halcyon days

From Latin Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyon birds (kingfishers). When Alcyone made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the "halcyon days," when storms do not occur. Today, the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successful.

halcyon days pl (plural only)

1. Period of calm during the winter, when storms do not occur.
2. (idiomatic) A period of calm, often nostalgic: “halcyon days of yore”, “halcyon days of youth”.

• c.1591 – William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1

  Expect Saint Martin's summer, halcyon days, / Since I have entered into these wars.

• c.1880 – Ambrose Bierce, On a Mountain

  And, by the way, during those halcyon days (the halcyon was there, too, chattering above every creek, as he is all over the world) we fought another battle.

• 1891 – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Book XXXIV

  Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
  The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

• 1941 – Thomas S. Eliot, Four Quartets - The Dry Salvages

  And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
  Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
  On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
  In navigable weather is always a seamark
  to lay a course by: but in the sombre season
  Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

• Alcyone
• back in the day
• days of wine and roses
• days of yore
• halcyon
• heyday
• nostalgia
• salad days