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Halcyon   /hˈælsiən/   Listen
Halcyon

noun
1.
(Greek mythology) a woman who was turned into a kingfisher.  Synonym: Alcyone.
2.
A large kingfisher widely distributed in warmer parts of the Old World.  Synonym: genus Halcyon.
3.
A mythical bird said to breed at the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea and to have the power of calming the winds and waves.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Halcyon" Quotes from Famous Books



... singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... and three light cruisers, the Kolberg, the Graudenz, and the Strasburg. They were mainly fast vessels and the battle cruisers carried eleven-inch guns. Early in the morning they ran through the nets of a British fishing fleet. Later an old coast police boat, the Halcyon, was shot at a few times. About eight o'clock they were opposite Yarmouth, and proceeded to bombard that naval station from a distance of about ten miles. Their range was poor and their shells did no damage. They then turned swiftly for home, but on the road back the York ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... nest of the halcyon or kingfisher, supposed to float on the sea, which our Saint describes so well and applies so exquisitely in one of his letters, was the true picture of his own heart. The great stoic, Seneca, says ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... one follows the high walls of the Villa Palmieri, which is now very private American property, but is famous for ever as the first refuge of Boccaccio's seven young women and three young men when they fled from plague-stricken Florence in 1348 and told tales for ten halcyon days. It is now generally agreed that if Boccaccio had any particular house in his mind it was this. It used to be thought that the Villa Poggio Gherardo, Mrs. Ross's beautiful home on the way to ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... the valley below—they all carried with them an inexpressible magic for the man wandering on the moor. So did the movements of birds—the rise of a couple of startled grouse, the hovering of two kestrels, a flight of wild duck in the distance. Each and all reminded him of the halcyon times of life—adventures of his boyhood, the sporting pleasures of his manhood. By George!—how ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Halcyons. Halcyon days, ones of peace and tranquillity; anciently, days of calm weather in mid-winter, when the halcyon, or kingfisher, was supposed to brood. It was fabled that this bird laid its eggs in a nest that floated on ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... from the Atlantic to the Pacific—appealing invitations done in his best style, and sanctioned by the aegis of a committee headed by "Captain Sproul, Chairman." Such unbroken array of declinations heartened him in his quest, and he was reaping his halcyon harvest as rapidly as ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... those halcyon days. The storm began; From pole to pole the doubling thunder ran. Yet still with patient toil I saw thee urge Thy fearless passage o'er the gloomy surge; Still Faith discern'd the harbour of repose, And panting Hope look'd ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... interrupted on the honest man's account. He has been here these two hours—courting the mother for the daughter, I suppose—yet she wants no courting neither: 'Tis well one of us does; else the man would have nothing but halcyon; and be remiss, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... reckoning nothing worth the doing in which she had not a part. He consulted her before each undertaking, talked and laughed over it with her in private afterwards, thereby unconsciously securing to her halcyon days, a honeymoon of the heart of infinite sweetness, so that she, on her part, thanked God and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... These were halcyon hours, happier as Leonora grew up and received the education prescribed for her by her parent. Her Hebrew was fair, and her Hittite up to a first class, but, to my distress, she mainly devoted ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... sweeps the velvet grounds; As hand in hand along the flowery meads His blushing bride the quiver'd hero leads; Charm'd round their heads pursuing Zephyrs throng, And scatter roses, as they move along; Bright beams of Spring in soft effusion play, And halcyon Hours ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... Did ever song of birds sound so like the voice of eternal youth? Whence had come this air like the fumes from the winepresses of the gods? And the light! What colors, what tints, upon mountain and valley and halcyon lake! And the man asleep in the next room—yes, there WAS a Joshua Craig whom she found extremely trying at times; but that Joshua Craig had somehow resigned the tenancy of the strong, straight form there, had resigned ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... the halcyon hours. During the day time Aristide in a corner of the Mayor's office, drew up flamboyant circulars in English which would have put a pushing Land and Estate Agent in the New Jerusalem to the blush, and in the evening played piquet with Madame Coquereau, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... On halcyon wings our moments pass, Life's cruel cares beguiling; Old Time lays down his scythe and glass, In gay good-humour smiling: With ermine beard and forelock gray, His reverend part adorning, He looks like ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... well, girl, Thou wilt know it yet. I fetter not thy choice, But if thou couldst by loving bind together Not two hearts only, but opposing peoples; Supplant by halcyon days long years of strife, And link them in unbroken harmony;— Were this no glory for a woman, this No worthy ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... savoury and nourishing dish, the 'poor man's steak' I believe it is commonly called. When I was younger, Mrs. Wilkins, they were cheaper. For twopence one could secure a small specimen, for fourpence one of generous proportions. In the halcyon days of youth, when one's lexicon contained not the word failure (it has crept into later editions, Mrs. Wilkins, the word it was found was occasionally needful), the haddock was of much comfort and support to me, a very present help in time of trouble. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... perhaps the peaceful, happy life she leads—povera—that preserves her. And the air, the wonderful air of our Cornwall. I fixed on Cornwall for the sake of Tallie, in great part; I sought for a truly halcyon spot where that faithful one might end her days in joy. You knew ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... waves are strown beneath your prow, Like carpets for a victor's feet; You call slow zephyrs to your brow, In listless luxury complete: Love, the true Halcyon, guides your ship; Oh, might his ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... to consider, back to a mere three words she had begun by using about Charlotte Stant. She simply "cleared them out"—those had been the three words, thrown off in reference to the general golden peace that the Kentish October had gradually ushered in, the "halcyon" days the full beauty of which had appeared to shine out for them after Charlotte's arrival. For it was during these days that Mrs. Rance and the Miss Lutches had been observed to be gathering themselves for departure, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... halcyon days were broken by intervals of storm and cloud. The weak little woman was afflicted with that intermittent fever called jealousy; and the stalwart Thomas was one of those men who can scarcely give the time of day to a feminine acquaintance without ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... storm, as by his instinct he ought to be,) appearing at that uncertain season before the rigs of old Michaelmas were yet well composed, and when the inclement storms of winter were approaching, began to flicker over the seas, and was busy in building its halcyon nest, as if the angry ocean had been soothed by the genial breath of May. Very unfortunately, this auspice was instantly followed by a speech from the throne in the very spirit ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... be the English scourge— This night the siege assuredly I'll raise: Expect St. Martin's Summer, halcyon days, Since I have entered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... From such halcyon dreams they were startled one morning, at daybreak, by a savage yell, and jumped for their rifles. The yell was repeated by two or three voices. Cautiously peeping out, they beheld, to their dismay, several Indian warriors among the trees, all armed and painted ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... unexpected in this wandering life, but another time the mishap might not be turned to diversion. The coach would not always traverse sunny byways; the dry leaf floating from the majestic arm of the oak, the sound of an acorn as it struck the earth presaged days less halcyon to come. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... Ghosts, forsooth! When all around me vibrated with the sounds of girlish laughter, and the summer sunshine, sparkling on the golden curls of my child-wife, saw itself reflected a millionfold in the alluring depths of her azure eyes. In halcyon days like these who thinks of ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... taught by the manner of his friend Poppins that he could not now expect to receive that high deference which was paid to him about the time that Johnson of Manchester had been in the ascendant. Those had been the halcyon days of the firm, and Robinson had then been happy. Men at that time would point him out as he passed, as one worthy of notice; his companions felt proud when he would join them; and they would hint to him, with a mysterious reverence that was very gratifying, their ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... sweet tokens of a pure and loving heart. How tenderly she looked down, now and then, upon the slumbering cherub whose winning ways and murmurs of affection had blessed her through the day! Happy young wife! these are thy halcyon days. Care has not thrown upon thee a single shadow from his gloomy wing, and hope pictures the smiling future with ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur

... be so much above him should have owned that she was all his own seemed then to be world enough for him. For a few weeks he lived a hero to himself, and was able to tell himself that for him the glory of a passion was sufficient. In those halcyon moments no common human care is allowed to intrude itself. To one who has thus entered in upon the heroism of romance his own daily work, his dinners, clothes, income, father and mother, sisters and brothers, his own street and house are nothing. Hunting, shooting, rowing, Alpine-climbing, even ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... of repose; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm; a tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... the penniless, halcyon days for the toady and the sycophant. There was still much of the old oriental munificence about the court, and sovereigns like Mazarin and Louis XIV. granted pensions for a copy of flattering verses, or gave away places as the reward of a judicious speech. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... the lady to this compliment, "that hemlocke wheresoever it bee planted, will be pestilent [and] that the serpent with the brightest scales shroudeth the most fatall venome." Is there anything more certain? But that does not prevent the halcyon from hatching when the sea is calm, and the phoenix from spreading her wings when the sunbeams shine on her nest. This is what the husband remarks, and, guided by the onyx, the alexander, &c., after a mock trial, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... held, anciently, that a nation's architecture was the exponent of its national character, growing with and out of its social, civil, and religious peculiarities, and modified by climate, habit, and taste. In those early ages, the halcyon days of the art, men built with a purpose, built what they wanted in a natural and appropriate way, and—built successfully. So true was this, that to this day, most of their relics proclaim their own origin, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... scarce a goose to be seen in the whole county of Nice. Wild-ducks and teal are sometimes to be had in the winter; and now I am speaking of sea-fowl, it may not be amiss to tell you what I know of the halcyon, or king's-fisher. It is a bird, though very rare in this country about the size of a pigeon; the body brown, and the belly white: by a wonderful instinct it makes its nest upon the surface of the sea, and lays its eggs in the month of ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... is, he now resumes his old Reinsberg Program of Life; probably with double relish, after such experiences the other way; and prosecutes it with the old ardor; hoping much that his History will be of halcyon pacific nature, after all. Would the mad War-whirlpool but quench itself; dangerous for singeing a near neighbor, who is only just got out of it! Fain would he be arbiter, and help to quench it; but it will not quench. For a space of Two Years ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... paltry fifty dollars a month, as she had never needed anything in life. If she refrained from spending a dollar for several years, she could hardly clear herself of the accumulated bills from her halcyon days of hope. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... artistic charm which characterized everything she selected. It was a straggling, hilly, leafy village, full of archaic relics—human as well as architectural—sloping down to a gracefully curved bay, where the blue waves broke in whispers, for on summer days a halcyon calm overhung this magic spot, and the great sea stretched away, unwrinkled, ever young. There were no neutral tones in the colors of this divine picture—the sea was sapphire, the sky amethyst. There were dark-red houses ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... halcyon days of Cartagena's greatness, when, under the protection of the powerful mother-country, her commerce extended to the confines of the known world, her streets and markets presented a scene of industry and activity wholly foreign to her in these latter days of her decadence. From ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... Now while the halcyon broods through the Sabbath-days of winter, and, looking from her nest, sees the waves of a summer calm and brightness,—now while she meditates, with the eggs under her wings, of a fast-approaching time when she shall teach her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... and there of gayety and halcyon days that give brightness to the story so full of tragedy. There was in the very heart of the valley (near the site of St. Louis, where a great world's fair was held a few years ago), Fort Chartres, mentioned above, "the centre of life and fashion in the West" as well as "a bulwark against Spain ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... household eaves." Io Aegien! Peace! "And the skylark at poise o'er the bended sheaves," Io Aegien! Peace! Here and there, everywhere, hear we Peace, Hear her, and see her, and clasp her—Peace! The grasshopper chaunts in the bells of thyme, And the halcyon is back to ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... O'Brien (then enthusiastic about a Repeal of the Legislative Union) said that the picture of Irish misery drawn by Lord John Russell was the result of forty-seven years of union with England. Halcyon days were promised to Ireland at the time of the Union, but he called on the House to contrast the progress of Ireland from 1782 to the Union, with the state of Ireland since. He expressed his opinion that the loss in potatoes, considering the value of offal for pigs and ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... "discovery" of the field by Mr. Peter Finnerty, old "Taeping," as Gordon's ex-marine engineer had been promptly nicknamed, arrived with his crushing battery, and then indeed were halcyon days for the Flat. From early morn till long past midnight, the little bar of the "Digger's Best" was crowded with diggers, packhorsemen and teamsters; a police trooper arrived and fixed his tent on the ridge overlooking the creek, and then—the very zenith of prosperity—a bank official ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke

... warm in the sunshine where country-folk got in with baskets, and talked in an unfamiliar dialect, an English which to us sounded almost like a foreign tongue. Then the first glimpse of the sea; the excitement of noting whether tide was high or low—stretches of sand and weedy pools, or halcyon wavelets frothing at their furthest reach, under the sea-banks starred with convolvulus. Of a ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... Halcyon nights those, and then on Sunday morning we always breakfasted at old Martin's on University Place eggs a la Martin and that wonderful coffee and pain de menage. And what a wrench it was when I tore myself away from ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those halcyon moments of our first housekeeping! To be the confidential friend in a hundred families in the town,—cutting the social trifle, as my friend Haliburton says, "from the top of the whipped syllabub to the bottom of the sponge-cake, which ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... was gratified, not completely, but enough to remove grounds for lover's fretfulness. He passed idyllic days in halcyon weather. Often she would send her gondola to fetch him from the Grand Hotel, where he was staying. Now and then, most graciously audacious of princesses, she would come herself. On such occasions he would sit awaiting her with beating heart, juvenis fortunatus nimium, on the narrow veranda of the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... poet wears your laurels now; None rises, singing, from your race like you. Dark melodist, immortal, though the dew Fell early on the bays upon your brow, And tinged with pathos every halcyon vow And brave endeavor. Silence o'er you threw Flowerets of love. Or, if an envious few Of your own people brought no garlands, how Could Malice smite him whom the gods had crowned? If, like the meadow-lark, your flight was low Your flooded lyrics half the hilltops drowned; A wide world heard ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, the philosopher, the historian and the humble listener, there has been a divine melody running through the song, which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.' ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... sea be smooth and bright, Sparkling with the stars of night, And my ship's path be ablaze With the light of halcyon days, Still I know my need of Thee; Jesus, ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer

... particularly "hanging judge," ended by hanging himself, as the coroner's jury found, under an impulse of "temporary insanity," with a child's skipping-rope, over the massive old bannisters) resided there, entertaining good company, with fine venison and rare old port. In those halcyon days, the drawing-rooms were hung with gilded leather, and, I dare say, cut a good figure, for they were ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... halcyon notes ceased upon our ears, when, in resumed public session, we are summoned to fresh warlike operations; to create a new army of thirty thousand men for the further prosecution of the war; to carry the war, in the language of the President, still more dreadfully into the vital parts of the enemy, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... on the eve of a Jubilee Year, when the halcyon shall plume his wing, and we shall hear much oratorical trash and hebetude about the peacefulness ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... This halcyon period of our autumn will always in some way be associated with the Indian. It is red and yellow and dusky like him. The smoke of his camp-fire seems again in the air. The memory of him pervades the woods. His plumes and moccasins and ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... constantly preached caution lest strength should be over-taxed, could find no fault with Francis' progress during these halcyon days ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... halcyon times for Punch engravers. Mark Lemon would come down two or three times a week to edit and make up the paper, and would talk leisurely with Mr. Swain of such matters as concerned the engraver. No block was hurried. If it could not be ready for one week, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... one eventful day—a day far back in that happy, halcyon age when ships sailed as freely across the ocean as ferry-boats across the North River and men roved at will among the nations of the earth—one sunny August morning, eight years after the day of our coming, ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Duke of Newcastle and the Earl of Bute. But beyond all this, he meant something more, which gives the real spice to his writings. It was something not quite easy to put into formulas; but characteristic of the vague discomfort of the holders of sinecures in those halcyon days arising from the perception that the ground was hollow under their feet. To understand him we must remember that the period of his activity marks precisely the lowest ebb of political principle. Old issues had been settled, and the new ones were only just coming to the surface. He saw the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... Theories, Philosophies, Sensibilities,—beautiful art, not only of revealing Thought, but also of so beautifully hiding from us the want of Thought! Paper is made from the rags of things that did once exist; there are endless excellences in Paper.—What wisest Philosophe, in this halcyon uneventful period, could prophesy that there was approaching, big with darkness and confusion, the event of events? Hope ushers in a Revolution,—as earthquakes are preceded by bright weather. On the Fifth of May, fifteen years hence, old Louis will not be sending for the Sacraments; but a new ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Those halcyon days were too serene to last long. When his honour the Laird of Gandercleugh, with his wife and three daughters, the minister, the gauger, mine esteemed patron Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham, and some round dozen of the feuars and farmers, had been consigned to immortality by ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... left me without a sou in the locanda at Venice," said Mistigris. "And I had to get from Venice to Rome by painting portraits for five francs apiece, which they didn't pay me. However, that was my halcyon time. I ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... the traces of mental alienation. Methought I was inspired by the grand master-spirit; my pirogue bounded along the troubled waters of the ocean as if it possessed wings. One would have said that I had twenty rowers at my disposal, and I cleft the waves with the same rapidity as the halcyon's flight, when wafted away by the hurricane. After a short time's laborious and painful rowing I at last came in view of the corsairs who were carrying away my treasure. At the sight my strength was renewed again, and I was soon ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... in which scarce a worthy disciple of the learned patriarchs of ancient days is to be found. Received with open arms, persecuted, patronized, smiled upon, tolerated, it with the last phase of its existence, has reached, not the halcyon days of peace and rest, but its final stage, foreshadowing its decay from rottenness and corruption."[40] So also, in a like report, agree many witnesses. The common people of China are ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... was made a curse by hapless love. Some modern lovers in my mind remain, But those to reckon here were needless pain: The two, whose constant loves for ever last, On whom the winds wait while they build their nest; For halcyon days poor labouring sailors please. And in rough winter calm the boisterous seas. Far off the thoughtful AEsacus, in quest Of his Hesperia, finds a rocky rest, Then diveth in the floods, then mounts ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... cherished a desire to visit the place in which I lived with the family of Ruthven, for then I could look above and beyond the clouds of early days, and discern the many golden gleams and rosy rays, the many halcyon hours of happiness and hope. So, after the spirit has passed through the purifying fires of persecution, it can calmly look back with a triumphant soul song. But these old scenes were in places so remote and inaccessible that I was forced to forego the pleasure of visiting them; ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... refreshing zest to present enjoyment. Despair, therefore ill becomes one who has follies to bewail, and a God to trust in. Johnson and Goldsmith, with numerous others, at some seasons were plunged deep in the waters of adversity, but halcyon days awaited them: and even those sons of merit and misfortune whose pecuniary troubles were more permanent, in the dimness of retrospection, only stand out invested in ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... them a wide wilderness,—but they had no fear from the Indians. The few who came to the settlements were friendly, and, after smoking and eating with the settler, they would go away, grasping his hand and assuring him that the red man was his brother. Those were halcyon days; but Satan entered into Paradise, and one of his legitimate children,—a Scotchman named Cameron,—in the early spring of 1772, invaded this Eden on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... we'll sing and play And celebrate a halcyon day; Great Nephew Aeolus make no noise, Muzzle ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... West; And felt sweet Peace her softest balm infuse, Into his once too world-disturbed breast: There did he find a deep and quiet rest: The mockbird sang his vespers, while the star Shone sweetly o'er the rippling river's crest; There no rude sound the halcyon calm did mar, And Grief was absent still, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... tell him, and in a style which interested Lucy as well as her father. He had been a pioneer in California, and could narrate many a strange tale of fortunes made and fortunes lost in those wild, halcyon days. He had been a scout too, and a trapper, a silver explorer, and a ranchman. Wherever stirring adventures were to be had, Jefferson Hope had been there in search of them. He soon became a favourite ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... meanwhile, stood that domestic drama of love and its entanglements, which was destined to be deeply interwoven with the other principal incidents of this singular story? All on the surface seemed as bright and unruffled as the halcyon waters of the sleeping ocean before the days of storm have come to move and vex it. But how was it within the vail of the heart and teeming mind, where the currents and counter-currents of that subtle but powerful passion flow and clash unseen, often ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air dazed them,—a glance downward made their brains reel. But when a great wind filled their wings, and Icarus felt himself sustained, like a halcyon-bird in the hollow of a wave, like a child uplifted by his mother, he forgot everything in the world but joy. He forgot Crete and the other islands that he had passed over: he saw but vaguely that winged thing in the distance before ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... wound my spirit, that on all I cast An envied thought who rest in darkness find. My heart Love prostrates, Fortune more unkind No comfort grants, until its sorrow vast Impotent frets, then melts to tears at last: Thus I to painful warfare am consign'd. My halcyon days I hope not to return, But paint my future by a darker tint; My spring is gone—my summer well-nigh fled: Ah! wretched me! too well do I discern Each hope is now (unlike the diamond flint) A fragile mirror, with ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... never suffered such a trial of his patience! In fact, his troubles were scarcely worth mentioning, for he was never cursed with learned servants!" Saying this, the doctor retired, lamenting his hard fate in not having been born in those halcyon days when cooks drew nothing but their poultry; whilst the gentle Celestina's breast panted with indignation at his complaint. An opportunity soon offered for revenge; and seeing the doctor's steam valet ready to be carried to its master's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various

... moderate; lenient &c 740; gentle, mild, mellow; cool, sober, temperate, reasonable, measured; tempered &c v.; calm, unruffled, quiet, tranquil, still; slow, smooth, untroubled; tame; peaceful, peaceable; pacific, halcyon. unexciting, unirritating^; soft, bland, oily, demulcent, lenitive, anodyne; hypnotic &c 683; sedative; antiorgastic^, anaphrodisiac^. mild as mother's milk; milk and water. Adv. moderately &c adj.; gingerly; piano; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... "Halcyon days"—how often is the expression made use of, how seldom do its users realise from whence they have ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... maiden-hair ferns, and masses of hydrangea bushes, which must be beautiful as a poet's dream when they are covered with their great bunches of pale blue blossom. That will not be until Christmas-tide, and, alas! I shall not be here to see, for already my three halcyon days of grace are ended and over, and this very evening we must steam away from a great deal yet unvisited of what is interesting and picturesque, and from friends who three days ago were strangers, but who have made every moment since we landed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... would almost seem, does not direct but looks on, as her world emerges in painful toil from chaos. We do not find her with precipitate zeal intervening to arrest at a given point the ferment of creation; stretching her hand when she sees the gleam of the halcyon or the rose to bid the process cease that would destroy them; and sacrificing to the completeness of those lower forms the nobler imperfection of man and of what may lie beyond him. She looks always to the end; and so in our statesmanship should we, striving to express, not to limit, by ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... souls and fatal to their prosperity, forced upon them at the point of the bowie-knife and the muzzle of the revolver by hordes of sordid barbarians from a hostile soil, their natural and necessary enemies. And the sweet harbinger of this blessed peace, the halcyon which broods over the stormy waves and tells of the calm at hand, is a bribe so cunningly devised that its contrivers firmly believe it will buy up the souls of these much-injured men, and reconcile them to the shame and infamy of trading away their lights and their honor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... Nature, it is essential to every Chivalry and Nation and Man. "Polite Polish Society for the last thirty years has felt itself to be in a most halcyon condition," says Rulhiere: [Rulhiere, i. 216 (a noteworthy passage).] "given up to the agreeable, and to that only;" charming evening-parties, and a great deal of flirting; full of the benevolences, the philanthropies, the new ideas,—given up especially to the pleasing idea of "LAISSEZ-FAIRE, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... surprised to have seen Zeus throned on the splendid summit of the greatest of those rounded clouds, contemplative of us, finger on cheek, smiling with approval of the scene below—melancholy approval, for we would remind him of those halcyon days whose refulgence turned pale and sickly when Paul, that argumentative zealot, came to provide a world, already thinking more of industry and State politics than of the gods, with a hard-wearing theology which would last till ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... fortnight of halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden prime of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry Ludovic Speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix, as related duly in another chronicle of her history.(1) Arnold Sherman, an elderly friend of the Irvings, was there at the ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... The halcyon days of Squash Tennis were the 1920s and 1930s. Such names as Fillmore Van S. Hyde, Rowland B. Haines, Thomas R. Coward, William Rand, Jr., and R. Earl Fink dominated the amateur ranks during the Golden Twenties. New York Athletic Club's Harry F. Wolf reigned alone and supreme as the ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires

... them; then hearing a deep sigh, he shrugged his shoulders, and looked as pitiable as a prime minister with a rebellious cabinet. At length he ventured to lift up his head; there was not a wrinkle on the face of ocean; a halcyon fluttered over him, and then scudded before his canoe, and gamesome porpoises were tumbling at his side. The sky was cloudless, except in the direction to which he was driving; but even as Popanilla observed, with some misgivings, the mass of vapours ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... combine the local schools having failed, we had to provide a building of our own. This we felt must be planned for the future. For some day the halcyon days of peace on earth shall be permitted in our community, and the true loyalty of efficient service to our brothers will, it is to be hoped, become actually the paramount object of our Christian religion. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... was a long and somewhat anxious day. While we were bowling along in the sweet sunshine and sweeter moonlight of the halcyon time, Uncle Sam might be dethroned by somebody in buckram, or Baltimore burnt by the boys from Lynn and Marblehead, revenging the massacre of their fellows. Every one begins to comprehend the fiery eagerness of men who live in historic times. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... ought to give the preference to the present Summer season that has but recently commenced, a season so rich in enjoyment. For now Unceasing are the charms of halcyon days, When the cool bath exhilarates the frame; When sylvan gales are laden with the scent Of fragrant Patalas; when soothing sleep Creeps softly on beneath the deepening shade; And when, at last, the dulcet calm of eve Entrancing steals o'er every ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... troubles behind us, emerging into the channel of a brook that circled along the foot of the descent; and here, turning joyfully to the left, we rode in luxury and ease over the white pebbles and the rippling water, shaded from the glaring sun by an overarching green transparency. These halcyon moments were of short duration. The friendly brook, turning sharply to one side, went brawling and foaming down the rocky hill into an abyss, which, as far as we could discern, had no bottom; so once more we betook ourselves to the detested woods. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... the matter before his Grace of Newcastle:" "Please your Grace, it is hardly three months since the illustrious Treaty of Vienna was signed; Dutch and we leading in the Termagant of Spain, and nothing but halcyon weather to be looked for on that side!" Grace of Newcastle, anxious to avoid trouble with Spain, answers I can only fancy what; and nothing was done upon ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... "Halcyon House," and what a suitable and lovely name for one in his business, and one who had settled here after his service in the Revolution. For the halcyon was a fabled bird, whose nest floated upon the sea. It had the power ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker

... 1842. Visits to the various centres of Canada, according to the practice of his predecessors, soon gave him an understanding of popular opinion and feeling; and, although he was expected by the extreme Conservatives to bring back the old, halcyon, ante bellum days, he was most careful to follow the lines of Sydenham's policy. Towards the French he was amiable and conciliatory and made several appointments of French Canadians to positions of trust and emolument. Ever ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... halcyon days must end, I fear, as all such days do eventually, and we must meet the more prosaic side of life. Let us hope it will assume a pleasing form. I am loth to hand in my resignation as Dominie Exactus, however," he ended with a ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... age of New York was under the reign of Walter Van Twiller, the first governor of the province, and the best it ever had. In his sketch of this excellent magistrate Irving has embodied the abundance and tranquillity of those halcyon days:— ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... more secure, more comfortable. The heavens of international politics were as serene as the evening sky; not yet was the storm-cloud that hung over Ireland bigger than a man's hand; east, west, north and south there brooded the peace of the close of a halcyon day, and the amazing doings of the Suffragettes but added a slight incentive to the perusal of the morning paper. The arts flourished, harvests prospered; the world like a newly-wound clock seemed to be in for a spell ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... the base, and columns and fragments of columns from the peristyle. Those groups, however, marked (75-84), which consist of the statues originally placed in the intercolumniations of the building, are figures of divinities, with various symbols at their feet, as the dolphin, the halcyon, &c., and are meant to represent, by the flow of the drapery, that they are flying through the air. They have been variously interpreted, but never satisfactorily; some authorities asserting that they were meant to celebrate the arrival of ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... of sperrit, same as I have, that keeps a' drivin an a drivin at him, and makes him be up an doin. An now, I declar, if I ain't gittin to be a confirmed wanderer agin, same as I was in the days of my halcyon an shinin youth. Besides, I have a kine o' feelin as if I'd be a continewin this here the rest of all ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... kid when he trekked from his farm; but the kids, which in halcyon times represented the interest on his capital, were now one by one dying as fast as they were born and left by the roadside for the jackals and ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... subtle air that blows from the craggy peaks over the treeless plateau seems to take all superfluous moisture out of the men of Madrid. But it is, like Benedick's wit, "a most manly air, it will not hurt a woman." This tropic summer-time brings the halcyon days of the vagabonds of Madrid. They are a temperate, reasonable people, after all, when they are let alone. They do not require the savage stimulants of our colder-blooded race. The fresh air is a feast. As Walt Whitman says, they loaf and ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... The halcyon days between Mrs. Bell's death and her funeral passed all too quickly. Then came the day of the funeral, and the next morning the iron rule of Lydia Purcell began again. Whatever few words she said to cook, dairymaid, and message-boy, they once more obeyed her and showed ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... thou; and when up comes the moon, Atowards her turn me; and then, boon, Thyself compose, 'neath wavering leaves That hang these branched, majestic eaves: That so, with self-imposed deceit, Both, in this halcyon retreat, By trance possessed, imagine may We ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... and made her way to what had been the back parlor of the house. In that densification of population which proceeds so incessantly on Manhattan Island this old house, like many another, was modernly compelled to hold more people than it had been meant for in the halcyon days when Second Avenue was a fashionable thoroughfare. The second floor of the house had been let, without board, to a gentleman and his wife, and the rooms above to single gentlemen. The parlor floor and the basement were made ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... was with an agreement to meet again that evening, and in the twilight they spent a halcyon hour together, ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... and social caste, and they have a humour which is homely, but thoroughly genial, and quite the monopoly of their race. They insist on the whole of Christmas week for a holiday. 'Missus' must manage how she can. To insist on chaining them down in the kitchen during that halcyon time would stir up blank rebellion. Dancing and music are their favourite Christmas recreations; they manage both with a will. In the city suburbs there are many modest little frame-houses inhabited by the blacks; now and then a homely inn kept by a dusky landlord. Here in ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... in their trusting eyes, exulting confidence in their springing step, themselves blithe and radiant with the glory of the dawn. Today, and here, we meet ourselves. Not to these familiar scenes alone—yonder college-green with its reverend traditions; the halcyon cove of the Seekonk, upon which the memory of Roger Williams broods like a bird of calm; the historic bay, beating forever with the muffled oars of Barton and of Abraham Whipple; here, the humming ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... of bean-flour, and an occasional draught of weak beer, his fastidious appetite demanded fresh meat or fish, white bread, vegetables freshly gathered, and ale of the best. As long as his store lasted, he worked as little as possible, and grumbled at the fortune that made him a laborer. But these halcyon days were few, and soon passed away, to be followed by decreasing allowances of the commonest food, fierce pangs of hunger, and miserable destitution. A bad harvest inflicted untold wretchedness on the poor. Ill lodged, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... In those old days,—the halcyon days of youth,—after the sap was gathered, and the fuel piled high beside the arch, then it was that we sat down by the blazing fire and watched it burn; heaped on the logs, filled up the kettle, and again sat down to muse, or talk, or read. If the wind whistled afar, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... inaugurate the existence of new republics. One face I shall never forget. It was that of the self-made temporary dictator of a little country whose importance was dwindling to the dimensions of a footnote in the history of the century. I had been acquainted with him personally in the halcyon day of his transient glory. Like his picturesque land, he won the immortality of a day, was courted and subsidized by competing states in turn, and then suddenly cast aside like a sucked orange. Then he ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... was, the price of the Sofala took up pretty near all the lottery-money. He had left himself no capital to work with. That did not matter so much, for these were the halcyon days of steam coasting trade, before some of the home shipping firms had thought of establishing local fleets to feed their main lines. These, when once organized, took the biggest slices out of that cake, of course; and by-and-by a squad of confounded German tramps turned up east of Suez Canal ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... Where Wisdom's voice has found a listening heart. Amid the howl of more than winter storms, The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Hackney-coach fiakro. Hag malbelulino. Haggard sovagxa. Haggle marcxandi. Hail hajli. Hail hajlo. Hailstone hajlero. Hair haro. Hair, head of hararo. Hairdresser frizisto. Hairy harajxa. Halberd halebardo. Halcyon alciono. Hale sana. Half duono. Hall vestiblo. Hallow sanktigi. Hall-porter pordisto. Hallucination halucinacio. Halt halti. Halting-place haltejo. Halter kolbrido. Halves, by ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... time in company with his relation in booksellers' shops, and not objecting to possess duplicates, if other copies in better condition were found or were presented to him by friends. Mr. North flourished during the halcyon days of the classics. The literature of his own country probably interested him little. North, however, was so far a true book-lover, inasmuch as he ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... enchaced with glass and beads There is, that to the Chapel leads; Whose structure, for his holy rest, Is here the Halcyon's curious nest; Into the which who looks, shall see His Temple of Idolatry; Where he of god-heads has such store, As Rome's Pantheon had not more. His house of Rimmon this he calls, Girt with small bones, instead of walls. ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... man's aversion to manual labor which, like the hounds, harked back to other generations. Near-by, propped against the rails, rested a repeating rifle, though the people would have told you that the truce in the "South-Hollman war" had been unbroken for two years, and that no clansman need in these halcyon days go ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... The halcyon weather held for two weeks, the delicate weather of Indian summer. Day by day the forest dropped its leaves under a blue windless sky; but the nights sharpened their frosts. Ruth, stealing early to her bathing-pool, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... them often had to content themselves with going on foot through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon period of their felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as a favor than as a scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and confidential communications were not disturbed by the loud rattle of the wheels, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... the privilege of imposing rigorous commands, or resenting slight offences. If I forgot any of her injunctions, I was gently reminded; if I missed the minute of appointment, I was easily forgiven. I foresaw nothing in marriage but a halcyon calm, and longed for the happiness which was to be found in the inseparable society of a good ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... country, as an industrious collector from Sydney, who spent nine months on the northern and middle islands, obtained nearly a hundred species of terrestrial and fluviatile mollusca. The scarcity of birds during our walk surprised me, for the only one which I saw on shore was a solitary kingfisher (Halcyon vagans): during our ascent of the Keri-Keri, however, many ducks (Anas superciliosa) flew past the boat, and gulls, terns, and two kinds of ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast in the halcyon days of their childhood? These toyful trifles, "light as air," doubtless suggested the Emperor's Rout. Do not start, expectant reader; this is no downfall of a royal dynasty, no burning of palaces, or muster of rebel ranks—no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various

... thy parishioners: Thou marriest every year The lyrique lark, and the grave whispering dove, The sparrow, that neglects his life for love, The household bird with the red stomacher; Thou mak'st the blackbird speed as soon As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon.' ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... represented, as a rule, the insatiable ambitions of its rulers. But now new men forced themselves to the front, a new power arose which was very imperfectly understood, and which practically held the sea at its mercy. Gone were the halcyon days of peaceful trade which had been pursued for generations by Venetian and Genoese, by Spaniard and Frenchman; gone also, apparently never to return, was all sense of security for the wretched dwellers on the littoral of the Mediterranean, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... the rocky cliffs of the sea, halcyon,[144] dost chant thy mournful elegy, a sound well understood by the skilled, namely, that thou art ever bemoaning thine husband in song, I, a wingless bird, compare my dirge with thine, longing for the assemblies[145] of the Greeks, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... Halcyon days of sitting in rocking-chairs under the beech-trees on locust-zizzing afternoons, of hunting for shells on the back-side shore of the Cape, of fishing for whiting from the landing on the bay side, of musing among the many-colored grasses of the uplands. They would have ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... jeers for the tears of my wife; She may moan, she may groan, she may weep and grow wild, But the Spring shall remain undisturbed, undefiled, Spring with a new and more beautiful meaning, Spring as it ought to be, Spring without cleaning; Halcyon days! Oh, let us raise Shouts of thanksgiving and paeans of praise. Join me, O men. Bound the world let it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various

... be cast— The Age of the Antonines! O summit of fate, O zenith of time When a pagan gentleman reigned, And the olive was nailed to the inn of the world Nor the peace of the just was feigned. A halcyon Age, afar it shines, Solstice ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... They made as great a furore among the musical public of that day as would an opera from Gounod or Verdi in the present. The principal airs were sung throughout the land, and published as harpsichord pieces; for in these halcyon days of our composers the whole atmosphere of the land was full of the flavor and color of Handel. Many of the melodies in these now forgotten operas have been worked up by modern composers, and so have passed into ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... of the concert made Chopin forget his sorrows. There is not one complaint in the letter in which he gives an account of it; in fact, he seems to have been enjoying real halcyon days. He had a full house, but played with as little nervousness as if he had been playing at home. The first Allegro of the Concerto went very smoothly, and the audience rewarded him with thundering applause. Of the reception of the Adagio and Rondo we learn nothing except that in the pause ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... moderation—always enabled her to throw herself into other people's interests; it gave her positive happiness to see Michael so tranquil and content, and carrying himself with the air of a man who knows himself to be anchored in some fair haven after stress of weather; and, indeed, these were halcyon days ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... which succeeded Christmas were a period of halcyon peace for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover came to the villa when he pleased, but was still careful not to encroach on the license allowed him. Once a week he permitted himself the delight of five-o'clock tea in Mrs. Sheldon's drawing-room, on which occasions he brought ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... Lowin, an actor contemporary with Shakespeare and associated with several of Shakespeare's greater characters (his range was so wide, indeed, that it included Falstaff, Henry the Eighth, and Hamlet), that, having survived the halcyon days of "Eliza and our James" and lingered into the drab and russet period of the Puritans, when all the theatres in the British islands were suppressed, he became poor and presently kept a tavern, at Brentford, called ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... ones of peace and tranquillity; anciently, days of calm weather in mid-winter, when the halcyon, or kingfisher, was supposed to brood. It was fabled that this bird laid its eggs in a nest that floated on the sea, and that it charmed the winds and waves to make ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... a quart d'heure, Sir Paul. Helas! It was not so in the old days. It was always gay then at this time of the night, with the band playing and all the guests chattering like mad." The maitre d'hotel breathed a gentle sigh for the halcyon ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... Oh, that those halcyon days of the little wars would come again, when a captain could ride out almost any time at the held of his band of mercenaries and see honest fighting and divide honest spoils! There was much knocking about of men and horses, but very little bloodshed, so we are told. Mr. Bixby will sit ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to the heart of the Hills, For a season of halcyon hours, 'Mid the music of murmurous rills, And the ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... Fairer far than this fair Day, Which, like thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough Year just awake 5 In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring, Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn To hoar February born, 10 Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kissed the forehead of the Earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, 15 And breathed upon the frozen mountains, And like a prophetess ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... for a future occasion; for I could not but feel, that being an officer of the Company, it was robbing me of a part of my pay under the pretext of an indulgence. Availing myself, however, of this ungenerous grant of freedom, I spent some halcyon days in the company of relatives most dear to me, and expected no interruption to my enjoyment until the time appointed for the embarkation: but a few days after I had joined my relatives in the vicinity of Montreal, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... Arctic of the aerial ways: And now, back warping from the inclement main, Its vaporous shroudage drenched with icy rain, It swung into its azure roads again; When, floated on the prosperous sun-gale, you Lit, a white halcyon auspice, 'mid our ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... period—the inquiries, the exposures, the arraignments that took place—the constant hunt after Indian delinquency, in which Ministers joined no less keenly than the Opposition—and then compare all this with the tranquillity that has reigned, since the halcyon incubation of the Board of Control over the waters,—though we may allow the full share that actual reform and a better system of government may claim in this change, there is still but too much of it to be attributed to causes ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... aware of the difficulty of raising six millions of dollars in the limited period at our disposal. Times have changed since 1896. Then six millions was quite a large sum, larger than sixty millions now. That was before the halcyon period of "Frenzied Finance." ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... down almost to a man's height from the ground, and shelters a row of mangers, running back half the length of the stable, and serving in former times for the baiting of such beasts as could not be provided for within. But the halcyon days of the cattle-market are past (though you may still see the white horns tossing above the fences of the pens, when a newly arrived herd lands from the train to be driven afoot to Brighton), ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... It was like an oasis, a restful halt between two stretches of desert journey; she wished to make it as long as possible. Only those who live exposed to life's buffetings ever learn to enjoy to the full the great little pleasures of life—the halcyon pauses in the storms—the few bright rays through the break in the clouds, the joy of food after hunger, of a bath after days of privation, of a jest or a smiling face or a kind word or deed after darkness and bitterness and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... the several States were morally bound to maintain the compact into which they had voluntarily entered, the obligation, if any one State chose to repudiate it, could not be legally enforced. Their ideal was a Union based upon fraternal affection; and in the halcyon days of Washington's first presidency, when the long and victorious struggle against a common enemy was still fresh in men's minds, and the sun of liberty shone in an unclouded sky, a vision so ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... us; an Attempt more Difficult, more Surprising, more snarl'd with unintelligible Circumstances than any that we have hitherto Encountered; an Attempt so Critical, that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon Days with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under our feet." In sound and structure Mather's style is what the critics call "archaistic." It is all untouched by the influences of another world, and though "the New Englanders ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... But such halcyon days could not last long. Even Paradise might pall on such a restless temperament as that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He began to sigh for the outer world in which he felt that it was his destiny to shine, for an arena in which he could do justice to the gifts which were clamouring for ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... found the moment of indecision to be the moment of completest anguish. When our resolutions are taken with determined firmness, they engross the mind and close the void of misery. Yes, my friend, save the pang of sympathy, I am happy. These are my halcyon days. Let us taste them together. We shall mutually heighten their relish. Let us rescue some moments of rational enjoyment from the wreck of impetuous time. Friendship shall smooth the rugged path of science, and virtue cheer ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... June in the ninth year of King Edward VII's reign—that halcyon period when nobody who was anybody felt particularly happy, because no such person had actually experienced what unhappiness was. Certainly Mrs. Delarayne had not, unless she had shown really exceptional fortitude and self-control over her ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... These halcyon days continued during the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII. and the five years of the reign of Edward VI. till Mary came to the crown, who, soon after her accession, gave all power into the hands ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... Kemble might be presented to her, when the gentleman had the opportunity of making his "best genteel-comedy bow." Now it was on the younger generation of the Kembles that the Queen bestowed her gracious countenance. These were halcyon days for society as well as for the stage, when, in Mrs. Oliphant's words, "the Queen was in the foreground of the national life, affecting it always for good, and setting an example of purity and virtue. The theatres to which she went, and which both she and her husband enjoyed, were ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... had moved,—if not in fashionable circles,—at any rate in circles so near to fashion as to be brought within the reach of Lady Eustace's charms. They were married, and for some few months Mr. Emilius enjoyed a halcyon existence, the delights of which were, perhaps, not materially marred by the necessity which he felt of subjecting his young wife to marital authority. "My dear," he would say, "you will know me better soon, and then things will be smooth." In the meantime he drew more largely upon ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... hallucination To grudge our hymns their halcyon harmonies, When in just homage our rapt voices rise To celebrate our heroes in meet fashion; Whose hosts each heritage and habitation, Within these realms of hospitable joy, Protect securely 'gainst humiliation, When hostile foes, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... the vine twists about the ribs of the cast-iron Pallas, And, on the zephyr afloat, the halcyon soul of the borax Blends with the scent of the soap, the brush of the white-washer's flying E'en as the chicken-hawk flies when ready to light ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... yore. My eyes were glowing, and my cheeks were hot With warm young blood; excitement, joy, or pain Alike would send swift coursing through each vein. Roy, always eloquent, was waxing fine, And bringing vividly before my gaze Some old adventure of those halcyon days, When suddenly, in pauses of the talk, I heard a well-known step upon the walk, And looked up quickly to meet full in mine The eyes of Vivian Dangerfield. A flash Shot from their depths:- a sudden ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... but not gaudy"?—Soon Despond (Too soon!) at flouted faith and fond, Soon tempests halcyon tides above Shall wreck this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various

... Vig. and Horsf. Podargus brachypterus, Gould. Eurostopodus guttatus, Gould. Halcyon sanctus, Vig. and Horsf. Merops ornatus, Lath. Hirundo pacifica ? Lath. Collocalia ? leucosterna, Gould. Cotyle pyrrhonota. Cotyle familiaris, Gould. Seisura volitans, Vig. and Horsf. Microeca assimilis, Gould. Rhipidura albiscapa, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey



Words linked to "Halcyon" :   happy, genus Halcyon, golden, peaceable, family Alcedinidae, peaceful, bird genus, Alcedinidae, Greek mythology, mythical being



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