"Elysian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 that you can't even hope to live up to have no place ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... 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
... Hermotimus averred) saw pretty visions, and suffered I know not what. [1008]Errant exangues sine corpore et ossibus umbrae. Others grant the immortality thereof, but they make many fabulous fictions in the meantime of it, after the departure from the body: like Plato's Elysian fields, and that Turkey paradise. The souls of good men they deified; the bad (saith [1009]Austin) became devils, as they supposed; with many such absurd tenets, which he hath confuted. Hierome, Austin, and other Fathers of the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... two thousand years before we find it in picture form. Certain scenes which are found in the Book of the Dead as vignettes accompanying certain texts or chapters, e.g., the Fields of Hetep, or the Elysian Fields, are exceedingly old, and are found on sarcophagi of the XIth and XIIth dynasties; but the earliest picture known of the Judgment Scene is not older than the XVIIIth dynasty. In the oldest Theban papyri of the Book of the Dead no Judgment Scene ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... his lyric flights than any similar assemblage that could be collected haphazard in some modern castle. They did not pretend—they knew. Even you, Lady Alice, could frame a neat verse in Latin and cap some pleasant jest with a line from Homer. When Milton dreamed aloud of bathing in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, of inhaling the scents of nard and cassia, 'which the musky wings of the Zepyhr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides,' they followed each turn and swoop of his fancy with an active sense of ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... enchanting, entrancing, enravishing[obs3]. charming; delightful, felicitous, exquisite; lovely &c. (beautiful) 845; ravishing, rapturous; heartfelt, thrilling, ecstatic; beatic[obs3]; beatific; seraphic; empyrean; elysian &c. (heavenly) 981. palmy, halcyon, Saturnian. Phr. decies repetita placebit[Lat]; "charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul" [Pope]; "sweetness and light" [Swift]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... better scholars; 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 itself a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 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
... alphabetical characters, their 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... blended With the gorgeous golden rays; Phantasies of bliss descended In a myrrh'd Elysian haze; And in lyre-born chords extended Harmonies ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... who sublime 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
... 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 herring ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Elysian, Heard their ringing tones of mirth, But a brighter, fairer vision Called ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... 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
... immediately seized. In the hope that he would abjure his extravagant errors, 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 as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... always before his soul, as before Mahomet's in the fairest sky, a dark cloud; and, as Cain upon the earth, an eternal fear would pursue him. Yes, if all the woods upon this earth were groves of pleasure; if all the valleys were Kampaner valleys; if all the islands were blessed, and all the fields Elysian; if all eyes were cheerful and all the hearts joyful,—yes, then—no! even then, had God, through this very blessedness, made to our spirits the promise, the oath of eternal duration! But, now, O God! when so many houses ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... those whose hearts are most susceptible of its forms. Many a time has he sat alone upon the brow of a rock or hill, watching the clouds of heaven, or gazing on the setting sun, or communing with the thousand aspects of nature in a thousand moods, his young spirit relaxed into that elysian reverie which, beyond all other kinds of intellectual enjoyment, is the most seductive to a ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... 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
... 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 two ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... [Mrs. Caleb Foote, of Salem],—I hoped I should see you again, before I came home to our Paradise. I intended to give you a concise history of my elysian life. Soon after we returned, my dear lord began to write in earnest; and then commenced my leisure, because, till we meet at dinner, I do not see him. I have had to sew, as I did not touch a needle all summer, and ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... 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 into immortals in whose veins courses ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... [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 spirits, and the ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... tempted to lend their anonymous pens for this kind of work. But even the tiniest little "one-horse" railway distributes neat little "folders," showing conclusively that its tracks lead through the Elysian Fields and end at the Garden of Eden. A conspicuous feature in all hotel offices is a large rack containing packages of these gaily coloured folders, contributed by perhaps fifty different railways for the use of the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... murmuring dell Ran a whisper of rapture Elysian; Across that Bathybian jell Ran a crack ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... 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
... about me with delight. "Could there, can there, be in Rome a more Elysian spot in which to feel health ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... 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, we found a neat, well-arranged eating-house. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... perfectly, and I thoroughly agree with Mr. Whibley 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 is powdered with ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... on the earth, he did not rise far above the horizon, and cooling breezes blew from the chilled summit of the cliffs. The vegetation seems to go on budding, flowering, and fruiting perpetually, as in the Elysian ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... everything that takes the eye—palaces, arches, Bon Marche shops, arcades, colonnades, great open spaces adorned with statues, forest parks, elysian driveways, and broad boulevards cut through mediaeval quarters in every direction, as well for air as for protection from the canaille blockaded in the narrow streets. San Francisco may have some canaille of her own to boast of one of these days; canaille engendered from ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... the infernal regions. The soul then 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 most impressive ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended 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 ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... for subdivision and laid out romantically named suburbs large enough to contain the entire population of California before the site of the city had been completely surveyed. Beyond their claims, the memorial parks, columbariums, homes of eternal rest and elysian lawns offered choice lots—with a special discount on caskets—on the installmentplan. Magnificent brochures were printed, a skeletal biographical dictionary—$5 for notice, $50 for a portrait—planned, advertisements ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... 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 ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... one of those rich slumberous afternoons of spring that seem to bathe earth and heaven with an Elysian softness; and from her little lonely nook shrouded in dusky shadows by its orange-trees, Agnes looked down the sombre gorge to where the open sea lay panting and palpitating in blue and violet waves, while the little white sails ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... 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" with golden ...
— Abroad • Various
... to the noises from the out-house, where Gaspare was unsaddling the donkeys. Artois glanced at him, and was more sharply conscious of change in him. To Artois this place, after the long journey, which had sorely tried his feeble body, seemed an enchanted place of peace, a veritable Elysian Field in which the saddest, the most driven man must surely forget his pain and learn how to rest and to be joyful in repose. But he felt that his host, the man who had been living in paradise, who ought surely to have been learning its blessed lessons through sunlit days and starry nights, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Ogygia about 5,000 stadia, but from the other islands not so far.... One of 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
... in 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 knew. She (for the newcomer showed such evidences of sex as cropped hair and ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... bleeding clay; but the Prtor drew back as if I were pollution, and sternly 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 must I, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of a passion, it is doubtful if any mood is more elysian than that which accompanies the waking moments on the morning after the great discovery. Leigh wandered for some time in this imaginary paradise, where everything seemed not only possible, but actually ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the deceased was taking down with him a little liquor for his own use in the under-world—which he holds to be possessed of a chilly and damp climate—and a little over to give a propitiatory peg to one of the ruling authorities there—or any old friend he may come across in the Elysian fields. This is possibly a misguided heathen thing of him to do, and it is generally held in European circles that the under-world such an individual as he will go to is neither damp, nor chilly. But granting this, no one can contest ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and through her mistress's hair—all conveyed the same soothing impression of drowsy, delicious quiet. On one side of the door were the broad daylight and the familiar realities of life. On the other was the dream-land of Elysian ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Mates of my youth,—yet not my mates, Stronger and bolder far than I, With grace, with genius, well attired, And then as now from far admired, Followed with love They knew not of, With passion cold and shy. O joy, for what recoveries rare! Renewed, I breathe Elysian air, See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,— Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb! Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil Of life resurgent from the soil Wherein was dropped the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... 