"Elf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 in many a grene mede; This was the olde opinion, as I rede. But now can no man see none elves mo. For now the grete charitee and prayeres Of limitours and ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... always amuse himself in a town, ma'am. If it's your own business you're coming on, he knows you'll find him; and if it's his business, then begorra let him find you!" Which quite reminded me of what the Irish elf says to the English elf in Moira O'Neill's fairy story: "A waste of time? Why, you've come to a country where there's no such thing as a waste of time. We have no value for time here. There is lashings of it, more than anybody ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... this malady caught? Or wherefore his characters thus without fault? Say, was it that, mainly 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 ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... elf-like girl—the living Peter Pan to millions of theater-goers—was to assume the feathers and strut of the barnyard Romeo, there was a widespread feeling that he was making a great mistake, and that he was putting Miss Adams into a role, admirable artist that she ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... ballads, still enjoy a 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 ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... lovely an elf. A sunbeam had made its home in each lock of her tumbled hair. Her little brown face had the soft bloom of a ripe nectarine; her eyes, the timid glance of ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... distinguish—1, The active presence of the Sprites in a human habitation. 2, Their masquerading. 3, Their dispatch of human victuals. 4, The liability of Elfin limbs to human casualties. 5, The personality of that saucy Puck, our tiny ambassador elf. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... pause and take no further step lest he fall into the blue depths of space. The moon hangs like a great shield in a sky of soft sapphire, piled with luminous figures. Within the wood are fairy and elf, goblin and gnome, half seen in the filmy light. Here giant genie stand revealed, passing in the dim perspective of mighty distances or leaning portentously from the radiant sky. In the mirror-like pond I see all these things repeated ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... 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 feeding to look on in placid wonder; the grasshoppers ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... beyond all madnesse is the elf, Now he hath got out of himself! His fatal enemy the Bee, Nor his deceiv'd artillerie, His shackles, nor the roses bough Ne'r half so netled him, as ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... caught the horses that were in the "town" and rode away on them. They found the stud-horses between two brooks. Skarphedinn caught sight of them, for Sigmund was in bright clothing. Skarphedinn said, "See you now the red elf yonder, lads?" They looked that way, and ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... to heed— You, as though you would inquire "Can I trust them?" . . . then a jerk, And you'd skipped three branches higher, Jaws again at work; Like a little clock-work elf, With all the forest ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... 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 ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... the sun will never show himself, Who could not with his beams e'er melt me so, My dripping locks,—they would become an elf, Who in a beaded coat does ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... forth in her own proper likeness, unconcealed by bonnet or shawl, or maternal protection. The pinafore scarcely covered her gaunt neck and long arms; that tremendous head of rough, dusky hair was evidently for the first time gathered into a comb. Thence elf locks escaped in all directions, and were forever being pushed behind her ears, or rubbed (not smoothed; there was nothing smooth about her) back from her forehead, which, Hilary noticed, was low, broad, and full. The rest of her face, except ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... dim To wild uncertainty and shadows grim. There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before, And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore The journey homeward to habitual self! A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf, Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar, Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire, 280 Into the bosom of a ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... 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
... the malicious reader or Some one or other editor Of keen 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 Than ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... not hopped far before they met Eddie Elf, who was singing happily to himself as he walked along. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling on a rattle!" he said, when ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... Cador's son. I give thee here my kingdom, and 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 ...
