"Halcyon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... equilibrium Great error of despising their enemy Great battles often leave the world where they found it Guarantees of forgiveness for every imaginable sin Habeas corpus Hair and beard unshorn, according to ancient Batavian custom Halcyon days of ban, book and candle Hanged for having eaten meat-soup upon Friday Happy to glass themselves in so brilliant a mirror Having conjugated his paradigm conscientiously He did his best to be friends with all the world He came as a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... after his punch, he spent his hours in totting and 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
... For two 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 the earlier days, they went on jolly excursions, visited ancient temples, and ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... her softest balm infuse, Into his once too world-disturbed breast: There did he find a deep and quiet rest: The mockbird sang his vespers, while the star Shone sweetly o'er the rippling river's crest; There no rude sound the halcyon calm did mar, And Grief was absent still, and ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... 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 ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... Halcyon nights those, and then on Sunday morning we always breakfasted at old Martin's on University Place eggs a la Martin and that wonderful coffee and pain de menage. And what a wrench it was when I tore myself away from the delights of the great city and scurried back to my desk in sleepy ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... artistic charm which characterized everything she selected. It was a straggling, hilly, leafy village, full of archaic relics—human as well as architectural—sloping down to a gracefully curved bay, where the blue waves broke in whispers, for on summer days a halcyon calm overhung this magic spot, and the great sea stretched away, unwrinkled, ever young. There were no neutral tones in the colors of this divine picture—the sea was sapphire, the sky amethyst. There were dark-red houses nestling amid foliage, and green-haired ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... into a chaos of equal sadness, universal strife. It is the relation of the immediate isthmus on which we stand ourselves to a past and (prophetically speaking) to a coming world of calamity, the relation of the smiling and halcyon calm which we have inherited to that darkness and anarchy out of which it arose, and towards which too gloomily we augur its return—this relation it is which enforces the other impulses, whether many or ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... So passed the halcyon hours. During the day time Aristide in a corner of the Mayor's office, drew up flamboyant circulars in English which would have put a pushing Land and Estate Agent in the New Jerusalem to the blush, and in the evening played ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... household eaves." Io Aegien! Peace! "And the skylark at poise o'er the bended sheaves," Io Aegien! Peace! Here and there, everywhere, hear we Peace, Hear her, and see her, and clasp her—Peace! The grasshopper chaunts in the bells of thyme, And the halcyon is back to her nest ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... laurels now; None rises, singing, from your race like you. Dark melodist, immortal, though the dew Fell early on the bays upon your brow, And tinged with pathos every halcyon vow And brave endeavor. Silence o'er you threw Flowerets of love. Or, if an envious few Of your own people brought no garlands, how Could Malice smite him whom the gods had crowned? If, like the meadow-lark, your flight was low Your flooded lyrics half the hilltops ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... Lowin, an actor contemporary with Shakespeare and associated with several of Shakespeare's greater characters (his range was so wide, indeed, that it included Falstaff, Henry the Eighth, and Hamlet), that, having survived the halcyon days of "Eliza and our James" and lingered into the drab and russet period of the Puritans, when all the theatres in the British islands were suppressed, he became poor and presently kept a tavern, at Brentford, called The Three Pigeons. Lowin was born in 1576 and he died in 1654—his ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... mists of morning—we can fairly "smell" the river, as Huck himself would say, and we know that it is because the writer loved it with his heart of hearts and literally drank in its environment and atmosphere during those halcyon pilot days. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... artistic ideals. This strain was in her blood, and from childhood she had fought it, hopefully at times, and at other times, as now, despairingly. There were tears in her eyes when she turned to the window; and if they were merely tears of self-pity, they were better than none. Once, in the halcyon summer, David Kent had said that the most hardened criminal in the dock was less dangerous to humanity than the woman who had ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Our halcyon days must end, I fear, as all such days do eventually, and we must meet the more prosaic side of life. Let us hope it will assume a pleasing form. I am loth to hand in my resignation as Dominie Exactus, however," he ended ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... 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.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and, scarcely daring to try a sense, immediately shut them; then 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 ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... days of calm between the storms; halcyon days, as they have well been named, in which genius had sufficient freedom in determining its own direction to devote itself with all ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... 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 banyan roots ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... produced its pension: to be a poet, or reputed so, was to be—eligible for all things; and the fortunate possessor of a rhyming dictionary might have governed Europe with his metrical protocols. But these halcyon times are of the past—and so, verily, are their heroes. Farewell, a long farewell, children of oblivion! farewell, Spratt, Smith, Duke, Hughes, King, Pomfret, Phillips, and Blackmore: ye who, in that day of very small things, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... answered, "and cousin to the halcyon of the ancients. If, when next you go to sea, you take its feathers with you, you need ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... of the great World-Powers Lion and bear and eagle sullenly brood, Whether the slow folds flap o'er halcyon hours Or stream tempestuously o'er ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... preacher in London, and had moved,—if not in fashionable circles,—at any rate in circles so near to fashion as to be brought within the reach of Lady Eustace's charms. They were married, and for some few months Mr. Emilius enjoyed a halcyon existence, the delights of which were, perhaps, not materially marred by the necessity which he felt of subjecting his young wife to marital authority. "My dear," he would say, "you will know me better soon, and then things will be smooth." In the meantime he drew more largely upon her money ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... Oh, that 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 bloodshed, so we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her heart: that azure eye, That shone through sunny tresses, waving by; The brow, the cheek, that blush'd of fire and snow, Both blending into one ethereal glow; And that same breathing radiancy, that swam Around her, like a pure and blessed calm Around some halcyon bird. And, as he kiss'd Her wormy lips, he felt that he was blest! He felt her holy being stealing through His own, like fountains of the azure dew, That summer mingles with his golden light; And he would clasp her, till the weary ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... embattled lines, Back to the Past one glance be cast— The Age of the Antonines! O summit of fate, O zenith of time When a pagan gentleman reigned, And the olive was nailed to the inn of the world Nor the peace of the just was feigned. A halcyon Age, afar it shines, Solstice of ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... halcyon days, and abundant was the harvest of game which these bold reapers were gathering. During the days thus spent, in shooting the game and curing the meat, the hunters lived upon the fat of the land. The tongue and liver of the buffalo, and the peculiar fat, found along the spine ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... the way, during those halcyon days (the halcyon was there, too, chattering above every creek, as he is all over the world) we fought another battle. It has not got into history, but it had a real objective existence although by a felicitous afterthought called by us who were defeated a "reconnaissance ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... signature and date were added by the painter after exhibiting it, and probably while he worked on it, with the advantage of having compared the painting with others in the Royal Academy. The landscape recalls that glimpse of halcyon country of which we caught sight in The Infant Academy—its trees, its glowing sky, are equally adaptable to both subjects. The picture was exhibited at the British Institution in 1843, and was then the property of Sir James Cockburn, Bart., ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... had it all to themselves," said the young man; and he laughed. "Well, it was a halcyon period. What sort of a man is ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... more. It is a halcyon day, and with a companion I leave the train and push on for a view of the country. Away we gallop, my Indian companion and I, over the country toward a great plateau which we can see in the distance. The Salahkai is covered with a beautiful forest. We have an exhilarating ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... himself without a rival in the Queen's good graces, continued steadily to carry on within and without the realm the system of his predecessor, and royalty, as well as France, reckoned upon a succession of halcyon years, thanks to the re-union of the Princes of the blood with the Crown, to the tactics and personal conduct of the Prime Minister, and to his political sagacity, seconded by the military genius of the Duke d'Enghien. The imprudence of Madame de Montbazon and her lover Beaufort in the ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... supporter of the '15 and left it with sufficient means for its upkeep to his grandson William, the second baron and first viscount, who built on sure foundations. Common sense and a certain practical alertness in the halcyon days of the Enclosure Acts did nothing to diminish the patrimony of Charles, fourth baron, third viscount and first earl, though the estate came to be temporarily encumbered when the good fellowship of John, ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... see another such cabin as this—its great fireplaces, and the loft heaping full of pumpkins? O, Yosemite! O, halcyon days, and bed-time at eight P.M., tucking in for ten good hours and up again at six; good eatings and drinkings day by day, mugs of milk and baked squash forever, plenty of butter to our daily bread; letters at wide ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... a long and somewhat anxious day. While we were bowling along in the sweet sunshine and sweeter moonlight of the halcyon time, Uncle Sam might be dethroned by somebody in buckram, or Baltimore burnt by the boys from Lynn and Marblehead, revenging the massacre of their fellows. Every one begins to comprehend the fiery eagerness of men who live in historic times. "I wish I had control of chain-lightning for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... did not speak; but Leonora pressed his hand. The passing thought of the orderly, multifarious existence of the house behind her, of the warmed and lighted rooms, of the preoccupied lives, only increased the felicity of her halcyon dream. And in the dreamy and brooding silence all things retreated and gradually lapsed away, and the pair were left sole amid the ineffable spaces of the universe to listen to the irregular beatings of their own hearts. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... while ecclesiastical abuses are thus augmenting, ecclesiastical power is diminishing in the Netherlands. The Church is no longer able to protect itself against the secular aim. The halcyon days of ban, book and candle, are gone. In 1459, Duke Philip of Burgundy prohibits the churches from affording protection to fugitives. Charles the Bold, in whose eyes nothing is sacred save war and the means of making it, lays a heavy impost upon all clerical ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... been International Copyright in the more halcyon days of my "Proverbial" popularity, when, as reported (see the New York World on p. 124), a million and a half copies of my book were consumed in America, I should have been materially rewarded by a royalty of something like a hundred thousand ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden prime of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry Ludovic Speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix, as related duly in another chronicle of her history.(1) Arnold Sherman, an elderly friend of the Irvings, was there at the same time, ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... artists, scholars, students innumerable, all in their own departments capable of satisfying a youth's curiosity, by explaining to him the particular virtues of books discussed, or of antique works of art inspected. During those halcyon years, before the invasion of Charles VIII., it seemed as though the peace of Italy might last unbroken. No one foresaw the apocalyptic vials of wrath which were about to be poured forth upon her plains and cities through the next half-century. Rarely, at any period of the world's ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... 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. When it was getting ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... gave her positive happiness to see Michael so tranquil and content, and carrying himself with the air of a man who knows himself to be anchored in some fair haven after stress of weather; and, indeed, these were halcyon days to Michael. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... 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
... for here flocked the people to see the Discoverer. If they heard his voice they were happy; if some bolder one had a moment's speech with him that fortunate went off with the air of, "My children's children shall know of this!" There returned in this springtide travel sunniness, halcyon weather, bright winds of praise. The last health of the present body was his upon this journey. Health and strength harked back. All noted it. Jayme de Marchena held it for the leap of the flame before sinking, before ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... This halcyon period of our autumn will always in some way be associated with the Indian. It is red and yellow and dusky like him. The smoke of his camp-fire seems again in the air. The memory of him pervades the woods. His plumes and moccasins and blanket of skins form just the costume the season ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... harvested my first crop of filberts from my experimental garden here in town and my bushes at Halcyon Frunut Gardens (this is the name of my nut farm) are growing nicely and some have catkins for next year's crop. The filberts that I have just harvested were borne from three Cosford bushes of the French strain. I have some German strain that I received ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... Hope was able to tell him, and in a style which interested Lucy as well as her father. He had been a pioneer in California, and could narrate many a strange tale of fortunes made and fortunes lost in those wild, halcyon days. He had been a scout too, and a trapper, a silver explorer, and a ranchman. Wherever stirring adventures were to be had, Jefferson Hope had been there in search of them. He soon became a favourite with the old farmer, who spoke eloquently of his virtues. On such occasions, ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I lingered, by unseen hands fast bound, My willing fancy captive to the magic of sweet sound, And eagerly I listened to the whispering voices tell Of happy days of childhood, and the tear unbidden fell, As were pictured to the mind again the halcyon scenes of yore, And loved ones that no more I'll meet till on the ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... war. To suppress these sporadic disorders a small professional army was incomparably the best instrument, and it was, of course, best secured and maintained by the system of voluntary enlistment. Thus in the halcyon Georgian and Victorian days the right inherent in every sovereign Government to call upon its subjects for national service sank into forgetfulness, the ancient military obligations of Englishmen fell into desuetude, ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... 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 ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Schwirtz was away Una was happy by contrast. Indeed she found a more halcyon rest than at any other period since her girlhood; and in long hours of thinking and reading and trying to believe in life, the insignificant good little ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year—one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon (*1),—I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. But, uplifting my eyes, I saw that Berenice stood ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... did the dolphin mourn beside the sea-banks, nor ever sang so sweet the nightingale on the cliffs, nor so much lamented the swallow on the long ranges of the hills, nor shrilled so loud the halcyon o'er his sorrows; ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... of a Golden Age before the Fall, when man was free and happy, and which through the application of masonic principles is to return once more, finds an exact counterpart in the Socialist conception of a past halcyon era of Liberty and Equality, which is to return not merely in the form of a regenerated social order, but as a complete Millennium from which all the ills of human life have been eliminated. This idea has always haunted the imagination of Socialist writers from Rousseau to William ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Oh, surely Job himself never suffered such a trial of his patience! 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are; A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon; Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone; Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar, Being of its furthest fires oracular;— The evident heart of all life sown ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... rose of England bloomed on Gertrude's cheek:— What though these shades had seen her birth, her sire A Briton's independence taught to seek Far western worlds; and there his household fire The light of social love did long inspire; And many a halcyon day he lived to see, Unbroken but by one misfortune dire, When fate had reft his mutual heart—but she Was gone;—and Gertrude climbed a ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... period of halcyon weather. A kinder, more discerning and more helpful chief than Edmund Yates no aspiring young journalist ever had. He was as genial and as quick to recognise honest effort as Dawson himself, and he knew ten times better what he wanted, and a thousand times more ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... occasion like this. "Well, that alone ought to settle it. Under the circumstances, it would be flying in the face of Providence to leave Boston. The mere fact of a brilliant opening like that offered me on 'The Microbe,' and the halcyon future which Fulkerson promises if we'll come to New York, is as dust in the balance against the advantages of the Friday ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... keep Dan in complete ignorance of the whole situation. Dan, to be sure, took his unconscious revenge. His kind, puzzled eyes haunted her dreams, and the thought of him proved the one disturbing element in these halcyon days. In vain she told herself that he was an old fogy, that he had Sunday-school notions, that he wouldn't be able to see anything but wrong in a harmless flirtation that would end with Mac's return to college. But would it end? That was a question ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... 