"Elysian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have breakfasted 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 ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... future of his off-spring, without fear of want, defiant of poverty, undisturbed by the bickerings of society or heartburnings of politics, regardless of rank or station, wealth, kindred, or descent, it must be admitted that, from an earthly point of view, his estate was as near Elysian as the mind can conceive. Besides all this, he had the Gospel preached unto him—for nothing; and the law kindly secured him against being misled by false doctrines, by providing that the Bread of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... by you so positively yesterday evening, that you would remain single for the rest of your life as a compliment due to the memory of your husband, I retired to my chamber. Throwing myself upon my bed I dreamt that I was dead, and was transported to the Elysian fields. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... divorce between the two 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, 'tempo rubato'." ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... comfortable as you are at home; secondly, there isn't the ghost 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 ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... ill-used race of men that 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 will ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... days in England, but had not yet seen anything like this. Here was summer without sultriness, without gnats, mosquitoes, threatening thunderstorms, or anything to spoil it; it was summer as it might be in the Elysian fields, perfectly clear, and calm, and radiant. When the train stopped they could see how not a breath of wind stirred the dust on the quiet white roads, and the leaves of the magnolia trees glistened motionless ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... 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, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... flies, Strange phantoms rising as the mists arise; 40 Dreadful, as hermits' dreams in haunted shades, Or bright, as visions of expiring maids. Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires, Pale spectres, gaping tombs, and purple fires: Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes, And crystal domes, and angels in machines. Unnumber'd throngs on every side are seen Of bodies changed to various forms by Spleen. Here living teapots stand, one arm held out, One bent; the handle this, and that the spout: 50 A pipkin there, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... without disappearing, has changed its relation to reality: instead of being an extension to the natural world myth has become its substratum. Religion no longer reveals divine personalities, future rewards, and tenderer Elysian consolations; nor does it seriously propose a heaven to be reached by a ladder nor a purgatory to be shortened by prescribed devotions. It merely gives the real world an ideal status and teaches men to accept a natural life ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... such 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, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... beauties to satisfy every taste; forms the noblest and the loveliest, colors the most gorgeous and the most delicate, odors the sweetest and subtlest, harmonies the most soothing and the most stirring: the sunny glories of the day; the pale Elysian grace of moonlight; the lake, the mountain, the primeval forest, and the boundless ocean; 'silent pinnacles of aged snow' in one hemisphere, the marvels of tropical luxuriance in another; the serenity of sunsets; ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... "I will fly from this island of woes." And acting on that decision, By that odor of rose I was led by the nose, For 'twas truly, ah! truly, Elysian. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... up and making off with portentous speed to the nearest coverts, whence they stare upon him with their sharp and lustrous eyes. I repeat, that it is impossible to continue melancholy in regions like these, and the ancient Greeks and Romans were right in making them the site of their Elysian fields. Most beautiful they are even in their present desolation, for the hand of man has not cultivated them since the fatal era of the expulsion of the Moors, which drained Andalusia of at least ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the 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 ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Yet the greeneries Elysian He has known in tracts afar; Thus the enamouring fountains flow, Those the very palms that grow, By ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... we have an affecting instance in the historic narrative of that Italian Countess del Verme, who, losing her husband after an elysian union for eight years, was so shocked on learning his death, that she threw herself on his body in a convulsion of grief which broke her heart, and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... ancients called these places the Islands of the Blessed and the Fortunate Isles. It is, perhaps, not unnatural that in the earlier writers the existence of these remote and mysterious regions should be linked with the ideas of the Elysian Fields and of the abodes of the dead. But the later writers, such as Pliny, and Strabo, the geographer, talked of them as actual places, and tried to estimate how many Roman miles they must be distant from the ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... shining towers we may not see With our dim earthly vision, For Death, the silent warder, keeps the key That opes the gates elysian. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... 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 the ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... of books annually presented to the do-nothing world, under the curiosity-provoking title of fashionable novels, we have hardly more than one or two generally recognised true and faithful pictures of really fashionable life. The caricatures of caricatures of this Elysian state are numberless—imagination has been exhausted, sense confounded, grammar put on the rack, the "well of English undefiled" stirred up from the very dregs, to give the excluded pictures of the life of the exclusives—yet, what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... 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, we found a neat, well-arranged ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... 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