— Brut • Layamon
... vast stillness we blew a blast on our shrill whistle, and listened for the echo. Sometimes it returned to us almost on the instant and we cried, "Halt!" When we halted or veered off, creeping as it were on the surface of the oily sea, sometimes a faint or far-off whisper—"the horns of elf-land"—gave us assurance of plenty of space and the sea-room we were sorely in need of just then. Once we saw looming right under our prow a little islet with a tuft of fir-trees crowning it—the whole worthy to be made the head-piece or ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... cottages harbored Maya for the night; and then her way at dawn lay through a vast forest, where the dim tree-trunks stretched far away till they grew undefined as a gray cloud, and only here and there the sunshine strewed its elf-gold on ferns and mosses, feathery and soft as strange plumage and costly velvet. Sometimes a little brook with bubbling laughter crept across her path and slid over the black rocks, gurgling and dimpling in the shadow or sparkling in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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 not: And, as we get this honey ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... bright-haired, of blooming complexion, merry to madness; in spirit, the personification of a romping elf; in physique, a sort of Hebe. Helen, on the other hand, is dark as gipsy, or Jewess; stately as a queen, with the proud grandeur of Juno. Her features of regular classic type, form tall and magnificently moulded, amidst others she appears as a palm rising above the commoner trees of the forest. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... abominably. Curiosity had brought them and the whole family into the parlour, to be spectators of the interview. My grandfather entered; I was dressed as genteelly as every effort of the village taylor could contrive; an appearance so different from that of the beaten, bruised, and wounded poor elf he first had seen, with clouted shoes, torn stockings, and coarse coating, dripping with water, and clotted with blood, was so great as scarcely to be credible. The ugliness of my companions did but enhance the superiority ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... startled—the girls most was the figure that sat facing them, as they entered the van. It was that of an old, old crone, sitting on a stool, bent forward with her sharp chin resting on her clenched fists, and her elbows on her knees, while iron-gray elf-locks hung about her wrinkled, nut-brown face, ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... little chap of mine, just full of life and fun, Comes up to me with solemn face to tell the bad he's done. It's natural for any boy to be a roguish elf, He hasn't time to stop and think and figure for himself, And though the womenfolks insist that I should take a hand, They've never been a boy ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... remoteness and intangibility: it was as if she were hovering 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. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... note in the words, subdued though it was, was not to be mistaken. It stirred him oddly, making him see her for the first time as a woman rather than as the fantastic being, half-elf, half-child, whom he had wrested from the very jaws of Death against her will. He leaned slowly forward, marking the deep, deep shadows about her eyes, the ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... downpouring night? I do!" He was a burly full-blooded blond, extravagantly facetious in convivial moments, and a mournful brooder in solitude. King, better known as "The Goblin," was a dark, whimsical elf in thick spectacles, much loved in the 'varsity dramatic society for his brilliant impersonations. The Goblin said nothing as he sipped his coffee and gazed at ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... 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 is brewing. Into the moor woman's ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... evermore, Here mew'd his lovely consort, young and fair, And watch'd her with a dotard's bootless care. Sure, Love these dotards dooms to jealous pain, And the world's laugh, when all their toil proves vain. This lord, howe'er, did all that mortal elf Could do, to keep his treasure to himself: Stay'd much at home, and when in luckless hour His state affairs would drag him from his tower, Left with his spouse a niece himself had bred, To be the partner of her board and bed; And one old ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... fashion,—its mother slept profoundly. She bent lower and lower over the child. With a beating heart she ventured to touch the small, pink hand that lay outside its wrappings like a softly curved rose-leaf. With a sort of elf-like confidence and contentment the feeble, wee fingers closed and curled round hers,—and held her fast! Weak as a silken thread, yet stronger in its persuasive force than a grasp of iron, that soft, light pressure controlled and restrained her, . . . very gradually the mists ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... 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— (Good heavens! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... child, I 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 ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... how grievously he had dreaded this child—the little black-haired elf that had seen him hiding. It had made him shiver to think of her—the small woodland demon, the devil's spy whose lisping treble might be distinct and loud enough to utter his death sentence. A thousand times he had wondered about her—thinking: ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... beat stormily. Oh, she did have a wish, a burning wish, but she didn't dare confess it. The elf seemed to guess; he smiled so you couldn't keep anything ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... 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
... garments. The shoes and stockings of a ploughman were, however, seen to meet at his knees with a pair of brownish, blackish breeches; a rusty-coloured handkerchief, that has been black in its day, surrounded his throat, and was an apology for linen. His hair, half grey, half black, escaped in elf-locks around a huge wig, made of tow, as it seemed to me, and so much shrunk that it stood up on the very top of his head; above which he plants, when covered, an immense cocked hat, which, like the chieftain's ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... to the newcomers. Soon thirty canoes were around the ships with some ten warriors in each. Still they came, shoals of them, like fish, with savages almost naked, the harbor smooth as glass, the grand tyee, or great chief of the tribes, standing erect shouting a welcome, with long elf-locks streaming down his back. Women and children now appeared in the canoes. That meant peace. The women were chattering like magpies; the men gurgling and spluttering their surprise at the white visitors. For safety's sake the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... 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
... it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. My long scythe whispered ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... the work-scarred hands upon it. "It's something by the ordinar' to find a gude auld country body in such a foul place." He stooped and patted Bobby, and noted the bun, untouched, upon the floor. Turning to a wild elf of a barefooted child in the crowd he spoke to her. "Would you share your gude brose ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... 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 a choir of fishwomen. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... you'd find that out," he said. "Trust you to get telepathic messages from the elf-folk! Why, this gorge teems with fairy tales and legends of magic, black and white. The Rhine Valley and the Black Forest together haven't as many or as wonderful ones. I should like you to hear the stories from some of the village people or the boatmen. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the same hour when the tumult in Strasburg being abated for that night,—the Strasburgers had all got quietly into their beds—but not like the stranger, for the rest either of their minds or bodies; queen Mab, like an elf as she was, had taken the stranger's nose, and without reduction of its bulk, had that night been at the pains of slitting and dividing it into as many noses of different cuts and fashions, as there were heads in Strasburg to hold them. The abbess ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... 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 sign ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... do I know myself! By Odin, I look more like a rugged elf than Hother. And who art thou, that ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... "Come here, you envious elf," said her father, taking something from his pocket. Like light she flashed out from under the cloud and was at his side in an instant, dimpling, smiling, and twinkling with expectation, her black eyes as quick and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... vision seen in the forest by the minstrel Bard, of the bright green snake coiled around the wings and neck of a fluttering dove; and, finally, we read it in its most startling form, in the conclusion of the poem, "A little child, a limber elf, singing, dancing to itself," etc., wherein is exhibited the strange tendency to express love's excess "with words of unmeant bitterness". This dark principle of evil, we may suppose, after dwelling in the poet's mind, in an abstract form, crept into this broken poem, where ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... misfortune flings Can give me little pain When my narcotic spell has wrought This quiet in my brain: When I can waste the past in taste So luscious and so ripe That like an elf I hug myself; And ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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
... while praying she may eat the child in the cradle if ever she deceived them. They find nothing, and are about to depart when Daw insists on kissing the new baby. Gill vows she saw the child changed by an elf as the clock struck midnight, but Mak pleads guilty and gets ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... lad, your value for peace and for my poor kindness proves that you have a human heart and are no elf." ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the night lounged on a heap of rock at the edge of the ledge. The strange Indian was well past middle age, tall and dignified. He was darker than Kut-le. His face was thin and aquiline. His long hair hung in elf locks over his shoulders. His toilet was elaborate compared with that of Kut-le, for he wore a pair of overalls and a dilapidated flannel shirt, unbelted and fluttering its ends in the morning breeze. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... an elf, full to the brim of laughter and light, little Francette was playing the deepest ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... bid me, I shall tell ye a' That ilk ane talks about you, but a flaw. When last the wind made Glaud a roofless barn; When last the burn bore down my mither's yarn; When Brawny, elf-shot, never mair came hame; When Tibby kirn'd, and there nae butter came; When Bessy Freetock's chuffy-cheeked wean To a fairy turn'd, and cou'dna stand its lane; When Wattie wander'd ae night thro' the shaw And tint himsell amaist ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... unseen world; very real in those poor monks' eyes, though not in ours. There were Nixes in the streams, and Kobolds in the caves, and Tannhauser in the dark pine-glades, who hated the Christian man, and would lure him to his death. There were fair swan-maidens and elf-maidens; nay, dame Venus herself, and Herodias the dancer, with all their rout of revellers; who would tempt him to sin, and having made him sell his soul, destroy both body and soul in hell. There was Satan and ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... caterpillar-shrouds, Boughs on which the wild bees settle, Tints that spot the violet's petal, Why Nature loves the number five, And why the star-form she repeats: Lover of all things alive, Wonderer at all he meets, Wonderer chiefly at himself, Who can tell him what he is? Or how meet in human elf ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... cock was pleased to hear him speak so fair, And proud beside, as solar people are; Nor could the treason from the truth descry, So was he ravish'd with this flattery; So much the more, as from a little elf He had a high opinion of himself; Though sickly, slender, and not large of limb, Concluding all the world ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... 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
... more deep and mysterious the feeling 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 on 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 ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... may a neckcloth, call'd a rope, Of robbing cure this elf; If so I'll write, without a trope, His ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... 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 ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... quoth Medb. "It is but a single body he has; he shuns being wounded; he avoids being taken. They do say his age is but that of a girl to be wed. [1]His deeds of manhood have not yet come,[1] nor will he hold out against tried men, this young, beardless elf-man of whom thou spokest." [2]"We say not so,"[2] replied Fergus, "for manful were the deeds of the lad at a time when he was younger ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... drew a cartoon of the situation of his country as he and his countrymen saw it. The Russian Bear, coming down from the north, his feet planted in Manchuria and northern Korea, sees the British Bulldog seated in southern China, while "The Sun Elf'' ( Japan), sitting upon its Island Kingdom, proclaims that "John Bull and I will watch the Bear.'' The German Sausage around Kiau-chou makes no sign of life, but the French Frog, jumping about in Tonquin and Annam and branded "Fashoda and Colonial Expansion,'' ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... low window that commanded a view of the library, where Katherine, in a familiar gown of pale yellow chambrey, was oblivious to all but the work in hand. The young man shot a searching look at the mischievous elf; then, with a quiet "thank you," deliberately took the proffered seat, but, ten minutes later, he also was missing ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... gigantic barbarians of the cantons, flaunting with plumes and emblazoned surcoats, 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 of all those legioned races which were ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... which many of the ancient Greek patricians still retained, she seemed of a different mold from the young Venetian gentlewomen of the court of Caterina—like some fantastic fury, half-elf, half-woman. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... to charm an elf! Had Crusoe, sick of self, Chanced to view One printed near the tide, Oh, how hard he would have tried For ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... ride, the daughter of the erl king met him and invited him to dance a measure, but Sir Oluf declined. She then offered him a pair of gold spurs, a silk doublet, and a heap of gold, if he would dance with her: and when he refused to do so, she struck him "with an elf-stroke." On the morrow, when all the bridal party was assembled, Sir Oluf was found dead in a wood.—A Danish ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... botanical treasures reported to grow at Monkend, was searching among the dead twigs under the hazel bushes, and was rewarded by finding a clump of the curious little birds-nest fungus with its seeds packed like tiny eggs inside. Some orange elf-cups, a bright red toadstool or two, and a few of the larger purple varieties that had lingered on from October made quite a creditable fungus record for the League, and specimens of wild flowers were also secured, a belated foxglove ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... 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
... groups and leaders: Eritrean Islamic Jihad or EIJ; Eritrean Liberation Front or ELF ; Eritrean Liberation Front-Revolutionary Council or ELF-RC ; Eritrean Liberation Front-United Organization or ELF-UO ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the girl well enough—too well for her, not well enough yet for himself. It was 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. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... you know, she never was so perverse 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 a solemn air, ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... which the mellowing Western sky reflects itself. This changeful mirror of swift waters spreads a dazzling foreground to valley, hill, and lustrous heaven. There is orange on the far horizon, and a green ocean above, in which sea-monsters fashioned from the clouds are floating. Yonder swims an elf with luminous hair astride upon a sea-horse, and followed by a dolphin plunging through the fiery waves. The orange deepens into dying red. The green divides into daffodil and beryl. The blue above grows fainter, and the moon and stars ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... 