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, and managed to get ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... But such halcyon days could not last long. Even Paradise might pall on such a restless temperament as that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He began to sigh for the outer world in which he felt that it was his destiny to shine, for ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... House," and what a suitable and lovely name for one in his business, and one who had settled here after his service in the Revolution. For the halcyon was a fabled bird, whose nest floated upon the sea. It had the power of charming winds and waves, hence, "halcyon days" are days of tranquillity and peace. He had married Rebecca Loundes, the daughter of Christopher Loundes, of Bladensburg. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... with a farmer to bring from Greenwood such supplies of clothes as Mrs. Meredith wrote to Sukey to pack and send. To most the prospect would not have been a cheering one, but after the last few days it seemed truly halcyon, and Janice was scarcely able to contain her happiness. She poured her warmest gratitude and thanks out in a letter to Washington, which would have surprised him not a little had he ever received it, but the mail in which it went was captured, and it was a British officer ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... anticipation, saw himself welcomed as a contrast and received more than his usual meed of applause. This satisfied, for the time, his singer's vanity which he professed so greatly to despise. They entered on a spell of halcyon days. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... replies the lady to this compliment, "that hemlocke wheresoever it bee planted, will be pestilent [and] that the serpent with the brightest scales shroudeth the most fatall venome." Is there anything more certain? But that does not prevent the halcyon from hatching when the sea is calm, and the phoenix from spreading her wings when the sunbeams shine on her nest. This is what the husband remarks, and, guided by the onyx, the alexander, &c., after a mock ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... 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, ...
— 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 Italy or in France. But in the middle of the eighth century the Danes ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... joyously—all nature seemed to be in such perfect tune with the deep ease and satisfaction of his own soul, that every breath he took was more or less of a thanksgiving to God for having been spared to enjoy the beauty of such halcyon hours. By the willing away of all his millions to one whom he knew to be of a pure, noble, and incorruptible nature, a great load had been lifted from his mind,—he had done with world's work for ever; and by some ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... once he dared the watery world, O'er wild or halcyon waves, And saw his snow-white sails unfurled Above ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... velvet grounds; As hand in hand along the flowery meads His blushing bride the quiver'd hero leads; Charm'd round their heads pursuing Zephyrs throng, And scatter roses, as they move along; Bright beams of Spring in soft effusion play, And halcyon Hours ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 is come ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... lessening the labours of the next. Everything must be recommenced; and therefore,—so said these hopeless ones,—the penny with five farthings, the penny of which a hundred would make ten shillings, the halcyon penny, which would make all future pecuniary calculations easy to the meanest British capacity, could never become the law of the land. Others, more hopeful, were willing to believe that gradually the thing would ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... upon air. That she who seemed to be so much above him should have owned that she was all his own seemed then to be world enough for him. For a few weeks he lived a hero to himself, and was able to tell himself that for him the glory of a passion was sufficient. In those halcyon moments no common human care is allowed to intrude itself. To one who has thus entered in upon the heroism of romance his own daily work, his dinners, clothes, income, father and mother, sisters and brothers, his ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... 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 to which she went, and which both she and her husband ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... was interrupted on the honest man's account. He has been here these two hours—courting the mother for the daughter, I suppose—yet she wants no courting neither: 'Tis well one of us does; else the man would have nothing but halcyon; and be remiss, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... coachman, Nancy the laundress, of a gentleman residing at the capital. Their master had the happy eccentricity of getting more amiable with every rum-toddy; and as he never for any length of time discontinued rum-toddies, the days of Sol and Nancy at Judge Q.'s were halcyon. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... presence contrive to nestle into its buoyant and pure existence. If youth will enjoy itself virtuously with gymnastics, with music, with friendship, with poetry, there will come no hours of lamentation and repentance. They attend the imbecile and thoughtless. These halcyon days will return to temper and grace the period of old age; as upon the ripened peach reappear the hues of its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... us, emerging into the channel of a 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 ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... advantage to Prussia. They clutched eagerly, however, at his proposal that Prussia should form a league of the North German States, and made overtures to the two most important States, Saxony and Hesse-Cassel. During a few halcyon days the King even proposed to assume the title Emperor of Prussia, from which, however, the Elector of Saxony ironically dissuaded him. This castle in the air faded away when news reached Berlin at the beginning of August that Napoleon ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... knew on the day of my ordination, and in those halcyon moments of our first housekeeping! 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 of the sponge-cake, which is the foundation"—to keep abreast ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Forester, the then Prior, with the stipulation that in the event of a war with France the King should receive a sum of money equal to that which in time of peace would be paid to the Abbey of St. Denis. With halcyon days like these the Priory set about rebuilding what had been destroyed, and works were undertaken—much of which is standing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... of the infuriated girl were plainly audible all over the flats whereon were huddled the little cabins of log and adobe assigned as quarters to the few married men among the soldiery. These were the halcyon days of the old army when each battery, troop, or company was entitled to four laundresses and each laundress to one ration. Old and young, there were at least fifty pairs of ears within easy range of the battle that raged forthwith, the noise of which reached even to the shaded precincts ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... 