"Undulation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... transformations (the Mueller-Haeckel "biogenetic-law.") 2. New characters are first acquired by strong adult males (the law of male dominance). 3. New characters appear on definite parts of the body, spreading especially from the rear to the front, (the law of undulation). 4. Varieties are stages in the process of development, through which all the individuals of the ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... been invented to account for the principal operations of radiant matter. In the first it is supposed that the universe contains a highly rare elastic substance, which, when put into a state of undulation, produces those effects on our organs of sight which constitute the sensations of vision and other phenomena caused by solar and terrestrial rays. In the second it is conceived that particles are emitted from luminous or heat-making bodies with great velocity, and that they ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... of motion are here obviously active, a motion of translation and a motion of undulation—the race of the river through its gorge, and the great waves generated by its collision with, and rebound from, the obstacles in its way. In the middle of the river the rush and tossing are most violent; at all events, the impetuous force of the individual waves is here most strikingly ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... reader by explaining the simple process that carried us happily through the deluge. By keeping the canoe bow on, we nobly resisted the shock of every wave, and gradually fell back under the impulse of each undulation. Thus we held on till the heavy clouds discharged their loads, beating down the sea and half filling the canoe with rain water. While the Krooman paddled and steered, I conducted the bailing, and as the African dipper was not sufficient to keep ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... we can employ an acoustic apparatus for the purpose of decomposing any proposed note, and finding not only the main undulation itself, but the several superposed harmonics which give to the note its timbre. So also we can analyze the undulation of the tide, and show the component parts. The decomposition is effected by the process known ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... other stooping in one tremendous cliff to a distorted glacier thousands of feet below. The faint blue line across the upper neve, scarcely distinguishable to the eye, represents to one observer nothing but a trifling undulation; a second, perhaps, knows that it means a crevasse; the mountaineer remembers that it is the top of a huge chasm, thirty feet across, and perhaps ten times as deep, with perpendicular sides of glimmering blue ice, and fringed by thick rows of enormous pendent icicles. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... strength, and the serpent with its vital writhe and deadly reverted bite, are both characteristic of the finest Lombard work. The dog's head is 14th century Gothic—a masterpiece of broad, subtle, easy sculpture, getting expression with every touch, and never losing the least undulation of surface, while it utterly disdains the mere imitation of hair, or attainment of effect by ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... always dived while yet well out in the stream, and so entered their door unseen. When they came out they were quite as careful, always swimming some distance under water before coming to the surface. It was several days before my eye could trace surely the faint undulation of the water above them, and so follow their course to their doorway. Had not the water been shallow I should never have found it; for they are the most wonderful of swimmers, making no ripple on the surface, and not ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... even in the snugness of the Dragon bar. The rich expanse of corn-field, pasture-land, green slope, and gentle undulation, with its sparkling brooks, its many hedgerows, and its clumps of beautiful trees, was black and dreary, from the diamond panes of the lattice away to the far horizon, where the thunder seemed to roll along the hills. The heavy rain beat down the tender branches of vine and jessamine, and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... summit is gained, at an elevation of nearly 150 feet. Passing along the top, the woods soon disappear, and the visitor emerges on a wild waste of delicately tinted saffron, rising from the slate-colored beach in gentle undulation, and sleepily falling on the other side down to green pastures and into the cedar woods. The whole surface of this gradually undulating mountain desert is ribbed by little wavelets a few inches apart, but the general aspect is one of perfect smoothness. The sand is almost ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... western part of the island, I sailed to Loloway, near the eastern point, one of the loveliest spots in the archipelago. Lofty cliffs flank two sides of a round bay; at the entrance a barrier-reef breaks the swell, which glides in a soft undulation over the quiet water, splashing up on the sandy beach. All around is the forest, hanging in shadowy bowers over the water, and hardly a breeze is astir. The white whale-boat of the Anglican missionary floats motionless on the green ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... She was evidently the last to leave. The other boats put off at once, and none too soon; for there was a warning cry, a quick swerving of the barge, and the end of the dwelling slowly dropped into the flood, seeming to sink on its knees like a stricken ox. A great undulation of yellow water swept across the street, inundating his office through the open window and half swamping his boat beside it. At the same time he could see that the current had changed and increased in volume and velocity, and, from the cries and warning of the boatmen, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... child," said they, "our only treasure, and our life is wrapt up in her safety. Watch over her like her guardian genius. Bring her again to our arms adorned with the cheerfulness of tranquility and innocence." The breast of Edwin was dilated with the charge; he felt a gentle undulation of pride and conscious importance about his heart, at the honour conferred ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... desolate, featureless and melancholy, when the sky above it is filled with clouds. But sweep away the cloud-rack, and let the blue arch itself above the brown moorland, and all glows into lustre, and every undulation is brought out, and tiny shy forms of beauty are found in every corner. And so, if you drape Heaven with the clouds and mists born of indifference and worldliness, the world becomes mean, but if you dissipate the cloud and unveil heaven, earth is greatened. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... final value of action, like that of books, and better than books, is that it is a resource. That great principle of Undulation in nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold; and, as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is known to us under the name of Polarity,—these "fits ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... passing from Leith to Kinghorn in Scotland, a sudden change of the wind shook the undistended sail, and stopt our boat; from this unusual movement the passengers all vomited except myself. I observed, that the undulation of the ship, and the instability of all visible objects, inclined me strongly to be sick; and this continued or increased, when I closed my eyes, but as often as I bent my attention with energy on the management and mechanism ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... preparations for the sailing of the fleet began. The bou-boats, two by two, were moored to the harbor wharfs, dipping their masts on the swell as though curtseying to the people ashore, while their hulls went up and down in graceful undulation. Those tiny sea-dogs, with their rough profiles of ancient galleys, made one think of the old armadas of Aragon, or of the fleets of doughty pinnaces with which Roger de Lauria used to spread terror along the coasts of Sicily. And the fishermen, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the depths of space, reaches the earth, and turns the delicate balance of the thermopile. Another discovery was made with the spectroscope; thus, if a boat moves up a river, it will meet more waves than will strike it if going down stream. Light is the undulation of waves; hence if the spectroscope is set on a star that is approaching the earth, more waves will enter than if set on a receding star, which fact is known by displacement of lines in the spectroscope ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Africa. Traversing this in a majestic northward curve and receiving vast supplies of water from many great tributaries, it finally turns south-west and cuts a way to the Atlantic Ocean through the western highlands. North of the Congo basin and separated from it by a broad undulation of the surface is the basin of Lake Chad—-a flat-shored, shallow lake filled principally by the Shad coming from the south-east. West of this is the basin of the Niger, the third river of Africa, which, though flowing to the Atlantic, has its principal source in the far west, and reverses ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... comfort, gently bounding the marsh below it, and cut off by the seething clouds in the north-west from the mountains towards which it climbed. And as he turned homewards with the moss country behind him, the hills rose and fell about him in soft undulation more and more rich in wood, while beside him roared the tumbling Greet, with its flood-voice—a voice more dear and familiar to Alan Helbeck perhaps, at this moment of his life, than the voice of ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... along its topmost boughs—the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow—and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver-grey, and tender, like the down on a bird's breast, with which far away it veils the undulation of the mountains."—Stones of Venice, vol. ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... them equalled in nature. Indeed the beauty of this phenomena is amazing. The band, inlaid with various colours, now occupies the whole space, maintaining an equal distance from the closed eyes, and moving continually with a rhythmic undulation, while it constantly becomes more vivid. The moving circle continues to dilate until it slowly fades, and at last completely disappears. From its beginning to the end, the vision occupies ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... of a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gardener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monotonous surface of Blenheim,—making the most of every undulation,—flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth out of a giant's hand, wherever it was needed,— putting in beauty as often as there was a niche for it,—opening vistas to every point that deserved to be seen, and throwing a veil of ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... till within about a hundred miles of our port, when it fell calm. Never do I recollect a more perfect calm. The sea was like lead in colour, but as smooth as glass, though every now and then there came a long, slow, gently-moving undulation, as if there were some unseen power beneath the water. There was something, I thought, very ominous in the whole appearance of the atmosphere. The barometer, the seaman's warning friend, began also ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... plain, delicate beauty and a weird charm, despite its lack of undulation. Its lonely unplowed sweep gave me the satisfying sensation of being at last among the men who held the outposts,—sentinels for the marching millions who were approaching from the east. For two hours I walked, seeing Aberdeen fade to a series of wavering, grotesque notches ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... a verb, which includes both the swinging motion and pealing sound of a large bell; also the undulation ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... ocean stretch'd immense survey, Deep, deep beneath; and triumphing in pride, With clouds and winds commixed, innumerous ride; 'Tis wild obstreperous clangour all, and heaven Whirls, in tempestuous undulation driven. Nor less the alarm that shook the world below, Where marched in pomp of war the embattled foe; Where mannikins with haughty step advance, And grasp the shield, and couch the quivering lance; To right and left the lengthening lines they ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... fall naturally around the path of him who is in the performance of his proper work; as the curled shavings drop from the plane, and borings cluster round the auger. Undulation is the gentlest and most ideal of motions, produced by one fluid falling on another. Rippling is a more graceful flight. From a hill-top you may detect in it the wings of birds endlessly repeated. The two waving lines which represent the flight of ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... much like Beacon Street, in Boston, bordering on the Common, allowing for a considerable enlargement of scale in favor of the Park residences. The Park, however, has not the beautiful elms that overshadow Boston Common, nor such a pleasant undulation of surface, nor the fine off-view of the country, like that across Charles River. I doubt whether London can show so delightful a spot as that Common, always excepting the superiority of English lawns, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the madua of a temple at Alittane, between Anarajapoora and Dambool. When about a yard apart, each discerned the other and stood still, the spider with his legs slightly bent and his body raised, the cockroach confronting him and directing his antennae with a restless undulation towards his enemy. The spider, by stealthy movements, approached to within a few inches and paused, both parties eyeing each other intently: then suddenly a rush, a scuffle, and both fell to the ground, when the blatta's ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... she shrank back, suspended from the rope, reminded one of those sea goddesses which sculptors carve upon galleys. A slight tremor, caused partly by the cold and partly by the movement of the river, gave her something of the undulation ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... soil in the district they inhabit. The Rev. H. Tristram, in his account of the ornithology of North Africa in the 1st volume of the "Ibis," says: "In the desert, where neither trees, brush-wood, nor even undulation of the surface afford the slightest protection to its foes, a modification of colour which shall be assimilated to that of the surrounding country, is absolutely necessary. Hence without exception the ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the light was translucent and cold as the waters of a spring, and when the trees waved in the wind their undulation seemed to communicate itself ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... walls of his slip, it was because he was so well assured of the orthodoxy of his minister that he felt that no interest of society would suffer while he was off duty. But may Heaven grant us, in these days of dissolving views and general undulation, large armies of these solid-planted artillery on the walls of ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... well-known term among mechanics to express the irregular motion of engines or turning-lathes when loose in their bearings, or otherwise out of order. A badly stitched seam in a sail is wabbled. It is also applied to the undulation of the compass-card when the motion of the vessel ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... waves "travelling" at such and such a rate, but they do not in reality travel at all. It is the undulation, or, so to speak, the motion of a wave, that travels; in the same manner that a wave passes from one end of a carpet to the other end when it is shaken. The water remains stationary, excepting ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the woman said, her hands caressing a dial. Slowly, with gentle undulation, his chair rose from the floor and cradled the aged tiredness that was Oliver Symmes to his bed. With almost tender devotion, his body was mechanically shifted from the portable chair to ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... reconnoitre. The Mont St. Jean, or Waterloo, position does not impress the beholder with any sense of strength. The so-called valley, separating the two arrays, is a very shallow depression, nowhere more than fifty feet below the top of the northern slope. It is divided about halfway across by an undulation that affords good cover to assailants about to attack La Haye Sainte. Another slight rise crosses the vale halfway between this farm and Hougoumont, and facilitates the approach to that part of the ridge. In fact, only on their extreme left could the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... touches the sacred night The sky sees laugh and redden and divide Dim lips and eyelids virgin of the sun, Hers, and the warm slow breasts of morning heave, Fruitful, and flushed with flame from lamp-lit hours, And maiden undulation of clear hair Colour the clouds; so laughed she from pure heart Lit with a low blush to the braided hair, And rose-coloured and cold like very dawn, Golden and godlike, chastely with chaste lips, A faint grave laugh; and all they held their peace, And she passed by them. Then one cried ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... strange look on the face of a friendly French peasant whom I met at Gournay. He had described to me in a very vivid way the disposition of the French troops on the neighbouring hills who had disappeared in the undulation below the sky-line, but when I mentioned that I was on the way to Beauvais he suddenly raised his head and looked at me in a queer, startled way which puzzled me. I remember that look when I began to approach the town. Down the road came small parties ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... looking for centuries, and I cannot see it. I supposed we were heading for it. I thought sometimes I saw the flash of distant spires, the sunny gleam of upland pastures, the soft undulation of purple hills. Ah! me. I am sure I heard the singing of birds, and the faint low of cattle. But I do not know: we come no nearer; and yet I felt its presence in the air. If the mist would only lift, we should see it lying so fair ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"—the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... about 600 yards distant, and I continued the march forward as though no enemy were present. As we descended a ravine and marched up the opposite incline, I found that the natives retired over the next undulation. Their line of front extended about a mile and a quarter, while we occupied at the most ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... without we resort to the miraculous, which at once obliterates the connection between cause and effect, which it is the peculiar province of physical science to develop. Let us take another view. The present doctrine of light teaches that light is an undulation of an elastic medium necessarily filling all space; and this branch of science probably rests on higher and surer grounds than any other. Every test applied to it by the refinements of modern skill, strengthens its claims. Here then the Newtonian vacuum is no longer a void. ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... abruptly away, and near the bottom glimmered whitewashed cots along a winding road. Still lower down extended marshy common land, laced with twinkling watercourses and dotted with geese; while beyond, in many a rise and fall and verdant undulation, the country rolled onwards through Teign valley and upwards towards the Moor. The expanse seen from this lofty standpoint extended like a mighty map, here revealing a patchwork of multicoloured fields, here exhibiting tracts of wild waste and wood, here beautifully indicating by a misty ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... probable) and try whether this hypothesis of Natural Selection does not explain (as I think it does) a large number of facts in geographical distribution—geological succession, classification, morphology, embryology, etc. I should really much like to know why such an hypothesis as the undulation of the ether may be invented, and why I may not invent (not that I did invent it, for I was led to it by studying domestic varieties) any hypothesis, such ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... fresh water on this steaming speck of rock, and I tell you, the knowing that there was none, and that unless rain fell I must die of thirst, had like to have driven me mad. Where the ship was, and beyond it, the island rose somewhat in the form of a gentle undulation. I walked that way, and there obtained a view of the whole island, which was very nearly circular, like the head of a hill, somewhat after the shape of a saucepan lid. It resembled a great mass of sponge to the sight, and there ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... hunters to lead my horse while I attempted to stalk a fine buck mehedehet (Redunca Ellipsyprimna). There were several in the herd, but there was a buck with a fine head a few yards in advance; they were standing upon an undulation on open ground backed by high grass. I had marked a small bush as my point of cover, and creeping unobserved towards this, I arrived unseen within about a hundred and twenty yards of the buck. With the Fletcher 24 I made a good shoulder-shot; the buck gave a few bounds and fell dead; the does ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... fixed upon those of the great bust of Berenice, he was startled by a sudden cry from within the house, the hoarse yell of a man in agony; it was repeated, and became a long shriek, rising and falling in terrible undulation. He had stepped forward to seek an explanation, when Heliodora's eunuch smilingly came to ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... neck and chin. And in her walk there is also a serpentine elegance, a sinuous charm: the shoulders do not swing; the cambered torso seems immobile;— but alternately from waist to heel, and from heel to waist, with each long full stride, an indescribable undulation seems to pass; while the folds of her loose robe oscillate to right and left behind her, in perfect libration, with the free swaying of the hips. With us, only a finely trained dancer could attempt such a walk;—with the Martinique woman of color it is natural as the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... disappeared, rolling back like a dark stocking from the leg of the road. Three minutes' walk ahead of her, suspended in the now high and limitless air, she saw a thin interlacing of attenuated gleams and glitters, centred in a regular undulation on some one invisible point. Abruptly she knew where she would go. That was the great cascade of wires that rose high over the river, like the legs of a gigantic spider whose eye was the little green light in the switch-house, and ran with the railroad ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... curvature.] Convolution — N. winding &c v.; convolution, involution, circumvolution; wave, undulation, tortuosity, anfractuosity^; sinuosity, sinuation^; meandering, circuit, circumbendibus^, twist, twirl, windings and turnings, ambages^; torsion; inosculation^; reticulation &c (crossing) 219; rivulation^; roughness &c 256. coil, roll, curl; buckle, spiral, helix, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the universe, the Infinite Good. In a word, he dies, and enters Nirwana. There is no more evil of any sort for him at all forever. The final fading echo of sorrow has ceased in the silence of perfect blessedness; the last undulation of the wave of change has rolled ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and moorhens dived and hid in the reeds. The lesser grebe sank at the sound of the paddle like a stone. A strong northern diver raised a wave as he hurried away under the water, his course marked by the undulation above him. Sedge-birds chirped in the willows; black-headed buntings sat on the trees, and watched him without fear. Bearded titmice were there, clinging to the stalks of the sedges, and long-necked herons rose from ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... prevented the weeds from encroaching; but when he died, not long after, his wife had to go into the workhouse, and in one season the sorrel and dandelions took possession, and Phoebe's grave became like all the others—a scarcely distinguishable undulation ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... time that this immense aerial undulation started on its tour around the world, another wave but of awful destructiveness, a seismic sea-wave, started on a similar journey. There can hardly be a doubt that this so-called "tidal-wave" was synchronous with the greatest of the explosions. A wave from fifty ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... such as make the beauty of our dancing. They move from the hip, keeping constantly the upper part of their body still, and seem to associate with every gesture or pose some definite thought. They cross the stage with a sliding movement, and one gets the impression not of undulation but of ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... ever alone. The green space was bare around her as if cleared by the sweep of her gown. She moved quietly, with a long and even undulation, a yielding of her whole body to the rhythm of her feet. She had reached the far end of the lawn as Lucy neared her, and he looked for her ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... fair boundaries of the counties of Hereford and Worcester rise in a long undulation the sloping pastures of the Malvern Hills. Consulting a big red book on the castles and manors of England, we found Lockley Park to be seated near the base of this grassy range, tho in which county I forget. In the pages of this genial volume Lockley Park and its appurtenances made a very ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... that was tossed on its inconstant bosom, I imaged a bier, that would convey to death all who trusted to its treacherous smiles. Farewell to the sea! Come, my Clara, sit beside me in this aerial bark; quickly and gently it cleaves the azure serene, and with soft undulation glides upon the current of the air; or, if storm shake its fragile mechanism, the green earth is below; we can descend, and take shelter on the stable continent. Here aloft, the companions of the swift-winged ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... barrier at its northern end, where the river escapes, except that formed by the gradually increasing throw of the fault. The pool is simply due to the reversal of the natural slope of the river-bed, caused by the formation of a roll or undulation in the ground on the upthrow side of the fault. Its recent origin is evident from the number of dead trees and bamboo clumps ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... steps in ascending the hill he leaned gently now and then on the arm of a handmaid, evidently the pet-lamb of this kindest of pastors. Ah, such a damsel! Andalus from head to foot; from the rose in her hair, to the fairy shoe and lacework stocking; Andalus in every movement; in every undulation of the body:—ripe, melting Andalus! But then so modest!—so shy!—ever, with downcast eyes, listening to the words of the padre; or, if by chance she let flash a side glance, it was suddenly checked and her eyes once more ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by its strange sheen. It began to lean stiffly toward one side—as if falling. It straightened and leaned the other way. Then undulation crept into it, till the top-end followed the outline of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... the rules of art—from the smallest perceptible sound to the loudest and most magnificent crescendo, exactly as she pleased. One of her favorite caprices of ornament was to imitate the swell and fall of a bell, making her tones sweep through the air with the most delicious undulation, and, using her voice at pleasure, she would shower her graces in an absolutely wasteful profusion. Her greatest defect was that, while the ear was bewildered with the beauty and tremendous power of her voice, the feelings were ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... entered. She was tall and slender, but rounded, with a peculiar undulation of movement, such as one sometimes sees in perfectly untutored country-girls, whom Nature, the queen of graces, has taken in hand, but more commonly in connection with the very highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained society. She was a splendid scowling beauty, black-browed, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... stopped by the morning wind, they sometimes form a broad and dense crescent quite across the river. When I turn my prow that way, and the wave which it makes strikes them, list what a pleasant rustling from these dry substances grating on one another! Often it is their undulation only which reveals the water beneath them. Also every motion of the wood-turtle on the shore is betrayed by their rustling there. Or even in mid-channel, when the wind rises, I hear them blown with a rustling ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... on all sides! The white locusts of death were swarming over the entire countryside. There was no corner free from their quivering wings. The recently plowed earth, the yellowing roads, the dark woodland, everything was pulsating in weariless undulation. The soil seemed to be clamoring, and its words were the vibrations of the restless little flags. And the thousands of cries, endlessly repeated across the days and nights, were intoning in rhythmic chant the terrible onslaught which this earth had witnessed and from which ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... folded structure. All the miners are agreed in the statement that the gold abounds most at the swells, or highest points of the waves of rock, and that the scarcely less valuable mispickel appears to follow the same law. The spaces between are not found to be so rich as these points of undulation; and this structure must explain the signal contrast in thickness and productiveness which is everywhere seen in sinking a shaft in this district. As the cutting passes through one of these original swells, the thickness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... heard her singing with all the light-heartedness of youth and he caught a few notes as clear and cheerful as a grey bird's. Then, still walking quickly, she dwindled into one bright spot upon the moor, dipped into an undulation, and was gone—a creature of the heath and wild lands whom it seemed impossible to imagine ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... Hwan-lien-p'u this morning, to the left high hills are picturesquely darkened in the soft and unruffled solemnity of their own still unbroken shade. Opposite, rising in pretty wavy undulation, with occasional abruptions of jagged rock and sunken hollow, the steep hill-sides are brought out in the brightest coloring of delicate light and shade by the golden orb of early morn; towering majestically sunwards, sheer up in front of me, high above all else, still more sombre heights ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... dejected and pulverized past. The drive itself was charming; for there is an inexhaustible sweetness in the gray-green landscape of Provence. It is never absolutely flat, and yet is never really ambitious, and is full both of entertainment and re- pose. It is in constant undulation, and the bareness of the soil lends itself easily to outline and profile. When I say the bareness, I mean the absence of woods and hedges. It blooms with heath and scented shrubs and stunted olive; and the white rock ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... area and disappeared down the incline which led to the water. Nearing the bank he heard distinctly the splash of the body and he fired again into the spot whence the noise arose. The waters were still in commotion when he reached them, but there was no one to be found; nothing save the gentle undulation of the surface as it closed over its burden, and gradually became placid under the soft stillness of the night. After several minutes of intense vigilance, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... essentials. The chief difference between the old way and my new method is in the preparatory work. Now, this will never become a world full of ballet dancers, because not everyone could learn this graceful undulation if they wanted to. (All the more reason, I say, why those who have the talent should profit by it.) Not all of my pupils, nor all of my best pupils in other forms of the art, can hope to become solo artistes in ballet work. I can glance over a class at work in any of my studios, ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line, Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be—I think I may venture to say there is—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The 'dynamo' which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its temporary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... hills, with a jagged fringe of bluish firs and a solitary windmill. It must be a good mile and a half since we had passed a house, and there was none to be seen in the distance—nothing but the undulation of sere grass, sopped brown beneath the huge blackish oak-trees, and whence arose, from all sides, a vague disconsolate bleating. At last the road made a sudden bend, and disclosed what was evidently ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... ahead of the pony party we unconsciously dropped into a hollow of an undulation, and foolishly did not spot it when we paused to build a cairn. Continuing our march we looked back to find no cairn. This first indicated to us the existence of undulations in the neighbourhood, and we frequently lost the ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... established his head-quarters. This mountain range, towering from two to three thousand feet over the plain of Ormond, stretches from north-west to south-east, some twenty miles, descending with many a gentle undulation towards the Funcheon and the Blackwater in the earldom of Desmond. Of all its valleys Aharlow was the fairest and most secluded. Well wooded, and well watered, with outlets and intricacies known only to the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... in violent contrast with the multitudinous detail, the secular stability, and the vast average of comfort of the Western nations. Life in the East is fierce, short, hazardous, and in extremes. Its elements are few and simple, not exhibiting the long range and undulation of European existence, but rapidly reaching the best and the worst. The rich feed on fruits and game,—the poor on a watermelon's peel. All or nothing is the genius of Oriental life. Favour of the Sultan, or his ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... leave everywhere audible a deep fundamental tone and a soft continuously-singing upper voice, and you will get the right idea of his playing. But it would be an error to think that Chopin permitted every one of the small notes to be distinctly heard. It was rather an undulation of the A flat major chord, here and there thrown aloft anew by the pedal. Throughout all the harmonies one always heard in great tones a wondrous melody, while once only, in the middle of the piece, besides that chief song, a tenor voice became ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... thirds should be very soft, thin—like an airy cloud. The left hand is soft too, but the first beat should be slightly accented, the second not; the first is positive, the second negative. Herein lies the idea of the barcarolle, the ebb and flow, the undulation ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... acknowledging his Supremacy. About two miles from hence is a Curiosity, in the shape of a Building, where, if you fire off a Pistol; the Sound returns about Fifty times. 'Tis done, they told me, by two Parallel Walls of a considerable length, which reverberate the Sound to each other till the undulation is quite spent. The which, being so informed, I was as wise concerning the Echo as I ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... His hands were as beautiful as if they had been the works of art. His figure left nothing to be desired, particularly by those who found rather a grace than a defect in a certain light and gentle undulation of the person when he entered a room, and of which you hardly felt tempted to enquire the cause. Indeed it was scarcely perceptible,—the clothes he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... beech woods at the foot of the great Downs, and far over the endless fields of the Weald or plain. Thirty fields could be counted in succession, one after the other, like irregular chess-squares, some corn, some grass, and these only extended to the first undulation, where the woods hid the fields behind them. But beyond these, in reality, succeeded another series of fields to the second undulation, and still a third series to the farthest undulation visible. Yet farther there was a faint ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... thirst, which became the more intolerable as the body was drained of its moisture. In vain those miserable objects stripped themselves of their clothes, squatted down on their hams, and fanned the air with their hats, to produce a refreshing undulation. Many were unable to rise again from this posture, but falling down, were trod to death or suffocated. The dreadful symptom of thirst was now accompanied with a difficulty of respiration, and every individual gasped ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... place also to be visited at Segeste—its theatre; but we are too immediately below it to know any thing about it at present, and must leave it in a parenthesis. To our left, at the distance of eight miles, this hill country of harmonious and graceful undulation ends in beetling cliffs, beneath which the sea, now full in view, lies sparkling in the morning sunshine. We shall never, never forget the impressions made upon us on first getting sight of Segeste! Paestum we had seen, and thought that it exhausted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... swam with undulation soft, Adrift on Vischer's ocean, And, from my cockboat up aloft, Sent down my mental plummet oft, In ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... indescribable, unconscious grace; with that supple, elastic undulation which would have been coquettish had it not been undeniably natural. Reaching the wall that enclosed the right side of the park, she opened a wicket that led into a narrow path through a large field of ripe ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... than crows fly, across a plain. The plain undulated a little, like a sea, a dead sea, of spotless white, with nothing alive upon it—only his hunched, slouching, untidy, squat form and his shadow, "pacing" him. At the top of the highest undulation he stopped, and glowered back along ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... the extra high notes with that ease and certainty which make each highest one a triumph of expression purely, and not a physical marvel. The gradual growth and sostenuto of her tones; the light and shade, the rhythmic undulation and balance of her passages; the bird-like ecstacy of her trill; the faultless precision and fluency of her chromatic scales; above all, the sure reservation of such volume of voice as to crown ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... of births. But though personalities ever shift, the one line of life along which they are strung like beads, runs unbroken, it is ever that particular line, never any other. It is therefore individual—an individual vital undulation—which is careering through the objective side of Nature, under the impulse of Karma and the creative direction of Tanha and persists through many cyclic changes. Professor Rhys-Davids calls that which passes from personality ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A transparent vapor or exhalation, which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east; in the western sky still lingered the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... bar that ran across. He was facing the door; his hands were still clinging, his eyes glared at me, his jaw had fallen, The hideous face seemed grimacing at and threatening me. As I entered the water was disturbed by my motion. An undulation set in movement by my entrance passed through the length of the saloon. All the corpses swayed for a moment. I stopped in horror. Scarcely had I stopped when the corpses, agitated by the motion of the water and swaying, lost their hold; their fingers slipped, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... however only an extravagant growth of the prolific soil. Mrs. McKinstry gazed at it anxiously. There was no sign of life or movement near or around it; it stood as it had always stood, deserted and solitary. But turning her eyes to the right, beyond the water-course, she could see a slight regular undulation of the grassy sea and what appeared to be the drifting on its surface of half a dozen slouched hats in the direction of the alders. There was no longer any doubt; a party from the other ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... a remarkable instance of scientific prevision. In a note to line 373, canto ii. of the poem, the author sets out with, "The progressive motion of fish beneath the water is produced principally by the undulation of their tails;" and after giving the rationale of the process, he goes on to say that "this power seems to be better adapted to push forward a body in the water than the oars of boats;" concluding with the query, "Might not some machinery resembling ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... the thought of undulation, and of the wave-power in the sea itself, which is always expressed by the serpentine bodies either of the sea-gods or of the sea-horse; and when Athena carries, as she does often in later work, a serpent for her shield-sign, it is not so much the repetition ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... Chameillan's, one of the most exclusive houses in the noble Faubourg. When I enter her drawing-room, I usually cause the same sensation that Beelzebub would doubtless produce should he put his foot into one of the drawing-rooms in Paradise. That evening, when I was announced, I saw a certain undulation of heads in a group of young women who were whispering to one another; many curious eyes were fastened upon me, and among these beautiful eyes were two more beautiful than all the others: they were those ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... choose nothing less than heaven and earth as their object; they divide the world between them as if it were an orange; they rush to the fight or stop for a speech with a fine shake of the head which sends a majestic undulation round the wig worn by them, even by the Moors, as we may see in one of the very rare dramas then published with engravings. They are represented there with embroidered justaucorps, wigs ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... crowned with groves of pine, and others exhibiting only barren precipices of grayish marble, except where the crags were tufted with myrtle and other aromatic shrubs. The sea slept in a perfect calm; its waves, dying in murmurs on the shores, flowed with the gentlest undulation, while its clear surface reflected in softened beauty the vermeil tints of the west. Emily, as she looked upon the ocean, thought of France and of past times, and she wished, Oh! how ardently, and vainly—wished! that its waves would bear her to ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Massulah boat pulls off alongside, receives its cargo at the gangway, and is then beached through the surf. It is no uncommon circumstance for the boat alongside, assisted by the rolling of the ship, to rise and fall twenty-five feet relatively to the height of the ship's deck at each undulation. Ladies are lashed into chairs, and from the ship's yard-arm lowered into the boat. In 1860 some improvement was effected by the construction of an iron pier, about nine hundred feet in length, and twenty feet in ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... horror. It was rising gradually to my side, within the bell, through the gloom of which the pale skin and light robes sent a sickly gleam. I had no power to move myself away from it. My body was bent so that my face was within a few inches of it; and a slight undulation of the waters that were rising into the bell inch by inch, imparted to the corpse a motion that made it dodge upwards and downwards, as if it made efforts to touch my countenance. All was as silent as death; for the slight agitation of the sea ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... short; fortunately from the undulation of the vale, they could not see the cottage until within a hundred yards of it. When they were in sight, a man came forth from the garden to greet them; Sybil gave an exclamation of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... corresponded to Shackleton's southernmost advance. We camped in 88 deg. 25' S. and established there our last—the tenth—depot, in which we left 220 pounds of provisions. Our way now gradually led downward. The surface was in excellent condition, entirely level, without a single hill or undulation or other obstacle. Our sleds forged ahead to perfection; the weather was beautiful; we daily covered seventeen miles. Nothing prevented us from increasing our daily distance. But we had time enough and ample provisions; we thought it wiser, also, to spare our dogs and not to work them harder than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the still reeking skins came floating out on the surface of the sea, so calming the waves in their vicinity that these did not break any longer, but glided under the keel of the boat with a heavy rolling undulation. ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the yelping and occasional baying below, the rustling among the limbs, and the undulation caused by the animals leaping upward among the branches; but they ceased to disturb him after a time, and became like the sound of falling water in the ears of the hunter by his camp-fire. It was not long before slumber stole away his senses, ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... hundred yards of the deer, which was a beautiful little antelope. Beyond the bush behind which he now crouched all was bare open ground, without a shrub or a hillock large enough to conceal the hunter. There was a slight undulation in the ground, however, which enabled him to advance about fifty yards farther, by means of lying down quite flat and working himself forward like a serpent. Farther than this he could not move without being seen by the antelope, which browsed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... lustre, was the glazed high-road which stretched, hedgeless and ditchless, past a directing-post where another road joined it, and on to the less regular ground beyond, lying like a riband unrolled across the scene, till it vanished over the furthermost undulation. Beside the pools were occasional tall sheaves of flags and sedge, and about the plain a few bushes, these forming the only obstructions to a ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... larger and larger as they approached the house and then diminishing again when they had passed it, till they looked like two insects at the end of the long white line which stretched as far as the eye could reach, rising and falling with the undulation of the earth. When the grass again sprang up a little girl passed the gate every morning with two thin cows which browsed along the side of the road, and in the evening she returned, taking, ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... cheap sentiment overflowed the Bellairs family, in which Colonel Bellairs floated complacently like a piece of loose seaweed, and in which even Aunt Mary underwent a dignified undulation. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... dramatists, we said that really and truly no man can paint another, but only himself, and what we call character-painting is at the best but a poor mixing of painter and painted—a third something between these two, just as what we call colour and sound are born of the play of undulation upon organism. Very likely this is putting the case too strongly. But be this as it may, it is impossible to open a play of Shakespeare’s without being struck with the way in which the meditative side of Shakespeare’s mind strove with and sometimes nearly strangled ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... a calm evening came; the sea lay in soft, shining undulation, not urgent enough to exasperate the drooping sails. The ship rose and declined like a sleeper's pulse. We were all under a spell. Soon the moon, then at her full, came up, elongating herself laterally into an oval, whose breadth was not more than three fifths its length; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... entrepreno. Underwrite garantii. Undesigned senvola, senintenca. Undignified malinda. Undisciplined malobeema. Undo malfari. Undo (the hair) malligi. Undress (one's self) malvesti, senvestigi. Undulate ondolinii. Undulating ondolinia. Undulation ondolinio. Unearthly supernatura. Uneasiness maltrankvileco. Uneasy maltrankvila. Unemployed senokupa. Unendurable nesuferebla. Unequal neegala. Unerring neerara, certa. Uneven neebena, malglata. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... day proved to be a lovely autumn morning, and the prospect along the Wall perfect for the antiquary, who could see it crawling like some great serpent on its belly, with many an undulation from east to west, over many a mile beneath ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... out on the lonesome and still snow-covered prairie the steed which they were going to rescue stood on a low mound or undulation of the plain surrounded by wolves. It was a pitiful sight to see the noble mare, almost worn-out with watching and defending herself, while the pack of those sneaking hounds of the wilderness sat ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... on! One—two—three—four quarters after eleven tinkled in silvery numbers upon the delicate bell of the clock, yet the closed eyelids and fixed lips moved not, gave no sign; but for the light, though regular undulation of the chest, life itself might seem to have fled forever. Yet ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... tongue; The weed whose tangled fibres tell Of some inviolate deep-sea dell; The faultless, secret-chambered shell, Whose sound is an epitome Of all the utterance of the sea; Great, basking, twinkling wastes of brine; Far clouds of gulls that wheel and swerve In unanimity divine, With undulation serpentine, And wondrous, consentaneous curve, Flashing in sudden silver sheen, Then melting on the sky-line keen; The world-forgotten coves that seem Lapt in some magic old sea-dream, Where, shivering off the milk-white foam, Lost airs wander, seeking ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... an instinct which urged him to fly and an instinct which commanded him to remain, he perceived in the snow at his feet, a few steps before him, a sort of undulation of the dimensions of a human body—a little eminence, low, long, and narrow, like the mould over a grave—a ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... waters. But presently, outside the scene of disturbance, a circular wave is seen to form, and if the motion of this wave be watched it is seen to present the most striking contrast with the turmoil and confusion at its centre. It sweeps onward and outward in a regular undulation. Gradually it loses its circular figure (unless the sea-bottom happens to be unusually level), showing that although its motion is everywhere regular, it is not everywhere equally swift. A wave of this sort, though incomparably vaster, swept swiftly away on every side ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... had really come, his restlessness fell from him. He felt cool, confident, happy! The world, the beautiful world, was gay in gold and green. Over the rise, half hidden by its gentle undulation, he caught the glint of a ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... features of the Sensible World correspond therefore to the laws of our exertional activity, but the correspondence is relational, not resemblant. Just so, it is by the reflection of Light that we discover the forms of the obstacle which solid bodies oppose to the radiant undulation. The resultant colours correspond to the form of these obstructions; but the correspondence is relational not resemblant. The same is true of sounds, of tactual sensations, of every other ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... face with an effort, and straightened up as the cheery voice hailed me. She was coming towards me like a woodland sprite, floating, it seemed to me, for her gliding step was so free from any pronounced undulation. Her dress of blue checked gingham just escaped the ground, and she wore a gingham sunbonnet with two long strings, which she held in either hand. The sunbonnet was tilted back, and her laughing face, ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... there would be smooth. Nor was I deceived, for I saw that the rock acted as a breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a good way beyond it. I thereupon steered for the starboard of this rock, and when I was within it found the heave of the sea dwindled to a scarce perceptible undulation, whereupon I lowered my sail, and, standing to the oar, sculled the boat to a low lump of ice, on ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... hair was magnificently red and her eyes very black. It was a troubling effect, but it had been evanescent; he had forgotten it almost till very unexpectedly he saw her coming down the terrace slow and eager, as if she were restraining herself, and with a rhythmic upward undulation of her whole figure. The light from an open window fell across her path, and suddenly all that mass of arranged hair appeared incandescent, chiselled and fluid, with the daring suggestion of a helmet of burnished ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... carriage, and it is indeed the poetry of motion, singular as it may appear, when it is remembered that for them to walk abroad is such a rarity. It is not the simple progressive motion alone, but also the harmonious play of features, the coquettish undulation of the face, the exquisite disposition of costume, and the modulation of voice, that engage the beholder and lend a happy charm to every ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... smooth undulation to a breaker is not abrupt except where the bottom shoals abruptly. Say the bottom shoals gradually for from quarter of a mile to a mile, then an equal distance will be occupied by the transformation. Such a bottom is ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... fixed mathematical principles, though those principles are not always developed, it is to be observed, that country is always most beautiful when it is made up of curves, and that one of the chief characters of Ausonian landscape is the perfection of its curvatures, induced by the gradual undulation of promontories into the plains. In suiting architecture to such a country, that building which least interrupts the curve on which it is placed will be felt to be ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... knees at a chair, she buried her face in her hands. She prayed for a long time, and he, standing behind her, could see that she was crying. She wept noiselessly, like women do weep when they are in great, poignant grief. There was a kind of undulation in her body, which ended in a little sob, which was hidden and stifled ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... disappeared. The elephants which had taken to flight roamed in the horizon with their fired towers. These burned here and there in the darkness like beacons nearly half lost in the mist; and no movement could be discerned in the plain save the undulation of the river, which was heaped with corpses, and was drifting them away to ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... meant many long hours of undulation and skidding over the November snow, to the somniferous bell jangle of my dirty little horses, the only impression of interest being a weird gypsy concert I came in for at a miserable drinking-booth half buried in the snow where we halted for the refreshment of man and beast. Here, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... flat region may be noticed. The intense heat of the summer sun striking on the dry sand or the saline efflorescence of the desert throws the air over them into such a state of quivering undulation as produces the most wonderful and varying effects, distorting the forms of objects, and rendering the most familiar strange and hard to be recognized. A mud bank furrowed by the rain will exhibit the appearance of a magnificent city, with columns, domes, minarets, and pyramids; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... facile as grain rippling before the wind, would have put the best ballet in Europe to the blush. Concha's skirts swept Rezanov's feet, her little slippers twinkled before his admiring eyes, and he lost no sinuous turn or undulation of her beautiful figure; but she never vouchsafed him ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... us, a projecting ridge of rock—Madigan Nunatak—came into sight. From the camp of the previous evening it had evidently been hidden from view by an undulation in ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the King of old 'Mid Babylonian gold, And picture-woven walls, and lamps that gleam'd Unholy radiance, sate, And with some smooth slave-mate Toy'd, and the wine laugh'd round, and music stream'd Voluptuous undulation, o'er the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... held by the Brigade stretched south from the great Bapaume-Cambrai road. It was from these trenches that the northern part of the surprise attack against Cambrai was launched on 20th November. The enemy was ensconced in his Hindenburg Line, which took advantage of every undulation in the bare tableland. The villages in our occupation, Hermies, Doignies and Beaumetz, had all shared in the systematic devastation of the spring. The foremost British line was still a matter of partially connected outposts, each Platoon forming as a rule ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... inexperienced eye has no idea of the imposing impression caused by the extremely subitaneous changes to which these waters are subjected. The wide bosom of the lake that sometimes lies motionless and glassy, without a breath of air to cause the slightest undulation, in a very short time may be scourged by a sudden gale. The wild gambols of the waves, accompanied by the roar of the disturbed elements, may well cause the timid to fear; for, as the swell lifts, you would think the bases of ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... Visual vertigo. The vertigo rotatoria described above, was induced by the rotation or undulation of external objects, and was attended with increased action of the primary link of the associated motions belonging to vision, and with consequent pleasure. The vertigo visualis is owing to less perfect vision, and is not accompanied with pleasurable ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin |
