"Halcyon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sols; but the pigeons are dearer than in London. Rabbits are very rare; and there is scarce a goose to be seen in the whole county of Nice. Wild-ducks and teal are sometimes to be had in the winter; and now I am speaking of sea-fowl, it may not be amiss to tell you what I know of the halcyon, or king's-fisher. It is a bird, though very rare in this country about the size of a pigeon; the body brown, and the belly white: by a wonderful instinct it makes its nest upon the surface of the sea, and lays its eggs in the month of November, when the Mediterranean is always calm and ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... valuable privileges. A like cordial understanding between the citizens and their sovereign existed under Henry V., and the City, in consequence, increased in opulence, population, and influence. Guildhall was built, and the streets were lighted at night by public lanterns. The halcyon days, however, of the City of London must be referred to the reign of the fourth Edward. The citizens never wavered in their attachment to his fortunes, nor did that gay and gallant monarch ever exhibit any coldness of feeling—at ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... however, and I would hold them: the halcyon breakfast, the queer hat, the pebble in her small shoe, the gold bag with the broken chain—the bag! Why, it was in my ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the dinner that followed betimes—during which Mr. Graham's pleasantries and Louise's gay spirits and mirth evoked in Lee a blitheness to which he long had been a stranger and in Dave a state of joyous bliss—they luxuriated in halcyon well-being. After the meal Louise, at her father's suggestion, went to the piano and sang while the men were smoking their cigars. And then followed an hour at cards, High Five, at which Mr. Graham and Dave won the most games; and then a maid, a Mexican girl, Rosita, brought in ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, the philosopher, the historian and the humble listener, there has been a divine melody running through the song, which speaks of hope and halcyon days ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... however, marked (75-84), which consist of the statues originally placed in the intercolumniations of the building, are figures of divinities, with various symbols at their feet, as the dolphin, the halcyon, &c., and are meant to represent, by the flow of the drapery, that they are flying through the air. They have been variously interpreted, but never satisfactorily; some authorities asserting that they were meant to celebrate the arrival of Latona at ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... on golden pinions, and I was as happy as the day was long. Winter made way for spring, spring gave place to summer. The halcyon hours sped brighter and brighter for me, from the time of violets—when nature's sweetest nurslings modestly blossomed beneath ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the howl of more than wintry storms, The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours Already ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... halcyon days. The storm began; From pole to pole the doubling thunder ran. Yet still with patient toil I saw thee urge Thy fearless passage o'er the gloomy surge; Still Faith discern'd the harbour of repose, And panting Hope look'd forward to ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... where the trappers and hunters had such good times in the halcyon days of the border, like that which befell nearly all the trading-posts and ranches on the Old Santa Fe Trail, was to be partially destroyed by the savages. During the early months of the winter of 1854, the Utes swept down through the Arkansas ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... present age has perhaps fallen somewhat in estate. It was natural that it should rush to a high perfection in the halcyon days of its growth. It is easy to make mournful predictions of decadence. The truth is the symphony is a great form of art, like a temple or a tragedy. Like them it has had, it will have its special eras of great expression. Like them it will ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Christian students in their synagogue. Jews took care of vacant benefices for the king. In the reign of Henry I. the Jews began to make proselytes, and monks were sent to several towns to preach against them. Halcyon times! With the reign of Stephen, however, began the storms, and, with the clergy, the usurper persecuted the Jews, exacting a fine of L2,000 from those of London alone for a pretended manslaughter. The absurd story of the Jews murdering young children, to anoint Israelites or to raise devils ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... friendship? Such were not her thoughts, nor were they in any way akin to this. They ran back instantly to years gone by,—over long years, as her few years were counted, and settled themselves on certain halcyon days, in which she had dreamed that he had loved her, and had fancied that she had loved him. How she had schooled herself for those days since that, and taught herself to know that her thoughts had been over-bold! And now it had all come round. The only man that ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... of the grand chamberlain, whose government only lasted for a day, when he was supplanted by another; of their dinners in the sunshine amid the corn-fields; of their boats, banners, and music on the water; of their gentleness, simplicity, and honest, hearty enjoyments. These halcyon days soon came to an end. The infamous Captain Argall, hearing that a number of white people had settled in this hyperborean region, set sail from Jamestown for the colony, in a ship of fourteen guns, in the midst of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... mine own folly of stubborn pride had known so little of content and the deep and restful joy of it; here, I say, greatly tempted am I to dwell and enlarge upon these swift-flying, halcyon days whose memory Time cannot wither; I would paint you her changing moods, her sweet gravity, her tender seriousness, her pretty rogueries, her demureness, her thousand winsome tricks of gesture and expression, the vital ring of her sweet ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... halcyon days which Robert passed at Silverton, but one stood out prominently before him, whether sitting by his camp-fire or plunging into the battle, and that the one when, casting aside all pride and foolish theories, Bell Cameron freely acknowledged her love for the man ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... not in the days of courtship assume the privilege of imposing rigorous commands, or resenting slight offences. If I forgot any of her injunctions, I was gently reminded; if I missed the minute of appointment, I was easily forgiven. I foresaw nothing in marriage but a halcyon calm, and longed for the happiness which was to be found in the inseparable society of a good ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... end Robert asked for delay, which was grudgingly granted him. Then he and his mother and friend fled over seas: he feverishly determined to get well and cheat the fates. But, after a halcyon time in Palestine and Constantinople, a whiff of poisoned air at Cannes, on their way home, acting on a low constitutional state, settled matters. Robert was laid up for weeks with malarious fever, and when he struggled out again into the hot Riviera sunshine it was ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... already felt too long! Nor let my words import more blame than needs. 100 The tumult rose and ceas'd: for Peace is nigh Where Wisdom's voice has found a list'ning Heart. Amid the howl of more than wintry storms The Halcyon hears the Voice of vernal Hours, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... days were halcyon times for Punch engravers. Mark Lemon would come down two or three times a week to edit and make up the paper, and would talk leisurely with Mr. Swain of such matters as concerned the engraver. No block was hurried. If it could not be ready for one week, it was held over for ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... old hostelry, close and faint of atmosphere and of a smell at once mouldy and dusty. The room that was called Nelson's, for no very definite reason, and the room in which the ministry used to have their whitebait dinners in the halcyon days before whitebait was extinct in Greenwich, pretended to some state but no beauty, and some smaller dining-rooms that overhung the river had the merit of commanding a full view of the Isle of Dogs, and in the immediate foreground—it was as much earth ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... spirit, that on all I cast An envied thought who rest in darkness find. My heart Love prostrates, Fortune more unkind No comfort grants, until its sorrow vast Impotent frets, then melts to tears at last: Thus I to painful warfare am consign'd. My halcyon days I hope not to return, But paint my future by a darker tint; My spring is gone—my summer well-nigh fled: Ah! wretched me! too well do I discern Each hope is now (unlike the diamond flint) A fragile mirror, with ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... lingered in the seventh and eighth centuries, when the arts were fostered in monasteries—the arts of gold-work and illuminated missals—'Ireland's halcyon days,' he said; a deep peace brooded, and under the guidance of the monks Ireland was the centre of learning when England was in barbarism. The first renaissance was the Irish, centuries before a gleam showed in ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... landlord to let them color them in the hotel kitchen. I had a deal of ado to make them wait till after breakfast, but I managed, somehow; and when we had finished—it was a mighty good Pennsylvania breakfast, such as we could eat with impunity in those halcyon days: rich coffee, steak, sausage, eggs, applebutter, buckwheat cakes and maple syrup—we got their out-door togs on them, while they were all stamping and shouting round and had to be caught and overcoated, and fur-capped and hooded simultaneously, ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... moderate; lenient &c 740; gentle, mild, mellow; cool, sober, temperate, reasonable, measured; tempered &c v.; calm, unruffled, quiet, tranquil, still; slow, smooth, untroubled; tame; peaceful, peaceable; pacific, halcyon. unexciting, unirritating^; soft, bland, oily, demulcent, lenitive, anodyne; hypnotic &c 683; sedative; antiorgastic^, anaphrodisiac^. mild as mother's milk; milk and water. Adv. moderately &c adj.; gingerly; piano; under easy sail, at half speed; within bounds, within compass; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cowbell in the contiguous mountain coppice told the slow approach of a dappled dairy, in charge of a swarthy French Canadian youth. All else was quiet about the place, that seemed to be lying in a sort of listless, half dreamy tranquillity and halcyon repose. The mansion itself was spacious, and built of the grey limestone of the district. Woodbine and hop, clematis and the Virginia creeper half concealed its rugged exterior, and clothed in tangled luxuriance the verandah that extended along the front. The roof was covered with shingles, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... commendation from us, his "Capture, Prison-Pen, and Escape," issued soon after the close of the war, having been among the most extensively read annals of the war. The "Sword and Pen" gives a sketch of the early life and adventures of the soldier-author, his school-boy days, and the incidents of that halcyon period of youth, all of which reads like a romance. His academic life is then detailed, after which the stern realities of life are encountered. His military life follows, and his capture by the Confederate troops. Then follows a recital of the ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... fastidious appetite demanded fresh meat or fish, white bread, vegetables freshly gathered, and ale of the best. As long as his store lasted, he worked as little as possible, and grumbled at the fortune that made him a laborer. But these halcyon days were few, and soon passed away, to be followed by decreasing allowances of the commonest food, fierce pangs of hunger, and miserable destitution. A bad harvest inflicted untold wretchedness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... happy and fair, Set gem-like in halcyon seas; The white winters visit not there, To sadden its blossoming leas, More bland than the Hesperides, Or any warm isle of the West, Where the wattle-bloom perfumes the breeze, And the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... sure he felt them. Both at length, the gods Commisserating, chang'd to feather'd birds. The same their love remains, and subject still To the same fates; and in the plumag'd pair The nuptial bond is sacred; join'd in one Parents they soon become; and Halcyon sits Sev'n peaceful days 'mid winter's keenest rule Upon her floating nest. Safe then the main: For AEoelus with watchful care the winds Guards, and prevents their egress; and the seas Smooths for the offspring, with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... man whose wife is gone away! From cares exempt, he dwells in perfect peace. His heart is light as boy's on holiday. He walks abroad and joys in his release. The cat is gone, the frisky mouse doth play. The fox remote, walk forth the wandering geese. So he, delivered, thinks his troubles past, O halcyon ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... intention was to have announced his determination to "give England ONE MORE trial"—to place Repeal once more in abeyance—in order to see whether England would really, at length, do "justice to Ireland;" in other words, restore the halcyon days of Lord Normanby's nominal, and Mr O'Connell's real, rule in Ireland, and enable him, by these means, to provide for himself, his family, and dependents; for old age is creeping rapidly upon him—his physical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... disciple of the learned patriarchs of ancient days is to be found. Received with open arms, persecuted, patronized, smiled upon, tolerated, it with the last phase of its existence, has reached, not the halcyon days of peace and rest, but its final stage, foreshadowing its decay from rottenness and corruption."[40] So also, in a like report, agree many witnesses. The common people of China are to-day Taoists rather ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... weather, we found ourselves colliding with an enormous halcyon's nest; it was full seven miles round. The halcyon was brooding, not much smaller herself than the nest. She got up, and very nearly capsized us with the fanning of her wings; however, she went off with a melancholy cry. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... glories of the ring broke out in the following passage in a too-good-to-be-forgotten article in 'Blackwood,' which, to those who may never hope to see in any circus anything so inspiring, so full of an imaginative glamour, may give some idea of the nightly scenes in the halcyon ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... Calico become in these halcyon days. His back and flanks were like the surface of a well-upholstered sofa. His coat of motley told its own story of daily rubbings and good feeding. The white was dazzlingly white and the carrot-red patches glowed like the inside of a well-burnished ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... from opening buds; so the butterfly expands its wings to the idle air; so the thistle's silver down is wafted over summer seas. An airy voyager on life's stream, his mind inhales the fragrance of a thousand shores, and drinks of endless pleasures under halcyon skies. Wherever his footsteps tend over the enamelled ground of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... there was a terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air dazed them,—a glance downward made their brains reel. But when a great wind filled their wings, and Icarus felt himself sustained, like a halcyon-bird in the hollow of a wave, like a child uplifted by his mother, he forgot everything in the world but joy. He forgot Crete and the other islands that he had passed over: he saw but vaguely that winged thing in the distance before him that was his father Daedalus. He longed for one ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... this information reached me; but it is necessary for you to know that the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company is vitally interested in the recovery of this money, or at least in the identity of the thief. And when we speak of the Interprovincial in these halcyon days we speak of J. Cuthbert Nickleby, its astute president. A thing like this could never have happened if Nat Lawson had been in ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... calculating, adding and subtracting at his old greasy book, till he would turn into bed, to forget another day's woes, and dream of punctual tenants and unembarrassed properties. Alas! it was only in his dreams he was destined to meet such halcyon things. What could such a man have to say to a young girl that would attract or amuse her? Poor Thady had little to say to any one, except in the way of business, and on that subject Feemy would not listen ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... In fact, his troubles were scarcely worth mentioning, for he was never cursed with learned servants!" Saying this, the doctor retired, lamenting his hard fate in not having been born in those halcyon days when cooks drew nothing but their poultry; whilst the gentle Celestina's breast panted with indignation at his complaint. An opportunity soon offered for revenge; and seeing the doctor's steam valet ready to be carried to its master's chamber, she treacherously applied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... after the "discovery" of the field by Mr. Peter Finnerty, old "Taeping," as Gordon's ex-marine engineer had been promptly nicknamed, arrived with his crushing battery, and then indeed were halcyon days for the Flat. From early morn till long past midnight, the little bar of the "Digger's Best" was crowded with diggers, packhorsemen and teamsters; a police trooper arrived and fixed his tent on the ridge overlooking the creek, and then—the ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... however, they had a stranger adventure than that of the Halcyon Stream, as they named the mysterious brook. They had been walking in the woods; and Rose, being tired, had stopped to rest, while Hildegarde pursued a "yellow swallow-tail" among the trees. Rose established herself on ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... the halcyon days of the bush. My husband had purchased a very light cedar canoe, to which he attached a keel and a sail; and most of our leisure hours, directly the snows melted, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the concern," said Watson, "and take to stagging in Surrey." This was supposed to be the bitterest piece of satire that could be uttered in regard to the halcyon country in which their operations were ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... scarcely anything of Asa's reign except the war which, as it says, was between him and Baasha of Israel 'all their days.' But, according to 2 Chronicles xvi. 1, Baasha did not proceed to war till Asa's thirty-sixth year, and the halcyon time of peace evidently followed immediately on the religious reformation at ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Cardenas in 1650, to about 1720, was the halcyon period of the Jesuit missions in Paraguay. During that time things went on in the missions after the fashion I have attempted to describe. The people passed their time in their semi-communistic labour, sweetened by ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... meanwhile, stood that domestic drama of love and its entanglements, which was destined to be deeply interwoven with the other principal incidents of this singular story? All on the surface seemed as bright and unruffled as the halcyon waters of the sleeping ocean before the days of storm have come to move and vex it. But how was it within the vail of the heart and teeming mind, where the currents and counter-currents of that subtle but powerful passion flow and clash unseen, often gaining their full height and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... must pass quickly over that time of my life on which I should most love to linger, those halcyon hours when, with Marian by my side and the prospect bright before us, we voyaged through those Indian seas, down the long coast of Malabar and up the long coast of Coromandel, past the Isle of Serendib, and the reefs and foaming seas, to where the tangled ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... resistance. The eight-hour clause in this first factory law met with much less opposition in the Legislature than was anticipated, and was enforced for a year before it was pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Illinois. During the halcyon months when it was a law, a large and enthusiastic Eight-Hour Club of working women met at Hull-House, to read the literature on the subject and in every way to prepare themselves to make public sentiment in favor of the measure which meant ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... down the stairs of heaven, the rain hissing on the village streets, the wild bull's-eye of the storm flashing all night long into the bare inn- chamber - the same sweet return of day, the same unfathomable blue of noon, the same high-coloured, halcyon eves - and above all, if he had anything like as good a comrade, anything like as keen a relish for what he saw, and what he ate, and the rivers that he bathed in, and the rubbish that he wrote, I would exchange estates to-day ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fine, subtle air that blows from the craggy peaks over the treeless plateau seems to take all superfluous moisture out of the men of Madrid. But it is, like Benedick's wit, "a most manly air, it will not hurt a woman." This tropic summer-time brings the halcyon days of the vagabonds of Madrid. They are a temperate, reasonable people, after all, when they are let alone. They do not require the savage stimulants of our colder-blooded race. The fresh air is a feast. As Walt Whitman says, they loaf and invite their ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... temperate, if not more judicious, and—in the higher literary organs, at least—unswayed by personal prejudice. But the result of even the most favourable notices upon a book is now but small. I can remember when a review in the Times was calculated by the 'Row' to sell an entire edition. Those halcyon days—if halcyon days they were—are over. People read books for themselves now; judge for themselves; and buy only when they are absolutely compelled, and cannot get them from the libraries. In the case of an author who has already secured a public, it ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... and the good were filled with sadness, as they listened to the low murmurs of popular discontent, which seemed to be gradually swelling into strength for some terrible convulsion; and they looked back with fond regret to the halcyon days, which they had enjoyed under the temperate rule ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... The Halcyon builds its nest upon a floating weed; so to the drifting fortunes of these wanderers clung a friendless child, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... singing. Was there ever such a dawn? Did ever song of birds sound so like the voice of eternal youth? Whence had come this air like the fumes from the winepresses of the gods? And the light! What colors, what tints, upon mountain and valley and halcyon lake! And the man asleep in the next room—yes, there WAS a Joshua Craig whom she found extremely trying at times; but that Joshua Craig had somehow resigned the tenancy of the strong, straight form there, had ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... saw of Billy was during one of my engagements at the Palace Theater, New York. He was then soliciting orders for some photograph firm, the halcyon days of his big money having faded to a memory. But he had been a good showman and his was one of the best liked working acts in the Curio, as the dime-museum ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... his course begun; When, lo! his disk burst forth—his beams of gold Seem'd earth as with a garment to enfold, And from his piercing eye the loose mists flew, And heaven with arch of deep autumnal blue Glow'd overhead; while ocean, like a lake, Seeming delight to take In its own halcyon-calm, resplendent lay, From Western Kames to far Kilchattan bay. Old Largs look'd out amid the orient light, With its grey dwellings, and, in greenery bright, Lay Coila's classic shores reveal'd to sight; And like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the South. When he left Monte Alloro the land had worn the bleached face of February, and it was amazing to his northern-bred eyes to find himself, on the sea-coast, in the full exuberance of summer. Seated by this halcyon shore, Genoa, in its carved and frescoed splendour, just then celebrating with the customary gorgeous ritual the accession of a new Doge, seemed to Odo like the richly-inlaid frame of some Renaissance "triumph." But the splendid houses with their marble ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... sport of every movement of the horse? If the lady be not mistress of her seat, and be unable to maintain a proper position of her limbs and body, so soon as her horse starts into a trot, she runs the risk of being tossed about on the saddle, like the Halcyon of the poets ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... place is a young thrifty orchard, and at the base of the hill is a finely cultivated piece of land, and there is nothing but the everlasting hills to tell us of the dear spot where we wandered in the halcyon days of childhood; we ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... halcyon wings our moments pass, Life's cruel cares beguiling; Old Time lays down his scythe and glass, In gay good-humour smiling: With ermine beard and forelock gray, His reverend part adorning, He looks like Winter turn'd to May, Night soften'd into ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... while the vine twists about the ribs of the cast-iron Pallas, And, on the zephyr afloat, the halcyon soul of the borax Blends with the scent of the soap, the brush of the white-washer's flying E'en as the chicken-hawk flies when ready to light on ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... 1728. They made as great a furore among the musical public of that day as would an opera from Gounod or Verdi in the present. The principal airs were sung throughout the land, and published as harpsichord pieces; for in these halcyon days of our composers the whole atmosphere of the land was full of the flavor and color of Handel. Many of the melodies in these now forgotten operas have been worked up by modern composers, and so have passed into modern music unrecognized. It is a notorious fact that the celebrated ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... 1851, appears to our backward gaze almost like a short day of splendid summer interposed between two stormy seasons; but at the time men were more inclined to regard it as the first of a long series of halcyon days. Indeed, the unexampled number and success of the various efforts to redress injury and reform abuses, which had signalised the new reign, might almost justify those sanguine spirits, who now wrote and spoke as though wars and oppression were well on their way to ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... horrible hallucination To grudge our hymns their halcyon harmonies, When in just homage our rapt voices rise To celebrate our heroes in meet fashion; Whose hosts each heritage and habitation, Within these realms of hospitable joy, Protect securely 'gainst humiliation, When hostile foes, like ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... resignedly to every glowing line of his, . . no, not his, but Sah-luma's poem, . . the lovely, gracious, delicate, entrancing poem he remembered so well! And by and by, as each mellifluous stanza sounded softly on his ears, a strangely solemn tranquillity swept over him,—a most soothing halcyon calm, as though some passing angel's hand had touched his ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... brook that circled along the foot of the descent; and here, turning joyfully to the left, we rode in luxury and ease over the white pebbles and the rippling water, shaded from the glaring sun by an overarching green transparency. These halcyon moments were of short duration. The friendly brook, turning sharply to one side, went brawling and foaming down the rocky hill into an abyss, which, as far as we could discern, had no bottom; so once more we betook ourselves to the detested woods. When next we came forth from their dancing ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... sea-horse on the ocean Own no dear domestic cave, Yet he slumbers without motion On the still and halcyon wave; If on rainy days the loafer Gamble when he cannot roam, The police will help him so far As to find him here ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Waiting, Usher of the Black Rod, Deputy Groom of the Stole, Chief Equerry to the Princess Royal, (which appointment only lasted till the princess was five years old), Lord Gold Stick, Keeper of the Royal Robes; till, at last, he had culminated for ten halcyon years in a Lord of the Bedchamber. In the latter portion of his life he had grown too old for this, and it was reported at Ballindine, Dunmore, and Kelly's Court,—with how much truth I don't know,—that, since her Majesty's accession, he had ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... ways. He traced his impression, on coming to consider, back to a mere three words she had begun by using about Charlotte Stant. She simply "cleared them out"—those had been the three words, thrown off in reference to the general golden peace that the Kentish October had gradually ushered in, the "halcyon" days the full beauty of which had appeared to shine out for them after Charlotte's arrival. For it was during these days that Mrs. Rance and the Miss Lutches had been observed to be gathering themselves for departure, and it was with that difference ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... companion of sperrit, same as I have, that keeps a' drivin an a drivin at him, and makes him be up an doin. An now, I declar, if I ain't gittin to be a confirmed wanderer agin, same as I was in the days of my halcyon an shinin youth. Besides, I have a kine o' feelin as if I'd be a continewin this here the rest of ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... halcyon period was yet afar off, and the colonel roused himself to the duty of the hour. With the best intentions he had let loose upon the community, in a questionable way, a desperate character. It was no ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the manner of his friend Poppins that he could not now expect to receive that high deference which was paid to him about the time that Johnson of Manchester had been in the ascendant. Those had been the halcyon days of the firm, and Robinson had then been happy. Men at that time would point him out as he passed, as one worthy of notice; his companions felt proud when he would join them; and they would hint to him, with a mysterious reverence that was very gratifying, their assurance ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... better times often administer a new and refreshing zest to present enjoyment. Despair, therefore ill becomes one who has follies to bewail, and a God to trust in. Johnson and Goldsmith, with numerous others, at some seasons were plunged deep in the waters of adversity, but halcyon days awaited them: and even those sons of merit and misfortune whose pecuniary troubles were more permanent, in the dimness of retrospection, only stand out invested ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... on Vertot's passion for revolutions are admirable,(685) and yet it is natural for an historian to like to describe times of action. Halcyon days do not furnish matter for talents; they are like the virtuous couple in a comedy, a little insipid. Mr. Manly and Lady Grace, Mellefont and Cynthia, do not interest one much. Indeed, in a tragedy ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... During the halcyon period of union between kirk and king their hearty agreement on the subject of witchcraft failed not to heat the fires against the persons suspected of such iniquity. The clergy considered that the Roman Catholics, their principal enemies, were equally devoted ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... halcyon days with Miss Plinlimmon because, as they were the last I spent at the Genevan Hospital, so they soften all my recollections of it with their own gentle prismatic haze. In fact, a bare fortnight had gone by since my adventure on the spire when I was summoned to Mr. Scougall's ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... halcyon broods through the Sabbath-days of winter, and, looking from her nest, sees the waves of a summer calm and brightness,—now while she meditates, with the eggs under her wings, of a fast-approaching time when she shall teach her song to the little flock that's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... perverse and wicked a doctrine." To the ancients all beyond the region they had traversed was an unknown land, clothed in darkness, crowded with mystery and allurement. Across the weltering wastes of brine, in a halcyon sea, the Hindu placed the White Isle, the dwelling of translated and immortalized men.8 Under the attraction of a mystic curiosity, well might the old, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... hearing a deep sigh, he shrugged his shoulders, and looked as pitiable as a prime minister with a rebellious cabinet. At length he ventured to lift up his head; there was not a wrinkle on the face of ocean; a halcyon fluttered over him, and then scudded before his canoe, and gamesome porpoises were tumbling at his side. The sky was cloudless, except in the direction to which he was driving; but even as Popanilla observed, with some misgivings, the mass of vapours ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... Bob and Sue, who have ice-cream, Life is a glowing, halcyon dream, While Tom stands empty by; And says, "Gee! fellers, ain't it prime? Say, I had ice-cream too, one time, And it was ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells
... often had to content themselves with going on foot through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon period of their felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as a favor than as a scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and confidential communications were not disturbed by the loud rattle of the wheels, and ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... little we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those halcyon moments of our first house-keeping. To be the confidential friend in a hundred families in the town,—cutting the social trifle, as my friend Haliburton says, "from the top of the whipped syllabub to the bottom ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... institutions abhorrent to their souls and fatal to their prosperity, forced upon them at the point of the bowie-knife and the muzzle of the revolver by hordes of sordid barbarians from a hostile soil, their natural and necessary enemies. And the sweet harbinger of this blessed peace, the halcyon which broods over the stormy waves and tells of the calm at hand, is a bribe so cunningly devised that its contrivers firmly believe it will buy up the souls of these much-injured men, and reconcile them to the shame and infamy of trading away their lights and their honor as the boot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... which succeeded Christmas were a period of halcyon peace for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover came to the villa when he pleased, but was still careful not to encroach on the license allowed him. Once a week he permitted himself the delight of five-o'clock tea in Mrs. Sheldon's drawing-room, on which ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... ocean adventurers For myself I am unworthy of the honor (of martyrdom) Forbids all private assemblies for devotion Force clerical—the power of clerks Great Privilege, the Magna Charta of Holland Guarantees of forgiveness for every imaginable sin Halcyon days of ban, book and candle Heresy was a plant of early growth in the Netherlands In Holland, the clergy had neither influence nor seats Invented such Christian formulas as these (a curse) July 1st, two Augustine monks were burned at Brussels King of Zion to be pinched to death with red-hot ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... replied, "is a savoury and nourishing dish, the 'poor man's steak' I believe it is commonly called. When I was younger, Mrs. Wilkins, they were cheaper. For twopence one could secure a small specimen, for fourpence one of generous proportions. In the halcyon days of youth, when one's lexicon contained not the word failure (it has crept into later editions, Mrs. Wilkins, the word it was found was occasionally needful), the haddock was of much comfort and support to me, a very present help in time of trouble. In those days a kind friend, without ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... [16] At present we are like mariners on the ocean: they may sail on for ever, but the seas they have crossed are no more theirs than those that are still unsailed. But if we hold the fortresses, the enemy will find they are living in a hostile land, while we have halcyon weather. [17] Some of you may dread the thought of garrison duty far from home; if so, dispel your doubts. We Persians, who must, as it is, be exiles for the time, will undertake the positions that are nearest to the foe, while it will be for you to occupy the ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... follows the high walls of the Villa Palmieri, which is now very private American property, but is famous for ever as the first refuge of Boccaccio's seven young women and three young men when they fled from plague-stricken Florence in 1348 and told tales for ten halcyon days. It is now generally agreed that if Boccaccio had any particular house in his mind it was this. It used to be thought that the Villa Poggio Gherardo, Mrs. Ross's beautiful home on the way to Settignano, was the first refuge, and the Villa Palmieri the second, but the latest researches have ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... with grinding of brakes and precipitate speed. Arrived at the post-office, Dr. Mason and the two gamblers left the coach; and a store-keeper and two surveyors employed by the great Malakoff Mining Company took passage to Nevada City. In those halcyon days of hydraulic mining, the Malakoff, employing fifty men, was known to clean up $100,000 in thirty days. It was five hundred feet through dirt and gravel to bed-rock, and a veritable canon had been washed out ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... were halcyon days, when I returned to spend the vacations at the Lodge, and found myself ever a welcome visitor at the Hall. With a proud heart I recounted to Sir Alexander, all my boyish triumphs at school, and the good baronet listened to my enthusiastic ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... river in its boldest course," she wrote, "interspersed by halcyon isles on which Nature has lavished all her prodigality in tree, vine, and flower, banked by noble bluffs three hundred feet high, their sharp ridges as exquisitely definite as the edge of a shell; their summits adorned with those same beautiful trees and with buttresses of rich rock, crested with ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... east wind, when the morning's breast Gleams like a bird's that leaves the nest, A fledgeling halcyon's bound on quest, Drives wave on wave on wave to west Till all the sea be life and light, So time's mute breath, that brings to bloom All flowers that strew the dead spring's tomb, Drives day on day on day to doom Till all ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... splendent with Theories, Philosophies, Sensibilities,—beautiful art, not only of revealing Thought, but also of so beautifully hiding from us the want of Thought! Paper is made from the rags of things that did once exist; there are endless excellences in Paper.—What wisest Philosophe, in this halcyon uneventful period, could prophesy that there was approaching, big with darkness and confusion, the event of events? Hope ushers in a Revolution,—as earthquakes are preceded by bright weather. On ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... halcyon months Yuki San lived in a dream. The ample compensation Merrit insisted upon making for the hospitality extended to him more than met the modest needs of the little household, and once again, as in ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... glance, on returning to the old ground, that the village itself has undergone some alterations. Though belonging to a part of the country occasionally accused of being "unenterprising," it had not proved insensible to the general movement felt throughout the republic, in those halcyon days of brilliant speculation, which commenced with the promise of good fortune to all, and ended by bringing poverty to many, and disgrace to others. A rail-road now runs through the principal street, and the new depot, a large, uncouth ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Election of 1900 the Party had a splendid solidarity and a fine enthusiasm. There had been just sufficient new blood infused into it to counteract the jealous humours and to minimise the weariness of spirit of those older members who had served in the halcyon days of Parnell and had gone through all the squalidness and impotence of the years of the Split. Had the Party been rightly handled, and led by a man of strong will and inflexible character, it could ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... those halcyon days of the little wars would come again, when a captain could ride out almost any time at the held of his band of mercenaries and see honest fighting and divide honest spoils! There was much knocking about of men and horses, but very little ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a lover," and we elderly people are always pleased to note the progress of young folks' love affairs, especially if either of them is a relative of ours. In them we seem to renew our youth, for their entrancements seem to carry us back to the halcyon days when we ourselves were young. When "Love took up the glass of time and turned it in his glowing hands" everything seemed of a roseate hue, and we dwelt in the seventh heaven of delight, at peace with ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... wrote the record of that halcyon day in illuminated manuscript, all glowing with purple and gold, with angel faces peeping through a graceful network ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... his foes, He lived a stranger in a foreign land. She, too, that maiden, 'twas her fate to share Her husband's troubles for her beauty rare. Still 'twas a little heav'n their new home where The halcyon days of mutual love were spent. 'Tis sweet to love and sweeter to be loved; And thus in their new home their life of joy They spent in undisturbed solitude; But ah! this even was not long to be. One day the news was brought to their new ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... In the halcyon days of Cartagena's greatness, when, under the protection of the powerful mother-country, her commerce extended to the confines of the known world, her streets and markets presented a scene of industry and activity wholly foreign ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... too rare, these halcyon days, When earth's a paradise rose-petalled, For you to chill us with a phrase: "The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... where a tenant previously paid L100 a year rent, all he will have to pay—even at twenty-four years' purchase—is L80 a year, and at that rate with the bonus the landlord obtains twenty-seven years' purchase. But this scale is a little halcyon in most instances. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... at Rome. On this memorable day the Sistine chapel and its paintings were kept to the last; and Watts, high though his expectations were, was overwhelmed at what he saw. 'Michelangelo', he said, 'stands for Italy, as Shakespeare does for England.' So the four years went by till in 1847 this halcyon period came to an end. The Royal Commission of Fine Arts was offering prizes for fresco-painting, and Watts felt that he must put his growing powers to the test and utilize what he had learnt. This time he chose for his subject 'Alfred inciting the English to resist the Danes by sea'. He ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... ideas of rank and social caste, and they have a humour which is homely, but thoroughly genial, and quite the monopoly of their race. They insist on the whole of Christmas week for a holiday. 'Missus' must manage how she can. To insist on chaining them down in the kitchen during that halcyon time would stir up blank rebellion. Dancing and music are their favourite Christmas recreations; they manage both with a will. In the city suburbs there are many modest little frame-houses inhabited by the blacks; now and then a homely inn kept by a dusky landlord. Here ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... seemed almost mutual, we were nevertheless the best of friends. Once or twice she dined with me at a restaurant, and went to a play afterwards, on such occasions remarking that it seemed like "old times," in the early days of our blissful love. And sometimes she would recall those sweet halcyon hours, until I felt a pang of regret that my trust in her had been shaken by that letter found among the dead man's effects and that tiny piece of chenille. But I steeled my heart, because I felt assured that the ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... stream or dotted its still pools with scattered sequins of sunshine, where light winnowed through the dome of the leaves; and at one spot, on a wrinkled root that wound crookedly from the alder into the river, there glimmered a halcyon, like an opal on a miser's bony finger. From above the tree-tops there sounded cynic bird-laughter, and gazing upwards Martin saw a magpie flaunt his black and white plumage across the valley; while at hand the more musical merriment ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... halcyon days are over, Age and winter close us slowly round, And these sounds at fall of even Dim the sight and muffle all the sound. And at the married fireside, sleep of soul and sleep of fancy, Joan and Darby. Silence of the world without a sound; ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... night-key, and made her way to what had been the back parlor of the house. In that densification of population which proceeds so incessantly on Manhattan Island this old house, like many another, was modernly compelled to hold more people than it had been meant for in the halcyon days when Second Avenue was a fashionable thoroughfare. The second floor of the house had been let, without board, to a gentleman and his wife, and the rooms above to single gentlemen. The parlor floor and the basement were made ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... have passed to the heart of the Hills, For a season of halcyon hours, 'Mid the music of murmurous rills, And ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... said he, my beloved girl, in your style and expressions: and the affectionate things you say of me are inexpressibly obliging; and again, with this kiss, said he, do I confirm for truth all that you have promised for my intentions in this letter.—O what halcyon days are these! God continue them!—A ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... must, at the same time, recollect that though Dryden is nowhere censured for extravagance, poets are seldom capable of minute economy, and that Lady Elizabeth was by education, and perhaps by nature, unfitted for supplying her husband's deficiencies. These halcyon days, too, were but of short duration. The burning of the theatre, in 1670,[32] greatly injured the poet's income from that quarter; his pension, like other appointments of the household establishment of Charles II., was very irregularly paid; ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... floods we'll sing and play And celebrate a halcyon day; Great Nephew Aeolus make no ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian philosopher and historian—the humble listener—there has been a divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... Captain, "takes one back, suh, to the halcyon days of American history. I refeh, suh, to those times when the plantahs of the black prairie belt of Alabama lived like princes, in the heart of ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... the sea be smooth and bright, Sparkling with the stars of night, And my ship's path be ablaze With the light of halcyon days, Still I know my need of Thee; ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... of the bursting spray, O halcyon bird, That wheelest crying, crying, on thy way; Who knoweth grief can read the tale of thee: One love long lost, one song for ever heard And ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... me without a sou in the locanda at Venice," said Mistigris. "And I had to get from Venice to Rome by painting portraits for five francs apiece, which they didn't pay me. However, that was my halcyon time. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... and sorrow, towards which, as to their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of man's heart are continually travelling. Obliquely we were nearing the sea upon our left, which also must, under the present circumstances, be repeating the general state of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the light, bore an orchestral part in this universal lull. Moonlight, in the first timid tremblings of the dawn, were now blending: and the blendings were brought into a still more exquisite state of unity, by a slight ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Those halcyon days were too serene to last long. When his honour the Laird of Gandercleugh, with his wife and three daughters, the minister, the gauger, mine esteemed patron Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham, and some round ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... paper, and above a square mile of skins of vellum have been employ'd to no purpose, to settle peace among those sons of violence. Pray, who is he that will say unto them, Go and disband yourselves? But lo! by this transformation it is done at once, and the halcyon days of publick tranquillity return: For neither the military temper nor discipline can taint the soft sex for a whole age to come: Bellaque matribus invisa, War odious to mothers, will not grow immediately palatable ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... for the penniless, halcyon days for the toady and the sycophant. There was still much of the old oriental munificence about the court, and sovereigns like Mazarin and Louis XIV. granted pensions for a copy of flattering verses, or gave away places as the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... waves are strown beneath your prow, Like carpets for a victor's feet; You call slow zephyrs to your brow, In listless luxury complete: Love, the true Halcyon, guides your ship; Oh, might his pinion touch ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... julep or so," he replied apologetically. "I rode over to the race track to see the new trotter. I've called him Halcyon, Jinny," he continued, with enthusiasm. "And he'll win the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... During this same halcyon season two priests, who had been selected by the Bonapartes, arrived in the island, as also a Corsican doctor, Antommarchi. Napoleon was disappointed with all three. The doctor, though a learned anatomist, knew little of chemistry, and at an early interview with Napoleon ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... certain stratum of society, Carrie was comfortably established—in the eyes of the starveling, beaten by every wind and gusty sheet of rain, she was safe in a halcyon harbour. Drouet had taken three rooms, furnished, in Ogden Place, facing Union Park, on the West Side. That was a little, green-carpeted breathing spot, than which, to-day, there is nothing more beautiful in Chicago. It afforded a vista pleasant to contemplate. The best room looked out upon ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Premier of South Australia has announced that the Governor's salary will in future be reduced by two thousand pounds; his reasons are obvious. The other Colonies will follow suit for a certainty, so the halcyon days of an Australian Governor may fairly be said to ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... mentions, she asked that Charles Kemble might be presented to her, when the gentleman had the opportunity of making his "best genteel-comedy bow." Now it was on the younger generation of the Kembles that the Queen bestowed her gracious countenance. These were halcyon days for society as well as for the stage, when, in Mrs. Oliphant's words, "the Queen was in the foreground of the national life, affecting it always for good, and setting an example of purity and virtue. The theatres ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler |