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 ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... But this 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 less than his plain duty to put the man under restraint. To rescue from Fetters a man whose ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... its first dramatic appearance, was one of the most astonishing things that we saw in the whole course of our adventures. It was not a cerulean vault like that which covers the earth in halcyon weather, but an indescribably soft, pinkish-gray concavity that seemed nearer than the sky and yet farther than the clouds. Here and there, far beneath it, but still at a vast elevation, floated delicate gauzy curtains, tinted like sheets of mother-of-pearl. The sun was ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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 ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Those were halcyon days which followed for de Cosse and the lady his loyalty had won; days of sweet meetings and tender partings—of a union of souls which even death was powerless to dissolve. When they could not meet—and de Cosse's duties often kept him from her side—letters ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... there, even in the most responsible and glorious days of his administration; over and over again has the great President stolen an hour ... from his life of anxious care to live over again those bygone exhilarating and halcyon days ... with Sweet or me."—Henry C. Whitney in his Life ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... between Blake and his faithful sergeant. Behind these three rode another set. Sandwiched between two troopers was a man whom Sancho's people well remembered as Nevins' clerk and assistant, despite the fact that a bushy beard now covered the face that was smooth-shaven in the halcyon days of the supply camp. Then came some thirty horsemen in long, straggling column of twos, while, straight from the flank to the gate of the corral, silent and even somber, rode the engineer, Lieutenant Loring. To him ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... And now ensued a halcyon season, dewy dawns wherein I bathed and sparred with Jessamy, long, sunny days full of labour and an ever-growing joy of Diana's radiant loveliness, nights of healthful, dreamless slumber ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Hampton Court to lay the matter before his Grace of Newcastle:" "Please your Grace, it is hardly three months since the illustrious Treaty of Vienna was signed; Dutch and we leading in the Termagant of Spain, and nothing but halcyon weather to be looked for on that side!" Grace of Newcastle, anxious to avoid trouble with Spain, answers I can only fancy what; and nothing was done upon ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "make his head" early in life, and to acquire the gentle art of pistolling his friends, when now he would be studying Greek under Professor Jowett, or "coaching" for a civil-service examination. It was in bad taste in those halcyon days for a man to leave a pleasant social party in a state of sobriety, and he was liable to be challenged by his aggrieved companions if he did it frequently. The custom of locking the dining-room door and putting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... fair day, Which, like thee, to those in sorrow Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough year just awake In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon morn To hoar February born; Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kiss'd the forehead of the earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, And breathed upon the frozen ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Government House in Adelaide has been voted a distinct failure since she became its hostess. The 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
... constantly preached caution lest strength should be over-taxed, could find no fault with Francis' progress during these halcyon days ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... ourselves with exploring the 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 ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... love, with her luring smile, The mystic charm-light of halcyon hours, Shall no more with her witch'ry our souls beguile, As the leaves grow seer on Life's fading bowers, And the blushes are pale on ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... beautiful chapter on humming birds, and the names which in various languages these exquisite little creatures bear.] The amount is very large of curious legendary lore which is everywhere bound up in words, and which they, if duly solicited, will give back to us again. For example, the Greek 'halcyon,' which we have adopted without change, has reference, and wraps up in itself an allusion, to one of the most beautiful and significant legends of heathen antiquity; according to which the sea preserved a perfect calmness for all the period, the fourteen ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... halcyon hour when the Angelus falls like a benediction upon the waning day. Far off the notes were sounding gently, and nature, now that she listened, seemed to have paused also. A scarlet-breasted robin ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... what holy ground May Domestic Peace be found? Halcyon daughter of the skies, Far on fearful wings she flies, From the pomp of Sceptered State, 5 From the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with the situation in which she was placed. She succeeded beyond her hopes. Miss Warwick determined to accept of her unknown friend's invitation to Angelina Bower—a charming romantic cottage in South Wales, where, according to Araminta's description, she might pass her halcyon days in tranquil, elegant retirement. It was not difficult for our heroine, though unused to deception, to conceal her project from Lady Diana Chillingworth, who was much more observant of the appearance of her protegee in public, than interested about what passed in her mind in private. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... fetters and cast-iron forms of this rigid and wrinkled Old World. Doubtless, those struggles will long be arduous and trying: doubtless, the dictates of Duty will there often bear sternly away from the halcyon bowers of Popularity; doubtless, he who would be singly and wholly right must there encounter ordeals as severe as those which here try the souls of the would-be champions of Progress and Liberty. But Political Freedom, such as white men enjoy in the United States, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... 