... well as hear it, thrill on thrill, Vibrating plainly down the backs of chairs And through the wall and up the old hall-stairs.— Indeed young Chapman's voice especially Attracted Mr. Hammond—For, said he, Waiving the most Elysian sweetness of The ladies' voices—altitudes above The man's for sweetness;—but—as contrast, would Not Mr. Chapman be so very good As, just now, to oblige all with—in fact, Some sort of jolly song,—to counteract In part, at least, the sad, pathetic trend Of music generally. Which ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... Sat singing So sweet, and clear, and loud, It seemed a thousand harp strings ringing. And the Monk Felix closed his book, And long, long, With rapturous look, He listened to the song, And hardly breathed or stirred, Until he saw, as in a vision, The land Elysian, And in the heavenly city heard Angelic feet Fall on the golden flagging of the street. And he would fain Have caught the wondrous bird, But strove in vain; For it flew away, away, Far over hill and dell, And instead of its sweet singing He heard the convent bell Suddenly ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of 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 a truth ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in a state of Elysian beatitude, these young people. Love worked strange metamorphoses, as he does always. They found new joys in Tennyson, and rejoiced in the wonderful colours of the waves. I am not laughing at them for these things. I first read Tennyson when I was in love, and liked him, and ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... sad Stygian shore, nor in clear sheen Of far Elysian plain, shall we meet those Among the dead whose pupils we have been, Nor those great shades whom we have held as foes; No meadow of asphodel our feet shall tread, Nor shall we look each other in the face To love or hate each other being dead, Hoping some praise, or fearing ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... direct his gaze off the bridge along the waterway North-eastward without beholding as an eye the glow of whitebait's bow-window by the riverside, to the front of the summer sunset, a league or so down stream; where he sees, in memory savours, the Elysian end of Commerce: frontispiece of a tale to fetch us up the out-wearied spectre of old Apicius; yea, and urge Crispinus to wheel his purse into the market for the purchase of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Happy Isles, referred to in the poem, was a familiar one with the Greek poets. They became in time confounded with the Elysian fields, in which the spirits of the departed good and great enjoyed perpetual rest. It is as such that Ulysses mentions them ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... agony passed, and an Elysian, Majestic fervor lit her lofty eyes, Now dwelling on the skies: Meanwhile, Endymion stood, cheek, brow and vision, Radiant with resignation, stern and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... material of which was worn in some ravine of the wilderness, mayhap not a twelvemonth since, by a creature faster even than a banker's wife. Great is the hereafter of the marten-cat, whose skin may be looked upon as the soul by which the animal is destined to attain a sort of modified immortality in the Elysian abodes of Wealth and Fashion,—the place where good ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he replied, "not thine the life Elysian, Live thou the world's life, holding yet thy vision A hope and memory, till ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... hides, Where sweet Meanders lead his pleasant Course, Where Trees and Plants and Fruits themselves disclose, Where never-fading Groves of fragrant Fir And beauteous Pine perfume the ambient Air, The air, at once, both Health and Fragrance yields, Like sweet Arabian or Elysian Fields Thou Royal Settlement! he washes Thee, Thou Village, blest of Heav'n and dear to me: Nam'd from a pious Sov'reign, now at Rest, The last of Stuart's Line, of Queens the best. Amidst the rural Joys, the Town is seen, Enclos'd with Woods and Hills, forever green The Streets, the Buildings, ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... a command, that this dirty earth should convert itself straight into Elysian lilies, and bloom out, at a word, with roses of Paradise. Excellent patterns, celestial exemplars, of the things required were held up to it; and endless declamation and argument why it should ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... "Elysian Fields" and "Fortunate Islands" of antiquity—have perhaps figured in fabulous lore more extensively than any others, and have been discovered, invaded, and conquered more frequently than any country in the world. There has scarcely been a nation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of Regiments in the Streets of which the date is the 30th of January. "It was cold this afternoon, as bright as Italy, and these Elysian Fields crowded with carriages, riders, and foot passengers. All the fountains were playing, all the Heavens shining. Just as I went out at 4 o'clock, several regiments that had passed out at the Barriere in the morning to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Scott returned to the stables his pulses were still throbbing with joy and he trod the grass