"Billow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and twined a fish-hook in the long and glistening hair, and drew it, laughing as she went, through dust, and mire, and gore, and over the rough stones of the town, and through the shouting crowds of the multitudes, and tossed it out on to the sea, laughing still as the waves flung it out from billow to billow, and the fish sucked it down to make their feast. "Voila tes secondes noces!" she cried where she stood, and laughed by the side of the gray angry water, watching the tresses of the floating hair sink downward like a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... 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 ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... with his eyes on the ground, for in his 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, began ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... upon the yard Rocked with the billow to and fro, Soon as her well-known voice he heard He sighed, and cast his eyes below: The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands, And quick as lightning on ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... wearied mariner to port e'er fled From the dark billow, when some tempest's nigh, As from tumultuous gloomy thoughts I fly— Thoughts by the force of goading passion bred: Nor wrathful glance of heaven so surely sped Destruction to man's sight, as does that eye Within whose bright black orb Love's Deity Sharpens ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... mounted. So did the dance. Wave followed on ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow. Limb after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play; yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,—as limp as flowing, rushing water,—she whirled and swayed through all the emotions until, at the highest pitch of the mounting music, she fell ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... was on the point of burying them irrecoverably beneath it. Then the soft voice of Undine was heard through the uproar; the moon emerged from the clouds; and by its light Undine was seen on the heights above the valley. She rebuked, she threatened the floods below her. The menacing and tower-like billow vanished, muttering and murmuring; the waters gently flowed away under the beams of the moon; while Undine, like a hovering white dove, flew down from the hill, raised the knight and Bertalda, and bore them to a green spot, where, by her earnest efforts, she soon restored ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... 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 ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... toward his 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, ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... they found in one of those, Where the cleft shore sea in his bosom takes, And 'twixt his stretched arms doth fold and close An ample bay, a rock the haven makes, Which to the main doth his broad back oppose, Whereon the roaring billow cleaves and breaks, And here and there two crags like turrets high, Point forth a port to ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... stairs. Just as Alexis flung himself before the Princess, the new-comer caught the young man's outstretched arm and wrenched something from his hand. The next second he had hurled it into a far corner where stood the great fireplace. There was a blinding sheet of flame, a dull roar, and then billow upon billow of acrid smoke. As it cleared they saw that the fine Italian chimneypiece, the pride of the builder of the House, was a mass of splinters, and that a great hole had been blown through the wall into what had been the dining-room.... ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... work. Details were immediately demanded, the plot of the new novel discussed and praised; there 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 ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... upon the waters, treads the billow's rolling crest; O'er the shifting depths of ocean firm and sure His footsteps rest, And the wave parts not asunder where ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... kisses! How they burned on Edith's lips, making her so happy—and how they blistered on Arthur's heart, making him doubt the propriety of having given or received them. His was the braver spirit now. He had buffeted the billow with a mightier struggle than Edith had ever known. Around his head a blacker, fiercer storm had blown than any she had ever felt, and from out that tumultuous sea of despair he had come a firmer, a better man, with strength to ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... this thought the present hour recedes, As from the beach a billow backward rolls, And the great past, rich in heroic ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... off another hide, and began to worry that in like manner till he had torn it also to shreds; and thus he ran after Tremsin's steed for seventy miles, till he had torn off all the hides, and worried them to bits. But Tremsin sat upon the sea-shore till he saw the large white billow bounding in, and behind the billow came his own horse, and behind his own horse came the thrice-terrible charger of the thrice-lovely Nastasia, with the whole herd at his heels. Tremsin struck him full on the forehead with the twenty ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... consolation that, though legally responsible, he was not morally bound to pay other people's debts. But Scott's own sanguine carelessness had been partly to blame for the Ballantyne failure; and he faced the billow as it suddenly appeared, bowed to it in grief but not in shame, and, while not pretending to any stoicism, instantly resolved to devote the remainder of his life to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... boats. They also, like the birds, seemed pitifully tiny. But, unlike the birds, they did not seem purposeless. It was evident they were moving, though one could not see rowers, oars, or splashes, for they progressed in short jumps and above the dulled rattle of a billow breaking on the pebbles, the faint click-thud of oars between thole-pins was plainly audible. I had an odd fancy that the six men were rowing through immensity, into eternity, to meet God; and that they ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... speck was seen in the horizon; now it is visible above the hollow wave, now curtained from our sight by the swelling billow: we approach nearer; the speck divides, and two spots appear; they ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... boy, whose hunger was as plain as his rags, was calm as the wintry sky. She wondered, but she needed not have wondered; for storm of anger, drought of greed, nor rotting mist of selfishness, had passed or rested there, to billow, or score, or waste. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... island in the South, it shows Its frosted brow, and waves its shaggy woods, And sullenly above the billow broods. Here he that shook the frighted world arose. 'Twas here he gained the strength the wing to plume, To swoop upon the Arno's classic plains, And drink the noblest blood of Europe's veins— His eye but glanced and nations felt their doom! Alas! "how art ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... such imminent peril that not an eye was closed in slumber, excepting in the case of little Inez Hawthorne, who felt the situation only to the extent that it compelled her to stay close in the cabin, while the vessel pitched and tossed from the crest of one tremendous billow, down, seemingly, into the fathomless depths between, and then laboriously climbed the mountain in front, with the spray and mist whirling about the deck and rigging like millions of fine shot. But the gallant Coral rode it out safely, and the steady breeze caught her and she sped swiftly ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... if you can find a competent assassin, I wouldn't make it a point with him to oblige Mr. Markley. I don't care particularly to have the poet buried in the weltering sea. If he can't find a roaring billow, I'll be perfectly satisfied to have him chucked into a creek. And I dare say that it'll make no material difference whether the dolphins gobble him or the catfish and eels nibble him up. It's all the same ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... 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 ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... know, I know. Has it come? Let it wait.... And the war did wait at the door, patiently. War knew that it would have its turn. He knew that also; that is why he had no shame in his egotism. The rising billow of death was about to seize him. So he owed death nothing in advance. Nothing. Let death come back again at the date of the contract! Up to that day let death be silent! Ah, up to then at least ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... out of the city, and what a surging tide of life and motion meets the eye, as if all nations under heaven had dashed their waves of population on this Judean shore! A noisy, wrathful, tempestuous mob, billow on billow, waver and rally round some central object, which it conceals from view. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia and Egypt, strangers of Rome, Cretes and Arabians, Jew and Proselyte, convoked ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Brahman's awful strength compare? To-day, base Warrior, shall thou feel That God-sent might is more than steel." He raised his Brahman staff, nor missed The fiery dart that near him hissed: And quenched the fearful weapon fell, As flame beneath the billow's swell. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... islands were completely submerged by it. The lonely Opara Isle, where the steamers which run between Panama and New Zealand have their coaling station, was visited at about half-past eleven in the evening by a billow which swept away a portion of the coal depot. Afterward great waves came rolling in at intervals of about twenty minutes, and several days elapsed before the sea resumed its ordinary ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... very heavy but the men behaved steadily and well; and through it we went, dancing along like a cork in a mill-pond; at last one huge roller caught us, all hands gave way, and we were hurried along on the top of the swelling billow, which then suddenly fell under us and broke; in a moment after we had grounded, and although still upwards of two hundred yards from the shore, we all jumped out to haul the boat up, but ere we ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... leading to the quarter-deck. The writer, therefore, made the best of his way aft, and, on a second attempt to look out, he succeeded, and saw indeed an astonishing sight. The sea or waves appeared to be ten or fifteen feet in height of unbroken water, and every approaching billow seemed as if it would overwhelm our vessel, but she continued to rise upon the waves and to fall between the seas in a very wonderful manner. It seemed to be only those seas which caught her in the act of rising which struck her with ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which came to Joe in the flight of a second. Then the Reindeer swept skyward and hurtled across their bow to leeward on the breast of a mighty billow. ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... wert a statesman once, Melanthon; now, Grown dim with age, thy eye pervades no more The deep-laid schemes which Dionysius plans. Know then, a fleet from Carthage even now Stems the rough billow; and, ere yonder sun, That now declining seeks the western wave, Shall to the shades of night resign the world, Thou'lt see the Punic sails in yonder bay, Whose waters ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... wrapped of the ocean, Down, down through vast storeys of darkness, behold, in the tower Of the heaven, the thunder! on stairways of cloudy commotion, Colossal of tread, like a giant, from echoing hour to hour Goes striding in rattling armor ... The Nymph, at her billow-roofed dormer Of foam; and the Sylvan—green-housed—at her window of leaves appears; —As a listening woman, who hears The approach of her lover, who comes to her arms in the night; And, loosening the loops of her locks, With eyes full of love and delight, From the ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... on every side around them. The stout frigate was tossed about as if she had been a cockle-shell, yet on she flew unharmed, now sinking into the deep trough of the sea, now rising to the summit of a mountainous billow. ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... turning to look the daring assailant in the face, the rogue had pitched himself back into his cave. No sooner that, than a very bulldog of a billow would attack him in the face. The serenity with which the impertinent assault was borne was complete. It was but a puff of silvery dust, powdering his mane with fresher brightness. Nothing would be left of bull but a little froth of all ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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 ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... 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 light, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... that problem would very soon be settled. As I looked, an enormous billow, topping all the others, and coming after them, like a driver following a flock, swept over the vessel. Her foremast snapped short off, and the men who clung to the shrouds were brushed away like a swarm of flies. With a rending, riving sound the ship began to split in two, where the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gust of wind at this instant swept past them, their frail vessel shook in every timber, and, mounting on a sweeping wave that came howling along, was sent forward with frightful impetuosity to a great distance; when, as if the angry billow disdained its weight, it was precipitated into a gulf of foam which dashed above the sunken rocks whose points received it. "Oh, Beatrix!" exclaimed the young fisherman; "it is all over; we shall meet no more; our fate has overtaken ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... slow-spreading water, filtering slowly through dense banks of clouds, folding them back like the shutter of a giant camera, until the whole eastern sky was a field of gray clouds with frosty edges, between which, coming majestically forward through the green-white billow, appeared finally a moon, big and round and brilliant, casting over the earth a flood of wonderland light, streaming down upon the dunes and flats in mystic sheen, bringing out the desert in soft outline. Near by, the light brought out the form of Pat, standing a ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... red and kindling every billow, The sun's shield shines 'neath many a golden spear, To lean with you, against this leafy pillow, To murmur words of love in this loved ear— To feel you bending like a bending willow, This is to be a poet—this, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... glory, if of thy great lore Thou'rt bountiful to weary voyagers. One art I fain would learn of thee, brave sir; That since the Lord, the Maker of mankind, Hath given might and honor unto thee, Thou shouldst instruct me how thou pointest out The course of this thy billow-riding ship, Thy sea-horse wet with spray. Though sixteen times, In former days and late, I've been to sea, 490 And rowed with freezing hands upon the deep, The ocean-streams—this makes one voyage more— Yet even so mine eyes have ne'er beheld A mighty captain steering ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... for the dead alone, Whose song has told their heart's sad story,— Weep for the voiceless, who have known The cross without the crown of glory! Not where Leucadian breezes sweep O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, But where the glistening night-dews weep On nameless sorrow's ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... murmured Edward Marvel, closing his eyes, and letting his thoughts go, swift-winged, across the billow sea. "Shall I never look on your sweet face again? Never feel your light arms about my neck, or your breath warm on my cheek? Oh, that I had never left you! Heaven give thee strength to ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... surging billow and away to the north ward, other robins are singing in the old maple-tree than those which sang there years ago, when death seemed brooding o'er the place. Again the summer shadows fall aslant ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... if nothing better is to be had, write your name, or draw a hideous spook on the wet sand. You have to be quick about it, too; for just as you are putting the finishing touches to the work, another great billow is sure to come tearing at you, with a wide, deep hollow of emerald green, and foaming crest, looking like molten silver in the moonlight. Crash! it falls on the beach; and a long rush of foam slides up the sand as you ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... Georgia, stood in a grove of oaks on a hill-top overlooking a little mountain town, beyond which uprose a crescent of blue peaks against a dreamy summer sky. Behind the house a broad plantation rolled its billow-like ridges of ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... Ever the heavy billow rears All its sea-length in green, hushed wall; But totters as the shore it nears, Foams to its fall; Where was its mark? on what vain quest Rose that great water ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... Aurora left her early pillow, And the heavens grew rosy-rich, and rare; Laughed the dewy plain and glassy billow, For the Golden God himself was there; And the vapour-screen Rose the hills between, Steaming up, like incense, in ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... buried almost, sometimes, in the seething cauldron, or struck by tons of solid water when some huge mountain of a wave, toppling to its fall, rushed at her out of the blackness. From minute to minute the men never knew but that the next roaring billow would engulf them also, as already they had seen it roll over ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... going down behind the line of distant buttes, throwing long shadows out across the grassy upland. Every crest and billow of the prairie is bathed in crimson and gold, while the "breaks" and ravines trending southward grow black and forbidding in their contrasted gloom. Far over to the southeast, in dazzling radiance, two lofty peaks, still snow-clad, gleam against ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... exhausted his arrows, he took up his javelin, and although already nearly half engulfed, with his arm alone above the water, he hurled it, a powerless weapon, against the unknown God whom he still braved from the depths of the abyss. A mighty billow, which rolled two or three times over the edge of the sea, engulfed the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... it was glittering under the lugger's bottom. Occasionally a pursuing sea cast the stern upward, as if about to throw it in advance of the bows; but le Feu-Follet was too much accustomed to this treatment to be disturbed, and she ever rose on the billow, like a bubble, and then the glancing arrow scarce surpassed the speed with which she hastened forward, as if to recover ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... bowling o'er the billow, Or him, less wise, Who chose rough bramble-bushes for a pillow, And ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... few minutes sleep. He had been in his cabin only long enough to change his damp clothing for dry, when a fearful crash told him the ship had struck upon the rocks. In a moment he was back on the quarter deck. He found that a surging billow had struck the hinder part of the ship, tore off part of the sheathing, and carried away the watch-house in which two women were sleeping—all efforts to rescue them were in vain. Whilst the storm-tossed ocean raged and foamed around the devoted ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... hand, lay between the receded tide and the road, and all along huge islets of somber stone defended themselves as best they could against the attack of the surf. Signs of surrender showed in some, caverns and arches cut by the constant hammer of swell and billow. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... chest heaved upon the floor like a sea-billow, and the house span about him like a wreath of smoke, for he saw he was lost now, and there was no escape. "It is what I feared," he thought. "It is she who ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was lost is found! Never from surf-beaten shore or rocky headland do spectators watch with such anxious interest the life-boat, as, now seen and now lost, now breasting the waves and now hurled back on the foaming crest of a giant billow, she makes for the wreck, as they watch those who, with the Bible in their hearts and hands, go forth to save the lost. And when the poor perishing sinner throws himself into Jesus' arms, what gratulations among these happy spirits! "There ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... the Acadians. This quarter off here to northward was named by the Nova-Scotian exiles, in memory of the land from which they were driven, the Beau Bassin. These small homestead groves that dot the plain far and wide are the homes of their children. Here is this one on a smooth green billow of the land, just without the town. It is not like the rest,—a large brick house, its Greek porch half hid in a grove of oaks. On that dreadful day, more than a century ago, when the British in far-off Acadie shut into ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... more! Like a dream when one awaketh Vanishing away; Like a billow when it breaketh Scattered into spray; Like a meteor's paling ray, Such is man, do all he can;— Nothing that is fair can stay. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... answered with a qualm. But when they left him to himself again, Twist, like a fiend's breath from a distant room Diffusing through the passage, crept; the smell Deepening had power upon him, and he mixt His fancies with the billow-lifted bay Of Biscay, and the rollings ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various
... Atlantic squall overwrought her Or rearing billow of the Biscay water: Home was hard at hand And the blow ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... blast ne're shooke our Battlements: If it hath ruffiand so vpon the Sea, What ribbes of Oake, when Mountaines melt on them, Can hold the Morties. What shall we heare of this? 2 A Segregation of the Turkish Fleet: For do but stand vpon the Foaming Shore, The chidden Billow seemes to pelt the Clowds, The winde-shak'd-Surge, with high & monstrous Maine Seemes to cast water on the burning Beare, And quench the Guards of th' euer-fixed Pole: I neuer did like mollestation ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Ripogenus had transmuted itself into vapor, and filled the valley full to our feet. A faint wind had power to billow this mist-lake, and drive cresting surges up against the eastern hill-side, over which they sometimes broke, and, involving it totally, rolled clear and free toward Katahdin, where he stood hiding the glows of sunrise. Leagues higher up than the mountain rested a presence of cirri, already ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... His form we have laid; With spar, pearl and amber The walls are arrayed— Though high rolls the billow He wakes not at morn, And sponge for his pillow From rocks we ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... gush of flame from its underjets and it shouldered heavily upward, just missing the jagged crest. A gout of fire forward, another, and it went into a long flat glide, following the fall of a foothill to the plain beyond. It held course and reduced speed, letting the ground billow up to it rather than descending. There was a moment of almost-flight, almost-sliding, and then a rush of dust and smoke which over-took and passed them. When it cleared, they were part of the ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... washed her nose in a curving billow that came inboard and swept aft. With her small area of exposed sail and with the wind buffeting her, she had halted and paid off, lacking steerageway. She got several wallops of the same sort before she had gathered herself enough ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... time I was working with great enthusiasm upon the draft of a connected essay, and was delighted one day to receive a visit from the novelist and Tieckian scholar, Eduard von Billow (the father of my young friend Billow), who was passing through Zurich. In my tiny little room I read him my chapter on poetry, and could not help noticing that he was greatly startled at my ideas on literary drama and on the advent of the new Shakespeare. I thought this all the more reason ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... to escape from the noise and traffic of the city, Freshwater Bay affords a delightful retreat. During the bright days of summer the sea breaks in gentle murmur on the sand and shingle of the beach, but in winter when lashed by S.W. Gales "it tumbles a billow on chalk and sand." The roar of the ocean can be heard for miles inland. The esplanade shown in the picture has been destroyed by the breakers. Temporary repairs have been effected, but a fierce controversy ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... sail, Flying to westward before the fierce gale; Fortunate, Fridthjof to follow O'er the wild billow. ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... wealth of animal life in that green solitude, where the voice of man was hardly ever heard, was prodigious; the rarest birds were common there; even those who had their habitations by the sea were sometimes lured to this as silent spot, and skimmed above its undulating dells as o'er the billow. The eagle and the osprey had been caught there; and, indeed, a specimen of each was caged in a sort of aviary, which Grange had had constructed at the back of the lodge; while Yorke's sitting-room was literally stuffed full of these strange feathered visitants, which had fallen victims to ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... appearance that the succeeding years never entirely wore off. For he lived in the open by day, riding among his fields in three townships, watching the green carpet of March rise and begin to dimple in April, and billow in May. And at night he worked in his office until the midnight cockcrow. His back was bowed under a score of burdens. But his greatest burden was the bank; for it gave him worry; and worry weighed upon him more than work. It was in April—early April when ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... wealth for you, If my bark, which bounded o'er foreign foam, Should be lost near home— Ah! what would you do?"— "So thou wert spared—I 'd bless the morrow, In want and sorrow, That left me you; And I 'd welcome thee from the wasting billow, This heart thy pillow— That 's what I ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... under close-reefed topsails. She was not too heavily laden; and, being a good sea-boat, she rose easily on the lift of the waves, almost skimming the surface like one of Mother Carey's chickens, and jumping, as it were, from billow to billow as the wind ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... victorious Rome to yield, (Another blow had broke the fates' decree, And earth had wanted her fourth monarchy,) Immortal Blenheim, fam'd Ramillia's host, They all are here, and here they all are lost: Their millions swell to be discern'd in vain, Lost as a billow in th' unbounded main. This echoing voice now rends the yielding air, For judgment, judgment, sons of men, prepare! Earth shakes anew; I hear her groans profound; And hell through all her trembling realms resound. Whoe'er thou art, thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... grandeur. Just as when fairly out on the open sea we realize to the full its beauty and sense of infinity, so it is here. The farther we go the wider, more bewilderingly vast becomes the horizon: wave upon wave, billow upon billow, now violet-hued, with a tinge of gold; now deep brown, partly veiled with green, or roseate with sunlit clouds—the gray monotony of stone and waste is thus varied ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... however, well aware of having made farther to the southward than any previous navigators, and felt great amazement at not meeting with the usual impediments of ice. In the meantime every moment threatened to be our last—every mountainous billow hurried to overwhelm us. The swell surpassed anything I had imagined possible, and that we were not instantly buried is a miracle. My companion spoke of the lightness of our cargo, and reminded me of the excellent qualities of our ship; but I could not help ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... had secured a life-buoy, moved close to the girl's side, and looking anxiously out ahead saw a faint line of foam in the thick darkness which had succeeded the explosion. Already the distant roar of the billow was heard, proving that it had ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... 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 it ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... worthy gentleman of Ephesus, and a most skilful physician, was standing by the sea-side, his servants brought to him a chest, which they said the sea-waves had thrown on the land. 'I never saw,' said one of them, 'so huge a billow as cast it on our shore.' Cerimon ordered the chest to be conveyed to his own house and when it was opened he beheld with wonder the body of a young and lovely lady; and the sweet-smelling spices and rich casket of jewels made him conclude it was some great ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that their situation was still desperate. Should a storm spring up,—even an ordinary gale,—not only would their canvas water-cask be bilged, and its contents spilled out to mingle with the briny billow, but their frail embarkation would be in danger of going to pieces, or of being whelmed fathoms deep under the frothing waves. In a high latitude, either north or south, their chance of keeping afloat would have been slight indeed. A ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... feel the same emotion twice: No two ships ever ploughed the self-same billow; The waters change with every fall and rise; So, Guilo, go contented to ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... urge Earth's wildest wanderer to her farthest verge;— If these on all some transient hours bestow Of rapture tingling with its hectic glow, Then all are poets; and if earth had rolled Her myriad centuries, and her doom were told, Each moaning billow of her shoreless wave Would wail its requiem o'er a ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cried Porthos, drawing himself up. It is a sad thing to have to confess, but a man's heart is like a restless billow; for, from that very moment, Porthos ceased to look at Madame Truechen in that touching manner which had so softened her heart. Planchet encouraged these ambitious leanings in the best way he could. He talked over, or rather gave exaggerated accounts of all the splendors of the last reign, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... 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
... upon the billow, Our opening timbers creak, Each fears a watery pillow. ... To cling to slippery shrouds Each breathless seaman crowds, As she lay Till the day In the Bay of Biscay O! ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... When too late, he knows that his affections are another's, and sees his wife fascinated by a handsome French adventurer. In an attempt to elope, the wife and her lover are wrecked, and clinging to a spar, are overtaken by the "terrible South Breaker—plunging and rearing and swelling, a monstrous billow, sweeping and swooping and rocking in." Dan in later life, marries Georgia, his first love.—Harriet Prescott Spofford, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... he had to say to the fond, he only talked of the practical difficulties, and ended without saying anything the least promising or satisfactory, though nothing decidedly the reverse. Bourqueney had previously been with Billow, who is just come back, and who desires no better on the part of his Government than to join in any conciliatory measure we may adopt; and Esterhazy, who is expected every hour, will, he doubts not, be equally well disposed. But although such is the disposition both of Austria and Prussia, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... were now most dejected. The tears and sighs and wailings in all parts of the ship would have melted a stony heart into pity; every swelling wave seemed great in expectation of its booty; the raging waves foamed as if their prey were too long detained from them; every billow threatened present death, who every moment stared in their faces for almost two ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... my blossom, Nor anguish nor falsehood shall know; Together we cleave the wild billow— Unfaltering together we go To rest on the same rocky pillow, To slumber ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... joys, Parent, filial, kindred ties?— Common friend to you and me, Nature's gifts to all are free: Peaceful keep your dimpling wave, Busy feed, or wanton lave: Or, beneath the sheltering rock, Bide the surging billow's shock. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and was as nearly nervous as she had accused her mother of being. But the conversation finally flagged so much that Joan began to worry about the weather once more. The wind was now frightful, the icy rain rattled against the windows, and at the open door Joan could hear billow on billow, crash on crash, shrieking blast on shrieking blast. She was unable to preserve her cheerfulness. Like all strong hearts in anxiety, she became silent. The platitudes of Denas, dropped without interest, annoyed her; she only moved ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Bo-Peep, from my friendly pillow I gaze at the even star; Then I sail away on a gentle billow, Where dreaming and visions are. And never a doubt nor a fear assails me The whole of the long night through, And the welcomest dream of all ne'er fails me, For I constantly dream of you, Of you, Of you, of ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... great artillery besides many assaults and entries; and (seeing) that himself and the ship must needs be possessed of the enemy who were now all cast in a ring round about him, the Revenge not able to move one way or another, but as she was moved by the waves and billow of the sea, commanded the Master Gunner, whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and sink the ship, that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory to the Spaniards: seeing in so many hours' fight, and with so great a navy, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... There is something stately and wonderful about standing rye, when one is close enough to see the individual stalks. They are so tall and slim that you cannot understand why the lightest wind does not lay them flat. Yet all day long they sway and ripple and billow in the summer wind, and unless the heavy, driving storm comes the ranks remain unbroken to the last and face the sickle in golden ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... packed roofs and chimneys, the smoke rose in a thick, curling rampart. It loomed in mounded masses, swelled into lowering spheres, dissolved into long, soaring puffs, looked solid and yet was perpetually taking new forms. In places it suddenly heaved upward, a gigantic billow shot with red, at others lay a dense, churning wall, here and there ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... believe I did not hear the dull roar of the explosion. But the rocks suddenly assumed a new arrangement: they rent asunder like a curtain. I saw a bottomless pit open on the shore. The sea, lashed into sudden fury, rose up in an enormous billow, on the ridge of which the unhappy raft was uplifted bodily in the air with all its crew ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... under us: the hills Billow on billow of umbrageous green Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen One rapturous instant, blind with flash of rills And silver-rising storms and dewy stills Of dripping boulders, till the dim ravine Drowned ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... 