"Billow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night drew on, the sea roughened: larger waves swayed strong against the vessel's side. It was strange to reflect that blackness and water were round us, and to feel the ship ploughing straight on her pathless way, despite noise, billow, and rising gale. Articles of furniture began to fall about, and it became needful to lash them to their places; the passengers grew sicker than ever; Miss Fanshawe declared, with ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... roll that often when we were in the trough of the sea, we could not see either the barque which we had left or the brig which we were approaching. The sinking sun did not penetrate down there, and it was cold and dark in the hollows of the waves, but each passing billow heaved us up into the warmth and the sunshine once more. At each of these moments, as we hung upon a white-capped ridge between the two dark valleys, I caught a glimpse of the long, pea-green line, and the nodding foremast of the brig, and I steered so as to come round by her stern, so that we might ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... characters and humours, as are requisite in a play, in those narrow channels which are proper to each of them; to conduct his imaginary persons through so many various intrigues and chances, as the labouring audience shall think them lost under every billow; and then, at length, to work them so naturally out of their distresses, that, when the whole plot is laid open, the spectators may rest satisfied, that every cause was powerful enough to produce the effect it had; and that the whole ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... her eye wandered about the vacant room, it fell upon a white and tempestuous ocean of counterpane, an ocean breaking into strange movements of wave and crest and billow. ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cold. How shall a warrior's puissance dare With Brahman's awful strength compare? To-day, base Warrior, shall thou feel That God-sent might is more than steel." He raised his Brahman staff, nor missed The fiery dart that near him hissed: And quenched the fearful weapon fell, As flame beneath the billow's swell. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... themselves with the national pastime of surf-bathing. Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea, (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a lightning express train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an enormous dry pine, that towered so up high above the surrounding forest as to have long served as a landmark for the hunters and fishermen, in setting their courses through the woods or over the lake. Here the fiery billow, as if governed by the human tactics of a military assault, paused, parted, and swept by on either side, till it had inclosed the elevation; when suddenly it shot up from every side in an hundred converging tongues of flame, which, soon meeting and expanding into one, quickly ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... was a billow of red, white, and blue. The President's box was wrapped in two enormous silk flags with gold-fringed edges gracefully draped and ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... 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
... standing rye, when one is close enough to see the individual stalks. They are so tall and slim that you cannot understand why the lightest wind does not lay them flat. Yet all day long they sway and ripple and billow in the summer wind, and unless the heavy, driving storm comes the ranks remain unbroken to the last and face the sickle in ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in Wiesbaden. On the 5th June Bulow conducts the first concert there, at which Bronsart's beautiful and valuable "Fruhlings-Fantasie," Billow's music to Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," and my "Faust Symphony" will be performed. Bulow kindly plays the piano the same evening, and has chosen Tschaikowsky's Concerto. Besides this his favorite pupil Schwarz produces several "Etudes transcendantes." [By Liszt] ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... the inevitable missing spoke. It pointed to a ranch-type establishment that lay sprawled out in a billow of dead area. I eyed it warily and kept on driving because my plans did not include marching up to the front door like ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... high 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 ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... 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, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Skiff on the Ocean tost, Now high, now low, with each Billow born, With her Rudder broke, and her Anchor lost, Deserted and all forlorn. While thus I lie rolling and tossing all Night, That Polly lies sporting on Seas of Delight! Revenge, Revenge, Revenge, Shall appease ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... night, yet a wilder night Hung around o'er the mother's pillow; In her bosom there waged a fiercer fight Than the fight on the wrathful billow. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... feel the same emotion twice: No two ships ever ploughed the self-same billow; The waters change with every fall and rise; So, Guilo, go contented to ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... term for 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 most noteworthy. ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... leaves were absolutely frantic. Now they would sweep up far into the air as if they never intended to descend again, and then taking curvatures, would skim away like birds; others would cluster together, and then roll along like a great quivering billow; others again would circle around in eddies like whirlpools, soaring up now and then in the likeness of a water-spout, whilst frequently tall columns would march down the broad aisles of the forest in the most majestic manner, and finally fall to pieces ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... 