishness. Cha. I will be gentle as that air which yields A breath of balm along the Elysian fields. Speak, what art thou? Euc. One once that had a lover, Than which thyself ne'er wafted sweeter over. He was—— Cha. Say what? Euc. Ah me, my woes are deep. Cha. Prithee relate, while I give ear and weep. Euc. He was a Hastings; and that one name has In it all good that is, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... species of architecture—the erection of atmospheric mansions. Every one has it, in a way, but with me it had broken out in a very virulent form. It makes one feel mean, indeed, to arouse from one of these Elysian escapades only to find his feet on the commonest sort of clay. Day-dreaming never produces the kind of dream that comes true, and mental speculating is about as useless as indulging in Western mining stock. Well-laid plans are all right, but ideals ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... found Of hearty gossips prating round; Fresh from a wedding or a christening, To teach her ears the art of listening, And please her more to hear them tattle, Than the Dean storm, or Stella rattle. Late be her death, one gentle nod, When Hermes,[3] waiting with his rod, Shall to Elysian fields invite her, Where there will be no cares to ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... my journey to Tonsberg. The country still wore a face of joy—and my soul was alive to its charms. Leaving the most lofty and romantic of the cliffs behind us, we were almost continually descending to Tonsberg, through Elysian scenes; for not only the sea, but mountains, rivers, lakes, and groves, gave an almost endless variety to the prospect. The cottagers were still carrying home the hay; and the cottages on this road looked very comfortable. Peace and plenty—I mean not abundance—seemed to reign around—still ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Kaiser, prodigal of verbal boons, Congratulates his brave Bayreuth Dragoons Upon their prowess, which, he tells them, yields Joy "to old Fritz up in Elysian fields." Perhaps; but what if he is down below? In any case what we should like to know Is how his modern namesake, Private Fritz, Enjoys the fun of being blown to bits Because his Emperor has ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... down from my temples, to buy myself the pleasure of one noontide sleep, the blessing of a single tear. There was a time too, when I could weep—O ye days of peace, thou castle of my father, ye green lovely valleys!—O all ye Elysian scenes of my childhood! will ye never come again, never with your balmy sighing cool my burning bosom? Mourn with me, Nature! They will never come again, never cool my burning bosom with their balmy sighing. They are gone! ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Elysian island of the west, Still be thy gardens brighten'd by the rose Of a perennial spring, and winter's snows Ne'er chill the warmth of thy maternal breast! May calms for ever sleep around thy coast, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... at length arrived at those terrestrial Elysian fields, would now soon have discovered his lordship's mansion; but the peer unluckily quitted his former house when he went for Ireland; and as he was just entered into a new one, the fame of his equipage had not yet sufficiently blazed in the neighbourhood; so that, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... four abreast, we walked very comfortably up and down; and I, by Gretchen's side, fancied that I really wandered in those happy Elysian fields where they pluck from the trees crystal cups that immediately fill themselves with the wine desired, and shake down fruits that change into every dish at will. At last we also felt such a necessity; and, conducted by Pylades, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... fever and debility, Ivan sank into a hell of the senses; and daily gazed with longing upon the still closed gates of life. He had heard the low-calling voices of departed Shades. He had been given misty glimpses of the Elysian land that lay beyond those high black bars. Long and long was it before he could turn his face from that vision back to the grays and glooms of his worn routine. And when at last it became patent to him that this must ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... inventor of new arts; nothing is more flattering to his intellect, or draws a broader line between him and the animals. Nothing was held in higher reverence by the ancients, and hence it is that Virgil, in his Elysian Fields, represented the band of inventors with their brows bound with white chaplets, equally distinct in merit as in rank, from the more vulgar shades ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... his former comrades; but the Sibyl reminded him that the hour was approaching when he must return to the upper world. "Here," she said, "the path is divided. To the right, past the palace of Pluto, lies our way to the Elysian Fields; on the left is the way to Tartarus, the place of punishment for ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... in truth Elysian Fields? And is there life beyond the grave? Or are the years that Nature yields Confined this side the Stygian wave? For those who more existence crave Is there a Power to help ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the body with the rapidity of lightning. The palace in which Louis had passed the hours of his infancy, and his childhood, and the days of his early grandeur; the magnificent gardens of the palace, where he had so often been greeted with acclamations; the spacious Elysian Fields, the pride of Paris, were all spread around, as if in mockery of the sacrifice which was there to be offered. This whole space was crowded with a countless multitude, clustered upon the house tops, darkening the windows, swinging upon the trees, to witness the tragic spectacle of the ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... incomparable attitude; No human presences their witness are, But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued, And showers and night winds and the northern star. Nay, even our salutations seem profane, Opposed to their Elysian quietude; Our salutations calling from afar, From our ignobler plane And undistinction of our lesser parts: Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts. Double your glory is who perished thus, For you have died for France and ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... prevailed over Jupiter as to induce him to give permission to Ceres to bring Proserpina back, provided that she had not tasted of any food that grew in the regions below. Ceres accordingly went in search of her daughter. She found, unfortunately, that Proserpina, in walking through the Elysian fields with Pluto, had incautiously eaten a pomegranate which she had taken from a tree that was growing there. She was consequently precluded from availing herself of Jupiter's permission to return to Olympus. ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... comprehended under the name of Ades, as all the five might be under that of Orcus, was a prince or judge: Minos for the regions of Erebus; Rhadamanthus for Tartarus; and AEacus for Elysium, Pluto and Proserpine had their palace at the entrance of the road to the Elysian fields, and presided as sovereigns over ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... abundantly. He had a sense—almost a knowledge—that the garden he was in was a dream-garden, a sort of panoramic phantasm, and that the real garden lay behind it somehow, hidden from material eyesight, eluding material touch, but there all the same, unearthly and elysian, more beautiful a great deal than the one in which he was standing, and teeming with gracious presences. It seemed a revelation to him, this sudden perception of a real world underlying the apparent ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... nation among the Indians who hold it a sacred duty to murder every one not of their own tribe, whom they can waylay: and when they are taken and punished by the rulers of that country, die joyfully under the greatest torments, believing themselves certain of an entrance into the Elysian fields, in proportion to the number of murders ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... face of the listener is turned away, solitude falls again on the bruised heart. Kirstie had lost her "cannie hour at e'en"; she could no more wander with Archie, a ghost if you will, but a happy ghost, in fields Elysian. And to her it was as if the whole world had fallen silent; to him, but an unremarkable change of amusements. And she raged to know it. The effervescency of her passionate and irritable nature rose within her at times to ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reclining at ease with their friends and relations, arranged according to clans and tribes. Among these he recognized his own father, dressed in the clothes in which he was buried; and it must have been comforting to the son to have such good evidence that his parent was safely installed in the Elysian Fields. In a few moments ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... Elysian Fields and Avernus: and wandered through various ruined temples, baths, and classic spots; at length we entered the gloomy cavern of the Cumaean Sibyl. Our Lazzeroni bore flaring torches, which shone red, and almost dusky, in the murky subterranean ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of an amusement here, and if you came, you'd go back to Saint Winifred's with a fit of blue devils, as I always do; thirdly, the change from Semlyn to Fuzby-le-Mud would be like walking from the Elysian fields and the asphodel meadows, into mere borboros as old Edwards would say. So I don't ask you; and yet if you could come—why, the day would be marked with white in the dull calendar of—Your ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Tibullus, keep that secret I would not, for all Rome, it should be thought I veil bright Julia underneath that name: Julia, the gem and jewel of my soul, That takes her honours from the golden sky, As beauty doth all lustre from her eye. The air respires the pure Elysian sweets In which she breathes, and from her looks descend The glories of the summer. Heaven she is, Praised in herself above all praise; and he Which hears her speak, would swear the tuneful orbs ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... Elk Mountain and find its giant mass towering into the eternal snows three thousand feet farther above our heads,—this plateau is a prairie fifty miles square, lifted bodily eight thousand feet into the air. It is difficult for us to roll over this Elysian mead walled in by these tremendous ranges, and think of the commercial uses to which the level might be put; but from its elevation and its natural crop we may pronounce it a grazing tract of splendid capabilities, unsuited to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... were not long in awakening in his breast a strong desire to share in such stirring events. The venturesome mind at last became inspired. He determined to go; and, giving his restless spirit full sway, in 1826, joined a party bound for his boyish fancy-pictures of the Elysian Fields. The leader of this expedition required no second request from young Carson before enrolling his name on the company-list. The hardy woodsman saw stamped upon the frank and open countenance of the boy who stood before him those sterling qualities which ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the men paid a visit to the great island, as they called Europe. From him the narrator learned many things about the state of men after death—the conclusion being that the souls of men arrive at the Moon, wherein lie the Elysian Fields of Homer. ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... his two brothers stood on the margin of the Elysian lake. King Henry, the Prince of Conde, and a selection of the younger and gayer Huguenots, were the assailants,—storming Paradise to gain possession of the nymphs. It was a very illusive armour that they wore, thin scales of gold or silver as cuirasses over their satin ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'feathered wile.' Still, we fear that he will never produce any real good work till he has made up his mind whether destiny intends him for a poet or for an advertising agent, and we venture to hope that should he ever publish another volume he will find some other rhyme to 'vision' than 'Elysian,' a dissonance that occurs five times in this ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... we, I suspect, have the advantage in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without something of terror allaying their gratitude; the remembrance of Field comes back with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... substantial deem The forms that fleet through life's deceitful dream? Till at some stroke of Fate the vision flies, And sad realities in prospect rise; And, from Elysian slumbers rudely torn, The startled soul awakes, to think, and mourn. O ye, whose hours in jocund train advance, Whose spirits to the song of gladness dance, Who flowery plains in endless pomp survey, Glittering in beams of visionary ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... bid us spare your vision; Put faith in a life after death, Strive on toward some realm Elysian And heed all ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... and will wear the same frock-coat, with the same creases in it. Swinburne, on the other hand, will be quite, quite young, with a full mane of flaming auburn locks, and no clothes to hinder him from plunging back at any moment into the shining Elysian waters from which he will have just emerged. I see him skim lightly away into that element. On the strand is sitting a man of noble and furrowed brow. It is Mazzini, still thinking of Liberty. And anon the tiny young English ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... satisfactory as it appeared. Mr Proctor paid for his temporary absence. All-Souls was not the Elysium it had been before that brief disastrous voyage into the world. The good man felt the stings of failure; he felt the mild jokes of his brethren in those Elysian fields. He could not help conjuring up to himself visions of Morgan with his new wife in that pretty rectory. Life, after all, did not consist of books, nor were Greek verbs essential to happiness. The strong emotion into which his own failure ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... reply. Mary then looked at him as Dido looked at AEneas in the Elysian fields, fierce ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have troubles, pretty much as the sparks fly upwards. She had fierce siegings after this, and explosive procedures,—little short of Monk Schwartz, who was just inventing gunpowder at the time. We cannot hope she lived in Elysian harmony with Kurfurst Ludwig;—the reverse, in fact; and oftenest with the whole breadth of Germany between them, he in Brandenburg, she in the Tyrol. Nor did Ludwig junior ever come to be Kaiser, as his Father and she had hoped; on the contrary, King Johann of Bohemia's people,—it was they that ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... from turmoil, strife, the mountain-vying waves Of life's antagonisms that delude the world— Amidst elysian valleys, slopes, majestic hills and caves That mark the path where ages wrought their wrath and hurled The crumbling sinews of the soil down to defeat, To linger in the depth as symbols that all power Is at the will of the Supreme—in this retreat, Filled with the ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... Glory exists above us, under us, around us, within us, without us, if we open our eyes to see. 'Nirvana is in life itself,' if we enjoy it with admiration and love. "Life and death are the life of Buddha," says Do-gen. Everywhere the Elysian gates stand open, if we do not shut them up by ourselves. Shall we starve ourselves refusing to accept the rich bounty which the Blessed Life offers to us? Shall we perish in the darkness of scepticism, shutting our eyes to the light of Tathagata? ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... in the houses of the wealthy, I have lunched at the Cafe Anglais, I have dined at the Savoy but never have I eaten, never till they give me a welcoming banquet in the Elysian fields, shall I eat so ambrosial a meal as that first herring ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... astronomy, and their religion. Of that delightful region (for such it appeared to the eyes of a native) the Atlantis of Plato, the country of the Hyperboreans, the gardens of the Hesperides, the Fortunate Islands, and even the Elysian Fields, were all but faint and imperfect transcripts. A clime so profusely favored by Nature could not long remain desert after the flood. The learned Rudbeck allows the family of Noah a few years to multiply from eight to about twenty thousand ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... of preternaturally vivid green and rankness of growth, mixed with a handsome fern, with a caudex a foot high, the Sadleria cyathoides, and another of exquisite beauty, the Micropia tenuifolia, which are said to be the commonest ferns on Hawaii. It looks Elysian. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... and direction of all negotiations with foreign countries are reserved to him. While the Assembly itself is constantly acting upon the stage, and is exposed to the critically vulgar light of day, he leads a hidden life in the Elysian fields, only with Article 45 of the Constitution before his eyes and in his heart daily calling out to him, "Frere, il faut mourir!" [1 Brother, you must die!] Your power expires on the second Sunday of the beautiful month of May, in the fourth year after your election! The glory ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... made the lovely flowers Which adorn both shrub and tree, Climbing vine, and shady bowers, In this beauty speaks to me: 'Tis the curtain of His tent, Hiding much, yet much reveals, Type of the Elysian fields; Glory ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... this girl! And the boy, walking straight at Dodge's villainous revolver! Why, he would need the whole crew behind him when he liberated these two! But he knew that the laughter striving for articulation was not the kind heard in Elysian fields! ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... there; yet no gem Dropp'd from its foil; and through the beamy list Like flame in alabaster, glow'd its course. So forward stretch'd him (if of credence aught Our greater muse may claim) the pious ghost Of old Anchises, in the' Elysian bower, When he perceiv'd his son. "O thou, my blood! O most exceeding grace divine! to whom, As now to thee, hath twice the heav'nly gate Been e'er unclos'd?" so spake the light; whence I Turn'd me toward him; then unto ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... prostitutes were greatly honored; but that had passed, he was convinced, forever; and this, on the whole, he concluded, was fortunate; for, perhaps, if prostitution were thoroughly discredited, marriage might, in some Elysian future, be swept of most of its rubbish. Houses of prostitution, mistresses, like charity, absorbed and dissipated a great deal of the dissatisfaction inseparable from the present misconceptions of love and society. The first move, obviously, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... more for Ecuador than for Ecuadorians. She laid out this beautiful valley for an Elysian field; "de Quito al Cielo" (from Quito to Heaven) is not an empty adage; and it is painful to look upon tottering walls and impassable roads, upon neglected fields and an idle population—poor as poverty ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since; They follow me—they lead me through the years. They are my ministers—yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle— My duty, to be saved by their bright light, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in Heaven—the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still—two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... mountains, and the cliffs Faded in distance till his aching sight No longer knew them. Then his wearied frame Sank in the arms of sleep. But Julia's shape, In mournful guise, dread horror on her brow, Rose through the gaping earth, and from her tomb Erect (1), in form as of a Fury spake: "Driven from Elysian fields and from the plains The blest inhabit, when the war began, I dwell in Stygian darkness where abide The souls of all the guilty. There I saw Th' Eumenides with torches in their hands Prepared against thy battles; and the fleets ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... time when my tears flowed so freely. Oh, those days of peace! Dear home of my fathers—ye verdant halcyon vales! O all ye Elysian scenes of my childhood!—will you never return?—will your delicious breezes never cool my burning bosom? Mourn with me, Nature, mourn! They will never return! never will their delicious breezes cool my burning bosom! They are ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and faith. It is then that the familiar prattle of the seance-room offends us. We sought freedom, light, absolution from the trammels of personality, and we are told that the dead appear in bodies and clothes, that they toil and fret, that they inhabit houses and cities. Our plains Elysian suffer an invasion of lawyers and physicians, of merchants and moneylenders. The weariness of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... directed to those who had signalized themselves by philosophical research. Horace Walpole alludes to this her peculiar taste, in his fable called the "Funeral of the Lioness," where the royal shade is made to say: "... where Elysian waters glide, With Clarke and Newton by my side, Purrs o'er the metaphysic page, Or ponders the prophetic rage Of Merlin, who mysterious sings Of men and lions, beasts and kings." Lord Orford's Works, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... [Frontispiece: The Elysian Fields of the Egyptians according to the Papyrus of Ani. 1. Ani adoring the gods of Sekhet-Aaru. 2. Ani reaping in the Other World. 3. Ani ploughing in the Other World. 4. The abode of the perfect ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... in epic numbers roll'd, And he who struck the softer lyre of love, By Death's [14]unequal hand alike controul'd, Fit comrades in Elysian ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... under Ionian skies, Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise; And, for the harbours are not safe and good, This land would have remained a solitude But for some pastoral people native there, Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, With ever-changing sound and light and foam Kissing ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the latter part of eternity, as the Shades of all the great writers were reposing upon beds of asphodel and moly in the Elysian fields, each happy in hearing from the lips of the others nothing but copious quotation from his own works (for so Jove had kindly bedeviled their ears), there came in among them with triumphant mien a Shade whom none ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... to rain, and we wore out our horses. Friday we moved toward Waterville, and Friday night we camped between Elysian and German lake. Saturday morning we left our horses and started through on foot, hiding that day on an island in a swamp. That night we tramped all night and we spent Sunday about four miles south of Marysburg. Meantime our ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... you know, that I am still alive; but to say truth, I look upon my present circumstances to be exactly the same with those of departed spirits. The heats of Constantinople have driven me to this place, which perfectly answers the description of the Elysian fields. I am in the middle of a wood, consisting chiefly of fruit-trees, watered by a vast number of fountains, famous for the excellency of their water, and divided into many shady walks, upon short grass, that seems to me artificial, but, I am assured, is the pure work of nature—within ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... of his new house going up made Cowperwood feel of more weight in the world, and the possession of his suddenly achieved connection with the city treasurer was as though a wide door had been thrown open to the Elysian fields of opportunity. He rode about the city those days behind a team of spirited bays, whose glossy hides and metaled harness bespoke the watchful care of hostler and coachman. Ellsworth was building an attractive stable in the little side street back ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... crossed the park; but it was no longer the rapid rivulet rushing over a pebbly descent—it was a quiet, languid brook, gliding along through clumps of trees. Under this mass of luminous vapour, between the bushes which seemed to bathe and float therein, it was like an Elysian stream which unfolded itself ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... believe they call it. The Elysian Fields of Manhattan Island. Perhaps you'll come with me sometimes and see that I attend properly ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... which, after death, the blessed were conveyed, and where they were permitted to enjoy it happy destiny. In the Fourth Book of the Odyssey the sea god Pro'teus, in predicting for Menelaus a happier lot than that of Hades, thus describes the Elysian plains: ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in the smoking-room of the club, which was, indeed, a smoking-room of a novel sort, the invention of an unknown shade, who had sold all the rights to the club through a third party, anonymously, preferring, it seemed, to remain in the Elysian world, as he had been in the mundane sphere, a mute inglorious Edison. It was a simple enough scheme, and, for a wonder, no one in the world of substantialities has thought to take it up. The smoke was ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... everything with these mentally blind creatures. Sometimes, though this is not a frequent occurrence, a crocodile takes away a bather; but such persons are rather envied than regretted, since to die in those waters is in their estimation simply to be at once wafted to the elysian fields of paradise. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Sound common sense, critical acumen, the irony of humor, hatred of tyrants and humbug, an acrid temper mollified by genial love of letters, a manly spirit of independence. Last, but not least, he inherited something of the old Elysian smile which played upon the lips of Ariosto, from which Tasso's melancholy shrank discomfited, which Marino smothered in the kisses of his courtesans, and Chiabrera banned as too ignoble for Dircean bards. This smile it was that cheered ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... his friend Dekker represents him, shortly after, reaching the Elysian fields, leaves little doubt that his life was shortened not only by his angry passions, but by sheer want: "Marlow, Greene and Peele had got under the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash, that was but newly ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... forms of hours Elysian, And shades of dear ones rise to meet my gaze; First Love and Friendship steal upon my vision Like an old tale of legendary days; Sorrow renewed, in mournful repetition, Runs through life's devious, labyrinthine ways; And, sighing, names the good (by Fortune cheated Of ...
— Faust • Goethe
... high on the wings of glory, her very glance promises immortality. Her life is the loveliest harmony, irradiated by a thousand virtuous deeds.' And so on. As poetic spokesman of the girls he pours out those 'Elysian feelings' which he supposes them to cherish toward their ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... there thou dreamest of Elysian rest, In the deep sanctuary of one true breast Hidden from earthly ill: There wouldst thou watch the homeward step, whose sound Wakening all Nature to sweet echoes round, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... princess, since she is my queen and sovereign lady; her beauty more than human, since in her all the impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty which the poets ascribe to their mistresses are realized; for her hair is gold, her forehead the Elysian Fields, her eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck, alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her whiteness snow, and her whole person without parallel. She is of those of Toboso de ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... cause of the war, she was recovered by Menelaus, and gladly accompanied him back to Sparta. There she lived for years afterwards in dignity and happiness, and finally died to become happily immortal in the Elysian fields. ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the water-falls of Elysian gardens. This was, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius; the grandeur of wildness and the novelty of extravagance were always desired by him, but ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... near a fortnight passed at what the Earl now calls the Elysian Lake (instead of Siberia), a westerly wind compelled me to get under sail yesterday afternoon; and it was fortunate that I did so, as it has blown a gale since that time. By the Megaera, which has joined me this evening, I find the fleet is to go to Torbay; and, from what Sir Thomas Troubridge ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross |
