"Purling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not attempt to deny the importance of size in winning our first regard: it is a law inseparable from the thing itself; but I must protest against the taste of the age being supplied always with mere physical attributes. The purling stream and babbling brook; the small rill falling from on high, till its feathery stream is lost in mist, are and should be as much sought after as the roaring torrent or the thundering cascade. The effect of the one is ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... at the Name of it. The Wife is overrun with Affectation, the Husband sunk into Brutality: The Lady cannot bear the Noise of the Larks and Nightingales, hates your tedious Summer Days, and is sick at the Sight of shady Woods and purling Streams; the Husband wonders how any one can be pleased with the Fooleries of Plays and Operas, and rails from Morning to Night at essenced Fops and tawdry Courtiers. The Children are educated in these different Notions of their ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and purling Streams, I spend my Life in pleasing Dreams; And would not for the World be thought To change my false delightful Thought: For who, alas! can happy be, That does the Truth of all things see? For who, alas! can happy be, That does the Truth of ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... advocated by some that man first learned to talk by imitating the sounds of nature. It is sometimes called the "bow-wow" theory of the origin of language. Words are used to express the meaning of nature. Thus the purling of the brook, the lowing of the cow, the barking of the dog, the moaning of the wind, the rushing of water, the cry of animals, and other expressions of nature were imitated, and thus formed the root words of language. This theory was very commonly upheld by the philosophers ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... his constant companion, Golemar, were making the round of the traps and had been gone for hours. Barry was alone—alone with the beauties of spring in the hills, with the soft call of the meadow lark in the bit of greenery which fringed the still purling stream in the little valley, the song of the breeze through the pines, the ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the Geraldines!—and are there any fears Within the sons of conquerors for full a thousand years? Can treason spring from out a soil bedewed with martyrs' blood? Or has that grown a purling brook, which long rushed down a flood?— By Desmond swept with sword and fire—by clan and keep laid low— By Silken Thomas and his kin,—by sainted Edward, no! The forms of centuries rise up, and in the Irish line COMMAND THEIR SON TO TAKE THE POST ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... leave this family in such piteous state Was out of question, so young GOODWORTH took The horses out—for now 'twas growing late— To quench their thirst at a clear purling brook, And gave them food within a sheltered nook; Then found some boards and made a coffin rude. Meanwhile the father took God's holy Book And read such portions as teach fortitude To us, that all immoderate grief may ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... of an early June afternoon. The hot white light of this open country makes my eyes ache and seems to dry my soul up. I can't help thinking of cool green shadows, and musky little valleys of gloom with a brook purling over mossy stones. I long for the solemn greenery of great elms, aisles and aisles of cathedral-like gloom and leaf-filtered sunlight. I'd love to hear an English cuckoo again, and feel the soft mild sea-air ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... of this state-table runs a purling brook crossed by quaint bridges, in which gold and silver fish frisk about between banks of moss and flowers. The whole scene is lit with wax candles in chandeliers, and in ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... as to forbid cultivation. Upon these lovely acclivities were built the cabins of the emigrants, at the base of which, and near the house, was always to be found a fountain of pure, sweet water, gushing and purling away over sand and pebbles, meandering through a valley which it fertilized, and which abounds in shrubs flowering in beauty, and sheltered by forests of oak, hickory, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... it is because we will affect to have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore-throats and agues with attempting to realise these visions. Master Damon writes a song, and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening. Zephyr is a north-east ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... you wander down the vale, When balmy scents perfume the gale, And purling rills and linnets hail The King of kings, To muse with you I never ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... gods that haunt green groves, purling brooks, and mountain valleys seemed to have fled forever from these deserts. Pan alone, the great and mysterious Pan, was hiding somewhere nearby in the chaos of nature, and with mocking glance seemed to be pursuing the tiny ant that ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... without the tent, I say,— Me and my ottoman,— I'll see the messenger myself! It is the caravan From Africa, thou sayest, And they bring us news of war? Draw me without the tent, and quick! As at the desert well The freshness of the purling brook Delights the tired gazelle, So pant I for the voice of him That cometh ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... pretexts alleged in that extraordinary performance in support of the trade by influence and authority. Mr. Hollond, one of the Council, joined Mr. Rouse in opinion that a letter to the purport of that minute should be written; but they were overruled by Messrs. Purling, Hogarth, and Shakespeare, who passed a resolution to defer sending any reply to Mr. Hurst: and none was ever sent. Thus they gave countenance to the doctrine contained in that letter, as well as to the mischievous practices which must inevitably arise from the exercise of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fermenting for the coming days. Even now a windy turbulence troubled the half-naked boughs, and a lonely leaf would occasionally spin downwards to rejoin on the grass the scathed multitude of its comrades which had preceded it in its fall. The river by the pavilion, in the summer so clear and purling, now slid onwards brown and thick and silent, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... fourth angel—an angel with another spick-and-span blouse, and the light of devotion in her eyes and the sound of it in her purling voice. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... things—frogs and tadpoles and newts and strange water-insects, nixies and pixies. Undines and Sabrinas fair and water-babies; and such strange plants grow in them; and who can guess the meaning of the tales they tell, in that never-ceasing, purling tongue of theirs? . . . And Signor Ranocchio? What do you suppose he is thinking of, as he floats there, so still, so saturnine, so indifferent to us? He is plainly in a deep, deep reverie. How wise he looks—a grey, wise old water-hermit, with his head full of strange, unimaginable ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... fair as Fields in Autumn seen, Her Temper gentle as the purling Stream: That's true; but then with those the rest conspire, Lighter she is than Air, ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... the effect of shutting out a world which clamored to participate in their pleasures, and looked on themselves as being not forgotten, but too selfish in keeping to themselves. It kept little streams of mirth purling through Kate's soul, and at each jest or supposed brilliancy she laughed twice—once with them and once at them. But they were unsuspicious—her friends. They were secretly sorry for her, that ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... and above us, going its silent or noisy round of mechanical and chemical change, ponderable, insensate, obstructive, slumbering in the rocks, quietly active in the soil, gently rustling in the trees, sweetly purling in the brooks, slowly, invisibly building and shaping our bodies—how could we ever dream that it held in leash such a terrible, ubiquitous, spectacular thing as this of the forked lightning? If we were to see and hear it for the first time, should we not think that the Judgment ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... Pindar tells us[908] that the abode of the blest is a glorious existence, where the sun shines bright through the entire night in meadows red with roses, an extensive plain full of shady trees ever in bloom never in fruit, watered by gentle purling streams, and there the blest ones pass their time away in thinking and talking about the past and present in social converse....[909] But the third road is of those who have lived unholy and lawless lives, that thrusts their souls to Erebus and the bottomless pit, where sluggish streams ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... ripples over the old, brown oak sill, and he who listens may hear the brook telling a story all day long in purling undertones. I fancy its language a simple one, too, but its words of one syllable tumble so swiftly over one another that, in spite of their liquid purity of tone, I never quite catch them. It is the brook's rapidity of utterance that troubles me. I am quite sure, always, that if ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... how droll the most of them are, with their unmistakable traces of descent from Ariosto, Tasso, and Guarini! What acres of enameled meadow there are in those pages! Brooks enough to turn all the mills in the world go purling through them. I should say some thousands of nymphs are constantly engaged in weaving garlands there, and the swains keep such a piping on those familiar notes,—Amore, dolore, crudele, and miele. Poor ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... been dammed and widened into a deep, limpid pool to which the clean, white sand of its bottom lent a golden hue. At the lower end it overflowed in a waterfall, the purling music of which filled the glade. Overhead the great trees were arched together and interlaced, their lower branches set with flowering orchids like hothouse plants upon a window-ledge. The dense ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... glen with its purling stream and reedy bed, and entered very shortly upon an entirely different country, covered with porcupine grass. We went north-west to some ridges at seventeen miles, where there was excellent vegetation, but no water. I noticed to-day for the first time upon ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... the cedar, shall not the lowly hyssop fear and tremble? When anglers draw the great leviathan from his mighty deeps, what hope have the fish of the shallow pond? When the fishing-line is dropped into the dashing torrent, can they feel secure, the waters of the purling brook? ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... with the flowers and the birds, sweet, sweet sounds were wafted to our ears.... We seemed to hear women's voices in them.... And everything round about,—the sky, the sea, the bellying of the sail up aloft, the purling of the waves at the stern,—everything spoke ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... leaves,—I believe a species of ash,—some of a rich claret, and the never-failing arbutus, here quite a tree, with its orange and crimson berries, all these massed together formed admirable contrasts in shape and colour. And then there was the gentle brook, never roaring or boisterous, but purling among rocks dividing it into still pools, with giant ferns hanging over the stream and bunches of hassock-grass luxuriating in the alluvial soil of its little deltas, and, where the forest receded, a graceful growth of shrubbery ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... leads up the Salagua, alternately climbing the hard mesa and losing itself in the shifting sand of the river bottom until, a mile or two below the mouth of the box canyon, it swings in to the edge of the water. But the Salagua is no purling brook, dignified by a bigger name; it is not even a succession of mill ponds like the dammed-up streams of the East: in its own name the Salagua is a Rio, broad and swift, with a current that clutches treacherously ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks, Old-fashion'd halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks... (To) divert her eyes with pictures in the fire, Hum half a tune, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... Bag, and made as good a Meal as the Courseness of the Fare, and the Niceness of her Appetite would permit: After which, she bruis'd the outward green Shells of a Wall-nut or two, and smear'd her lovely Face, Hands, and Part of her Arms, with the Juice; then looking into the little purling Stream, that seem'd to murmur at the Injury she did to so much Beauty, she sigh'd and wept, to think to what base Extremities she was now likely to be reduc'd! That she should be forc'd to stain that Skin which ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... draw it out with his eyes or with his breath. And the poor Poet cries out, "Pump! the water is gaining on us, and our shop is going to ruin. Pump!" Whereupon the lazy, absent-minded one resumes pumping, while yearning all the while for the plashing stone-rollers and the purling eaves of his home in Baalbek. And once in a pinch,—they are labouring under a peltering rain,—he stops as is his wont to remind Shakib of the Arabic saying, "From the dripping ceiling to the running gargoyle." He is labouring again under a hurricane of ideas. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... 340 With dishes pil'd, and meats of noblest sort And savour, Beasts of chase, or Fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boyl'd, Gris-amber-steam'd; all Fish from Sea or Shore, Freshet, or purling Brook, of shell or fin, And exquisitest name, for which was drain'd Pontus and Lucrine Bay, and Afric Coast. Alas how simple, to these Cates compar'd, Was that crude Apple that diverted Eve! And at a stately ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... wander all day, by a purling stream That flows through some mossy dell, And watch its silvery waters gleam, And list to its music's swell As it dashes down some wild cascade, On its race to the wide, wide sea, With sweeter strains than old Orpheus played, Is supreme ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... once directed, got there first, and was down on her knees on the bank, dabbling her hands in the purling little ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... knoll. On either side were tall and stately trees. A purling brook at the left rolled its silvery current down a gentle declivity, and in front, for half a ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... on the tree, I hear the purling brook, And from the old manse on the lea Flies slow the cawing crow— ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... for the poetic life. Academies cannot shut him out from the odour of the violet or the song of the nightingale. He hears the lark's song filling the heavens, as the happy bird fans the milk-white cloud with its wings. He listens to the purling of the brook, the bleating of the lamb, the song of the milkmaid, and the joyous cry of the reaper. Thus his mind is daily fed with the choicest influences of nature. He cannot but appreciate the joy, the glory, the unconscious delight of ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... the woodland, Where purling brooks loosen their brown tresses, Where the music of the breeze Is played on viols of the vines and trees, Thy soft words I hear Like songs from enchantment's strings. Ah, vanishing moments of ecstacy! Far-fleeing only ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... set me free! Heart, thou art desolate. Farewell, O sun. Vain are the plains of the earth, its flowers, and purling streams. I loved you all once—but now no longer love. Thee I woo, kind Death! Wa-shu-pa calls me hence. In life we were one. We'll bask together in the Spirit Land. Short is my pass ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... precious old town that we've dodged Indians, and shot rattlesnakes, and sunburnt our noses, and rain-soaked our dress suits for! That's why we've pillowed our heads on the cushiony cactus and tramped through purling sands, and blistered our hands pullin' at eider-down ropes, and strained our leg-muscles goin' down, and busted our lungs comin' up, and clawed along the top edge of the world with nothin' but healthy climate between us and the bottom of the bottomless pit. Humph! That's what you call Santa ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... dew-drops off, and bruise the rising grass; Nor must the lizard's painted brood appear, Nor wood-pecks, nor the swallow, harbour near. They waste the swarms, and, as they fly along, 20 Convey the tender morsels to their young. Let purling streams, and fountains edged with moss, And shallow rills run trickling through the grass; Let branching olives o'er the fountain grow; Or palms shoot up, and shade the streams below; That when the youth, led by their princes, shun The crowded hive and sport it in the sun, Refreshing ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... by thirst, went to drink in a clear, purling rivulet; but the current, with its circling eddy, snatched her away, and carried her down the stream. A Dove, pitying her distressed condition, cropped a branch from a neighbouring tree and let it fall into the water, by means of which the Ant saved ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... marvelous tenor voice in one of those weird folk-songs of the far-away that fairly tear the listener's heart out of his body—a song as sinisterly metallic as the hum of hate along a dagger-blade; a song as rapturously surprised at its own divinity as the first trill of a nightingale; a song of purling brooks and grim, gray mountain fortresses; a song of quick, sharp lights and long, low, lazy cadences; a song of love and hate; a song of all joys and all sorrows—and then death; the song of Sex as Nature sings it—the plaintive, wheedling, ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... stone and drooping bough to the semblance of urgency, and with its mazy lights went a clear murmur of sound. Georgie took off her little cloth jacket and threw herself down on the grassy slope that, amidst a tangle of hemlock, edged the purling water. Between her and the sunlight drooped an alder; she saw against the sun the showers of yellow catkins all gleaming transparent, like sunlit raindrops caught at the moment when they lengthen.... She lay under the glory ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... South Sea, generally are surprised at the appearance of the islands when beheld from the sea. From the vague accounts we sometimes have of their beauty, many people are apt to picture to themselves enamelled and softly swelling plains, shaded over with delicious groves, and watered by purling brooks, and the entire country but little elevated above the surrounding ocean. The reality is very different; bold rock-bound coasts, with the surf beating high against the lofty cliffs, and broken here and there into deep inlets, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... stream and the day being far spent we decided to pass the night hereabouts, so we turned aside forthwith and having gone but a few yards, found ourselves quite hidden from the highway, so thick grew the trees and so dense and tangled the thickets that shut us in; and here ran this purling brook, making sweet, soft noises in the shallows mighty soothing to be heard. And here I would have stayed but Sir Richard shook wise head and was for pushing farther into the wild. "For," said he, "there may be other travellers behind us to spy some gleam ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Sebastia great, But whist'leth to thy flock in cold and heat. Viewing the Sun by day, the Moon by night Endimions, Dianaes dear delight, Upon the grass resting your healthy limbs, By purling Brooks looking how fishes swims, If pride within your lowly Cells ere haunt, Of him that was Shepherd then King go vaunt. This moneth the Roses are distil'd in glasses, Whose fragrant smel all made ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... arm he wriggled violently, so that it was difficult to wade ashore with him. In this difficulty I took him to a place where the shoal in the middle of the stream was about three inches deep. There I lay down on him, picked up a stone and hammered his head with it, while the purling water rippled pleasantly over ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... curling, The silver streamlet purling, The meadow wildflowers furling Their leaflets to repose: All woo me from the world ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... to look upon, like suddenly grown girls, and the sun was beginning to shine hot. Now she passed over rustic bridges, under posted warnings to drive slow or pay a fine, or through sandy fords across purling streams, hearing the monotone of some unseen mill-dam, or scaring the tall gray crane from his fishing, or the otter from his pranks. Again she went up into leagues of clear pine forest, with stems as straight as lances; meeting now a farmer, and now a school-girl or two, and once a squad of scouts, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... the freedom which characterized their treatment of the rigid and somewhat ungraceful costumes before them." Walpole, in his "Anecdotes of Painting," says, "Lely supplied the want of taste with clinquant; his nymphs trail fringes, and embroidery, through meadows and purling streams. Vandyke's habits are those of the times; Lely's, a sort of fantastic night-gown fastened with a single pin." Lely's ladies are not unfrequently en masque, and are habited in the conventional dresses adopted for goddesses in the court ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... boundaries! Sometimes he delights to lie under an aged holm, sometimes on the matted grass: meanwhile the waters glide along in their deep channels; the birds warble in the woods; and the fountains murmur with their purling streams, which invites gentle slumbers. But when the wintery season of the tempestuous air prepares rains and snows, he either drives the fierce boars, with many a dog, into the intercepting toils; or spreads his thin nets with the smooth pole, as a snare for the voracious thrushes; or catches ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... from the nearby forests. The light vanished from the sky but the mysterious charm of the time was not broken. In the east a softer and more quiet splendor tipped the foliage with silvery radiance, edging the fleecy clouds with mellow light. Only the purling music of the distant waterfall now broke the restful solemnity of the mountain solitudes. Night with its thoughts of other fairer worlds than this, was here and we with all Nature ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... low, soft voice. To Juliet, to whom every purling syllable was painfully audible, it sounded cooingly, ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... captivating figure of sweet innocence walking unscathed through searing fires of wickedness and vice, and the scenes of mere accessory decoration, like that of the laundresses, the mousm in the first act, with its purling figure borrowed from "Les Huguenots" and its unnecessarily uncanny col legno effect conveyed from "L'Africaine," that the music seemed most effective. "Zanetto" is nothing more than an operatic sketch in one act. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... immersed in sin and sea-coal. But since my late forced visit to my estate, I am so pleased with it, that I am resolved to live and die upon it. I am every day abroad among my acres, and can scarce forbear filling my letter with breezes, shades, flowers, meadows, and purling streams. The simplicity of manners which I have heard you so often speak of, and which appears here in perfection, charms me wonderfully. As an instance of it, I must acquaint you, and by your means ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... morning the two men dragged the little flat boat to the water's edge. The river had risen to full flood during the night and out of the darkness came the crash and grind of ice, the dull roar and splash of undermined banks, and the purling ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... because he is characterized by a childlike inability to comprehend the very existence of sin in the world. Of course his environment has a good deal to do with this. The innocent shepherd poet, shut off from crime by many a grassy hill and purling stream, has a long tradition behind him. The most typical pastoral poet of our period, the hero of Beattie's The Minstrel, suffers a rude shock when an old hermit reveals to him that all the world is not as fair and good as his immediate environment. The innocence of Wordsworth, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... smiles upon the singing brook, With sparkles filling every nook That lurks about its dimpled face, Giving its deepest shadows grace, And breathing on its grassy mane A gloss it ne'er can hope to gain Beneath the sun's more kingly ray. Weirdly the purling waters play In her embrace; then break away To vanish under bending boughs, But ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... I see her yet, The white smoke from her red lips curling, Her dreaming eyes, her soft replies, Her gentle sighs, her laughter purling! Ah, dainty roll, whose parting soul Ebbs out in many a snowy billow, I too would burn, if I could earn Upon her lips so ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... ideal camping-ground, and Jane, whose rosy dreams of camping in Kashmir had pictured her little white canvas home set up in a flowery mead by the side of a purling brook, gazed upon the rugged slopes which rose around—the cold snow gleaming through the shaggy pine-trees—with a shiver and ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... roads, while ears and eyes feasted on the symphonies of Nature and the ever changing beauty of the hills; or stood beside Joanna in a trance of delight out in the fragrant dairy, whose windows opened into a wild sweetness of fluttering leaves, and whose cool stone floor made a channel for a purling brook, watching her as with dexterous hands she shaped and moulded the bubbley dough or tossed up an omelet or made one of her delicious cherry pies, conscious through it all of the sweet influence which seemed to pervade every corner of ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... warlike, the lover and painter of all Nature's old original forms—the ocean, the mountains, and the stars—what thorough sympathy could a man have who never saw a real mountain or a battle, and whose enthusiasm for scenery was confined to purling brooks, trim gardens, artificial grottos, and the shades of Windsor Forest? Accordingly, his Homer, although a beautiful and sparkling poem, is not a satisfactory translation of the "Iliad," and still less of the "Odyssey." ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... earth's surface the freshwaters form a very small fraction, about a hundredth, but they make up for their smallness by their variety. We think of deep lake and shallow pond, of the great river and the purling brook, of lagoon and swamp, and more besides. There is a striking resemblance in the animal population of widely separated freshwater basins: and this is partly because birds carry many small creatures on their muddy feet from one water-shed to another; partly because some ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... halfway between Denver and Golden. The place was rife with birds, all of which are described in other chapters of this volume.[10] Mention need be made here only of the song-sparrows, which were seen in a bushy place through which a purling stream wound its way. Of course, they were Melospiza fasciata montana, but their clear, bell-like trills were precise copies of those of the merry lowland minstrels of the East. Special attention is called to the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Cupid drew His willing slave, with all my hopes and fears— When Phoebus seem'd to rise and set in tears For many a spring—and when I used to dwell A lonely hermit in a silent cell. How upwards oft I traced the purling rills To their pure fountains in the misty hills! The rocks I used to climb, the solemn woods, Where oft I wander'd by the winding floods! And often spent, whene'er I chanced to stray, In amorous ditties all the livelong ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... propitious boon; direct her genial regards to one whose love is without example, and whose constancy is unparalleled. Bear witness to my constancy and faith, ye verdant hills, ye fertile plains, ye shady groves, ye purling streams; and if I prove untrue, ah! let me never find a solitary willow or a bubbling brook, by help of which I may be enabled to put a period to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... he done?" she asked, in a voice which, to me, was as sweet as the sound of a brook purling its way through a dell in ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... by the purling brook, No friend to lonely places; Or, if he toy with Strephon's crook, His Chloes ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Such our Barzillai; but Barzillai too, With Moses Fate does Moses Zeal pursue: Leads to that Bliss which his own Silver Hairs Shall never reach, Rich onely to his Heirs. Kind Patriot, who to plant us Banks of Flow'rs, With purling Streams, cool Shades, and Summer Bow'rs, His Ages needful Rest away does fling, Exhausts his Autumn to adorn our Spring: Whilst his last hours in Toyls and Storms are hurl'd, And onely to enrich th'inheriting World. Thus prodigally throws his Lifes short span, To play his Countries generous ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... olive, by the river's brim, Annunziata sat on the turf, head bowed, so that her curls fell in a tangle all about her cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... morning fed With a full mess of milk and bread. One day the boy his breakfast took, And eat it by a purling brook Which through his mother's orchard ran. From that time ever when he can Escape his mother's eye, he there Takes his food in th' open air. Finding the child delight to eat Abroad, and make the grass his seat, His mother ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the day was filled up by long walks broken by delightful rests under the shade of cornricks on grassy hillslopes beside some purling brook. Then Pilar would sit on the rug or the camp stool, while Wilhelm lay at her feet with his head in her lap caressed by the little hands that played with his hair or wandered softly over his face, resting fondly ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... meet with make the same impression on my mind as would the trees of your forests, or the flocks of sheep grazing on your common. The busy hum too of these merchants does not disturb one more than the purling of your brooks. If sometimes I amuse myself in contemplating their anxious motions, I receive the same pleasure which you do in observing those men who cultivate your land; for I reflect that the end of all their labours is to embellish the city ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... vigour of the Oise ends. Above it is a weakly, purling stream, the greater part of the traffic going by the Canal Lateral, while below it broadens out into a workable, industrial sort of a waterway which is doing its best to contribute its share to the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... busily for a time, without a word spoken by either of them. The only sound was the rustling of Jacqueline's stolen silks and the purling of a small stream of water near them, some ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... not long to listen to the purling Of foam athwart the keel? To hear the nearing rapids softly swirling Among their stones, to feel The boat's unsteady tremor as it braves The ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the song had been purling from her smiling lips, Mrs. Strathsay's eyes were laid, a weight like lead, on me, and then she had risen as if it hurt her, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as bright as a paroquet and as gay as a lark. She prattled on in a perpetual, purling stream of music. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... as one aneath the mould. For Lilith's sake, no more was Eden fair. Bloomless the days, the nights bowed down with care. Oft pacing pathways dim, he saw the gleam Of strange-faced flowers beside the purling stream, Or toyed with circling leaves; or plucked the grass, And watched through rifted trees the clouds o'erpass; Wide roaming, heard the waters idly break Far 'gainst the curving beach. "And grieving, spake, 'Oh, sweet with thee each hour—each wilding way, And sweet the memory of ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... thunder-storms were phenomena that had been rarely witnessed in the colder summers of the north; the forests, majestic in their growth, and free from underwood, deserved admiration for their unrivalled magnificence; the purling streams and the frequent rivers, flowing between alluvial banks, quickened the ever-pregnant soil into an unwearied fertility; the strangest and the most delicate flowers grew familiarly in the fields; the woods were replenished with sweet barks and odors; the gardens matured the fruits ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... protected the soil from the beating storms; when these slopes, now furrowed with gulleys and spread with stones, were covered with orchards and clad with verdure, where the flocks might 'lie down midst pastures of tender grass;' and when these dried up waterways were purling brooks, where the flocks were 'led beside the waters of quietness.' I believe that David's description of this country was a true picture of the land as it appeared then. 'Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly; ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... it Lieschen—was it Gretchen? Had she tin, or whence she came? So I took my trusty meerschaum, And I took my lute likewise; Wandered forth in minstrel fashion, Underneath the louring skies: Sang before each comely Wirthshaus, Sang beside each purling stream, That same ditty which I chanted When Undine was my theme, Singing, as I sang at Jena, When the shifts were hung to dry, "Fair Undine! young Undine! Dost thou love ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... Arcadia so remote from known reality and speculative possibility that we can never support its representation through a long work. A pastoral of an hundred lines may be endured, but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life, but will be for the most part thrown away as men grow wise ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... verse except enchanted groves And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines? Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves? Must all be veiled, while he that reads divines Catching ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been resuscitated) on Fourteenth Street, I held my breath till I got over alive, and I blessed Heaven for my safe passage at Forty-second and Twenty-third streets, and at divers places on Third Avenue. Now I regard these interlacing iron currents with no more anxiety than I would so many purling brooks, with stepping-stones in them to keep my feet from the wet: they are like gentle eddies—soft, clear, slow tides—where one may pause in the midst at will, compared with the deadly expanses of Fifth Avenue, with their rush of all manner ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... As he advances upward to our View; We gaze with growing Wonder till we're blind, And every Beauty fades and dies but his. Thus shall I always view your growing Charm, And every Day and Hour with fresh Delight. Witness thou Sun and Moon, and Stars above, Witness ye purling Streams and quivering Lakes, Witness ye Groves and Hills, and Springs and Plains, Witness ye Shades, and the cool Fountain, where I first espied the Image of her Charms, And starting saw her on th' adjacent Bank, If I to ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... broad bosom of the loch, the stillness lay grey and smooth like glimmering steel, with little puffs of night wind purling across it, and disappearing like breath from a new knife-blade. He saw where the smooth satin plane rippled to the first water-break, as the stream collected itself, deep and black, with the force of the water behind ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... rumbling and tumbling, Clattering and battering and shattering, And gleaming and streaming and skimming and beaming And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing, 5 And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping, And curling and whirling and purling and twirling; Retreating and meeting and beating and sheeting, Delaying and straying and spraying and playing, Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing, 10 Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling and boiling; And thumping and bumping and flumping and jumping, And thrashing ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... thunder'd in his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr and the purling rill!" —Pope, Essay ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... different stamp. The road which before ran over an unbroken plain, thickly peopled, and cultivated like a garden, now begins to pass between steep uncultivated hills, overgrown with tall, uncut, withered grass, separated by valleys in which run purling rivulets, nearly concealed by exceedingly luxuriant bushy thickets. Ikaho is celebrated for the warm, or more correctly hot, springs which well up from the volcanic hills which surround the little town, which is beautifully situated on ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Lowly Innocence makes a sure retreat, A harmless Life, and ignorant of deceit, and free from fears with various sweet's encrease, And all's or'e spread with the soft wings of Peace: Here Oxen low, here Grots, and purling Streams, And Spreading shades invite to ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... bosom friends. He told her about Bloomfield as it came back to him, rhapsodized over its meadows and woods and "purling streams," and felt a rising desire to taste its joys again. And all the while his voice would fall on deaf ears and her eyes would take on a misty look as though peering down dark, dusty corridors; and interrupting him, she would recall the circumstances ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... turning toward me, salaam; mine host then comes forward, shakes hands, gives me the letter to Mudura Ghana, and permits me to depart. He has provided two zaptiehs to escort me outside the town, and in a few minutes I find myself bowling briskly along a beautiful little valley; the pellucid waters of a purling brook dance merrily alongside an excellent piece of road; birds are singing merrily in the willow-trees, and dark rocky crags tower skyward immediately around. The lovely little valley terminates all too soon, for in fifteen minutes ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Miss Lucy Mowbray, who had just arrived with her brother, bent their steps toward the grove, through which ran a purling stream; and thither they were followed after a little by Miss Martha Wayles and her admirer, Bathurst. We cannot follow them and listen to their conversation—that would be indecorous. But we may be permitted to say that two young ladies—one very young—on that morning ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... feeling that already they were his own. The vastness of the great unknown world took hold on him. The forests of Picardy were like stubble beside these unbroken stretches of wooded country; and the mightiest river of France was but as a purling brook when compared with the gigantic sweep of the river of Hochelaga, which stretched inland ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... blessing and prosperity to the country. It is probable also that the charm which ever accompanies the sound of running water exercised its power over their imagination. They heard with delight the gentle whisper of the fountain, lulling the senses with its low, rippling tones; the soft purling of the brook as it rushes over the pebbles, or the mighty voice of the waterfall as it dashes on in its headlong course; and the beings which they pictured to themselves as presiding over all these charming sights and sounds of nature, corresponded, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... may ye be For ever mirth's best nursery! May pure contents, For ever pitch their tents Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these mountains, And peace still slumber by these purling fountains, Which we may every year Find when we come ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... perfect safety, we rolled merrily away down hill, till we reached Colonel Beam's tavern, a neat, low-browed, Dutch, stone farmhouse, situate in an angle scooped out of a green hill-side, with half a dozen tall and shadowy elms before it—a bright crystal stream purling along into the horse-trough through a miniature aqueduct of hollowed logs, and a clear cold spring in front of it, with half a score of fat and lazy trout floating ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... warns her mistress, and begs her to wait. Beauty rests upon the scene like a benediction. To Isolde the horns are but the rustling of the forest leaves as they are caressed by the wind, or the purling and laughing of the brook. Longing has eaten up all patience, all discretion, all fear. In spite of Brangane's pleadings she extinguishes the torch, and with wildly waving scarf beckons on her hurrying lover. Beneath the foliage they sing their ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... they stand there, while in the moonlight pale Their rifle barrels and polished bayonets gleam; Nought is heard but the owl's low, plaintive wail, And the soft musical voice of the purling stream; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are likewise collected into a Beatiful Lake that is Inhabited by a Couple of Swans, and empties it self by a litte Rivulet which runs through a Green Meadow, and is known in the Family by the Name of The Purling Stream. The Knight likewise tells me, that this Lady preserves her Game better than any of the Gentlemen in the Country, not (says Sir ROGER) that she sets so great a Value upon her Partridges and Pheasants, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... sloping and but just washed, sand strewn thickly on it, and the air was damp and cold. But without, scarcely twenty paces from the inn, on the other side of the road, lay the celebrated valley, a garden made by nature herself, and whose charm consists of trees and bushes, wells and purling brooks. ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... in the midst of summer, Mr. Drake and his son Albert took a walk in some of the most agreeable environs of the city. The sky was clear, the air cool; and the purling streams, and gentle zyphyrs rustling in the trees, lulled the mind into an agreeable gloom. Albert, enchanted with the natural beauties that surrounded him, could not help exclaiming, "What a lovely evening!" He pressed his father's hand, and, looking up to him, said, "You know ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... of an infant in the cradle. She took one beautiful hand from the paper and passed it over Bob's bronzed cheek, just as the infant touches its mother's face with its chubby fingers. In my horror I almost expected to hear the purling of a babe. My eyes in their perplexity must have wandered from her face, for I suddenly became aware of a great black head-line spread across the top of the paper that she had ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... on, as it were, and look down into the dale of the stripling Teviot, electro clarior (then held by the Scotts); we descend and ford "Borthwick's roaring strand," as Leyden sings, though the burn is usually a purling brook even where it joins Teviot, three miles ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... had strolled leisurely in the opposite direction to that the earl had taken, and in a little while—still followed by the valet, who bore his painting tools—had climbed into a field knee-deep in grass which was ready for the scythe. At the bottom of this meadow ran a little purling stream, with a slant willow growing over it. In obedience to the young gentleman's instructions, the valet set down his burden here, and having received orders to return in an hour's time, departed. The young gentleman sketched the willow and ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... Street now crosses the Rea, I remember there was a footbridge, and beyond that the river was a pretty, purling, sylvan stream, with bushes and rushes growing on its green banks. A field walk past an old farm house led on to Moseley Hall, which was looked upon as being quite away in the country. As for Moseley itself, it was a pretty little village in those days. The old village ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... Or soft autumnal gales; O! seek thou there Some fountain gurgling from the rifted rock, Of pure translucent wave, whose margent green Is loved by gentlest nymphs, and all the train Of that chaste goddess of the silver bow; For silent, shady groves, by purling springs, Delight the train, and through the gliding hours Their nimble feet in mazy trances wind; And oft at eve, the wondering swain hath heard The Arcadian pipe and breathing minstrelsy, From joyous troops ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... after early dinner, and walked across the Common to the Thatched Cottage. I cannot tell you what it was to me to catch sight of the chimney and the purling smoke again; I had to stand still and wait a while, my heart thumped so. (A fool, eh?) I crept noiselessly into the house, and through the hall, then stealthily opened the study door. There he sat on ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... had been capsized in its treacherous quarter mile of boiling length. Then came a so-called lake, Old Grass, with the real Grass Lake barely visible through its circle of trees. A crystal-clear creek was its outlet to Plum Run, a thousand gleaming sunfish and tiny bass flashing through its purling rapids or sulking in deep, dark pools. There was good fishing in Grass Lake, but waist-high marsh grass, saw-edged, barred the way for ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... lacks a river. "One thing is wanting—and happy is the situation that wants no more; for in this place notwithstanding the medicinal waters, and sufficient of sweetes for domestic use, are not to be heard the precipitant murmurs of impetuous cascades. There are no purling streams in our groves, to tempt the shrill notes of the warbling choristers, whose never-ceasing concerts exceed Bononcini ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... them gently flows From the dark sik-ka-ti[1] where Kharsak[2] glows; And Sedu[3] softly dances on the leaves, And a rich odorous breath from them receives; Where tulips peep with heliotrope and pink, With violets upon a gleaming brink Of silver gliding o'er a water-fall That sings its purling treasures o'er a wall Of rugged onyx sparkling to the sea: A spot where Zir-ri[4] sport oft merrily, Where Hea's[5] arm outstretched doth form a bay, Wild, sheltered, where his sea-daughters play; A jasper rock here peeps above ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... jessamine or of pinks. Henceforward flower-gardens, the May sunshine, the birds in their nests, exquisite tints, radiant blossoms, boxes of orange trees and daphne odora, velvet petals upon which golden bees alight, the sacred odours of spring-tide, balms, incense, purling brooks, and soft green grass are associated with this bandit. The divine smile of nature penetrates and ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... creeps slowly upward, we find the land less cultivated, and now and again we pass tracts of woodland whence little purling streams fall over rocky ledges on to the roadway. We catch sight of small clumps of cyclamen, and in the shady hollows we detect tufts of the maiden-hair fern—Capilli di Venere, "Venus' tresses," as the Italians sometimes call this graceful little plant. At a curve ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... months. It is impossible for any spot to be better adapted for a number of houses being built in a comparatively small compass: for the whole of the ground is so romantically tossed about by the sportive hand of Nature,—presenting here a lofty ridge of rocks, there a woody dell adorned with a purling stream or a limpid pool, that most of the houses are completely hid from ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... what sing ye? Woodland meadows? Rocks, trees and rills where sunlight glints to gold? Sing ye the hills, adown whose sides blue shadows Creep when the westering day is growing old? Sing ye the brooks where in the purling shallows The small fish dart and gleam? Sing ye the pale green tresses of the willows That stoop to kiss the stream? Or sing ye burning streets, foul with the breath Of sweatshop, tenement, where endlessly Spawned swarms of folk serve tyrant masters twain— ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... a walk as of yore through the fields, wandered too far, and got lost. The sky was dotted with little fleecy clouds, the wind was shaking the tiny bells of the oats; a stream was purling along through a meadow—and then, all at once, an infectious odour made them halt, and they saw on the pebbles between the thorn trees the ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... fields, not by witchcraft but by conducting it along a canal from the neighbouring river. Some rough tools were first hewn out, and he had soon the whole tribe at work, and the canal and conduits were laid out among the crops. And there stood the witch-doctors put to shame, as they heard the water purling and filtering into ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... camp under present circumstances: it was composed of porous sandstone, which in these climates dries almost immediately after rain. There was plenty of dead wood upon it and it was surrounded by richly-grassed flats, whilst from the base gushed forth a clear spring, which then murmured along a purling brook, traversing the flat on which the ponies ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... brook of the sweetest water, purling over the cleanest and brightest of golden sands, we filled the canteens, this being the last opportunity for some time. Forest walks are thirsty work during the hot season; the air is close, fetid, and damp with mire; the sea-breeze has ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... passage—an entrance hidden in a curtain-like fold in the face of the cliff that towered above them, casting an ink-black shadow. But beyond it the emblazoned firmament glowed irradiant, and at their feet the encircling waters ran, a broad ribbon of black silk purling between the cliff and the opposing shores, where a thicket of tamarisks rose, a ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Ill offices to cross their wooing; When only by themselves they're hindred, For trusting those they made her kindred; 20 And still, the harsher and hide-bounder The damsels prove, become the fonder. For what mad lover ever dy'd To gain a soft and gentle bride? Or for a lady tender-hearted, 25 In purling streams or hemp departed? Leap'd headlong int' Elysium, Through th' windows of a dazzling room? But for some cross, ill-natur'd dame, The am'rous fly burnt in his flame. 30 This to the Knight could be no news, With all mankind so much in use; Who therefore took the wiser course, To make the most ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... work them in ribs, four in each row, knitting two stitches; and purling two; both sides must be alike. Continue this till you come to the beginning of the lightest shade; then begin to decrease one stitch at the beginning of every row, till only one stitch remains in the middle; fasten this off, break the wool, and begin the next petal ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... the shade of a big beech, for the afternoon sun was rather oppressive. It was a pleasant spot to while away an hour. A purling brook went babbling by, singing to itself as it journeyed to the sea. Insects droned about in busy flight. There was a perfume of honeysuckle wafted to us on the summer wind, which stirred the beech-tree and rustled its young leaves lazily, ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... the clear water which, bubbling from the basaltic rocks, used to fall in graceful cascades into the lake at the place called Le Mole, because here were established the mills of the modern village of Nemi. The purling of the stream as it ran over the pebbles is mentioned by Ovid, who tells us that he had often drunk of its water. Women with child used to sacrifice to Egeria, because she was believed, like Diana, to be able to grant them an easy delivery. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... each found in the near presence of the other. The glamour of romance was like a golden mist over all the scene, irradiating each leaf and flower, softening the bird-calls to fairy flutings, draping the nakedness of distant rugged peaks, bearing gently the purling of the limpid brook along which the path ran in devious complacence. Often, indeed, the lovers' way led them into the shallows, through which their bare feet splashed unconcerned. The occasional prismatic flash of ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... of Port Arthur was like a pleasure trip; our fleet of old crocks pounded along steadily, with a soft, soothing sound of purling water rising from under their bows, dominated from time to time by the clank of our crazy engines, which our mechanics had doctored up as thoroughly as time permitted, in order to ensure that they should outlast the run across. There was nothing for us to ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... landscape stretches, in the form of an immense treeless upland, towards a long mountain lake. Beyond the lake rises a range of peaks with blue-white snow in the clefts. In the foreground on the left a purling brook falls in severed streamlets down a steep wall of rock, and thence flows smoothly over the upland until it disappears to the right. Dwarf trees, plants, and stones along the course of the brook. In the foreground on the right a hillock, with a stone ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... to the river his newest allurement carried him, until one day he found himself on a strange path leading into a large yard in which stood a neat, white house, with green blinds. Purling at his feet, bubbling from an invisible source, was a brook of clear, cold water. Very cold it felt to his bare feet as he waded up and down over it's sandy, pebbly bed, the water reaching barely to his ankles. Wading nearer to the fountain head, the depth gradually ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... feeling ode appeared upon the occasion, entitled My Whiskers, dedicated to the princess; it was never printed, but attributed to Thomas Moore. The Kiss, or Lady Francis W- W-'s Frolic, had nearly produced a fatal catastrophe. How would poor Lady Anne W-m have borne such a misfortune? or what purling stream would have received the divine form of the charming Mrs. H-d-s? But alas! he escaped little W-'s ball, only to prove man's base ingratitude, for he has since cut with both these beauties for the interesting little Josephine, the protegee ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... You may walk beside me—if you like." She glanced up from under her black lashes. "The hall is but a short half mile down the stream here to the left." They proceeded, walking slowly, the brook purling and murmuring at their side. The girl drew in her ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... they wandered as they had done in earlier years by purling streams and mossy banks, under cool shadows of friendly trees. Every old playground and hallowed spot was visited once more, and they lived over those joyous scenes ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... Every now and then a Sigh burst out, as if her Heart were breaking. In her Hand she held a little Wand or Rod, with which she was tracing out some Characters on the dry Sand, that lay between the flow'ry Bank she sat on, and the purling Current. Zadig's Curiosity induc'd him, unperceiv'd, to observe her Operations at some Distance. But approaching nearer, and perceiving very distinctly the first Character to be an Z. the next an A. and ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... the world is hollow. The hills are mere bubbles, and the earth is honeycombed with caverns. By the side of the road which leads to Houssy a river accompanies the traveller's steps, purling and singing, and talking secrets (as shallow pebbly-bedded streams have a way of doing), and on a sudden the traveller misses it. There, before him, is a river bed, wide, white, and stony, but where is the river? ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... silent Groves, oh may you be For ever mirths blest nursery, May pure contents For ever pitch their tents Upon these downs, these Meads, these rocks, these mountains, And peace stil slumber by these purling fountains Which we may every year find when ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... impetuosity of your desire! I hear the sound of the horns." Isolde again listens. "No!" she discourses in her over-running tender exhilaration, "the sound of horns was never so pleasing as that! It is the soft purling of the fountain whose music comes so sweetly borne to us; how could I hear it, if hunting-horns were still blaring near by? In the silence, all I hear is the murmured laughter of the fountain. The one who is waiting for me in the hushed night, are you determined to keep him away from me as ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... reference to the country, show something of this kind; either a foolish sentimentality, or a morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most curious ignorance. You will find all its descriptive expressions at once vague and monotonous. Brooks are always "purling;" birds always "warbling;" mountains always "lift their horrid peaks above the clouds;" vales always "are lost in the shadow of gloomy woods;" a few more distinct ideas about hay-making and curds and cream, acquired in the neighborhood of Richmond Bridge, serving ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... much beauty; it is too soft; for, though it has its rocks and huge trees, yet it lacks wildness and sublimity. The rocks are not sufficiently abrupt, the steeps not sufficiently great; there are no chasms, no waterfalls—only purling brooks and quiet walks." ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... "Minne-ha-ha," and could almost fancy the silvery song and light laughter of the Indian girl in the happy purling music of the waterfall, and, as it glided off into the gentler murmur of the stream, below, I could imagine the still sadder song of the spirit speeding ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... on distant ridge and point the cavalry vedettes keep vigilant watch, against surprise or renewed attack. Down along the banks of a clear, purling stream a sentry paces slowly by the brown line of rifles, swivel-stacked in the sunshine. Men by the dozen are washing their blistered feet and grimy hands and faces in the cool, refreshing water; men by the dozen lie soundly sleeping, some in the broad glare, some in the ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... the fact that the national poets, Hafiz and Sadi, like Thomas Moore, have sought in fancy what the land of Iran denied them. Those "spicy groves, echoing with the nightingale's song," those "rosy bowers and purling brooks," on the whole exist, so far as our experience goes, only in the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... recede during October, after the rains have ended, each runlet and purling stream becomes a scene of slaughter on a most reckless and improvident scale. The innumerable shoals of spawn and small fish that have been feeding in the rice fields, warned by some instinct seek the lakes and main streams. As they try to get their way back, however, they find at ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis |
