"Billow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plunged anew in the gloomy deeps of swamp and brake, the friendly lights were lost and the depressed wayfarers struggled on with something of the feeling of a crew cast away at sea, who, thrown upon the crest of a rising billow, catch a near glimpse of a great ship, light and taut, riding serenely havenward to lose it the next in the dire waste. Presently the melancholy bird-notes that had puzzled Jack in the same vicinity days before broke out just in front ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... mischief-devising, fearful wretch, would that, on the day when first my mother brought me forth, a destructive tempest of wind had seized and borne me to a mountain, or into the waves of the much-resounding ocean, where the billow would have swept me away before these doings had occurred. But since the gods have thus decreed these evils, I ought at least to have been the wife of a braver man, who understood both the indignation and the many reproaches of men. ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... the state of unstable equilibrium which the least touch upsets, and fell to crying. It took her some time to get down the waves of emotion so that speech would live upon them. At last it ventured out,—showing at intervals, like the boat rising on the billow, sinking into the hollow, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Gotham's wise men bowling o'er the billow, Or him, less wise, Who chose rough bramble-bushes for a pillow, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... forewarned dawn. He had climbed the roll of stone slowly, picking each step, for, perhaps, two-hundred feet, when that trail sense of feel made him stoop to examine the ground. The roll of moraine he had climbed met another stone billow; and between the two ran a groove, a little narrow hardened tracing where the tracks of game going to and from watering place had packed and worked in between the rolling pebbles the ice dust of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the other water-hosts living not only in the sea, but also in the rivers, lakes, cataracts, and fountains, is Ahtolaiset (inhabitants of Ahtola), "Water-people," "People of the Foam and Billow," "Wellamo's Eternal People." Of these, some have specific names; as Allotar (wave-goddess), Koskenneiti (cataract-maiden), Melatar (goddess of the helm), and in The Kalevala these are sometimes personally invoked. Of these minor deities, Pikku Mies (the Pigmy) is ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... boat, ropes, and clothing with a coat of ice. The surf, dashing upon the shore, rendered landing impossible, and they sought in vain for any creek or cove where they could find shelter. The short afternoon was fast passing away, and a terrible night was before them. A huge billow, which seemed to chase them with gigantic speed and force, broke over the boat, nearly filling it with water, and at the same time unshipping and sweeping away their rudder. They immediately got out two oars, and, with much difficulty, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... river itself, its waters stretch out joyous and splendid; the rising sun pours upon its breast a long streamlet of gold; the breeze covers it with scales; its eddies stretch themselves, and tremble like an awaking serpent, and, when the billow heaves them, you seem to see the striped flanks, the tawny ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... of the first quarter of the present century, the great poetical billow, which was not indeed caused by, but received an impulse from, the great political billow, the French Revolution (for they were cognate or co-radical movements), had quite spent itself, and English poetry ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... traffic of the city, Freshwater Bay affords a delightful retreat. During the bright days of summer the sea breaks in gentle murmur on the sand and shingle of the beach, but in winter when lashed by S.W. Gales "it tumbles a billow on chalk and sand." The roar of the ocean can be heard for miles inland. The esplanade shown in the picture has been destroyed by the breakers. Temporary repairs have been effected, but a fierce controversy ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... folds her in his arms, And each upheaving of his drowsy breast Is like a billow upon pleasure's sea, Wafting her on to ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... resolve, she, too, arose to her feet. A sort of ague went from her head to her feet. For an instant there was not a sign of color in her cheeks, then, a great billow of blushes beat her face down upon her hands. If I had not been clinging to her skirt I could hardly have got the meaning of the muffled words. Her lover had to bend his head to ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... upon the yard Rocked with the billow to and fro, Soon as her well-known voice he heard, He sighed and cast his eyes below; The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands, And, quick as lightning, on the deck ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... hands upon my breast," Read her last behest. "Turn my cheek upon the pillow, As resting from life's stormy billow With sleep's ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... express: His wand'ring fingers smooth my hair in silent token, And all my being answers to the tender mute caress. My head is resting on his breast for pillow, And as by music moved my soul is thrill'd; Flow on and clasp the land, O bursting billow! O breezes, tell the mountains many-rill'd! Our hearts now know each other, and ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... wings of the wind he comes, he comes! With the rolling billow's speed; On his breast are the signs of peace and love, And his soul is nerved with strength from above: While his eyes flash fire, He burns with desire To achieve ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... start were repeated, with the aggravation that we were now across the wind instead of being head on. Wave after wave burst over us, and time after time, as we hung suspended on the crest of some great billow, it seemed as if we never could ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... plunged like a bucking broncho, at the same time rolling with fierce violence. As rapidly as possible we bailed with our kettles, but the effort was useless. At length, as we neared the end, an immense billow broke upon our port bow with a resounding crack. The little craft succumbed. With a quick careen she turned upside down, and we were in the foaming current. I threw up my hand and fortunately grasped a spare oar that was fastened along the outside ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... mariner to port e'er fled From the dark billow, when some tempest's nigh, As from tumultuous gloomy thoughts I fly— Thoughts by the force of goading passion bred: Nor wrathful glance of heaven so surely sped Destruction to man's sight, as does that eye Within whose bright black orb Love's Deity Sharpens each dart, and tips ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... let us rest on the oar, And vex not a billow that sighs to the shore:— For sacred the spot where the starry waves meet With the beach, where the breath of the citron is sweet. There's a spell on the waves that now waft us along To the last of our Muses, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... billow's clasp, From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather, The British oak with rooted grasp Her slender handful holds together; - With cliffs of white and bowers of green, And Ocean narrowing to caress her, And hills and threaded streams between, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... was the objectionable one to the Catholics, was dispensed with. Now, if we stood in the same circumstances as the Catholics did in 1828, the example would be in point. When the public mind is thoroughly revolutionized, and ready for the change, when the billow has reached its height and begins to crest into foam, then such a measure may bring matters to a crisis. But let us first go through, in patience, as O'Connell did, our twenty years of agitation. Waiving all other objections, this plan seems to me mere playing ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... showed that it was noon, Ivra's steps grew slower and slower, dragged and dragged, until at last she stood still in a billow of leaves. ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... drizzled, it hiss'd and it whirl'd, And it bubbled like water when mingled with flame, And columns of foam to the heaven were hurl'd, And billow on billow tumultuously came; It seem'd that the womb of the ocean would bear Sea over sea ...
— The Song of Deirdra, King Byrge and his Brothers - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... start, crying out that his father was dead. The child was quieted, and again he woke up exclaiming that his father was drowned. A month later the news came that his father had, in fact, been swept off the deck of his smack by a billow. The widow then remembered how her son had wakened up and spoken of his father's death. Everyone said it was a miracle, and the affair caused a great sensation. The dates were compared, and it was found that the accident and the dream had very nearly coincided, whence they drew the conclusion ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... mounted. So did the dance. Wave followed on ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow. Limb after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play; yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,—as limp as flowing, rushing water,—she whirled and swayed through all the emotions until, at the highest pitch of the mounting music, she fell ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... the ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow. At any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take an observation. The old admirals sail the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken up, and live only in pictures; but this, that was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Heaven! Spare the victims! Are the engines coming? Yes, here they are, dashing down the street. Look! the horses ride upon the wind; eyes bulging like balls of fire; nostrils wide open. A palpitating billow of fire, rolling, plunging, bounding rising, falling, swelling, heaving, and with mad passion bursting its red-hot sides asunder, reaching out its arms, encircling, squeezing, grabbing up, swallowing everything before it with the hot, greedy ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... off here to northward was named by the Nova-Scotian exiles, in memory of the land from which they were driven, the Beau Bassin. These small homestead groves that dot the plain far and wide are the homes of their children. Here is this one on a smooth green billow of the land, just without the town. It is not like the rest,—a large brick house, its Greek porch half hid in a grove of oaks. On that dreadful day, more than a century ago, when the British in far-off Acadie shut into the chapel the villagers of Grand Pre, a certain widow ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... to her fate, for rising high upon a huge billow she was borne on for a short distance, and then there was the sudden check. She had struck on another of the terrible coral reefs, and was fast, offering an obstacle to the seething billows, at which they rushed, broke, and then fell over, deluging ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... a speck was seen in the horizon; now it is visible above the hollow wave, now curtained from our sight by the swelling billow: we approach nearer; the speck divides, and two spots ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the space of the lightning's flash all the field of battle round which our company has uncertainly wandered since the morning. I saw a limitless gray plain, across whose width the wind seemed to be driving faint and thin waves of dust, pierced in places by a more pointed billow of smoke. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... hurrying up from Old Point came the Roanoke and the Saint Lawrence. Our own batteries at Sewell's Point opened upon these two ships as they passed, and they answered with broadsides. We fed our engines, and under a billow of black smoke ran down to the Minnesota. Like the Congress, she lay upon a sand bar, beyond fear of ramming. We could only manoeuvre for deep water, near enough to her to be deadly. It was now late afternoon. I could see through the port of the bow pivot the slant sunlight ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... all distinctly visible. An eagle flying straight from our eyrie might traverse Lombardy and light among the snow-fields of the Valtelline between sunrise and sundown. Nor is the prospect tame to southward. Here the Apennines roll, billow above billow, in majestic desolation, soaring to snow summits in the Pellegrino region. As our eye attempts to thread that labyrinth of hill and vale, we tell ourselves that those roads wind to Tuscany, and yonder stretches Garfagnana, where Ariosto lived and mused in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... always gone in north Georgia, stood in a grove of oaks on a hill-top overlooking a little mountain town, beyond which uprose a crescent of blue peaks against a dreamy summer sky. Behind the house a broad plantation rolled its billow-like ridges ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... shone on her golden hair, And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair, With the breath of morn and the soft sea air. Like a beauteous barge was she, Still at rest on the sandy beach, Just beyond the billow's reach; But he Was ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... between the billow's top And mountain's summit, sweeps around The muscle-clothed rock, and with light wing Sports on the ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... of great artillery besides many assaults and entries; and (seeing) that himself and the ship must needs be possessed of the enemy who were now all cast in a ring round about him, the Revenge not able to move one way or another, but as she was moved by the waves and billow of the sea, commanded the Master Gunner, whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and sink the ship, that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory to the Spaniards: seeing in so many hours' fight, and with so great a ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Eric's ears as his boat hit the first incoming billow. The former rescue in the moonlight had held a quick thrill, but it had been nothing like this tense eager race in the darkness. Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed in the station-house before the rescued ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... was in being bound with ropes to the masts—I saw this man, who had fixed himself to one with a cord that was not very strong, and who held his wife clasped in his arms, that the waters might not carry her away. At last there came one gigantic billow, whose power it seemed impossible to withstand; then I saw this man withdraw the support of his arm from the poor creature, who seemed anxious only to die with him, and use both his hands to clasp the pole which sustained him. She gave a piteous cry, more for his cruelty, I feel sure, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... "Bounding billow, cease thy motion, Bear me not so swiftly o'er; Cease thy roaring, foamy ocean, I will tempt thy ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... comes to bless with perfection. The long threads, on each of which hung an oat-grain—the harvest here was mostly of oats—had got dry and brittle; and the grains began to spread out their chaff-wings, as if ready to fly, and rustled with sweet sounds against each other, as the wind, which used to billow the fields like the waves of the sea, now swept gently and tenderly over it, helping the sun and moon in the drying and ripening of the joy to be laid up for the dreary winter. Most graceful of all hung those delicate ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... continuation of the national road; there is a narrower one below, which used to be called the Rue de la Paille, because the cottages lining it were formerly all thatched with cane straw; and there is one above it, edging the cane-fields that billow away to the meeting of morne and sky. There is nothing of architectural interest, and all is sombre,—walls and roofs and pavements. But after you pass through the city and follow the southern route that ascends the Sguinau promontory, you can obtain ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... not on your breath! Bear not the crash of bark far on the main, Bear not the cry of men, who cry in vain, The crew's dread chorus sinking into death! Oh! give not these, ye pow'rs! I ask alone, As rapt I climb these dark romantic steeps, The elemental war, the billow's moan; I ask the still, sweet ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... gentle touch, and whispered, "Come on deck, and see what a morning it is." What a morning, indeed! Thanks, old comrade! Call me next time, when there is such to see; and if I am too weak to get out of my berth, take me up in those strong arms, across that broad, billow-like chest of yours, and bear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... tendency or movement in itself is liable to frequent interruptions, and short counter-movements: even when the tide is coming in upon the shore, every wave retires after its advance; and he who follows incautiously the retreating waters, may be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming again for an instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child standing by the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it seems, irregular advance and retreat of the water, could not tell whether it was ebb or flood; and we, standing for a few years on the ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... rebounding brightness, And the pale moon's ever-fair light, And the many colored star lights, Blended in a great profusion, To the limits of our world, Which we best can know and search in. First, unto the boundless ocean, By the billow which returneth Echo to great Neptune's call, Where the mermaid host sojourneth In his ancient rocky hall; Where Leviathan, the mighty Keeper of all Neptune's treasure, Roams around the rocky caverns In majestic state, exploring. Let us see these mighty waters When they ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... splendor gleaming far and wide o'er pine-clad heath, While the flaming blade of battle slumbers in its golden sheath. And before the lowly Savior, e'en the rider of the sea, Sigurd, tamer of the billow, he hath ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... hawse-pipes. Go for'ard!" Chris commanded, taking charge of things as a matter of course. "Tell him not to worry; that I'm at the wheel. Help him as much as you can, and make him help"—he stopped and ran the spokes to starboard as a tremendous billow rose under the stern and yawed the schooner to port—"and make him help himself for the rest. Unship the fo'castle hatch and get him down into a bunk. ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... undulation, surge, eagre, bore, swell, billow, breaker; ripple; whitecap; signal, flourish; swelling, excitement, tide. Associated ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Chloe's cheek is wan no more, Cupids round it rise. Hasten, Zephyr, waft from roses All their loveliest bloom! Haste where Chloe now reposes, Wake her from her tomb! To the fairest's couch repair, Wanton round her pillow; O'er her lip and bosom fair Bathe thy blandest billow! She wakes the whispers to the gale, Wakes from her morning dream; Whilst so the stream, and thro' the vale, I er'st have ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... had ample knowledge of the state of the lake, though, save in momentary glances, it was invisible beneath the black pall of cloud and rain, for waves came surging in, making the boat rise and fall, while from time to time quite a billow rushed beneath the drooping boughs, which partially broke its force ere it struck against the side of the boat with a heavy slap and sent its crest over the covering ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... loosened sheet taut, the canvas caught the gust and the craft gained sufficient headway to enable her to run over, and not be run down by the seas. As she careened and plunged, racing down a frothing dark billow, the convict, relieved of his burden, clung to the lower gunwale. By a desperate effort he drew himself up, when a face vaguely remembered—as part of a bad dream—looked into his, with a ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... at the saloon door, wistfully did Miss Allison regard him, but only as the means to an end. She wanted to get there, and did not see a way without a helping hand, and just here old Neptune seemed to tender it. A huge, foam-crested billow came sweeping straight from the invisible shores of Albion, burst in magnificent deluge upon the port bow, lifted high in air one instant the heaving black mass of the stem, then let it down with stomach-stirring swish deep into the hollow beyond,—deep, deep into the green mountain that followed, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... very heavy but the men behaved steadily and well; and through it we went, dancing along like a cork in a mill-pond; at last one huge roller caught us, all hands gave way, and we were hurried along on the top of the swelling billow, which then suddenly fell under us and broke; in a moment after we had grounded, and although still upwards of two hundred yards from the shore, we all jumped out to haul the boat up, but ere we could move our heavily laden whaler beyond a few yards breaker after breaker came tumbling ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... repeat The glad earth and the sea; And every wind and billow fleet, Bears on the jubilee. Where Hebrew bard hath sung, Or Hebrew seer hath trod, Each holy spot has found a tongue; "Let glory ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... while it was yet early morning, as Cerimon a worthy gentleman of Ephesus, and a most skilful physician, was standing by the sea-side, his servants brought to him a chest, which they said the sea-waves had thrown on the land. "I never saw," said one of them, "so huge a billow as cast it on our shore." Cerimon ordered the chest to be conveyed to his own house, and when it was opened he beheld with wonder the body of a young and lovely lady; and the sweet-smelling spices and rich casket of jewels made him conclude it was some great person who was thus ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... peak. Though the waves rushed by the vessel with the velocity of the fleetest steeds, and demolished everything that obstructed their career, our craft appeared to defy their fury, and sprung from billow, to billow with the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... and at first saw nothing save the great curtain of fire that rose from the abyss of the volcano, whereof, as I have told, the crest was bent over by the wind like the crest of a breaking billow. But presently, as we watched, in the depths of this red veil, Nature's awful lamp-flame, a picture began to form as it forms in the seer's ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... dash'd upon the billow, Our opening timbers creak, Each fears a watery pillow. ... To cling to slippery shrouds Each breathless seaman crowds, As she lay Till the day In the Bay ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... reigns throughout the country, and that there is no disturbance threatening its peace, endangering its safety, but that which was produced by busy, restless politicians. It has been maintained that the surface of the public mind is perfectly smooth and undisturbed by a single billow. I most heartily wish I could concur in this picture of general tranquillity that has been drawn upon both sides of the Senate. I am no alarmist; nor, I thank God, at the advanced age at which His providence has been pleased ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Billow and breeze, islands and seas, Mountains of rain and sun, All that was good, all that was fair, All that was me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suddenly the canoe beneath them was lifted like a straw and tossed high into the air. A mighty mass of water boiled up beneath it and around it. Then the foam rushed in, and vaguely Geoffrey knew that they were wrapped in the curve of a billow. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... hast watched our pillow In thy tender, sleepless love, Lo, we dare the crosted billow; Mother, put thy trust above. Father! from thy guidance turning, O'er the deep our way we take; Keep the prayerful incense burning On thine ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... Massachusetts-Connecticut state-line he talked of Mexican revolutions, Theodore Roosevelt, Japanese art, vers libre, mushrooms, and such other topics as were of interest in the spring of 1914. But at the state-line, chancing a look out of the window, he saw the doming billow of blue mountains which marks the entrance to our Berkshire intervales, and a strange gleam came into his eyes. His square jaws set. His whole countenance was transformed. Turning back to me, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... of an exploded mine. The saffron waters of the Salmon shot upward until they topped the main rampart, and there separated into a cloud of spray which rained down in a deluge. Out from the fallen mass rushed a billow which gushed across the channel, thrashed against the high bank, then inundated it until the alder thickets on its crest whipped their tips madly. A giant charge of fragments of every size flew far out across the flats or lashed the waters to ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... itself into separate wavelets, the last lagging behind, crested by a foaming parasol, which hid all details, except a general white muslin filminess. But Terry and I had not much chance to observe the third billow. Our attention was caught by the first glittering rush of pink and ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The labouring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with engulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening, shivering weight against the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... rage. The long-succeeding numbers who can name? But all were Greeks, and eager all for fame. Fierce to the charge great Hector led the throng; Whole Troy embodied rush'd with shouts along. Thus, when a mountain billow foams and raves, Where some swoln river disembogues his waves, Full in the mouth is stopp'd the rushing tide, The boiling ocean works from side to side, The river trembles to his utmost shore, And distant rocks re-bellow ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... eye the westward traveller sees A thousand miles of neighbors side by side, Holding by toil-won titles fresh from God The lands no serf or seigneur ever trod, With manhood latent in the very sod, Where the long billow of the wheatfield's tide Flows to the sky across the prairie wide, A sweeter vision than the castled Rhine, Kindly with thoughts of Ruth ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... could not be many hours more of daylight, upon rising to the summit of a great billow, I beheld something riding the seas not far ahead. For some reason I had not seen the bulk of this strange apparition before and at first I was sure it was the turtle-turned ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... Atlantic squall overwrought her Or rearing billow of the Biscay water: Home was hard at hand And ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... it was moving blindly across the wind with a thin trailing edge behind it and a rolling billow of descending mist as its forefront. It rolled up to and across a concrete highway, watched by perspiring motor cops who had performed miracles in clearing a path for it among the horde of sightseeing cars. It swept on into a spindling pine wood. Behind it lay ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... wave, and some of these islands were completely submerged by it. The lonely Opara Isle, where the steamers which run between Panama and New Zealand have their coaling station, was visited at about half-past eleven in the evening by a billow which swept away a portion of the coal depot. Afterward great waves came rolling in at intervals of about twenty minutes, and several days elapsed before the sea resumed ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... state-room. Just then a billow strikes the steamer almost amidships, and she rolls. This, not being expected, causes John to slide across the cabin floor, to the accompaniment of a chorus of cries from the frightened people, who are huddled in a corner by this new move on ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... stiff little obstacle—the narrow gauge metals being on top of a narrow embankment. Then across a level field of veldt, and they commence to ascend a slight depression, which is just behind a shouldering billow of veldt. It is hard work for the artillery horses over this ground, but it is fine the way they tug and strain at their work. The officers urge the men to hurry forward. Already a gun is heard from the Boers. They have opened fire. ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... is silent when it mirrors most Whate'er is grand or beautiful above; The billow which would woo the flowery coast Dies in the first expression of its love; And could the bard consign to living breath Feelings too deep for thought, the utterance ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... o'clock. I found the weather overcast, the sea gray but calm. Hardly a billow. I hoped to encounter Captain Nemo there—would he come? I saw only the helmsman imprisoned in his glass-windowed pilothouse. Seated on the ledge furnished by the hull of the skiff, I inhaled the sea's ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... night, Sadly to greet her,— Moon in her silver light, Stars in their glitter. Then sank the moon away Under the billow, Still wept the maid alone— ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and swift— A love in desolation masked—a Power Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour; Is it a dying lamp, a falling shower, A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak Is it not broken? On the withering flower The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek The life can burn in blood, even while the heart ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... being revealed? But no; it means: "Answering spake unto her great glittering-helmeted Hector;" or tout simplement, 'Hector answered.' And hardly can anyone open his lips, but it must be brought in with some variation of that sea-riding billow, or ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... great gold tassels, that nearly touched the huge anklets of green jade with which her two little bare feet were loaded, as if to help them to stand firm. And a soft broad band of gold ran right round her just below her lovely breast, that lay held in its gold cup like a great double billow made of the creamy lather of the sea, prevented from escaping as it swelled up by the delicious dam formed by the curve of her shoulders meeting the soft bulge of the upper part of her rounded arms, which came out from each side and seemed as it were to wave gently in the air like creeper sprays, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... coast. From our hotel windows the sea view was all banked in haze, with a little rain-swept half-circle under our very eyes, churned and lashed into one tossing stretch of foam. So heavy was the wind upon the waves that little sea could rise, for the crest of each billow was torn shrieking from it, and lashed broadcast over the bay. Clouds, wind, sea, all were rushing to the west, and there, looking down at this mad jumble of elements, I waited on day after day, my sole ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... harmonious tunes, Rasant les ilots verts et les Following in their dreams and dunes d'opale, voices mellow, De meandre en meandre, au fil To wander and wander in the l'onde pale, thread of the pale billow, Suivre le cours des flots Past islands hushed and errants. . . . ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... as ever and a number of resources for doing it required to be discussed. Ramsey mentioned the unidentified man with the cornet but found no seconder. His "Life on the Ocean Wave" was thought hardly convincing and his "Bounding Billow, Cease thy Motion" seemed to clash with the sentiment for an ocean life and to suggest uncomfortable symptoms. Undaunted, she tried again. Through Basile she had early discovered three striplings of the circus ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... by its white crest, a huge billow rose up before them, as if to crush the little vessel into matchwood, but she lifted and passed right over it, and then over another and another, for there was a brisk breeze from off the shore; and after ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... riband around the flowing hair of the sea, Where gleam the foam-flowers garlanded in multitudinous nebulous rings: Here, on the frontier of many worlds and the billow-rocked cradle of eternal sleep, No sound, no music, no silence that a wounded soul ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... man was hardly ever heard, was prodigious; the rarest birds were common there; even those who had their habitations by the sea were sometimes lured to this as silent spot, and skimmed above its undulating dells as o'er the billow. The eagle and the osprey had been caught there; and, indeed, a specimen of each was caged in a sort of aviary, which Grange had had constructed at the back of the lodge; while Yorke's sitting-room was literally stuffed full of these strange feathered visitants, which had fallen victims ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... phantom waters flit, Of visionary birth— Yet be thou still, and wait, wait long; There comes a sea to drown the wrong, His glory shall o'erwhelm the earth, And thou, no more a scathed rock, Shall start alive with gladsome shock, Shalt a hand-clapping billow be, And ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... the reverse; for in the fallacious hope of seeing in the other world her who had so lately departed from this, every instant the galley delayed to founder or drive ashore was to me an age of agony. I watched every billow that dashed by us and over us, to see if they bore the body of the unfortunate Leonisa. I will not detain you, Mahmoud, with a recital of the tortures that distracted my soul in that long and bitter night; it is enough ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow, Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... with the words, "I will not say, 'O King, live forever,' but, 'O King, live as long as you like!'" and Mark Twain rose, his snow-white hair gleaming above that brilliant assembly, it seemed that a world was speaking out in a voice of applause and welcome. With a great tumult the throng rose, a billow of life, the white handkerchiefs flying foam-like on its crest. Those who had gathered there realized that it was a mighty moment, not only in his life but in theirs. They were there to see this supreme embodiment of the American spirit as he scaled the mountain-top. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and giddy wave. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to billow; the ocean breaks and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening, shivering weight against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed, at last, after a few months' passage, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... burthen round Sigaeum's steep And cast on Lemnos' shore: The sea-birds shriek above the prey, O'er which their hungry beaks delay,[hc] As shaken on his restless pillow, His head heaves with the heaving billow; That hand, whose motion is not life,[hd] Yet feebly seems to menace strife, 1090 Flung by the tossing tide on high, Then levelled with the wave—[184] What recks it, though that corse shall lie Within a living grave? The bird that tears that prostrate form Hath only robbed the meaner ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... where the only spots of colour were the roses—masses of pink roses in gold bowls—a Madonna-like being was reclining in a green and white billow of a lace tea gown, on a white sofa. She held out both hands to Mrs. Ess Kay, and looked at me, apologising for ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... giant roller, the wave burst into awful masses of towering foam, so high above and around the lugger that for an instant she was out of sight, overwhelmed, and the crowds cried, 'She's lost!' but upwards she rose again on the crest of the following billow, and with the speed of an arrow flew to the land ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... the yard was in the act of being hauled down, when a sudden gust of wind whirled it round with violence, and a man was struck down from the cross-trees into the sea, which was working like yeast below. In a short time he emerged; I saw his head on the crest of a billow, and instantly recognised in the unfortunate man the sailor who a few moments before had related his dream. I shall never forget the look of agony he cast whilst the steamer hurried past him. The alarm was given, and everything ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... which drove him out to sea, till he was lost to the hermit's view; and he ceased not to fare on over the abysses of the ocean, one billow tossing him up on the crest of the wave and another bearing him down into the trough of the sea, and he beholding the while the terrors and wonders of the deep, for the space of three days, at the end of which time Fate cast ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... said the wagoner, "for I am Kuehleborn." So saying, he thrust his distorted face into the wagon with a grin, but the wagon was a wagon no longer, the horses were not horses—all was transformed to foam and vanished in the hissing waves, and even the wagoner himself, rising as a gigantic billow, drew down the vainly struggling horse beneath the waters, and then, swelling higher and higher, swept over the heads of the floating pair, like some liquid tower, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... mountain top; the dark-blue dome of the sky fills with a lighter azure; the star swoons, and the sun peers over the crest. It ascends. Its rays plunge into the pool of darkness still upon the meadow; they pierce it, at first separately as with rapier thrusts, and then finally billow down into it in a cascade of molten gold. The shadows flee; the sunlight strikes the cabin; and Charles-Norton Sims appears ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... a scene! Yon rosy mists on high careering,— The Moorish cavaliers who fleet With hawk and hound and distant cheering,— The dipping sail puffed to the gale, The prow that spurns the billow's fawning,— How can they fade to dimmer shade, And how this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... side, and in idleness of spirit ponder on bygone scene, that has brought us anything but happiness,—to gaze on the curling waves, as impelled by the boisterous wind, we ride o'er the angry waters, lashed by the sable keel to a yeasty madness,—to look afar upon the disturbed billow, presenting its crested head like the curved neck of the war horse,—then to mark the screaming sea bird, as, his bright eye scanning the waters, he soars above the stormy main—its wide tumult his delight—the roaring of the winds his melody—the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... hands towards us imploring help. It was a piteous sight, for none could we afford, and all her own boats had, we saw, been washed away. Now, as we mounted to the summit of a sea, she began, it seemed, to climb up another watery height, but a still vaster billow came rolling on, and thundering over her deck; down she went beneath it, and the next moment, when we looked, not a trace of her was to be seen except a few planks and spars, which rose to the surface out of the vortex she formed as she sank. Yes, as we continued to gaze, between us and ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... restless sea, with haughty roar, Calms each wild wave and billow rude, Retreats submissive from the shore, And swells the chorus, ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... I see, like hounds at play, How billow on billow dashes; Yea, tossing aloft the glittering spray, The fierce throng hisses and clashes. Oh, might I leap into the raging flood And urge on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... grown a glorious Whore; where be your Fighters? what mortal Fool durst raise thee to this daring, And I alive? by my just Sword, h'ad safer Bestride a Billow when the angry North Plows up the Sea, or made Heavens fire his food; Work me no higher; will ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... well, cut cable silently, And bending to the eager oars sweep out along the sea. He heard it, and his feet he set to follow on the sound; But when his right hand failed to reach, and therewithal he found 670 He might not speed as fast as fares the Ionian billow lithe, Then clamour measureless he raised, and ocean quaked therewith Through every wave, and inwardly the land was terrified Of Italy, and AEtna boomed from many-hollowed side. But all the race of Cyclops stirred from woods and lofty hills, Down rushes ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... to look the daring assailant in the face, the rogue had pitched himself back into his cave. No sooner that, than a very bulldog of a billow would attack him in the face. The serenity with which the impertinent assault was borne was complete. It was but a puff of silvery dust, powdering his mane with fresher brightness. Nothing would be left of bull but a little froth of all the foam ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Master Varney," said Anthony Foster. "He that is head of a party is but a boat on a wave, that raises not itself, but is moved upward by the billow which it floats upon." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... if you can find a competent assassin, I wouldn't make it a point with him to oblige Mr. Markley. I don't care particularly to have the poet buried in the weltering sea. If he can't find a roaring billow, I'll be perfectly satisfied to have him chucked into a creek. And I dare say that it'll make no material difference whether the dolphins gobble him or the catfish and eels nibble him up. It's all the same in the long run. Mention this to ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... for you, If my bark, which bounded o'er foreign foam, Should be lost near home— Ah! what would you do?"— "So thou wert spared—I 'd bless the morrow, In want and sorrow, That left me you; And I 'd welcome thee from the wasting billow, This heart thy pillow— That 's what ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... lay there, hour after hour, now flung aloft until the whole ocean to the limits of the horizon lay spread around us, anon sweeping down the back of some giant billow until it seemed that the boat was about to plunge to the ocean's bed, and the passage of every hour was marked by an increasing greyness and haggardness in the faces of my companions, while a more hopelessly despairing ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... exaggerated language, "the waves ran mountain high," which means from twenty to forty feet; perhaps, on this occasion, twenty-five feet from the trough of the sea to the crest of the billow. Even this is a great height to be tossed up and down on the water; and to the boys of the Young America the effect was grand, if not terrific. The deck was constantly flooded with water; additional life-lines had been stretched across ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... to the glacier, the road was bad, a steep, rocky path, with loose, rolling stones. When we came to the Ice Sea, the young lady, as was natural, took the guide's hand, and I, the last of the caravan, strode cautiously along, my alpenstock in my hand, over the slippery, billow-like ice. But soon it began to split up into deep crevasses, and farther on we came to places where the path you had to follow was no wider than a few hands' breadth, with yawning precipices in the ice on ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... so, when they had safely passed O'er many a land and billow, Before a grave they stopped at last, Beneath a weeping willow: The moon upon the humble mound Her softest light was flinging; ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various |
