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Billow   /bˈɪloʊ/   Listen
Billow

noun
1.
A large sea wave.  Synonym: surge.



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"Billow" Quotes from Famous Books



... that he had left the 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 ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... 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, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... it may be supposed he had been Young Mat, but he had been Old Mat now as long as most could recall. In all these years, indeed, he had changed very little. He trained his horses to-day at Putnam's, the farm in the village of Cuckmere, over the green billow of the Downs, just as he had done in the beginning; and he trained the same kind of horses in the same kind of way, which was entirely different from that ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... 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 out thy fleecy ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... have passed away since the September afternoon when the deep-toned bell rang out the merry tidings, "Maude can see—Maude can see," and again upon the billow another vessel rides. But this time to the westward; and the beautiful lady, whose soft, dark eyes look eagerly over the wave says to her companion, "It is very ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... times should come like these! Prophets, indeed, taught lies when we were young, And people loved to have it so; For they teach well who teach their scholars' tongue! But that the foolish both should gaze, With feeble, fascinated face, Upon the wan crest of the coming woe, The billow of earthquake underneath the seas, And sit at ease, Or stand agape, Without so much as stepping back to 'scape, Mumbling, 'Perchance we perish if we stay: 'Tis certain wear of shoes to stir away!' Who ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... a ship steaming across the billow, That should have brought him to his mother's knee; Did warning dreams hover around her pillow, Of the dear face she never more shall see? She sits at home deeming that all is well, Who shall the tale ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... 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 ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... breaking over the Downs. Coming ashore later, on a giant roller, the wave burst into awful masses of towering foam, so high above and around the lugger that for an instant she was out of sight, overwhelmed, and the crowds cried, 'She's lost!' but upwards she rose again on the crest of the following billow, and with the speed of an arrow flew to the land on this mighty ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... like the present one, for the commission of errors, ignorances, or sins, which in their turn must inevitably produce their due effect of sickness, disability, or woe. Thus is the soul tossed about from life to life, from billow to billow in the great ocean of transmigration. And there is no escape save for the very few, who, during their birth as men, attain to a right knowledge of the Great Spirit: and thus enter into immortality, or, as the later [94] philosophers ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... their contingents of "Nobody's Boys." Let them take with them kind thoughts of Old England, and memories sweet of its rare rural joys. Let them "camp out" once again, by the ocean, and plunge in the billow, and rove on the sands; Know the true British brine-whiff by experience. Help, British Public, their friends' kindly hands. Good is the work, and the fruit of it excellent; giving poor wastrels a fair start in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various

... 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 joyaunce through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... circumstances in which the ripple passes into the wavelet, and the wavelet into the billow. On this head, as on all others, there is great value in the teachings of history; and the Free Church might be worse employed than in occasionally conning the lesson. Each fifty years of the last century and half has been marked by its own special questions of the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... rest, Whom the fates sever From his true maiden's breast, Parted for ever? Where, through groves deep and high, Sounds the far billow; Where early violets die Under the willow. Eleu loro, &c. Soft shall be ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... day for the most part we ran East Southeast all along the shoare, within two leagues alwayes of the same, and found the land all as at the first, ful of woods and great rocks hard aboord the shoare, and the billow beating so sore, that the seas brake vpon the shoare as white as snow, and the water mounted so high that a man might easily discerne it 4. leagues off, in such wise that no boate could land there. Thus we ran vntil 12. of the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... there. So upward sprang his knees as he rushed against the stream right on, nor stayed him the wide-flowing River, for Athene put great strength in him. Neither did Skamandros slacken his fierceness, but yet more raged against the son of Peleus, and he curled crestwise the billow of his stream, lifting himself on high, and on Simoeis he called with a shout: "Dear brother, the strength of this man let us both join to stay, since quickly he will lay waste the great city of king Priam, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... state-room. Just then a billow strikes the steamer almost amidships, and she rolls. This, not being expected, causes John to slide across the cabin floor, to the accompaniment of a chorus of cries from the frightened people, who are huddled in a corner by this new move on ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... the green upland which climbed the Red Mountain at its southern aspect, the long spike of the monk's-hood shot up from its broad-leaved stool and once more shook its dark blue bells. Again the billow above Smith's grave was soft and green, its crest just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups. The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year, and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they reached Smith's grave, and there, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... space of the lightning's flash all the field of battle round which our company has uncertainly wandered since the morning. I saw a limitless gray plain, across whose width the wind seemed to be driving faint and thin waves of dust, pierced in places by a more pointed billow ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... 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 named the Valley of the Wreck. At each of these ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... body of water, torrent, rapids, flush, flood, swash; spring tide, high tide, full tide; bore, tidal bore, eagre^, hygre^; fresh, freshet; indraught^, reflux, undercurrent, eddy, vortex, gurge^, whirlpool, Maelstrom, regurgitation, overflow; confluence, corrivation^. wave, billow, surge, swell, ripple; anerythmon gelasma [Gr.]; beach comber, riffle [U.S.], rollers, ground swell, surf, breakers, white horses, whitecaps; rough sea, heavy sea, high seas, cross sea, long sea, short sea, chopping sea. [Science of fluids in motion] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Thought a great shell of artificial matter went, a visible, misty wall, that curled forward, and wrapped itself around the Thessian ships with a motion of tremendous speed, yet deceptive, for it seemed to billow and flow. ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... all, in their adult state, locomotive beings. They float freely and incessantly through the ocean, either impelled by their own efforts, or driven by storm and billow. They for the most part frequent the open seas, and shun the shore, their delicate frames being endangered by the perennial strife between land and water. Being designed for constant motion, for the navigation of the great waters, their entire organisation ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... and toss on my pillow, As a ship without rudder or spars Is tumbled and tossed on the billow, 'Neath the glint and the glory of stars. 'Tis midnight and moonlight, and slumber Has hushed every heart but my own; O why are these thoughts without number Sent to me by the man in ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... of exceeding peril. Though the wind had subsided, the swell was tremendous; billow after billow being carried against the coral reefs with a violence known only to the earthquake and the angry ocean. Vast volumes of water surged high on either side, projecting still higher their sparkling shafts of spray, like the pillars ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... mountain top; the dark-blue dome of the sky fills with a lighter azure; the star swoons, and the sun peers over the crest. It ascends. Its rays plunge into the pool of darkness still upon the meadow; they pierce it, at first separately as with rapier thrusts, and then finally billow down into it in a cascade of molten gold. The shadows flee; the sunlight strikes the cabin; and Charles-Norton Sims appears at ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... traffic of the city, Freshwater Bay affords a delightful retreat. During the bright days of summer the sea breaks in gentle murmur on the sand and shingle of the beach, but in winter when lashed by S.W. Gales "it tumbles a billow on chalk and sand." The roar of the ocean can be heard for miles inland. The esplanade shown in the picture has been destroyed by the breakers. Temporary repairs have been effected, but a fierce controversy is still raging as to the ultimate solution ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various

... whispered, "Come on deck, and see what a morning it is." What a morning, indeed! Thanks, old comrade! Call me next time, when there is such to see; and if I am too weak to get out of my berth, take me up in those strong arms, across that broad, billow-like chest of yours, and bear me to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... inexhaustible theme. Painters have here expended their utmost skill. Whether it is the tiny ripple that dies along the curving sands, or the merry, rustling, crested surf that hurries on to wanton in the rocky pools, or the storm billow that rushes wildly against an iron-bound coast to spurt aloft its sheets of spray or to hurl its threatening mass on the trembling strand—in each and every form the wave is a moving miracle. Through every change of contour and interplay of curves, its lines are ever of ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... face, coughed out the smoke he had swallowed, and caught one refreshing gasp of sweet air blowing up the tunnel. Then the fresh air was driven back by the huge billow of smoke, and the heavy clouds settled about Jack. He could not have moved now had he wished. He was the prey of the thick suffocating smoke, and a swift merciful unconsciousness fell upon him and put an end to the agonies he had so ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... tranquillity reigns throughout the country, and that there is no disturbance threatening its peace, endangering its safety, but that which was produced by busy, restless politicians. It has been maintained that the surface of the public mind is perfectly smooth and undisturbed by a single billow. I most heartily wish I could concur in this picture of general tranquillity that has been drawn upon both sides of the Senate. I am no alarmist; nor, I thank God, at the advanced age at which His providence has been pleased to allow me to reach, am I very easily alarmed ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... Westermost point of the riuer Pechora to be South of vs 15 leagues. At a Westsouthwest sunne we set our maine sayle, and lay close by the winde, the winde being at Northwest and by North, making but little way, because the billow went so high: at midnight wee cast about, and the shippe caped Northnortheast, making ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... love, when 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 ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... wise men bowling o'er the billow, Or him, less wise, Who chose rough bramble-bushes for a pillow, And scratched ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... thoughts he was following those who were descending to the village. They soon came in sight of the inn, which was, however, scarcely visible, so small did it look, a black speck at the foot of that enormous billow of snow, and when they opened the door Sam, the great curly dog, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... 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

... the first tremulous sensation of the beauty of our being, in the most glorious perception of the lightning of our life; there, indeed, our expatiation of spirit, when it meets the pulse of outward sound and joy, the voice of bird and breeze and billow, does demand some power of liberty, some space for its going forth into the morning, some freedom of intercourse with the lovely and limitless energy ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... o'er the billow with head bent and hoary, With full throbbing heart, and with glistening eye Past years roll before him—the scene of his glory Fills his heart with ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... musical to the ear Of the sailor-boy on the far-off main, When, from the friendly vessel drawing near, Across the billow floats the gentle strain, The words the tear-drops of his memory move; They tell a mother's or a sister's love; And playmates, friends, and sweetheart to him come Out to him on the sea, in letters from his home. How warmly there the tender ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... the shore; but had scarcely altered our course when the stars disappeared, a tremendous noise struck upon our ears from seaward, and the storm was upon us. In the impenetrable obscurity of the night, not a trace of land could be discovered; but we continued to ply our oars, while each succeeding billow threatened immediate destruction. ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... brow of a kopje. The guns limber up and jump the railway line—a pretty stiff little obstacle—the narrow gauge metals being on top of a narrow embankment. Then across a level field of veldt, and they commence to ascend a slight depression, which is just behind a shouldering billow of veldt. It is hard work for the artillery horses over this ground, but it is fine the way they tug and strain at their work. The officers urge the men to hurry forward. Already a gun is heard from the Boers. They have opened fire. Two ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... shore gazed at her in breathless anxiety, expecting every moment to see her overturned and their comrades left to perish in the waves; but when they saw her reappear from each overwhelming billow, their hearts rose with a rebound, and loud prolonged huzzas cheered the lifeboat on her course. They became silent again, however, when distance and the intervening haze of spray and rain rendered her motions indistinct, and their feelings of anxiety became more and ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... route; and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with engulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after five months' passage, ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro

... way in which elections used to be conducted!)—I felt it was safe for me to wing my flight to fresh scenes and pastures new!—not that I wanted any "new pastures," having been a grass-widow for some time;—but having had enough of the "rolling billow"—(by the way, the rolling "Billow" at Stockbridge didn't roll fast enough)—I yearned for the silvery smoothness of Father Thames, so started for Henley with my faithful Eulalie—(I really must change her ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892 • Various

... handkerchiefing, more tears and laughter, more ear-splitting shrieks of steam and a black plume of smoke that rose in a billow, and hand in hand Miriam and Irving Shapiro joggling down the ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... mounted. So did the dance. Wave followed on ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow. Limb after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play; yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,—as limp as flowing, rushing water,—she whirled and swayed through all the emotions until, at the highest pitch of ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... bundle of bunting rose in the air, shapeless and without definite color. But suddenly, wonderful enough, there came a breeze, a brisk spurt out of the north. The bunting caught it, twisted upon itself, tumbled, writhed, then suddenly shook itself free, and in a single long billow rolled out into the Stars ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris

... nodding line of woolly forms, lifting like the crest of a yellow wave, plunged out and down in rounded billow over the canyon rim. With din of hoofs and bleats the sheep spilled themselves over the precipice, and an awful deafening roar boomed up from the river, like the spreading ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... was down when there was a sudden flare as though the sun had risen, and I saw still a few heads bobbing and a few arms waving frantically around me. At the same instant a terrific detonation split the ears; and when I rose on the next bald billow, where the ship lay burning a few seconds before, there remained but a red-hot spine that hissed and dwindled for another minute, and then left a blackness through which every ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... stiff piece of work reaching her, for wind and waves were both against us and rowing difficult; the cutter at one moment being on the top of a mountainous billow and the next plunged deep down into a yawning valley of green water, the broken ridges of which curled over our gunwales on either hand, threatening to overwhelm us till we, rose ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... across to the opposite bank, on which were standing twelve thousand men—erect, excited, defiant. I was sure that at the next shot they would surge straight against the Stockade like a mighty human billow, and then a carnage would begin the like of which modern times had ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... straightway in front of their faces they raised their heavy hands and matched their might in deadly strife. Hereupon the Bebrycian king even as a fierce wave of the sea rises in a crest against a swift ship, but she by the skill of the crafty pilot just escapes the shock when the billow is eager to break over the bulwark—so he followed up the son of Tyndareus, trying to daunt him, and gave him no respite. But the hero, ever unwounded, by his skill baffled the rush of his foe, and he quickly noted the brutal play of his fists to see where he was invincible ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... 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, her cheeks a little ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... bitter—and sweet; But the Bride she rejected, you know, with expressions I will not repeat. Well—she did no more than all publishers did. Though my prospects were marred, I can pity and pardon them. Blindness, mere blindness! And yet it was hard. For a poet, Bill, is a blossom—a bird—a billow—a breeze— A kind of creature that moves among men as a wind among trees. And a bard who is also the pet of patricians and dowagers doubly can Express his contempt for canaille in his fables where beasts are republican. Yet with all my disdainful ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the slow, regular rhythm that came marching from some weird country, with a grand crash at last, a sobbing crescendo, and an interval of silence that still pulsated on the dusky, odorous air, when the moaning billow was dead. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... willow, the wild weeping willow, That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days, And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays! A musical ditty to scatter the sadness, A warble of wildness to banish its tears, Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness Be sounding and bounding through all ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... silvery head of age upborne Appeared above the wave; So nearly was his strength outworn, That all too late to save Had been the knight, if another billow Its force on his fainting frame, had bent,— Nay, his feeble grasp by the drooping willow The beat of a pulse ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... though kind hands have given him burial on the beach, even there the ceaseless thunder of the surge is in his ears, and the roar of the surf under the broken reef will not let him be quiet; "keep back but twelve feet from me," is his last prayer, "and there billow and roar as much as thou wilt."[29] But even the grace of a tomb was often denied. In the desolation of unknown distances the sailor sank into the gulfs or was flung on a desert beach. Erasippus, perished with his ship, has all the ocean for his grave; somewhere far away his white bones moulder ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... head, and looked into the set face of Ankarstrom, who was close behind him. Then a burning, rending pain took him in his side, and he grew sick and dizzy. The uproar of voices became muffled; the lights were merged into a luminous billow that swelled and shrank and ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... on Mark's knee and gave it a firm grip, sighing hard the while, and then there was silence for a time, as the gig rocked easily in the darkness, while the thunderous roar of the breakers grew less violent; and, instead of being deluged with spray as every billow curved over, there was a sensation as of shelter and warmth which pointed to the fact that the boat must have drifted behind rocks as into some channel; but the intense darkness ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... was flattery too in the diffident criticism of an incident here and there, and the sweetest foretaste of happiness in the joint rearrangement of the disputed chapter. Mallinson was lifted on a billow of confidence. He was of the type which adjusts itself to the opinions his company may have of him. Praise Mallinson and he deserved praises; ignore him and he sank like a plummet to depths of insignificance, conscious of insignificance and of nothing more except a dull rancour ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... 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 ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... and myself had cast To stop him as he outward pass'd; But, lighter than the whirlwind's blast, He vanish'd from our eyes, Like sunbeam on the billow cast That glances ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins

... 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... 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, the Spirit ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... desolate gloom of afternoon, which in late winter is, above the sixtieth, all but night. Ahead of them there seemed to rise billow upon billow of snow-mountains, which dwarfed themselves into drifted dunes when they approached, and the heaven above them, and the horizon on all sides of them were shut out from their vision by a white mist which was intangible and without ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... bold sea-rover feareth 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

... 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 Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... had forever fled; the packet was beaten and tossed about by the tumultuous waters with a violence which threatened to dash her into fragments at every shock, and the sea now made a continual breach over her. The decks were repeatedly swept by the boiling ocean, and each billow snatched its victims to a watery grave. The unfortunate captain and his mate were among the first that perished. About thirty or forty passengers were standing upon the poop clinging to each other in hopeless agony, and occasionally uttering the most piteous ejaculations. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... a sudden, a last, shrill paean rose high; the hosts of our pursuers paused, billow-like, reared, and scattered—my poor ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... and a most skilful physician, was standing by the sea-side, his servants brought to him a chest, which they said the sea-waves had thrown on the land. 'I never saw,' said one of them, 'so huge a billow as cast it on our shore.' Cerimon ordered the chest to be conveyed to his own house and when it was opened he beheld with wonder the body of a young and lovely lady; and the sweet-smelling spices and rich casket of jewels made him conclude it was some great person who was thus strangely ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... hove to, with their colours' hoisted half- mast high, during the ceremony; and I think it was a very great relief to all hands when, the poor fellows—ten in all, including O'Flaherty— having been consigned with all solemnity to their last resting-place beneath the heaving billow, we were able to fill away again and resume our course ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... out there 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 ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... tiny as children's toys—then the azure gleam of the sea and the boats dancing like bits of cork upon it,—then finally the plainer, broader view, wherein the earth with its woods and hills and rocky promontories appeared to heave up like a billow crowned with varying colours,—and so steadily, easily down to the pattern of grass and flowers from the centre of which the Palazzo d'Oro rose like a little white house for ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... beat and shouted round their little prison-isle, each billow leaping as if possessed by a separate demon. The absurd horror of the situation overwhelmed him. He dared not attempt to carry her ashore, for she might spring from his grasp into the flood. He could not leave ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... A deluge billow scoured the land off seas, With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam. For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home, The lesser savage offered bogs ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... hundred souls are in peril. Merciful Heaven! Spare the victims! Are the engines coming? Yes, here they are, dashing down the street. Look! the horses ride upon the wind; eyes bulging like balls of fire; nostrils wide open. A palpitating billow of fire, rolling, plunging, bounding rising, falling, swelling, heaving, and with mad passion bursting its red-hot sides asunder, reaching out its arms, encircling, squeezing, grabbing up, swallowing everything before it with the hot, greedy ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... the visage of the rugged old ocean, To the caves in the billow he rides his foamed steed: As o'er the grim surge with his chariot in motion, He spreads desolation, ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... priestly craft, He closed his ear against the Word Divine: The thing he saw he trusted; nought beyond. Three years went by. Once, when his friend had named The Name all-blessed, Kenwalk frowned. Since then That Name was named no more. O'er hill and dale They chased the wild deer; on the billow breathed Inspiring airs; in hall of joyance trod The mazes of the dance. Then war broke out: Reluctant long King Anna sought the field; Hurled back aggression. Kenwalk, near him still, Watched him with insight keener than his wont, And, wondering, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... scuttles had been hermetically nailed up. It was hoped that they would resist if some formidable billow should fall on the ship. If, by any mischance, they should yield under the weight of these avalanches, the ship might fill and sink. Very fortunately, also, the stowage had been well attended to, so that, notwithstanding the terrible tossing of the vessel, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... multitude of small spiders. Here is one close to my face, out at the tip of a slender grass-stem, holding on with its fore legs and kicking out backward with its hind legs a tiny skein of web off into the air. The threads stream and sway and lengthen, gather and fill and billow, and tug at their anchorage till, caught in the dip of some wayward current, they lift the little aeronaut from his hangar and bear him away ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... 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

... 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 ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... Thus horror girds thee round. Meantime alone Thou dwell'st, and helpless in a soil unknown, Poor, and receiving from a foreign hand The aid denied thee in thy native land. Oh, ruthless country, and unfeeling more Than thy own billow-beaten chalky shore! Leav'st Thou to foreign Care the Worthies giv'n By providence, to guide thy steps to Heav'n? 90 His ministers, commission'd to proclaim Eternal blessings in a Saviour's name? Ah then most worthy! with a soul unfed In Stygian night to lie for ever dead. ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... 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 dripping train ran on through shallower ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... was glowing with a reddish yellow light. This billow of candles which crossed it illuminated the lower arches of the side-aisles, the depth of the chapels, and glittered upon the glass of some shrine or upon the gold of some tabernacle. The rays even penetrated into the apse, and the sepulchral crypts were brightened up by them. The choir was a ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... scraped and grated against knee and elbow. Over all lay a strange light, pallid, ghastly, where the sea spray whirled across the landscape and drove into my face until it grew numb with the cold. In broad bands, rank after rank, billow on billow, the rain burst out across the endless moors, and yet there was no wind to drive ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... ship of romance, and in such a time and place. She was a cloud that, when it mounted the horizon like the others, instead of floating into the meridian, moved over the seas to us, an immutable billow of luminous mist blown forward on the wind. She might have risen at any moment. Her green hull had the sheer of a sea hollow. Her bows pressed continually onward, like the crest of a wave curving forward to break, but held, as though enchanted. Sometimes, when her white mass heeled from us ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... billow, and swim bark! The storm is up, and all is on the hazard. Julius Caesar, Act v. Sc. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar Of the long-breaking surf, and all the sky Is gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I try To time a simple legend to the sounds Of winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,— A song of breeze and billow, such as might Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at night Look from their hemlock camps, by quiet cove Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love. (So hast thou looked, when level sunset lay On the calm bosom of some Eastern bay, And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... cowslip bank, see the billow dances; There I lay, beguiling time—when I liv'd romances; Dropping pebbles in the ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte

... instant when the block was not more than half a cable's length from the "Jeune-Hardie," a dull sound was heard, and a veritable waterspout fell upon the bow of the vessel, which then rose on the back of an enormous billow. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... the wild billow, when it breaks its barrier— Not the wild wind, escaping from its cavern— Not the wild fiend, that mingles both together, And pours their rage upon the ripening harvest, Can match the wild freaks of this mirthful ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... thundering over the ship with a crash—and the first cable snapped like a pistol shot. The ship rebounded; then drove before the back-wash of the angry sea. With no fate possible but the wall of rocks ahead, the terrorized crew began heaving the dead overboard in the moonlight; but another roaring billow smashed the St. Peter squarely broadside. The second hawser ripped back with the whistling rebound of a whip-lash, and Ofzyn was in the very act of dropping the third and last anchor, when straight as a bullet to the mark, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... half-fainting into the boat, a cloak was tossed after, and one by one the remainder followed; they were all safe, and some beggared. The bows of the schooner already plunged deep down in the gaping gulfs, they pulled bravely away, and were tossed along from billow to billow. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... rocks and beaches 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 of ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... the threshold of Joseph's modest studio clad from top to toe in a billow of flaming scarlet: tulle and velvet and poppies cunningly mingled, and well foiled by the solemn black of her escort's formal garb. While the vision floated about the room examining the various sketches and studies scattered ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... upon me before I had thought to execute these instructions, I straightened myself out rigidly, and lo! I shot in like a torpedo on the very top of the billow, holding the point of the board up, yelling like a Comanche Indian. So fast, so straight did I go, that it was all I could do to swerve in the shallow water and not be hurled with force ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... of her. I had answered her letter by a brief note, friendly but calm, in which no mention of continued correspondence or further visits was made. At that hour my bark hung on the topmost curl of a wave of fate, and I knew not on what shoal the onward rush of the billow might hurl it; I would not then attach her destiny to mine by the slightest thread; if doomed to split on the rock, or run a aground on the sand-bank, I was resolved no other vessel should share my disaster: but six weeks was a long time; and could it be that she was still ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell



Words linked to "Billow" :   travel, locomote, moving ridge, cloud, soar upwards, move, wave, soar up, soar, expand, zoom, blow up, reflate, go



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