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, beyond question, ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... Queen here by the King's commands, Who does not like Cook's dirty hands, Makes the court-pastry all herself. Pambo the knave, that roguish elf, Watches each sugary sweet ingredient, And slily thinks ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in 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 honor of ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... at this fellow!' cried he, catching from Sarah's arm, and holding aloft an elf, whose round mouth and eyes were all laughter, and sturdy limbs all movement, the moment he appeared. 'There! have we not improved in babies since your time! And here is a round dumpling that calls itself Anna. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gipsy, a great cudgel in her hand, and her dress and bearing more like those of a man than of a woman. Elf-locks shot up through the holes in her bonnet, and her black eyes rolled with a kind of madness. Soon, however, Godfrey, who evidently only half disbelieved in her powers as a witch, dismissed her to the kitchen with fair words, while Guy Mannering, whom his strange adventure ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... tiptoe, 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 cautiously ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... 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
... presumptuous 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, and dancing low, Was living, as a child might know, ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... 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 ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... to smile at the east wind. When its spirit to the Yue Ling hath flown, 'tis hard to say 'tis spring. The russet clouds across the 'Lo Fu' lie, so e'en to dreams it's closed. The green petals add grace to a coiffure, when painted candles burn. The simple elf when primed with wine doth the waning rainbow bestride. Does its appearance speak of a colour of ordinary run? Both dark and light fall of their own free will into the ice ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was of brief duration; for Aasa's thoughts had taken a widely different course; it was but seldom she had found herself under the necessity of making a decision; and now it evidently devolved upon her to find the stranger a place of rest for the night; so instead of an elf-maid's kiss and a silver palace, he soon found himself huddled into a dark little alcove in the wall, where he was told to go to sleep, while Aasa wandered over to the empty cow-stables, and threw herself down in the hay by the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... big, so red, and so misshapen, under your coarse elf-locks, that they are revolting. I am not pretty myself, but I should die of shame if mine were like them." After this last blow, the old witch, having repeated what the queen had taught her, hobbled off, with a harsh croak of laughter, leaving poor Jacinta dissolved ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... nintau Thalateen Forty Mulu fula Arbae'in Fifty Mulu fula neentan Kumseen Sixty Mulu sebaa Setteen Seventy Mulu sebaa nintan Sebae'in. 374 Eighty Mulu nani T'aramana'een Ninety Mulu nani neentaan Tasa'een One hundred Kemi Mia One thousand Uli Elf ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... 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 son, Foul Merodach[124], by his father dealt: Who when his ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... "doomed" (what the Germans call "fatal") in its appearance—such a preternaturally thoughtful, mournful expression for a little child, such a marked brow over the heavy blue eyes, such a transparent skin, such pale-golden hair. John says the little creature is an elf-child. I think it is the prophecy of a poet. [And so, indeed, it was, as all who know Adelaide Procter's writings will agree—a poet who died too early for the world, though not before she had achieved a poet's fame, and proved herself her father's worthy daughter.] ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Swiftly I come, and enter there, Where not a chink lets in the air; Like thought, I'm in a moment gone, Nor can I ever be alone: All things on earth I imitate Faster than nature can create; Sometimes imperial robes I wear, Anon in beggar's rags appear; A giant now, and straight an elf, I'm every one, but ne'er myself; Ne'er sad I mourn, ne'er glad rejoice, I move my lips, but want a voice; I ne'er was born, nor e'er can die, Then, pr'ythee, tell ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... "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, or bursting into ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... were half hid under heavy, projecting eyebrows, and shut up tight whenever he laughed. His hair was long and thin, and white as spun glass. Altogether, except that he spoke with an unmistakable Yankee twang, and wore unmistakable Yankee clothes, you might have fancied that he was an ancient elf from ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of hunting-piece, full of the sparkle, the color and romance of bugles and horns,—a spirited fanfare broken by hushed phrases of strings or wood, or an elf-like mystic dance on the softened call of trumpets. The Trio sings apart, between the gay revels, in soft voices and slower ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... eyes and elf locks, with a baby wrapped in her shawl, crouching low and making a desperate long arm, grasped a covetous handful, which spirted away wastefully between her clenched fingers. She moistened some of this in a puddle as she knelt, and held ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... mother's toys; Or follow'd by their Bonne, in Norman cap, Affect to take their first-born to their lap— To gaze enraptured, think you, on a face, In which a husband's lineaments they trace? Smiling, to win the notice of their elf? No! but to draw the gaze of crowds ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... 