of the Elysian Fields. Young love is pure and noble, a spontaneous emotion that has nothing in it of calculation, and the wild and strange setting of his romance merely served to ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... own the moral not exact, Besides, the tale is false, in fact; And so absurd, that could I raise up, From fields Elysian, fabling. Aesop, I would accuse him to his face, For libelling the four-foot race. Creatures of every kind but ours Well comprehend their natural powers, While we, whom reason ought to sway, Mistake our talents every day. The Ass was never known so stupid To act ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... when he says that it is a pity that Goethe never had an opportunity of reading Dorian Gray. I feel quite certain that he would have been delighted by it, and I only hope that some ghostly publisher is even now distributing shadowy copies in the Elysian fields, and that the cover of Gautier's copy ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... that of a 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 la Mancha; a lineage which, though modern, is ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... West beyond the bounds of their actual knowledge, and, as it appears, of too fugitive a nature ever to be fixed within the circle of authentic geography. Homer describes at the extremity of the ocean the Elysian plain, "where, under a serene sky, the favourites of Jove, exempt from the common lot of mortals, enjoy eternal felicity." Hesiod, in like manner, sets the Happy Isles, the abode of departed heroes, beyond the deep ocean. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... after year he's toiling, as toiled the slaves of Rome, to keep the pot a-boiling in his old mother's home. Through years of gloom and sickness he kept the wolf away; for him no tailored slickness, for him no brave array; for him no cheerful vision of wife and kids a few; for him no dreams Elysian—just toil, the long years through! Forever trying, straining, to sidestep debtors' woes, unnoticed, uncomplaining, the little Strong ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... hand Sibylla's golden boughs to guard them, Through hell and horror, to the Elysian springs." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... the gods, our reason tells us they are not. But when pure passion possesses our hearts, then we see tangible visions, then our dreams become no dreams but realities; we mount up on wings, we fly, we soar to Olympus, to Atlantis, to the Elysian fields; we no longer wish to know, we feel; we no longer wish to prove, we see; and what our reason bids us to reject, a surer monitor bids us to receive: the dangers and perils of this life of shades upon the earth are of no account, for we are transformed ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... time abroad, again in dreams is all gone o'er— Again in Paris, as it seems, they watch the crowd once more. The "Elysian Fields," beneath the trees, are peopled with a throng Of loveliest dolls, which at their ease converse, or ride along; And wondrous "Easter Eggs" in nests, abundant lie around, And "April Fish" ...
— Abroad • Various
... come back, full of Elysian dreams, to his Sophy,—his Enchanted Princess. Gone, taken away, and with the Mayor's consent,—the consent of the very man upon whom he had been relying to secure a livelihood and a shelter! Little more had he learned at the cottage, for Mr. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... odor arose, of violets fermented in the sun, a hot boudoir perfume, enervating, weakening, which called up before de Gery's eyes feminine visions, Aline, Felicia, gliding across the enchanted landscape, in that blue-tinted atmosphere, that elysian light which seemed to be the visible perfume of such a multitude of flowers in full bloom. A sound of doors closing made him open his eyes. Some one had entered the adjoining room. He heard a dress ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Paradise, fast by the tree of life, Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows, And flowers aloft shading the fount of life, And where the river of bliss through midst of Heaven Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream; With these that never fade the Spirits elect Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams; Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone, Impurpled with celestial roses smiled. Then, crowned again, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... by the Greeks for its almost perennial flowering, and with which they, in their imagination, covered the Elysian fields, called ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... day-labourers! Oh, I would toil till the blood ran 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! gone! and may ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... mind is reconciled only by a passive 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 waterfalls 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 not always attained. Yet, as diligence is never wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... between Mr. Cabell and the popular romancers who in all ages clutter the scene and for whom he has nothing but amused contempt is that they are unconscious dupes of the demiurge whereas he, aware of its ways and its devices, employs it almost as if it were some hippogriff bridled by him in Elysian pastures and respectfully entertained in a snug Virginian stable. His attitude toward romance suggests a cheerful despair: he despairs of ever finding anything truer than romance and so contents himself with Poictesme and ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... only with their smiles The fabled valleys and Elysian isles; He who is wearied of his village plain May roam the Edens of the world in vain. 'T is not the star-crowned cliff, the cataract's flow, The softer foliage or the greener glow, The lake of sapphire or the spar-hung cave, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... might fancy the carol of a robin over a grave might seem, could the cold sleeper below wake one moment to its perception. If it woke one regretful sigh and drew one wandering look downward to the elysian paradise that lay smiling at the foot of the mountain, he instantly suppressed the feeling, and set his face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... touched, and gave it a kiss for every stitch. Then, incensed at myself, I flung it from me, and hurried from the room. I walked towards the Place de la Concorde, where the brilliant lamps burned like a constellation. I strolled through the Elysian Fields, and watched the lights of the carriages swarming like fire-flies up the long avenue; stopped by the concert gardens, and listened to the glorified girls singing under rosy and golden pavilions the last songs of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... flies 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 ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Thither all their bounties bring. There eternal Summer dwells, And west winds with musky wing About the cedarn alleys fling 990 Nard and cassia's balmy smells. Iris there with humid bow Waters the odorous banks, that blow Flowers of more mingled hue Than her purfled scarf can shew, And drenches with Elysian dew (List, mortals, if your ears be true) Beds of hyacinth and roses, Where young Adonis oft reposes, Waxing well of his deep wound, 1000 In slumber soft, and on the ground Sadly sits the Assyrian queen. But far above, in spangled sheen, Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced Holds his ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... yesterday, in the fields beyond Monte Mario,—a spire two feet high, of more than two hundred stars, the stalks of them all deep blue, as well as the flowers. Heaven send all honest people the gathering of the like, in Elysian fields, some day! ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... terrors, Armed in adamantine chains, Lead me to the crystal mirrors, Watering soft Elysian plains. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... 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 ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Menelaus,' he said, 'art exempt from the common lot of men, because thou art the husband of Helen, and she is a daughter of Zeus. Therefore it is not appointed for thee to die, but when thine hour is come the gods shall convey thee to the Elysian fields, where dwell the elect spirits in everlasting blessedness. There falls not snow nor rain, there blows no rude blast, but the fresh cool breath of the west comes softly from Ocean to refresh them that dwell in ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... spirits, destined to enjoy the delights of Elysium, passed out on the right, and proceeded to the golden palace where Aides and Persephone held their royal court, from whom they received a kindly greeting, ere they set out for the Elysian Fields which lay beyond.[47] This blissful region was replete with all that could charm the senses or please the imagination; the air was balmy and fragrant, rippling brooks flowed peacefully through the smiling ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... her soul, not with her feet; became the living incarnation of the ancients' conception of plastic creation, enchanting, intoxicating. They heard the myriad voices of spring, the voices of birds and insects and the sound of falling waters; beheld the Elysian, flower-strewn fields of youth, recalling the immortal, fairy days of childhood and with them their golden dreams, and experienced the sweetness and bitterness of unfulfilled longings and aspirations of later years. All felt that it was an event of a lifetime—one ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... than aught which Greece or Rome Could boast of in its best and happiest days; Whose smile should be his rich reward for toil; Whose pure transparent cheek, when press'd to his, Should calm the fever of his troubled thoughts, And woo his spirit to those fields Elysian— The ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... {I} "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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... An unwonted splendor brightened All within him and without him In that narrow cell of stone; And he saw the blessed vision Of our Lord, with light Elysian Like a vesture wrapped about Him, Like ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... I had seen him was when he stepped out of a gas tank on the 18th floor of an office building in Chicago where I was reclining at the time in a dentist chair. He was the little gas demon who walked with me through the Elysian fields the last time I had a ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... them as having armed the three Deities, who divided the empire of the world: Jupiter with thunder; Pluto with his helmet; and Neptune with his trident. Statius represents them as the builders of the walls of Argos and Virgil as the founders of the gates of the Elysian fields. Aristotle supposes that they were the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... 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 which they ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call death. 499 LONGFELLOW: Resignation, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... company then receives his orders; and, after communicating whatever may be necessary to the men, he desires them to "pile arms, and make themselves comfortable for the night." Now, I pray thee, most sanguine reader, suffer not thy fervid imagination to transport thee into elysian fields at the pleasing exhortation conveyed in the concluding part of the captain's address, but rest thee contentedly in the one where it is made, which in all probability is a ploughed one, and that, too, in a state of preparation to take a model of thy very beautiful person, under the ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... the roses could fade he wreathed himself with them. Immortality to him was in his descendants, the continuation of his name, respect to his ashes. Any other form of future life was a speculation, infrequent at that. In anterior epochs Fright had peopled Tartarus, but Fright had gone. The Elysian Fields were vague, wearisome to contemplate; even metempsychosis had no adherents. "After death," said Caesar, "there is nothing," and all the world agreed with him. The hour, too, in which three thousand gods had not a single ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... night beautiful—oh, inexpressibly beautiful!—but moonlight nights were what made lovers want to look into each other's eyes, and sing each other love songs "with expression." To be sure, she had formerly considered this very tendency an elysian feature of such nights; but that was when she thought that love always was right for its own sake, that true lovers never should be thwarted. She still held by that belief; and yet—she visioned Uncle Charlie, dear Uncle Charlie, so fond of buying Aunt Isabel extravagant organdies ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Greek and Syrian cults also had their processions and banners, their fifes and cymbals and holy chants, their hierarchy of officers to whom the art of making collections was not wholly unknown; and who, as freely as their modern imitators, promised an Elysian future to contributory converts. The success of these antique Salvation armies was enormous. Simon Magus was quite as notorious a personage, and probably had as strong a following as Mr. Booth. Yet the Apostles, with their old-fashioned ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... April 7. F. Weingaertner's symphonic poem, "The Elysian Fields," given by the Philharmonic ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... they delayed his punishment; but no exhortation or entreaties availed. He persisted in maintaining that Jupiter was the sovereign God of the universe, and that there was no other paradise than the Elysian fields. He was burnt alive, after having first had his tongue pierced, and his hand cut off. Thus perished an ardent and learned youth, who ought only to have been condemned ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and short journeys to take even then. Elysian Fields had not lost all its glory. And yet the little girl was quite disappointed in her visit to it. She had lived in the country, you know, she had looked off the Sound at Rye Beach and seen the Hudson from Tarrytown and Sleepy ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... that day; the great sharp north wind swept out Elysian Fields Street in blasts that made men shiver, and bent everything in its track. The skies hung lowering and gloomy; the usually quiet street was more than deserted, ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... Farewell! 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
... it Lightning look'd out most sublime! Here throned in unimaginable bliss And glory, sits The One Eternal Power, Creator, Lord, and Life of All: Again, Stillness ethereal reign'd, and forth appear'd Elysian creatures robed in fleecy light, Together flocking from celestial haunts, And mansions of purpureal mould; the Host Of heaven assembled to adore with harp And hymn, the First and Last, the Living God; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... the best discipline of a state. Honourable industry travels the same road with duty; and Providence has closely linked both with happiness. The gods, says the poet, have placed labour and toil on the way leading to the Elysian fields. Certain it is that no bread eaten by man is so sweet as that earned by his own labour, whether bodily or mental. By labour the earth has been subdued, and man redeemed from barbarism; nor has a single step in civilization been made without it. Labour is not ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... 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
... 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 ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is the opinion of Master ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... 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 ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... the flutes of the Grecians" came first these Elysian numbers, then through Lucretius, then through Tennyson's own Lucretius, then in ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... we took our way to the Place de la Concorde, and thence through the Elysian Fields (which, I suppose, are the French idea of heaven) to Bonaparte's triumphal arch. The Champs Elysees may look pretty in summer; though I suspect they must be somewhat dry and artificial at whatever season,—the trees being slender and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a majority vote on translating the Greek word "Aides" as "Hell"; but a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Home of Departed Spirits, guarded by a savage three-headed dog named Cerberus. The only way of reaching the "Home," our guide told us, was by means of the ferry on the River Styx, of which Charon had charge, and to ensure the spirit having a safe passage to the Elysian Fields it was necessary that his toll should be paid with a coin placed beforehand in the mouth or hand of the departed. We did not, however, take the hint about the payment of the toll until after our return journey, when we found ourselves ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... how long I shall be obliged to stay in the meanwhile I act pretty well the part of a County Squire, id est, hunting, shooting, fishing, walking every day without to lay aside the ever charming conversation of Horace Virgil Homer and all our noble friends of the Elysian fields. They are allways faithfull to me, with their aid I find very well how to employ my time, but I want in this country a true bosom friend like my dear Wilkes to converse with, but my pretenssions ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... give's one grave as we'd one mind; There, as the wiser few suspect, That spirits after death affect, Our souls shall meet, and thence will they, Freed from the tyranny of clay, With equal wings, and ancient love Into the Elysian fields remove, Where in those blessed walks they'll find More of thy genius, and my mind. First, in the shade of his own bays, Great Ben they'll see, whose sacred lays The learned ghosts admire, and ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the evening and the place, for both seemed suddenly endowed with uncommon beauty and interest. The dingy old houses might have been fairy palaces, for anything they saw to the contrary; the dusty walks, the trampled grass, were regular Elysian fields to them, and the music was the music of the spheres, though they found themselves "Right in the middle of the boom, jing, jing." For both had made a little discovery,—no, not a little one, the greatest and sweetest man and woman can make. In the sharp twinge of jealousy ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... springs of water, that they may make pleasant fountains. Within the enclosure, he erects a round or square tomb, either on pillars or of closed walls, with a door for entrance. The rest of the enclosure is planted with trees and flowers, as if they would make the elysian fields of the poets, in which their souls may repose in delight. They have many such goodly monuments built in memory of those they esteem as saints, of whom they have an ample calendar, in these there are lamps continually ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... when the voice stops and the bright 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 ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... writing, so that the Pharaoh could now see what his ancestors had been able merely to read on the walls of their tombs. Where the inscribed texts in the burial-chamber of Unas state that Unas, incarnate in the Sun, and thus representing Osiris, sails over the waters on high or glides into the Elysian fields, the sculptured or painted scenes in the interior of the Theban catacombs display to the eye Ramses occupying the place of the god in the solar bark and in the fields of laid. Where the walls of Unas bear only the prayers recited over ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus' self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto to have quite set free His half-regained Eurydice. These delights if thou canst give, Mirth, with ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... answer. "Charon keeps the ferry across the Styx to the Elysian Fields, past the sunless marsh of Acheron. Yes—I've met him more than once. I met him only last month, and he was very proud of his new electric launch with its ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... emerged from the stifling heat of the reception-rooms into the lovely, cool, and limpid night. It was a night illumined by a superb full moon, one of those matchless Roman nights when the city slumbers in Elysian radiance, steeped in a dream of the Infinite, under the vast vault of heaven. And they took the most agreeable route, going down the Corso proper and then turning into the Corso ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... must see through dreams, Be mine Elysian gleams, Be mine by morning streams To watch and wander; So may my spirit cast (Serpent-like) off the past, And my free soul at last Have ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... our story, Sounding far above our strife, Is a time-enclosing glory, Is a space-absorbing life. We can dream no dream Elysian, There is no good thing might be, But some angel has the vision, But ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... hill-goats come to feed, And the sea-eagles build their nest. He show'd him Phthia far away, And said: O boy, I taught this lore To Peleus, in long distant years! He told him of the Gods, the stars, The tides;—and then of mortal wars, And of the life which heroes lead Before they reach the Elysian place And rest in the immortal mead; And all the wisdom ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the Muses do not yet intend me to become the prey of the bony scytheman, as I have yet much to do for you, and much to bequeath, which my spirit dictates and calls on me to complete before I depart hence for the Elysian Fields; I feel as if I had written scarcely more than a ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... 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 ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... 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 ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... happy thing It was, when life was in its spring, To peep through Love's betrothal ring At Fields Elysian, To move and breathe in magic air, To think that all that seems is fair!— Ah, ripe young mouth and golden hair, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... irksome, and after a while resumed his former practice, arguing with himself that the Doctor really had no business to extract any such promise. The point is a nice one, and perhaps ere this the two friends have met and discussed it in the Elysian fields. If so, I hope the Doctor, grown "angelical," kept his temper with the mild shade of Reynolds better than on the historical occasion when he discussed with him the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Champs Elysees swung themselves up, in narrowing line, till they reached the pompous arch at the summit, and among the rich trees of those Elysian fields gleamed the festive lamps ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... they call it. The Elysian Fields of Manhattan Island. Perhaps you'll come with me sometimes and see that I attend ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... be judged for any of your own doings, and the tradition of the coming of Christ is to you as an idle tale—still, think what a wonderful tale it would be, were it well told. You are at liberty, disbelieving it, to range the fields—Elysian and Tartarean—of all imagination. You may play with it, since it is false; and what a play would it not be, well written? Do you think the tragedy, or the miracle play, or the infinitely Divina Commedia of the Judgment ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... thoroughfare, for instance, was Fetter Lane, with its quaint charm and mediaeval grace! I snuffed the cabbage-laden atmosphere and seemed to breathe the scent of the asphodel. Holborn was even as the Elysian Fields; the omnibus that bore us westward was a chariot of glory; and the people who swarmed verminously on the pavements bore the semblance ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... humanly possible for Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett to lug her place in Hyndsville, South Carolina, along with her into the next world, plump it squarely in the middle of the Elysian Fields, plaster it over with "No Trespassing" signs, and then settle herself down to a blissful eternity of serving writs upon the angels for flying over her fences without permission, and setting the saved by the ears in general, she would have done ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... can I ever demonstrate the gratitude—the illimitable, boundless gratitude which fills my heart, for the joy, the truly elysian delight afforded me ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... his country,) and awarding instant death to those who should dare to bury him. We know the importance which the ancients attached to the funeral obsequies, as alone securing their admission into the Elysian fields. Antigone, upon hearing the law of Creon, which thus carried vengeance beyond the grave, enters in the first scene, announcing her fixed resolution to brave the threatened punishment: her sister Ismene shrinks from sharing the peril of such an undertaking, and endeavors to dissuade her from ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... these Still do the tribes of men "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 their doom ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... indeed! All that I require, I have in abundance,—music, books, and my art. Here I am independent, for remember that he was a petted son of fame, who said, 'Books are the true Elysian fields, where the spirits of the dead converse, and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. What king's court can boast such company,—what school of philosophy such wisdom?' Verily if you had ever examined ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... 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 ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... 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, iv, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... du Deffand had sent Mr. Walpole a snuff-box, on the lid of which was a portrait of Madame de S'evign'e, accompanied by a letter written in her name from the Elysian Fields, and addressed to Mr. Walpole; who did not at first suspect Madame du Deffand as the author, but thought both the present and the letter had come from the Duchess of Choiseul. ("One of the principal features, and it must be called, when ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... proceeds in a series of transmigrations into the bodies of animals and human beings and thus passes through a purgatorial process which entitles it to appear again before the judgment-seat of Osiris. If found pure it is conveyed to Aalu, the Elysian fields, or the 'Pools of Peace.' After three thousand years of sowing and reaping by cool waters it returns to its old body (the preserved mummy), suffers another period of probation, and is ultimately absorbed into the godhead. One of the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... 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 ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... come, Juliana, when we may realise your Elysian deserts; but at present, you know, I am wholly dependent on my father. I hope to prevail on him to do something for me; and that our stay here will be short; as, you may be sure, the moment I can, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... many accounts of the soft and delightful region of Xaragua, in one part of which Indian traditions placed their Elysian fields. They had heard much, also, of the beauty and urbanity of the inhabitants: the mode of their reception was calculated to confirm their favorable prepossessions. As they approached the place, thirty females of the cacique's ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... true, somewhat better, but I feel no less that my end draws near. When I am dead you will have the agreeable consolation of returning to Europe. One will meet his relations, another his friends; and as for me, I shall behold my brave companions-in-arms in the Elysian Fields. Yes," he went on, raising his voice, "Kleber, Desaix, Bessieres, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Massena, Berthier, all will come to greet me: they will talk to me of what we have done together. I will recount to them ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... 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 ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... must here for the first 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 complacent recognitions ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... by the officious Titus, at the precise moment that Small yearned for his afternoon's solace, yet scrupled to ask for it; when the door had been made fast, and the first whiff exhaled, all his misgivings vanished, and he surrendered himself to the soft seduction. In this Elysian state ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... nothing of which man is more ambitious, than of being called an 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
... was plain, and he knew his class was held by these people as base. His Elysian gardens, thought he, were about ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... great bard, to charm and bless My heart with many a grand, illusive vision, And show those gorgeous fields of happiness, With vistas and with rivers all Elysian? ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... how long a time I lay, Dreaming the ecstasy of joys Elysian, Within my marble shrine. It fled away— The rapture ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... alternated between 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 be, he still clung to the erratic and ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... beyond my window are piled up like Alps. The shades of B. Franklin and W. Tell seem to walk together on those Elysian Fields; for it was here (or sufficiently nigh for the purpose) that in days gone by our pure patriot dwelt and flirted with Madame Helvetius; and yonder clouds so much resemble the snowy Alps that they remind me irresistibly of the Swiss. Noble examples ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... almanacs, diaries, and letters of the time, with the strange exaltation of spirit with which the New England Puritan regarded death. To him thoughts of mortality were indeed cordial to the soul. Death was the event, the condition, which brought him near to God and that unknown world, that "life elysian" of which he constantly spoke, dreamed and thought; and he rejoiced mightily in that close approach, in that sense of touch with the spiritual world. With unaffected cheerfulness he yielded himself to his own fate, with unforced resignation he bore the loss of dearly loved ones, and with ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... seemed that Noble Dill went hopping upon a waxed floor and upon Julia's little slippers; he was bumped and bumping everywhere; but in reality he floated in Elysian ether, immeasurably distant from earth, his hand just touching the bodice of an ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... produce gentle sprinkling showers, which they convey along with them from the sea, but more usually bring days of moist bright weather, cooling and gently fertilizing the soil, so that the firm belief prevails even among the barbarians, that this is the seat of the blessed, and that these are the Elysian Fields celebrated by Homer. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of the luxurious Romans of the empire; where Sylla lived, and Cicero loved to retire; which Julius loved, and Horace, and every Roman of taste or refinement. There spread away the lake Lucrine, bordered by the Elysian Fields; there was the long grotto through which Aeneas passed; where once the Cumaean Sibyl dwelt and delivered her oracles. There was Misenum, where once the Roman navy rode at anchor; Baiae, where once all Roman luxury loved to pass the summer ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Barnes at three o'clock. "Come to my room as soon as possible," was the message delivered by Mr. Bacon. Barnes was taking a nap. More than that, he was pleasantly dreaming when the pounding fell upon his door. Awakened suddenly from this elysian dream he leaped from his bed and rushed to the door, his heart in his mouth. Something sinister was back of this imperative summons! She was in fresh peril. The gang from Green Fancy had descended upon ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... and I summoned to the feast the gods, one and all. And with my own hand I raised the bridal torch, in return for the kindly honour thou didst pay me. But come, let me tell a tale that erreth not. When thy son shall come to the Elysian plain, he whom now in the home of Cheiron the Centaur water-nymphs are tending, though he still craves thy mother milk, it is fated that he be the husband of Medea, Aeetes' daughter; do thou aid thy ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... many a winding bout Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out, 140 With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that ty The hidden soul of harmony. That Orpheus self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear Such streins as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half regain'd Eurydice. 150 These delights, if thou canst give, Mirth with thee, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 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
... 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 ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Europe. He was so far fond of nature that, anticipating the most recently developed of modern tastes, he ascended Mount AEtna and the Mons Casius, in order to enjoy the spectacle of sunrise. In his villa at Tivoli he indulged a trivial fancy by christening one garden Tempe and another the Elysian Fields; and he had his name carved on the statue of the vocal Memnon with no less gusto than a modern tourist: audivi voces divinas. His memory was prodigious, his eloquence in the Latin language studied and yet forcible, his knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy far from contemptible. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... grass-plot and dropped a final curtsey to them, their hands beat together. The clapping travelled across the dusk of the quadrangle to the two watchers, and reached them faintly, thinly, as though they listened in wonder at ghosts applauding on the far edge of Elysian fields. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and harmony that seem eternal. This is also one of the mysterious charms in the Holy Families of Raffaelle and of the early painters before him: the faces of the Madonnas are beyond the discomposure of passion, and their very draperies betoken an Elysian atmosphere where wind never blew. The best painter of the unideal Christ is, I think, Rembrandt: as one may see in his picture at the National Gallery, and that most wonderful one of our Saviour and the Disciples at Emmaus in the Louvre: there they sit at supper as they might have sat. Rubens and ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald |
