"Elf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "school was out," James's spirits foamed over as naturally as a tumbler of soda water, and he could jump over benches and burst out of doors with as much rapture as the veriest little elf in his company. Then you might have seen him stepping homeward with a most felicitous expression of countenance, occasionally reaching his hand through the fence for a bunch of currants, or over it after a flower, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... locks, commonly called "elf-locks": the various forms "felted," "felter'd" and "feutred" ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... Delighteth in no game or fellowship, Loves no good deeds, and hateth talk; But sitteth in a corner turning crabs, Or coughing o'er a warmed pot of ale. Backwinter th'other, that's his nown[123] sweet boy, Who like his father taketh in all points. An elf it is, compact of envious pride, A miscreant born for a plague to men; A monster that devoureth all he meets. Were but his father dead, so he would reign, Yea, he would go good-near to deal by him As Nebuchadnezzar's ungracious son, Foul ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... The little girl moved with the grace of a child, but Elsie Moss danced like a fairy. Her cheeks glowed, her dark eyes shone, her dimples twinkled, her feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground. Her red hat was like a poppy-cup, and the dark hair tumbling about her little face, elf-locks. Elsie Marley gazed spellbound. ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... The enchanting vision of the prairie flower faded, and Rona Mitchell stood before her in solid fact. Solid was the word for it—no fascinating cinema heroine this, but an ordinary, well-grown, decidedly plump damsel with brown elf locks, a ruddy sunburnt complexion, and ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... gained him from the very cradle every prerogative of eldership (and he did struggle first into life, too, so he was the first-born), had grown to be a swarthy, strong, big-boned man, of the Roman-nosed, or, more physiognomically, the Jewish cast of countenance; with melo-dramatic elf-locks, large whiskers, and ungovernable passions; loud, fierce, impetuous; cunning, too, for all his overbearing clamour; and an embodied personification of those choice essentials to criminal happiness—a hard heart and a good digestion. Charles, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... war of words—for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the delicacy of her native French, in which language she always attacked me—I used to turn upon her with my old decision, and arrest bodily the sprite that teased me. Vain idea! no sooner had I grasped hand or arm than the elf was gone; the provocative smile quenched in the expressive brown eyes, and a ray of gentle homage shone under the lids in its place. I had seized a mere vexing fairy, and found a submissive and supplicating little ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep? Ode ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... myself in my article and left Mrs. McGurk to deal with Sadie. Finally, after she had worked half-way around the room, she came to a portrait of a little girl occupying a leather frame in the center of the doctor's writing desk—a child with a queer elf-like beauty, resembling very strangely our little Allegra. This photograph might have been a portrait of Allegra grown five years older. I had noticed the picture the night we took supper with the doctor, ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... him that no maid will stay with her? That she shows no desire to improve? That she mimics and angers her teachers, refuses to study and plays impish tricks like some mischievous little elf? Am I to ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... roses, gay gladioluses, pure white lilies, bunches of star-like daisies and their soft round white little buds, gaudy marigolds, brown, yellow, and orange, crimson cock's-combs, branches of honeysuckle vines filled with honey, rich fairy trumpets, saucy elf-faced pansies, spicy pinks, hollyhocks in satiny dresses of many colors, bright-eyed verbenas and sweet-williams, brilliant geranium blossoms, and even great honest faithful sunflowers—those flowers that ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Leonard laughed angrily; but when Henry held up the elf-bolt, and he saw its sharp point, he was shocked, and he ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... listen expectantly. Then again he seated himself to wait. Several times, passionately insistent, he shook his head, and it was as if the refusal were being made to an invisible presence. Suddenly he lifted his face as the sound of a weird, wild wail was borne to him, mingling with the elf-like moaning of the wind. He leaned forward slightly, listening intently. From somewhere above him pleading notes from a violin were making the night even more mournful. A change came over the ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... and a white pinafore, his yellow hair flying in the breeze, his chin up, his black eyes wide open, with slate in one hand, his pencil in the other, and the sandy kitten clinging to his shoulder (for Jan never lowered his chin to help her to balance herself), he looked more like some elf than a ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he spoke the barbaric copper clock upon the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprang up and turned on the Major one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the face of an elf. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... sending up their finest incense. It seemed a gala where all was happiness and brilliancy, and misery could find no sympathy. This was the effect it had on Caterina. As she wound among the beds of gold and blue and pink, where the flowers seemed to be looking at her with wondering elf-like eyes, knowing nothing of sorrow, the feeling of isolation in her wretchedness overcame her, and the tears, which had been before trickling slowly down her pale cheeks, now gushed forth accompanied with sobs. And yet there was a loving human being close beside her, whose heart was ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... diminutive wisp of humanity, a starved, slender elf with a freckled face, wizened and peaked, which at times looked a thousand years old. It reminded you of the face of one of those preternaturally aged monkeys that sit motionless in a dark corner of the cage, oppressed ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... senses by a soft luxuriance in which all sharp articulation of parts is merged; but what Browning seizes on in the rose is its "labyrinthine" intricacy, while the moss becomes a little forest of "fairy-cups and elf needles." And who else would have thought of saying that "the fields look rough with hoary dew"?[78] In the Easter-Day vision he sees the sky as a network of black serrated ridges. He loves the intricate play of light and shade, and the irregular, contorted, honeycombed surface ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... ever in thy life, and maintain them all the laws that have stood in my days, and all the good laws that in Uther's days stood. And I will fare to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom, and dwell with the Britons with ...
— Brut • Layamon
... bitterly, because his hope was lost, his praise would never be heard among the fairies, and the beauty he had hoped to create he should never see. The elf that lived in the toad-stool looked up as the tears fell upon him, and gathered them up from his fungous coat, where they sparkled ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... : angilo. effect : efiko, efekto. effective : efektiva. efficacious : efika. effort : peno, klopodo. eiderduck : molanaso. elastic : elast'a, -ajxo. elbow : kubuto. elder : (tree), sambuko. elect : elekti, baloti. electricity : elektro. elegant : eleganta. elf : koboldo, elfo. elm : ulmo. eloquent : elokventa. embalm : balzami. embrace : cxirkauxpreni, enbrakigi; ampleksi. embroider : brodi. emerald : smeraldo. emigrate : elmigri. eminent : eminenta. emotion : kortusxeco. emphasis : emfazo, akcentego empire ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... Ramona, her head bent down to his, their lips together,—what could Baba think? As mischievously as if he had been a human being or an elf, Baba bounded to one side and tore the lovers apart. They both laughed, and cantered on,—Alessandro running; the poor Indian pony feeling the contagion, and loping as it had not ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... failings alone, Adopting his portraits, are pleased with their own. Say, where has our poet this malady caught? Or wherefore his characters thus without fault? Say, was it, that vainly directing his view To find out men's virtues, and finding them few, Quite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf, He grew lazy at last, and drew from himself? Here Douglas retires from his toils to relax, The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks. Come, all ye quack bards, and ye quacking divines, Come, and dance on the spot where your tyrant reclines When satire and censure encircled his throne, ...
— English Satires • Various
... very suddenly the spell was broken. For no apparent reason, he fell headlong from his heights and burst into a merry little jig that set Gracie dancing like an elf. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... do I know myself! By Odin, I look more like a rugged elf than Hother. And who art thou, that knowest me? ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... and tiny Maid, Who love the Fairies in the glade, Who see them in the tangled grass The Gnomes and Brownies, as they pass, Who hear the Sprites from Elf-land call Go, frolic with these Brownies small, And join these merry sporting Elves, But ever ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... bit struck on him. That's more like it. She thinks he's a very tall handsome man. Well, he's not my taste. Funny, if you're tall, I s'pose you want a tall man to fall in love with you. It's different, being small, I suppose. My Elf's only about inch taller than me. You can't hardly see there's any difference between us. If I've got ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... sobriquet could better express her personality: She was little—a dainty, elf-like littleness, with tiny feet and wee hands; she was gray—a soft, silver gray—too gray for her forty years (and this fragment begins when she was forty); and she was a lady in every beat of her warm heart; in every pressure of her white hand; in her voice, speech—in all ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the soft blue-grass lawn, that sloped gently a hundred yards from the cabin, built upon a little rise in the bottom land, down to the water's edge. Often when she was a child, and I a man well toward middle life, did I play with the enchanting little elf upon the blue-grass lawn, and drink the waters of perennial youth at the fountain of her sweet babyhood. Vividly I remember the white-skinned sycamores, the gracefully drooping elms, and the sweet-scented honey-locust ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... ropes that clung round the mainmast seemed to gibber like a man in fever as the gale threaded the mazes; the hollow down-draught from the foresail cried in boding tones; it seemed like some malignant elf calling "Woe to you! Woe for ever! Darkness is coming, and I and Death await you with cold arms." Every timber complained with whining iteration, and the boom of the full, falling seas tolled as a bell tolls that beats out the last minutes of a mortal's life. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... found on rocks and menhirs, on the walls of sepulchral chambers, on stones forming the sides of KISTVAENS, accompanied in many instances with radiated circles, which do not, however, help us to understand them better. In Scandinavia they are known as ELFEN STENAVS, or elf stones, and the inhabitants come and place offerings on them for the LITTLE PEOPLE. According to a touching tradition, these little people are souls awaiting the time of their being clothed once more in human flesh. In Belgium these strangely decorated stones are attributed to the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... I came face to face with the children leaving school. I had been accustomed to seeing these wild, bare-legged mountaineers breaking loose from school in a state of subdued frenzy, leaping up and down the side ditches, screaming, yelling, panting, with their elf-locks blinding their eyes, and their bare feet flashing amid the green of grasses or the brown of the ditch-mould. They might condescend to drop me a courtesy, and then—anarchy, as before. Today they moved slowly, with eyes bent modestly on the ground, three by three, and all chanting ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old, Upon her battered doll's staunch bosom weeps. ("O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.") With tear-burned face, at last the ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... him,—the pot calling the kettle black. Etta Robbin-Steele did flirt. She had dancing black eyes that flung a challenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all her baby face. She was like an elf. Her violet eyes were capable of infinite shades of expression. She, herself, had a way of appropriating men who pleased her, to the resentful dismay of other young women. It pleased her to do that with Jack MacRae whenever ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... last century, but was not entirely completed until 1832. It is, inclusive of the lakes, 118 miles long, and its construction cost $3,750,000, three-fifths of which was contributed by the state. This canal connects the Baltic Sea with Lake Wener, as well as, through the Goeta-Elf, with ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... started with such a roar That the King, his father, was troubled sore, And peevishly muttered within himself— "He'll burst his throat, the unmannerly elf!" But Auster, angry at seeing his brother Astart of him, broke away with another As fearful a yell from the opposite side Of the wind-cave, ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... this much change in him, that to-night Agnes was not even waking him to dispassionate interest; he had no attention to spare her. And yet it was not that Barbara had captured his mind; she was nothing but an elf of mischief, dancing in the sunshine backwards and forwards across his path, pelting him with flowers, vanishing and reappearing. Restlessness or discontent must have peeped from behind the suave mask. He had meant to be more friendly, far more friendly; they had not met ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the two smokers approached; shaggy, uncombed ruffians, whose enormous mustaches were turned back over their ears, and mingled with the wild elf-locks of their hair, much of which was seen under the old beavers which they wore aside upon their heads, while some straggling portion escaped through the rents of the hats aforesaid. Their tarnished plush jerkins, large slops, or trunk-breeches, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... used in the meaning of "mirage," and also as another name for H[o]rai, the Elf-land of Far Eastern fable. Various beings in Japanese myth are credited with power to delude mortals by creating a mirage of H[o]rai. In old pictures one may see a toad represented in the act of exhaling from its mouth a vapor ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... away," they all laughed, "and chuck them in her face! She has got you up in such a way as to make a regular old elf of you!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that on two small wings doth fly, And, flying, carry on those wings yourself; Methinks I see you, looking from your eye, As tho' you thought the world a wicked elf. Offspring of summer! brimstone is thy foe; And when it kills ye, soon you lose your breath: They rob your honey; but don't let you go, Thou harmless victim of ambitious death! How sweet is honey! coming from the Bee; Sweeter than sugar, in the lump ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... the chivalry of France, splendid with silk mantles and gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in their wild costume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds of the German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, stamped an ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On this memorable occasion, as in a show upon some holiday, marched past before them specimens and vanguards ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... recognize a geist; his knees shook, and he dared not utter a word. The elf looked down upon him half displeased, yet chuckling ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... babe, baby, babe in arms; nurseling, suckling, yearling, weanling; papoose, bambino; kid; vagitus. child, bairn [Scot.], little one, brat, chit, pickaninny, urchin; bantling, bratling^; elf. youth, boy, lad, stripling, youngster, youngun, younker^, callant^, whipster^, whippersnapper, whiffet [U.S.], schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, larva, chrysalis, tadpole, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the little mouse had finished repeating what the elf had said she laid her staff against the king's breast, and sure enough there sprang forth from it the loveliest flowers. They yielded so strong a perfume that the king commanded that the mice who stood nearest the chimney should stick their tails in the fire, in order ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... gudeman said heedlessly, little knowing there was any danger of Robin's being carried away to Elf-land. Whether the fairies were at that instant listening under the eaves, will never be known; but it chanced, one day, that Wild Robin was sent across the ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... the tips of her fingers, and told Dorothy in a high, squeaky voice that she was very glad to know her. Elf did the same in an exact copy ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... footsteps of several persons in the neighbourhood. I was about to inquire, in a whisper, who they could be, when I observed him glance up at the top of the wall above us. I turned my eyes in the same direction, and then I saw, by the light of the fire, the elf-like locks and red-coloured countenance of a wild Indian, who was gazing down upon us. He looked as much surprised to find us there as we were ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... at last, And, thy shady region pass'd, Upon another shore I stood, And look'd upon another flood; [Footnote 4] Great Ocean's self! ('Tis He, who fills That vast and awful depth of hills;) Where many an elf was playing round, Who treads unshod his classic ground; And speaks, his native rocks among, As FINGAL spoke, and OSSIAN sung. Night fell; and dark and darker grew That narrow sea, that narrow sky, As o'er the ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... there was nothing indeed in the gipsy's appearance to trouble one's calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf- locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... stairs. Her clinging white skirt made a soft, swishing sound as it brushed the tiled floor, and she herself—with her slender figure, graceful neck and crown of golden curls, looked, as the gloom of evening wrapped her in, more like an intangible elf—an apparition—gliding through space, than just a scornful woman who had thought fit to reject the importunate addresses ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... came trooping along. They lived in the further meadow, else they had come sooner. They were somewhat larger than the fairies, yet they were very tiny and very delicate creatures. The elf prince had long flaxen curls, and he was arrayed in a wonderful suit of damask web, at the manufacture of which seventy-seven silkworms had labored for seventy-seven days, receiving in payment therefor as many mulberry leaves as seven blue beetles could carry and stow in seven times ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... society calls a "pretty little thing," and was predestined to marry some large, good-natured man who would imagine that she would make a nice little pet, a household fairy, but who might learn to his dismay that the fairy could be a tormenting elf. She would not marry the young gentleman with whom her name was at present associated by the gossips, and who had driven over that morning to help her entertain the expected guests. Mr. Harcourt and Miss Marchmont understood each other. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... but composed interest. It never occurred to her that she could have any individual concern in the contents of the parcels. She was a tall girl who had outgrown all her frocks, or rather did outgrow them periodically, with dark elf locks about her shoulders, which would not curl or creper, or do anything that hair ought to do. She had her thoughts always in the clouds, forming all sorts of impossible plans, as was natural to her age, and was just the kind of angular, jerky school-girl, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... when all ended, she was in the gayest, the most elf-like spirits. All went well until Marcey dug a hole in the ground, put a stone in it, and, burying it, said it was Laforce's heart. Then Laforce pretended to ventriloquise, and mocked Marcey's slight stutter. That was the beginning of the trouble, and Lucille, like any lady of the world, troubled ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... It seems so selfish to have one. I am anything—a fay, a sprite, an elf." She freed her hands with a sudden twist and ran ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... company was sometimes mellow: And, Although he was a priest, Thought it no sacramental sin—to feast. I can't say much for his morality: But for his immortality, Good luck! Why he's bound in calf, and squeezed in boards, And scarcely a good library's shelf But boasts acquaintance with the elf. But now I'll tell you what I should have told before, A grievous illness brought him nigh Death's door. Who, bony wight, Enjoyed the sight— And grinn'd as he thought of the fun there'd be When the jester had joined ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... as he wrought, that a loving heart Was somehow baffling his evil art; For more than spell of Elf or Troll Is a maiden's prayer for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... remember. Do you know," exclaimed Mr Powell, who clearly must have been, like many seamen, an industrious reader, "do you know what she looked like to me with those big eyes and something appealing in her whole expression. She looked like a forsaken elf. Captain Anthony had moved towards her to keep her away from my end of the table, where the tray was. I had never seen them so near to each other before, and it made a great contrast. It was wonderful, for, with his beard cut to a point, his swarthy, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... things," she announced, calmly, crossing her dainty feet and gazing guilelessly at him. "I'm a witch, a Brownie, a sprite, an elf, ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... Meg for such encounters; and as her noble soul delighted in them, so her outward properties were in what Tony Lumpkin calls a concatenation accordingly. She had hair of a brindled colour, betwixt black and grey, which was apt to escape in elf-locks from under her mutch when she was thrown into violent agitation—long skinny hands, terminated by stout talons—grey eyes, thin lips, a robust person, a broad, though flat chest, capital wind, and a voice that could match ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the road, and was speeding onward fast, with the Taf at some distance on my right, when I saw a strange-looking woman advancing towards me. She seemed between forty and fifty, was bare-footed and bare-headed, with grizzled hair hanging in elf locks, and was dressed in rags and tatters. When about ten yards from me, she pitched forward, gave three or four grotesque tumbles, heels over head, then standing bolt upright, about a yard before me, raised her right arm, and shouted ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Anthropological Institute,' May 1880, p. 451) remarks: "It appears from several papers of the Berlin Society as to the German 'high- fields' or 'heathen-fields' (Hochacker, and Heidenacker) that they correspond much in their situation on hills and wastes with the 'elf-furrows' of Scotland, which popular mythology accounts for by the story of the fields having been put under a Papal interdict, so that people took to cultivating the hills. There seems reason to suppose that, like the tilled plots in the Swedish forest which tradition ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... alike. A work of fiction should carry the hall mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a Velasquez, and a Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations of those masters. This is not to speak of tricks and manners which lend themselves to that facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a certain individual way of seeing and feeling. A young poet once said of another and more popular poet: "Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice." And, when one came to think of it, he did not; a certain flabbiness of spirit, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the self-same tune Underneath an older moon. Life to him is, plain enough, Still a game of blind man's buff. If we listen we may hear Puckish laughter always near, And the elf's apostrophe, "Lord, what fools ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... sailor-idiom to be lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire 'sweet Doric'; and do recollect what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf story ... why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about fairies:—Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite 'Nymphidia,' ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... marvelled. As first I had expected, subconsciously I imagine, the passing of their love. Then I became aware that it was Time that passed and Love that remained. Then I became curious. What was their secret? What were the magic fetters with which they bound Love to them? How did they hold the graceless elf? What elixir of eternal love had they drunk together as had Tristram and Iseult of old time? And whose hand had brewed ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... had him fast in his fist, and fast he held him, till the elf showed him where his treasure ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... sarcastic intellect Herein my portrait should detect, And impiously should declare, To sketch myself that I have tried Like Byron, bard of scorn and pride, As if impossible it were To write of any other elf ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... th' olde dayes of the King Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye; The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... in Downie Hills, and got meat there from the queen of the fairies, more than I could eat. The queen is brawly clothed in white linen, and in white and brown cloth; and the king is a braw man, well-favoured, and broad-faced. There were plenty of elf bulls rowting and skoyling up and down, and affrighted me." Mr. Kirk says "that in fairyland they have also books of various kinds—history, travels, novels, and plays—but no sermons, no Bible, nor any book of a religious kind." Every reader of Hogg's Queen's Wake ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... trousers and black veils, and babies, and cats, and parrots. Here is a tall, venerable grandfather, with spectacles and a long gray beard, dressed in a black robe with a hood and a yellow scarf; grave, patriarchal, imperturbable: his little granddaughter, a pretty elf of a child, with flower-like face and shining eyes, dances hither and yon among the chaos of freight and luggage; but as the chill of evening descends she takes shelter between his knees, under the folds of his long robe, and, while he feeds her with bread and sweetmeats, keeps ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... rather pretty woman, with a curiously flat head, staring black eyes, and sharp chin. She had a child on her knee of about a year old, an elf with delicately proud features, and a ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a dream, Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallow'd house: I am sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door. Through the house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire: Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier; And this ditty, after me, Sing, and dance it trippingly. First, rehearse your song by rote, To each word a warbling note: Hand in hand, with fairy grace, Will we ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... desk. What was he doing? What a singular attitude he was in! Then, all in a moment, Hilda's heart seemed to stop beating, and her breath came thick and short; for she saw that this man before her was not the farmer. The farmer had not long elf-locks of black hair straggling over his coat-collar; he was not round-shouldered or bow-legged; above all, he would not be picking the lock of his own desk, for this was what the man before her was doing. Silent as her own ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... a glorious Banquet had he prepared; to that bade the prince of men All his noblest thanes. That with mickle haste 10 Did the warriors-with-shields perform; came to the mighty chief The people's leaders going. On the fourth day was that After that Judith, cunning in mind, The elf-sheen virgin, ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... searched high and low, among the rocks and the caves and the snowy crags, they could see no signs of the cunning fugitive. Then they went back to his house again to consult what next to do. And, while standing by the hearth, Kwaser, a sharp-sighted elf, whose eyes were quicker than the sunbeam, saw the white ashes of the burned net lying undisturbed in the still hot embers, the woven meshes ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... their formation to a giant living on a hill who stretched out his hand to pick up shell-fish. This myth remained current until the eighteenth century, and stone axes exhumed from the heaps were called thunder-axes (rai-fu) just as similar relics in Europe were called elf-bolts or thunder-stones. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... but they are invariably "little people," from three to four feet high. It may be that the Gael's conception of humanised spirits may not have been uninfluenced by the traditions of that earlier diminutive race whose arrow-heads of flint were so long regarded as "elf-bolts." The fairies dwelt only in grassy knolls, on the summits of high hills, and inside cliffs. Although capable of living for several centuries, they were not immortal. They required food, and borrowed meal and cooking utensils from human beings, and always ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... and wrath both burning. Here I shall only trace it in relation to ethics. But I need not remind the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let me trace this ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... 'You wicked elf,' said Miss Mary, 'to inveigle people into predicaments, and then go shouting ho! ho! ho! ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sounded in his ears again; but he did not shrink from it now; this was not the circus band he had heard as he left the Square, but a melody like a far-away serenade at night, as of "the horns of elf-land faintly blowing"; and he closed his eyes with the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... a little elf. All at once the pretty beauty of her breaks upon Rylton. The reaction from such extreme doubt of her to a clear certainty has made his appreciation of her kinder—has, perhaps, opened his eyes to the perfections she possesses. However this may be, there is, ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... in Killamet. I'm afraid she'll disgrace us all!" Upon which Sara would comfort her by saying that, as most parrots were trained by rough people, nothing better could be expected, and she was sure nobody would blame them; while Molly, the naughty little elf, would shake her curls with ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... this theme, which grows too sad, And lay this sheet of sorrows on the shelf; I don't much like describing people mad, For fear of seeming rather touched myself— Besides, I've no more on this head to add; And as my Muse is a capricious elf, We'll put about, and try another tack With Juan, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... The black, straight elf-locks, the swart face, the great wondering eye, with the gay blanket, short gown of woollen-stuff, and brilliant moccasins, made a striking picture to be sure; and I could not help thinking, that if the apparition had chanced upon him earlier, she might have figured in some story of Pokanoket or ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... in the air, and might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not whence and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child—to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began—to snatch her to her bosom with a close pressure and earnest kisses—not so much from overflowing love as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was caught, though ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... elf, Whose great all is himself, Whose alone ipse dixit is law: What a figure he'll make, How like Momus he'll speak With ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... said the doctor, settling himself to go on with his list; "well, let us see. 'World without Souls.' Why, you Elf! read ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... shone so brightly that the children in the garden did not break off their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended the murmur of his song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf gliding from one black shadow to crouch in another. He was himself in the deep shade of a magnolia, over whose outer boughs the moonlight was trickling, as if the whole tree had been ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... — N. man, male, he, him; manhood &c (adolescence) 131; gentleman, sir, master; sahib; yeoman, wight^, swain, fellow, blade, beau, elf, chap, gaffer, good man; husband &c (married man) 903; Mr., mister; boy &c (youth) 129. [Male animal] cock, drake, gander, dog, boar, stag, hart, buck, horse, entire horse, stallion; gibcat^, tomcat; he goat, Billy goat; ram, tup; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... strange—no passion nor eagerness—in thy way of accosting her," whispered Hester. "Our Pearl is a fitful and fantastic little elf, sometimes. Especially, she is seldom tolerant of emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. But the child hath strong affections! She loves ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... exclaimed Rosa. "You look so exactly as you did when you were such a merry little elf, that I never thought to inquire whether you were married. In the joy of this sudden meeting, I forgot how many years had passed since we saw ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... delicate eyebrows which moved about continually with every changeful feeling that filled his breast. When excited his glance was magnificent, and the natural wildness of his whole aspect was increased by the luxuriance of his brown hair, which hung in long elf-locks over his shoulders. Among his intimates he was known by the name ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... time Ivan played, so delicately, so melodiously, and, withal, with an individuality so elf-like in its quaintness, that Joseph's quivering nerves were stilled and relaxed as by the caresses of a woman's hands. Then, when count of time had ceased, when the room was filled with velvet shadows, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... met a little Elf-man once, Down where the lilies blow. I asked him why he was so small ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... was wont to walk and Elf, There now walks the Limiter himself, In every bush and under every tree, There needs no ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... only one of the remaining seventeen nuns, namely, Godgyfu, had a scriptural or Christian name. The old names common among their heathen ancestors still survived, no less than ten being compounded of the word AElf, the modern Elf, or mountain spirit. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... to herself, "that is a fairy tent, and in it I may find a baby elf sick with whooping-cough or scarlet-fever. How splendid it would be! only I could never nurse such ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... Frederick touched the little one he felt the world was his. He forgot Waldstricker, forgot Madelene, forgot everything, but his elf-like son within his cuddling grasp. He touched his ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... as noiselessly as an elf, across the old hall, and softly opened the door of a little, low-ceilinged corner room; Babette, who, overcome by joy and surprise, had not noticed the stranger standing in the shadow, followed her dear Fraeulein. The door was left open, and Willibald could hear a cover laid back ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... dayes of the Kyng Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, All was this land fulfild of fairye. The elf queene with hir joly compaignye Daunced ful ofte in many a greene mede. This was the olde opinion as I rede,— I speke of manye hundred yeres ago,— But now kan no man se none elves mo, For now the grete charitee and prayeres ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... vowed Mr. Cobb solemnly, as he remounted his perch; and as the stage rumbled down the village street between the green maples, those who looked from their windows saw a little brown elf in buff calico sitting primly on the back seat holding a great bouquet tightly in one hand and a pink parasol in the other. Had they been farsighted enough they might have seen, when the stage turned into the side dooryard of the old brick house, a calico yoke rising and falling tempestuously over ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... seemed like a fairy sprite, possessed with a wild spirit of glee. She laughed and clapped her hands incessantly, and when set down on the kitchen-floor spun round like a little elf; and that night it was late and long before her wide, wakeful eyes could be veiled ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... piping of an elfish voice, "Mother, why does the minister keep his hands over his heart?" and the white drawn face of Hester Prynne, with her scarlet elf-child, passed slowly across her vision. The wretched misery of deluded Lucius and his mysterious Lamia she saw, and watched with breathless interest the formation of that "Brotherhood of the Rose." ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... Netherlands. Nay, thank me not, good Giles,' quo' she, 'but my good mother. And I do thank thee for giving of me somewhat to do for her memory. And doesn't she fall a weeping for her mother? And doesn't that set me off a-snivelling for my good brother that I love so dear, and to think that a poor little elf like me could yet speak in the ear of princes, and make my beautiful brother vicar of Gouda; eh, lass, it is a bonny place, and a bonny manse, and hawthorn in every bush at spring-tide, and dog-roses and eglantine in every summer ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... elf-locks tossing in the wind, and their flaring matches casting a strange lurid light over their features. Taking up a position, one body began to fire upon the Utaybah robbers, whilst two or three hundred, dismounting, swarmed up the hill under the guidance of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... things but with his outer senses then? Has not the inner soul, too, eye and ear, With which it can both see and hearken well? 'Tis true it is with eyes of flesh I see The richly glowing color of the rose; But with the spirit's eye I see within A lovely elf, a fairy butterfly, Who archly hides behind the crimson leaves, And singeth of a secret power from heaven That gave ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... all ages, venerable, bearded men, men in their prime, men with the hard-hammered features and thick, sinewy necks of gladiators, men slender and pallid as dreaming scholars, youths that might have worn the gold-red elf-locks and the shoulder cloak of Venice, youth chiselled in a beauty as dark and fierce as David wore when the mailed giant went crashing earthward under the smooth round pebble ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... fetid mists, which produce agues, low fevers, and moping madness, and are as fatal to cattle as to man. Such disorders are attributed to elves and fairies. This superstition still lingers in some parts of England under the name of elf-shot, whilst, throughout the north, it is called elle-skiod, and elle- vild (fairy wild). It is particularly prevalent amongst shepherds and cow-herds, the people who, from their manner of life, are most exposed to the effects of the elf-shot. Those who wish to know more of this superstition ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... was not dreaming, Fairy, when she was not scheming Wondrous tales of gnome and elf, Oft drew pictures for herself, Fanciful as they could be: Two are here for ...
— Fairy's Album - With Rhymes of Fairyland • Anonymous
... as thought the caps were thrown From every monkey's crown, For, like himself, each little elf Threw his ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... thicket of black alders freighted with a wealth of berries. How crimson they were amid the white quiet of the garden! And the brightly colored fruit of the barberry flamed forth from a snowy bush like the cheerful elf-lamps of a wood-gnome. ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... man in the fairy-stories," he said in a voice Joy did not quite know, "who catches an elf-girl in some unfair way, and finds her turn to a dear human woman in his house. Joy ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... In the latter time, therefore, she used to have in a little child "for the scraps;" that is to say, to eat up the remains of the dinner. It was a child employed in the ballet, one that certainly wanted feeding. The little one used to appear, sometimes as an elf, sometimes as a page; the most difficult part she had to play was the lion's hind leg in the "Magic Flute;" but as she grew larger she could represent the fore-feet of the lion. She certainly only got half a guilder ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... it,) a short-lived tyranny: Xenophon says "Fire burns only when we are near it; but a beautiful face burns and inflames, though at a distance: Plato calls beauty a privilege of nature: Theophrastus (arch fellow,) a silent cheat: Theocritus, (cunning elf,) a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom, (which he doubtless would keep to himself): Domitian says that nothing is more grateful, (not even killing flies); Aristotle affirms that beauty is better than all the letters of recommendation in the world: Homer, that it is a glorious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... Well might this old square be named quarter of the Magi—well might the three towers, overlooking it, own for godfathers three mystic sages of a dead and dark art. Hoar enchantment here prevailed; a spell had opened for me elf-land—that cell-like room, that vanishing picture, that arch and passage, and stair of stone, were all parts of a fairy tale. Distincter even than these scenic details stood the chief figure—Cunegonde, the sorceress! Malevola, the evil fairy. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... joy attended the illumination; nor can I quite forget that child who, wilfully foregoing pleasure, stoops to "twopence coloured." With crimson lake (hark to the sound of it - crimson lake! - the horns of elf-land are not richer on the ear) - with crimson lake and Prussian blue a certain purple is to be compounded which, for cloaks ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unkempt—he wore no hat, and he looked like a brownie, grotesque, though somewhat sad. But even more did he resemble an ape—or say the missing link—and only his eyes seemed human. These were large, dark and brilliant, sparkling like jewels under his elf-locks. He sat cross-legged on the sward and hugged a fiddle, as though he were nursing a baby. And, no doubt, he was as attached to his instrument as any mother could be to her child. It was not difficult for Miss Greeby to guess that this weird, hairy ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Her youngest brother was only five. He was a frail lad, with immense brown eyes in his quaint fragile face—one of Reynolds's "Choir of Angels", with a touch of elf. Often Miriam kneeled to the child and drew ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Fayre—a pretty blonde, sweet, serious, timid and a little slow, and Dorothy Rose—a sparkling brunette, quick, elf-like, high tempered, full of mischief and always getting ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... princely daughter of some Scottish chieftain, found in her creed at last something more precious than herself; while his brother or his cousin became, at Dublin or Wexford or Waterford, the husband of some saffron-robed Irish princess, 'fair as an elf,' as the old saying was; 'some maiden of the three transcendent hues,' of whom the old book of ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... I'll grime with filth, Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots And with presented nakedness outface The winds ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... well and rills, in meadows green, We nightly dance our heyday guise; And to our fairy king and queen We chant our moonlight minstrelsies. When larks 'gin sing, Away we fling, And babes new-born we steal as we go, And elf in bed We leave instead, And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... with this self-willed elf? To carry out her father's ideas, and let her nature have unrestrained freedom to develop itself, will be the ruin of her! Unless she is controlled and guided she is just the girl to grow up wild and eccentric, and end in running ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... that a good play is like a skein of silk, which, if you take by the right end you may wind off at pleasure on the bottom or card of your discourse in a tale or so—how you will; but if you light on the wrong end you will pull all into a knot or elf-lock, which nothing but the shears or a candle will undo ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Wood of the Old Wives' Fables They glittered out of the grey, And with all the Armies of Elf-land I strove like a beast ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... lovable children, in spite of a certain elf-like disobedience which possessed them like a disease. It was quite enough to tell them not to do a thing for them to be eaten up with a desire to do it forthwith. Christine had discovered this, and had learned to manage them in other ways than ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... expression in the highest degree repulsive. Deceit, low cunning, and greed of gain, were legibly written upon this unprepossessing countenance; whose wild character was completed by a profusion of coarse dark hair, that hung or rather stuck out in black elf-locks around the receding forehead and tawny sunken cheeks. The dress of this man was in unison with his aspect. He wore a greasy velveteen jacket, loose trousers of the same stuff, and his feet were shod with abarcas—a kind of sandal in common use in some parts of Navarre and Biscay, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... fancied to make a continuous music in the ears of the tiniest insects, the fall of pollen dust on flowers and grasses, the stealthy creeping of a spider upon his silken web, and even the piping of a pair of love-sick butterflies, or the trumpeting of a bellicose gnat, like the 'horns of elf-land faintly blowing.' ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the welcome singing Of the Meadow Lark and Robin, And above the eastern mountains Flushed the rose-light of the morning; Then again the sky was tinted By the Elf who plays with colors, And the sleeping poppies wakened When the sunbeams kissed ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... 'travail'; 'truth' and 'troth'; 'pennon' and 'pinion'; 'quail' and 'quell'; 'quell' and 'kill'; 'metal' and 'mettle'; 'chagrin' and 'shagreen'; 'can' and 'ken'; 'Francis' and 'Frances'{111}; 'chivalry' and 'cavalry'; 'oaf' and 'elf'; 'lose' and 'loose'; 'taint' and 'tint'. Sometimes the difference is mainly or entirely in the initial consonants, as between 'phial' and 'vial'; 'pother' and 'bother'; 'bursar' and 'purser'; 'thrice' and 'trice'{110}; 'shatter' and 'scatter'; 'chattel' and 'cattle'; 'chant' and 'cant'; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... token," added Hannekin, "the elf lock came out of my hair this very morn, I having, as you bade me, combed it each ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... determined to give him all the advantages in his power to bestow. Mary and Kate are two sprightly girls, near the respective ages of eight and eleven; and Harry, a quiet, innocent-minded, loving child, is in his sixth year. There is another still, a little giddy, dancing elf, named Lizzy, whose voice, except during the brief periods of sleep, rings through the house all day. And yet another, who has just come, that the home of Mr. Bancroft may not be without earth's purest form of innocence—a ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... mayst thou own, my winsome elf, Some day a pet just like thyself, Her sanguine thoughts to borrow; Content to use her brighter eyes, Accept her childish ecstacies, And, ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... Elf-child other summers came; But Lilith walked, heart-hungered, filled with shame, Naught comforted. And in that shadow-land She sorrowing bore, in after-time, a band Of elfin babes, that waked dim echoes long Forgotten there, and ghastly bursts of song. Then Lilith saddened more, for that she ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... before yesterday,' I was beginning to say, but I didn't. For I thought to myself, if there was any real trouble about Peterkin, it wouldn't be at all a good time to tease each other. I don't think Elf—that's Elvira's pet name—had understood about him being lost. Indeed, I don't think I had quite taken it in myself, till I saw how grave the two eldest ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... this night, pardie, An elf-queen shall my leman be ... An elf-queen wil I have, I-wis, For in this world no woman is Worthy to be my mate ... Al other women I forsake And to an elf-queen I me take By ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... dazzled laverock climbs the golden steep: Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep? Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... candle. The mystery of this window and the quicksilver dartings of the music—gods, what a touch, what gossamer delicacy!—set his heart throbbing. He forgot his sick nerves. When the trumpet blows, the war-horse lusts for action—and this was not a trumpet, but a horn of elf-land. He moved as closely as he dared to the window, and the music ceased—naturally enough, the movement had concluded. His ears burned with the silence. She came to the window. Arrested by the vision—the casement framed her in a delicious manner—he did not stir. She could not help seeing ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker |
