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More "Plash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for statues; a colossal breath swells their chests; their thighs and their shoulders writhe. On the ceiling a Mercury, entirely nude, is almost a figure by Rubens, but of a more gross sensuality. A gigantic Neptune urges before him his sea-horses which plash through the waves; his foot presses the edge of his chariot; his enormous and ruddy body is turned backwards; he raises his conch with the joy of a bestial god; the salt wind blows through his scarf, his hair, and his beard; one could never imagine, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... in the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the Transactions of the English Dialect Society, she has explained her methods ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... she didn't mind—she would put on stout shoes and walk over to Plash. She was restless and so fidgety that it was a pain; there were strange voices that frightened her—they threw out the ugliest intimations—in the empty rooms at home. She would see old Mrs. Berrington, whom she ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... The plash and bubble of waters swooned dreamily about my ears, and far off it seemed I heard the wild, sad songs of her native land, that now in tinkling tune, and now in long, slow rise and fall of mellow sound, swathed me with sweet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... with a hundred spears Rode far, till o'er the illimitable reed, And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle, The wide-wing'd sunset of the misty marsh Glared on a huge machicolated tower That stood with open doors, whereout was roll'd A roar of riot, as from men secure Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ease Among their harlot-brides, an evil song. "Lo there," said ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... globules, no doubt, are very small when they first emerge from the snow region; but, as they pass slowly downward through clouds of vapour, they gather together and attract others (by a law which I have not time to explain); and, descending faster and faster, at length plash down to the earth in large drops. Whenever it rains, then, at any particular place, you may be almost certain that it is snowing at the same time over that place—only at a point in the atmosphere far above it. I have been convinced of this fact, by observing that immediately after every ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... last words of the conversation; but Ethel, leaning from her window to listen to the plash of the waves, suspected that the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over that revelation of the motives of the life that had always been noble and generous in the midst ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came a clear, gentle voice, that fell from the window in the breaking ripples of a fountain plash. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... calm. She sang, and so did he, and their voices went well together. Her favourite song was "Come, Lasses and Lads"; his was "John Peel"; and they would sing them off and on for an hour at a spell. Thus on a summer evening, when the bay was lying like a tired monster asleep, and every plash of an oar was echoing on the hills, the people on the land would hear them coming around the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... guitar, the simple, plaintive melody, sounded to Lambert as refreshing as the plash of a brook in the heat of the day. He stood listening, his elbow on the show case, thinking vaguely that Alta had a good voice for singing babies ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... sturgeon was so abundant in the Delaware that one could hardly remain a minute on the wharf in early morn or ruddy evening without seeing some six-foot monster dart high in air, falling on his side with a plash. In the winter-time the river was allowed to freeze over, and then every schoolboy walked across to Camden and back, as if it had been a pilgrimage or religious duty, while meantime there was always a kind of Russian carnival on the ice, oxen being sometimes roasted ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... touchstone that tries gold, And see now—on before thee— Those lines of tender light that creep The clouded sky along: O night! that trieth gold of love, This love is proven perfect! O lines that streak the touchstone sky, Plash forth true shining gold! O rose-leaf feet, go boldly! O night!—that lovest lovers— Thy softest robe of silence About these ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... stepped from the parade upon the rocks, and approached the Delameres' party, who were seated on rugs and shawls spread upon the huge dry rocks overlooking the deep, clear water which lapped underneath with a gentle and regular plash and sucking sound. It was a brilliant day. Not a cloud was in the sky, and the blue-green seas lay basking in the sunshine. A brisk but gentle air had begun to crisp the top of the water, making it sparkle and bubble; and there was just visible a small silver cord of foam on the coast line of dark ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... from him, as it were, by accident, he unconscious that he is saying anything that is worth while. As the late Professor Harris said, one of the last times I saw him, "There are unsounded depths in a man's nature of which he himself knows nothing till they are revealed to him by the plash and ripple of his own conversation with other men." This great principle of life, when applied in conversation, may be stated simply then ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... habits of the pestering drones that infest the beach and the neighbourhood of the hotels. The whole of the steep rocky gorge of that tiny torrent the Canneto is full of mills, each emitting a whirring sound which mingles with the continual plash of the water as it descends in miniature cascades the full length of the ravine, providing in its headlong course towards the sea the motive power required to turn all this quantity of machinery. Bridges span the Canneto at several points, whilst either bank is occupied ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... blue tide. The evening was perfectly calm, and at a little distance from the shore the surface of the sea was without a ripple. The only sound breaking the solemn stillness of the hour, was the heavy plash of the waves, as in minute peals they rolled in upon the pebbly beach, and brought back with them at each retreat, some of the larger and smoother stones, whose noise, as they fell back into old ocean's bed, mingled with the din of the breaking surf. In one of the many little ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... blindfold when transported there. In low dark rounds the arches hung, From the rude rock the side-walls sprung; The grave-stones, rudely sculptured o'er, Half sunk in earth, by time half wore, Were all the pavement of the floor; The mildew-drops fell one by one, With tinkling plash upon the stone. A cresset, in an iron chain, Which served to light this drear domain, With damp and darkness seemed to strive, As if it scarce might keep alive; And yet it dimly served to show The ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... we stood staring at the black bulk lying motionless on the grey water; stood for a long time, listening. I, to tell the truth, was straining my ears to catch the plash of oars: I thought it possible that some of those on board the yawl might take a violent desire to ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... under a lofty portal, and looked through the open doorway into the interior of the palace. The first thing that they saw was a spacious hall, and a fountain in the middle of it, gushing up towards the ceiling out of a marble basin, and falling back into it with a continual plash. The water of this fountain, as it spouted upward, was constantly taking new shapes, not very distinctly, but plainly enough for a nimble fancy to recognize what they were. Now it was the shape of a man in ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the rocks across the narrow canon the first object to meet his gaze as he arose was Moreno, reclining there bound and helpless, while near at hand a soldier had thrown himself on his saddle blanket and was sound asleep. The plash of the waters in the brook, dancing and tumbling down the chasm, made sweet, drowsing music for his ears, a lulling, soothing sound that explained perhaps the deep ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... estuary, arm of the sea, bayou [U.S.], fiord, armlet; frith^, firth, ostiary^, mouth; lagune^, lagoon; indraught^; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles^; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough^, mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin^, puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c (store) 636; alberca^, barachois^, hog ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was a jovial bachelor, plump and rosy as an abbot; and no abbot could have presided over a more festive Sunday. The wine flowed merrily and long; the discourse kept pace with it; and next morning, in returning to town, we felt ourselves very thirsty. A pump by the road-side, with a plash round it, was a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... thus in silent pleasure, gazing at the gentle needle as it moved without noise; and, with nothing around but plash of waves, bright sun, and a feeling of hot silence, the spell of sleep was overpowering. Homer sometimes nodded, it is said, and he would have certainly had a good nap had he steered long thus. The sinking off into these delicious slumbers was imperceptible, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... accordingly, and in another moment were on top of the big rock. It was almost as good as being at sea; for when they turned their backs to the shore nothing could be seen but water and sails and flying birds, and nothing heard but the incessant plash and ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... here in the hot haze that brooded over the still mountains, and there seemed to be nought to fear. We drew swiftly up to the mound, with the plash of oars only to break the silence, and there was nought amiss that we could see. They had made it on a little flat tongue of land that jutted from the mountain's foot into the deep water, so that on two sides the mound was close to its edge. So we ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... upon them, broken only by the regular plash of the oars. In the young man's conversational attacks there had been nothing but a light play of sunny humour, but in this last retort of hers there was something like the glimmer of cold steel. It wounded him, yet he was unwilling ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... all was silent, till there smote my ear A movement in the stream that checked my breath: Was it the slow plash of a wading deer? But something said, "This water is of Death! The Sisters wash ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... marble court, its fountains, and the dark arches of its storerooms; or the door of a mosque, with its mosaic floor and pillared corridor. The interminable lines of bazaars, with their atmospheres of spice and fruit and fragrant tobacco, the hushed tread of the slippered crowds; the plash of falling fountains and the bubbling of innumerable narghilehs; the picturesque merchants and their customers, no longer in the big trowsers of Egypt, but the long caftans and abas of Syria; the absence of Frank faces and dresses—in all these there was the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... sea. From bank and hill the whippowil sends piping forth his flute-like notes, And clear and shrill the answers trill from leafy isles and silver throats. The twinkling light on cape and height; the hum of voices on the shores; The merry laughter on the night; the dip and plash of frolic oars,— These tell the tale. On hill and dale the cities pour their gay and fair; Along the sapphire lake they sail, and quaff ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... water, lifting and falling gently as the waves went in shore. We were not a very long way from the lighthouse, and once we could see Mrs. Kew's big white apron as she stood in the doorway for a few minutes. There was no noise except the plash of the low-tide waves and the occasional flutter of a fish in the bottom of the dory. Kate and I always killed our fish at once by a rap on the head, for it certainly saved the poor creatures much discomfort, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... rocky bed, murmuring to each other in tones so low that only an attentive ear could catch them, sparkling in the sunlight as though for very joy. Suddenly, near the edge of the narrow plateau over which they ran, they turned, and, with a tinkling plash of farewell, plunged in opposite directions,—the one eastward, hastening on its way to the Great Father of Waters, the other westward bound, towards the land of the ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... the wind Are tapping at the window-sash. A hawk is in the sky; his wings Slowly begin to plash. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... soldier, as well as the Union's. He had learned to think amid the awful scenes of Fort Wagner, and when wounded at Olustee was prepared to live or die, whichever was God's will. Mrs. Marsh was sitting beside his bed, in quiet conversation with him, when without warning, the hemorrhage commenced. The plash of blood was heard, as the life-current burst from his wound, and, "Go now," he said in his low calm voice. "This is the end, and I would not ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... shadowy motive flits faster here and there in a slow swelling din of whispering, to the insistent plash of wave. Suddenly the sense of desolation yields to soothing play of waters—a berceuse of the sea—and now a song sings softly (in horn), though strangely jarring on the murmuring lullaby. The soothing cheer ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... clearly against the background of the sky—a sky now tenderly flushed with pink like the inside of a delicate shell. When they could no longer perceive him they still rowed on speaking no word,—the measured, musical plash of the oars through the smooth, dark olive-green water alone breaking the stillness around them. There was a curious sort of hushed breathlessness in the air; fantastic, dream-like lights and shadows played on the little wrinkling waves; sudden flushes of crimson came and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... moment or two he heard nothing but the ripple and plash of the ice-brook descending the side of the berg fifty yards away; but with the burial of his enemy, the lad's self-control had deserted him, and he burst into a passionate ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... villages which from time to time showed themselves at the mountain's foot; the crystalline sheet of water; pure and peculiarly agreeable air, which I breathed with exhilaration; the musical carols of an infinity of birds; a sky of extraordinary purity; behind me the plash of water stirred by the round-ended paddle which was wielded with ease by a superb woman (with marvellous eyes and a complexion browned by the sun), who wore an air of stately indifference: all these things together seemed to plunge me ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... fountains are the clouds, and which cut their own channels through the air, and make sweet noises rubbing against their banks as they hurry down and down, until at length they are pulled up on a sudden, with a musical plash, in the very heart of an odorous flower, that first gasps and then sighs up a blissful scent, or on the bald head of a stone that never says, Thank you;—while the very sheep felt it blessing them, though it could never reach their skins through the depth of their long wool, ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... plash of their oars, and every tone of their voices, as they rowed round his place of refuge. He was not on the islet, but in it. This was such an island as Swein, the sea-king of former days, took refuge in; and Rolf was only ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... till her ere she had a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune. They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shoreside at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a saltwater dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say—he's on board an excise yacht. I hae a cousin at the board of excise; that's Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must have heard of, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... on the mountain blast? Like bullet from the arbalast, Was it the hunted quarry past Right up Ben-ledi's side?— So near, so rapidly he dash'd, Yon lichen'd bough has scarcely plash'd Into the torrent's tide. Ay!—The good hound may bay beneath, The hunter wind his horn; He dared ye through the flooded Teith As a warrior in his scorn! Dash the red rowel in the steed, Spur, laggards, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... had become intolerable and the two had already begun to exchange glances almost of despair, a plash was heard, and Asgeelo emerged far to the right. He struck out strongly toward the boat, which was at once rowed toward him. In a few minutes he was taken in. He did not ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... he went barefoot. He did not have to turn out at every mud-puddle, and he could plash into the mill-pond and give the frogs a crack over the head without stopping to take off stockings and shoes. Paul did not often have a dinner of roast beef, but he had an abundance of bean porridge, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... haunting the ear, occupying the thought and touching the soul. Like the distant frog-concert and chirp of the cicada, the creak of the water- wheel and the stroke of hammers upon the anvil from afar, the murmur of the fountain, the sough of the wind and the plash of the wavelet, they occupy the sensorium with a soothing effect, forming a barbaric music full of sweetness and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... little maid, There saw her flaxen tresses first; She filled the cup for one who lean'd (A soldier, crippl'd and athirst) Against the basin's carven rim; Her dear small hand's white loveliness Was pinkly flush'd, the gay bright drops Plash'd on ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... heavy smell of decay—sheep skins were stored there in great, stiff bales. She went on, feeling as though horror happened wherever she went. But along by the sea wall it was very peaceful; only the soft lapping of the landlocked tide against the stone, the slow gliding of ferry boats, the lazy plash of oars and the metallic clanking in the naval dockyard on Garden Island came to her. On a man-of-war out in the stream the sailors were having a washing day; she could hear their cheery voices singing and laughing as they hung vests and shirts ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... all a vague murmur, fraying off into nothing, ending like a wave with a long upward plash of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... had played a few bars she passed demurely out of the sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the cabinet de toilette. She moved about in the cabinet de toilette thinking that the waltz out of The Rosenkavalier was divinely exciting. The delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of the shortening cigarette was ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... rapidly, and when he got to the side of the well, he, without a moment's hesitation, flung it headlong down, and, listening attentively, he heard it fall with a slight plash, as if there was some water at the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... noise of the waterfall behind Casa Felice died away, the spectral facade faded and only the plash of the oars and the tinkle of fishermen's bells above the nets, floating here and there in the lake, were audible. The distant lights of mountain villages gleamed along the shores, and the lights of the stars gleamed in ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... heard that significant cry of alarm, and almost simultaneously the "plash" made by the little Portuguese as her body dropped down upon the water. He had slewed himself round, and was making a hurried effort to get to his feet, when the boy, flung with violence upon his stooping back, once more brought ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... figures all the way to London, Miss Penelles," he said, "but I am quite sure my soul will be wandering on the shingle, and feeling the blowing winds, and hearing the plash of the waves, and singing with all ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... darkness behind us, and we knew that he had sent a party into the fixed boat to rock it from side to side. Then came a cheer, as the water rolled hissing and whispering among the reeds; there was the simultaneous plash of ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... ancient Egyptians for being so devoted to the latter; forgetting Magnolia, and all the home things I could not do and would have liked to do; forgetting everything, and rapt in the enjoyment of tropical airs, and Eastern skies; hearing the plash of water from the everlasting shadoof, and watching the tints and colours on the ranges of hills bordering the Nile valley. All my hills were green; the hues of those others were enough of themselves to make an enchanted land. Still more, as I stopped ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... path, but I will tell you," and with the sound of the gurgling river, and the plash of the waves in his ears, Cardo listened to her simple story. "You couldn't see me much before, because only six weeks it is since I am here. Before that I was living far, far away. Have you ever heard of Patagonia? Well then, my father was a missionary there, and ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... indulgence of his mortified heart, Cadurcis looked about him for resources. The rain was pouring in torrents, and the plash of the troubled and swollen lake might be heard even at the abbey. At night the rising gusts of wind, for the nights were always clear and stormy, echoed down the cloisters with a wild moan to which he loved to listen. In the morning he beheld with interest the savage spoils of the tempest; ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... long-coated spectators sets towards the town, mingled with the parti-coloured, muddied figures of the players. I have been strolling half the afternoon along the river bank, watching the boats passing up and down; hearing the shrill cries of coxes, the measured plash of oars, the rhythmical rattle of rowlocks, intermingled at intervals with the harsh grinding of the chain-ferries. Five-and-twenty years ago I was rowing here myself in one of these boats, and I do not wish to renew the experience. I cannot conceive why ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Below were dusky woods around what I took to be Fosse Manor, for the great Roman Fosse Way, straight as an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its water-meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny village settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was no noise but the twitter of small birds and the night wind in the tops of ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... beetle's hum The Elfin army's goblin drum To pigmy battle sound; And now, where dripping dew-drops plash On waving grass, their bucklers clash, And now their quivering lances ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... of Catherine Seyton, which the page had let loose in the first moment of astonishment, vanished in darkness; but the plash of oars was heard, and, in a second or two, five or six harquebuses and a falconet were fired from the battlements of the castle successively, as if levelled at some object on the water. Confounded with these incidents, no way for Catherine's protection (supposing her to be in the boat ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... traders of many seas, who have gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings, quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the spectres which ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... business, and—as it is the nature of little people to do—making a prodigious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour. As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship paddles further away yet. These, with the creaking little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-water ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... slowly back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... English, pyrrocorax in Latin, who, in their mischief, would drop burning twigs on thatched roofs. Nor that magic bird, the fulmar, a wanderer from the Scottish archipelago, dropping from his bill an oil which the islanders used to burn in their lamps. Nor do you ever find in the evening, in the plash of the ebbing tide, that ancient, legendary neitse, with the feet of a hog and the bleat of a calf. The tide no longer throws up the whiskered seal, with its curled ears and sharp jaws, dragging itself along on its nailless paws. On that Portland—nowadays so changed as scarcely ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... grateful shadow over the crowd beneath, that fill up the intervals of its columns; but elsewhere the sun burns down and flashes everywhere. Mounted on the colonnade are masses of people leaning over, beside the colossal statues. Through all the heat is heard the constant plash of the two superb fountains, that wave to and fro their veils of white spray. At last the clock strikes. In the far balcony are seen the two great snowy peacock fans, and between them a figure clad in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... situated, just below the mansion. From the "Grist Yate," by the main road to Rochdale, a winding horse-way, paved with stones set on edge, led down the steep bank and pointed to the sequestered spot where for ages the clack of the hopper and the plash of the mill-wheel had usurped a noisy ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the water, and the galley glided down the creek with a velocity that soon rendered her but a shadow in the grey tide. In a few minutes I lost sight of her altogether; but I still distinguished the faint measured plash of the oars, and the feeble wail of the infant's voice ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... put a boat on them, now that there is perpetual trolling, as well as fly-fishing, so that every fish knows the lures, the fun is mainly over. In April, no doubt, something may still be done, and in the silver twilights of June, when as you drift on the still surface you hear the constant sweet plash of the rising trout, a few, and these good, may be taken. But the water wants re-stocking, and the burns in winter need watching, in the interests of spawning fish. It is nobody's interest, that I know of, to take trouble and incur expense; ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... hoarse-throated cannon belch fiery breath, And hurl forth the murderous rain, Which dances along on its message of death, And sings o'er the dying and slain! Crash! Crash! Then a leap and a dash! Hand to hand—face to face, goes the fight; The bayonets plunge, and the red streams plash, And up goes a shout of delight— "The enemy runs!—Men flinch from their guns! On! Forward! For God and for Right! Advance!—Advance!—Men of England and France! Press forward, for Freedom and Right! On—On—On! Hurrah! the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... goatherd is a laggard lover! And thou dost not glance at her, oh hard, hard that thou art, but still thou sittest at thy sweet piping. Ah see, again, she is pelting thy dog, that follows thee to watch thy sheep. He barks, as he looks into the brine, and now the beautiful waves that softly plash reveal him, {36} as he runs upon the shore. Take heed that he leap not on the maiden's limbs as she rises from the salt water, see that he rend not her lovely body! Ah, thence again, see, she is wantoning, light as dry thistle-down in the scorching summer weather. She flies when thou art wooing ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... better spirits when he went out. He whistled as he went. The plash of the blue sea all along the shingle seemed to have a sort of laugh in it: he was in love with Penzance and all its beautiful neighborhood. Once again, he was saying to himself, he would spend a quiet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... drives with her mamma, in being obliged to wear fine clothes, to learn music and dancing, "and other tiresome things," and never being free to run wild on the hills and heaths, wade in the ponds, and plash in the burns, ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... nautical adventure reappears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from Rousseau and Chateaubriand. There is more repose about this poem than in any of the author's other compositions. In its pages the sea seems to plash about rocks and caves that bask under a southern sun. "'Byron, the sorcerer,' he can do with me what he will," said old Dr. Parr, on reading it. As the swan-song of the poet's sentimental verse, it has a pleasing if not pathetic calm. During the last years in Italy he planned an epic on ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... moment, but the oars in the boat ahead continued their regular plash. It may be that Tregarthen had failed to discern the small sail astern of him in the gloom of the land. She lowered it quietly, stowed it, found and inserted the thole-pins, and shipped the paddles. Yet it seemed ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... little space Of silence, then the plash and spray, The sound of eager waves that ran To kiss the perfumed locks astray, To touch these lips that ne'er said 'Nay,' To dally with the helpless hands; Till the deep sea in silence lay On ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... and apparently hurried by some extreme apprehension of terror. Three of them I recognised as the captain, mate, and carpenter, and the others were men noted as their allies and firm friends. They had already lowered the boat nearly to the water; and just as I looked over the taffrail I heard the plash, as her keel dipped into the sea. I saw that there were some articles—the compass, with charts, and a few other things like boxes or barrels—already lying in the boat; but as yet none of the men had got ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... placid, and the sea like a smooth lake. When we had got some way out, and the sounds of the water on the yacht, together with the human noises of her crew, had faded, a singular silence fell. The plash of the oars was the only sound that broke on the ears. The air was soft and serene; nature seemed to have at last relented, and to be out of key with those tragic deeds committed on the sea. As I sat, passing such reflections in my mind, I heard a voice ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... barracks and the gloomy, bat-infested cells beneath. A vagrant breeze drifted now and then across the grim wall above them, and the deserted road in front lay drenched in the yellow light of the tropic moon. There was little likelihood of detection here, where the dreamy plash of the sea drowned the low sound of their voices; and Jose breathed more freely than in the populous plaza which they ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to cut and plash the hedges, and make the ditches 3 feet by 2 feet, or pay or cause to be paid to the landlord 1s. per rood for such as shall not be done after three months' notice has ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds. The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the objurgations of the 'mates' as some lazy fellow ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... into Northumbrian ground, over the Wansbeck; past Morpeth; by Warkworth, and its castle, and hermitage; over the Coquet stream, beloved by the friends of gentle Izaak Walton; on, by the sea-side - almost along the very sands - with the refreshing sea-breeze, and the murmuring plash of the breakers - the Misses Green giving way to childish delight at this their first glimpse of the sea; on, over the Aln, and past Alnwick; and so on, still further north, to a certain little station, which is the terminus of their railway ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... himself for an instant in the air, then closed his wings and shot downward. A whizzing sound! then a plash, and he disappeared beneath the surface, throwing up the water into sparkling foam-wreaths. He was absent but a moment, and then bore upward into the air a ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the fast-approaching summer night, the Baron and Flemming walked forth along the borders of the stream. As they heard it, rushing and gushing among the stones and tangled roots, and the great wheel turning in the current, with its never-ceasing plash! plash! it brought to their minds that exquisite, simple song of Goethe, the Youth and the Mill-brook. It was for the moment a nymph, which sang to them in the voice ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... White, snow-laden floes and lumps of ice float on the dark surface, looking like white marble on a black ground. Occasionally there is a larger dark-colored pool, where the wind gets a hold of the water and forms small waves that ripple and plash against the edge of the ice, the only signs of life in this desert tract. It is like an old friend, the sound of these playful wave-lets. And here, too, they eat away the floes and hollow out their ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... mountain mass of which they formed a part. Fancy what a place! for a hot afternoon after five, with no wind—and absolute solitude; no creature—except a lamb or two—to mix any ruder sound or voice with the plash of the innumerable streamlets." ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... perfect, calm night, and with the full moon, was almost as bright as day. We rowed all the way close to shore, passing under the gloomy shade of dense forests or by countless coconuts, the only sound besides the plash of our oars being the cry of water fowl or some night bird, while the light beetles [7] flashed their green lights against the dark background of the forest, looking much like falling stars. There are certain moments in life that have made a lasting ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... triumphs of all unmarried people are but the good oak planks being driven into place to make the vessel fit for the real voyage." Or, again, one night when they were in a rowboat on the lagoon in the park and all about them in the darkness was the plash of oars in the water, the screams of excited girls, and the sound of voices calling, he let the boat float in against the shores of a little island and crept along the boat to kneel, with his head ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... daylight. A slight mist hung upon the river, and the marshy land on the south side and the scattered houses leading to Chelsea on the north side looked dreary enough. The only sound was the plash of the waterman's sculls and the grinding of the rowlocks. At last they came upon ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... they began to sink, till with one spasm of dread she seemed to awake, and find she was a child again in the parlor at evening twilight, and Tom was not really angry. From the soothed sense of that false waking she passed to the real waking,—to the plash of water against the vessel, and the sound of a footstep on the deck, and the awful starlit sky. There was a moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get disentangled from the confused web of dreams; but soon the whole terrible truth urged itself upon ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... language of the upper valley of the St. Lawrence and of the valley of the Mississippi remembered as distinctly its origin we should everywhere hear the plash of the oar in all the hospitality of their settlements. But all such traces have disappeared, or all but disappeared, in the Mississippi Valley. The only one that comes to me now, as possibly of the old French days, is one which is preserved in an adage not at all French ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the dark corner, listening, through the monotonous din and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull plash of the rain in the far distance,—shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look towards her. She knew, in spite of all his kindness, that there was that in her face and form which made him loathe the sight of her. She felt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Then, ag'in, most likely there's only one road from your place to the nearest town, and jist when you want to send off your stuff it'll come on pourin' rain for ever so long, and the whole road'll be nothin' but plash and mash, like a dish of cabbage-soup; and there the stuff'll have to lie idle for weeks and weeks, and you've jist got to grin and bear it. And in them parts, instead of one good pelt and have done with it, it keeps on drip, drip, drip, for days and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... of boughs, the peals of thunder, and the dash of the rain. But she was safe and unharmed. Gradually the wind decreased, the vivid gleam of lightning stopped flashing in her frightened eyes, the thunder rolled farther and farther away; the birds began chirping softly; there was but a gentle plash of drops from the dripping leaves; long rays of sunshine stole in between the branches. The storm ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... disturb her, and sat the whole time by the sick girl's bed listening to her delirious fancies and renewing her compresses. He never shut his eyes. He heard plainly when the anchor went down and the ship was brought up; and then how the waves began to plash against the sides! The sailors tramped about the deck for some time, then one by one they turned in. But at midnight he heard a dull knocking. That sounds, thought he, like hammering in nails whose heads have been covered with cloth to muffle the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... o'clock, and night was at hand. Already the moon was showing her large, full face above the tree-tops by Chambord, and casting a silver streak athwart the stream. The plash of oars from the Marquis's boat was waxing indistinct despite the stillness, whilst by the eye the boat itself was no longer to ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... immense arterial and venous system circulates the life-blood of the plants, hot water being the vehicle of warmth in winter. These invisible streams will flow when the brooks at the foot of the hill are sealed by frost and the plash of the open-air ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... a few moments' pause she said, "I like the plan and I thank you very much for speaking of it; but I prefer the beach. I love the plash and roar and boom of the water, and it will be a constant inspiration to me. How soon can I go?" she asked, with a look upon her face that a young child might have had in speaking to ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... to catch every sound that came, they listened with beating hearts until it ceased. Once they had detected the click of stones striking together as if moved by a human foot and twice caught the faint plash of a bush or limb of tree dropping into the water. Then the sounds ceased, and only the faint murmur of that slow-running stream ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... the masonry of a thousand years. Amid a loud and awful shriek, horses and horsemen, and the dissolving fragments of the scene for a moment mingled as it were in airy chaos, and then plunged with a horrible plash into the fatal depths below. Some fell, and, stunned by the massy fragments, rose no more; others struggled again into light, and gained with difficulty their old shore. Amid them, Iskander, unhurt, swam like a river god, ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... we all went into the woods above and behind our house, and sat down and wove wreaths of red and russet leaves, and dreamed and mused with a far-off sound of booming waves and plash of sea on smooth beach in the pine-trees about us. It was beautiful to see the serene gleam of Una's face, fleckered with sunlight; and Julian, with his coronet of curls, sitting quiet in the great peace. My husband, at full length on the carpet of withered ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... plunge of waters over ledge after ledge of massive rock, the merry cascade enveloping itself in a robe of spray and mist, on the skirt of which flashes the faintest vision of a rainbow, which wavers and flits, almost, as you look at it, while the jets of foam plash up from the pool at the foot of the fall, a tranquil pause of the waters in a depth of uncertain blue, in which a suggestion of emerald flashes, and from which they dance on in less frantic mood over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Hist!" They'd cry: and straight the plash of oar, And creak of sail were stilled; And every ear Was tent to catch the strains her sweet voice trilled. Avast to gloomy thoughts and boding fear! Alack the day when she should ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... interval a shout was heard from far down the river; then later the plash of oars; then a cry hailing the approaching boats, and the answer, "All safe!" Presently the boats had come alongside, and the passengers crowded down to the guard to learn the details of the search. Basil heard a hollow, moaning, gurgling sound, regular ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... day; flaring acridly across was a transitory reek of burnt lubricating oil, and the hint of a cigar so faint that it was gone before he could be sure of it. . . . The lumbering creak of the mill-wheel rose assertively above the drone and plash of the stream; a shiver of rain and a gentle sigh of wind in the top branches of the trees behind him were suddenly swallowed by the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... blade plash bream dress twine glade clash cream swim blind grade crash dream spend grind shade smash gleam speck spike trade trash steam fresh smile skate slash stream whelp while brisk drove blush cheap carve quilt grove flush peach farce filth stove slush teach parse ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... into bottoms, shaded by trees, and overgrown with reeds and palmettos, shining, as the wind stirred them, like sails in the sunshine. The profound stillness of the sky-bounded plain, only broken by the plash of the waterfowl, or the distant howl of the savanna wolf, and the splendour of the rising sun, imparted an indescribable solemnity and grandeur to the scene. Lower down the river were detached groups of trees, amongst which grazed deer, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... delight at the success of their efforts; of the wind roaring in the chimney; of the church-bells ringing in the distance; of the ever-increasing moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubber wheels of several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravel ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... a start. A rush of wind, a sudden plash of water were followed by the whizzing of an arrow through the air. He was close to the water. Softly peering through the reeds he saw, palpitating and stricken with fear, a snowy swan. The arrow had missed ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... well if, in the morning, the household slaves had not to wash blood-stains from the pavement of the hall, or in the still night, when the drunken brawlers lay stupid on the floor, to drag a dead man from the red plash in which he lay. ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... on into the final week of July. There was scarcely any snow left on the hillsides by this time; the air was filled with the incessant cry of birds and the constant plash of falling waters. We could sleep well enough once more on the green grass in the open air; and another period of watching now began, for here it was that the vessels passed every year, as the savages told us. Sometimes, ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... Like balm upon me from the boughs o'erhead. My coming strikes a terror on the scene. All the sweet sylvan sounds are hushed; I catch Glimpses of vanishing wings. An azure shape Quick darting down the vista of the brook, Proclaims the scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs Startle my ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... conceiv'd, To deck his fortune with his virtuous deeds: And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study, Virtue and that part of philosophy Will I apply that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev'd. Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left And am to Padua come as he that leaves A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep, And with satiety seeks to ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... French gate, the men on guard, drawn up in line on each side, gazed on us as we passed at shoulder arms. We passed the outposts, and the drum ceased playing as we turned to the right. Nothing was heard but the plash of footsteps in the mud, for the snow ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... shot forth dancing blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowing cinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatched to let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowls and the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plants as the briny ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... passing with four or five young men and girls who sang in good time and tune. Only a song of the music-hall or of the nigger minstrels, but it sounded pleasantly with the plash of the oars. A fine sunset had begun to glow upon the river; its warmth gave a tone ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... at the winter stars riding high just over the meridian. The port behind us was still and dead, but a handful of navy-folk had come to one of the wharves to see us off. Yes, there was something of a stir—you know, the kind of stir that's made when boats go to sea: shouted orders, the plash of dropped cables, vagrant noises. It didn't take a great time to get under way; we were ready, waiting for the word to go. The flotilla—mother-ship, tugs and all—was out to sea long before the dawn. You would ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... partner, however, I trudged on alone, plish-plash-plosh, through the clayey sludge, cold, dripping and miserable, stopping occasionally to turn my back to the wind or to tie up a wayward shoestring, and pondering dolefully in my mind that I had full two ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... asking himself for the first time how he was to carry out his design. Sitting on the end of the bed with his head propped on his hand he felt as if he were in the hold of a great ship, listening to the plash and roar of the stormy sea outside. The excitement of the populace was now ungovernable and the air was filled with groans and cries. He would have to pass through the people, and they would see him and detain him, or perhaps follow him. His impatience was now ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... and down on the regular beat, sometimes in the full silvery moonlight, sometimes in the shade cast by the hut; one minute only the footsteps to break the silence, or the wallowing plash of one of the great ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... with heavy plash, From the cliffs invading, dash Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow, Till white and thundering down they go, Like the avalanche's snow, On the Alpine vales below; Thus at length, outbreathed and ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... suggestive of unfathomable depths. The moorhen called again from the reeds near the ford, then flew away over the fire-flushed river and disappeared into the gloom; and a water-vole dropped with a gentle plash into the pool. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... kingdom for my thought, Within a river's winding cove, Whose forests form a double grove, And, from the water's silent flow, Appear more beautiful below; While their large leaves the lilies lave, Or plash upon the shadow'd wave; While birds, with darken'd pinions, fly Across that still intenser sky; Fish, with cold plunge, with startling leap, Or arrow-flight across the deep; And stilted insects, light-o-limb, Would dimple o'er the even brim; ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... increased the hard brilliancy of the light in Milo's eyes. The great chamber was silent as a mausoleum in the intervals between the clashing and tinkling of gold and stones in the chest; from the outside, by way of the rock tunnel, came only the sigh and murmur of the crooning breeze, the softened plash of the tide on the shore, the scream of wheeling seabirds. All sound of the schooner had departed; there was no human note in ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... hand was drawn a continuous curtain of mossed stems and boughs overlapping and interlacing their delicate twigs. Scarcely a bird sang within the curtain; scarcely a woodland sound broke in upon the monotonous plash of the paddles. Alder, birch, maple, pine, spruce, and hemlock—the woods were a lifeless tapestry. Ahead curved and stretched the waterway, rippled now and again by a musk-rat crossing, swimming with its nose and no more ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a glass of water, and, trying to conceal my own distress for her as well as I could, sat down, silently, near her. Gradually she grew quieter, until the room was so still that we could hear the raindrops from the eaves plash down outside. Peggy pushed back her cloud of bright hair and fastened it in the nape of her neck. At last she said, with conviction: "Mother, Maria didn't say these things, but I know she thinks them for me, thinks that a woman's love is just all forgiveness and indulgence. By that she could—she ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... day, just as the princess had sat down to dinner, she heard a strange noise—tap, tap—plash, plash—as if something was coming up the marble staircase: and soon afterwards there was a gentle knock at the door, and a little ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... in Europe where to-day we find the most exquisite remains of Mohammedan culture, and, though the fury of Christian conquest dragged the harrow over the soil of Granada, even yet streams and fountains spring up there and gush abundantly and one seldom loses the sound of the plash of water. The flower of Christian chivalry and Christian intelligence went to Palestine to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of pagan Mohammedans. They found there many excellent things which they had not gone out to seek, and the Crusaders produced a kind of premature and abortive ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... tramp, tramp, up and down on the regular beat, sometimes in the full silvery moonlight, sometimes in the shade cast by the hut; one minute only the footsteps to break the silence, or the wallowing plash of one of the great reptiles ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... snare, the ash clusters glow, Ducks plash in the pools; breakers whiten below; More strong than a hundred is the ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... we went on thus in silent pleasure, gazing at the gentle needle as it moved without noise; and, with nothing around but plash of waves, bright sun, and a feeling of hot silence, the spell of sleep was overpowering. Homer sometimes nodded, it is said, and he would have certainly had a good nap had he steered long thus. The sinking off into these delicious slumbers was imperceptible, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... mangrove thickets, now receding in plains dotted with gloomy clumps of gumtrees, as far as the eye, from our low position and by the imperfect light afforded, could reach. As we advanced, the measured plash of the oars frightened from their roosting places in the trees, a huge flock of screeching vampires, that disturbed for a time the serenity of the scene by their discordant notes; and a few reaches further up, noisy flights of our old friends, the whistling-ducks, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... became herself beyond the possibility of her sister's reach. Her danger was imminent; she was sinking. Her father and sister shrieked to Him—who they believed heard them and sent his Messenger; for a plash in the water, a strong man with wonderful—it seemed superhuman—strength and speed, was making his way toward Mary. In one moment more he had grasped her with one hand. She had still enough presence ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in one another's face with mute astonishment, they heard a dull thud against the ship's side—the stroke of a boat-hook as the pinnace was shoved off—then a rattle, as the oars commence working in the tholes, succeeded by the plash of the oar-blades in the water. After that, the regular "dip-dip," at length dying away, as the boat receded, leaving the abandoned vessel silent as a graveyard in the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... dream! Spell of the summer night! Will of the grass that stirs in its sleep! Desire of the honeysuckle! And further away, Like the plash of far-off waves in the fluid night, ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... along, the birds flew up out of the thick second crop of clover, and the bees hummed as if it still were June. There was a flashing of white gulls over the water where the fleet of boats rode the low waves together in the cove, swaying their small masts as if they kept time to our steps. The plash of the water could be heard faintly, yet still be heard; we might have been a company of ancient Greeks going to celebrate a victory, or to worship the god of harvests, in the grove above. It was strangely moving to see this ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... mair?—it was laid till her ere she had a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune.—They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shore-side, at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say —he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise—that's 'Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... it is true, his curiously limited immortality—an immortality that may be, and finally is, curtailed—but she can suffer a punishment worse to her than extinction. The prelude opens with the roar and hoarse scream of the storm as it dashes through the forest—- the plash of the rain, the flashing of lightning and the roll of the thunder. The musical idea was obviously suggested by Schubert's "Erl-king." In each we have the same rapidly-reiterated notes in the upper part, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... the long account. And still the continents and oceans ring With royal torments of the Silver King! Incessant bellowings fill all the earth, Mingled with inextinguishable mirth. He roars, men laugh, Nevadans weep, beasts howl, Plash the affrighted fish, and shriek the fowl! With monstrous din their blended thunders rise, Peal upon peal, and brawl along the skies, Startle in hell the Sharons as they groan, And shake the splendors ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... keep its head and ears in the warmth and shelter, and never once attempted to creep in nearer; and so another hour passed, only broken by the low murmur of Dale's voice as he talked to the guide, and the plash and rush of water. For the dripping was drowned now by the enormous amount which fell, and this went on increasing till there was quite a heavy ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... with which it would have been almost impossible to associate the idea of war and invasion. In the lazy bunting that hung listlessly from peak and mast-head—in the cheerful voices of the sailors, heard afar off in the stillness—in the measured plash of the sea itself, and the fearless daring of the sea-gulls, as they soared slowly above our heads—there seemed something so suggestive of peace and tranquillity, it struck us as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... ears from below the sound of Madame Prune's long prayers, ascending through the floor, monotonous as the song of a somnambulist, regular and soothing as the plash of a fountain. It lasts three quarters of an hour at least, it drones along, a rapid flow of words in a high nasal key; from time to time, when the inattentive spirits are not listening, it is accompanied by a clapping of dry palms, or by harsh ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the Sheriff's supper party came with heavy showers and a sky swept by clouds that let through glimpse of moon nor star. The town lay in pitch darkness, all silent except for the plash of the sea upon the shore or its long roll on the Ramparts. A deserted and wind-swept street, its white walls streaming with waters, its outer shutters on the ground fiats barred to darkness, its gutters running over—it was the ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... pond-lilies, peopled with bullfrogs and water snakes, and haunted by two white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would beat as we approached it; what fearful glances we would throw around! And if by chance a plash of a wild duck, or the guttural twang of a bullfrog, struck our ears, as we stole quietly by—away we sped, nor paused until completely out of the woods. Then, when I reached home, what a world of adventures and imaginary terrors would I have to relate ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... and Clarence. To them it was a beloved friend; and magnificent as was Lynmouth, wonderful as was Clovelly, and glorious as was Hartland, I believe they would equally have welcomed the waves if they had been on the flattest of muddy shores! The ripple, plash, and roar were as familiar voices, the salt smell as native air; and my mother never had thawed so entirely towards Clarence as when she found him the only person who could thoroughly participate ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him: "Rob Donn, according to all accounts, though outwardly of such fair respectability that he attained an honour, unknown to Robert Burns, of acting as an elder of the kirk, was not always so chaste in his words as he might seem to be in his deeds; he took his plash as a poet, and not always in the clearest waters; besides, he had a terrible lash at his command, which he could wield with an effect at times that paid little respect to the bounds set in such matters by Christian charity, or even by social politeness. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... sit for hours, following with reverent pencil the details of an architecture unrivalled on the globe; to watch the sun scale the hills of Scutari and shatter its lances against the fairy minarets of Stamboul; to catch the swing and plash of the rowers rounding their caiques by the bridge of Galata; to wander through bazaar and market, dotting down splashes of robe, turban, and sash; to rest for hours in cool tiled mosques, which in their ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... poised himself for an instant in the air, then closed his wings and shot downward. A whizzing sound! then a plash, and he disappeared beneath the surface, throwing up the water into sparkling foam-wreaths. He was absent but a moment, and then bore upward into the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... horizon. Eastward the huge meadow sank down into bottoms, shaded by trees, and overgrown with reeds and palmettos, shining, as the wind stirred them, like sails in the sunshine. The profound stillness of the sky-bounded plain, only broken by the plash of the waterfowl, or the distant howl of the savanna wolf, and the splendour of the rising sun, imparted an indescribable solemnity and grandeur to the scene. Lower down the river were detached groups of trees, amongst which grazed deer, who, with wondering glances, seemed to ask the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... over-driven galley slaves, indifferent to everything, work, rest, blows, food, sleep and the hope of release. The sky darkens suddenly. There is a sort of horror in the stifling air. People do not talk much, and if they do are apt to quarrel and sometimes to kill one another without warning. The plash of the fountains has a dull sound like the pouring out of molten lead. The horses' hoofs strike visible sparks out of the grey stones in broad daylight. Many houses are shut, and one fancies that there must be a dead man in each whom no one will bury. A few great drops ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... demurely out of the sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the cabinet de toilette. She moved about in the cabinet de toilette thinking that the waltz out of The Rosenkavalier was divinely exciting. The delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of the shortening ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... defiant, mocking expression. He looked as though he wanted to say: "Yes, in a minute I will tell you something that will make you split your sides with laughing." The little round window was open and a soft breeze was blowing on Pavel Ivanitch. There was a sound of voices, of the plash of oars in the water.... Just under the little window someone began droning in a high, unpleasant voice: no doubt it ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a shout was heard from far down the river; then later the plash of oars; then a cry hailing the approaching boats, and the answer, "All safe!" Presently the boats had come alongside, and the passengers crowded down to the guard to learn the details of the search. Basil heard a hollow, moaning, gurgling sound, regular as that of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my path, but I will tell you," and with the sound of the gurgling river, and the plash of the waves in his ears, Cardo listened to her simple story. "You couldn't see me much before, because only six weeks it is since I am here. Before that I was living far, far away. Have you ever heard of Patagonia? Well then, my father was a missionary there, and he took me and my mother ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... ago—for on our starboard hand, by the edge of the rent, swept down a slope of turf, cropped by the gales, green as an English park; with a thread of a stream dropping to a small wilderness of ferns, and, through this, to plash upon a miniature beach of pink sand, on the edge of which the sea scarcely lapped. Sea-birds of many kinds circled and squawked overhead. Yet it was not our boat that had ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grey stone and full of dim sheep. Below were dusky woods around what I took to be Fosse Manor, for the great Roman Fosse Way, straight as an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its water-meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny village settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was no noise but the twitter of small birds and the night wind in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... side are embowered in fragrant bloom. There is a runnel of water at the roadside, and in one place this water is collected in a round stone basin that looks immensely old; from this it trickles forth again with coolness and musical plash. Having reached this spot, we may as well pass over into Fowey by the ferry here instead of by that from Polruan. If we had already come from Fowey to Bodinnick we should find that the ferryman would carry us back without further payment; the outward fee included ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... The waves plash at your feet, and the seagull, strangely tame, screams close overhead; but glorious as is the unbroken view of sky and ocean, the loneliness of the place, and the unutterable mystery of the sea, and the deep sullen roar, and the memories of the long sad history ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... courts, and a dreamy dulness in its trees and gardens; those who pace its lanes and squares may yet hear the echoes of their footsteps on the sounding stones, and read upon its gates, in passing from the tumult of the Strand or Fleet Street, 'Who enters here leaves noise behind.' There is still the plash of falling water in fair Fountain Court, and there are yet nooks and corners where dun-haunted students may look down from their dusty garrets, on a vagrant ray of sunlight patching the shade of the tall houses, and seldom troubled to reflect a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... crossed the ocean blue;" but everything was clean, and had an air of old-time respectability. The dining-room, which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square courtyard where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of a little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with the rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a raised and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the house, busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... and makes brave this sombreing tide of time. Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear The laurel glorious from that wintry hair— When he, the sovereign of our lyric day, In Charon's shallop must be rowed away, And hear, scarce heeding, 'mid the plash of oar, The ave atque vale ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... I walked along, I heard through the plash of the waves and the sizzle of the foam ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... at last, lay the twilight world he loved. Nature had ceased her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle in the herbage—the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall hardly stirred the dust. In the distance sounded the cry of ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... a hot June day, and out of the welter of din and rumble the cool plash of falling water came to his straining ears refreshingly. At once he considered the dog and, thankful for the distraction, stepped beneath the portico of a provision store and indicated the marble basin ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... told by her that she cannot sleep for the rats. Make the weather fair, to keep the picture at its best, and let her pass the hours till the coming of the dawn, watching the mainmast-truck sway to and fro against the Southern Cross, as the breeze falls and rises, and the bulwark-plash is soft ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... passed over her head. "It is better than the beautiful world where I sit on the rocks and wonder, and dream of the great beyond that goes over and meets the sky. There are no cruel Indians then, and I want to wander on and on and listen to the voices in the trees, the plash of the great river, and the little stream that plays against the stones almost like the song you sung. If one could live there always and did not get ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... in a still morning or euening a myle), to get vp and beare mee company a little way. In this foule way two pretty plaine youthes watcht me, and with their kindnes somewhat hindred me. One, a fine light fellow, would be still before me, the other euer at my heeles. At length, comming to a broad plash{8:23} of water and mud, which could not be auoyded, I fetcht a rise, yet fell in ouer the anckles at the further end. My youth that follow'd me tooke his iump, and stuck fast in the midst, crying out to ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... maiden-hair, and all sorts of verdant weeds that thrive in the cracks and crevices of moist marble, tell us that Nature takes the fountain back into her great heart, and cherishes it as kindly as if it were a woodland spring. And hark, the pleasant murmur, the gurgle, the plash! You might hear just those tinkling sounds from any tiny waterfall in the forest, though here they gain a delicious pathos from the stately echoes that reverberate their natural language. So the fountain is not altogether glad, after all ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... blue- shirted individuals who were commencing the work of taking down and rolling up the silken awnings, accompanying their labors by a sort of monotonous chant that, mingling with the slow, gliding plash of the river, sounded as weird and mournful as the sough of the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... fell upon them, broken only by the regular plash of the oars. In the young man's conversational attacks there had been nothing but a light play of sunny humour, but in this last retort of hers there was something like the glimmer of cold steel. It ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, it was no marvel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... adorable beauty of an early New England summer. It had no snow-capped mountains in the distance; no amethyst foothills to enchain the eye; no wonderful canyons and splendid rocky passes to make the tourist marvel; no length of yellow sea sands nor plash of ocean surf; no trade, no amusements, no summer visitors;—it was just a quiet, little, sunny, verdant, leafy piece of heart's content, that's what Beulah was, and Julia couldn't spoil it; indeed, the odds were, that it would sweeten Julia! That was what Mother Carey hoped when her heart had ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... enchanted despair of love, time was not marked for them except by the cool plash of the water, which at intervals broke under the half-open window. To the caressing praise of her ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... is the woodland plash, White is the woodland glade, Forth wend those twain, from oak to ash, With ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... wonderful to feel clean again, to get the stubble off his cheeks, and to plash the cool water over his head and about his ears. When he had finished he felt measurably nearer to Patsy. He found laid out also clean shirts and neckcloths. Two complete suits of clothes were folded in an open chest of drawers. Patsy had ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... be a graceful and nearly nude woman standing there, and some display of will power on the girl's part was called for before she approached nearer and stifled the first breath of apprehension. Then, delighted by the vague beauty of the scene, with senses soothed by the soft plash of the cascade, she decided to walk around the lake to the spot where Trenholme must have been hidden when he painted that astonishingly vivid picture. Its bold treatment and simplicity of note rendered it an easy subject to carry in the mind's eye, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... drooped above ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of water, and, trying to conceal my own distress for her as well as I could, sat down, silently, near her. Gradually she grew quieter, until the room was so still that we could hear the raindrops from the eaves plash down outside. Peggy pushed back her cloud of bright hair and fastened it in the nape of her neck. At last she said, with conviction: "Mother, Maria didn't say these things, but I know she thinks them ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... and the gloomy, bat-infested cells beneath. A vagrant breeze drifted now and then across the grim wall above them, and the deserted road in front lay drenched in the yellow light of the tropic moon. There was little likelihood of detection here, where the dreamy plash of the sea drowned the low sound of their voices; and Jose breathed more freely than in the populous plaza which they had ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... together. Her favourite song was "Come, Lasses and Lads"; his was "John Peel"; and they would sing them off and on for an hour at a spell. Thus on a summer evening, when the bay was lying like a tired monster asleep, and every plash of an oar was echoing on the hills, the people on the land would hear them coming around the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... seemed very peaceful here in the hot haze that brooded over the still mountains, and there seemed to be nought to fear. We drew swiftly up to the mound, with the plash of oars only to break the silence, and there was nought amiss that we could see. They had made it on a little flat tongue of land that jutted from the mountain's foot into the deep water, so that on two sides the mound was close ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... to hill, And still consumed, is burning still. Higher and higher leaps the flame, The smoke an ever-shifting frame. He sees a Spanish Castle old, With silver steps and paths of gold. From myrtle bowers comes the plash Of fountains, and the emerald flash Of parrots in the orange trees, Whose blossoms pasture humming bees. He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke Bears visions, that his master-stroke Is out of dirt ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... definitely installed as reader and garde malade in general, and Clement Rutherford soon learned to await her coming with impatience and to welcome her with delight. All his life long will he remember those summer days, when her voice and the low plash of the far-off ocean waves wove themselves together into music as she read, and when the blue splendors of her lustrous eyes lent a new meaning to the poet's story as it flowed in melodious verses from her lips. Then came a day when the book was laid aside, and the impassioned utterances of ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... there in the darkness near Where the shadows clutch and cling, Above the plash of the bitter tear, A song and the lips ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... the bottom of the pit, where the great drops of water fell plash. Many colliers were waiting their turns to go up, talking noisily. Morel gave his answers ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... midnight, but there was no disturbance; nothing was heard but the plash of the mill-stream, and the dripping ooze from the rocks. His old enemies, no doubt, were intimidated, and he was about commencing a snug nap on the idea—when, lo! there came a great rush of wind. He heard it booming on from a vast distance, until it seemed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this instrument of music the movement of things that moved about her—the patter of the leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling of the ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... shore to spawn, and that he seizes too the haddock, having enticed it near by beating the water. Crantz, in his "History of Greenland," evidently alludes to this cunning habit when he observes, "They plash with their feet in the water, to excite the curiosity of some kinds of fishes to come and see what is going forward, and then they snap them up; and the Greenland women have learnt this piece of art from ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... me waiting here, Selah. Of course I'd have enjoyed it all far better in your society—I don't think I need tell you that now, dear—but the sunshine, and the sea breeze, and the song of the larks, and the plash of the waves below, and the shouts of the fishermen down there on the beach mending their nets and putting out their smacks, have all been so delightful after our humdrum round of daily life at Oxford, that I only wanted your presence ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... dishonest, and her press debased, and her society frivolous, and her religion a mere twilight of wilful and self-induced delusion—she in her turn shall fall like Lucifer, son of the morning, and the double oceans which sweep her illimitable shores shall only plash to future empires a more sad, a more desolate, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... "but, Mr. Salter, if that was only all I had to trouble me! Oh, sir, work is occupation, but work harassed with care for others becomes unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now. At my desk I seem to see those low shores and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves between me and that indistinct boundary. I am floating on the river current, drowning ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... friend had obviously been a prey to one of his fits of low spirits, and vexing the kindly soul of the poet by gloomy anticipations of an early death. Suffering, as Maecenas did, from those terrible attacks of sleeplessness to which he was subject, and which he tried ineffectually to soothe by the plash of falling water and the sound of distant music, [Footnote: Had Horace this in his mind when he wrote "Non avium citharoeque cantus somnum reducent?"—(Odes, III. 1.) "Nor song of birds, nor music of the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... needle, making it round and oblong in shape like a fisherman's basket, and after deftly and closely weaving it together, subjects it to the action of the sea waves, that its surface may be rendered waterproof by this plash and cement, and it is hard for even iron or stone to break it. And what is more wonderful still, so symmetrically is the entrance of the nest adjusted to the kingfisher's shape and size, that no beast either greater or smaller can enter it, they even say that it does not admit the sea, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... me what you hear. Only the musical plash of the fountains and the sonorous undertone of the organ, like the distant roar of surf upon the beach? Ah, me! ah, me! how materialistic you are, my children. Your old uncle hears in these myriad-voiced fountains the musical instruments which Boccaccio gave to the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the hero of a romance, but face to face with a hard, practical, terrible reality. It was night when I landed at the Paddington Station, and taking an omnibus for Charing Cross, watched the long lines of lamps on Oxford Street, and the glitter of the Haymarket theatres, and at last the hard plash of the fountains in Trafalgar Square, with the stony statues grouped so rigidly about the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... into innumerable vistas, each grandly mysterious as a cathedral aisle. The sun shot golden arrows through dark boughs, patching the moss with translucent lights, vivid and clear as the lustre of emeralds. The gentle plash of the forest stream, rippling over its pebbly bed, made a tender music that was wont to seem passing sweet to Violet Tempest's ear. To-day she heard nothing, saw nothing. Her brain ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... hounds, heeding nothing the scratching of briars or the whipping of stiff twigs as she sped on. But for all their eager hunting, the quarry outran both dogs and folk, and gat him into a great thicket, amidmost whereof was a wide plash of water. Into the thicket they followed him, but he took to the water under their eyes and made land on the other side; and because of the tangle of underwood, he swam across much faster than they might have any ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... through Tempe's vale, or scale the giant Alp, Where roses list the bulbul's late, or snow-wreaths crown the scalp; I'd pause to hear soft Venice streams plash back to boatman's oar, Or hearken to the Western flood in wild and falling roar; I'd tread the vast of mountain range, or spot serene and flower'd, I ne'er could see too many of the wonders God has ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... she said; "close by it, sir. There's one bed in our garden that always thrives, in the hottest summer, by the plash from the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... estuary, arm of the sea, bayou [U.S.], fiord, armlet; frith[obs3], firth, ostiary|, mouth; lagune[obs3], lagoon; indraught[obs3]; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles[obs3]; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough[obs3], mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin[obs3], puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c. (store) 636; alberca[obs3], barachois[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of any habitation, no gleam of light from the shore to cheer us. In vain we strained our ears for the plash of the oar, or welcome sound of the human voice, or bark of some household dog, that might assure us we were not doomed to pass the night in ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... heard saving the plash of the little fountain, and the low soft ripple of the tiny waves that rocked themselves against the edge ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... weighing nearly three hundred tons. Through this immense arterial and venous system circulates the life-blood of the plants, hot water being the vehicle of warmth in winter. These invisible streams will flow when the brooks at the foot of the hill are sealed by frost and the plash of the open-air fountains ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... the channel by which the whole pit was drained. Beyond the light the three men encountered another wall of sand, and from behind it and through it there came to them the dull thud and the plash of heavy water. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... it did not come down—it bounded into the tin eave-trough and rolled slowly along till it came to the big pipe that led to the cistern, and into this it dropped, and went whirring down, and stopped somewhere with a faint plash. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... fence gleamed ghostly in the moonlight and were finally lost in the shadow of the great bluff that abruptly shut in the entire point and plateau and shut out all further sight of lake or land in that direction. Far beneath he could hear the soft plash upon the sandy shore of the little wavelets that came sweeping in the wake of the raft-boat and spending their tiny strength upon the strand; far down on the hotel point he could still hear the soft melody of the waltz; he remembered how the ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... curtain of the tent rolled up, and sat about on the boxes in silence for some time, listening to the plash of the sea upon the beach, every minute somebody ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... the footfall of one of his sergeants coming to apprise him of something worth knowing. From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... deepening into the darker shades of night. It is an eery business to be out on the hills at such a season, for they are deathly quiet except for the lashing of the storm. You will never hear a bird cry or a sheep bleat or a weasel scream. The only sound is the drum of the rain on the peat or its plash on a boulder, and the low surge of the swelling streams. It is the place and time for dark deeds, for the heart grows savage; and if two enemies met in the hollow of the mist only one would ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... that both were heavily muffled about the face. This was all he could see, for in a moment they had passed into the gloom, and the next the angle of the house hid them from view; but he could still hear the plash of their oars above the sounds ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... years—ago— After those water-lilies, till the plash, I know not how, surprised us; and you dared Neither advance nor turn back: so, we stood Laughing and crying until Gerard came— Once safe upon the turf, the loudest too, For once more reaching the relinquished prize! How idle thoughts are, some men's, ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... however, I trudged on alone, plish-plash-plosh, through the clayey sludge, cold, dripping and miserable, stopping occasionally to turn my back to the wind or to tie up a wayward shoestring, and pondering dolefully in my mind that I had full two hours to go, not only before reaching home, but perhaps before ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... it rapidly, and when he got to the side of the well, he, without a moment's hesitation, flung it headlong down, and, listening attentively, he heard it fall with a slight plash, as if there was some water at the bottom ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... caterer; but he was addicted to a sort of dreaming of his own, even when the sun stood in the zenith, and he was walking the poop, in the midst of a circle of his officers. Still, he could not refrain from glancing back at the past, that morning, as plash after plash was heard, and recalling the time when magna pars quorum FUIT. At this delectable instant, the ruddy face of a "young gentleman" appeared in his state-room door, and, first ascertaining that the eyes of his superior were actually open, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... several branches coming down from Ruppin Country, and certain lakes and plashes there, in a southwest direction, towards the Elbe valley, towards the Havel Stream; into which latter, through another plash or lake called GULPER SEE, and a few miles farther, into the Elbe itself, it conveys, after a course of say 50 English miles circuitously southwest, the black drainings of those dreary and intricate Peatbog-and-Sand countries. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... another," said Bob. He did not speak more; but as he leant back his head, and looked straight up at the roof of the shed, (there was a great hole in it which the stars shone through, and now and then a big drop of water from the top came plash, plash, on the muddy floor below,) he looked up, I say, and I wonder whether he was thinking the same thing as I was at that moment: "Rats help one another; do none but human beings ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... assented, and the stranger quitted the house, while Fenwolf lingered to offer some attention to Mabel, which was so ill received that he was fain to hurry forth to the boathouse, where he embarked with his companion. As soon as the plash of oars announced their departure, Mabel went forth to watch them. The stranger, who was seated in the stern of the boat, for the first time fixed his large melancholy eyes full upon her, and did not withdraw his gaze till an angle of the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... swum over, and his fingers were on the window-ledge. Robert never knew how the man had managed to climb up out of the water. But he saw the clinging fingers, and hit them as hard as he could with an iron bar that he caught up from the floor. The man fell with a plop-plash into the moat-water. In another moment Robert was outside the little room, had banged its door and was shooting home the enormous bolts, and calling to ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... a mosque, with its mosaic floor and pillared corridor. The interminable lines of bazaars, with their atmospheres of spice and fruit and fragrant tobacco, the hushed tread of the slippered crowds; the plash of falling fountains and the bubbling of innumerable narghilehs; the picturesque merchants and their customers, no longer in the big trowsers of Egypt, but the long caftans and abas of Syria; the absence ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... cliffs in the summer evenings, when great dark masses of cloud tinged with crimson were piled to the zenith at sundown, and coldly reflected in the dark waters of the bay, she saw the destination of the world; she heard cries of torment, too, in the plash of breaking waves and the unceasing roar of the sea; and as she watched the visitors lounging about in bright dresses, laughing and talking, careless of their doom, she could hardly restrain her tears. Night after night when she went to bed, she put her head under ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... and we stood staring at the black bulk lying motionless on the grey water; stood for a long time, listening. I, to tell the truth, was straining my ears to catch the plash of oars: I thought it possible that some of those on board the yawl might take a ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... no echo, Cataline advanced to the door. There was no lamp in the cell of the atriensis; no sign of wakefulness in any of the casements; yet at the first slight tap upon the stout oaken pannel, although it was scarce louder than the plash of the big raindrops from the eaves, another tap responded to it from within, so faint that it appeared an echo of the other. The rebel counted, as fast as possible, fifteen; and then tapped thrice as he had done before, meeting the same reply, a repetition of his ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings, quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... reflecting the lurid glare, became strangely suggestive of unfathomable depths. The moorhen called again from the reeds near the ford, then flew away over the fire-flushed river and disappeared into the gloom; and a water-vole dropped with a gentle plash into the pool. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Our windows here look out on a small and rather quiet piazza, with an immense palace on the left hand, and a smaller yet statelier one on the right, and just round the corner of the street, leading out of our piazza, is the Fountain of Trevi, of which I can hear the plash in the evening, when other sounds ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... scramble about a little in the high places and doze in the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, felt an ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the dawn began to appear, the air of the March night became sharper, and in the distance the murmur and plash of the tide was heard. Then, standing heavy and dark against the clear pale eastern sky, there arose the dark mass of St. Ebba's monastery, the parent of Coldingham, standing on the very verge of the cliff to which it has left the name of St. Abb's ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for a phantom- boat or a shadow on the dark water. Not a breath of air was stirring; but fortunately the gentle ripple of the sea upon the shore, mingled with the soft roar of the breaker on the distant reef, effectually drowned the slight plash that we unavoidably made in the water by the dipping of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... over their broad skylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden plash and rippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch leaped much higher ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was beyond her strength. She could not move the helpless weight, and, in her despair, she let Tibbie's head fall back with a dull plash upon ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... painting along the Thames, lying in my punt, my face up to the sky, or paddling in and out among the pond-lilies. I had idled, too, on the lagoons of my beloved Venice, listening to Luigi crooning the songs he loves so well, the soft air about me, the plash of my gondolier's oar wrinkling the sheen of the silver sea. It had been a very happy summer; full of color and life. The brush had worked easily, the weather had lent a helping hand; all had been peace and quiet. Ofttimes, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... do—making a prodigious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour. As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship paddles further away yet. These, with the creaking little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-water ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... description, nor the news the concierge had given. It was nine o'clock, and very dark, for it had begun to rain towards evening, and a monotonous drip, drip mingled with the plash of the fountain in the garden. Grim fancies came knocking at the door of my brain. It was a mad thing for a boy, little more than a child, to go out alone in the night with a stranger, a "rough-looking peasant-fellow," ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... about them, emphasized rather than broken by the droning chant of a fisherman mending his nets on the beach below, the intermittent plash of the waves on the shingle, and the scream of the gulls that circled overhead. Before the eyes of his flesh was stretched a wide desert of sky and water, and before the eyes of his mind the hopeless desert ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... higher in the heavens, and the yellow lane of light that crossed the violet waters of Loch Roag quivered in a deeper gold. The night-air was scented with the Dutch clover growing down by the shore. They could hear the curlew whistling and the plover calling amid that monotonous plash of the waves that murmured all around the coast. When they returned to the house the darker waters of the Atlantic and the purple clouds of the west were shut out from sight, and before them there was only the liquid plain of Loch Roag, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... in another moment were on top of the big rock. It was almost as good as being at sea; for when they turned their backs to the shore nothing could be seen but water and sails and flying birds, and nothing heard but the incessant plash and dash ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... turned her face to her mother's bosom. And as we went softly out from the room and stood upon the path with the lofty palm-plumes rustling above us, we saw the first swirling wave of the incoming tide ripple round Matautu Point and plash on Hamilton's beach. And from within the silent house answered the wail ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... and black, and where never a ray Of that self-same sun doth find its way Through the heaped-up houses' serried mass— Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng, And the clatter of wheels as they rush along— Or the plash of the rain, or the wind's hoarse cry, Or the busy tramp of the passer-by, Or the toll of the bell on the heavy air— Good friends, let ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... edge of the lake, where a couple of boats were always moored; they got into one of them, and Felix, with gentle strokes, propelled it to the opposite shore. The day was the perfection of summer weather; the little lake was the color of sunshine; the plash of the oars was the only sound, and they found themselves listening to it. They disembarked, and, by a winding path, ascended the pine-crested mound which overlooked the water, whose white expanse glittered ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... young, like knapsacks, on their backs; macaws and humming-birds, winged jewels, flew from tree to tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth canal among luxuriant plantations, the air was perfumed music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when the troops disembarked,—five hundred fine young men, the oldest not thirty, all arrayed in new uniforms and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... ways make an agreeable change from the habits of the pestering drones that infest the beach and the neighbourhood of the hotels. The whole of the steep rocky gorge of that tiny torrent the Canneto is full of mills, each emitting a whirring sound which mingles with the continual plash of the water as it descends in miniature cascades the full length of the ravine, providing in its headlong course towards the sea the motive power required to turn all this quantity of machinery. Bridges span the Canneto at several points, whilst either bank is ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... terribly do I repent me of it, Winter. I upbraid myself as bitterly as any can upbraid me for the folly. But hark—listen! I hear the plash of oars. See, there is a boat! It is he—it is Fawkes! I know him by his height and his strong action. Heaven be praised! All cannot yet be lost! Move upwards yet a few paces, and we will speak to him here alone before we take him within doors to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... careless ears they heard the plash And breezy wash of Attitash, The wood-bird's plaintive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... vague murmur, fraying off into nothing, ending like a wave with a long upward plash of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... were now pulling easily, and the long skiff darted up to them faster and faster still. Jack watched their pursuers with a fascinated eye. There was not the faintest sound made, save for the regular plash of the rising and falling oars. They were so near that he could see the naked backs of the oarsmen glisten as they swung their bodies to and fro in the starshine. Nearer, nearer, came the ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... town, mingled with the parti-coloured, muddied figures of the players. I have been strolling half the afternoon along the river bank, watching the boats passing up and down; hearing the shrill cries of coxes, the measured plash of oars, the rhythmical rattle of rowlocks, intermingled at intervals with the harsh grinding of the chain-ferries. Five-and-twenty years ago I was rowing here myself in one of these boats, and I do not wish to renew ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... heard every plash of their oars, and every tone of their voices, as they rowed round his place of refuge. He was not on the islet, but in it. This was such an island as Swein, the sea-king of former days, took refuge in; and Rolf was only following his example. Long before, he ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... reign of King William the Fourth, entitled "An Act to consolidate and amend the Laws relating to Highways in that part of Great Britain called England," I, T. Bradish, of the Town Hall, Smoltham, do hereby give you notice forthwith to cut, prune, plash or lop certain Trees and Hedges overhanging the highway immediately adjoining your premises, No. 15, East Gate, in the Parish of Smoltham, and which are causing an obstruction and annoyance to the said highway, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... when he was alone he quietly opened the cottage door, and lighting his pipe, sat down on the little rustic seat which was just outside. There was hardly a sound—nothing but the night wind sweeping through the valley, the far-off plash of water, the purring noise of a big moth as it flew past and then hovered a second, attracted by the gleam ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... was alone he quietly opened the cottage door, and lighting his pipe, sat down on the little rustic seat which was just outside. There was hardly a sound—nothing but the night wind sweeping through the valley, the far-off plash of water, the purring noise of a big moth as it flew past and then hovered a second, attracted by the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... olives, mulberries, and vineyards join their colours and melt subtly into distant purple. After crossing this we reach L'Isle, an island village girdled by the gliding Sorgues, overshadowed with gigantic plane-boughs, and echoing to the plash of water dripped from mossy fern-tufted millwheels. Those who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to be some trickling poet's rill emerging from a damp grotto, may well be astounded at the rush and roar of this azure river so close upon its fountain-head. It has a volume ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... moments' pause she said, "I like the plan and I thank you very much for speaking of it; but I prefer the beach. I love the plash and roar and boom of the water, and it will be a constant inspiration to me. How soon can I go?" she asked, with a look upon her face that a young child might have had in speaking to ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... thorns of the marine needle, making it round and oblong in shape like a fisherman's basket, and after deftly and closely weaving it together, subjects it to the action of the sea waves, that its surface may be rendered waterproof by this plash and cement, and it is hard for even iron or stone to break it. And what is more wonderful still, so symmetrically is the entrance of the nest adjusted to the kingfisher's shape and size, that no beast either greater or smaller can ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Monte Gennaro's dark peak looking over the Campagna, and all the Sabine hills trembling in a purple haze,—or, strolling down through the green avenues, you may watch the silver columns of fountains as they crumble in foam and plash in their mossy basins,—or gather masses of the sweet Parma ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... comfort, and he was quite content to remain in passive enjoyment of the same, to feel the gentle current of air softly fanning his brow, to yield himself to the easy, luxurious swing of the cot in which he was lying, and to listen dreamily to the soothing sough of the wind and the plash and gurgle of the water ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... expression. He looked as though he wanted to say: "Yes, in a minute I will tell you something that will make you split your sides with laughing." The little round window was open and a soft breeze was blowing on Pavel Ivanitch. There was a sound of voices, of the plash of oars in the water.... Just under the little window someone began droning in a high, unpleasant voice: no doubt it ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the soul. Like the distant frog-concert and chirp of the cicada, the creak of the water- wheel and the stroke of hammers upon the anvil from afar, the murmur of the fountain, the sough of the wind and the plash of the wavelet, they occupy the sensorium with a soothing effect, forming a barbaric music full of sweetness and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... one of late twilight, when outlines lose their distinctness and sea and shore melt into one mass of uniform gray. There was no wind and the waves came in with a soft plash, but so near to the level of the road that it was evident, even to these strangers, that the tide was at its height and would presently ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... last, lay the twilight world he loved. Nature had ceased her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle in the herbage—the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall hardly stirred the dust. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... up in the boat. Gigantic forest trees were about me; through which, like a silver snake, twisted and twined the great river. The little waves, when I moved in the boat, heaved and fell with a plash as of molten silver, breaking the image of the moon into a thousand morsels, fusing again into one, as the ripples of laughter die into the still face of joy. The sleeping woods, in undefined massiveness; ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... covered all the stone; but the third sprang into the air with delicate triumph, fine and high, satisfied, tenuous and exultant. This one tossed its summit into the light, and, alone of the things in the garden, the plash of its waters recalled and suggested activity—though that in so discreet a way that it was to be heard rather than regarded. The birds flew off in circles over the roofs of the town below us. Very soon they went ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... by a bar of shadow which seemed like a scar on the surface. The two men, as they stood in the street looking seaward, could hear already the solemn hum through the breathless air, and feel the first cool whiff of the breeze on their faces, while at their feet there fell with a sudden plash a heavy drop ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... valley of the shadow of death reigned around us, and we knew not where we went, but trusted to the instinct of the horses, who moved on with their heads close to the ground. The only sound which we heard was the plash of a stream, which tumbled down the pass. I expected every moment to feel a knife at my throat, but "IT WAS NOT SO WRITTEN." We threaded the pass without meeting a human being, and within three quarters of an hour after ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... had heard every plash of their oars, and every tone of their voices, as they rowed round his place of refuge. He was not on the islet, but in it. This was such an island as Swein, the sea-king of former days, took refuge in; and Rolf was only following his example. Long before, he ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... us, and we knew that he had sent a party into the fixed boat to rock it from side to side. Then came a cheer, as the water rolled hissing and whispering among the reeds; there was the simultaneous plash of oars, and ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... much better spirits when he went out. He whistled as he went. The plash of the blue sea all along the shingle seemed to have a sort of laugh in it: he was in love with Penzance and all its beautiful neighborhood. Once again, he was saying to himself, he would spend a quiet and delightful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune.—They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shore-side, at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say —he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise—that's 'Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must have heard of, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... scenes of Fort Wagner, and when wounded at Olustee was prepared to live or die, whichever was God's will. Mrs. Marsh was sitting beside his bed, in quiet conversation with him, when without warning, the hemorrhage commenced. The plash of blood was heard, as the life-current burst from his wound, and, "Go now," he said in his low calm voice. "This is the end, and I would not ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... but she stood the image of doubt and painful indecision. Then the plash of oars was heard in the water, and at the next moment the pinnace was seen gliding over the element, impelled by the strong arms of ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... masonry of a thousand years. Amid a loud and awful shriek, horses and horsemen, and the dissolving fragments of the scene for a moment mingled as it were in airy chaos, and then plunged with a horrible plash into the fatal depths below. Some fell, and, stunned by the massy fragments, rose no more; others struggled again into light, and gained with difficulty their old shore. Amid them, Iskander, unhurt, swam like a river god, and stabbed to ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... "treasure house of pleasant things," then, and make yourself at home in the golden palaces, the gem-studded caves, the bewildering gardens. Sit by its mysterious fountains, hear the plash of its gleaming cascades, unearth its magic lamps and talismans, behold its ensorcelled princes ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... streets. A great shout rang through the air, and rushed along the river; and then another, and another; and the shouts were heard spreading along the line of the procession towards the Duomo; and then there were fainter answering shouts, like the intermediate plash of distant waves in a great lake whose waters ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the Transactions of the English Dialect Society, she has explained ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... he replied, "I'll have none of your plash to-day; I tuck my skinful of good stiff stirabout that's worth a shipload of it. Drink it ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... let them drag after them. One end of this Rattan is stuck in the fisher's girdle, and the other knotted, that the fish should not slip off: which when it is full, he discharges himself of them by carrying them ashore. Nay every ditch and little plash of water but anckle deep hath fish ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... forth, decking them with a fringe of foam, flinging them on one another, and breaking them up into tiny eddies. The foam, melting, hissed and sighed, and everything was filled with the musical plash and cadence. The darkness ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... black, and where never a ray Of that self-same sun doth find its way Through the heaped-up houses' serried mass— Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng, And the clatter of wheels as they rush along— Or the plash of the rain, or the wind's hoarse cry, Or the busy tramp of the passer-by, Or the toll of the bell on the heavy air— Good friends, let it ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of clover, and the bees hummed as if it still were June. There was a flashing of white gulls over the water where the fleet of boats rode the low waves together in the cove, swaying their small masts as if they kept time to our steps. The plash of the water could be heard faintly, yet still be heard; we might have been a company of ancient Greeks going to celebrate a victory, or to worship the god of harvests, in the grove above. It was strangely ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... slippery stones, as he again made his way through the deserted and sleepy paths of the town to the old philosopher's house. He was wet, chilled, weary, and sick enough at heart as he leaned against the cold stone doorway and waited for an answer to his knock. The plash of the heavier rain-drops from the tiled leaves was the only sound he heard for many minutes, until, at last, pattering feet neared him on the inside, and a child's voice asked who was there. To his friendly response the door was opened half-wide, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... progressed the pungent odour of seaweed refreshed him and grew stronger every moment. Suddenly he became aware that although high land lay upon his left hand there was to his right a hollow darkness without shadow or depth. No merry plash of waves came to explain this; the smell of the sea was there, but the joyous tumble of its waters was not to be heard. The traveller stooped low and peered into the darkness. Gradually he discerned a distant line of horizon, and to that point ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... their boats rowed hard and fast across the silvery water with a steady plash, plash of the dipping oars in the calm bay, and ever Ida Lewis was in the lead, heading toward the island with a straight course, and keeping a close watch for the rocks of which the Bay was full. She would turn her head, toss back her hair, and call out in ringing tones to the flock, "'Ware, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... blue of his crest against the deeper blue of summer sky. Under him his reflection rippled along, like the rush of a gorgeous fish through the glassy water. Opposite my canoe he checked himself, poised an instant in mid-air, watching the minnows that my paddle had disturbed, and dropped bill first—plash! with a silvery tinkle in the sound, as if hidden bells down among the green water weeds had been set to ringing by this sprite of the air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for a brief instant; the ripples gathered and began to dance over the spot where Koskomenos had gone down, when ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... was dark night outside, with snow and rain, the place looked very gloomy and lonely. No lamps were to be seen, with the exception of one solitary light hanging before the picture of the Virgin that was fastened against the wall. The plash of the water against the neighbouring rampart at the castle wharf could be plainly heard. Such evenings are long and dreary, unless people devise some employment for themselves. There is not always packing or unpacking to do, nor can the scales be polished or paper ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... stands on the very brink of the river; its foundations are deep set in the water, and its rugged and buttressed walls are reflected stone by stone in the clear, tremulous mirror. The glancing lights on the bright stream, the wealth of leafy foliage, the sweet cadence of the ripples as they plash against the walls of the Quay, and the beauty of the long reflections—quivering lines of grey, green, and purple—increase the beauty of what is probably the most picturesque corner of the town, while ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... descended. The choir was in flame, and a glowing stream like lava was spreading over the floor, and slowly trickling down the steps leading to the body of the church. The transepts and the greater part of the nave were similarly flooded. Above the roar of the flames and the hissing plash of the descending torrents, was heard the wild laughter of Solomon Eagle. Perceiving him in one of the arcades of the southern gallery, Leonard shouted to him to descend, and make good his escape ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... were gradually fading out from the sky, yet wonderful shades of crimson, rose colour, and gold, still lingered lovingly amongst the clouds, and rested upon the waters. All the bustle of the town had been left far behind; there was nothing to break the silence but the measured plash of the oars, and the soft rippling and murmuring of the water as the little boat rode lightly over ...
— Charlie Scott - or, There's Time Enough • Unknown
... could be heard every now and then, listlessly flapping the carved wooden lattice-work shutters of an overhanging balcony built out on timber props over the river Maritza, whose turbid waters surged beneath with steady plash. Inside, the striped silken curtains were closely drawn. The atmosphere was stuffy and airless, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... obstruction, and the boat swung off. The stay-tackle falls were let go entirely, and all on board saw, with an exultation that words can scarcely describe, the important craft suspended directly over the sea. No music ever sounded more sweetly to the listeners than the first plash of the massive boat as it fell heavily upon the surface of the water. Its size, its roof, and its great strength gave it an appearance of security, that for the moment deceived them all; for, in contemplating the advantage they ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... enclose the orchard, which is planted quincunx-wise, with yew hedge and grass-walk all round it. The "Archdeacon's Walk" that grass- walk should be named, for my father paced it morning after morning. The pike and roach would plash among the reeds and water-lilies; and "Fish, fish, do your duty," my father would say to them. Whereupon, he maintained, the fish always put out their noses and answered, "If you do your duty, we do our duty,"—words fully as applicable to ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... 1715. Throughout a melancholy day, clinging mist had blurred the outline of even the nearest hills; distance was blotted out. Thin rain fell chillingly and persistently, drip, dripping with monotonous plash from the old inn's thatched eaves; a light wind sobbed fitfully around the building, moaning at every chink and cranny of the ill-fitting window-frames. "A dismal night for any who must travel," thought the stableman of the inn, as he looked east and then ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... prevailed about them, emphasized rather than broken by the droning chant of a fisherman mending his nets on the beach below, the intermittent plash of the waves on the shingle, and the scream of the gulls that circled overhead. Before the eyes of his flesh was stretched a wide desert of sky and water, and before the eyes of his mind the hopeless desert of ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... beautiful moonlight night, warm, and sweet with the breath of flowers; away in the distance, beyond the wide-spreading lawn, they could see the waters of the bayou glittering in the moonbeams, and the soft plash of oars came pleasantly ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... Egyptians for being so devoted to the latter; forgetting Magnolia, and all the home things I could not do and would have liked to do; forgetting everything, and rapt in the enjoyment of tropical airs, and Eastern skies; hearing the plash of water from the everlasting shadoof, and watching the tints and colours on the ranges of hills bordering the Nile valley. All my hills were green; the hues of those others were enough of themselves ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... drop burning twigs on thatched roofs. Nor that magic bird, the fulmar, a wanderer from the Scottish archipelago, dropping from his bill an oil which the islanders used to burn in their lamps. Nor do you ever find in the evening, in the plash of the ebbing tide, that ancient, legendary neitse, with the feet of a hog and the bleat of a calf. The tide no longer throws up the whiskered seal, with its curled ears and sharp jaws, dragging itself along on its nailless paws. On that ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... looking at each other for a moment. They had passed through much together—danger, excitement, and now they were dabbling in sorrow. It would appear that this same sorrow runs like a river across the road of our life. Some of us find the ford and plash through the shallows—shallow ourselves—while others flounder into deep water. These are they who look right on to the greater events, and fail to note the trivial details of each little step. Paul was wading through the deep water, and this good friend of his was not inclined ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the sea like a smooth lake. When we had got some way out, and the sounds of the water on the yacht, together with the human noises of her crew, had faded, a singular silence fell. The plash of the oars was the only sound that broke on the ears. The air was soft and serene; nature seemed to have at last relented, and to be out of key with those tragic deeds committed on the sea. As I sat, passing such reflections in my mind, I heard a voice at ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... a little space Of silence, then the plash and spray, The sound of eager waves that ran To kiss the perfumed locks astray, To touch these lips that ne'er said 'Nay,' To dally with the helpless hands; Till the deep sea in silence ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... till there smote my ear A movement in the stream that checked my breath: Was it the slow plash of a wading deer? But something said, "This water is of Death! The Sisters wash ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... Concord. Our windows here look out on a small and rather quiet piazza, with an immense palace on the left hand, and a smaller yet statelier one on the right, and just round the corner of the street, leading out of our piazza, is the Fountain of Trevi, of which I can hear the plash in the evening, when ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... became again a dark, undistinguished, and shadowy mass. The little lake had its share of these transient beams of light, and showed its waters broken, whitened, and agitated under the passing storm, which, when the clouds swept over the moon, were only distinguished by their sullen and murmuring plash against the beach. The wooded glen repeated, to every successive gust that hurried through its narrow trough, the deep and various groan with which the trees replied to the whirlwind, and the sound sunk again, as the blast passed away, into a faint and passing murmur, resembling ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... always think of it. It was an unco place by night, unco by day; and these were unco sounds, of the calling of the solans, and the plash of the sea and the rock echoes, that hung continually in our ears. It was chiefly so in moderate weather. When the waves were any way great they roared about the rock like thunder and the drums of armies, dreadful but merry to hear; and it was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nesfield,—a dreamy, careless, wayward plunge of waters over ledge after ledge of massive rock, the merry cascade enveloping itself in a robe of spray and mist, on the skirt of which flashes the faintest vision of a rainbow, which wavers and flits, almost, as you look at it, while the jets of foam plash up from the pool at the foot of the fall, a tranquil pause of the waters in a depth of uncertain blue, in which a suggestion of emerald flashes, and from which they dance on in less frantic mood over the brown and water-worn boulders to follow their further whims; everything that is most charming ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... the beach to-night, and a keg of rum, and the native women. Jump in." "No, I think I'll stay on board and read." "Come on. Don't be a fool." "No, go ahead and enjoy yourselves. I'll stay on board." And there would be the plash of oars as they rowed shoreward, and maybe a song raised.... And he would make himself comfortable under the awning of the after deck, and read the bundles of newspapers from home, of how Thomas Chalmers, the great Scottish preacher, was dead, or how a new great singer had been heard in London, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... calm night, and with the full moon, was almost as bright as day. We rowed all the way close to shore, passing under the gloomy shade of dense forests or by countless coconuts, the only sound besides the plash of our oars being the cry of water fowl or some night bird, while the light beetles [7] flashed their green lights against the dark background of the forest, looking much like falling stars. There are certain moments in life that have made a lasting impression on me, and ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... of little people to do—making a prodigious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour. As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship paddles further away yet. These, with the creaking little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... motives of life. For himself, the thought of Diana's childhood between the pine woods and the sea gave him pleasure; it added another to the poetical and romantic ideas which she suggested. There came back on him the plash of the waves beneath the Portofino headland, the murmur of the pines, the fragrance of the underwood. He felt the kindred between all these, and her maidenly energy, her ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and freshness on the upland lawns, as she rode happily on the dear old mare, by whom she really thought herself fondly recognised. There was something in the stillness of the whole, even in the absence of the roll and plash of the sea waves beside which she had grown up, that seemed to give her repose from the hurry and throb of sensations and thoughts that had so long preyed upon her; and when the ride was over she was refreshed, not tired, and the evening bell drew her to the conclusion most befitting a ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... observing. Their great cup- shaped leaves, swaying high above the pond, catch the rain and hold it a while; but always after the water in the leaf reaches a certain level the stem bends, and empties the leaf with a loud plash, and then straightens again. Rain-water upon a lotus-leaf is a favourite subject with Japanese metal-workers, and metalwork only can reproduce the effect, for the motion and colour of water moving upon the green oleaginous surface are exactly ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... all parts of the island, that Knox says, not the running streams alone, but the reservoirs and ponds, "nay, every ditch and little plash of water but ankle deep hath fish in it."[1] But many of these reservoirs and tanks are, twice in each year, liable to be evaporated to dryness till the mud of the bottom is converted into dust, and the clay cleft by the heat into gaping apertures. Yet within a very few ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... to be Fosse Manor, for the great Roman Fosse Way, straight as an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its water-meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny village settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was no noise but the twitter of small birds and the night wind in the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... feeling as though horror happened wherever she went. But along by the sea wall it was very peaceful; only the soft lapping of the landlocked tide against the stone, the slow gliding of ferry boats, the lazy plash of oars and the metallic clanking in the naval dockyard on Garden Island came to her. On a man-of-war out in the stream the sailors were having a washing day; she could hear their cheery voices singing and laughing as they hung vests and shirts and socks ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... hung, From the rude rock the side-walls sprung; The grave-stones, rudely sculptured o'er, Half sunk in earth, by time half wore, Were all the pavement of the floor; The mildew-drops fell one by one, With tinkling plash upon the stone. A cresset, in an iron chain, Which served to light this drear domain, With damp and darkness seemed to strive, As if it scarce might keep alive; And yet it dimly served to show The awful ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... gives a glimpse of the dark coppice by which it is backed, and from which we are separated by some marshy, rushy ground, where the springs have formed into a pool, and where the moor-hen loves to build her nest. Ay, there is one scudding away now;—I can hear her plash into the water, and the rustling of her wings amongst the rushes. This is the deepest part of the wild dingle. How uneven the ground is! Surely these excavations, now so thoroughly clothed with vegetation, must originally have been huge gravel pits; there ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... was high when I came to a place where the ways divided, and, while I stood hesitating which road to take, I heard the cool plash and murmur of a brook at no great distance. Wherefore, being hot and thirsty, I scrambled through the hedge, and, coming to the brook, threw myself face down beside it, and, catching up the sweet pure water in my hands, drank my fill; which done, I bathed my feet, and hands, and ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... romance, but face to face with a hard, practical, terrible reality. It was night when I landed at the Paddington Station, and taking an omnibus for Charing Cross, watched the long lines of lamps on Oxford Street, and the glitter of the Haymarket theatres, and at last the hard plash of the fountains in Trafalgar Square, with the stony statues grouped so rigidly ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... trees, she looked and listened with most painful anxiety to discover if any living thing were in that seeming solitude, or if any sound disturbed the heavy stillness. But she saw only Nature in her wildest forms, and heard only the plash and murmur (almost inaudible, because continual) of the little waterfall, and the quick, short throbbing of her own heart, against which she pressed her hand as if to hush it. Gathering courage, therefore, she began to descend; and, starting often at the loose stones that even her light ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a gun in my very ear. Flame, smoke—much of both—and the stifling smell of sulphur. Jorian had fired at the face of the pop-gun knave. That putty-white countenance had a crimson plash on it ere it vanished. Then came back to us a scream of dreadful agony and the sound ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... then well advanced toward her second quarter; and as the light gradually brightened, they became aware of certain shadowy forms indistinctly seen moving hither and thither in the deeper shadow of the trees, their whereabouts betrayed by the momentary rattle of a displaced pebble, or the soft plash of their feet in the shallow ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... blue above him, and at his feet summer waves were breaking peacefully on the shore, the sound of their soft, musical plash filling up his pauses and ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... Spell of the summer night! Will of the grass that stirs in its sleep! Desire of the honeysuckle! And further away, Like the plash of far-off waves in the fluid night, The ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... was passing with four or five young men and girls who sang in good time and tune. Only a song of the music-hall or of the nigger minstrels, but it sounded pleasantly with the plash of the oars. A fine sunset had begun to glow upon the river; its warmth gave a ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... window-ledge. Robert never knew how the man had managed to climb up out of the water. But he saw the clinging fingers, and hit them as hard as he could with an iron bar that he caught up from the floor. The man fell with a plop-plash into the moat-water. In another moment Robert was outside the little room, had banged its door and was shooting home the enormous bolts, and calling to Cyril ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... all went into the woods above and behind our house, and sat down and wove wreaths of red and russet leaves, and dreamed and mused with a far-off sound of booming waves and plash of sea on smooth beach in the pine-trees about us. It was beautiful to see the serene gleam of Una's face, fleckered with sunlight; and Julian, with his coronet of curls, sitting quiet in the great peace. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... long now is the green earth renewed 5 With the bright sea-wind and the yellow blossoms. From the cool shade I hear the silver plash Of the blown ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... she passed demurely out of the sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the cabinet de toilette. She moved about in the cabinet de toilette thinking that the waltz out of The Rosenkavalier was divinely exciting. The delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of the shortening cigarette was in ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... fluffy, scurrying mite. But the dog had already raced into the water. The kitten walked a few steps, turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously. It looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of waves. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... into his own house, the Portuguese nunnery. Through its desolate, lime-coated spaces, his meagre belongings were scattered all too easily; but the new servants, their words and ways, not only kept his hands full, but gave strange food for thought. The silent evenings, timed by the plash of a frog in a pool, a cry from the river, or the sing-song of a "boy" improvising some endless ballad below-stairs; drowsy noons above the little courtyard, bare and peaceful as a jail; homesick moments ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... a little song A little song to soothe my heart! I'd make it all of little things The plash of water, rub of wings, The puffing-off of dandies crown, The hiss of raindrop spilling down, The purr of cat, the trill of bird, And ev'ry whispering I've heard From willy wind in leaves and grass, And all the distant drones that pass. A song as tender and as light As flower, or butterfly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... or care why they are gathered together. We have all had dreams of Elysian fields, "where falls not any rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," where all is rest and freedom, where music blends with the plash of fountains, and fruits ripen, and lovers dream away the days, and no one asks what went before or what follows after. The Golden Age, the haunt of fauns and nymphs: there never has been such a day, or such a land: it is a mood, a vision: it has danced before the eyes of poets, from David to Keats ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... of the wind roaring in the chimney; of the church-bells ringing in the distance; of the ever-increasing moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubber wheels of several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravel of ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... words, the party passed the gateway, and came upon the mole, with the bay before them beautiful in the morning light. To the veteran sailor the plash of the waves was like a greeting. He drew a long breath, as if the perfume of the water were sweeter than that of the nard, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... cool club-house, which faces the Plaza de Armas, where the band plays in the evening and fountains plash softly amid blossoming shrubbery, Ridge and his companion were introduced to many officers, a number of whom were from ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... They were superabundantly crude as yet—happily for Olive, who promised herself, as we know, to train and polish them—but they were as genuine as fruit and flowers, as the glow of the fire or the plash of water. For her scrutinising friend Verena had the disposition of the artist, the spirit to which all charming forms come easily and naturally. It required an effort at first to imagine an artist so untaught, so mistaught, so poor ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... than the plash Of these wave-whimsies on the shore: "Give us a pearl to fill the gash — God, let our dead friend ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... barefoot. He did not have to turn out at every mud-puddle, and he could plash into the mill-pond and give the frogs a crack over the head without stopping to take off stockings and shoes. Paul did not often have a dinner of roast beef, but he had an abundance of bean porridge, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... from those who held them with a sudden violence, for which they were unprepared; and, with one desperate bound, the prisoner gained the steep bank of the broad dark stream. Another moment, and a heavy plash was heard in ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... of love, time was not marked for them except by the cool plash of the water, which at intervals broke under the half-open window. To the caressing praise ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... was dark under the trees. I started up and went into the broad promenade. The garden was deserted; I could hear the plash of the fountains, but no other sound therein. Lights were gleaming from the windows of the Tuileries, lights blazed along the Rue de Rivoli, dotted the great Square, and glowed for miles up the Champs Elysees. There were the steady roar of wheels and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... idea of the approach of the soldiers, and the sight of that pale, upturned face, with closed eyes, still and sad as marble, though the tears welled out of the long entanglement of eyelashes and dropped down; and, heavier, slower plash than even tears, came the drip of blood from her wound. Even the most desperate—Boucher himself—drew back, faltered away, scowled, and finally went off, muttering curses on the master, who stood in his unchanging attitude, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... gradually the sounds grew more and more remote, and only now and then could I trace their position as the roll of a distant drum swelled upon the breeze, or the more shrill cry of a pibroch broke upon my ear. A heavy downpour of rain followed soon after, and in its unceasing plash drowned all other sounds. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the boatman were now pulling easily, and the long skiff darted up to them faster and faster still. Jack watched their pursuers with a fascinated eye. There was not the faintest sound made, save for the regular plash of the rising and falling oars. They were so near that he could see the naked backs of the oarsmen glisten as they swung their bodies to and fro in the starshine. Nearer, nearer, came ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... her friends had already been taken to the bank; Eve stood in the bow, awaiting her bearers, and watching the distant bays of the stream, each one of which seemed just on the verge of opening into an impossible midnight glory. She heard the plash of feet in the water, but did not heed it other than to fold her cloak more conveniently about her, her eye caught the contour of a vague approaching form, and then shadowy arms were reaching up to encircle her. She was bending, and just yielding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from crystal waters spanned By other marbles: founts may plash on stone, And fashionably-branched trees may stand As thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, how ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... bayou [U.S.], fiord, armlet; frith^, firth, ostiary^, mouth; lagune^, lagoon; indraught^; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles^; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough^, mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin^, puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c (store) 636; alberca^, barachois^, hog wallow ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... trees, the soothing influence of the moonlight, and the faint sounds occasionally caught of dying revelry, the joyous exclamation of some successful candidate in the day's games, the song of some returning lover, the plash of an oar in the lake: all combined to produce that pensive mood in which we find ourselves involuntarily reviewing the history ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Just as anxious friends and kindred gather hastily around, Dropping tears unto his memory and with slow and measured tread, Bear away the bold young chieftain, to the mansions of the dead. Fear the falls of Winnewissa sweetly wooing to repose With its murmurous plash of waters perfume-laden of the rose, 'Neath the soil which once his kindred claimed and lived in until we Rising eastward like a storm-cloud, swept the land from sea to sea. Sleepeth well the brave young warrior in this ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... lonely spot, up here, by the queer lake, with timber on one side and the mountain on the other; the air was frosty, because ice would form any night, so high; not a sound could be heard, save the plash of trout, or the sighs of Apache as he fidgeted and dozed and grazed; but the Red Fox Scouts were snug under their tent, and under our bedding we Elks were cuddled warm, in two pairs and with ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... that were bright, Nor by tally nor price shall their worth be replaced; Ah, boded the morning of our brave unreturning, When it drifted the clouds in the rush of its blast. As we march'd on the hill, such the floods that distil, Turning dry bent to bog, and to plash-pools the heather, That friendly no more was the ridge of the moor, Nor free to our tread, and the ire of the weather Anon was inflamed by the lightning untamed, And the hail rush that storm'd from the mouth of the gun, Hard pelted the stranger, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Vertue and that part of Philosophie Will I applie, that treats of happinesse, By vertue specially to be atchieu'd. Tell me thy minde, for I haue Pisa left, And am to Padua come, as he that leaues A shallow plash, to plunge him in the deepe, And with sacietie seekes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and looked through the open doorway into the interior of the palace. The first thing that they saw was a spacious hall, and a fountain in the middle of it, gushing up towards the ceiling out of a marble basin, and falling back into it with a continual plash. The water of this fountain, as it spouted upward, was constantly taking new shapes, not very distinctly, but plainly enough for a nimble fancy to recognize what they were. Now it was the shape of a man ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shadow on the dark water. Not a breath of air was stirring; but, fortunately, the gentle ripple of the sea upon the shore, mingled with the soft roar of the breaker on the distant reef, effectually drowned the slight plash that we unavoidably made in the water by the dipping ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the ash clusters glow, Ducks plash in the pools; breakers whiten below; More strong than a hundred is ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... deserted, save for the presence of several copper-colored, blue- shirted individuals who were commencing the work of taking down and rolling up the silken awnings, accompanying their labors by a sort of monotonous chant that, mingling with the slow, gliding plash of the river, sounded as weird and mournful as the sough of the wind through ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Her evening cates before his neighbour's shop,) Here fortuned Curll to slide; loud shout the band, And Bernard! Bernard! rings through all the Strand. Obscene with filth the miscreant lies bewray'd, Fallen in the plash his wickedness had laid: Then first (if poets aught of truth declare) The caitiff vaticide conceived a prayer: 'Hear, Jove! whose name my bards and I adore, As much at least as any god's, or more; 80 And him and his if more devotion warms, Down with the Bible, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... began to appear, the air of the March night became sharper, and in the distance the murmur and plash of the tide was heard. Then, standing heavy and dark against the clear pale eastern sky, there arose the dark mass of St. Ebba's monastery, the parent of Coldingham, standing on the very verge of the cliff to which it has left the name of ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Prudence had ordered, their eyes tightly closed. They felt the hot beams of the sun pouring over them, and the cool salt wind blew on their faces and through their hair; their toes curled and wriggled in the warm, wet sand, and in their ears was the plash-plash of the little waves beating backwards and forwards on the beach. It was very pleasant. It seemed quite easy to think of those three nice things. And presently each child felt a warm and friendly glow steal up its left ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... gate, the men on guard, drawn up in line on each side, gazed on us as we passed at shoulder arms. We passed the outposts, and the drum ceased playing as we turned to the right. Nothing was heard but the plash of footsteps in the mud, for the snow ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... own daughter,' Herbert said smiling. 'But it hasn't mattered your keeping me waiting here, Selah. Of course I'd have enjoyed it all far better in your society—I don't think I need tell you that now, dear—but the sunshine, and the sea breeze, and the song of the larks, and the plash of the waves below, and the shouts of the fishermen down there on the beach mending their nets and putting out their smacks, have all been so delightful after our humdrum round of daily life at Oxford, that I only wanted your presence here to make it all into a perfect paradise.—Why, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... we dread to hear the noise Of the rapid, rushing rain— And the plash of the wintry drops, that beat Through ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... forest. The wounded lift their weary heads, behold the advancing line, and weep tears of joy. The steamers cast off their fastenings. The great wheels plash the gurgling water. They move to the other side. The panting soldiers of the army of the Ohio rush on board. The steamer settles to the guards with her precious cargo of human life; recrosses the river in safety. The line ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... motive flits faster here and there in a slow swelling din of whispering, to the insistent plash of wave. Suddenly the sense of desolation yields to soothing play of waters—a berceuse of the sea—and now a song sings softly (in horn), though strangely jarring on the murmuring lullaby. The soothing cheer is anon broken by a shift ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... sleep that night by the murmuring plash of falling water, and the tinkling of our horses' bells from the forest behind our tent, I thought that nothing could be more delightful than camp ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the best and fastest of ships. Jermin too, as a good fellow, and a sailor every inch, came in for his share of praise; and as for the captain—quiet man, he would never trouble anyone. In short, every inducement we could think of was presented; and Plash Jack ended by assuring the beachcombers solemnly that, now we were all well and hearty, nothing but a regard to principle prevented us from returning ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... stir of life around me in the dark, and there in that mine—after we struck the spring of water—I thought I heard voices all the time in the plash of the water. I suppose it seemed like insanity, for I ruined Dan and Biddy without mercy. I couldn't stop. I was sure if we could only hold out a little while we would reach it. But we didn't. Biddy had to go to work ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... their time for good or evil thought; The billows round the promontory brought The plash of hostile oars.—Alas! who made That sound a dread? All around them seemed arrayed Against them, save the bride of Toobonai: She, as she caught the first glimpse o'er the bay Of the armed boats, which hurried to complete The remnant's ruin with their flying feet,[fr] 220 Beckoned the natives ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... crashing of boughs, the peals of thunder, and the dash of the rain. But she was safe and unharmed. Gradually the wind decreased, the vivid gleam of lightning stopped flashing in her frightened eyes, the thunder rolled farther and farther away; the birds began chirping softly; there was but a gentle plash of drops from the dripping leaves; long rays of sunshine stole in between the branches. The storm ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... tree to tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth canal among luxuriant plantations; the air was perfumed music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when the troops disembarked,—five hundred fine young men, the oldest not thirty, all ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... it could keep its head and ears in the warmth and shelter, and never once attempted to creep in nearer; and so another hour passed, only broken by the low murmur of Dale's voice as he talked to the guide, and the plash and rush of water. For the dripping was drowned now by the enormous amount which fell, and this went on increasing till there was quite a heavy roar, as of ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... They sweep like breeze through Ochtertyre; 495 They mark just glance and disappear The lofty brow of ancient Kier; They bathe their coursers' sweltering sides, Dark Forth! amid thy sluggish tides, And on the opposing shore take ground, 500 With plash, with scramble, and with bound. Right-hand they leave thy cliffs, Craig-Forth! And soon the bulwark of the North, Gray Stirling, with her towers and town, Upon their fleet ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... And while the children play beside you, dabbling and paddling in the wavelets, and digging up the ridges of yellow sand, which take the print of their pattering footsteps, nothing is more pleasant than to let the transparent stream of the quiet tide plash musically with its light and motion to your very feet; nothing more pleasant than to listen to its silken murmurs, and to watch it flow upwards with its beneficent coolness, and take possession of the shore. But it is a very different thing when there rises behind you a wall of frowning ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... the huge meadow sank down into bottoms, shaded by trees, and overgrown with reeds and palmettos, shining, as the wind stirred them, like sails in the sunshine. The profound stillness of the sky-bounded plain, only broken by the plash of the waterfowl, or the distant howl of the savanna wolf, and the splendour of the rising sun, imparted an indescribable solemnity and grandeur to the scene. Lower down the river were detached groups of trees, amongst which grazed deer, who, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Me crouched till she heard the last slow step of the last cow plash through the stream, where some of them stopped to drink, and the sound of voices died away over the bridge; then in much hurry and alarm she thrust her wet little feet into her damp socks, which she had in her fright dropped into the water, and the wet feet and socks were hastily put ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... he could have sat down and cried. Blackest night seemed to nestle under those matted boughs, and the sullen gleams of stagnant water—the plash of a frog jumping in—the wading birds that stalked about—told him what to expect if he went farther. At the same instant a gleam of copper sunset struck across the heavens on the tops of the evergreens, and the west was not in the direction that ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... no answer and we stood staring at the black bulk lying motionless on the grey water; stood for a long time, listening. I, to tell the truth, was straining my ears to catch the plash of oars: I thought it possible that some of those on board the yawl might take a violent ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... I trudged on alone, plish-plash-plosh, through the clayey sludge, cold, dripping and miserable, stopping occasionally to turn my back to the wind or to tie up a wayward shoestring, and pondering dolefully in my mind that I had full two hours to go, not only before reaching home, but perhaps before finding a shelter of any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the transparent dusk of Venice settled down. In the broad canal of the Misericordia a faint plash and drip from a passing gondola; then, in a moment, as the boat rounded into the rio, a resounding "Stai"; again silence ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... minute ago." We all four stepped from the parade upon the rocks, and approached the Delameres' party, who were seated on rugs and shawls spread upon the huge dry rocks overlooking the deep, clear water which lapped underneath with a gentle and regular plash and sucking sound. It was a brilliant day. Not a cloud was in the sky, and the blue-green seas lay basking in the sunshine. A brisk but gentle air had begun to crisp the top of the water, making it sparkle and bubble; and there was just visible a small silver cord of foam on the coast ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... to the door, in a state of agitation which permitted no repose; and at length took up a permanent situation on one side of the wall, near the road: where, heedless of my expostulations and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her, she remained, calling at intervals, and then listening, and then crying outright. She beat Hareton, or any child, at a good ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... simple, plaintive melody, sounded to Lambert as refreshing as the plash of a brook in the heat of the day. He stood listening, his elbow on the show case, thinking vaguely that Alta had a good voice for singing ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... bed of the Seine is above the floor of the prison. The surrounding earth was consequently saturated with water, and the oozing moisture diffused over the walls and the floors the humidity of the sepulcher. The plash of the river; the rumbling of carts upon the pavements overhead; the heavy tramp of countless footfalls, as the multitude poured into and out of the halls of justice, mingled with the moaning of the prisoners in those solitary cells. There were one or two narrow courts scattered in this vast structure, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... deep blue tide. The evening was perfectly calm, and at a little distance from the shore the surface of the sea was without a ripple. The only sound breaking the solemn stillness of the hour, was the heavy plash of the waves, as in minute peals they rolled in upon the pebbly beach, and brought back with them at each retreat, some of the larger and smoother stones, whose noise, as they fell back into old ocean's bed, mingled with the din of the breaking ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... declared that he would stop; he would scramble about a little in the high places and doze in the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the plash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the balmy atmosphere, looking lazily at that bright, almost insupportable picture of blue sea under blue sky, there came the dip of oars, making music, and a sound of coolness with every plash of water. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... harbours, into which the heavy swell of the broad Atlantic was rolling its deep blue tide. The evening was perfectly calm, and at a little distance from the shore the surface of the sea was without a ripple. The only sound breaking the solemn stillness of the hour, was the heavy plash of the waves, as in minute peals they rolled in upon the pebbly beach, and brought back with them at each retreat, some of the larger and smoother stones, whose noise, as they fell back into old ocean's bed, mingled with the din of the breaking surf. In one of the many little ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... went barefoot. He did not have to turn out at every mud-puddle, and he could plash into the mill-pond and give the frogs a crack over the head without stopping to take off stockings and shoes. Paul did not often have a dinner of roast beef, but he had an abundance of bean porridge, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... his virtuous deeds: And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study, Virtue and that part of philosophy Will I apply that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev'd. Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left And am to Padua come as he that leaves A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep, And with satiety seeks to ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... to overflowing—immense sponges in fact;—and one has to watch carefully in crossing them to avoid plunging into deep water-holes, made by the feet of elephants or buffaloes. In the ooze generally the water comes half-way up the shoe, and we go plash, plash, plash, in the lawn-like glade. There are no people here now in these lovely wild valleys; but to-day we came to mounds made of old for planting grain, and slag from iron furnaces. The guide was rather offended because he did not get meat and meal, though he is accustomed ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... boatman were now pulling easily, and the long skiff darted up to them faster and faster still. Jack watched their pursuers with a fascinated eye. There was not the faintest sound made, save for the regular plash of the rising and falling oars. They were so near that he could see the naked backs of the oarsmen glisten as they swung their bodies to and fro in the starshine. Nearer, nearer, came ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... suggestion, a light plash was heard close to the ship's side, and a voice said, in a hoarse whisper, "Heave us a rope, will ye. Look alive, now. Guess I'll go under in two minits if ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... kind, and here a bird And there a flower beguiled his way; And, cool, in summer noons, he heard The fountains plash and play. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... acridly across was a transitory reek of burnt lubricating oil, and the hint of a cigar so faint that it was gone before he could be sure of it. . . . The lumbering creak of the mill-wheel rose assertively above the drone and plash of the stream; a shiver of rain and a gentle sigh of wind in the top branches of the trees behind him were suddenly swallowed by the hoot of ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... and blue. And while the children play beside you, dabbling and paddling in the wavelets, and digging up the ridges of yellow sand, which take the print of their pattering footsteps, nothing is more pleasant than to let the transparent stream of the quiet tide plash musically with its light and motion to your very feet; nothing more pleasant than to listen to its silken murmurs, and to watch it flow upwards with its beneficent coolness, and take possession of the shore. But it is a very different thing when there ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... company a little way. In this foule way two pretty plaine youthes watcht me, and with their kindnes somewhat hindred me. One, a fine light fellow, would be still before me, the other euer at my heeles. At length, comming to a broad plash{8:23} of water and mud, which could not be auoyded, I fetcht a rise, yet fell in ouer the anckles at the further end. My youth that follow'd me tooke his iump, and stuck fast in the midst, crying out to ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... it as it came down; but by and by it did not come down—it bounded into the tin eave-trough and rolled slowly along till it came to the big pipe that led to the cistern, and into this it dropped, and went whirring down, and stopped somewhere with a faint plash. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... spur the shadowy motive flits faster here and there in a slow swelling din of whispering, to the insistent plash of wave. Suddenly the sense of desolation yields to soothing play of waters—a berceuse of the sea—and now a song sings softly (in horn), though strangely jarring on the murmuring lullaby. The soothing cheer is anon broken by a shift of new tone. There is a fluctuation of pleasant and ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... through Ochtertyre; 495 They mark just glance and disappear The lofty brow of ancient Kier; They bathe their coursers' sweltering sides, Dark Forth! amid thy sluggish tides, And on the opposing shore take ground, 500 With plash, with scramble, and with bound. Right-hand they leave thy cliffs, Craig-Forth! And soon the bulwark of the North, Gray Stirling, with her towers and town, Upon their fleet career ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the passing beetle's hum The Elfin army's goblin drum To pigmy battle sound; And now, where dripping dew-drops plash On waving grass, their bucklers clash, And now their quivering lances ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... ago." We all four stepped from the parade upon the rocks, and approached the Delameres' party, who were seated on rugs and shawls spread upon the huge dry rocks overlooking the deep, clear water which lapped underneath with a gentle and regular plash and sucking sound. It was a brilliant day. Not a cloud was in the sky, and the blue-green seas lay basking in the sunshine. A brisk but gentle air had begun to crisp the top of the water, making it sparkle and bubble; and there was just visible a small silver cord of foam on the ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... vertuous deedes: And therefore Tranio, for the time I studie, Vertue and that part of Philosophie Will I applie, that treats of happinesse, By vertue specially to be atchieu'd. Tell me thy minde, for I haue Pisa left, And am to Padua come, as he that leaues A shallow plash, to plunge him in the deepe, And with sacietie seekes to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... bottom of the pit, where the great drops of water fell plash. Many colliers were waiting their turns to go up, talking noisily. Morel gave his ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... you hear. Only the musical plash of the fountains and the sonorous undertone of the organ, like the distant roar of surf upon the beach? Ah, me! ah, me! how materialistic you are, my children. Your old uncle hears in these myriad-voiced fountains the musical instruments which Boccaccio ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the men on guard, drawn up in line on each side, gazed on us as we passed at shoulder arms. We passed the outposts, and the drum ceased playing as we turned to the right. Nothing was heard but the plash of footsteps in the mud, ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... delightful, and almost as good as a holiday. The city clerk, the jaded shopman, the weary milliner, the pessimistic dyspeptic, should each read the book. It will bring a suggestion of sea breezes, the plash of waves, and all the accessories of a holiday ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt fluttering as it passed. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the popedom,—the despair Of free men, good men, wise men; the dread shows Of women's faces, by the faggot's flash Tossed out, to the minutest stir and throb O' the white lips, the least tremble of a lash, To glut the red stare of a licensed mob; The short mad cries down oubliettes, and plash So horribly far off; priests, trained to rob, And kings that, like encouraged nightmares, sat On nations' hearts most heavily distressed With monstrous sights and apophthegms of fate— We pass these things,—because "the times" are prest With ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Platz. "How uncertain life is. It seems that I did not come to Bleiberg carelessly in the way of amusement, but to work out a part of my destiny." He arrested his steps at the fountain and listened to the low, musical plash of the water, each drop of which fell with the light of a dazzling jewel. The cold stars shone from above. They were not farther away than she. A princess, a lonely and forlorn princess, hemmed in by the fabric of royal laws; a princess yet possessing ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... among the other drifters that were on the ground. We shot two hundred and forty fathom of net with a swishing plash of the yarn and a smack-smack-splutter of the buoys. We had our supper of sandwiches and tatie-cake and ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... are embowered in fragrant bloom. There is a runnel of water at the roadside, and in one place this water is collected in a round stone basin that looks immensely old; from this it trickles forth again with coolness and musical plash. Having reached this spot, we may as well pass over into Fowey by the ferry here instead of by that from Polruan. If we had already come from Fowey to Bodinnick we should find that the ferryman would carry us back without further payment; ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... every plash of their oars, and every tone of their voices, as they rowed round his place of refuge. He was not on the islet, but in it. This was such an island as Swein, the sea-king of former days, took refuge in; and Rolf was only following ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... scarcely a breath of air stirring, and the sea lay as calm as a lake. The whole scene resembled Fairyland, with the lovers as two spirits watching over the Cove. The tide rose higher and higher, and the only sound to be heard in that lone, desolate spot was the lazy plash of the waves on the shore, and around ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... through much together—danger, excitement, and now they were dabbling in sorrow. It would appear that this same sorrow runs like a river across the road of our life. Some of us find the ford and plash through the shallows—shallow ourselves—while others flounder into deep water. These are they who look right on to the greater events, and fail to note the trivial details of each little step. Paul was wading ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... fairly round—his head and forepart were over dry land—the three guns were pointed—the eyes of the three hunters were about to glance through the sights of their pieces, when all at once he was seen to rock and stagger,—and then roll over! With a loud plash, his vast body subsided into the water, sending great waves to every corner ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... plane-trees; then comes a hilly ridge, on which the olives, mulberries, and vineyards join their colours and melt subtly into distant purple. After crossing this we reach L'Isle, an island village girdled by the gliding Sorgues, overshadowed with gigantic plane-boughs, and echoing to the plash of water dripped from mossy fern-tufted millwheels. Those who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to be some trickling poet's rill emerging from a damp grotto, may well be astounded at the rush and roar of this azure river so close upon its fountain-head. It has a volume ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... strangers for his clerks and overseers—if this town house was the pride of the Italian burgess; the villa, with its farms and orchards, was the real joy, the holiday paradise of the over-worked man. To read in the cool house, with cicala's buzz and fountain plash all round, the Greek and Latin authors; to discuss them with learned men; to watch the games of the youths and the children, this was the reward for years of labour and intelligence; but sweeter than all this ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... whole time by the sick girl's bed listening to her delirious fancies and renewing her compresses. He never shut his eyes. He heard plainly when the anchor went down and the ship was brought up; and then how the waves began to plash against the sides! The sailors tramped about the deck for some time, then one by one they turned in. But at midnight he heard a dull knocking. That sounds, thought he, like hammering in nails whose ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... sombreing tide of time. Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear The laurel glorious from that wintry hair— When he, the sovereign of our lyric day, In Charon's shallop must be rowed away, And hear, scarce heeding, 'mid the plash of oar, The ave atque ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... only another of the countless millions of failures on the part of those Atlantic billows. They leap and fall with a mighty boom upon that rock, but only to break up with a hissing plash into a mass of foam, defeated, churned up with froth that runs hissing back, ready to give way to another wave ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... How we waded years—ago— After those water-lilies, till the plash, I know not how, surprised us; and you dared Neither advance nor turn back: so, we stood Laughing and crying until Gerard came— Once safe upon the turf, the loudest too, For once more reaching the relinquished prize! How idle thoughts are, ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... culture, and, though the fury of Christian conquest dragged the harrow over the soil of Granada, even yet streams and fountains spring up there and gush abundantly and one seldom loses the sound of the plash of water. The flower of Christian chivalry and Christian intelligence went to Palestine to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of pagan Mohammedans. They found there many excellent things which ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the deep sky amid the pale stars like a royal torch-bearer of the sun. The Columbia is a rolling flood of silver, and the gigantic trees of the centuries become a ghostly and shadowy splendor. There is a deep and reverent silence everywhere, save the cry of the water-fowl in the high air and the plash of the Cascades. Even the Chinook winds cease to blow, and the pine-tops ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... cautiously,—fearing the sound of his fall, and dreading almost the rush of my breath in the profound silence,—I lowered my boy into the boat. The basket followed. The negro fastened the boat-hook to the cabin window, and on this, lame as I was, I followed the basket. Fortunately, not a plash, a crack, or a footfall disturbed the silence. I looked aloft, and no one was visible on the quarter-deck. A slight jerk brought the boat-rope softly into the water, and I ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... every fish knows the lures, the fun is mainly over. In April, no doubt, something may still be done, and in the silver twilights of June, when as you drift on the still surface you hear the constant sweet plash of the rising trout, a few, and these good, may be taken. But the water wants re-stocking, and the burns in winter need watching, in the interests of spawning fish. It is nobody's interest, that I know of, to take trouble ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... rolled slowly, half-afloat and half-ashore, was bordered by a fringe of silver. When at one moment a gentle breeze lifted the water into ripples, countless stars floated, down a white waterway from yonder argent moon. Not a house on the banks of the mere; not a sign of life; only the low plash of wavelets on the pebbles. Hark! What cry was that coming clear and shrill? It was the curlew. And when the night bird was gone she left a ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... trouble me! Oh, sir, work is occupation, but work harassed with care for others becomes unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now. At my desk I seem to see those low shores and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves between me and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the clouds clashed, the sky became as night, the lightning flashed, the wind moaned, the clouds thundered. Kunda! Kunda! whither goest thou? The storm came—first the sound, then clouds of dust, then leaves torn from the trees borne by the wind; at last, plash, plash, the rain. Kunda, with thy one garment, ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... this obstruction, and the boat swung off. The stay-tackle falls were let go entirely, and all on board saw, with an exultation that words can scarcely describe, the important craft suspended directly over the sea. No music ever sounded more sweetly to the listeners than the first plash of the massive boat as it fell heavily upon the surface of the water. Its size, its roof, and its great strength gave it an appearance of security, that for the moment deceived them all; for, in contemplating the advantage they had so unexpectedly gained, they forgot ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... as my sleep. Like pencilled lines upon a tinted sheet The city's spires rose distant on the sky; Nor sound familiar to the crowded street Assailed my ear, nor busy scene mine eye; I saw the hills, the meadows and the river— I heard cool waters plash and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... rather quiet piazza, with an immense palace on the left hand, and a smaller yet statelier one on the right, and just round the corner of the street, leading out of our piazza, is the Fountain of Trevi, of which I can hear the plash in the evening, when other sounds ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sources, we were all once well acquainted with: considerable little moorland river, with several branches coming down from Ruppin Country, and certain lakes and plashes there, in a southwest direction, towards the Elbe valley, towards the Havel Stream; into which latter, through another plash or lake called GULPER SEE, and a few miles farther, into the Elbe itself, it conveys, after a course of say 50 English miles circuitously southwest, the black drainings of those dreary and intricate Peatbog-and-Sand countries. "LUCH," it appears, signifies LOCH ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... deep arcades of the beech woods, and freshness on the upland lawns, as she rode happily on the dear old mare, by whom she really thought herself fondly recognised. There was something in the stillness of the whole, even in the absence of the roll and plash of the sea waves beside which she had grown up, that seemed to give her repose from the hurry and throb of sensations and thoughts that had so long preyed upon her; and when the ride was over she was refreshed, not tired, and the evening bell drew her to the conclusion most befitting ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... monotonous plash of the waves, when the tide served, was his favourite resort. He could stand still and look out over the expanse of ripples, or wander on, as he pleased, watching ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of alluvial soil. It was a solitary, a melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels for the market ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... pushed the boat from her, and thus became herself beyond the possibility of her sister's reach. Her danger was imminent; she was sinking. Her father and sister shrieked to Him—who they believed heard them and sent his Messenger; for a plash in the water, a strong man with wonderful—it seemed superhuman—strength and speed, was making his way toward Mary. In one moment more he had grasped her with one hand. She had still enough presence of mind not to embarrass him by any struggles, and shouting a word of comfort to Alice, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... her mother's bosom. And as we went softly out from the room and stood upon the path with the lofty palm-plumes rustling above us, we saw the first swirling wave of the incoming tide ripple round Matautu Point and plash on Hamilton's beach. And from within the silent house answered the ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... crowd beneath, that fill up the intervals of its columns; but elsewhere the sun burns down and flashes everywhere. Mounted on the colonnade are masses of people leaning over, beside the colossal statues. Through all the heat is heard the constant plash of the two superb fountains, that wave to and fro their veils of white spray. At last the clock strikes. In the far balcony are seen the two great snowy peacock fans, and between them a figure clad in white, that rises from a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... unconscious that he is saying anything that is worth while. As the late Professor Harris said, one of the last times I saw him, "There are unsounded depths in a man's nature of which he himself knows nothing till they are revealed to him by the plash and ripple of his own conversation with other men." This great principle of life, when applied in conversation, may be stated simply then ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... governess, or drives with her mamma, in being obliged to wear fine clothes, to learn music and dancing, "and other tiresome things," and never being free to run wild on the hills and heaths, wade in the ponds, and plash in the burns, ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... sort of dreaming of his own, even when the sun stood in the zenith, and he was walking the poop, in the midst of a circle of his officers. Still, he could not refrain from glancing back at the past, that morning, as plash after plash was heard, and recalling the time when magna pars quorum FUIT. At this delectable instant, the ruddy face of a "young gentleman" appeared in his state-room door, and, first ascertaining that the eyes of his superior were ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... elapsed, when the plash of another paddle was heard, and a second canoe made its appearance, carefully approaching that of the Huron. In it was seated an Indian boy, not more than twelve years of age, who handled it with a skill scarcely second to that ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... said, the Vanguard shook through all her timbers oaken; It was like the shock of Doomsday,—not a tar but shuddered hard. All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken By the heavy plash that answered the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... cross the sloping lawn almost down to the river's edge. Floyd lights a cigar, after learning that it will not be disagreeable. He glances up and down the river, flecked here and there with a drowsy sail or broken with the plash of oars. Over on the opposite shore the rugged rocks rise frowningly, then break in depressions, through which clumps of cedars shine black and shadowy. Why, he has not seen much in Europe that can excel this! His heart swells with a sense of possession. For ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... her ere she had a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune.—They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shore-side, at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say —he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise—that's 'Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... overhung by mangrove thickets, now receding in plains dotted with gloomy clumps of gumtrees, as far as the eye, from our low position and by the imperfect light afforded, could reach. As we advanced, the measured plash of the oars frightened from their roosting places in the trees, a huge flock of screeching vampires, that disturbed for a time the serenity of the scene by their discordant notes; and a few reaches further up, noisy flights of our old friends, the whistling-ducks, greeted our ears. Their ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. He heard more faintly that that they heard, each for herself alone, then each for other, hearing the plash of waves, loudly, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... King William the Fourth, entitled "An Act to consolidate and amend the Laws relating to Highways in that part of Great Britain called England," I, T. Bradish, of the Town Hall, Smoltham, do hereby give you notice forthwith to cut, prune, plash or lop certain Trees and Hedges overhanging the highway immediately adjoining your premises, No. 15, East Gate, in the Parish of Smoltham, and which are causing an obstruction and annoyance to the said highway, so that the obstructions caused to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... orchard. Not that this young man's way lay through that orchard exactly; yet, walled up as was that orchard with all its forbidden fruit, that evil fruit would hang over the wall so that if any lusty youth wished to taste it, he had only to reach up to the over-hanging branches and plash down on himself some of the forbidden bunches. Now, that was just what Matthew had done. Till we have him lying at the House Beautiful, not only not able to enjoy the delights of the House and of the season, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... lands his allies by gangways from the high ships. Many watch the retreat and slack of the sea, and leap boldly into the shoal water; others slide down the oars. Tarchon, marking the shore where the shallows do not seethe and plash with broken water, but the sea glides up and spreads its tide unbroken, suddenly turns his bows to land and implores his comrades: 'Now, O chosen crew, bend strongly to your oars; lift your ships, make them go; let the prows cleave this hostile land and the keel ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... he had engaged to convey me. But I was wearied of movement and exotic fancies; so I leaped contentedly upon the firm sands of the village of Mojada, telling myself I should be sure to find there the rest that I craved. After all, far better to linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative plash of the waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit upon the horsehair sofa of my parental home in the East, and there, cast down by currant wine and cake, and scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears ...
— Options • O. Henry
... in the water, and the galley glided down the creek with a velocity that soon rendered her but a shadow in the grey tide. In a few minutes I lost sight of her altogether; but I still distinguished the faint measured plash of the oars, and the feeble wail of the infant's voice float along ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... the rectory gardens. Three of them enclose the orchard, which is planted quincunx-wise, with yew hedge and grass-walk all round it. The "Archdeacon's Walk" that grass- walk should be named, for my father paced it morning after morning. The pike and roach would plash among the reeds and water-lilies; and "Fish, fish, do your duty," my father would say to them. Whereupon, he maintained, the fish always put out their noses and answered, "If you do your duty, we do our duty,"—words fully as applicable to ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... but Arthur with a hundred spears Rode far, till o'er the illimitable reed, And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle, The wide-winged sunset of the misty marsh Glared on a huge machicolated tower That stood with open doors, whereout was rolled A roar of riot, as from men secure Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ease Among their harlot-brides, an evil song. 'Lo there,' ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... in regard to the safety promised by it, when he says: 'Wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby.' Not a keel of the enemy shall dare to cut its waters, nor break their surface with the wet plash of invading oars. And so, if we will only knit ourselves with God by simple trust and continual communion, it is the plainest prose fact that nothing will harm us, and no foe will ever get near enough to us to shoot his arrows ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... from the northern shore. Henry and Shif'less Sol, although they could not see it at first, knew it had started, because their keen ears caught the plash of the paddles. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the brink of the stream, and the plash of the ferryman's oar could be heard plainly; the world behind him had already grown distant and dim; even of the book which had been in his mind so long, he thought but little—he had done with it all; whether it brought him praise or blame ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... glance at her, oh hard, hard that thou art, but still thou sittest at thy sweet piping. Ah see, again, she is pelting thy dog, that follows thee to watch thy sheep. He barks, as he looks into the brine, and now the beautiful waves that softly plash reveal him, {36} as he runs upon the shore. Take heed that he leap not on the maiden's limbs as she rises from the salt water, see that he rend not her lovely body! Ah, thence again, see, she is wantoning, light as dry thistle-down in the scorching summer weather. She ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... the voices of the Mere. The break of shallow water at thy feet, Its plash among long weeds and grasses sere, And its weird sobbing,—hollow music meet For ears like thine; listen and take thy till, And dream on it by ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... with them we rode once more with our faces set toward our destination, keeping the tall range on our left hand, and on our right the melancholy sea-marshes where men cannot dwell for the malaria, and where for hour after hour we rode in a silence unbroken save by the plash of fish in the lagoon, or the cry of a heron solitary among the reeds. This desolation lasted all the way to Biguglia, where we turned aside again among the foothills to avoid the fortress of Bastia and the traffic of the roads about it. Beyond Bastia we were safe in the fastnesses of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... beechen pillars led the eye away into innumerable vistas, each grandly mysterious as a cathedral aisle. The sun shot golden arrows through dark boughs, patching the moss with translucent lights, vivid and clear as the lustre of emeralds. The gentle plash of the forest stream, rippling over its pebbly bed, made a tender music that was wont to seem passing sweet to Violet Tempest's ear. To-day she heard nothing, saw nothing. Her brain was clouded ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... and dried turf shot forth dancing blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowing cinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatched to let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowls and the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plants as the briny air ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... end; a stream of long-coated spectators sets towards the town, mingled with the parti-coloured, muddied figures of the players. I have been strolling half the afternoon along the river bank, watching the boats passing up and down; hearing the shrill cries of coxes, the measured plash of oars, the rhythmical rattle of rowlocks, intermingled at intervals with the harsh grinding of the chain-ferries. Five-and-twenty years ago I was rowing here myself in one of these boats, and I do not wish to renew the experience. ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Presently the plash of oars were heard near the vessel, and next moment a boat approached, but not from such a quarter as to be visible ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... though he wanted to say: "Yes, in a minute I will tell you something that will make you split your sides with laughing." The little round window was open and a soft breeze was blowing on Pavel Ivanitch. There was a sound of voices, of the plash of oars in the water.... Just under the little window someone began droning in a high, unpleasant voice: no doubt it was ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... arches hung, From the rude rock the side-walls sprung; The grave-stones, rudely sculptured o'er, Half sunk in earth, by time half wore, Were all the pavement of the floor; The mildew-drops fell one by one, With tinkling plash upon the stone. A cresset, in an iron chain, Which served to light this drear domain, With damp and darkness seemed to strive, As if it scarce might keep alive; And yet it dimly served to show ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... forced it from its form, and broke the masonry of a thousand years. Amid a loud and awful shriek, horses and horsemen, and the dissolving fragments of the scene for a moment mingled as it were in airy chaos, and then plunged with a horrible plash into the fatal depths below. Some fell, and, stunned by the massy fragments, rose no more; others struggled again into light, and gained with difficulty their old shore. Amid them, Iskander, unhurt, ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... belang, makes a brilliant point of colour on the blue strait between the sister islands. Red and yellow flags and pennants flutter above the green deck; the clash of gongs and cymbals echoes across the water, and a weird chant accompanies the rhythmic plash of the short oars, as the brown rowers toss them high in air, and bring them down with a sharp splash. A splendid avenue of kanari-trees extends along the shore, the usual Dutch church symbolises the uncompromising grimness of Calvinistic creed, and the crumbling fort of Orange-Nassau, the scene ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... up. It frolicked in little waves, bringing them forth, decking them with a fringe of foam, flinging them on one another, and breaking them up into tiny eddies. The foam, melting, hissed and sighed, and everything was filled with the musical plash and cadence. The ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... such a dashing prig, With my strummel faked in the newest twig, [17] Fake away! With my fawnied famms and my onions gay, [18] Fake away! My thimble of ridge and my driz kemesa, [19] All my togs were so niblike and plash. [20] Readily the queer screens I then could smash. [21] Fake away! But my nuttiest blowen one fine day, [22] Fake away! To the beaks did her fancy-man betray, [23] And thus was I bowled at last, And into the jug for a lag was cast, Fake away! But I slipped my darbies one morn in May, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... grumbled and made itself miserable all last night, and this morning it is still howling as ill-naturedly as ever, and roaring and rumbling in the chimneys. The tide is far out, but, from an upper window, I fancied, at intervals, that I could see the plash of the surf-wave on the distant limit of the sand; perhaps, however, it was only a gleam on the sky. Constantly there have been sharp spatters of rain, hissing and rattling against the windows, while a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of girls in their boats rowed hard and fast across the silvery water with a steady plash, plash of the dipping oars in the calm bay, and ever Ida Lewis was in the lead, heading toward the island with a straight course, and keeping a close watch for the rocks of which the Bay was full. She would turn her head, toss back her hair, and call out in ringing tones to the ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... another moment were on top of the big rock. It was almost as good as being at sea; for when they turned their backs to the shore nothing could be seen but water and sails and flying birds, and nothing heard but the incessant plash and dash ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... the summer night! Will of the grass that stirs in its sleep! Desire of the honeysuckle! And further away, Like the plash of far-off waves in the ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... notes fell at Falloden's feet. He stood looking out into Beaumont Street. The long narrow street, which only two days before had been alive with the stream of Commemoration, was quiet and deserted. A heavy thunder rain was just beginning to plash upon the pavements; and in the interval since he had taken the note from the maid's hand, it seemed to Falloden ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the roar of the river, the plash of the dipping oars, was heard the piteous wailing of the wounded, the loud oaths and jeers of the soldiers who had rushed down to the shore, and, with clenched fists, hurled execrations after the emperor, accusing him, with angry scorn, of perfidy because he left ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... in the piazza in the evening, we saw the light from on board some vessel move slowly through the distant obscurity,—so slowly that we were only sensible of its progress by forgetting it and looking again. The plash and murmur of the waves around the island were soothingly audible. It was not unpleasantly cold, and Mr. Laighton, Mr. Thaxter and myself sat under the piazza till long after dark; the former at a little distance, occasionally smoking his pipe, and Mr. Thaxter and I talking about poets ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... among figures all the way to London, Miss Penelles," he said, "but I am quite sure my soul will be wandering on the shingle, and feeling the blowing winds, and hearing the plash of the waves, and singing with ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... more definite than a cry, often swept out from her into the vast silence, unbroken except by her husband's breathing or the plash of the wave or the creaking of the masts; but if ever she thought of definite help, it took the form of Deronda's presence and words, of the sympathy he might have for her, of the direction he might give her. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... pass away like submarine islands; and suddenly, all this ocean, this shining ether, these branches and leaves steeped in sunlight—all is rippling, quivering in fleeting brilliance, and a fresh trembling whisper awakens like the tiny, incessant plash of suddenly stirred eddies. One does not move—one looks, and no word can tell what peace, what joy, what sweetness reigns in the heart. One looks: the deep, pure blue stirs on one's lips a smile, innocent as itself; ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... said Bob. He did not speak more; but as he leant back his head, and looked straight up at the roof of the shed, (there was a great hole in it which the stars shone through, and now and then a big drop of water from the top came plash, plash, on the muddy floor below,) he looked up, I say, and I wonder whether he was thinking the same thing as I was at that moment: "Rats help one another; do none but human beings leave their fellow-creatures ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... island, with deep folds of a darker green, in which you divine silent valleys; there is mystery in their sombre depths, down which murmur and plash cool streams, and you feel that in those umbrageous places life from immemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways. Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... walked slowly back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles with a ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... us in that direction. We still hoped to come within sound of the ship's gun, and kept straining our ears incessantly to hear the wished-for report. But no such sound ever came again, and we heard nothing except the plash of the waves and the crash of breaking ice. Thus all that day we rowed along, resting at intervals when exhausted, and then resuming our labors, until at length night came; and again to the snow and ice and waves was added the horror of ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... sounds are on the mountain blast? Like bullet from the arbalast, Was it the hunted quarry past Right up Ben-ledi's side?— So near, so rapidly he dash'd, Yon lichen'd bough has scarcely plash'd Into the torrent's tide. Ay!—The good hound may bay beneath, The hunter wind his horn; He dared ye through the flooded Teith As a warrior in his scorn! Dash the red rowel in the steed, Spur, laggards, while ye may! St. Hubert's shaft to a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... cautiously and slowly wading in it. Hardly breathing, and bending low, the better to catch every sound that came, they listened with beating hearts until it ceased. Once they had detected the click of stones striking together as if moved by a human foot and twice caught the faint plash of a bush or limb of tree dropping into the water. Then the sounds ceased, and only the faint murmur of that slow-running stream ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... but everything was clean, and had an air of old-time respectability. The dining-room, which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square courtyard where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of a little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with the rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a raised and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the house, busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while on all ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... smooth and level. It was harder likewise from the wet, and this afforded better walking, but there lay upon it fragments of weed and shell, as though it were liable to be covered by the sea, and there was a low, languid plash of the tide, which could not be seen. Twilight began to deepen the mist. The guide was evidently uneasy; he sidled up to Philip, and began to ask what he—hitherto obstinately deaf and contemptuous to French—was very slow to comprehend. At last he ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... postilion were in their master's confidence or not is not certain, but just before midnight they plunged into a narrow, miry road that traversed wastes and low coppices; the plash of the horses' feet showed the tract to be marshy and full of pools. Her ladyship looked out across ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... The great chamber was silent as a mausoleum in the intervals between the clashing and tinkling of gold and stones in the chest; from the outside, by way of the rock tunnel, came only the sigh and murmur of the crooning breeze, the softened plash of the tide on the shore, the scream of wheeling seabirds. All sound of the schooner had departed; there was no human note in ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... as they gazed in one another's face with mute astonishment, they heard a dull thud against the ship's side—the stroke of a boat-hook as the pinnace was shoved off—then a rattle, as the oars commence working in the tholes, succeeded by the plash of the oar-blades in the water. After that, the regular "dip-dip," at length dying away, as the boat receded, leaving the abandoned vessel silent as a graveyard in ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, 'Ah! Stali!" struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and when at last the boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... ears they heard the plash And breezy wash of Attitash, The wood-bird's plaintive cry, The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and as the boat dropped swiftly down on the ebb he had time to notice that both were heavily muffled about the face. This was all he could see, for in a moment they had passed into the gloom, and the next the angle of the house hid them from view; but he could still hear the plash of their oars above the ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tide of the driving element was also an accident not impossible. When the lull returned, no exertion of his faculties could catch a single sound foreign to the proper character of the scene, such as the plash of the water, and the creaking of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... deserted and sleepy paths of the town to the old philosopher's house. He was wet, chilled, weary, and sick enough at heart as he leaned against the cold stone doorway and waited for an answer to his knock. The plash of the heavier rain-drops from the tiled leaves was the only sound he heard for many minutes, until, at last, pattering feet neared him on the inside, and a child's voice asked who was there. To his friendly response the door was opened half-wide, and Voegelein's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... And still consumed, is burning still. Higher and higher leaps the flame, The smoke an ever-shifting frame. He sees a Spanish Castle old, With silver steps and paths of gold. From myrtle bowers comes the plash Of fountains, and the emerald flash Of parrots in the orange trees, Whose blossoms pasture humming bees. He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke Bears visions, that his master-stroke Is out of dirt and misery To light the fire of poesy. He sees the glory, yet he knows ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... the birds flew up out of the thick second crop of clover, and the bees hummed as if it still were June. There was a flashing of white gulls over the water where the fleet of boats rode the low waves together in the cove, swaying their small masts as if they kept time to our steps. The plash of the water could be heard faintly, yet still be heard; we might have been a company of ancient Greeks going to celebrate a victory, or to worship the god of harvests, in the grove above. It was strangely moving to see this and to make part of it. The sky, the sea, have watched poor ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... woods. It falls cold toward the dawn, and the boy grows hard and strong through his nightly ordeal. When his hands are properly hardened like his horny feet, he is allowed to row the coble with crossed oars; and then he becomes very useful, for the men are left free to haul nets and plash on the water to frighten the trout. When he reaches the age of sixteen, the fisher-lad clothes himself in thick pilot-cloth and wears a braided cap on Sundays. He pierces his ears too, and his thin golden rings give him a foreign look. The young fisher-folk are very shamefaced about sweet-hearting. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... the stillness, except the steady plash of the water falling into the fountain in the wide court, heard distinctly through the closed windows. The Baroness wondered if any one were awake except the old porter downstairs. She knew the house tolerably ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... yellow lane of light that crossed the violet waters of Loch Roag quivered in a deeper gold. The night-air was scented with the Dutch clover growing down by the shore. They could hear the curlew whistling and the plover calling amid that monotonous plash of the waves that murmured all around the coast. When they returned to the house the darker waters of the Atlantic and the purple clouds of the west were shut out from sight, and before them there was only the liquid plain of Loch Roag, with its pathway of yellow fire, and far away on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... lulled to sleep that night by the murmuring plash of falling water, and the tinkling of our horses' bells from the forest behind our tent, I thought that nothing could be more delightful ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... in a state of agitation which permitted no repose; and at length took up a permanent situation on one side of the wall, near the road: where, heedless of my expostulations and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her, she remained, calling at intervals, and then listening, and then crying outright. She beat Hareton, or any child, at a good passionate fit ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... a tree, the surrounding wood was set on fire, and he was abandoned to his fate, his enemies leaving him to destruction in their haste to reach the place of the council and slay or capture all who were there. Hardly were they out of hearing ere the plash of a paddle sounded through the roar of flame and Maya sprang upon the bank, cut her lover's bonds, and with him made toward the island, which they reached by a protected way before the assailants had arrived. They told the story of Joliper's cruelty and treason, and when his ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... fancy. In this piece his love of nautical adventure reappears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from Rousseau and Chateaubriand. There is more repose about this poem than in any of the author's other compositions. In its pages the sea seems to plash about rocks and caves that bask under a southern sun. "'Byron, the sorcerer,' he can do with me what he will," said old Dr. Parr, on reading it. As the swan-song of the poet's sentimental verse, it has a pleasing if not pathetic calm. During the last years ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... themselves for a day or two. Then, ag'in, most likely there's only one road from your place to the nearest town, and jist when you want to send off your stuff it'll come on pourin' rain for ever so long, and the whole road'll be nothin' but plash and mash, like a dish of cabbage-soup; and there the stuff'll have to lie idle for weeks and weeks, and you've jist got to grin and bear it. And in them parts, instead of one good pelt and have done with it, it keeps on drip, drip, drip, for days and days in a sneaking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... circular basin a few yards in diameter. Overflowing this basin, it found its way into the lake by another descent of a few feet. Around the basin, and on both sides of the waterfall, were several curious columns of basalt, and irregular picturesque piles of basaltic rock. The plash of the water, falling into the rocky basin, was the only sound that broke the Sabbath-like silence that pervaded the valley. There was, or seemed to be, something unreal and dream-like about the scene, that made us pause where we stood, in silence, as though the whole were an illusion, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... that bay first at night, for there is no more romantic hour in which to enter San Francisco; the bay spreading out back of you a-plash with all kinds of illuminated water craft and the city lifting up before you ablaze with thousands of pin point lights; for San Francisco's site is a hilly one and the city lies like a jewelled mantle thrown carelessly over many ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... channel by which the whole pit was drained. Beyond the light the three men encountered another wall of sand, and from behind it and through it there came to them the dull thud and the plash of ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the bullets splash: "Now drown thee, wizard! at thy pleasure," The Dutchmen hiss through teeth they gnash. He answers not; for o'er the plash Of waves he hears Joost's gasping measure ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... green parasol. She went with him to the edge of the lake, where a couple of boats were always moored; they got into one of them, and Felix, with gentle strokes, propelled it to the opposite shore. The day was the perfection of summer weather; the little lake was the color of sunshine; the plash of the oars was the only sound, and they found themselves listening to it. They disembarked, and, by a winding path, ascended the pine-crested mound which overlooked the water, whose white expanse glittered between the trees. The place was delightfully cool, and had the ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... in great, stiff bales. She went on, feeling as though horror happened wherever she went. But along by the sea wall it was very peaceful; only the soft lapping of the landlocked tide against the stone, the slow gliding of ferry boats, the lazy plash of oars and the metallic clanking in the naval dockyard on Garden Island came to her. On a man-of-war out in the stream the sailors were having a washing day; she could hear their cheery voices singing ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... ejaculation the kicking animal was launched into the air. I could not resist looking after. The yellow body bounded from the face of the opposite cliff, and fell with a heavy plash upon the water below. ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... party passed the gateway, and came upon the mole, with the bay before them beautiful in the morning light. To the veteran sailor the plash of the waves was like a greeting. He drew a long breath, as if the perfume of the water were sweeter than that of the nard, and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the Thames, lying in my punt, my face up to the sky, or paddling in and out among the pond-lilies. I had idled, too, on the lagoons of my beloved Venice, listening to Luigi crooning the songs he loves so well, the soft air about me, the plash of my gondolier's oar wrinkling the sheen of the silver sea. It had been a very happy summer; full of color and life. The brush had worked easily, the weather had lent a helping hand; all had been peace and quiet. Ofttimes, when I was happiest, somehow Muffles's solitary figure rose before me, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... great work of building began. Mr. Perrin kindly consented to act as foreman and set to work a whole army of workmen—the M.A.'s of course. And soon the sound of saw and hammer mingled with the plash of waves and cries of sea-birds, and gangs of stalwart M.A.'s in their seaweed tunics bent themselves to the task of shaping great timbers and hoisting them to the top of the highest tower, where other gangs, under Mr. Noah's own eye, reared a scaffolding ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... persuasions could counteract the pertinacious plash-plash of-the rain, and the chilling mist, and perhaps the uneasy pricks of her awakening chaperon-conscience. Nor could he extract a decisive "Yes" from his fluttering volatile enchantress. At Kaltbad, where they said farewell, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the plash Of these wave-whimsies on the shore: "Give us a pearl to fill the gash — God, let our dead friend live ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... The paddles plash, The wavelets dash, We see the summer lightning flash; While now and then, In marsh and fen Too muddy for the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... voices went well together. Her favourite song was "Come, Lasses and Lads"; his was "John Peel"; and they would sing them off and on for an hour at a spell. Thus on a summer evening, when the bay was lying like a tired monster asleep, and every plash of an oar was echoing on the hills, the people on the land would hear them coming around the castle ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... never remembered seeing any one quite so still before. Even his breathing had grown quiet, and the rise and fall of the broad breast was the only sign of life in the otherwise motionless figure. All around him was very still, too. Freddy could hear the plash of the waves on the beach, the rustle of the wind through the dwarf trees, the whir of wings as some sea bird took its swift flight above the broken roof. But within there was a solemn hush, that to the small ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... few steps, turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously. It looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of waves. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... In his ears there rang already the steady plash of the paddle, the weird melancholy song of the boatmen, the music of the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... and straight. Midnight was long past. Outside, the hot wind could be heard every now and then, listlessly flapping the carved wooden lattice-work shutters of an overhanging balcony built out on timber props over the river Maritza, whose turbid waters surged beneath with steady plash. Inside, the striped silken curtains were closely drawn. The atmosphere was stuffy and airless, filled with ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... accounts, though outwardly of such fair respectability that he attained an honour, unknown to Robert Burns, of acting as an elder of the kirk, was not always so chaste in his words as he might seem to be in his deeds; he took his plash as a poet, and not always in the clearest waters; besides, he had a terrible lash at his command, which he could wield with an effect at times that paid little respect to the bounds set in such matters by Christian charity, or even by social politeness. The consequence has been that much ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Plash fences thy plantation round about, And whilst yet young, be sure keep Cattel out; Severest Winters, scorching sun infest, And sheep, goats, bullocks, all young plants molest; Yet neither cold, nor the hoar rigid frost, Nor heat reflecting from the rocky coast, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... the hills at such a season, for they are deathly quiet except for the lashing of the storm. You will never hear a bird cry or a sheep bleat or a weasel scream. The only sound is the drum of the rain on the peat or its plash on a boulder, and the low surge of the swelling streams. It is the place and time for dark deeds, for the heart grows savage; and if two enemies met in the hollow of the mist only one ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... fanned his face and the sun smiled upon him, a loose piece of canvas of an awning near him flapped backwards and forwards with a monotonous musical sound, the plash and gurgle of the tumbling waves fell soothingly on his ears. Gradually sleep came over him gently, and enwrapped his strained, wearied body, his sore ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... neighbourhood of Glasgow glowed somewhat ominously large as the night wore on, we retired to rest rather in hope than resignation. But dismal, indeed, was the prospect when we awoke. A vaporous grey mist had entirely usurped the heavens, and the plash of weary rain resounded through the pluvious metropolis of the west. Fortunately, we were not ignorant of the fact, that Glasgow is under the peculiar tutelage of the Pleiades; and accordingly we proceeded to the railway, trusting that matters might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... that mysterious one of late twilight, when outlines lose their distinctness and sea and shore melt into one mass of uniform gray. There was no wind and the waves came in with a soft plash, but so near to the level of the road that it was evident, even to these strangers, that the tide was at its height and ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... plaintive melody, sounded to Lambert as refreshing as the plash of a brook in the heat of the day. He stood listening, his elbow on the show case, thinking vaguely that Alta had a good voice for singing ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... midst of all this action not one word was spoken, even the sturdy boatmen were mute, and the fall of the oar in the rowlock, the plash of the water, and the crushing sound of the yielding rushes as the "watery bier" made its way through them were the only sounds which broke the silence. Still Gustavus betrayed no emotion; but by the time ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... seeks the happy hunting ground Just as anxious friends and kindred gather hastily around, Dropping tears unto his memory and with slow and measured tread, Bear away the bold young chieftain, to the mansions of the dead. Fear the falls of Winnewissa sweetly wooing to repose With its murmurous plash of waters perfume-laden of the rose, 'Neath the soil which once his kindred claimed and lived in until we Rising eastward like a storm-cloud, swept the land from sea to sea. Sleepeth well the brave young warrior in this legend-hallowed ground, The long sleep that knows no waking till the ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... grow radiant with rosy splendor, as we pushed out from the island in our sail-boat. The place was remarkably still. Only the nightingale broke into song among the fragrant bushes by the frowning prison. All else was silent, save the silvery plash of the oars that broke the surface of the water ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... by the high way of the quays. The bed of the Seine is above the floor of the prison. The surrounding earth was consequently saturated with water, and the oozing moisture diffused over the walls and the floors the humidity of the sepulcher. The plash of the river; the rumbling of carts upon the pavements overhead; the heavy tramp of countless footfalls, as the multitude poured into and out of the halls of justice, mingled with the moaning of the prisoners in those solitary cells. There were one or two narrow courts ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... stars had they felt out their trails together. But always, under him and over him on all sides of him, there had been life. And tonight there was no life, nor smell of life. There was no chirp of night bird, or flutter of owl's wing, no plash of duck or cry of loon. He listened in vain for the crinkling snap of twig, and the whisper of wind in treetops. And there was no smell—no musk of mink that had crossed his path, no taste in the air of the strong scented fox, no subtle breath of ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... all delightful, and almost as good as a holiday. The city clerk, the jaded shopman, the weary milliner, the pessimistic dyspeptic, should each read the book. It will bring a suggestion of sea breezes, the plash of waves, and all the accessories of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... with his virtuous deeds: And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study, Virtue and that part of philosophy Will I apply that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev'd. Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left And am to Padua come as he that leaves A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep, And with satiety seeks to quench ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... dry land—the three guns were pointed—the eyes of the three hunters were about to glance through the sights of their pieces, when all at once he was seen to rock and stagger,—and then roll over! With a loud plash, his vast body subsided into the water, sending great waves to every corner of ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... fish in all parts of the island, that Knox says, not the running streams alone, but the reservoirs and ponds, "nay, every ditch and little plash of water but ankle deep hath fish in it."[1] But many of these reservoirs and tanks are, twice in each year, liable to be evaporated to dryness till the mud of the bottom is converted into dust, and the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a hundred ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the twilight world he loved. Nature had ceased her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle in the herbage—the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall hardly stirred the dust. In the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... valley, closely set and luxuriant, grew in beds edged with moss around the roots of the larger plants and in many open spaces. The air was very soft and warm, moist and full of heavy odours as the still atmosphere of an island in southern seas, and the silence was broken only by the light plash of softly-falling water. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... in tones so low that only an attentive ear could catch them, sparkling in the sunlight as though for very joy. Suddenly, near the edge of the narrow plateau over which they ran, they turned, and, with a tinkling plash of farewell, plunged in opposite directions,—the one eastward, hastening on its way to the Great Father of Waters, the other westward bound, towards the land of the ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... skins were stored there in great, stiff bales. She went on, feeling as though horror happened wherever she went. But along by the sea wall it was very peaceful; only the soft lapping of the landlocked tide against the stone, the slow gliding of ferry boats, the lazy plash of oars and the metallic clanking in the naval dockyard on Garden Island came to her. On a man-of-war out in the stream the sailors were having a washing day; she could hear their cheery voices singing and laughing as they hung vests and shirts and socks among the rigging, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... price shall their worth be replaced; Ah, boded the morning of our brave unreturning, When it drifted the clouds in the rush of its blast. As we march'd on the hill, such the floods that distil, Turning dry bent to bog, and to plash-pools the heather, That friendly no more was the ridge of the moor, Nor free to our tread, and the ire of the weather Anon was inflamed by the lightning untamed, And the hail rush that storm'd from the mouth of the gun, Hard pelted the stranger, ere we measured our danger, And broadswords were ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... are deeply impressive. The waves plash at your feet, and the seagull, strangely tame, screams close overhead; but glorious as is the unbroken view of sky and ocean, the loneliness of the place, and the unutterable mystery of the sea, and the deep ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... coolness in the deep arcades of the beech woods, and freshness on the upland lawns, as she rode happily on the dear old mare, by whom she really thought herself fondly recognised. There was something in the stillness of the whole, even in the absence of the roll and plash of the sea waves beside which she had grown up, that seemed to give her repose from the hurry and throb of sensations and thoughts that had so long preyed upon her; and when the ride was over she was refreshed, not tired, and the evening bell drew her to the conclusion most befitting a day ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cloister, the Rousseaus and the Wordsworths and the Nietzsches, wandered homelessly among the hills, while to-day we seek any feeble substitute for the cloister wherein to work at leisure in the free air of Nature, and hear the song of the birds and the plash of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... 'tis no more than a red rose rapping, And fear is a plash of wings. What, then, if a scarlet rose goes flapping Down the bright-grey ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... and when he got to the side of the well, he, without a moment's hesitation, flung it headlong down, and, listening attentively, he heard it fall with a slight plash, as if there was some water at the bottom of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... He had said to himself he wouldn't go to sleep; but all at once he heard a move below him, as of somebody unscrewing an air-port, and then he heard a voice say, 'Well, here goes a ghost that will stay laid!' and then a plash, a pl-m-p! and looking over quickly, he saw plain as could be the phosphorus hole in the sea, then a quarter of a second later something white as a man's face, and then it was ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... the prow, and only we three sat up to feast on the beauty of the night. The moon rode high above our heads, changing the river into a silver band, and deepening the mysterious shadows of the crowding woods on either bank. Not a sound was heard but the regular plash of our blades; naught moved but our gliding boat, and the silent water which bore us. Ludar, lugging steadily at his oar, spoke not a word. Yet I knew, though I was at his back, where his eyes rested, and what ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Cattle all gratefully low in pastures where fountains are glistening— Hark! in the shade of that rock the pruner with singing rejoices— The dove in the elm and the flock of wood-pigeons hoarsely repining, The plash of the sacred cascade—ah, restful, indeed, are these voices, Tityrus, all in the shade of ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... of delight it was! The browns of autumn tingeing the moor, the very air full of its mellow richness, the plash of the waves on the rocks below the cliffs, the song of the reapers coming on the breeze, oh, yes, life was all glorious and beautiful on ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... beautiful Lona!"—My blood was up, and I rushed fiercely at him. With the quickness of a cat he dodged me, spat in my face as I turned, and, with a horrible laugh, sprang headlong into the well. Down deeper and deeper sank the laugh—then it died away—then a faint plash—and all was silent. Rama Ragobah was gone! For fully ten minutes I stood dazed and irresolute and then returned mechanically to the house. I at first thought of informing the authorities of the whole affair, but, when I realised ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... which may in almost every instance be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the Transactions of the English Dialect Society, she has explained ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Soon the noise of the waterfall behind Casa Felice died away, the spectral facade faded and only the plash of the oars and the tinkle of fishermen's bells above the nets, floating here and there in the lake, were audible. The distant lights of mountain villages gleamed along the shores, and the lights of the stars gleamed in the ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... eyes, turning upon it for the last time, seemed to note the change; and the flitting spirit, wandering back to the old, old boyish days, and the legends of his people, spoke once more. The gathering darkness, the plash upon his hand, the resemblance to the mountain that guarded his babyhood and youth, all probably had worked their spell, for the pallid lips began to move, and in the silence of the lowering night a few words in his native ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... thin rain slanted on the slippery stones, as he again made his way through the deserted and sleepy paths of the town to the old philosopher's house. He was wet, chilled, weary, and sick enough at heart as he leaned against the cold stone doorway and waited for an answer to his knock. The plash of the heavier rain-drops from the tiled leaves was the only sound he heard for many minutes, until, at last, pattering feet neared him on the inside, and a child's voice asked who was there. To his friendly response ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... the wolverine to dig its owner out, is deserted for any otter's den or chance hole in the bank where he may sleep away the sunlight in peace. The great dam, upon which he toiled so many nights, is left to the mercy of the freshet or the canoeman's axe; and no plash of falling water through a break—that sound which in autumn or winter brings the beaver like a flash—will trouble his wise little ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... men on guard, drawn up in line on each side, gazed on us as we passed at shoulder arms. We passed the outposts, and the drum ceased playing as we turned to the right. Nothing was heard but the plash of footsteps in the mud, for the ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... the boat swung off. The stay-tackle falls were let go entirely, and all on board saw, with an exultation that words can scarcely describe, the important craft suspended directly over the sea. No music ever sounded more sweetly to the listeners than the first plash of the massive boat as it fell heavily upon the surface of the water. Its size, its roof, and its great strength gave it an appearance of security, that for the moment deceived them all; for, in contemplating the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... definite than a cry, often swept out from her into the vast silence, unbroken except by her husband's breathing or the plash of the wave or the creaking of the masts; but if ever she thought of definite help, it took the form of Deronda's presence and words, of the sympathy he might have for her, of the direction he might give her. It was sometimes after a white-lipped fierce-eyed temptation with murdering fingers ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Groweth rank and black, and where never a ray Of that self-same sun doth find its way Through the heaped-up houses' serried mass— Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng, And the clatter of wheels as they rush along— Or the plash of the rain, or the wind's hoarse cry, Or the busy tramp of the passer-by, Or the toll of the bell on the heavy air— Good friends, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... mouldering keystone, he forced it from its form, and broke the masonry of a thousand years. Amid a loud and awful shriek, horses and horsemen, and the dissolving fragments of the scene for a moment mingled as it were in airy chaos, and then plunged with a horrible plash into the fatal depths below. Some fell, and, stunned by the massy fragments, rose no more; others struggled again into light, and gained with difficulty their old shore. Amid them, Iskander, unhurt, swam like ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... for a visit. Look at the names: 'The Solitude' - is that romantic? The palm-trees? - how is that for the gorgeous East? 'Var'? the name of a river - 'the quiet waters by'! 'Tis true, they are in another department, and consist of stones and a biennial spate; but what a music, what a plash of brooks, for the imagination! We have hills; we have skies; the roses are putting forth, as yet sparsely; the meadows by the sea are one sheet of jonquils; the birds sing as in an English May - for, considering ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a glance of surprise back at his comrade, but the obedient gondola shot by the gloomy, though rich abode, as if the little bark had suddenly obeyed an inward impulse. In a moment more it whirled aside, and the hollow sound, caused by the plash of water between high walls, announced its entrance into a narrower canal. With shortened oars the men still urged the boat ahead, now turning short into some new channel, now glancing beneath a low bridge, and now uttering, in the sweet shrill ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... anchors were up, the smoke-pipes trailed their cloudy streamers on the breeze, flags and pennants were flying, paddle-wheels began to turn and plash, the bands played gay music, and the fleet drew off, in a long line of countless steamers and sailing vessels, down the ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... summer sea; then came the fog again and they laid on their oars that night. All around them dim islands seemed to float, scarcely discernible in the fog; sometimes from the top of each a point would show itself, as of a mighty hand, and they could hear an occasional plash and roar, as if this hand came downwards. Once they heard a cry, as if of sailors from another vessel. Then they strained their eyes to gaze into the fog, and a whole island seemed to be turning itself upside down, its peak coming down, while its base went uppermost, and the whole water boiled ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... engaged to convey me. But I was wearied of movement and exotic fancies; so I leaped contentedly upon the firm sands of the village of Mojada, telling myself I should be sure to find there the rest that I craved. After all, far better to linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative plash of the waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit upon the horsehair sofa of my parental home in the East, and there, cast down by currant wine and cake, and scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears of gaping neighbors sad stories ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Oh, sir, work is occupation, but work harassed with care for others becomes unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now. At my desk I seem to see those low shores and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves between me and that indistinct boundary. I am floating on the river current, drowning ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... about their small affairs. Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour. As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship paddles further away yet. These, with the creaking little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... into the gulches is always solemn. You canter along a bright breezy upland, and are suddenly arrested by a precipice, and from the depths of a forest abyss a low plash or murmur rises, or a deep bass sound, significant of water which must be crossed, and one reluctantly leaves the upper air to plunge into heavy shadow, and each experience increases one's apprehensions concerning the next. Though in some gulches the kukui preponderates, in others ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... little noise, making (as it were) a sheath of water which covered all the stone; but the third sprang into the air with delicate triumph, fine and high, satisfied, tenuous and exultant. This one tossed its summit into the light, and, alone of the things in the garden, the plash of its waters recalled and suggested activity—though that in so discreet a way that it was to be heard rather than regarded. The birds flew off in circles over the roofs of the town below us. Very soon they went ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... gazing into the blue sky, they traversed the streets in a holiday triumph; and although, once arrived, the manager did not fail to get some labour out of them, yet the store of amusement was endless. The great wheel, which drove the whole machinery; the plash-mill, or, more properly, wauk-mill—a word Robert derived from the resemblance of the mallets to two huge feet, and of their motion to walking—with the water plashing and squirting from the blows of their heels; the beatles thundering in arpeggio upon the huge cylinder round which ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... cry of the sailors, as with a plash and a cheer the anchor goes down, just in the deep water inside of Long Point; and then, says their journal, "being now passed the vast ocean and sea of troubles, before their preparation unto further proceedings as to seek out a place for habitation, they fell down on their knees ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... same light climbs the Campanile of S. Mark, and shows the golden angel in a mystery of gloom. The only noise that reaches us is a confused hum from the Piazza. Sitting and musing there, the blackness of the water whispers in our ears a tale of death. And now we hear a plash of oars, and gliding through the darkness comes a single boat. One man leaps upon the landing-place without a word and disappears. There is another wrapped in a military cloak asleep. I see his face beneath me, pale and quiet. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Blair-Drummond sees the hoofs strike fire, They sweep like breeze through Ochtertyre; 495 They mark just glance and disappear The lofty brow of ancient Kier; They bathe their coursers' sweltering sides, Dark Forth! amid thy sluggish tides, And on the opposing shore take ground, 500 With plash, with scramble, and with bound. Right-hand they leave thy cliffs, Craig-Forth! And soon the bulwark of the North, Gray Stirling, with her towers and town, Upon their ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of cakes on their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds. The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... silver. There was no sun upon me. But there were breaks in the clouds over the sea, through which, the air being filled with vapour, I could see the long lines of the sun-rays descending on the waters like rain—so like a rain of light that the water seemed to plash up in light under their fall. I questioned the past no more; the present seized upon me, and I knew that the past was true, and that nature was more lovely, more awful in her loveliness than I could grasp. It was a lonely ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, 'Ah! Stali!" struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and when at last the boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... below. No smoke issued from the soot-stained cowl of the galley, and the fore-scuttle and the companion were both inhospitably closed. The quiet of evening was over everything, broken only by the whirr of the paddles of a passenger steamer as it passed carefully up the centre of the river, or the plash of a lighterman's huge sweep as he piloted his unwieldy craft down on the last remnant of the ebb-tide. In shore, various craft sat lightly on the soft Thames mud: some sheeting a rigid uprightness, others with their decks at ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... down to the Arno, where its yellow waters plash monotonously about a couple of stray willows. There I sit, and cast up my final accounts with existence. I let my entire life pass before me in review. On the whole, it is rather a wretched affair—a few joys, an endless number of indifferent and ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... at the bottom of the pit, where the great drops of water fell plash. Many colliers were waiting their turns to go up, talking noisily. Morel gave his answers ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... would scramble about a little in the high places and doze in the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, felt ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... ostiary^, mouth; lagune^, lagoon; indraught^; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles^; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough^, mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin^, puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c (store) 636; alberca^, barachois^, hog wallow [U.S.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is the green earth renewed 5 With the bright sea-wind and the yellow blossoms. From the cool shade I hear the silver plash Of the blown ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... cry: and straight the plash of oar, And creak of sail were stilled; And every ear Was tent to catch the strains her sweet voice trilled. Avast to gloomy thoughts and boding fear! Alack the day when she should witch their hearts ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... seemed only to have awaited the actual moment of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... ash, in crash, rash, gash, flash, clash, lash, slash, plash, trash, indicate something acting more nimbly and sharply. But ush, in crush, rush, gush, flush, blush, brush, hush, push, imply something as acting more obtusely and dully. Yet in both there is indicated a swift and sudden motion not ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... parade upon the rocks, and approached the Delameres' party, who were seated on rugs and shawls spread upon the huge dry rocks overlooking the deep, clear water which lapped underneath with a gentle and regular plash and sucking sound. It was a brilliant day. Not a cloud was in the sky, and the blue-green seas lay basking in the sunshine. A brisk but gentle air had begun to crisp the top of the water, making it sparkle and bubble; and there ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels for the market ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Sands a little space Of silence, then the plash and spray, The sound of eager waves that ran To kiss the perfumed locks astray, To touch these lips that ne'er said 'Nay,' To dally with the helpless hands; Till the deep sea in silence lay ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... massive colonnade casts a grateful shadow over the crowd beneath, that fill up the intervals of its columns; but elsewhere the sun burns down and flashes everywhere. Mounted on the colonnade are masses of people leaning over, beside the colossal statues. Through all the heat is heard the constant plash of the two superb fountains, that wave to and fro their veils of white spray. At last the clock strikes. In the far balcony are seen the two great snowy peacock fans, and between them a figure clad in white, that rises from a golden chair, and spreads his great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Milo's eyes. The great chamber was silent as a mausoleum in the intervals between the clashing and tinkling of gold and stones in the chest; from the outside, by way of the rock tunnel, came only the sigh and murmur of the crooning breeze, the softened plash of the tide on the shore, the scream of wheeling seabirds. All sound of the schooner had departed; there was no human ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... that infest the beach and the neighbourhood of the hotels. The whole of the steep rocky gorge of that tiny torrent the Canneto is full of mills, each emitting a whirring sound which mingles with the continual plash of the water as it descends in miniature cascades the full length of the ravine, providing in its headlong course towards the sea the motive power required to turn all this quantity of machinery. Bridges span the Canneto at several points, whilst either bank is occupied by tiny factories of paper ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... King here!" he thought, "it's devilish monotonous ... can't see anything, and nothing to hear ... hold on, I can distinguish three separate noises, the plash of the water from the fountains, the rumble of carriages, and that heavy sound can only be the passage of trains from the North-South in the tunnel, which if I mistake not is right under my prison ... and these Singing ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... terms for seaside lodgings, which struck her as huge, and the matter of the number of beds required, which was not less portentous: this in reference to places of which the names—Eastbourne, Folkestone, Cromer, Scarborough, Whitby—tormented her with something of the sound of the plash of water that haunts the traveller in the desert. She had not been out of London for a dozen years, and the only thing to give a taste to the present dead weeks was the spice of a chronic resentment. ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... nothing the scratching of briars or the whipping of stiff twigs as she sped on. But for all their eager hunting, the quarry outran both dogs and folk, and gat him into a great thicket, amidmost whereof was a wide plash of water. Into the thicket they followed him, but he took to the water under their eyes and made land on the other side; and because of the tangle of underwood, he swam across much faster than they might have any hope to come round on him; and so were ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... went a gun in my very ear. Flame, smoke—much of both—and the stifling smell of sulphur. Jorian had fired at the face of the pop-gun knave. That putty-white countenance had a crimson plash on it ere it vanished. Then came back to us a scream of dreadful agony and the sound of a ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... struggled with it by energy and occupation; but it was something even worse in the evening, in the dark, solitary library, where the very size of the room gave an additional sense of loneliness; and in the silence he could hear, through the closed shutters, the distant plash and surge of the tide,—a sound, of which, in former years, he had never been sensible. There, evening after evening, he sat,—his attention roaming from his employment to feed ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him; and then leave them both, the decrepit and useless old and the needed young to drop into the tongueless silence of the grave, that silence broken only by the sound of the clods as they fall on the coffin lid or the plash of tears, or the choking sob; to allow the living whose hearts are torn and twisted and smashed by the robbery that death brings upon them to stand there and strangle themselves with the unanswered and unanswerable ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... was "Come, Lasses and Lads"; his was "John Peel"; and they would sing them off and on for an hour at a spell. Thus on a summer evening, when the bay was lying like a tired monster asleep, and every plash of an oar was echoing on the hills, the people on the land would hear them coming around ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the square the transparent dusk of Venice settled down. In the broad canal of the Misericordia a faint plash and drip from a passing gondola; then, in a moment, as the boat rounded into the rio, a resounding "Stai"; again silence and the robber ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... the beach in the sunshine, Home to their mother—in vain! for mine sits childless in anguish! O false sea! false sea! I dreamed what I dreamed of thy goodness; Dreamed of a smile in thy gleam, of a laugh in the plash of thy ripple: False and devouring thou art, and the great world dark and despiteful.' Awed by her own rash words she was still: and her eyes to the seaward Looked for an answer of wrath: far off, in the heart of the darkness, Blight white mists ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... sultry August evening. No breeze was stirring in the garden; no cool dews refreshed the parched and heated earth; yet from the languishing flowers rich sweets exhaled. The plash of a fountain fell pleasantly upon the ear, conveying in its sound a sense of freshness to the fervid air; while deep and drowsy murmurs hummed heavily beneath the trees, making the twilight slumberously musical. The westering sun, which filled the atmosphere with flame ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... listen for any sound from the front which might have a menacing significance—a shout, a shot, or the footfall of one of his sergeants coming to apprise him of something worth knowing. From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... but she is hidden behind heavy masses of clouds —welcome clouds that shelter lovers' secrets. The fountains, whose silvery showers keep such sweet time to the murmurings of love, plash gently on, hushing the sound of lovers' voices; on the bosom of yonder marble-tinctured lake, two snow-white swans are floating silently; and, far amid groves of myrtle and olive, the nightingale warbles her notes of love. Not a step echoes through the long avenues of the ducal park, not ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... cannon-roar,— "Now, by the Holy Cross! I swear, since earth and sea began, Was never such a daring deed essay'd by mortal man!" 70 Thick blew the smoke across the stream, and faster flash'd the flame: The water plash'd in hissing jets as ball and bullet came. Yet onward push'd the Cavaliers all stern and undismay'd, With thousand armed foes before, and none behind to aid Once, as they near'd the middle stream, so strong the torrent ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... clanking of iron—a boat-chain; then stillness. Only the lights showed that the boat had been launched into the middle of the river and was floating down stream. Soon the murmur of voices again, and the plash of oars, and now these sounds were quite close to Ivanov. One of the men was teasing the girls, the latter laughed at first, then all at once they ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... stars twinkle in the sea. From bank and hill the whippowil sends piping forth his flute-like notes, And clear and shrill the answers trill from leafy isles and silver throats. The twinkling light on cape and height; the hum of voices on the shores; The merry laughter on the night; the dip and plash of frolic oars,— These tell the tale. On hill and dale the cities pour their gay and fair; Along the sapphire lake they sail, and quaff like ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... crystal waters spanned By other marbles: founts may plash on stone, And fashionably-branched trees may stand As thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, how ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... as a belang, makes a brilliant point of colour on the blue strait between the sister islands. Red and yellow flags and pennants flutter above the green deck; the clash of gongs and cymbals echoes across the water, and a weird chant accompanies the rhythmic plash of the short oars, as the brown rowers toss them high in air, and bring them down with a sharp splash. A splendid avenue of kanari-trees extends along the shore, the usual Dutch church symbolises the uncompromising ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... was heard saving the plash of the little fountain, and the low soft ripple of the tiny waves that rocked themselves against ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... man; and as the boat dropped swiftly down on the ebb he had time to notice that both were heavily muffled about the face. This was all he could see, for in a moment they had passed into the gloom, and the next the angle of the house hid them from view; but he could still hear the plash of their oars above the ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mouth; lagune[obs3], lagoon; indraught[obs3]; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles[obs3]; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough[obs3], mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin[obs3], puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c. (store) 636; alberca[obs3], barachois[obs3], hog ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... without a peer, As if from heroes, nay from gods she came; In the transparent sheen her foot she laves; The tender life-fire of her noble frame She cools in yielding crystal of the waves.— Of swiftly moving wings what sudden noise? What plash, what plunge the liquid glass destroys? The maidens fly, alarmed; alone, the queen, With calm composure gazes on the scene; With womanly and proud delight, she sees The prince of swans press fondly to her knees, Persistent, tame; familiar now he grows.— But suddenly up-floats ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... take horse, dear heart, take horse and win— As from swart August to the green lap of May— To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware In any of her innumerable nests Of that first sudden plash of dawn, Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn Forward and up, in wider and wider way Shall float the sands and brim the shores On this our haunch of Earth, as round she roars And spins into the outlook ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... broken on the seaward side; and broken many hundreds of years ago—for on our starboard hand, by the edge of the rent, swept down a slope of turf, cropped by the gales, green as an English park; with a thread of a stream dropping to a small wilderness of ferns, and, through this, to plash upon a miniature beach of pink sand, on the edge of which the sea scarcely lapped. Sea-birds of many kinds circled and squawked overhead. Yet it was not our boat that had ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... good mother had Philiper Flash; Her voice was as soft as the creamy plash Of the milky wave With its musical lave That gushed through the holes of her patent churn-dash;— And the excellent woman loved Philiper so, She could cry sometimes when he stumped his toe,— And she stroked his hair With such motherly care When ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... windows of the room opened to the level of the ground upon the terrace at the head of the garden. It was in the end of July, and everything was open, for the weather was warm. As I sat alone I heard the unceasing plash of the great fountains, and I fell to thinking of the Woman of the Water. I rose, and went out into the still night, and sat down upon a seat on the terrace, between two gigantic Italian flower-pots. The ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... seas, who have gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings, quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt throng here when it grows dark. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... her guests through all the rooms with their classic associations, and Browning sat down to the desk at which Byron had written the last canto of "Childe Harold." To the satisfaction of the Brownings, Venice soon regained her usual quiet,—that wonderful silence broken only by the plash of water against marble steps, and the cries of the gondoliers,—and he resumed his long walks, often accompanied by Miss Browning, exploring every curious haunt and lingering in shops and squares. The poet ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... bird poised himself for an instant in the air, then closed his wings and shot downward. A whizzing sound! then a plash, and he disappeared beneath the surface, throwing up the water into sparkling foam-wreaths. He was absent but a moment, and then bore upward into the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... child's and he felt himself her master. At the farther end of the terrace a flight of steps led to a narrow strip of shore. He helped her down and after listening a moment gave a whistle. Presently they heard a low plash of oars and saw the prow of a gondola cautiously rounding the angle of the terrace. The water was shallow and the boatmen proceeded slowly and at length paused a few ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... enough to a cruizer, but quite capable of filling cock-boats. And, nearing the end of our voyage, we rejoice to see that the dull down-pourings and the sharp storms of Fernando Po have apparently not yet migrated so far south. Dancing blue wavelets, under the soft azure sky, plash and cream upon the pure clean sand that projects here and there black lines of porous ironstone waiting to become piers; and the water-line is backed by swelling ridges, here open and green- grassed, there spotted with islets of close and shady ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to begin again, till the riders struck the savage unroweled spur into their refreshment. At this they jerked their noses up, and looked at one another to say that they expected it, and then they lifted their weary legs and began to plash through ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... fact;—and one has to watch carefully in crossing them to avoid plunging into deep water-holes, made by the feet of elephants or buffaloes. In the ooze generally the water comes half-way up the shoe, and we go plash, plash, plash, in the lawn-like glade. There are no people here now in these lovely wild valleys; but to-day we came to mounds made of old for planting grain, and slag from iron furnaces. The guide was rather offended because he did not get meat and meal, though he is ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... world. An acute observer of natural phenomena, whose childhood and youth were spent in the interior of one of the newer New England States, has often told me that when he established his home in the forest, he always distinctly heard, in still weather, the plash of horses' feet, when they forded a small brook nearly seven-eighths of a mile from his house, though a portion of the wood that intervened consisted of a ridge seventy or eighty feet higher than either ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... lines of white palaces, exquisitely lighted by thousands on thousands of electric candles, soft, rich, shadowy, palpable in their sensuous depths; all in deep silence, profound solitude, listening for a voice or a foot-fall or the plash of an oar, as though the Emir Mirza were displaying the beauties of this City of Brass, which could show nothing half so beautiful as this illumination, with its vast, white, monumental solitude, bathed in the pure light of setting suns. One enjoyed it with iniquitous ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... seven o'clock, and night was at hand. Already the moon was showing her large, full face above the tree-tops by Chambord, and casting a silver streak athwart the stream. The plash of oars from the Marquis's boat was waxing indistinct despite the stillness, whilst by the eye the boat itself was ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... but by and by it did not come down—it bounded into the tin eave-trough and rolled slowly along till it came to the big pipe that led to the cistern, and into this it dropped, and went whirring down, and stopped somewhere with a faint plash. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... days of probation had been a distinguished caterer; but he was addicted to a sort of dreaming of his own, even when the sun stood in the zenith, and he was walking the poop, in the midst of a circle of his officers. Still, he could not refrain from glancing back at the past, that morning, as plash after plash was heard, and recalling the time when magna pars quorum FUIT. At this delectable instant, the ruddy face of a "young gentleman" appeared in his state-room door, and, first ascertaining that the eyes of his superior were actually ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in the whitest marble, rising fairylike out of a sapphire sea. My landing in the evening was just as full of charm. I hurried to the Alameda, the public promenade, where the silence was unbroken, save by the plash of the waves breaking at the foot of the ramparts, or the whisper of the breeze amongst the palm-trees. I caught sight of mysterious couples sitting in the shadows of the alamos, black dresses and mantillas blending ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... backed, and from which we are separated by some marshy, rushy ground, where the springs have formed into a pool, and where the moor-hen loves to build her nest. Ay, there is one scudding away now;—I can hear her plash into the water, and the rustling of her wings amongst the rushes. This is the deepest part of the wild dingle. How uneven the ground is! Surely these excavations, now so thoroughly clothed with vegetation, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... of batteaux moving across one of the Canadian lakes, during a season of profound calm. The uniform and steady pull of the crew, directed in their time by the wild chaunt of the steersman, with whom they ever and anon join in fall chorus—the measured plash of the oars into the calm surface of the water—the joyous laugh and rude, but witty, jest of the more youthful and buoyant of the soldiery, from whom, at such moments, although in presence of their officers, the trammels of restraint are partially removed—all these, added ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... itself miserable all last night, and this morning it is still howling as ill-naturedly as ever, and roaring and rumbling in the chimneys. The tide is far out, but, from an upper window, I fancied, at intervals, that I could see the plash of the surf-wave on the distant limit of the sand; perhaps, however, it was only a gleam on the sky. Constantly there have been sharp spatters of rain, hissing and rattling against the windows, while a little before or after, or perhaps simultaneously, a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in a sedge of the wild rice, and no doubt the sight of the canoe or the plash of the guiding oar had disturbed, and given it the alarm. It shot out from the reeds with head erect and wings slightly raised, offering to the eyes of the voyageurs a spectacle of graceful and majestic bearing, that, among the feathered race ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... it still were June. There was a flashing of white gulls over the water where the fleet of boats rode the low waves together in the cove, swaying their small masts as if they kept time to our steps. The plash of the water could be heard faintly, yet still be heard; we might have been a company of ancient Greeks going to celebrate a victory, or to worship the god of harvests, in the grove above. It was ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... usual, were tempting the trout with false fly or real worm, and I was roaming along the bank, seeking spring flowers, and hunting early butterflies and moths. Suddenly there was a little plash in the water at the spot where Ralph was fishing, the slender tip of his rod bent, I heard a voice cry out, "Strike him, sonny, strike him!" and an old man came quickly but noiselessly through the bushes, just as Ralph's line ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... Little Me crouched till she heard the last slow step of the last cow plash through the stream, where some of them stopped to drink, and the sound of voices died away over the bridge; then in much hurry and alarm she thrust her wet little feet into her damp socks, which she had in her fright dropped into the water, and the wet feet and socks were hastily ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... moment. They had passed through much together—danger, excitement, and now they were dabbling in sorrow. It would appear that this same sorrow runs like a river across the road of our life. Some of us find the ford and plash through the shallows—shallow ourselves—while others flounder into deep water. These are they who look right on to the greater events, and fail to note the trivial details of each little step. Paul was wading through ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... stone would never reach the bottom, and a curious expression was upon the eager faces that peered down, a strained look almost of pain, till all at once there was a start as of relief, as a hollow heavy plash was heard that came hissing, and echoing, and reverberating up the rocky sides of the shaft past them and into the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Couldn't we?" I cried, as a stone he threw went plash into the stream, and I jerked a piece of slate so far ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... from hill to hill, And still consumed, is burning still. Higher and higher leaps the flame, The smoke an ever-shifting frame. He sees a Spanish Castle old, With silver steps and paths of gold. From myrtle bowers comes the plash Of fountains, and the emerald flash Of parrots in the orange trees, Whose blossoms pasture humming bees. He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke Bears visions, that his master-stroke Is out of dirt and misery To light the fire of poesy. He sees the glory, yet he ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... said; "close by it, sir. There's one bed in our garden that always thrives, in the hottest summer, by the plash from the mill, sir." ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... we not heard them under the cool shade of the olive-trees, with the hot sun blazing on the garden-paths of the Villa Reale; and the children playing; and the band busy with its dancing canzoni, the gay notes drowning the murmur and plash of the fountains near? Look now!—far beneath the gray shadow of the olive-trees—the deep blue band of the sea; and there the double-sailed barca, like a yellow butterfly hovering on the water; ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... some little sandy bay or sparkling weir, it leaves an impression of melody on the soul like the echo of a sweet song just sweetly sung. High up the lanes run;—low down on the shoreline they come to an end,—and the wayfarer, pacing along at the summit of their devious windings, can hear the plash of the sea below him as he walks,—the little tender laughing plash if the winds are calm and the day is fair,—the angry thud and boom of the billows if a storm is rising. These bye-roads, of which there are so many along the Somersetshire ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... ledge after ledge of massive rock, the merry cascade enveloping itself in a robe of spray and mist, on the skirt of which flashes the faintest vision of a rainbow, which wavers and flits, almost, as you look at it, while the jets of foam plash up from the pool at the foot of the fall, a tranquil pause of the waters in a depth of uncertain blue, in which a suggestion of emerald flashes, and from which they dance on in less frantic mood over the brown and water-worn boulders to follow their further whims; everything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... in the blue above him, and at his feet summer waves were breaking peacefully on the shore, the sound of their soft, musical plash filling up his pauses and commenting ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... camp was the Makata plain an extensive swamp. The water was on an average one foot in depth; in some places we plunged into holes three, four, and even five feet deep. Plash, splash, plash, splash, were the only sounds we heard from the commencement of the march until we found the bomas occupying the only dry spots along the line of march. This kind of work continued for two days, until we came in sight of the Rudewa river, another powerful ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... stone and full of dim sheep. Below were dusky woods around what I took to be Fosse Manor, for the great Roman Fosse Way, straight as an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its water-meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny village settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was no noise but the twitter of small birds and the night wind in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... at the success of their efforts; of the wind roaring in the chimney; of the church-bells ringing in the distance; of the ever-increasing moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubber wheels of several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravel ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... hummed as if it still were June. There was a flashing of white gulls over the water where the fleet of boats rode the low waves together in the cove, swaying their small masts as if they kept time to our steps. The plash of the water could be heard faintly, yet still be heard; we might have been a company of ancient Greeks going to celebrate a victory, or to worship the god of harvests, in the grove above. It was strangely moving to see this and to make part of it. The sky, the sea, have ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and soothing as the scarcely audible plash of a distant fountain; but the incident she cited struck ominously on the Archbishop's recollection, rousing memory and causing him to dart a quick glance at the countess, in which was blended sharp enquiry and awakened foreboding; but the lady, unconscious of his scrutiny, stood with ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... of decay—sheep skins were stored there in great, stiff bales. She went on, feeling as though horror happened wherever she went. But along by the sea wall it was very peaceful; only the soft lapping of the landlocked tide against the stone, the slow gliding of ferry boats, the lazy plash of oars and the metallic clanking in the naval dockyard on Garden Island came to her. On a man-of-war out in the stream the sailors were having a washing day; she could hear their cheery voices singing and ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... there smote my ear A movement in the stream that checked my breath: Was it the slow plash of a wading deer? But something said, 'This water is of Death! The Sisters wash a shroud,—ill ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a box, that its light might not disturb her, and sat the whole time by the sick girl's bed listening to her delirious fancies and renewing her compresses. He never shut his eyes. He heard plainly when the anchor went down and the ship was brought up; and then how the waves began to plash against the sides! The sailors tramped about the deck for some time, then one by one they turned in. But at midnight he heard a dull knocking. That sounds, thought he, like hammering in nails whose heads have been ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... little lake had its share of these transient beams of light, and showed its waters broken, whitened, and agitated under the passing storm, which, when the clouds swept over the moon, were only distinguished by their sullen and murmuring plash against the beach. The wooded glen repeated, to every successive gust that hurried through its narrow trough, the deep and various groan with which the trees replied to the whirlwind, and the sound ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... air, and rushed along the river; and then another, and another; and the shouts were heard spreading along the line of the procession towards the Duomo; and then there were fainter answering shouts, like the intermediate plash of distant waves in a great lake whose ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... in walks with her governess, or drives with her mamma, in being obliged to wear fine clothes, to learn music and dancing, "and other tiresome things," and never being free to run wild on the hills and heaths, wade in the ponds, and plash in the burns, ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... in the wind Are tapping at the window-sash. A hawk is in the sky; his wings Slowly begin to plash. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... triumph of the intensity of its molten silver. There was no sun upon me. But there were breaks in the clouds over the sea, through which, the air being filled with vapour, I could see the long lines of the sun-rays descending on the waters like rain—so like a rain of light that the water seemed to plash up in light under their fall. I questioned the past no more; the present seized upon me, and I knew that the past was true, and that nature was more lovely, more awful in her loveliness than I could grasp. It was a lonely place: I fell on my knees, and worshipped the God that ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... it if there were. Arul rises in the same scant garment in which she slept, snatches up the pot of unglazed clay that stands beside the door, poises it lightly on her hip, and runs singing to the village well, where each house has its representative waiting for the morning supply. There is the plash of dripping water, the creak of wheel and straining rope, and the ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... vainer than the plash Of these wave-whimsies on the shore: "Give us a pearl to fill the gash — God, let our dead ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... drowsy and half-nodding in the bow, nodding with the more ease that it was still so dark and that Mr. Raleigh's back was toward her. Mrs. Laudersdale reclined in the stern. Mr. Raleigh once in a while sent them far along with a strong stroke, then only an occasional plash broke the charm of perfect stillness. Ever and anon they passed under the lee of some island, and the heavy air grew full of idle night-sweetness; the waning moon with all its sad and alien power hung low,—dun, malign, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... she perceived only just in time to prevent her stepping into it. These pillars and other dark masses of rock sprang up and up till her eye lost them in the darkness; and if there was a roof, she could not see it. A drip from above made a plash about once in a minute in the pool; and the murmur from without was so subdued—appeared to be so swallowed up in vastness and gloom—that the minute drop was loud in comparison. Lady Carse lay down on the ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... mite. But the dog had already raced into the water. The kitten walked a few steps, turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously. It looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of waves. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... after midday the water was all but up to the necks of the piers of Hammersmith Bridge, and the island at Chiswick was nearly submerged. Willows standing in lakes were recording the existence of towing-paths no longer able to speak for themselves, and the insolent plash of ripples over wharves that had always thought themselves above that sort of thing seemed to say:—"Thus far will I come, and a little farther for that matter." Father Thames never quite touched the landing of the boat-ladder, at the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... was again hushed. Dead silence succeeded the bellow of the thunder, the roar of the wind, the rush of the waters, the moaning of the beasts, the screaming of the birds. Nothing was heard save the plash of the agitated lake, as it beat up against the black rocks which girt ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the orchard, which is planted quincunx-wise, with yew hedge and grass-walk all round it. The "Archdeacon's Walk" that grass- walk should be named, for my father paced it morning after morning. The pike and roach would plash among the reeds and water-lilies; and "Fish, fish, do your duty," my father would say to them. Whereupon, he maintained, the fish always put out their noses and answered, "If you do your duty, we do our duty,"—words fully as ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... knows the lures, the fun is mainly over. In April, no doubt, something may still be done, and in the silver twilights of June, when as you drift on the still surface you hear the constant sweet plash of the rising trout, a few, and these good, may be taken. But the water wants re-stocking, and the burns in winter need watching, in the interests of spawning fish. It is nobody's interest, that I know of, to take trouble ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... outwardly of such fair respectability that he attained an honour, unknown to Robert Burns, of acting as an elder of the kirk, was not always so chaste in his words as he might seem to be in his deeds; he took his plash as a poet, and not always in the clearest waters; besides, he had a terrible lash at his command, which he could wield with an effect at times that paid little respect to the bounds set in such matters by Christian charity, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... drag after them. One end of this Rattan is stuck in the fisher's girdle, and the other knotted, that the fish should not slip off: which when it is full, he discharges himself of them by carrying them ashore. Nay every ditch and little plash of water but anckle ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... cabin the former saw the captain in the act of lying down upon one of the lockers, and as, about half an hour after, Brace lay awake listening to the strange sounds of the night which came through the open window, he distinctly heard the plash of oars, and soon afterwards the rubbing of a boat against the brig's side, followed by sips on deck, ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... was riding high and calm in the purple sky, and Harpswell Bay on the one hand, and the wide, open ocean on the other, lay all in a silver shimmer of light. There was not a sound save the plash of the tide, now beginning to go out, and rolling and rattling the pebbles up and down as it came and went, and once in a while the distant, mournful intoning of the whippoorwill. There were silent lonely ships, sailing slowly to and fro far out to sea, turning their fair wings now ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... moonlight night, warm, and sweet with the breath of flowers; away in the distance, beyond the wide-spreading lawn, they could see the waters of the bayou glittering in the moonbeams, and the soft plash of oars ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... watched in his impersonations the shifting tariff—the ever gliding, delicately graduated sliding-scale of dramatic right and wrong. He may have gloated, if he be a cynic, over the depths of ghastly horror, or the vagaries of moral puddle through which it may have been his duty to plash. But if he be an honest man, he will acknowledge that scarcely ever has either dramatist or management wilfully biassed the effect of stage representation in favor of evil, and of his audiences he will boast ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... still at the little town of Suechi ("Joyous Stream"), famous for its silk, we came to the Omei, which has its sources on the lower slopes of the Great Mountain. After this the country was more broken, but everywhere there was the same careful cultivation, and on all sides we heard the plash of falling water and the soft whirr of the great Persian wheels busily at work bringing water to the thirsty land; and occasionally we saw men working with the foot a smaller wheel by which the ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... if that was only all I had to trouble me! Oh, sir, work is occupation, but work harassed with care for others becomes unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now. At my desk I seem to see those low shores and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... between the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds. The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the scullery cleaning boots and knives, or doing some job or other, while her grandmother bustled back and forth, talking loudly, that her voice might reach above the frizzling of the frying-pan. But to-day there was a strange, most marked silence, broken only by the singing of the kettle, the plash of the rain outside, and a curious sound which Jessie could not make out, only she thought it sounded as though some ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... exotic fancies; so I leaped contentedly upon the firm sands of the village of Mojada, telling myself I should be sure to find there the rest that I craved. After all, far better to linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative plash of the waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit upon the horsehair sofa of my parental home in the East, and there, cast down by currant wine and cake, and scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears of gaping neighbors ...
— Options • O. Henry
... some in that heap must contain water, and he would persevere. The second and third failed him in like manner, but he would yet persevere. The fourth was heavy, and when he shook it gently he heard the water plash. That thirst at once became burning and uncontrollable. The cry of his body to be assuaged overpowered his will, and while deadly danger menaced he unscrewed the little mouthpiece and drank deep and long. It was not cold and perhaps ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... man do mair?—it was laid till her ere she had a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune. They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shoreside at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a saltwater dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say—he's on board an excise yacht. I hae a cousin at the board of excise; that's Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must have heard of, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... which struck her as huge, and the matter of the number of beds required, which was not less portentous: this in reference to places of which the names—Eastbourne, Folkestone, Cromer, Scarborough, Whitby—tormented her with something of the sound of the plash of water that haunts the traveller in the desert. She had not been out of London for a dozen years, and the only thing to give a taste to the present dead weeks was the spice of a chronic resentment. The sparse customers, the people she did see, were the people ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... closely set and luxuriant, grew in beds edged with moss around the roots of the larger plants and in many open spaces. The air was very soft and warm, moist and full of heavy odours as the still atmosphere of an island in southern seas, and the silence was broken only by the light plash of softly-falling water. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... William the Fourth, entitled "An Act to consolidate and amend the Laws relating to Highways in that part of Great Britain called England," I, T. Bradish, of the Town Hall, Smoltham, do hereby give you notice forthwith to cut, prune, plash or lop certain Trees and Hedges overhanging the highway immediately adjoining your premises, No. 15, East Gate, in the Parish of Smoltham, and which are causing an obstruction and annoyance to the said highway, so that the obstructions caused to the said ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... and in another moment were on top of the big rock. It was almost as good as being at sea; for when they turned their backs to the shore nothing could be seen but water and sails and flying birds, and nothing heard but the incessant plash and ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... crevices of moist marble, tell us that Nature takes the fountain back into her great heart, and cherishes it as kindly as if it were a woodland spring. And hark, the pleasant murmur, the gurgle, the plash! You might hear just those tinkling sounds from any tiny waterfall in the forest, though here they gain a delicious pathos from the stately echoes that reverberate their natural language. So the fountain is not altogether glad, after all its ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... debits in the long account. And still the continents and oceans ring With royal torments of the Silver King! Incessant bellowings fill all the earth, Mingled with inextinguishable mirth. He roars, men laugh, Nevadans weep, beasts howl, Plash the affrighted fish, and shriek the fowl! With monstrous din their blended thunders rise, Peal upon peal, and brawl along the skies, Startle in hell the Sharons as they groan, And shake the splendors of the great white throne! Still roaring outward through the vast profound, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the last words of the conversation; but Ethel, leaning from her window to listen to the plash of the waves, suspected that the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over that revelation of the motives of the life that had always been noble and generous in the midst of much that was eccentric and wayward, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the moon is the woodland plash, White is the woodland glade, Forth wend those twain, from oak to ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... he seems to have a great idea of our power," whispered Hollis, hopelessly. And then again there was a silence, the feeble plash of water, the steady tick of chronometers. Jackson, with bare arms crossed, leaned his shoulders against the bulkhead of the cabin. He was bending his head under the deck beam; his fair beard spread out magnificently over his chest; he looked colossal, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... dreaming of his own, even when the sun stood in the zenith, and he was walking the poop, in the midst of a circle of his officers. Still, he could not refrain from glancing back at the past, that morning, as plash after plash was heard, and recalling the time when magna pars quorum FUIT. At this delectable instant, the ruddy face of a "young gentleman" appeared in his state-room door, and, first ascertaining that the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the noise of the waterfall behind Casa Felice died away, the spectral facade faded and only the plash of the oars and the tinkle of fishermen's bells above the nets, floating here and there in the lake, were audible. The distant lights of mountain villages gleamed along the shores, and the lights of the stars gleamed in the ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... classic associations, and Browning sat down to the desk at which Byron had written the last canto of "Childe Harold." To the satisfaction of the Brownings, Venice soon regained her usual quiet,—that wonderful silence broken only by the plash of water against marble steps, and the cries of the gondoliers,—and he resumed his long walks, often accompanied by Miss Browning, exploring every curious haunt and lingering in shops and squares. The poet familiarized himself with the enchanting ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... those dark fens! The she-wolf will stir the brake, And the copper-snake breathe in his ear, And the bitterns will start by tens, And the slender junipers shake With the weight of the nimble bear, And the pool resound with the cayman's plash, And the owl will hoot in the boughs of the ash, Where he sits so calm and cool; Above his head, the muckawiss[B] Will sing his gloomy song; Frogs will scold in the pool, To see the musk-rat carry along The perch to his hairy brood; ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... from our camp was the Makata plain an extensive swamp. The water was on an average one foot in depth; in some places we plunged into holes three, four, and even five feet deep. Plash, splash, plash, splash, were the only sounds we heard from the commencement of the march until we found the bomas occupying the only dry spots along the line of march. This kind of work continued for two ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... visit. Look at the names: 'The Solitude' - is that romantic? The palm-trees? - how is that for the gorgeous East? 'Var'? the name of a river - 'the quiet waters by'! 'Tis true, they are in another department, and consist of stones and a biennial spate; but what a music, what a plash of brooks, for the imagination! We have hills; we have skies; the roses are putting forth, as yet sparsely; the meadows by the sea are one sheet of jonquils; the birds sing as in an English May - for, considering ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gardens; those who pace its lanes and squares may yet hear the echoes of their footsteps on the sounding stones, and read upon its gates, in passing from the tumult of the Strand or Fleet Street, 'Who enters here leaves noise behind.' There is still the plash of falling water in fair Fountain Court, and there are yet nooks and corners where dun-haunted students may look down from their dusty garrets, on a vagrant ray of sunlight patching the shade of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... heap of sea-cast timber and dried turf shot forth dancing blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowing cinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatched to let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowls and the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plants as the briny ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... arterial and venous system circulates the life-blood of the plants, hot water being the vehicle of warmth in winter. These invisible streams will flow when the brooks at the foot of the hill are sealed by frost and the plash of the open-air fountains is heard ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... a more festive Sunday. The wine flowed merrily and long; the discourse kept pace with it; and next morning, in returning to town, we felt ourselves very thirsty. A pump by the road side, with a plash round ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... high places and doze in the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, felt ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... there, and yet not seeing many of the items enumerated in her Murray. Rome, as Ralph said, confessed to the psychological moment. The herd of reechoing tourists had departed and most of the solemn places had relapsed into solemnity. The sky was a blaze of blue, and the plash of the fountains in their mossy niches had lost its chill and doubled its music. On the corners of the warm, bright streets one stumbled on bundles of flowers. Our friends had gone one afternoon—it was the third of their stay—to look at the latest excavations in the Forum, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... hundreds of years ago—for on our starboard hand, by the edge of the rent, swept down a slope of turf, cropped by the gales, green as an English park; with a thread of a stream dropping to a small wilderness of ferns, and, through this, to plash upon a miniature beach of pink sand, on the edge of which the sea scarcely lapped. Sea-birds of many kinds circled and squawked overhead. Yet it was not our boat ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... richest hanging wood, in which they said the deer lay hid. I never saw one, but often fancied that I heard them rustling, at daybreak, by these bright clear waters, stretching out in such smiling promise, where no sound broke the deep and blissful seclusion, unless now and then this rustling, or the plash of some fish a little gayer than the others; it seemed not necessary to have any better heaven, or fuller expression of love and freedom than in ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... of more than one religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings, quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt throng here when it grows dark. Hastening ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... rather the blackness of the valley of the shadow of death reigned around us, and we knew not where we went, but trusted to the instinct of the horses, who moved on with their heads close to the ground. The only sound which we heard was the plash of a stream, which tumbled down the pass. I expected every moment to feel a knife at my throat, but "IT WAS NOT SO WRITTEN." We threaded the pass without meeting a human being, and within three quarters of an hour after the time ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... ring through the forest. The wounded lift their weary heads, behold the advancing line, and weep tears of joy. The steamers cast off their fastenings. The great wheels plash the gurgling water. They move to the other side. The panting soldiers of the army of the Ohio rush on board. The steamer settles to the guards with her precious cargo of human life; recrosses the river in safety. The line of blue winds up the bank. It is Nelson's division. McCook's and ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... high-pitched voice to her satisfaction I felt that she surrendered herself. She was more than pleased, she was transported; the whole thing was an immense liberation. The gondola moved with slow strokes, to give her time to enjoy it, and she listened to the plash of the oars, which grew louder and more musically liquid as we passed into narrow canals, as if it were a revelation of Venice. When I asked her how long it was since she had been in a boat she answered, "Oh, ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... inlet, bight, estuary, arm of the sea, bayou [U.S.], fiord, armlet; frith^, firth, ostiary^, mouth; lagune^, lagoon; indraught^; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles^; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough^, mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin^, puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c (store) 636; alberca^, barachois^, hog ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... wine tastes fine, eh! You recall Goya. As for the boys swimming, the sensations of darting and weaving through velvety waters are produced as if by wizardry. But you never think of Sorolla's line, for line, colour, idea, actuality are merged. The translucence of this sea in which the boys plash and plunge is another witness to the verisimilitude of Sorolla's vision. Boecklin's large canvas at the new Pinakothek, Munich, is often cited as a tour de force of water painting. We allude to the mermaids and mermen playing in the trough of a greenish sea. It is mere "property" ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... whole river, and tipped with a spectral light even the distant piles of building. The boat and the toiling figure of the single rower were distinctly perceptible. Now all again was darkness; the wind suddenly subsided; in a few minutes the plash of the oars was audible, and the boat apparently stopped beneath ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... evening of 1715. Throughout a melancholy day, clinging mist had blurred the outline of even the nearest hills; distance was blotted out. Thin rain fell chillingly and persistently, drip, dripping with monotonous plash from the old inn's thatched eaves; a light wind sobbed fitfully around the building, moaning at every chink and cranny of the ill-fitting window-frames. "A dismal night for any who must travel," thought the stableman of the inn, as he looked east and then west along the darkening road. ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... than strangers for his clerks and overseers—if this town house was the pride of the Italian burgess; the villa, with its farms and orchards, was the real joy, the holiday paradise of the over-worked man. To read in the cool house, with cicala's buzz and fountain plash all round, the Greek and Latin authors; to discuss them with learned men; to watch the games of the youths and the children, this was the reward for years of labour and intelligence; but sweeter ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... lone boat, I sought A little kingdom for my thought, Within a river's winding cove, Whose forests form a double grove, And, from the water's silent flow, Appear more beautiful below; While their large leaves the lilies lave, Or plash upon the shadow'd wave; While birds, with darken'd pinions, fly Across that still intenser sky; Fish, with cold plunge, with startling leap, Or arrow-flight across the deep; And stilted insects, light-o-limb, Would dimple o'er the even brim; If, with my hand, in play, I chose The cold, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... considerable little moorland river, with several branches coming down from Ruppin Country, and certain lakes and plashes there, in a southwest direction, towards the Elbe valley, towards the Havel Stream; into which latter, through another plash or lake called GULPER SEE, and a few miles farther, into the Elbe itself, it conveys, after a course of say 50 English miles circuitously southwest, the black drainings of those dreary and intricate Peatbog-and-Sand countries. "LUCH," it appears, signifies LOCH ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... between banks now overhung by mangrove thickets, now receding in plains dotted with gloomy clumps of gumtrees, as far as the eye, from our low position and by the imperfect light afforded, could reach. As we advanced, the measured plash of the oars frightened from their roosting places in the trees, a huge flock of screeching vampires, that disturbed for a time the serenity of the scene by their discordant notes; and a few reaches ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... rowlocks and the even plash of dripping oars, muffled by the numbing curtain of the fog, broke through the silence. Then followed the gentle thudding noise of a boat as it bumped against the jetty and a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... twigs on thatched roofs. Nor that magic bird, the fulmar, a wanderer from the Scottish archipelago, dropping from his bill an oil which the islanders used to burn in their lamps. Nor do you ever find in the evening, in the plash of the ebbing tide, that ancient, legendary neitse, with the feet of a hog and the bleat of a calf. The tide no longer throws up the whiskered seal, with its curled ears and sharp jaws, dragging itself along on its nailless paws. On that Portland—nowadays ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... like the rush of a gorgeous fish through the glassy water. Opposite my canoe he checked himself, poised an instant in mid-air, watching the minnows that my paddle had disturbed, and dropped bill first—plash! with a silvery tinkle in the sound, as if hidden bells down among the green water weeds had been set to ringing by this sprite of the air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for a brief instant; the ripples gathered and began ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... instance be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the Transactions of the English Dialect Society, she has explained her ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... say: "Yes, in a minute I will tell you something that will make you split your sides with laughing." The little round window was open and a soft breeze was blowing on Pavel Ivanitch. There was a sound of voices, of the plash of oars in the water.... Just under the little window someone began droning in a high, unpleasant voice: no doubt it was a ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... upon seven o'clock, and night was at hand. Already the moon was showing her large, full face above the tree-tops by Chambord, and casting a silver streak athwart the stream. The plash of oars from the Marquis's boat was waxing indistinct despite the stillness, whilst by the eye the boat itself was no longer to ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... there would have been had he been at sea; but he presently came to the conclusion that he must be in one of the "punishment cells" aboard some ship lying in the harbour, for he thought that, now and again, he could hear the faint plash and gurgle of water close at hand, a sound similar to that which he had often heard when down about the bilges of the Blanco Encalada, far below the water-line. He also very soon realised that, in addition to being ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... Oscard absently. In his ears there rang already the steady plash of the paddle, the weird melancholy song of the boatmen, the music of the wind ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... a score of books for the passage in question, and can't find it. Expect to hear the drum and the musquetry momently (for they swear to resist, and are right,)—but I hear nothing, as yet, save the plash of the rain and the gusts of the wind at intervals. Don't like to go to bed, because I hate to be waked, and would rather sit up for the row, if ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... ice float on the dark surface, looking like white marble on a black ground. Occasionally there is a larger dark-colored pool, where the wind gets a hold of the water and forms small waves that ripple and plash against the edge of the ice, the only signs of life in this desert tract. It is like an old friend, the sound of these playful wave-lets. And here, too, they eat away the floes and hollow out their edges. One could almost imagine one's self in more ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... were, by accident, he unconscious that he is saying anything that is worth while. As the late Professor Harris said, one of the last times I saw him, "There are unsounded depths in a man's nature of which he himself knows nothing till they are revealed to him by the plash and ripple of his own conversation with other men." This great principle of life, when applied in conversation, may be stated simply ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... laughing and light-hearted South? Have we not heard them under the cool shade of the olive-trees, with the hot sun blazing on the garden-paths of the Villa Reale; and the children playing; and the band busy with its dancing canzoni, the gay notes drowning the murmur and plash of the fountains near? Look now!—far beneath the gray shadow of the olive-trees—the deep blue band of the sea; and there the double-sailed barca, like a yellow butterfly hovering on the water; and there the large martingallo, bound for the cloud-like island on the horizon. Are they singing, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... them, emphasized rather than broken by the droning chant of a fisherman mending his nets on the beach below, the intermittent plash of the waves on the shingle, and the scream of the gulls that circled overhead. Before the eyes of his flesh was stretched a wide desert of sky and water, and before the eyes of his mind the hopeless desert of ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... dumb in its immobility, half sheen, half night, with its arcades, the soothing plash of water, with its expiring lights, in a suggestion of Castilian severity, enveloped by the exotic ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... carbine to his shoulder, took deliberate aim, and fired. Almost simultaneously with the report, the huge animal came tumbling down from the tree, and fell with a dull, dead plash upon the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... asleep, quickly lulled into an almost death-like slumber by the cadence of innumerable fountains. Near the Patenta is the Garden of Fountains, which I shall tell you about in another message. It was the plash and rivulous current of these water courts that ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... see a plash in the canal, and see a gondola moving from the shore. It is he, and I scarcely can refrain from calling to him. Now the whole thing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... up as was that orchard with all its forbidden fruit, that evil fruit would hang over the wall so that if any lusty youth wished to taste it, he had only to reach up to the over-hanging branches and plash down on himself some of the forbidden bunches. Now, that was just what Matthew had done. Till we have him lying at the House Beautiful, not only not able to enjoy the delights of the House and of the season, but so pained in his bowels and so pulled together with inward pains, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... expedition of batteaux moving across one of the Canadian lakes, during a season of profound calm. The uniform and steady pull of the crew, directed in their time by the wild chaunt of the steersman, with whom they ever and anon join in fall chorus—the measured plash of the oars into the calm surface of the water—the joyous laugh and rude, but witty, jest of the more youthful and buoyant of the soldiery, from whom, at such moments, although in presence of their officers, the trammels of restraint are partially removed—all ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Not far off occasionally the rustle of clothes or the tinkle of an entrenching tool, as a sleeper turned over or the group sentry shifted arms on the parapet; and always in a lulling undertone the plash of rain on grass or wire, and the heavy breathing of tired men. For four years these nocturnal sounds of war had been familiar in the ears of Lawrence Hyde. He could hear them now, the river-murmur repeated them. And ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Ochtertyre; 495 They mark just glance and disappear The lofty brow of ancient Kier; They bathe their coursers' sweltering sides, Dark Forth! amid thy sluggish tides, And on the opposing shore take ground, 500 With plash, with scramble, and with bound. Right-hand they leave thy cliffs, Craig-Forth! And soon the bulwark of the North, Gray Stirling, with her towers and town, Upon their fleet career ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... in the dark corner, listening, through the monotonous din and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull plash of the rain in the far distance,—shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look towards her. She knew, in spite of all his kindness, that there was that in her face and form which made him loathe the sight of her. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... over their rocky bed, murmuring to each other in tones so low that only an attentive ear could catch them, sparkling in the sunlight as though for very joy. Suddenly, near the edge of the narrow plateau over which they ran, they turned, and, with a tinkling plash of farewell, plunged in opposite directions,—the one eastward, hastening on its way to the Great Father of Waters, the other westward bound, towards the ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... plants are worth observing. Their great cup- shaped leaves, swaying high above the pond, catch the rain and hold it a while; but always after the water in the leaf reaches a certain level the stem bends, and empties the leaf with a loud plash, and then straightens again. Rain-water upon a lotus-leaf is a favourite subject with Japanese metal-workers, and metalwork only can reproduce the effect, for the motion and colour of water moving upon the green oleaginous surface are exactly ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... followers now passed under a lofty portal, and looked through the open doorway into the interior of the palace. The first thing that they saw was a spacious hall, and a fountain in the middle of it, gushing up towards the ceiling out of a marble basin, and falling back into it with a continual plash. The water of this fountain, as it spouted upward, was constantly taking new shapes, not very distinctly, but plainly enough for a nimble fancy to recognize what they were. Now it was the shape of a man in a long robe, the fleecy whiteness of which was made out of the fountain's ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and in her struggle she pushed the boat from her, and thus became herself beyond the possibility of her sister's reach. Her danger was imminent; she was sinking. Her father and sister shrieked to Him—who they believed heard them and sent his Messenger; for a plash in the water, a strong man with wonderful—it seemed superhuman—strength and speed, was making his way toward Mary. In one moment more he had grasped her with one hand. She had still enough presence of mind not to embarrass him by any struggles, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... could hear it but not see it, a fountain was playing into a basin. By the sound it was one of those high French fountains which the people who built such houses as these two hundred years ago delighted in. The plash of it was very soothing, but I was so tired and drooping that at one moment it sounded much ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... soil. It was a solitary, a melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels for ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... fragrant bloom. There is a runnel of water at the roadside, and in one place this water is collected in a round stone basin that looks immensely old; from this it trickles forth again with coolness and musical plash. Having reached this spot, we may as well pass over into Fowey by the ferry here instead of by that from Polruan. If we had already come from Fowey to Bodinnick we should find that the ferryman would carry us back ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... part of the bedroom into the cabinet de toilette. She moved about in the cabinet de toilette thinking that the waltz out of The Rosenkavalier was divinely exciting. The delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of the shortening ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... my soul float away!" and she turned her face to her mother's bosom. And as we went softly out from the room and stood upon the path with the lofty palm-plumes rustling above us, we saw the first swirling wave of the incoming tide ripple round Matautu Point and plash on Hamilton's beach. And from within the silent house answered the ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... studie, Vertue and that part of Philosophie Will I applie, that treats of happinesse, By vertue specially to be atchieu'd. Tell me thy minde, for I haue Pisa left, And am to Padua come, as he that leaues A shallow plash, to plunge him in the deepe, And with sacietie seekes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... than any frogs in Europe, gave notice of rain by an incessant noise that was almost intolerable, and the gnats and musquitos, which had been very troublesome even during the dry weather, were now become innumerable, swarming from every plash of water like bees from a hive; they did not, however, much incommode us in the day, and the stings, however troublesome at first, never continued to itch above half an hour, so that none of us felt ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... all sides. At first I made out nothing: I was dazzled by this azure brilliance; but little by little began to emerge the outlines of beautiful mountains and forests; a lake lay at my feet, with stars quivering in its depths, and the musical plash of waves. The fragrance of orange flowers met me with a rush, and with it—and also as it were with a rush—came floating the pure powerful notes of a woman's young voice. This fragrance, this music, fairly drew me downwards, and I began to sink ... to ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... glass of water, and, trying to conceal my own distress for her as well as I could, sat down, silently, near her. Gradually she grew quieter, until the room was so still that we could hear the raindrops from the eaves plash down outside. Peggy pushed back her cloud of bright hair and fastened it in the nape of her neck. At last she said, with conviction: "Mother, Maria didn't say these things, but I know she thinks them for me, thinks that a woman's love is just all forgiveness and indulgence. By that she could—she ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... every now and then, listlessly flapping the carved wooden lattice-work shutters of an overhanging balcony built out on timber props over the river Maritza, whose turbid waters surged beneath with steady plash. Inside, the striped silken curtains were closely drawn. The atmosphere was stuffy and airless, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... ordered, their eyes tightly closed. They felt the hot beams of the sun pouring over them, and the cool salt wind blew on their faces and through their hair; their toes curled and wriggled in the warm, wet sand, and in their ears was the plash-plash of the little waves beating backwards and forwards on the beach. It was very pleasant. It seemed quite easy to think of those three nice things. And presently each child felt a warm and friendly glow steal up its left arm, through its heart, down its right arm—and so on to its ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... diseash dat is fatal to our family. Vel, den, dere is nothing, shentlemens, but Mrs. Shullen would spaak wid the Count in her chamber at midnight, and dere is no haarm, joy, for I am to conduct the Count to the plash, myshelf. ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... heavy plash, From the cliffs invading, dash Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow, Till white and thundering down they go, Like the avalanche's snow, On the Alpine vales below; Thus at length, outbreathed and worn, Corinth's sons were downward ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... absorbed in the "Marriage a la Mode"; days when even Giorgione's Pastoral may (as in Rossetti's sonnet) mean nothing beyond the languid pleasure of sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of water and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion, the same interest and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an inn-parlour oleograph. Then, as regards scientific interest and pleasure, there may be days when the diarist ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... passing beetle's hum The Elfin army's goblin drum To pigmy battle sound; And now, where dripping dew-drops plash On waving grass, their bucklers clash, And now their quivering lances flash, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... blue, yellow, and red—while, among the smooth, shining leaves of the orange and lemon trees, gleamed the swelling fruit. On a round tank close at hand some black swans were noiselessly tracing evanescent circles and uttering their strange lament. The song of birds mingled with the plash of fountains, and even the marble statues, for all that they were dumb, seemed to be enjoying the sweet morning air and the stir and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on chilly days, a generous heap of sea-cast timber and dried turf shot forth dancing blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowing cinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatched to let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowls and the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plants as the briny ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... They mark just glance and disappear The lofty brow of ancient Kier; They bathe their coursers' sweltering sides, Dark Forth! amid thy sluggish tides, And on the opposing shore take ground, 500 With plash, with scramble, and with bound. Right-hand they leave thy cliffs, Craig-Forth! And soon the bulwark of the North, Gray Stirling, with her towers and town, Upon their ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... in being allowed to take the air only in walks with her governess, or drives with her mamma, in being obliged to wear fine clothes, to learn music and dancing, "and other tiresome things," and never being free to run wild on the hills and heaths, wade in the ponds, and plash in the burns, like ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... away, she ordered a very large sow, big with young, to be taken down to the boat, and accompanied us thither herself. She had given directions to her people to carry me, as they had done when I came, but as I chose rather to walk, she took me by the arm, and whenever we came to a plash of water or dirt, she lifted me over with as little trouble as it would have cost me to have lifted over a child if ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... dictionary are those which may in almost every instance be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the Transactions of the English Dialect Society, she has explained her methods of ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with a ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... in a box, that its light might not disturb her, and sat the whole time by the sick girl's bed listening to her delirious fancies and renewing her compresses. He never shut his eyes. He heard plainly when the anchor went down and the ship was brought up; and then how the waves began to plash against the sides! The sailors tramped about the deck for some time, then one by one they turned in. But at midnight he heard a dull knocking. That sounds, thought he, like hammering in nails whose heads have been covered with cloth to muffle the sound. Before long he heard ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... magnificent as was Lynmouth, wonderful as was Clovelly, and glorious as was Hartland, I believe they would equally have welcomed the waves if they had been on the flattest of muddy shores! The ripple, plash, and roar were as familiar voices, the salt smell as native air; and my mother never had thawed so entirely towards Clarence as when she found him the only person who could ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Parisians. One side of our affection grows and strengthens and sends forth new shoots with every passing day. The longer one lives in Paris the better one loves it. Its beauty becomes part and parcel of one's daily life. The mighty sweep of palace and arcade and museum and church, the plash of sunlit fountains, the rustle and the shimmer of resplendent foliage, the grace of statue, the grandeur of monument, the far-stretching splendor of brilliant boulevard and bustling street,—all these make up a picture whose lines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... who display their wares,—masses of white lilac, flame-colored roses, rose and purple hyacinths and baskets of violets and carnations. Did all this fragrance and beauty send up its incense to Keats as he lay in the house adjoining, with the musical plash of Bernini's fountain under his window? It is pleasant to know that by the appreciation of American and English authors, the movement effectively directed by Robert Underwood Johnson, this house consecrated to a poet's memory has been purchased to be a permanent memorial to Keats and to Shelley. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... me, in spite of these memories of an extended connection, a sense as of some shrinkage or decline in the beaux jours of the Institution; which seems to have found its current run a bit thick and troubled, rather than with the pleasant plash in which we at first appeared all equally to bathe. I gather, as I try to reconstitute, that the general enterprise simply proved a fantasy not workable, and that at any rate the elders, and often such queer elders, tended to outnumber the candid jeunesse; so that ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... had jist got to try it themselves for a day or two. Then, ag'in, most likely there's only one road from your place to the nearest town, and jist when you want to send off your stuff it'll come on pourin' rain for ever so long, and the whole road'll be nothin' but plash and mash, like a dish of cabbage-soup; and there the stuff'll have to lie idle for weeks and weeks, and you've jist got to grin and bear it. And in them parts, instead of one good pelt and have done with it, it keeps on drip, drip, drip, for days and days in a sneaking half-and-half kind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... ere she had a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune.—They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shore-side, at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say —he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise—that's 'Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... away!" and she turned her face to her mother's bosom. And as we went softly out from the room and stood upon the path with the lofty palm-plumes rustling above us, we saw the first swirling wave of the incoming tide ripple round Matautu Point and plash on Hamilton's beach. And from within the silent house ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... cataract. The distant murmur of the mighty waterfall, the gentle sighing of the trees, the soothing influence of the moonlight, and the faint sounds occasionally caught of dying revelry, the joyous exclamation of some successful candidate in the day's games, the song of some returning lover, the plash of an oar in the lake: all combined to produce that pensive mood in which we find ourselves involuntarily reviewing ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... to him, the wife who loves him and the children dependent on him; and then leave them both, the decrepit and useless old and the needed young to drop into the tongueless silence of the grave, that silence broken only by the sound of the clods as they fall on the coffin lid or the plash of tears, or the choking sob; to allow the living whose hearts are torn and twisted and smashed by the robbery that death brings upon them to stand there and strangle themselves with the unanswered and unanswerable questions: "Whence," "What," and "Whither," ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... weight of universal moisture. The far-off glory of the mountains was blotted out, as though it had never been; and the doll's house, with its subsidiary group of native huts, had the aspect of a dwelling in Cloudland. From within came the plash of water falling drop by drop, suggesting a vision of zinc tubs, pails, and basins, set here, there, and everywhere, to check the too complete invasion of the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... than a cry, often swept out from her into the vast silence, unbroken except by her husband's breathing or the plash of the wave or the creaking of the masts; but if ever she thought of definite help, it took the form of Deronda's presence and words, of the sympathy he might have for her, of the direction he might give her. It was sometimes after a white-lipped ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the thick second crop of clover, and the bees hummed as if it still were June. There was a flashing of white gulls over the water where the fleet of boats rode the low waves together in the cove, swaying their small masts as if they kept time to our steps. The plash of the water could be heard faintly, yet still be heard; we might have been a company of ancient Greeks going to celebrate a victory, or to worship the god of harvests, in the grove above. It was strangely moving to see this and ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the Wansbeck; past Morpeth; by Warkworth, and its castle, and hermitage; over the Coquet stream, beloved by the friends of gentle Izaak Walton; on, by the sea-side - almost along the very sands - with the refreshing sea-breeze, and the murmuring plash of the breakers - the Misses Green giving way to childish delight at this their first glimpse of the sea; on, over the Aln, and past Alnwick; and so on, still further north, to a certain little station, which is the terminus ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... is backed, and from which we are separated by some marshy, rushy ground, where the springs have formed into a pool, and where the moor-hen loves to build her nest. Ay, there is one scudding away now;—I can hear her plash into the water, and the rustling of her wings amongst the rushes. This is the deepest part of the wild dingle. How uneven the ground is! Surely these excavations, now so thoroughly clothed with vegetation, must originally have been huge gravel pits; there is ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... two he heard nothing but the ripple and plash of the ice-brook descending the side of the berg fifty yards away; but with the burial of his enemy, the lad's self-control had deserted him, and he burst into a passionate outbreak of sobs ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... iron—a boat-chain; then stillness. Only the lights showed that the boat had been launched into the middle of the river and was floating down stream. Soon the murmur of voices again, and the plash of oars, and now these sounds were quite close to Ivanov. One of the men was teasing the girls, the latter laughed at first, then all at ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... when he got to the side of the well, he, without a moment's hesitation, flung it headlong down, and, listening attentively, he heard it fall with a slight plash, as if there was some water at the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... The cool shadows fall Like balm upon me from the boughs o'erhead. My coming strikes a terror on the scene. All the sweet sylvan sounds are hushed; I catch Glimpses of vanishing wings. An azure shape Quick darting down the vista of the brook, Proclaims the scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs Startle my wandering eye like basking snakes. Where this thick ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... lane of light that crossed the violet waters of Loch Roag quivered in a deeper gold. The night-air was scented with the Dutch clover growing down by the shore. They could hear the curlew whistling and the plover calling amid that monotonous plash of the waves that murmured all around the coast. When they returned to the house the darker waters of the Atlantic and the purple clouds of the west were shut out from sight, and before them there was only the liquid plain of Loch Roag, with its pathway of yellow fire, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... therefore Tranio, for the time I studie, Vertue and that part of Philosophie Will I applie, that treats of happinesse, By vertue specially to be atchieu'd. Tell me thy minde, for I haue Pisa left, And am to Padua come, as he that leaues A shallow plash, to plunge him in the deepe, And with sacietie seekes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... very peaceful here in the hot haze that brooded over the still mountains, and there seemed to be nought to fear. We drew swiftly up to the mound, with the plash of oars only to break the silence, and there was nought amiss that we could see. They had made it on a little flat tongue of land that jutted from the mountain's foot into the deep water, so that on two sides the mound was close to ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... and light-hearted South? Have we not heard them under the cool shade of the olive-trees, with the hot sun blazing on the garden-paths of the Villa Reale; and the children playing; and the band busy with its dancing canzoni, the gay notes drowning the murmur and plash of the fountains near? Look now!—far beneath the gray shadow of the olive-trees—the deep blue band of the sea; and there the double-sailed barca, like a yellow butterfly hovering on the water; and there the large martingallo, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth canal among luxuriant plantations; the air was perfumed music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when the troops disembarked,—five hundred fine young men, the oldest not thirty, ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... coming to an end; a stream of long-coated spectators sets towards the town, mingled with the parti-coloured, muddied figures of the players. I have been strolling half the afternoon along the river bank, watching the boats passing up and down; hearing the shrill cries of coxes, the measured plash of oars, the rhythmical rattle of rowlocks, intermingled at intervals with the harsh grinding of the chain-ferries. Five-and-twenty years ago I was rowing here myself in one of these boats, and I do not wish to renew the experience. ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... launch'd in some lone boat, I sought A little kingdom for my thought, Within a river's winding cove, Whose forests form a double grove, And, from the water's silent flow, Appear more beautiful below; While their large leaves the lilies lave, Or plash upon the shadow'd wave; While birds, with darken'd pinions, fly Across that still intenser sky; Fish, with cold plunge, with startling leap, Or arrow-flight across the deep; And stilted insects, light-o-limb, Would dimple o'er the even brim; If, with my hand, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... fare, in the rectory gardens. Three of them enclose the orchard, which is planted quincunx-wise, with yew hedge and grass-walk all round it. The "Archdeacon's Walk" that grass- walk should be named, for my father paced it morning after morning. The pike and roach would plash among the reeds and water-lilies; and "Fish, fish, do your duty," my father would say to them. Whereupon, he maintained, the fish always put out their noses and answered, "If you do your duty, we do our duty,"—words fully as applicable to ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... flute-like notes, And clear and shrill the answers trill from leafy isles and silver throats. The twinkling light on cape and height; the hum of voices on the shores; The merry laughter on the night; the dip and plash of frolic oars,— These tell the tale. On hill and dale the cities pour their gay and fair; Along the sapphire lake they sail, and quaff like wine the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... transparent dusk of Venice settled down. In the broad canal of the Misericordia a faint plash and drip from a passing gondola; then, in a moment, as the boat rounded into the rio, a resounding "Stai"; again silence and ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... that's vainer than the plash Of these wave-whimsies on the shore: "Give us a pearl to fill the gash — God, let our ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... thy marriage-song; Dark as the touchstone that tries gold, And see now—on before thee— Those lines of tender light that creep The clouded sky along: O night! that trieth gold of love, This love is proven perfect! O lines that streak the touchstone sky, Plash forth true shining gold! O rose-leaf feet, go boldly! O night!—that lovest lovers— Thy softest robe of silence About ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... The Seine flows by upon one side, separated only by the high way of the quays. The bed of the Seine is above the floor of the prison. The surrounding earth was consequently saturated with water, and the oozing moisture diffused over the walls and the floors the humidity of the sepulcher. The plash of the river; the rumbling of carts upon the pavements overhead; the heavy tramp of countless footfalls, as the multitude poured into and out of the halls of justice, mingled with the moaning of the prisoners in those solitary cells. There ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... shed, cast, pour, plash, scatter, emit, pour out; refl., to fall, be scattered ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... inherent in the Thames. Just after midday the water was all but up to the necks of the piers of Hammersmith Bridge, and the island at Chiswick was nearly submerged. Willows standing in lakes were recording the existence of towing-paths no longer able to speak for themselves, and the insolent plash of ripples over wharves that had always thought themselves above that sort of thing seemed to say:—"Thus far will I come, and a little farther for that matter." Father Thames never quite touched the landing of the boat-ladder, at the end of the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... floes and lumps of ice float on the dark surface, looking like white marble on a black ground. Occasionally there is a larger dark-colored pool, where the wind gets a hold of the water and forms small waves that ripple and plash against the edge of the ice, the only signs of life in this desert tract. It is like an old friend, the sound of these playful wave-lets. And here, too, they eat away the floes and hollow out their edges. One could almost imagine one's self in more southern latitudes. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... of the darkness behind us, and we knew that he had sent a party into the fixed boat to rock it from side to side. Then came a cheer, as the water rolled hissing and whispering among the reeds; there was the simultaneous plash of oars, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... spectral light even the distant piles of building. The boat and the toiling figure of the single rower were distinctly perceptible. Now all again was darkness; the wind suddenly subsided; in a few minutes the plash of the oars was audible, and the boat apparently stopped beneath ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... fly-fishing, so that every fish knows the lures, the fun is mainly over. In April, no doubt, something may still be done, and in the silver twilights of June, when as you drift on the still surface you hear the constant sweet plash of the rising trout, a few, and these good, may be taken. But the water wants re-stocking, and the burns in winter need watching, in the interests of spawning fish. It is nobody's interest, that I know of, to take trouble and incur expense; ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... furnaces in the neighbourhood of Glasgow glowed somewhat ominously large as the night wore on, we retired to rest rather in hope than resignation. But dismal, indeed, was the prospect when we awoke. A vaporous grey mist had entirely usurped the heavens, and the plash of weary rain resounded through the pluvious metropolis of the west. Fortunately, we were not ignorant of the fact, that Glasgow is under the peculiar tutelage of the Pleiades; and accordingly we proceeded to the railway, trusting that matters might mend so soon as we lost sight ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... blood was up, and I rushed fiercely at him. With the quickness of a cat he dodged me, spat in my face as I turned, and, with a horrible laugh, sprang headlong into the well. Down deeper and deeper sank the laugh—then it died away—then a faint plash—and all was silent. Rama Ragobah was gone! For fully ten minutes I stood dazed and irresolute and then returned mechanically to the house. I at first thought of informing the authorities of the whole affair, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... and walked slowly back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... puffed a little waft of smoke. "Spat!" sounded the bullet. The huge snake began to writhe and twist, fairly shaking the tree; then fold by fold it issued, in a horrid mazy line of yellow and black (would it never end?), until with a plash the last of it fell into the water and swirling the ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... youthful pair. The maiden drooped like a gentle flower, When lashed by the gale in its quivering bower: Her arms round her lover she wildly twined, And gazed on the sea with a wildered mind. He bent o'er the trembler, and sheltered her form, From the plash of the sea, and the sweep of the storm; But woe to the lover, and woe to the maid, Whose hopes on the treacherous deep are laid! For the Sea hath a King whose palaces shine, In lustre and light down the pearly brine, And he loves to gather in ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... by which the whole pit was drained. Beyond the light the three men encountered another wall of sand, and from behind it and through it there came to them the dull thud and the plash of heavy water. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... on the water. Cold February, a little sloop, and the bleak roadstead at the mouth of the Rappahannock brought but few comforts to the anxious wife, who sat muffled upon that unstable deck, watching the opposite shore, whilst the ceaseless plash of the waves breaking upon her ear numbered the minutes that marked the weary hours, and the hours that marked the still more weary day. She watched for the party who had galloped into the sombre pine-forest that sheltered the road ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... of the summer night! Will of the grass that stirs in its sleep! Desire of the honeysuckle! And further away, Like the plash of far-off waves in the fluid night, The ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... Julia to the skies as the best and fastest of ships. Jermin too, as a good fellow, and a sailor every inch, came in for his share of praise; and as for the captain—quiet man, he would never trouble anyone. In short, every inducement we could think of was presented; and Plash Jack ended by assuring the beachcombers solemnly that, now we were all well and hearty, nothing but a regard to principle prevented us from returning on ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... than one religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings, quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt throng here when it grows dark. Hastening ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... may rise from crystal waters spanned By other marbles: founts may plash on stone, And fashionably-branched trees may stand As thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, how ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... This sudden plash into pure wildness—baptism in Nature's warm heart—how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us. Here without knowing it ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... soothing as the scarcely audible plash of a distant fountain; but the incident she cited struck ominously on the Archbishop's recollection, rousing memory and causing him to dart a quick glance at the countess, in which was blended sharp enquiry and awakened ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... lake in the soft light, the glory of the setting sun still reflected from the surrounding peaks, the music of their boat songs accompanied by the dip and plash of the oars. ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... The "plash-plash" of the Foam Flake's hoofs and the squeak and grind of buggy wheels died away along the invisible main road. Captain Sears stared at the ropes of rain laced diagonally across the lighted window of ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... hot June day, and out of the welter of din and rumble the cool plash of falling water came to his straining ears refreshingly. At once he considered the dog and, thankful for the distraction, stepped beneath the portico of a provision store and indicated the marble basin with a ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the plash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... in crash, rash, gash, flash, clash, lash, slash, plash, trash, indicate something acting more nimbly and sharply. But ush, in crush, rush, gush, flush, blush, brush, hush, push, imply something as acting more obtusely and dully. Yet in both there is indicated a swift and sudden ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... fabric of the air took on a tint of daintiness so rare, fleeting, and exquisite as made your fancy riot, conjuring mirages of smooth enchantment, gardens that hung luxuriant beneath a languorous moon, the plash of water and ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... boats draw near and go by. The houses to the left hid them from her: but she leaned out, hearkening to the soft plash of oars, the creak of thole-pins, the girls' voices in hushed chorus practising the simple native harmonies they would lift aloud as they returned after sunrise. She recognised the tune, too; the old tune of "The ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... low strip of alluvial soil. It was a solitary, a melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels for the ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... miles from our camp was the Makata plain an extensive swamp. The water was on an average one foot in depth; in some places we plunged into holes three, four, and even five feet deep. Plash, splash, plash, splash, were the only sounds we heard from the commencement of the march until we found the bomas occupying the only dry spots along the line of march. This kind of work continued for two days, until we came in sight of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... leaves of stephanotis spread a canopy, pale clusters of its white, heavy-scented bloom gleaming star-like in the faint light of Chinese lanterns swung from the leaf-clad roof. From somewhere near at hand came the silvery, showering plash of a fountain playing—a delicate and aerial little sound against the robust harmonies of the band, like the notes ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... yell, and shot, and cannon-roar,— "Now, by the Holy Cross! I swear, since earth and sea began, Was never such a daring deed essay'd by mortal man!" 70 Thick blew the smoke across the stream, and faster flash'd the flame: The water plash'd in hissing jets as ball and bullet came. Yet onward push'd the Cavaliers all stern and undismay'd, With thousand armed foes before, and none behind to aid Once, as they near'd the middle stream, so strong the torrent swept, 75 That scarce that long and living ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... take horse and win— As from swart August to the green lap of May— To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware In any of her innumerable nests Of that first sudden plash of dawn, Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn Forward and up, in wider and wider way Shall float the sands and brim the shores On this our haunch of Earth, as round she roars And spins into the outlook ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... very still. Freddy never remembered seeing any one quite so still before. Even his breathing had grown quiet, and the rise and fall of the broad breast was the only sign of life in the otherwise motionless figure. All around him was very still, too. Freddy could hear the plash of the waves on the beach, the rustle of the wind through the dwarf trees, the whir of wings as some sea bird took its swift flight above the broken roof. But within there was a solemn hush, that to the small watcher seemed ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... mellow, they that found them did gather them up, and oft eat of them to their hurt. So Christiana's boys, as boys are apt to do, being pleased with the trees, and with the fruit that did hang thereon, did plash[58] them, and began to eat. Their mother did also chide them for so doing, but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and the stranger quitted the house, while Fenwolf lingered to offer some attention to Mabel, which was so ill received that he was fain to hurry forth to the boathouse, where he embarked with his companion. As soon as the plash of oars announced their departure, Mabel went forth to watch them. The stranger, who was seated in the stern of the boat, for the first time fixed his large melancholy eyes full upon her, and did not withdraw his gaze till an angle of the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... royal torch-bearer of the sun. The Columbia is a rolling flood of silver, and the gigantic trees of the centuries become a ghostly and shadowy splendor. There is a deep and reverent silence everywhere, save the cry of the water-fowl in the high air and the plash of the Cascades. Even the Chinook winds cease to blow, and ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... the simple, plaintive melody, sounded to Lambert as refreshing as the plash of a brook in the heat of the day. He stood listening, his elbow on the show case, thinking vaguely that Alta had a good voice for singing ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... was long past. Outside, the hot wind could be heard every now and then, listlessly flapping the carved wooden lattice-work shutters of an overhanging balcony built out on timber props over the river Maritza, whose turbid waters surged beneath with steady plash. Inside, the striped silken curtains were closely drawn. The atmosphere was stuffy and airless, filled with languorous ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... repent me of it, Winter. I upbraid myself as bitterly as any can upbraid me for the folly. But hark—listen! I hear the plash of oars. See, there is a boat! It is he—it is Fawkes! I know him by his height and his strong action. Heaven be praised! All cannot yet be lost! Move upwards yet a few paces, and we will speak to him here alone before we take him within ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... is. It seems that I did not come to Bleiberg carelessly in the way of amusement, but to work out a part of my destiny." He arrested his steps at the fountain and listened to the low, musical plash of the water, each drop of which fell with the light of a dazzling jewel. The cold stars shone from above. They were not farther away than she. A princess, a lonely and forlorn princess, hemmed in by the fabric of royal laws; a princess yet ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... suspense had become intolerable and the two had already begun to exchange glances almost of despair, a plash was heard, and Asgeelo emerged far to the right. He struck out strongly toward the boat, which was at once rowed toward him. In a few minutes he was taken in. He did not appear to be ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... walk over the principal of my vassals, whose custom it is to snore immediately across the doorway. Conceive the oddity of the most familiar things in this place, from one instance: Last night we go downstairs at half-past eight, step into the gondola, slide away on the black water, ripple and plash swiftly along for a mile or two, land at a broad flight of steps, and instantly walk into the most brilliant and beautiful theatre conceivable—all silver and blue, and precious little fringes made of glittering prisms of glass. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... overflowing—immense sponges in fact;—and one has to watch carefully in crossing them to avoid plunging into deep water-holes, made by the feet of elephants or buffaloes. In the ooze generally the water comes half-way up the shoe, and we go plash, plash, plash, in the lawn-like glade. There are no people here now in these lovely wild valleys; but to-day we came to mounds made of old for planting grain, and slag from iron furnaces. The guide was rather offended because he did not get meat and meal, though he is accustomed ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... day of delight it was! The browns of autumn tingeing the moor, the very air full of its mellow richness, the plash of the waves on the rocks below the cliffs, the song of the reapers coming on the breeze, oh, yes, life was all glorious and beautiful on the Garthowen ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a hundred ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... trudged on alone, plish-plash-plosh, through the clayey sludge, cold, dripping and miserable, stopping occasionally to turn my back to the wind or to tie up a wayward shoestring, and pondering dolefully in my mind that I had full two hours to go, not only before reaching home, but perhaps before finding a shelter of any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... tree ferns, grew in profusion around us, and rare orchids filled the air with their sweet perfumes. Strangely enough not a bird, or living thing, was to be seen in this lovely glen, and the solemn stillness which reigned, broken only by the plash of the water as it fell from rock to rock, was ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... to have a great idea of our power," whispered Hollis, hopelessly. And then again there was a silence, the feeble plash of water, the steady tick of chronometers. Jackson, with bare arms crossed, leaned his shoulders against the bulkhead of the cabin. He was bending his head under the deck beam; his fair beard spread out magnificently ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... popedom,—the despair Of free men, good men, wise men; the dread shows Of women's faces, by the faggot's flash Tossed out, to the minutest stir and throb O' the white lips, the least tremble of a lash, To glut the red stare of a licensed mob; The short mad cries down oubliettes, and plash So horribly far off; priests, trained to rob, And kings that, like encouraged nightmares, sat On nations' hearts most heavily distressed With monstrous sights and apophthegms of fate— We pass these things,—because "the times" are prest With necessary charges of ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... but once. The waves, with ceaseless motion, Do day and night plash on the pebbled shore; But the strong tide of the resistless ocean Sweeps in but ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... occupation; but it was something even worse in the evening, in the dark, solitary library, where the very size of the room gave an additional sense of loneliness; and in the silence he could hear, through the closed shutters, the distant plash and surge of the tide,—a sound, of which, in former years, he had never been sensible. There, evening after evening, he sat,—his attention roaming from his employment to feed on his ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... water which covered all the stone; but the third sprang into the air with delicate triumph, fine and high, satisfied, tenuous and exultant. This one tossed its summit into the light, and, alone of the things in the garden, the plash of its waters recalled and suggested activity—though that in so discreet a way that it was to be heard rather than regarded. The birds flew off in circles over the roofs of the town below us. Very soon they went to ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... is tenderly rippled with gold and blue. And while the children play beside you, dabbling and paddling in the wavelets, and digging up the ridges of yellow sand, which take the print of their pattering footsteps, nothing is more pleasant than to let the transparent stream of the quiet tide plash musically with its light and motion to your very feet; nothing more pleasant than to listen to its silken murmurs, and to watch it flow upwards with its beneficent coolness, and take possession of the shore. But it is a very different thing when there rises behind you ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... people to do—making a prodigious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour. As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship paddles further away yet. These, with the creaking little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-water marks in the mud, and the broken causeway, and the broken bank, and the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... back to town, Richard was again selected to sit by Mrs. Mount. Brayder and Adrian started the jokes. The pair of parasites got on extremely well together. Soft fell the plash of the oars; softly the moonlight curled around them; softly the banks glided by. The ladies were in a state of high sentiment. They sang without request. All deemed the British ballad-monger an appropriate interpreter of their emotions. After good wine, and plenty thereof, fair throats will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have almost taken us for a phantom- boat or a shadow on the dark water. Not a breath of air was stirring; but fortunately the gentle ripple of the sea upon the shore, mingled with the soft roar of the breaker on the distant reef, effectually drowned the slight plash that we unavoidably made in the water by ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... deeds: And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study, Virtue and that part of philosophy Will I apply that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev'd. Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left And am to Padua come as he that leaves A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep, And with satiety ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... congregation by exhibiting a traditional shaving rag of Isaiah's with the Prophet's stubble hair on the dried soap-sud. And yet, on the other hand, there is an innocency in it, a security of faith, a fulness evinced in the play and plash of its overflowing, that at other times give one the same sort of pleasure as the sight of blackberry bushes and children's handkerchief-gardens on the slopes of a rampart, the promenade of some peaceful old ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... sun. A slender rowing boat, known as a belang, makes a brilliant point of colour on the blue strait between the sister islands. Red and yellow flags and pennants flutter above the green deck; the clash of gongs and cymbals echoes across the water, and a weird chant accompanies the rhythmic plash of the short oars, as the brown rowers toss them high in air, and bring them down with a sharp splash. A splendid avenue of kanari-trees extends along the shore, the usual Dutch church symbolises the uncompromising grimness of Calvinistic creed, and the crumbling fort of Orange-Nassau, the scene ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... on it. Then commenced a period of suspense that tried his nerves most cruelly; every faculty of his being was strained and concentrated in the one sense of hearing; sounds so faint as to be imperceptible reverberated in his ears like the crash of thunder; the plash of a distant waterfall, the rustling of a leaf, the movement of an insect in the grass, were like the booming of artillery. Was that the tramp of cavalry, the deep rumbling of gun-carriages driven at speed, that he heard down there to the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... sir, work is occupation, but work harassed with care for others becomes unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now. At my desk I seem to see those low shores and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves between me and that indistinct boundary. I am floating on the river current, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the blue above him, and at his feet summer waves were breaking peacefully on the shore, the sound of their soft, musical plash filling up his pauses ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... buttercups and forget-me-nots, is behind her, but she has had enough of that, and is open to more spiritual pleasures. The kingfishers and water- wagtails flit about her. The water-rat jumps into the stream with a soft plash, and his black body scuttles along to the opposite bank. The green dragon-flies float hither and thither; the beautiful frail-winged water- flies float over trout too lazy to snatch at them. The ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Fort Wagner, and when wounded at Olustee was prepared to live or die, whichever was God's will. Mrs. Marsh was sitting beside his bed, in quiet conversation with him, when without warning, the hemorrhage commenced. The plash of blood was heard, as the life-current burst from his wound, and, "Go now," he said in his low calm voice. "This is the end, and I would ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... few brief moments in the lapse of time, but an age in the records of thought. Not a breath relieved the horror and intensity of that silence. The plash of a light oar was heard;—a boat touched the vessel. The ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... confessed their ways make an agreeable change from the habits of the pestering drones that infest the beach and the neighbourhood of the hotels. The whole of the steep rocky gorge of that tiny torrent the Canneto is full of mills, each emitting a whirring sound which mingles with the continual plash of the water as it descends in miniature cascades the full length of the ravine, providing in its headlong course towards the sea the motive power required to turn all this quantity of machinery. Bridges span the Canneto at several points, whilst either bank is occupied by tiny factories ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... limited immortality—an immortality that may be, and finally is, curtailed—but she can suffer a punishment worse to her than extinction. The prelude opens with the roar and hoarse scream of the storm as it dashes through the forest—- the plash of the rain, the flashing of lightning and the roll of the thunder. The musical idea was obviously suggested by Schubert's "Erl-king." In each we have the same rapidly-reiterated notes in the upper part, and Wagner's bars are simply a variant ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... half-ashore, was bordered by a fringe of silver. When at one moment a gentle breeze lifted the water into ripples, countless stars floated, down a white waterway from yonder argent moon. Not a house on the banks of the mere; not a sign of life; only the low plash of wavelets on the pebbles. Hark! What cry was that coming clear and shrill? It was the curlew. And when the night bird was gone she left a silence deeper ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... were in their master's confidence or not is not certain, but just before midnight they plunged into a narrow, miry road that traversed wastes and low coppices; the plash of the horses' feet showed the tract to be marshy and full of pools. Her ladyship looked out across the ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... stop; he would scramble about a little in the high places and doze in the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... summer evenings, when great dark masses of cloud tinged with crimson were piled to the zenith at sundown, and coldly reflected in the dark waters of the bay, she saw the destination of the world; she heard cries of torment, too, in the plash of breaking waves and the unceasing roar of the sea; and as she watched the visitors lounging about in bright dresses, laughing and talking, careless of their doom, she could hardly restrain her tears. Night after night when she went to bed, she put her ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... grandmother bustled back and forth, talking loudly, that her voice might reach above the frizzling of the frying-pan. But to-day there was a strange, most marked silence, broken only by the singing of the kettle, the plash of the rain outside, and a curious sound which Jessie could not make out, only she thought it sounded as though ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... west. As he progressed the pungent odour of seaweed refreshed him and grew stronger every moment. Suddenly he became aware that although high land lay upon his left hand there was to his right a hollow darkness without shadow or depth. No merry plash of waves came to explain this; the smell of the sea was there, but the joyous tumble of its waters was not to be heard. The traveller stooped low and peered into the darkness. Gradually he discerned a distant ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... as huge, and the matter of the number of beds required, which was not less portentous: this in reference to places of which the names—Eastbourne, Folkestone, Cromer, Scarborough, Whitby—tormented her with something of the sound of the plash of water that haunts the traveller in the desert. She had not been out of London for a dozen years, and the only thing to give a taste to the present dead weeks was the spice of a chronic resentment. The sparse customers, the ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... little sandy bay or sparkling weir, it leaves an impression of melody on the soul like the echo of a sweet song just sweetly sung. High up the lanes run;—low down on the shoreline they come to an end,—and the wayfarer, pacing along at the summit of their devious windings, can hear the plash of the sea below him as he walks,—the little tender laughing plash if the winds are calm and the day is fair,—the angry thud and boom of the billows if a storm is rising. These bye-roads, of which there are so many along the Somersetshire coast, are often very lonely,—they ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds. The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the objurgations of the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... and though Miss Tita gave no high-pitched voice to her satisfaction I felt that she surrendered herself. She was more than pleased, she was transported; the whole thing was an immense liberation. The gondola moved with slow strokes, to give her time to enjoy it, and she listened to the plash of the oars, which grew louder and more musically liquid as we passed into narrow canals, as if it were a revelation of Venice. When I asked her how long it was since she had been in a boat she answered, "Oh, I don't know; a long time—not since my aunt began ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... waked up. It frolicked in little waves, bringing them forth, decking them with a fringe of foam, flinging them on one another, and breaking them up into tiny eddies. The foam, melting, hissed and sighed, and everything was filled with the musical plash and cadence. The darkness ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... who, in their mischief, would drop burning twigs on thatched roofs. Nor that magic bird, the fulmar, a wanderer from the Scottish archipelago, dropping from his bill an oil which the islanders used to burn in their lamps. Nor do you ever find in the evening, in the plash of the ebbing tide, that ancient, legendary neitse, with the feet of a hog and the bleat of a calf. The tide no longer throws up the whiskered seal, with its curled ears and sharp jaws, dragging itself along on its nailless paws. On that Portland—nowadays so changed as scarcely to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
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