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 brow ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and took him finally aside and demanded a meeting in the name of Utie. The naval officer answered that he had simply relieved a lady from a drunken boy; but Tiltock, in the dramatic way common to halcyon old times, refused to accept either "drunken" or "boy" as terms appropriate to "the code," and pressed for an answer. In five minutes the naval officer replied, through his naval companion, that having ascertained Mr. Utie to be a gentleman's son, and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... ought to give the preference to the present Summer season that has but recently commenced, a season so rich in enjoyment. For now Unceasing are the charms of halcyon days, When the cool bath exhilarates the frame; When sylvan gales are laden with the scent Of fragrant Patalas; when soothing sleep Creeps softly on beneath the deepening shade; And when, at last, the dulcet calm of eve Entrancing steals ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... old days,—the halcyon days of youth,—after the sap was gathered, and the fuel piled high beside the arch, then it was that we sat down by the blazing fire and watched it burn; heaped on the logs, filled up the kettle, and again sat down ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... On 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 Morning. How ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to kid when he trekked from his farm; but the kids, which in halcyon times represented the interest on his capital, were now one by one dying as fast as they were born and left by the roadside for the jackals and vultures to ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... less true in fact, that reams of 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 ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... Now while the 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... a cheap substance known as beef suet, an imitation butter could be made, which was in composition and appearance the same as butter made by the ordinary process, and was exactly as nourishing a food. There has been much talk of the halcyon days to come when the progress of science will be so great that food will be made in the laboratory. Well, here was an important practical step in that direction. A cheap product worth three or four cents a pound could be easily converted by a chemical ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... London in the stage coach "Commodore", at the age of nine, were divided from a strenuous and successful manhood by so dark a gulf as to concentrate all the powers of recollection upon them with a desperate kind of intensity. It was the realization of a childish ambition conceived in that halcyon era which drew him to Gadshill, and he returned again and again to the contemplation of his earliest dreams and imaginings. He wrote from Gadshill of his old nurse—the original, it can ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... resumes his old Reinsberg Program of Life; probably with double relish, after such experiences the other way; and prosecutes it with the old ardor; hoping much that his History will be of halcyon pacific nature, after all. Would the mad War-whirlpool but quench itself; dangerous for singeing a near neighbor, who is only just got out of it! Fain would he be arbiter, and help to quench it; but it will not quench. For a space of Two Years or more (till ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... northernmost one. While we were at lunch, the breeze freshened so much that we were all glad to add some wraps to our light and airy costumes. A little later, a summer gale was blowing ahead, making some of us feel very uncomfortable and long for the halcyon days of the past, even with the accompaniment of the inevitable heat. Such is mankind, and womankind too for that matter, 'never blessed but always to be blessed.' The gale freshened, the screw was raised, the yacht pitched ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... enthusiastic about a Repeal of the Legislative Union) said that the picture of Irish misery drawn by Lord John Russell was the result of forty-seven years of union with England. Halcyon days were promised to Ireland at the time of the Union, but he called on the House to contrast the progress of Ireland from 1782 to the Union, with the state of Ireland since. He expressed his opinion ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... cannot know. He knows only what was and is, and his soul is overwhelmed with pity. In that moment those who are most deeply injured forgive and forget. They remember the time when all was well,—the sweet childhood, the blooming youth, the first love, the halcyon days ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... carried them back to many scenes connected with past experiences; and they lived again in the various happenings marking those halcyon days. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... The days of the Triumvirate had come, and the quarrel with Clodius—of Cicero's exile and his return, together with the speeches which he had made, in the agony of his anger, against his enemies. And all this had taken place since those halcyon days in which he had risen, on the voices of his countrymen, to be Quaestor, AEdile, Praetor, and Consul. He had first succeeded as a public man, and then, having been found too honest, he had failed. There can be no doubt that he had failed because he had been too ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... W.G.—in those halcyon days when Gloucester was worthy of the cheese whereof she is now so chary a producer—used to score with that heavy cut between point and cover, I too, greatly daring, cut it and laid it (the ball, not the cheese) dead. De mortuis ... ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... depths of his nature, the man wonders why it was that, in the halcyon days of courtship, he never beheld his beloved in the midst of a gunny—no, a dressing-sack. Of course, then, she didn't have to keep house, and didn't have so many cares to tire her. Poor little thing! Perhaps ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... ancient falchion, Which once flashed as freedom's star! Till sweet peace—the bow and halcyon, Stilled the stormy strife of war. Listen! now thy country's calling On her sons to meet her foe! Sweet is love in moonlight bowers! Sweet the altar and the flame! Sweet the spring-time with her flowers! Sweeter far ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... but bent on seeking ways and means for the safety and protection of nations,—as bent as Roger Seaton was on a force for their destruction. So the hours passed swiftly, and no interruption or untoward obstacle hindered the progress of the "White Eagle" as it careered through the halcyon blue of the calmest, loveliest sky that ever made perfect weather, till late afternoon when it began to glide almost insensibly downward towards earth. Then she roused herself from her long abstraction and looked through ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... our movements. She slept through all that day and the following night; and I watched over her with as much jealousy of all that might disturb her, as a mother watches over her new-born baby; for I hoped, I fancied, that a long— long rest, a rest, a halcyon calm, a deep, deep Sabbath of security, might prove healing and medicinal. I thought wrong; her breathing became more disturbed, and sleep was now haunted by dreams; all of us, indeed, were agitated by dreams; the past pursued me, and the present, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... verses in Nature, it is essential to every Chivalry and Nation and Man. "Polite Polish Society for the last thirty years has felt itself to be in a most halcyon condition," says Rulhiere: [Rulhiere, i. 216 (a noteworthy passage).] "given up to the agreeable, and to that only;" charming evening-parties, and a great deal of flirting; full of the benevolences, the philanthropies, the new ideas,—given up especially to the pleasing ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 all the world and envying no one—for were we not the ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... Thou wilt know it yet. I fetter not thy choice, But if thou couldst by loving bind together Not two hearts only, but opposing peoples; Supplant by halcyon days long years of strife, And link them in unbroken harmony;— Were this no glory for a woman, this No ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Rome. When that fear was allayed, and the menace that hung over the very existence of the nation removed by the defeat of the Armada, the differences within the Church broke out afresh, and waxed fiercer every year. Shakespeare grew to manhood during the halcyon years between the Marian persecutions and the Marprelate pamphlets—a kind of magic oasis, which gave us our English Renaissance. Milton's youth breathed a very different air. The Church, as it was, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Horsf. Podargus brachypterus, Gould. Eurostopodus guttatus, Gould. Halcyon sanctus, Vig. and Horsf. Merops ornatus, Lath. Hirundo pacifica ? Lath. Collocalia ? leucosterna, Gould. Cotyle pyrrhonota. Cotyle familiaris, Gould. Seisura volitans, Vig. and Horsf. Microeca assimilis, Gould. Rhipidura albiscapa, Gould. Rhipidura isura, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Apennine which encircles "gentile Firenze." In due time, one of the largest and brightest of those comets whose return is so accurately calculated and eagerly expected by the Florentine dealers in ancient art made his appearance in the Tuscan sky—no less than a buyer for the Louvre. Those were the halcyon days of the Empire, and money was plenty. Poor Bastianini's bust was brought out with all due mystery, duly admired by the infallible French connoisseur, and eventually purchased by him for the imperial collection for, I think, five thousand francs—at all events, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... of the concert made Chopin forget his sorrows. There is not one complaint in the letter in which he gives an account of it; in fact, he seems to have been enjoying real halcyon days. He had a full house, but played with as little nervousness as if he had been playing at home. The first Allegro of the Concerto went very smoothly, and the audience rewarded him with thundering applause. Of the reception of the Adagio and Rondo ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the state of Israel in spite of the halcyon days it enjoyed under Jeroboam II. From the indirect results of war, from changes in the tenure and in the culture of the soil, from defective administration of justice, the humbler classes had much to suffer; they found that the times ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... reputation of a particularly "hanging judge," ended by hanging himself, as the coroner's jury found, under an impulse of "temporary insanity," with a child's skipping-rope, over the massive old bannisters) resided there, entertaining good company, with fine venison and rare old port. In those halcyon days, the drawing-rooms were hung with gilded leather, and, I dare say, cut a good figure, for ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... while embracing her, the cool deliberation which marked his exit—offered a picture of calm stoicism just on the point of tumbling over the precipice of destruction not to be equalled—not, at least, since those halcyon dramatic days when Osbaldiston leased ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... cry: The Bible is to be cast out. We look and behold men who have these opinions sitting on the throne of the Caesars. Now, one would suppose the intellect of that whole realm would have fair play. There was no Bible there to fetter or to annoy. This ought to be the halcyon age for "the liberty of man, woman and child." These rulers have the same dignified abhorrence for all kinds of religion. The skeptic Lucretius says: "The fear of the lower world must be sent headlong forth. It poisons life to its lowest depths; it spreads over all things the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... by 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, ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... southward, always down the stream and never up. The first keen blasts up in the northland have given them a warning and they are going steadily, happily, but for the most part silently, on down the stream, giving rare beauty to these halcyon days of late summer; on past the farthest point of your vision, where the silver gray mist softens the outline of the forest-crowned headlands, and lavender shadows hang gently across the valleys; always on and on towards the land where all is light ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... 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
... must be up and away, not wait till it should be too late. She, too, saw how many lovers plan under the June honeymoon to sail away after a year or two and see the great world, and, when they wearily die, know that it will still be a year or two before they can flee to the halcyon isles. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... 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. I ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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 least, towards their ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... country-folk got in with baskets, and talked in an unfamiliar dialect, an English which to us sounded almost like a foreign tongue. Then the first glimpse of the sea; the excitement of noting whether tide was high or low—stretches of sand and weedy pools, or halcyon wavelets frothing at their furthest reach, under the sea-banks starred with convolvulus. Of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... the York, and three light cruisers, the Kolberg, the Graudenz, and the Strasburg. They were mainly fast vessels and the battle cruisers carried eleven-inch guns. Early in the morning they ran through the nets of a British fishing fleet. Later an old coast police boat, the Halcyon, was shot at a few times. About eight o'clock they were opposite Yarmouth, and proceeded to bombard that naval station from a distance of about ten miles. Their range was poor and their shells did no damage. They then turned swiftly for ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... be the English scourge— This night the siege assuredly I'll raise: Expect St. Martin's Summer, halcyon days, Since I have entered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... pay of Britain, and, while they fatten in plenty, and unaccustomed affluence, look with great tranquillity upon the distresses of Austria, and, in their indolence of gluttony, stand idle spectators of that deluge, by which, if it be suffered to roll on without opposition, their own halcyon territories must at last be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... Carson lads. They planned for it far in advance, and enjoyed this' part of the excursion almost as much as the thing itself. Max Hastings knew so many things in connection with the woods; and they had also picked up such a world of information when spending those halcyon days up with old Trapper Jim, that it made it unusually pleasant when they were in camp, trying out new ideas, and copying others which they had watched the ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... The halcyon weather held for two weeks, the delicate weather of Indian summer. Day by day the forest dropped its leaves under a blue windless sky; but the nights sharpened their frosts. Ruth, stealing early to her bathing-pool, found it edged with thin ice, and paused, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Mrs. M.R. Blake, Hamen's wife. The old Platt's hall was packed to its fullest capacity. The cantata was given to the unbounded delight of Mr. Badger, and the audience cheered us all to the utmost. Enthusiasm was at the highest pitch and encomiums of praise were showered upon us. Those were halcyon days for fine singers. We had no lack of voices to ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... of Riversford, in order to avoid the sharp ascent from the town, as well as the still sharper and highly dangerous descent into the valley again, where the little mediaeval village lay nestled. Thus it was enabled to gather to itself a strangely beautiful halcyon calm on the Lord's Day,—and in fair Spring weather like the present, dozed complacently under the quiet smile of serene blue skies, soothed to sleep by the rippling flow of its ribbon-like river, and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... opposition, Bruno enjoyed fair weather, halcyon months, in England. His description of the Ash Wednesday Supper at Fulke Greville's, shows that a niche had been carved out for him in London, where he occupied a pedestal of some importance. Those gentlemen of Elizabeth's Court did not certainly exaggerate the value of their ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... motionless, undisturbed, unruffled, pacific, placid, tranquil, halcyon; sedate, collected, imperturbable, unmoved, cool, composed, dispassionate. Antonyms: excited, stormy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... alleys off Cornhill and Lombard Street. I agree, too, with Georgie in deploring the passing of the public-house mid-day ordinary. From his recollections, I learn that the sixties and seventies were the halcyon days for feeding—indeed, the only time when Londoners really lived; and an elderly uncle of mine, who, at that time, went everywhere and knew everybody in the true hard-up Bohemia, tells me that there were then twenty or thirty taverns within fifty yards of Ludgate ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... 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 ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... was billeted with a French family, just around the corner from the Hospice. The head of the family had been, in the halcyon days before the war, the village butcher. There was now Madame, the little Marie, a sturdy boy about twelve, and the old Grand'mere. The husband was away, of course,—"dans les tranchees," explained Madame ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... the various centres of Canada, according to the practice of his predecessors, soon gave him an understanding of popular opinion and feeling; and, although he was expected by the extreme Conservatives to bring back the old, halcyon, ante bellum days, he was most careful to follow the lines of Sydenham's policy. Towards the French he was amiable and conciliatory and made several appointments of French Canadians to positions of trust and emolument. Ever ready to meet courtesy half-way, ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... instinct he ought to be,) appearing at that uncertain season before the rigs of old Michaelmas were yet well composed, and when the inclement storms of winter were approaching, began to flicker over the seas, and was busy in building its halcyon nest, as if the angry ocean had been soothed by the genial breath of May. Very unfortunately, this auspice was instantly followed by a speech from the throne in the very spirit and principles ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are; A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar Some heavenly solstice, hushed and halcyon, Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone; Whose eyes the sungates of the soul unbar, Being of its furthest fires oracular, The evident heart of all ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... loose Fishermen and river raftsmen become 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 ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... now travelled through that part of Dr. Johnson's life, which was a perpetual struggle with difficulties. Halcyon days are now to open upon him. In the month of May, 1762, his majesty, to reward literary merit, signified his pleasure to grant to Johnson a pension of three hundred pounds a year. The earl of Bute was minister. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... countenance bore all the traces of mental alienation. Methought I was inspired by the grand master-spirit; my pirogue bounded along the troubled waters of the ocean as if it possessed wings. One would have said that I had twenty rowers at my disposal, and I cleft the waves with the same rapidity as the halcyon's flight, when wafted away by the hurricane. After a short time's laborious and painful rowing I at last came in view of the corsairs who were carrying away my treasure. At the sight my strength was renewed again, and ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... or two there was halcyon weather. On Saturday afternoon Louise hired a carriage and took her friends for a drive into the country; at her special request the child accompanied them. Nothing could have been more delightful. She had quite made up her mind to have a house, some day, ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... late in June in the ninth year of King Edward VII's reign—that halcyon period when nobody who was anybody felt particularly happy, because no such person had actually experienced what unhappiness was. Certainly Mrs. Delarayne had not, unless she had shown really exceptional fortitude and self-control over her ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici |
