halcyon days

singular halcyon day

1. pluralplural normallyA period of calm during the winter, when storms do not occur.
2. idiomaticpluralplural normallyA period of calm, usually in the past and often nostalgic.

   halcyon days of yore

   5 more examples

   halcyon days of youth

   Expect Saint Martins summer, Halcyon dayes, / Since I haue entred into theſe Warres.

   1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], page 98

   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.

   c. 1880, Ambrose Bierce, On a Mountain

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

   1891, Walt Whitman, “Halcyon Days”, in Leaves of Grass

   It was a halcyon day, and as they neared the shore and the salt breezes scurried by, he began to picture the ocean and long, level stretches of sand and red roofs over blue sea.

   1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 2, in This Side of Paradise, book 1