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 the mummy for the opening ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... crew—was detained by Calypso in an island, whence he had no means of escape. The sea-god had further promised that Menelaus should never die, stating that, as husband of Helen and son-in-law of Jupiter, he would enjoy everlasting bliss in the Elysian Fields. Then, after describing the sacrifices which insured his return to Sparta, Menelaus invites Telemachus to tarry with him, although the youth insists he ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... of thy fountain still are sprinkled With thine Elysian water-drops; the face Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled, Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place, Whose wild, green margin, now no more erase Art's works; no more its sparkling waters sleep, Prisoned in marble; ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... 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 ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... hilariously. I recognised the man. The last time 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 ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... winds of the sea weary, All the waves of the sea rest, All the wants of my heart settle Softly now in my breast. All the stars that in heaven anchor, Golden buoys of Elysian light, Send me across the gulf promise ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... 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
... wax dim, overcast with clouds of age, The pangs of death compass my crazed bones; Thus to you all my blessings I bequeath, And with my blessings, this my fleeting soul My glass is run, and all my miseries Do end with life; death closeth up mine eyes, My soul in haste flies to the Elysian fields. ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... rare rapturous vision, Oh, purple, impalpable Cow, Do you browse in a Dream Field Elysian, Are you purpling pleasantly now? By the side of wan waves do you languish? Or in the lithe lush of the grove? While vainly I search in my anguish, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... 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 had roused him; the wondering ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Who art—who art Thyself alone? None, none can trace Thy course sublime, For none can catch a ray from Thee, The splendour and the source of time— The Eternal of eternity. Thy light of light outpour'd conveys Salvation in its flight elysian, Brighter than e'en Thy mercy's rays; But vainly would our feeble vision Aspire to Thee. From day to day Age steals on us, but meets thee never; Thy power is life's support and stay— We praise thee, sing ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... The Elysian days rolled on. Zoe was in heaven, and Severne in a fool's paradise, enjoying everything, hoping everything, forgetting everything, and fearing nothing. He had come to this, with all his cunning; he was intoxicated ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... to pretend that the insight of philosophers and the energy of artists help us very greatly in this bleak wrestling. They are there, these men of genius, securely lodged in the Elysian fields of large and free thoughts—and we are here, sweating and toiling in the dust of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... time, from Jubal's tongue, The tuneful anthem filled the morning air, To sacred hymnings and Elysian song His music-breathing shell the minstrel woke— Devotion breathed aloud from every chord, The voice of praise was heard in every tone, And prayer and thanks to Him the Eternal One, To Him, that, with bright inspiration touched The ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... 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. ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... me why so soon I came, I'll hide her sin and say it was my lot. In life and death I'll tender her good name; My life nor death shall never be her blot. Although this world may seem her deed to blame, The Elysian ghosts shall ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... 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 brushing against the thin partition, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of this Mankato contest we formed two parties, one from Mankato and one from Traverse, and started with two teams, on wheels, there being no snow, and the first day we reached a point in the woods, somewhere near the present town of Elysian, and there camped. When morning opened on us we found the ground covered with from twelve to fifteen inches of snow, which made it impossible to proceed further with our wagons. We did not hesitate, but accepted the only alternative that presented ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... yourselves, my friends: I am, it is 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 the latest events of my life. On seeing me they will become once ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... contract, that convict prisons should be workhouses, that all who paid duties should be electors, and that there should be no poor rates or tithes. Then Penn proceeded to lay out the city of Philadelphia, where they "might improve an innocent course of life on a virgin Elysian shore." It was here that the Declaration of Independence was signed ninety-three ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 spot in the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Canary Islands—the "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 of any maritime enterprise that has not had to do ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... isle 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 the sifted sands and caverns hoar; And all the winds wandering ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... from here, Your worthy consort did appear; Her form, in spite of my surprise, I could not fail to recognise. "My friend," said she, "beware Lest funeral pomp about my bier, When I shall go with gods to share, Compel thine eye to drop a tear. With kindred saints I rove In the Elysian grove, And taste a sort of bliss Unknown in worlds like this. Still, let the royal sorrow flow Its proper season here below; 'Tis not unpleasing, I confess."' The king and court scarce hear him out. Up goes the loud and welcome shout— 'A miracle! an apotheosis!' And such at once the fashion ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the Elysian fields—universally born of sunsets. When the golden clouds in the west turned to amethyst, sapphire, and purple, the poor savage thought it a vision of another land—a land without care or grief—a world of perpetual joy. This myth was born of the setting of the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... human 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 ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... very butterfly of sound. It struck on the sad, leaden ear of the monk much as we 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 in its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... has been such a 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 ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... snake approach'd. But Phoebus gave his aid, And check'd the greedy bite; with open jaws The serpent rears in stone congeal'd, as then Widely he gap'd. The ghost from earth descends, And views the regions he had view'd before. Exploring through th' Elysian fields he meets His dear Eurydice; with longing arms He clasps her. Here they walk, now side by side, With equal pace; now follows he, and now A little space precedes her: Orpheus there Back on Eurydice in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... public—so far as the literature of imagination was concerned—tended to be—"anything but the war"! There was an eager wish in both, for a time, in the first onrush of the great catastrophe, to escape from it and the newspapers, into the world behind it. That world looks to us now as the Elysian fields looked to Aeneas as he approached them from the heights—full not only of souls in a blessed calm, but of those also who had yet to make their way into existence as it terribly is, had still to taste reality and pain. We were thankful, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... genius as Schubert! And once more, Max Maria von Weber writes that his father's improvisations on the piano were like delightful dreams. "All who had the good fortune to hear him," he says, "testify that the impression of his playing was like an Elysian frenzy, which elevates a man above his sphere and makes him marvel at the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... 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 (2) ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... of the fight Wrapped his weaned bosom in its dark delight; No more the irksome restlessness of Rest Disturbed him like the eagle in her nest, Whose whetted beak[389] and far-pervading eye 310 Darts for a victim over all the sky: His heart was tamed to that voluptuous state, At once Elysian and effeminate, Which leaves no laurels o'er the Hero's urn;— These wither when for aught save blood they burn; Yet when their ashes in their nook are laid, Doth not the myrtle leave as sweet a shade? Had Caesar known but Cleopatra's kiss, Rome had been free, the world had not been his. And what ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... highway of Ancient History all at once sweeps the pageantry of Mythology. Philemon bends above old Baucis at the High School gate, though hitherto they have been sycamores. Olympus is just beyond the clouds. The Elysian Fields lie only the surrender of the will away, if one but droops, with absent eye, head propped ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... Polynesia, the way out of our own present. He met a Polynesian Queen—a Mary Stuart or a Helen of Troy grown old. "She had been passed from chief to chief; she had been fought for and taken in war"; a "Queen of Cannibals, tattooed from head to foot." Now she had reached the Elysian plain and a windless age, living in religion, as it were: "she passes all her days ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in their glee— Lawless rangers of all ways Winding through lush greenery Of Elysian vales—the viny, Bowery groves of shady, shiny Haunts of childish days. Spread and read again with me The ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... when from her dream Elysian She wakes to see the empty crib, and weep; Knowing her joy was but a sleeper's ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... meditation, to 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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, a waster, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the realms sidereal, Clothed with the immaterial, Far as the fields elysian In starry bloom extend, The stretch of angel ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... 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 heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regain'd Eurydice. These delights if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee I ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... morn! Welcome, a thousand welcomes! Care, who clings Round all, seems loosening now its serpent fold: New hope springs upward; and the bright world seems Cast back into a youth of endless springs! Sweet mother, is it so? or grow I old, Bewildered in divine Elysian dreams! ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... 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. Finally, however, Jupiter consented that ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... are they that Death comes to be regarded as a most stirring adventure. The archaeologist, too, better than any other, knows the vastness of the dead men's majority; and if, like the ancients, he believes in the Elysian fields, where no death is and decay is unknown, he alone will realise the excellent nature of the company into which he will ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... come back, 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
... the father of the Roman race wrought out the greatness of his people, the toils he endured "dum conderet urbem." "Italiam quaero patriam" is the key-note of the AEneid, but the Quest of AEneas is no self-sought quest of his own. "Italiam non sponte sequor," he pleads as Dido turns from him in the Elysian Fields with eyes of speechless reproach. He is the chosen instrument of a Divine purpose working out its ends alike across his own buffetings from shore to shore or the love-tortures of the Phoenician Queen. The memorable words that AEneas addresses to Dares, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... must be at least that of a princess, since she is my queen and lady, and her beauty superhuman, since all the impossible and fanciful attributes of beauty which the poets apply to their ladies are verified in her; for her hairs are gold, her forehead 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 fairness snow, and what modesty conceals from sight such, I think and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Earth, air, and heaven, and all terrestrial forms With charms bright as heaven's new-created light. And as she gazed on the blue firmament, And shrined the stars with her pure thoughts, and dreamt Of that which lay beyond; I gazed on her, And drew Elysian theories of Heaven, As though borne thither by wing'd seraphims. Oh! what is there in love that wreathes all things With an unfading halo of sweet light, Making ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... and the pet short, goes to the University, gets a prize for an essay on the Dispersion of the Jews, takes Orders, becomes a Bishop's chaplain, has a young nobleman for his pupil, publishes a useless classic and a Serious Call to the Unconverted, and then goes through the Elysian transitions of Prebendary, Dean, Prelate, and the long train of purple, profit, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... 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 ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... upon Elysian ones," James said, patiently looking up from his book. "And don't underestimate Magnolia's capabilities. She has sense organs, and motor organs, too. She can't move from where she is, because she's rooted to the ground, but she's capable ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... unrestrained, riot to anticipate another day's fuller satisfaction. Coleridge is printing "Christabel," by Lord Byron's recommendation to Murray, with what he calls a vision, "Kubla Khan," which said vision he repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers into my parlor while he sings or says it; but there is an observation, "Never tell thy dreams," and I am almost afraid that "Kubla Khan" is an owl that won't bear daylight. I fear lest it should be discovered, by the lantern of typography and clear reducting ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the movement of his favorite; his thoughts were absent from the present—absent from the earth! They were wandering in the unknown future, with the spirits of those he longed to see again in the Elysian fields. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... Rogers who fired at his associates his 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 is ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... 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 ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... A cloud of hues As beautiful as morning fills the air; And every breath I draw comes freighted with Elysian sweets! An iris-tinted mist, In perfumed wreaths, is rolling round the room. The very walls are melting from my sight, And surely, father, there's the sky o'erhead! And on that gentle breeze did we not hear The song of birds and silvery ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... told by Punchius to the Shade of Sayerius in the Elysian Fields. With Intercalary Observations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... 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 ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... roamed at will in these Elysian fields is to be presumed, since we have this amusing picture of three High Street belles and beauties in the "Traditions ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... 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 ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... or under the altar of God, and that they cannot leave their own tombs and be present where they will. They are, it seems, of senatorial rank and are not in the worst sort of prison and among murderers, but are kept apart in liberal and honorable custody in the isles of the blessed and the Elysian fields. Do you lay down laws for God? Will you throw the Apostles in chains? So that to the day of judgment they are to be kept in confinement and are not with the Lord, although it is written concerning them, "They follow the Lamb ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... misty wreathes Are fill'd with light elysian; O'er reed and leaf the zephyr breathes— So fades the ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... (and other tribes also) believed that after death the soul lay for a time in a trance, and then found itself floating towards a River which must be crossed. Beyond the River lay the Happy Hunting Grounds, the Elysian fields; but to oppose the weary soul anxious to reach this paradise there ramped on the other side a huge, flaming-red bison bull, if it had been ordained by the Great Spirit that the soul's time was not ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... breast—so white that people called her "the Daughter of the Swan." She could speak in the very voice of any man or woman, so folk also named her Echo, and it was believed that she could neither grow old nor die, but would at last pass away to the Elysian plain and the world's end, where life is easiest for men. No snow comes thither, nor great storm, nor any rain; but always the river of Ocean that rings round the whole earth sends forth the west wind to blow cool on the people of King Rhadamanthus of the fair hair. These were some ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... 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
... of raptures Elysian, Divine Squintifobus who, placed within reach Of two opposite worlds, by a twist of your vision Can cast at the same time a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... by imprisonment or freedom in separate localities than it is, in a common environment, by the fatal working of their interior forces of character, and their relations with all things else. Moreover, these antagonist kingdoms, Tartarean and Elysian, defined as the everlasting habitations of departed souls, have been successively driven, as dissipated visions, from their assumed latitudes and longitudes, one after another, by progressive discovery, until now the intelligent mind knows of no assignable spot for them. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... graceful ease into Elysian bowers of sensual joy. There he remained to breathe its poisoned air and feed upon the husks of such ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... madam, affright not thus yourself With outrage for your son Horatio; He sleeps in quiet in the Elysian fields. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... venture to deplore A great tradition cheaply prized, And yonder, on the Elysian shore, The ghost ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... opaline hue, With a heaven above it of glorious blue, And say is there scene, in this beautiful world, Where Nature more gaily her flag has unfurled? Or think'st thou, that e'en in the regions of bliss, There's a landscape more truly Elysian than this? ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... go to the lower regions," retorted the king, gayly. "You needn't go in search of the Elysian Fields; you carry them with you wherever ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... 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
... Who calls Amyntas? beauteous Proserpine? 'Tis shee.—Fair Empresse of th' Elysian shades, Ceres bright daughter intercede for mee, To thy incensed mother: prithee bid her Leave talking riddles, wilt thou?... Queene of darknesse, Thou supreme Lady of eternall night, Grant my petitions! wilt thou beg of Ceres That ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... nation's ear, Shakes some prescrib'd Lyceum's petty sphere; And pleased to mark the grin from space to space Spread epidemic o'er a town's broad face.— O might old Betterton or Booth return To view our structures from their silent urn, Could Quin come stalking from Elysian glades, Or Garrick get a day-rule from the shades— Where now, perhaps, in mirth which Spirits approve, He imitates the ways of men above, And apes the actions of our upper coast, As in his days of flesh he play'd the ghost:— How might they bless ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sight! It's enough that I was bored to death by it! The "young'un" often speaks of you. She is getting togged out to go with her mother and do the town in the way of At Homes and such things. What a life! Yet they seem to enjoy it, and pity us. Us! In Wall street! The Elysian Fields of America! Can I do anything for you here? You know I am ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... entered the castle. Men were singing and whistling for all they were worth; the air was full of music. It was not unlike the grand transformation scene in the pantomime when all that has been gloom and despondency gives way in the flash of an eye to elysian splendour and dazzling gaiety. 'Pon my soul, I never felt so exuberant in all my life. The once nerve-racking clangour was like the soothing strains of an invisible orchestra to my delighted senses. Ha! Ha! What a merry old ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Tribune, Margaret Fuller was all the time saving her money for the trip to Europe, which had her life long been her dream of felicity; and at last, on the first of August, 1846, she sailed for her Elysian Fields. There, in December, 1847, she was secretly married, and in September, 1848, her child was born. What these experiences must have meant to her we are able to guess from a glimpse into her private journal in which she had many years before recorded her profoundest feeling ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... Thersites! How are the lumps which Ulysses gave thee at Troy, and what is he doing himself in the Elysian Fields?" ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... body torn, Its feeling could retain and substance lose. Fool that I was! to sigh for human love! Why art thou here to madden me with looks,— Those womanly, caressing looks which fill My soul with wild desires! Back, to thy home, In that gold-girdled circle of daylight, That island of elysian loveliness, Where thou and I did'st one time idly dream! There breathe the passionate breath of orange-flowers— Walk in the sunlight till thy brows are flushed With its warm kisses—plunge thy snowy feet In the embracing waves and silver sand— Shake down magnolia-blossoms on thy hair— ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown |
