"Elf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gibberish heard in the straw. The fool shrieks, 'Nuncle, come not in here,' and out rushes 'Tom o Bedlam'—the naked creature, as Gloster calls him—with his 'elf locks,' his 'blanketed loins,' his 'begrimed face,' with his shattered wits, his madness, real or assumed—there ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... did Inge go? She sank into the moor ground, and went down to the moor woman, who is always brewing there. The moor woman is cousin to the elf maidens, who are well enough known, of whom songs are sung, and whose pictures are painted; but concerning the moor woman it is only known that when the meadows steam in summer-time it is because she ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... discovered, to his great delight and astonishment, that, in consequence of its having touched the lips of a goddess, it played of itself in the most charming manner. Marsyas, who was a great lover of music, and much beloved on this account by all the elf-like denizens of the woods and glens, was so intoxicated with joy at this discovery, that he foolishly challenged Apollo to compete with him in a musical contest. The challenge being accepted, the Muses were chosen umpires, and it was decided that the unsuccessful candidate ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... was during this period that a pool of the river suddenly boiled up in my face in a little fountain. It was in a very dreary, marshy part among dilapidated trees that you see through holes in the trunks of; and if any kind of beast or elf or devil had come out of that sudden silver ebullition, I declare I do not think I should have been surprised. It was perhaps a thing as curious—a fish, with which these head waters of the stream are alive. They are some of them as long as my finger, should be easily caught ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she explained. "There, do you hear that bell? That's for dinner," and taking a tiny watch from an elf-like pocket, she added, "Only half-past eleven. But, to be sure, we ate breakfast with the chickens. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... to Avalun: And I will fare to Avalon, To vairest alre maidene To the fairest of all maidens, To Argante ethere quene, To Argante the queen, Alven swiethe sceone; Elf surpassing fair; And heo scal mine wunden And she shall my wounds Makien alle isunde, Make all sound, Al hal me makien All hale me make Mid halweige drenchen. With healing draughts. And seoethe Ich cumen wulle And ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... he came back the pertest little ape That ever affronted human shape; 100 Full of his travel, struck at himself. You'd say he despised our bluff old ways? —Not he! For in Paris they told the elf Our rough North land was the Land of Lays, The one good thing left in evil days; 105 Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time, And only in wild nooks like ours Could you taste of it yet as in its prime, And see true ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... black specks of the trefoil; namely, Pipalee, Nip, Trip, and the lord treasurer (for that was all the party selected by the queen for her travelling cortege), and waiting for her Majesty, who, being a curious little elf, had gone round ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old, drawing near the confines of illusive dreams. Elf-land behind her, the shores of Reality in front. To herself she said that night, after Robert had walked home with her to the rectory gate: "I love Robert, and I feel sure that he loves me. I have thought so many a time before; to-day I ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was it a tryst of joy in that day's dawning For the foemen of Yngvi Frey, When the land-rulers guided the long-ships across the waste, And the sword-elf from the south-land Thrust the sea-steeds ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... deep and mysterious the feelings which then pervaded me might originate. Who can lie down on Elvir Hill without experiencing something of the sorcery of the place? Flee from Elvir Hill, young swain, or the maids of Elle will have power over you, and you will go elf-wild!—so say the Danes. I had unconsciously laid myself down upon haunted ground; and I am willing to imagine that what I then experienced was rather connected with the world of spirits and dreams than with what I actually saw and heard around me. Surely the elves ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... out of the studio passed male models of all statures, 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
... 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 ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... chin was as 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 bowl full 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 with a jerk, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... goes that a man-servant listening at the keyhole heard the truth in a talk between the King and Carr; and the bodily ear with which he heard grew large and monstrous as by magic, so awful was the secret. And though he had to be loaded with lands and gold and made an ancestor of dukes, the elf-shaped ear is still recurrent in the family. Well, you don't believe in black magic; and if you did, you couldn't use it for copy. If a miracle happened in your office, you'd have to hush it up, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... disappeared, and a deep dusk was falling upon the forest. Ernestine moved, elf-like, in the light of the sinking fire. She took no notice of the man who watched her, being plainly too busy to heed ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... eleven nouns in f, change the f into v and assume es for the plural: sheaf, sheaves; leaf, leaves; loaf, loaves; leaf, beeves; thief, thieves; calf, calves; half, halves; elf, elves; shelf, shelves; self, selves; wolf, wolves. Three others in fe are similar: life, lives; knife, knives; wife, wives. These are specific exceptions to the general rule for plurals, and not a series of examples coming under a particular ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... shut on their retainer, and perched herself on the end of the big old-fashioned sofa drawn up at one side of the fire. She wore a loose stockinette brown dress and looked rather like a wood elf of sorts with ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the 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 ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... look at Treherne. He stood gazing, his head a little bent, and one of his black elf-locks had fallen forward over his forehead. And again she had the sense of a shadow over the grass; she almost felt as if the grass were a host of fairies, and that the fairies were ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... Which will win, Thin little Harold or chubby Jim? Surely not Harold for there he goes Down so flat he bumps his nose, While Jimmy stops short. The fat little elf, Says he can't run ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... a little lithe lad. Then it was that in every pickle of mischief where a little lad could be this elf-child, with his black eyes and curly auburn hair, was to be found. So maddening indeed were his naughty tricks that the townspeople spoke not so often of beating him, as they would have beaten a human child, but of wringing his neck like a young thing that had no right ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... night—a night in March—people who had stayed up late by their firesides, talking of their sons at the front or dozing over the Temps, heard a queer music in the streets below, like the horns of elf-land blowing. It came closer and louder, with a strange sing-song note in ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... The miserly elf, Who, in hoarding his pelf, Keeps body and soul on the rack, O! Would he bless and be blest, He might open his chest By taking a ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... motions of the blood like hers, had carried her in her breast, and watched her sleeping. She had always thought of her mother as so long dead as to be no more than a nameless pinch of earth; but now it occurred to her that the once-young woman might be alive, and wrinkled and elf-locked like the woman she had sometimes seen in the door of the brown house that Lucius Harney ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... 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 love the sun so dearly that they turn to gaze upon him when he is bidding ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces, Some human memories and tearful lore, Render him terrorless: his name's "No More." He is the corporate Silence: dread him not! No power hath he of evil in himself; But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!) Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf, That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod No foot of man,) commend thyself ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Capstan' and if you consider the 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,' with its subtle sylvan consistency, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... is always black or white, and hangs in agreeable folds over the neck and shoulders. There is but little beauty among them; and alas! how should there be? They are in general filthy; the hair of both old and young is allowed to fall in uncombed elf-locks about their heads; and the old women are often hideous and disgustful in the extreme. The heart bleeds for the women: they have more than their share of the labors of the field; they have all the toils of the men, added to the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... eyebrows, presented 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 ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... nor melody, it was just formless, boundless music. The boy forgot himself and all the world besides. All his darkness was sudden light; dazzled he crept forward, bewildered, fascinated, until with one last wild whirl the elf-girl paused. The crimson light fell full upon the warm and velvet bronze of her face—her midnight eyes were aglow, her full purple lips apart, her half hid bosom panting, and all the music dead. Involuntarily ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... broad bright windows Of men I serve no more, The groaning of the old great wheels Thickened to a throttled roar; All buried things broke upwards; And peered from its retreat, Ugly and silent, like an elf, The ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... 'You wicked elf,' said Miss Mary, 'to inveigle people into predicaments, and then go shouting ho! ho! ho! like ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thou wert Cador's son, I give thee here my kingdom. Guard thou my Britons so long as thou livest, And hold them all the laws that have in my days stood And all the good laws that in Uther's days stood. And I will fare to Avelon to the fairest of all maidens To Argente their Queen, an elf very fair, And she shall my wounds make all sound All whole me make with healing draughts, And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom And dwell with the Britons with mickle joy. Even with the words that came upon the sea A short boat sailing, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... unprepared as he was for it, prevented him from understanding. If he had been a man of weak or superstitious mind, unacquainted with life and the world, it is impossible to say what he might have imagined. Independently of this—strong-minded as he was—the impression made upon him by the elf-like sprites that ran about so busily, almost induced him, for a few moments, to surrender to the illusion that he stood among individuals who had little or no natural connection with man or the external ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... quite well; the thunder-clouds seemed to have cleared away. I often felt beautifully elevated, gently supported; generally I was silent, but it was from inner joy; even hope wound itself softly round my heart; the children of fable came to the weeping elf, saying, "Weep not; thou too mayst still be happy." But the word resounded from farther and farther distance, till at last I could hear it no longer. Silence! now the old night holds me again; ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... to Avalun: And I will fare to Avalun, To vairest alre maidene, To fairest of all maidens, To Argante there quene, To Argante the queen, Alven swithe sceone. An elf very beautiful. And heo seal mine wunden And she shall my wounds Makien alle isunde, Make all sound; Al hal me makien All whole me make Mid haleweiye drenchen. With healing drinks. And seothe ich cumen wulle And again will I come To mine kiueriche ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... man hurried to take his sister's arm, and to get into place with her. Marie d'Harcourt, Rene's sister, was a charming girl, with blonde hair and a rosy complexion, fair and lithe as a northern elf. The blue veins were visible beneath her transparent skin, so fair that one might often have fancied the blood was about to come gushing through it. The Duke d'Harcourt had lost two of his sons of that terrible ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... high feather at the success of her exploit, and danced about like an elf, as she put her night-gown on over her frock, braided her hair in funny little tails all over her head, and fastened the great red pin-cushion on her bosom for a breast-pin in ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... trips across the meadows, The weird, capricious elf! The buds unfold their perfumed cups For love of her sweet self; And silver-throated birds begin to tune their lyres, While wind-harps lend their strains ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... blonde, sweet, serious, timid and a little slow, and Dorothy Rose—a sparkling brunette, quick, elf-like, high tempered, full of mischief ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... Elf Bold, and lavish of thyself, Since we needs must first have met I have seen thee, high and low, 20 Thirty years or more, and yet 'Twas a face I did not know; Thou hast now, go where I may, Fifty ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... he will, she prays, Yet will when his distempered devil of Self; - The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf In ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and with all wonders 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, him ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd 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 ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... a limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds, and never seeks, Makes such a vision to the sight As fills a father's eyes with light; And pleasures flow in so thick and fast Upon his heart, that he at last Must needs express his love's ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... are usually quite ready to play the elf in the rose-garden of love," replied Heinz gaily. "Moreover, I shall soon need a T and an S embroidered on my own doublet, for——Why don't they bring the light? Another cup of wine, the note, and then with renewed vigour ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dreamed al 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 dale and eke ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... "If an elf or a goblin come, smear his forehead with this salve, put it on his eyes, cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the victual. Meanwhile the carles fell to speech freely with the wayfarers, and told them much concerning their little land, were it hearsay, or stark sooth: such as tales of the wights that dwelt in the wood, wodehouses, and elf-women, and dwarfs, and such like, and how fearful it were to deal with such creatures. Amongst other matters they told how a hermit, a holy man, had come to dwell in the wood, in a clearing but ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... to-day, Miss Monfort," said Mrs. Clayton, with unusual asperity on one occasion, when, holding Ernie in my arms, I lavished endearments upon him; "your king, indeed! your angel! I really believe you admire as well as love that hideous little elf." ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Elf, Exclaim'd a thundering Voice, Nor dare to thrust thy foolish self Between me and my choice!" A falling Water swoln with snows Thus spake to a poor Briar-rose, That all bespatter'd with his foam, And dancing high, ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... pranksome elf Flash vaguely past at every turn, Or, weird and wee, sits Puck himself, With legs akimbo, on ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... 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
... out of the window from among the flowers that stood there, and no more songs were heard; so May knew that the elf ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... at Monthier and visit the source on foot, but fatigue may be avoided by taking a carriage from Pontarlier. Between Monthier and the source of the Loue is a bit of wild romantic scenery known as the Combes de Nouaille, home of the Franc-Comtois elf, or fairy, called la Vouivre. Combe, it must be explained, means a straight, narrow valley lying between two mountains, and Charles Nodier remarks: "is very French, and is perfectly intelligible in any part of the country, but has been omitted in the Dictionary of the Academy, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... "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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... precisely to win the woeful beauty of her that he had set his snares and unleashed his dogs. Did the Abbot know anything? Impossible; his reference forbad the fear. Was the girl something more than a dark woodland elf, a fairy, haggard and dishevelled, whose white shape shining through rags had made his blood stir? The mask of his face safeguarded him through this maze of surmise; nothing out of the depths of him was ever let to ruffle that dead surface. He commanded ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... wonder that the lover of the princely Idris should fail to recognize himself in the miserable object there pourtrayed. My tattered dress was that in which I had crawled half alive from the tempestuous sea. My long and tangled hair hung in elf locks on my brow—my dark eyes, now hollow and wild, gleamed from under them—my cheeks were discoloured by the jaundice, which (the effect of misery and neglect) suffused my skin, and were half hid by a ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... poetry one's preferences change according to the mood one happens to be in and to the conditions generally. At home in murky London on most days I should probably seek pleasure and forgetfulness in Browning; but in such surroundings as I have been describing the lighter-hearted, elf-like Melendez accords best with my spirit, one whose finest songs are without human interest; who is irresponsible as the wind, and as unstained with earthly care as the limpid running water he delights in: who is brother ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... a tall, stout, downy plant, from three to five feet high, of the Composite order, with broad leaves, and bright, yellow flowers. Campania is the original source of the plant (Enula campana), which is called also Elf-wort, and Elf-dock. Its botanical title is Helenium inula, to commemorate Helen of Troy, from whose tears the herb was thought to have sprung, or whose hands were full of the leaves when Paris carried her off from Menelaus. This title has become corrupted ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... King Arthur all the land was filled with fairies, and the elf queen and her merry company held many a dance in the green meadows where now you will see never one of them. But that was many ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... brutal, bestial, and if one comes to think of it, grotesque! ... Oh! My poor child, what joking elf, what perverse sprite could have prompted the concluding words of your letter to me? I have made a collection of them, but out of love for you, I will not show them ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... change, be applied to Byron. All the fairies, save one, had been bidden to his cradle. All the gossips had been profuse of their gifts. One had bestowed nobility, another genius, a third beauty. The malignant elf who had been uninvited came last, and, unable to reverse what her sisters had done for their favorite, had mixt up ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... upon my neck she'll loll, And screaming out, "Pretty Poll," I learn from the sweet chattering elf, To not have too much ...
— Spring Blossoms • Anonymous
... acquainted. And as nor tyrant sun nor winter weather May ever change sweet amaranthus' hue, So she though love and fortune join together, Will never leave to be both fair and true. And should I leave thee then, thou pretty elf? Nay, first let Damon ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... mind how much she had seen and how much she had imagined. There was assuredly 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 for nine ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... as composed as ever I did in my life: 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 a ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... 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 to ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... havril want?" Uncertain steps not long after sounded along the creaking passage; the door was opened, and presented to the impatient glance of the new proprietor the visage of the grumbling Gael. He was an old decrepit man, with bright ferocious eyes gleaming through his elf-locks. If he had succeeded in making a "swap" of his habiliments with any scarecrow south of the Tay, he would have had by far the best of the bargain, for his whole toilet consisted in a coarse blue kilt or petticoat ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... her joy was, when, one day as she wandered alone, gazing on gorgeous blossoms rich in brilliant colours, down at her feet she spied, waving its delicate-tinted elf-bells in the warm, soft breeze, ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... attended the illumination; nor can I quite forgive 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 especially, Titian could not equal. The latter colour with gamboge, a hated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 or ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... 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 ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... unbending fingers of his sinewy, red hands; he had a wrinkled face, sunken cheeks, and tightly-compressed lips, that he was incessantly moving as though chewing, which, added to his customary taciturnity, produced an almost malevolent impression; his grey hair hung in elf-locks over his low brow; his tiny, motionless eyes smouldered like coals which had just been extinguished; he walked heavily, swaying his clumsy body from side to side at every step. Some of his movements ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... an athletic, and, obviously, a most powerful ruffian. On his face he carried more than one large glazed cicatrix, that assisted the savage expression of malignity impressed by nature upon his features. And his matted black hair, with its elf locks, completed the picturesque effect of a face that proclaimed, in every lineament, a reckless abandonment to cruelty and ferocious passions. Maximilian himself, familiar as he was with the faces of military butchers in the dreadful hours of sack and carnage, recoiled for one ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... excursions in the vicinity of her father's residence. Those were days of post-chaises and sedan-chairs, when the rush of the locomotive was unknown. Steam, that genie of the vapor, was yet a little household elf, singing pleasant times by the evening fire, at quiet hearthstones; it has since expanded into a mighty giant, whose influences are no longer domestic. The circles of fashion are changed also. Those were the days of country-dances and India muslins; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... which stands on the left-hand side of 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 in a most ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... are 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... embowered in a modest way, and the drapery is eked out by many a yellow flannel petticoat and pair of scarlet leggings that dally riotously with each other in the breeze. The shrines are certainly less magnificent than those fairy bowers of the elf-land St. Roch, but there is a good deal of beaded peltry and bark-work about them, giving them, in a small way, the character of aboriginal bazaars. The Hurons are bons Catholiques, and everything connected with the fete is conducted with a solemnity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... world like the other sinful creatures of the earth, but was one of the kane-bairns of the fairies, whilk they had to pay to the enemy of man's salvation every seventh year. The poor lady-fairy—a mother's aye a mother, be she elves' flesh or Eve's flesh—hid her elf son beside the christened flesh in Marion Irving's cradle, and the auld enemy lost his prey for a time. Now, hasten on with your story, which is not a bodle the waur for me. The maiden saw the shape of her brother, fell into a faint, or a trance, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... and tossing her arms wildly as she utters some new denunciation, and then cowering down again in a despairing weariness. There are traces yet in the thin, wan face of the beauty which enslaved Loxian Apollo, and of the pride which turned his great love into a greater hate: round it hang the black elf-locks, disheveled, that have never been braided since the gripe of Telamonian Ajax ruffled them so rudely. In her great, troubled eyes you read terrible memories, and a prescience of coming death—death, most grateful to the dishonored princess, but before ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... jarl, who, marrying the 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 ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... happened in the darkness, for at such times our spoken words may take on a life of their own just as the trees and shadows do. And so these words of the lady, instead of scattering in the air, were changed into a marvellous little fairy elf that went stealing away through the forest. And as the elf ran swiftly under the trees and over the long grass, so lightly indeed that the flowers and weeds only bowed under his feet as when a gentle breeze passes over them,—as the elf sped on, I ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... 