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 ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... from where we had parted—I found her, a pillar of smoke in the first shining of the moon. She turned large, smouldering eyes on me, her mane in elf locks, her flanks heaving and wet, her forelock frizzed like a colt's. Yet she showed only pleasure at seeing me, and so evident a desire to unburden the day's history, that I almost wished I might be ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... woods, and the beings in South Germany who resemble the dwarfs, and are called Wild, Wood, Timber and Moss People.[B] "These generally live together in society, but they sometimes appear singly. They are small in stature, yet somewhat larger than the Elf, being the size of children of three years, grey and old-looking, hairy and clad in moss. Their lives are attached, like those of the Hamadryads, to the trees, and if any one causes by friction the inner bark to loosen, a Wood-woman dies." In Scandinavia ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... beaten gold And jet Hung, in the stately way of old, From the ears' drooping lobes On festivals and Lord's-day of the week, Show all too matron-sober for the cheek,— Which, now I look again, is perfect child, Or no—or no—'t is girlhood's very self, Moulded by some deep, mischief-ridden elf So meek, so maiden mild, But startling the close gazer with the sense Of passions forest-shy and forest-wild, And ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... ethnic daemons though they were, yet cherished a hope of salvation! The myth-spirits of the North were more homely and domestic than those of the South, and had a broader humor and livelier fancies. The Northern Elf-folk were true natives of the soil, grotesque in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Hence, ghostly shadows! let me learn to draw Mine inspiration from the common air. A peasant-woman auburn-haired, large-eyed, Within the shade of overhanging boughs Suckles her babe, and sees her eldest born Gambol upon the grass: the elf has wrought With two snapt boughs the semblance of a cross, And proudly holds the sacred symbol high Above his head to win his mother's praise. Mine art may haply reproduce that wealth Of brilliant hues—the dusk hair's glimmering gold, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... said Lucy passionately. "He had a cord across the Slype to trip us up. I heard him laughing like a hobgoblin, and saw him too, grinning over a tombstone like the malicious elf ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ancient course conceal'd by bushes. Where the hollow was, a mound Rises from the upheaved ground. Doubting, shouting with surprise, How the fool stares, and rubs his eyes! All's so changed, the simple elf Fancies he is changed himself! Ho! ho! 'tis a merry sight The hag shall have when dawns the light. But see! she halts and waves her hand. All is done as ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... her. Far away a sheep bleated. The sound came to Duncan scornfully, as though a wicked elf had laughed ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... so singest thou, Not to thyself, Mayn’t there be list’ning now Some fairy elf, Silently sitting near Thy dark retreat, Drinking with grateful ear Thy ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... anything or paying any attention to the spiteful words which Loki kept uttering, Sindri chose from a heap of gold the most solid lump he could find and flung it into the white flames. Thrice it was heated and cooled, and the dark elf turned it and worked it with wonderful skill, and in the glow Loki saw a broad red ring, which seemed to live and move. Again he tried to spoil the work as a fly, and bit deeply into Brok's neck, but Brok would not so much as ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... French saloon, and 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 ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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 a little way thence toward ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... spirit 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
... tempt the wight, Nor fond Regret delay him, Nor Love himself can hold the elf, Nor sober Friendship stay him, We'll drink to-night, with hearts as light, To loves as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, And break on the ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... to be 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 ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... he doesn't look like an elf, he looks like a king with a high crown on his head or a naughty boy with a ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... jeweller working with a graver's tool upon the gold vessel before him; how steadily he bears himself at a task which requires at once strength of hand and delicacy of workmanship. Look again at the nervous pose of the pretty elf who is gingerly pouring wine out of a huge amphora, which he holds in his arms, into a shallow tasting cup offered by a brother Cupid. How thoroughly must the unknown artist have enjoyed the task of painting this frieze! How unfettered his fancy, as his brush glided smoothly ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... 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 ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... 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 ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... 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 ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... flew away. Anyone but Tanko-Mankie would have remained to help the wax lady out of the troubles that were sure to overtake her; but this naughty elf thought it rare fun to turn the inexperienced lady loose in a cold and heartless world and leave her to shift ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum |