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 ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... projectile and insert it in the muzzle of the piece, the rammers would ram it home, and then stand clear. The man at the breech would then pull the lanyard,—and now look out! A tongue of red flame would leap from the mouth of the cannon, followed by a billow of white smoke; then would come the scream of the missile as it passed over our heads (if a solid shot), or exploded near our front or rear (if a shell), and lastly we would hear the report of the gun. Then we all drew a long breath. When they threw shells at us their method was to elevate the ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... 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. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... noon, let me know. 8. The ship leaps, as it were, from billow to billow. 9. Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob. 10. If a pendulum is drawn to one side, it will ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... after standing on for twelve hours longer, nothing should turn up to improve the present aspect of affairs. It was now eleven o'clock; P. M. Fitz and Sigurdr went to bed, while I remained on deck to see what the night might bring forth. It blew great guns, and the cold was perfectly intolerable; billow upon billow of black fog came sweeping down between the sea and sky, as if it were going to swallow up the whole universe; while the midnight sun—now completely blotted out—now faintly struggling through the ragged breaches of the mist—threw down from time to time an unearthly ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... shall be my theme, And Leda's twins, for horses be, He famed for boxing; soon as gleam Their stars at sea, The lash'd spray trickles from the steep, The wind sinks down, the storm-cloud flies, The threatening billow on the deep Obedient lies. Shall now Quirinus take his turn, Or quiet Numa, or the state Proud Tarquin held, or Cato stern, By death made great? Ay, Regulus and the Scaurian name, And Paullus, who at Cannae gave His glorious soul, fair record claim, For all were brave. Thee, Furius, and ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Duke of Ragusa continued to offer strong resistance in the faubourg of Halle to the repeated attacks of General Blucher; while Marshal Ney calmly saw the combined forces of General Woronzow, the Prussian corps under the orders of General Billow, and the Swedish army, break themselves to pieces against his ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... silvery beach, a riband around the flowing hair of the sea, Where gleam the foam-flowers garlanded in multitudinous nebulous rings: Here, on the frontier of many worlds and the billow-rocked cradle of eternal sleep, No sound, no music, no silence that a wounded soul ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... nothing was to be seen upon the broad expanse of ocean, save here and there a solitary seagull, perched upon the crested billow. Payne in a paroxism of rage, vented the most dreadful imprecations; swearing that could he get them once more in his power, he would put them to instant death. Not so with us; a ray of hope shot through our minds, that this circumstance might be the means of rescuing us from ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... 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, and laughs ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... hand; the noisy rush Of applause sinks down; and silverly Her voice glides forth on the quivering hush, Like the white-robed moon on a tremulous sea! And wherever her shining influence calls, I swing on the billow that swells and falls,— I know no more,—till the very walls Seem ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... strength, upon Berlin; he himself hastened to Macdonald's beaten troops in Silesia, and rallied them for a new assault upon Bluecher. All was in vain. Ney, advancing on Berlin, was met by the Prussian general Billow at Dennewitz, and totally routed (Sept. 6): Bluecher, finding that Napoleon himself was before him, skilfully avoided battle, and forced his adversary to waste in fruitless marches the brief interval which he had ed from his ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... characters and humours, as are requisite in a play, in those narrow channels which are proper to each of them; to conduct his imaginary persons through so many various intrigues and chances, as the labouring audience shall think them lost under every billow; and then, at length, to work them so naturally out of their distresses, that, when the whole plot is laid open, the spectators may rest satisfied, that every cause was powerful enough to produce the effect it ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... term for the other water-hosts living not only in the sea, but also in the rivers, lakes, cataracts, and fountains, is Ahtolaiset (inhabitants of Ahtola), "Water-people," "People of the Foam and Billow," "Wellamo's Eternal People." Of these, some have specific names; as Allotar (wave-goddess), Koskenneiti (cataract-maiden), Melatar (goddess of the helm), and in The Kalevala these are sometimes personally invoked. Of these minor deities, Pikku Mies (the Pigmy) is the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... mist cleared off a little; they peered anxiously out, but no boat was to be seen. Now it settled down thicker than ever, and all they could see was billow after billow crested with foam come rolling in, and breaking with loud roars on the beach, making the very ground beneath their feet tremble. They stood with their hands clasped together, Margery partly sheltered by her mother's cloak. As they could ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... flew her words, When the bridge reft asunder, The horseman was crossing, 'Mid lightning and thunder, And loud was the yell, As he plunged in the billow, The maid knew it well, As she sprang from ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the shores' grands bois odorants, harmonious tunes, Rasant les ilots verts et les Following in their dreams and dunes d'opale, voices mellow, De meandre en meandre, au fil To wander and wander in the l'onde pale, thread of the pale billow, Suivre le cours des flots Past islands hushed and errants. . . . ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... in the cunningly-wrought chest the raging blast and the stirred billow and terror fell upon her, with tearful cheeks she cast her arm around Perseus and spake, 'Alas, my child, what sorrow is mine! But thou slumberest, in baby-wise sleeping in this woeful ark; midst the darkness of the brazen rivet ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... you'll believe it, as I wuz walkin' upstairs as peaceful as our old brindle cow goin' up the south hill paster, my skirts begun to billow out till they got as big as a hogsit. I didn't care about its bein' fashion to not bulge out round the bottom of your skirts but hobble in; but I see the folks below wuz laughin' at me, and it madded me some when I hadn't done a thing, only jest walk upstairs peaceable. And I don't know to ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... boat:— There was once a boat on a billow: Lightly she rocked to her port remote, And the foam was white in her wake like snow, And her frail mast bowed when the breeze would blow, And bent like a ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... sleep no more, And stand the eternal throne before. And well he may—his earthly peace Upon that sound is doomed to cease. 90 That sleeping whisper of a name Bespeaks her guilt and Azo's shame. And whose that name? that o'er his pillow Sounds fearful as the breaking billow, Which rolls the plank upon the shore, And dashes on the pointed rock The wretch who sinks to rise no more,— So came upon his soul the shock. And whose that name?—'tis Hugo's,—his— In sooth he had not deemed ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... she was still so distant, and in the grey dawn so misty-looking and indistinct, that it was difficult to decide the question. The captain himself was not certain. "However, we shall soon be able to settle the matter," he observed, as the Barbara, now on the summit of a mountain billow, was about to glide down the steep incline. Down, down, we went—it seemed that we should never be able to climb the opposite height. We were all looking out for the strangers, expecting to settle the disputed point. "Where are they?" burst from the ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... reach the deck, and that there was only one way of escape. Thrusting his slim figure between the beams of the open-work, where no full-grown man could have passed, he held on with all his strength. Crash came the great billow against the side, making the whole ship quiver from stem to stern; but Austin remained unhurt. The next moment he was safe ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... upon 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 over the walls, Joseph managed to keep his ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... moving blindly across the wind with a thin trailing edge behind it and a rolling billow of descending mist as its forefront. It rolled up to and across a concrete highway, watched by perspiring motor cops who had performed miracles in clearing a path for it among the horde of sightseeing cars. It swept on into a spindling pine wood. Behind it lay a thinning sheet of vapor—thick ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the great frost, the last purple bloom in the very tip-top seemed to look up yearningly and plead with the sun for one more day of life; that it, too, might add in time its snowy tribute to the bank of white which rolled entirely across the field, one big billow of cotton. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... on his 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
... of our men as have recrossed at the ford convince me that the Yankee brigade has exterminated the disabled survivors. Our loss has been uncommonly heavy. Of my own division of 15,000 infantry, the casualties—killed, wounded, captured, and missing—are 14,994. Of General Dolliver Billow's division, 11,200 strong, I can find but two officers and a nigger cook. Of the artillery, 800 men, none has reported on this side of the river. General Flood is dead. I have assumed command of the expeditionary force, but owing to the heavy losses have deemed it advisable to contract my line ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... steering-oar in an attitude of vigorous caution, while his Eskimos were pulling as if for their lives. An enormous wave rose behind them, curled over their heads and appeared ready to overwhelm them, but the sturdy rowers sent the boat forward, and the broken crest passed under them. The next billow was still larger. Taken up though he was with his own boat the Captain found time to glance at them ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... placid mold. It was the struggle of a brave and tranquil soul with the ferocious instincts of the brute. The hound, crouched for a deadly spring, was fascinated by this spectacle of the utter absence of emotion. His huge chest heaved like a billow with his labored respiration, but the regular breathing of the being that awed him was like that of a sleeping child. For full five minutes—but it seemed an age—this silent but terrible duel was being fought, and yet no succor came. Beverly ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood |