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 with a jerk, And, laying his finger aside ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... 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 ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... or beckoning elf Far from her homestead to the desert bourn, The vagrant soul returning to herself Wearily wise, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... my dove, my beautiful elf, Was the water clear as heaven, Did you weave a crown of flowers for yourself, In the ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... Mara 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
... defend thou my Britons 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
... as he should do, 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 ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... 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, very well intentioned, but very ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... he hated her. 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
... him, and he knows it, and does as she tells him most faithfully and gratefully. They are pattern-folk from top to toe, and so is the boy. But the girl! He would have his way, and named her Phyllis—Fly he calls her. She is a little skittish elf—Rotherwood himself all over; and doesn't he worship her! and doesn't he think it a holiday to carry her off to play pranks with! and isn't he happy to get amongst a good lot of us, and be his old ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the old humbug of sex superiority because she had seen it fall on its face to howl over a trodden worm, with the result that it discovered itself hollow behind, like the elf-maiden. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... call Hearkens his ready ear, Scarcely waiting to hear; Silk locks, white feet, all Rush, like a furry elf Tumbling over himself. ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... knew, 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "She wouldn't, Elf—Miss Bell. She was afraid of suggesting the obligation to come home to you. She said with your artistic conscience you couldn't come, and it would only be inflicting unnecessary pain upon you. But her bronchitis was no light matter last February. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... an elf, full to the brim of laughter and light, little Francette was playing the deepest game ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... "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 returned what they received on ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... one who was not evil—one who would surely befriend the Shadow Witch. It was the Elf—the good Elf, who dwells in the Borderland that stretches beyond the Plain of Ash and away toward the Kingdom of Earth. Very old and wise is the Elf. He knows the ways of the Evil Fairies who dwell in the countries that lie away from the heart of the Fire; knows much of their ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... 'Like a midsummer elf,' put in Captain Gates; 'I thought you did not care about dancing. Why, you love it, you know ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... the 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
... (since some men of fashion nobly dare To scrawl in verse) from Bond-street or the Square? [l] If things of Ton their harmless lays indite, Most wisely doomed to shun the public sight, What harm? in spite of every critic elf, Sir T. may read his stanzas to himself; MILES ANDREWS [107] still his strength in couplets try, And live in prologues, though his dramas die. Lords too are Bards: such things at times befall, And 'tis some praise in Peers to write at all. 720 Yet, did or Taste ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... no more I you love, But go with unsubservient feet, behold Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;— A new man, mock-ed with misname of old; When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf! When, ceremented in mouldering memory, Myself is hears-ed underneath myself, And I am but the monument of me:- O to that tomb be tender then, which bears Only the name ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... him. They had seen him often in the forest, dancing about like an elf after the eddying leaves, or crouched up in the hollow of some old oak-tree, sharing his nuts with the squirrels. They did not mind his being ugly, a bit. Why, even the nightingale herself, who sang so sweetly in the orange ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... began To persuade her good man The soles for to cobble once more Quoth Jobson you elf He may do them himself ...
— The Entertaining History of Jobson & Nell • Anonymous
... very nice and curious, instead of being carefully cleaned and disposed into short curls, or else set up on end, as is represented in old paintings, in a manner resembling that used by fine gentlemen of our own day, escaped in sable negligence from under a furred bonnet, and hung in elf-locks, which seemed strangers to the comb, over his rugged brows, and around his very singular and unprepossessing countenance. His keen, dark eyes were deep set beneath broad and shaggy eyebrows, and as they ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... or Innupits is the singular, Innupin the plural. It may be translated witch, elf, or goblin, with evil tendencies. On the other hand they did not fear a spirit. When on the Kaibab in July with Chuar and several other Indians, Prof. while riding along heard a cry something like an Indian halloo. "After we got into camp," he said ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... owing probably to a complexion rather florid, and uncommonly fair, notwithstanding a two years' residence within the tropics, which, together with his light hair and blue eyes, afforded a striking contrast to the tawny skins and long black elf-locks of the natives. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... 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 hedge. I know what the poor fool affects, leave ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... variety there was! First of all, Dorothy, as an elf in gauze and spangles, was a ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... basket and knife, and away ran Marjorie, entirely satisfied now that there was no magic about the new-comer; for if she had been an elf, couldn't she have got her hat without any help from a mortal child? Presently, however, it did begin to seem as if that hat was bewitched, for it led the nimble-footed Marjorie such a chase that the cows stopped ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... Thauberg's Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in spirit, and longs to be out in the free air—and we are there; by Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf, out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church stands—the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes gained in the war against the Danes. We follow the broad high road: it leads us close past Upsala's old hills—Odin's, Thor's and Freia's graves, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... whiskers, pinched my ear, rummaged my pockets, danced round me in a sort of wild joy, stunning me with a volley of questions, without stopping to hear the answer to one of them; in short, the wild little elf of old days seemed suddenly to come back to me, as I sat down and drew her on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... 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, need be, ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... elf! (But stop,—first let me kiss away that tear!) Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite, With spirits feather-light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin,— (My dear, the child ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Not to thyself, Mayn’t there be list’ning now Some fairy elf, Silently sitting near Thy dark retreat, Drinking with grateful ear Thy music sweet, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the grape for me!' said she: 'the Rhine grape with the elf in it, and the silver ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... whence I hear the quick voices of my beautiful and vivacious young friends. You ought to see these girls. Emma might look like a Madonna, were it not for her wicked wit; and as to Anna and Lizzie, as they glance by me, now and then, I seem to think them a kind of sprite, or elf, made to inhabit shady old houses, just as twinkling harebells grow in old castles; and then the gracious mamma, who speaks French, or English, like a stream of silver—is she not, after all, the fairest of any of them? And there is Caroline, piquant, racy, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we to do 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
... my children, were your father out, There was a merriment at his return; For still, on coming home, he brought you somewhat, Might be an Alpine flower, rare bird, or elf-bolt, Such as the wand'rer finds upon the mountains: Now he is gone in quest of other spoil On the wild way he sits with thoughts of murder: 'Tis for his enemy's life he lies in wait And yet on you, dear children, you ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... certain popularity. The once-famous Catnach Press still survives in Seven Dials, and Mr. Such, of Union Street in the Borough, still maintains what is probably the largest stock of broadsides now in existence, including Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight (or May Colvin), perhaps the most widely ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... cup-like sculptures are 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 ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... 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 ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... And to repay the other! Why rejoices Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? 20 Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood? Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of Image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf, That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold? Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold 25 These costless shadows of thy shadowy self? Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun! Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none; Thy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... birds are associated with this province: Black Vulture, Scaled Quail (C. s. pallida), Turkey, Elf Owl, Green Kingfisher, Hairy Woodpecker (D. v. icastus), Ladder-backed Woodpecker (D. s. cactophilus), Wied's Crested Flycatcher, Buff-breasted Flycatcher, Vermilion Flycatcher (P. r. flammeus), Black-crested ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... Dalesmen swore fidelity to Gustavus—the inhabitants, namely, of the upper parishes on both arms of the Dal-elf, where a numerous people, living amid wild yet grand natural scenery and hardened by privations, is still known by that name. Gustavus came to the Kopparberg with several hundred men in the early part of February, 1521, there took prisoner ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... over the shoulder hung the horn which announced his approach. He had a swarthy and sunburnt visage, with a thin beard, and piercing dark eyes, a well formed mouth and nose, and other features which might have been pronounced handsome, but for the black elf locks which hung around his face, and the air of wildness and emaciation, which rather seemed to indicate a savage than a ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... from a wretched elf, Who hails thee, emblem of himself. The book of life, which I have traced, Has been, like thee, a motley waste Of follies scribbled o'er and o'er, One folly bringing hundreds more. Some have indeed been writ so neat, In characters so fair, so sweet, That those who judge not too severely, Have ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al |