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 salty aroma with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... In the same billow—in the same dark grave— Mother, and child, and husband find their rest. The dream is ended; and the solemn wave Gives back the gifted to her ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... companion's reason, Meredith more than once drugged his food; but when the land began to rise beneath their feet in tentative, billow-like inequalities—the deposit of a glacial age—Durnovo refused to stop for the preparation of food. Eating dry biscuits and stringy tinned meat as they went along, the four men—three blacks and one white—followed in the footsteps ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... events which by their very nature, and despite any intrinsic interest that they may possess, are foredoomed to oblivion. They are merged in the general story of those greater events of which they were a part, as the thunder of a billow breaking on a distant beach is unnoted in the continuous roar. To how many having knowledge of the battles of our Civil War does the name Pickett's Mill suggest acts of heroism and devotion performed in scenes of awful carnage to accomplish the impossible? Buried in the official ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... Xerxes' world in arms, proud Cannae's field, Where Carthage taught victorious Rome to yield, Immortal Blenheim, fam'd Ramillia's host;— They all are here, and here they all are lost; Their millions swell, to be discerned in vain, Lost as a billow ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... rocky bluff. A gush of flame from its underjets and it shouldered heavily upward, just missing the jagged crest. A gout of fire forward, another, and it went into a long flat glide, following the fall of a foothill to the plain beyond. It held course and reduced speed, letting the ground billow up to it rather than descending. There was a moment of almost-flight, almost-sliding, and then a rush of dust and smoke which over-took and passed them. When it cleared, they were part of the ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... Gotham's wise men bowling o'er the billow, Or him, less wise, Who chose rough bramble-bushes for a pillow, And ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... incomprehensible was, that the shipwrecked mariner should be punished in an after-state for not having guided his vessel better; when the rudder which had been given him to shape his course by was so weak that any extraordinary billow could not ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... phosphoric on the billow, Or hermit ray of evening sky, Like ripplings round a weeping ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... carry vases, which figure for the stern lanterns. There is a roll in 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... secured a life-buoy, moved close to the girl's side, and looking anxiously out ahead saw a faint line of foam in the thick darkness which had succeeded the explosion. Already the distant roar of the billow was heard, proving that it ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... 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— There by ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... composure as if he had been sitting by his own fireside, "the battle, I trust, is gained. Charge with your column. The disordered troops will rally in your rear." Like a rock, Desaix, with his solid phalanx of ten thousand men, met the on-rolling billow of Austrian victory. At the same time Napoleon dispatched an order to Kellerman, with his cavalry, to charge the triumphant column of the Austrians in flank. It was the work of a moment, and the whole aspect of the field was changed. ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... sea! all round, the sea! flood, flood o'er billow surges! In vain the bird fatigued its faltering wing here urges. Billows beneath, waves, waves around; Ever the floods (no end!) by urging floods repulsed; The eye sees but the waves, in an abyss engulphed, Roll ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... explosion. But the rocks suddenly assumed a new arrangement: they rent asunder like a curtain. I saw a bottomless pit open on the shore. The sea, lashed into sudden fury, rose up in an enormous billow, on the ridge of which the unhappy raft was uplifted bodily in the air with all ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... his restless pillow, His head heaves with the heaving billow, That hand, whose motion is not life, Yet feebly seems to menace strife, Flung by the tossing tide on high, Then ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the two were about to leave the platform, a voice, as yet far distant, was heard in the depths of the shaft. It came up like a sonorous billow, swelling as it advanced, and becoming more ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... saw all this, watched the skipper scramble aboard again onto the submerged decks, and then vanish altogether in a great billow. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... Cuirassiers rushed forth from the invaders' ranks, flung itself uphill, and girdled the grim earthwork with a stream of flashing steel There, for a brief space, it was stayed by the tough Muscovite lines, until another billow of horsemen, marshalled by Grouchy and Chastel, swept all before it, took the redoubt on its weak reverse, and overwhelmed its devoted defenders.[266] In vain did the Russian cavalry seek to save the day: Murat's horsemen were not to be denied, and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... terror of the appointed end, For this I sigh! The billow, poised above, Fell on thee like a beast that leaps to rend: Thou couldst not know ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... Supremacy," which 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 at politics, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... suppliant, who had earned it 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 ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... full many a measure; It has thrilled with love's red wine; It has hope and health, and youth's rare wealth— Oh rich is this heart of mine. Yet it is not glad—it is wild and mad Like a billow before it breaks; And its ceaseless pain is worse than vain, Since it knows not ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... grace, with distinction, her head held high, even thrown back a little, superciliously. She had an immense quantity of very lovely hair. Red hair? Yellow hair? Red hair with yellow lights burning in it? Yellow hair with red fires shimmering through it? In a single loose, full billow it swept away from her forehead, and then flowed into a half-a-thousand rippling, crinkling, capricious undulations. And her skin had the sensitive colouring, the fineness of texture, that are apt to accompany red hair when it's yellow, yellow ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... billow rears All its sea-length in green, hushed wall; But totters as the shore it nears, Foams to its fall; Where was its mark? on what vain quest Rose that ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... had he reached the door And seized his staff of oak, When like a billow with a roar The ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... scarcely laid foundations of the future. And because you have delayed the work of centuries for a few days, you think you have shattered the hourglass of Eternity. There is much pride in this grief, Lelia! But God will make this billow of stormy centuries, that for him are but a drop in the ocean, float by. The devouring hydra will perish for lack of food; and from its world-covering corpse a new race will issue, stronger and more patient than ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... lay like a stiffened billow of the sea, green with purple glints. The clear western sky was ruddy gold, the sun's great ball approaching the horizon. But when it dipped the short June night would know little dark in this northern land. The air struck most fresh and pure. Glenfernie came presently upon the old ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... dancing leaves, Hear a throbbing heart that grieves, Not for joys this world can give, But the life that spirits live: Spirit of the foaming billow, Visit thou my nightly pillow, Shedding o'er it silver dreams, Of the mountain brooks and streams, Sunny glades, and golden hours, Such as suit thy buoyant powers: Spirit of the starry night, Pencil ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... earth increased so much in size, that all on board the canoe were able to disembark upon it. After a long and perilous drifting of the canoe hither and thither, its voyagers were at length able to lay their heads down at night upon solid land, and to sleep unrocked by the tempestuous billow. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... ravine quite out of sight. The country about him was rolling, and as the wind waved the tall grass before his eyes, it was as if he were looking upon a great gray-green sea, and the ravine doubtless lay between the billow-like swells of land that spread out in vast ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... There was once a boat on a billow: Lightly she rocked to her port remote, And the foam was white in her wake like snow, And her frail mast bowed when the breeze would blow, And bent like a wand ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... left her early pillow, And the heavens grew rosy-rich, and rare; Laughed the dewy plain and glassy billow, For the Golden God himself was there; And the vapour-screen Rose the hills between, Steaming up, like incense, in ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... 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— There ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... occurred to him, and seemed incredible even when her own lips told it. She had been right in fearing the effect this knowledge would have upon him. It stung his pride, wounded his heart, and forever marred his faith in love and friendship. As the truth broke over him, cold and bitter as a billow of the sea, she saw gathering in his face the still white grief and indignation of an outraged spirit, suffering with all a woman's pain, with all a man's intensity of passion. His eye grew fiery and stern, the veins rose dark upon his forehead, the ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... look him over, starting from the feet and working upward. A matter of inches above his insteps brings us to the bottom of his trouser-legs. Now these trouser-legs of his are morally certain to be too long, in which event they billow down over his feet in slovenly and ungraceful folds, or they are too short, in which event there is an awkward, ugly cross-line just above his ankles. If he is a thin man, his dress waistcoat bulges away from his breastbone so the ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... a wind, 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 him upon the Mount of the Bereft Mother, where he landed, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... and shade and stormy weather, That night we went to the icy Pole, And there on the rocks we stood together, And saw the ocean before us roll. No moon shone down on the hermit sea, No cheering beacon illumed the shore, No ship on the water, no light on the lea, No sound in the ear but the billow's roar! But the wave was bright, as if lit with pearls, And fearful things on its bosom played; Huge crakens circled in foamy whirls, As if the deep for their sport was made, And mighty whales through ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... lean against him for one full hour!" it would make her strong again. For, she found that if her heart was rising on a broad breath, suddenly, for no reason that she knew, it seemed to stop in its rise, break, and sink, like a wind-beaten billow. Once or twice, in a quick fear, she thought: "What is this? Is this a malady coming before death?" She walked out gloomily, thinking of the darkness of the world to Wilfrid, if she should die. She plucked flowers, and then reproached herself with plucking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... two-and-thirty without ever kissing or being kissed. The act, now that he had experienced it, was nothing. A warm body, yielding in self-surrender, had pressed against him for a moment; two hands had impelled his head forward; he had been blinded for an instant by a scented billow of hair; then his cheeks had been touched as though a leaf had blown against them. That was the temperate analysis of kissing. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... cause, so fair she was, and he now come far into his eighteenth year. She was that day clad all in black, without any adornment, and her hair was knit up as a crown about her beauteous head, which sat upon her shoulders as the swan upon the billow: her hair had darkened since the days of her childhood, and was now brown mingled with gold, as though the sun were within it; somewhat low it came down upon her forehead, which was broad and white; her eyes were blue-grey and lustrous, ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... Strathconon with its cream you've driven me, And from Wyvis with its curds and cheese; While billow beats on shore you cannot drive me From the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... defiance; tossing, tumbling, and dancing, as if in mockery at their success! The structure, but a few hours past, as perfect as human intellect could devise, towering with its proud canvas over space, and bearing man to greet his fellow-man, over the surface of death!—dashing the billow from her stem, as if in scorn, while she pursued her trackless way—bearing tidings of peace and security, of war and devastation—tidings of joy or grief, affecting whole kingdoms and empires, as if ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... Every billow hurries quicker, Every surge runs up the strand; While the brindled eddies flicker, Scourged as ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... the lawless moment, where disintegration is the sole unity of plan, and being ground up and destroyed for some no-idea of the Power of darkness. And then would be the time for the good—no, not to tremble, but to resolve with the Lord of light to endure all, to let every billow of evil dash and break upon him, nor do the smallest ill, tell the whitest lie for God—knowing that any territory so gained could belong to no kingdom of heaven, could be but a province of the kingdom of darkness. If there were two powers, the one of evil, the other ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... secret place they found in one of those, Where the cleft shore sea in his bosom takes, And 'twixt his stretched arms doth fold and close An ample bay, a rock the haven makes, Which to the main doth his broad back oppose, Whereon the roaring billow cleaves and breaks, And here and there two crags like turrets high, Point forth a port to all ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... fairyland a guest; "On such a night," et cetera— See Shakespeare for much better a Description of the rest,— I mused, how sweet to wander Beside the river, yonder; And then the sudden whim Seized my head to pillow On Hudson's sparkling billow, A midnight, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... came, Swift as a swallow, subtle as a flame: I know not what it bore of freight or host, But white it was as an avenging ghost. It levelled strong Euphrates in its course; Supreme yet weightless as an idle mote It seemed to tame the waters without force Till not a murmur swelled or billow beat: Lo, as the purple shadow swept the sands, The prudent crocodile rose on his feet And shed appropriate tears and wrung ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... critic Rivarol said of Dante) with the bare help of the substantive and verb, is worth acres of this dead cord-wood piled stick on stick, a boundless continuity of dryness. I would rather have written that half-stanza of Longfellow's, in the "Wreck of the Hesperus," of the "billow that swept her crew like icicles from her deck," than all Gawain Douglas's tedious enumeration of meteorological phenomena put together. A real landscape is never tiresome; it never presents itself to us as a disjointed succession of isolated particulars; we take it ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... by waters that never freeze, Beaten by billow and swept by breeze, Lieth the island ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... her 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 ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... 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
... me down, to the sea gate at the end of a warm, still, foggy day. There in the deepening twilight we drifted without a sign of a world around us—till in from the ocean there came a deep billow, then another and another, and as our small craft darted off to one side a gigantic gray shadow loomed through the fog with four black towers of smoke overhead, lights ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... tossing the light boat in a majestic flood of angry water, whitened by foam, and beaten into waves, where it rounded the rocky edge of the island. Across this tumbling surge streamed the glorious sunlight, gilding each billow into beauty, while in the midst of it, bearing swiftly down toward us, came that strange thing that had so startled Madame. What in the name of nature it might prove to be, I could not hazard—it ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... in the North Channel. To her aid 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 upon the water, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... of God fail either to excite admiration or to impart instruction. The Sandwich Islands present some of the sublimest scenery on earth, but to an ignorant native—to the great mass of the people in entire heathenism—it has no meaning. As one crested billow after another of the heaving ocean rolls in and dashes upon the unyielding rocks of an iron-bound coast, which seems to say, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther," the low-minded heathen is merely thinking of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... raving about, in hopeless confusion; now letting it sink in the hollow of the waves, and lifting above it cold glittering walls of water, that becalmed it as in a sheltered vale, while the hurricane roaring above, flung arches of writhing waters across from billow to billow overhead, and threatened to close, as in a transparent tomb, boat and boy. At length, when the boat rose once more, unwilling, to the awful ridge, jagged and white, a yet fiercer blast tore it from the top of the wave. The dreamer found himself choking in the waters, and soon lost ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... right, for after they had remained fast a little longer they were saved, thus: Suddenly the wind dropped, then it rose again in a last furious squall, driving before it a very mountain of water. This vast billow, as it rushed shorewards, caught the galley in its white arms and lifted her not only off the rock whereon she lay, but over the further reefs, to cast her down again upon a bed of sand and shells, within a stone's throw of the beach, where she remained ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... throttle. Like knight tilting against knight, wave and engine met. There was a hissing as of the plunging of a great red-hot bar into a vat. A roaring sheet of water, thrown into the air by our momentum, washed cab and tender and car, as a billow pours over a laboring ship; and we stood on the steps, drenched to the skin, the water swirling about our ankles as we rushed forward. Then we heard the scream of triumph from the whistle, with which Schwartz cheered us as the ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... reaching the other shore. Having exhausted his arrows, he took up his javelin, and although already nearly half engulfed, with his arm alone above the water, he hurled it, a powerless weapon, against the unknown God whom he still braved from the depths of the abyss. A mighty billow, which rolled two or three times over the edge of the sea, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... on toward the plain, the sound of low chanting began to swell from the crowd. The strain gained in distinctness; power gathered on it; passion grew in it; prayer ascended from it. I could not help being moved by this billow of sweet sound. The forms and faces of the people melted together before my eyes; their outlines seemed to quiver in the flood of song; it was as if their manifold personalities blurred in the unity of their feeling; they seemed to me, as I regarded them, like the presence of one ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... went the brave youths and soon saw the shores of the Goths, their homeland. Beowulf and his men brought the ship high up on the shore lest the billow's force might wreck it. Then Beowulf ordered them to carry the noble gifts of Hrothgar. Near the sea-wall was the home of Hygelac. The bright sun, the candle of the world, was shining when the brave Beowulf and his men went to greet their king. Hygelac was glad to ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... 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 appear; they are ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... before the enormous billow, a monstrous wave forty feet high, broke over the fugitives with a fearful noise. Men and animals all disappeared in a whirl of foam; a liquid mass, weighing several millions of tons, engulfed them in its ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... my darling, my blossom, Nor anguish nor falsehood shall know; Together we cleave the wild billow— Unfaltering together we go To rest on the same rocky pillow, To slumber ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... upgrew to encounter. Ah, but ye that extrude from the ocean your helpless faces, Ye over stormy seas leading long and dreary processions, Ye, too, brood of the wind, whose coming is whence we discern not, Making your nest on the wave, and your bed on the crested billow, Skimming rough waters, and crowding wet sands that the tide shall return to, Cormorants, ducks, and gulls, fill ye my imagination! Let us not talk of growth; we are still in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Less upon the trusted oak, Mans the helm himself and jeereth At the wild wind's sportive stroke. Tighter now the sail he fastens, Fleeter o'er the water skims, Straight to westward fearless hastens, Goes where'er the billow swims. ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... sounded like the dirge of the three devoted beings, who, pent between two of the most magnificent, yet most dreadful objects of naturea raging tide and an insurmountable precipicetoiled along their painful and dangerous path, often lashed by the spray of some giant billow, which threw itself higher on the beach than those that had preceded it. Each minute did their enemy gain ground perceptibly upon them! Still, however, loth to relinquish the last hopes of life, they bent their eyes on ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... steadily for two days past from the south-east, had gone down into some ocean lair; but the sullen element refused to forget its late scourging, and occasionally a long swelling billow dashed itself into froth against the stone piers of the boat-house, and the cliffs which stood like a phantom fleet along the southern bend of the beach, were fringed with a white girdle ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... awoke in every bosom at Versailles! Huge Paris, in all conceivable and inconceivable vehicles, is pouring itself forth; from each Town and Village come subsidiary rills; Versailles is a very sea of men. But above all, from the Church of St. Louis to the Church of Notre-Dame: one vast suspended-billow of Life,—with spray scattered even to the chimney-pots! For on chimney-tops too, as over the roofs, and up thitherwards on every lamp-iron, sign-post, breakneck coign of vantage, sits patriotic Courage; and every window bursts with patriotic Beauty: for the Deputies are ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... seeing what his eyes saw in that wonderland. And she was feeling it. Her hand, seeking his hand, crept into his palm, and the fingers of it clung to his fingers. He could feel the thrill of the miracle passing through her, the miracle of the open spaces, the miracle of the forests rising billow on billow to the purple mists of the horizon, the miracle of the golden Saskatchewan rolling slowly and peacefully in its slumbering sheen out of that mighty mysteryland that reached to the lap of ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... stirs its waves, But the spirits of the braves Hov'ring o'er, Whose antiquated graves Its still water laves On the shore. With an Indian's stealthy tread It goes sleeping in its bed, Without joy or grief, Or the rustle of a leaf, Without a ripple or a billow, Or the sigh of a willow, From the Lyndeboro' hills To the Merrimack mills. With a louder din Did its current begin, When melted the snow On the far mountain's brow, And the drops came together In that rainy weather. Experienced river, Hast ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the South, it shows Its frosted brow, and waves its shaggy woods, And sullenly above the billow broods. Here he that shook the frighted world arose. 'Twas here he gained the strength the wing to plume, To swoop upon the Arno's classic plains, And drink the noblest blood of Europe's veins— His eye but glanced and nations felt their doom! Alas! "how art thou ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... hours are trances; And all my nightly dreams Are where the dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams, In what ethereal dances, By what Italian streams. Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From Love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow!— From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... expects me!" cried Porthos, drawing himself up. It is a sad thing to have to confess, but a man's heart is like a restless billow; for, from that very moment, Porthos ceased to look at Madame Truechen in that touching manner which had so softened her heart. Planchet encouraged these ambitious leanings in the best way he could. He talked over, or rather gave exaggerated ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... knew there 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 hulk ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... 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 ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the mountain-cleft Was the Troglodyte concealed; And the roving Nomad left, Desert lying, each broad field. With the javelin, with the bow, Strode the hunter through the land; To the hapless stranger woe, Billow-cast on ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the salt sea-billow I sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow 1380 For my light head was hollowed in his lap, And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap, Fearing it was a fiend: at last, he bent O'er me his aged face; as if ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... cutting and serving the material with no greater interest in it than has the cheesemonger in the cheese he weighs and deals. Meanwhile, the glimpse we may take of him shows Bill Wyvern urging along his pen until clean paper became magic manuscripts; living upon a billow of hope when the envelopes were sped, submerged beneath oceans of gloom when they were returned; trembling into Fleet Street deliciously to inhale the thick smell of printer's ink that came roaring up from a hundred basements; with goggle eyes venerating ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... 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 ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... cried Porthos, drawing himself up. It is a sad thing to have to confess, but a man's heart is like an ocean billow; for, from that very moment Porthos ceased to look at Madame Truchen in that touching manner which had so softened her heart. Planchet encouraged these ambitious leanings as best as he could. He talked over, or rather gave ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... arms of the driver kept free only by incessant motion. It was no longer snowing; it was "snowballing;" it was an avalanche out of the slopes of the sky. The exhausted horses floundered in it; the clogging wheels dragged in it; the vehicle at last plunged into a billow of it—and stopped. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... "Bounding billow, cease thy motion, Bear me not so swiftly o'er; Cease thy roaring, foamy ocean, I will tempt ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... sigh the winds of Heaven O'er your grave! While the billow mournful rolls And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing—glory to the souls ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... shore, and already the foaming surge filled us with terror. Each wave that came from the open sea, each billow that swept beneath our boat, made us bound into the air; so we were sometimes thrown from the poop to the prow, and from the prow to the poop. Then, if our pilot had missed the sea, we would have been sunk; the waves would have thrown us aground, and we would have been buried among the breakers. ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... nearer and nearer to the foaming lines of surf. Presently they were in the welter of white. Once when the little craft went completely out of sight behind a monster swell, Loll, watching from the cabin top, shouted in alarm, but yelled again in delight as it rose high on the same billow. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... home returning With hopes high burning, With wealth 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
... billow rising, curving, high as the gaff of the main, it seemed to him, as he grasped at the coil of the main halyards. Down came the tons of water, booming on the deck that bent under the blow, spilling in a great cataract that ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... heard men shouting during a lull in the roar of the elements; but the coming of another smothering billow shut ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... morn thy gallant bark Sailed on a sunny sea: 'Tis noon, and tempests dark Have wrecked it on the lee. Ah woe! ah woe! By Spirits of the deep Thou'rt cradled on the billow To thy ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... whose hunger was as plain as his rags, was calm as the wintry sky. She wondered, but she needed not have wondered; for storm of anger, drought of greed, nor rotting mist of selfishness, had passed or rested there, to billow, or score, or waste. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... statesman once, Melanthon; now, Grown dim with age, thy eye pervades no more The deep-laid schemes which Dionysius plans. Know then, a fleet from Carthage even now Stems the rough billow; and, ere yonder sun, That now declining seeks the western wave, Shall to the shades of night resign the world, Thou'lt see the Punic sails in yonder bay, Whose waters ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... A mighty billow flings its cloud of foam over the faces of Claude and the shrinking girl by his side, and blinds them with salt spray. But high as the tide is, the Chair is still above its reach, and although the wave may sprinkle them, it cannot swallow them ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... seasons can scarcely be chosen when travelling in Athabasca, for a storm comes unawares. Upon the plains you will see a cloud arising, not in the sky, but from the ground—a billowy surf of drifting snow; then another white billow from the sky will sweep down and meet it, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on the sky-line, in the north-east this time, another column of smoke was lifting its first billow over the tree-tops. "Oh, Dick!" she exclaimed, in beautiful alarm, "what does ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... ruin was seen the ridge of the Bois-le-Pretre rapidly attaining the level of the moor. At length the forest of Puvenelle, the ravine, and the Bois-le-Pretre ended together in a rolling sweep of furzy fields cut off to the west and north by a vast billow of the moor which, like the rim of a saucer, closed the wide horizon. Continuing straight ahead, the Puvenelle road mounted this rise, dipped and disappeared. Halfway between the edge of the forest of Puvenelle and this crest stood an abandoned inn, a commonplace building made of buff-brown ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... the quaint old casement She looks upon the sea; Thank God that the sight She saw that night So rare a sight should be! Hemmed in by many a billow With mad and foaming lip, A mile from shore, Or hardly more, She saw ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... mean! There was naething intill 't but a pennyworth o' blastin' pooder. It wadna blaw the froth aff o' the tap o' a jaw (billow)." ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... a music wild and low Ever, o'er the curved shells, Wanders with a fitful flow As the billow sinks or swells. Now, to faintest whispers hushing, Now, in louder cadence gushing, Wakens from their pleasant sleep All the tuneful Nereid-throng, Till their notes of wreathed song Float in magic streams along, Chanting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... the present occasion, it must be confessed there was not much bounding, nor much billow. Nor, again, would it have been easy for any one to see her, even if he had been brought close to her; for the simple reason that the "Parson," as she went on her way, carrying Zac and his fortunes, had become involved ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... 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 be ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... 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 a thinning sheet of vapor—thick ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... you only knew—if only I could tell you something—" She broke off, lowered her head to her hand, and he saw her breast rise on a billow of emotion. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... close-reefed topsails. She was not too heavily laden; and, being a good sea-boat, she rose easily on the lift of the waves, almost skimming the surface like one of Mother Carey's chickens, and jumping, as it were, from billow to billow as ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself through the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar between two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes's waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... 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
... bosoms, and nothing escaped them: for them the nightingale was singing, the stars were shining, and the trees were softly whispering, lulled both by slumber and by the softness of the summer, and by the warmth. Lavretzky surrendered himself wholly to the billow which was bearing him onward,—and rejoiced; but no word can express that which took place in the young girl's pure soul: it was a secret to herself; so let it remain for all others. No one knows, no one has seen, and no one ever will see, how that which is called into ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... 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, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... dare, and then, with a walking stick or an umbrella, or your finger, if nothing better is to be had, write your name, or draw a hideous spook on the wet sand. You have to be quick about it, too; for just as you are putting the finishing touches to the work, another great billow is sure to come tearing at you, with a wide, deep hollow of emerald green, and foaming crest, looking like molten silver in the moonlight. Crash! it falls on the beach; and a long rush of foam slides up ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... sea, and 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... distinguish different notes; the crash of trees carried away by the avalanche and the scream of gravel grinding across rocky scraps. He could imagine the stones being planed away and the mass of broken trunks riding on top of the huge white billow. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... 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
... thought as we hollowed his narrow bed, And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow. ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... then an awkward thump on the head by which I was stunned. {268} Recovering again just in time, I saw another wave send the dingey once more on board with a crash, and splinters flew up, so we thought she was smashed, but it was the jigger-boom that was broken by the collision. The very next billow broke the dingey's painter of strong canoe rope, but much worn. Away floated the tiny cockleshell, and it was very soon hid in the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... a wave of melody: From heaving waters of the impassioned soul A billow of tidal music one and whole Flows, in the "octave"; then, returning free, Its ebbing surges in the "sestet" roll Back to the deeps of Life's ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... clinging 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... unheeded on the deep— Tossed by the restless billow and the breeze, It drifts o'er sultry leagues of tropic seas. Where long Pacific surges swell and sweep, When pale-faced stars their silent watches keep, From their far rhythmic spheres, the Pleiades, In calm beatitude and tranquil ease, Smile sweetly down upon its cradled sleep. Erewhile, ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... me, shameless authoress of 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. But this man's sentiments are neither constant ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... of Carmel the surf is mighty to-day. Breaker and lifting billow call To the high, blue Silence over all With the word no heart can say. Time-to-be, shall I hear it ever? Time-that-is, with the hands that sever, Cry all words but the dreadful "Never"! And name ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... 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 a few minutes of terrible peril the beautifully ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... the surf broke quite over it in many places. This surf never ceased its roar, for, however calm the weather might be, there is always a gentle swaying motion in the great Pacific, which, although scarce noticeable out at sea, reaches the shore at last in a huge billow. The water within the lagoon, as before said, was perfectly still. There were three narrow openings in the reef; one opposite each end of the valley which I have described as crossing the island; the other opposite our own valley, which we afterwards ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... 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
... thing is 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
... discord. Those words, too, have, in our time, won for the orator who spoke them the deliberate, and the almost lyrical, applause of the greatest historian who has yet laid hand on the story of the Constitution: "Henry showed his genial nature, free from all malignity. He was like a billow of the ocean on the first bright day after the storm, dashing itself against the rocky cliff, and then, sparkling with light, retreating ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... and 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 ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... hill of sand that rises yonder? One can scarcely tell, for it has as it were no shape, no outline; rather it seems like a great rosy cloud, or some huge, trembling billow, which once perhaps raised itself there, forthwith to become motionless for ever. . . . And from out this kind of mummified wave a colossal human effigy emerges, rose-coloured too, a nameless, elusive rose; emerges, and stares with ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... The billow of white smoke filled the northern sky. A whirl of gray wood ashes, light as air, floated on and ever on over Superior. The site of the mill, the squares where the piles of lumber had stood, glowed incandescence over which already a white film ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... banner of the inquisition advanced, the countless throng sunk on their knees before it; they bowed their faces to the very earth as it passed, and then slowly rose again, like a great undulating billow. A murmur of tongues prevailed as the prisoners approached, and eager eyes were strained, and fingers pointed, to distinguish the different orders of penitents, whose habits denoted the degree of punishment they were to undergo. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving |
