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Rill   /rɪl/   Listen
Rill

noun
1.
A small stream.  Synonyms: rivulet, run, runnel, streamlet.
2.
A small channel (as one formed by soil erosion).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rill" Quotes from Famous Books



... I had a quiet tomb, Beside a little rill; Where birds, and bees, and butterflies, Would sing ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... genius the sterility; Mighty projects countermanded; Rash ambition, brokenhanded; Puny man and scentless rose Tormenting Pan to double the dose. Rebuild or ruin: either fill Of vital force the wasted rill, Or tumble all again in heap To weltering Chaos and ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... an English landscape even in mid-winter. Large tracts of smiling verdure contrasted with the dazzling whiteness of the shaded slopes and hollows. Every sheltered bank, on which the broad rays rested, yielded its silver rill of cold and limpid water, glittering through the dripping grass; and sent up slight exhalations to contribute to the thin haze that hung just above the surface of the earth. There was something truly ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... her foot in time to the rhythm. She was not sure whether a rill was a fountain or a stream, so she decided, as there was no dictionary convenient, to think of it as like the creek where it crossed the road at the foot ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard

... a stay of twenty minutes, had buttoned up his great-coat again and pulled down his hat, and told Mrs. Chuff that there was no use in his remaining any longer, when, all of a sudden, a little rill of blood began to trickle from the lancet-cut ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... retreated, even from more remote and seemingly far wilder fastnesses, to these sequestered haunts. I love them, in that the graceful hind conceals her timid fawn among the ferns that wave on the lone banks of many a nameless rill, threading their hills, untrodden save by the miner, or the infrequent huntsman's foot—in that the noble stag frays oftentimes his antlers against their giant trees—in that the mighty bear lies hushed in grim repose amid their tangled swamps—in that their bushy dingles resound nightly to the ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... the present rill floweth down thus from our world, why doth it appear to us only at ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... GENIUS, as He stept along, And bade these lawns to Peace and Truth belong; Down the steep slopes He led with modest skill The willing pathway, and the truant rill, 55 Stretch'd o'er the marshy vale yon willowy mound, Where shines the lake amid the tufted ground, Raised the young woodland, smooth'd the wavy green, And gave to Beauty ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... dimples deepen and whirl away, And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot The swifter current that mines its root, Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill, The quivering glimmer of sun and rill With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, Like the ray that streams from the diamond-stone. Oh, loveliest there the spring days come, With blossoms, and birds, and wild-bees' hum; The flowers of summer are fairest there, And freshest ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... narrow lane that faced the inn and terminated in a turnstile. Here the boy paused, and making me a sign to go on, went back his way whistling. I passed the turnstile, and found myself in a green field, with a row of stunted willows hanging over a narrow rill. I looked round, and saw Vivian (as I intend still to call him) half kneeling, and seemingly intent upon ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... it awakes, it outspreads its arms, O and O! and the birds in their nests are still, The red-browed hill bleats low with the lamb's alarms, And a sound of singing comes from the slipping rill. ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... who can weigh the cause, And trace the secret springs of Nature's laws; Say why the wave, of bitter brine erewhile, Should be the bosom of the deep recoil, Robbed of its salt, and from the cloud distil, Sweet as the waters of the limpid rill?" ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... 'Where now the rill, melodious, pure, and cool, 'And meads, with life, and mirth, and beauty, crowned! 'Ah! see, the unsightly slime, and sluggish pool, 'Have all the solitary vale imbrowned; 'Fled each fair form, and mute each melting sound. 'The raven ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... the calm, mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home, When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers, whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... to rock I went From hill to hill, in discontent Of pleasure high and turbulent, Most pleas'd when most uneasy; But now my own delights I make, My thirst at every rill can slake, And gladly Nature's love partake Of thee, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... aggrandizement of a State is to be seen in its increase of inhabitants, and consequent progress in industry and wealth. Of the vast tide of emigration, which now rushes like a cataract to the West, not even a trickling rill wends its feeble course to the Ancient Dominion.—Of the multitude of foreigners who daily seek an asylum and a home, in the empire of Liberty, how many turn their steps toward the regions of the slave? None. No not one. There ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown

... proportioned size; a cheesepress, often supported by some tree near the door; a cluster of embowering sycamores for summer shade, with a tall fir through which the winds sing when other trees are leafless; the little rill or household spout murmuring in all seasons,—combine these incidents and images together, and you have the representative idea of a mountain cottage in this country—so beautifully formed in itself, and so richly adorned by the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... enormous number of old roots, the remains of a forest of birch trees which originally covered the mountain-side, and with some dry heather lighted an enormous tire, taking care to keep it within bounds. A small rill trickling down the mountain-side supplied us with water, and, getting our apparatus to work and some provisions from our bags, we sat down as happy as kings to partake of our frugal meal, to the accompaniment of the "cup that cheers but not inebriates," waiting for the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... soul craved a larger atmosphere than it found; as if she were ill-timed and mis-mated, and felt in herself a tide of life, which compared with the slow circulation of others as a torrent with a rill. She found no full expression of it but in music. Beethoven's Symphony was the only right thing the city of the Puritans had for her. Those to whom music has a representative value, affording them a stricter copy of their inward life than any other of the expressive arts, will, perhaps, enter ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... could watch her slight, virginal figure, and the bend of her head in answering Mrs. Adams gave him transient glimpses of her fair face; but there was no message in all its changes for him. In fact, in spite of Mrs. Smith's little rill of social complaining, he felt quite "out" of the inner circle of the company's interests, and he was also deeply mortified at Cornelia's ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... abrupt serrated edges showing out clearly and boldly defined against the evening sky. Far to the right, the shining river—a riband of burnished steel, for its waters were a deep steely blue—rolled its swift flood along amid shining sand-banks. In front, the vast undulating plain, with grove, and rill, and smoking hamlet, stretched at our feet in a lovely panorama of blended and harmonious colour. We were now high up above the plain, and the scene was one of the finest I have ever witnessed in India. The wind had gone down, and the oblique rays of the sun lit up the whole vast panorama ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... ax of the active colonist, who considered himself the heir of undiscovered wealth, which would result from an inevitable destiny. The colonies which were established along the coast, and those which were formed in the interior, increased, as increases the gentle rill in its onward course by uniting with other rills and with rivers, until, becoming one vast torrent, it precipitates itself into the ocean. The colonies of Tyre, of Carthage, or Rome were never comparable with ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... the bottom of every valley was marked by a long, dark streak, indicating the presence of the fast-collecting waters beneath. The stifled sounds of rushing streams were heard issuing from the hidden beds of every natural rill; while the larger brooks were beginning to burst through their wintry coverings, and throw up and push on before them the rending ice and snow that obstructed their courses to the rivers below, to which they were hurrying with increasing speed, and with seemingly growing ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... low and dark ravine Beneath a rugged hill, Where stood the Boykin Mill Spanning the creek, whose rill Flows ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... restored to light. Here all dread sights of torture round him rise; Lash'd on a wheel, a whirling felon flies; A wretch, with members chain'd and liver bare, Writhes and disturbs the vulture feasting there: One strains to roll his rock, recoiling still; One, stretch'd recumbent o'er a limpid rill, Burns with devouring thirst; his starting eyes, Swell'd veins and frothy lips and piercing cries Accuse the faithless eddies, as they shrink And keep him panting still, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... away into a storm of snow So white and soft, I feel no deathly chill, But listen to the murmuring overflow Of clouds that fall in many a frosty rill! ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... name of Girivraja bear. This fertile spot whereon we stand Was once the high-souled Vasu's land. Behold! as round we turn our eyes, Five lofty mountain peaks arise. See! bursting from her parent hill, Sumagadhi, a lovely rill, Bright gleaming as she flows between The mountains, like a wreath is seen— And then through Magadh's plains and groves With many a fair meander roves. And this was Vasu's old domain, The fertile Magadh's ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... said, feeling a rill of joy flowing into some dry places in my heart and changing the wilderness there. "But he was silent, and ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... the poor man's home! He listens—not a sound is heard Save from the trickling household rill; But, stepping o'er the cottage-sill, Forthwith ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... Woman—simply woman in general, or perhaps as an institution —wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a unique one to her voice. He says it "fills the breast with fond alarms, echoed by every rill." It sounds well enough, but it is not true. After the eulogy he takes up his real work and the novel begins. It begins in the woods, near the village ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... he rose with the sun, limping "dot and go one," To yon rill of the mountain, in all sorts of weather, Where a Prior and a Friar, who lived somewhat higher Up the rock, used to come ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... my heart rose towards heaven with a feeling of ineffable gratitude. This peace of the family circle—this clear evening, with the perfume of the woods and wild flowers wafted on the breeze—this deep silence, only broken by the murmur of the neighboring rill—all affected me with one of these passing fits of vague and sweet emotion, which one feels but cannot express. You well know it, my friend, who, in your solitary walks, in the midst of your immense plains of flowering heath, surrounded by forests ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... spirit was too gentle for him not to represent to himself a fancied associate; his heart was not narrow enough to know so much as the meaning of a solitary happiness. But Imogen now formed the principal figure in these waking dreams. It was Imogen with whom he wandered beside the brawling rill. It was Imogen with whom he sat beneath the straw-built shed, and listened to the pealing rain, and the hollow roaring of the northern blast. If a moment of forlornness and despair fell to his lot, he wandered upon the heath without his Imogen, and he climbed the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... mizzle[obs3], drizzle, stillicidum[obs3], plash; dropping &c. v.; falling weather; northeaster, hurricane, typhoon. stream, course, flux, flow, profluence[obs3]; effluence &c. (egress) 295; defluxion[obs3]; flowing &c. v.; current, tide, race, coulee. spring, artesian well, fount, fountain; rill, rivulet, gill, gullet, rillet[obs3]; streamlet, brooklet; branch [U.S.]; runnel, sike[obs3], burn, beck, creek, brook, bayou, stream, river; reach, tributary. geyser, spout, waterspout. body of water, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... laboring eye Shoots round the wide horizon, to survey Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave Thro' mountains, plains, thro' empires black with shade, And continents of sand, will turn his gaze To mark the windings of a scanty rill That murmurs at his feet? The high-born soul Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm; Rides on the volleyed lightning through ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Italy's sunny clime, "Maine kin beat it, every time!" If they marvelled at AEtna's fount of fire, They roused his ire: With an injured air He'd reply, "I swear I don't think much of a smokin' hill; We've got a moderate little rill Kin make yer old volcaner still; Jes' pour old Kennebec down the crater, 'N' I guess ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... more, than wood or woodland rill Can give of keen delight, We glean from ocean-margins, till The spirit—at the sight Of all its range of changeful change— Becometh, like it, bright! Bright when the sunlight on it falls, Or grave and grand when, dark, The shadowy night lets down its pall Upon each human ark; And ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... close? Must the lips be still?— How I love their speech that flows Like a wanton rill! Must those cheeks, soft-tinged with rose, Pallid grow and chill? Give her back to me, angel in disguise! So your mystery I shall learn—yet with tearless eyes. By the pangs, the prayers, By the mother's glee, By her hopes, her fears, her cares, Give my child ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... grandeur, testifies To His omnipotence who placed it there; The rushing, mighty torrent verifies His ceaseless working; and His constant care And kindliness is proven by the still And growing meadow, and the purling rill. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... panics in Pointview. It was my privilege to observe, under calm exteriors, a raging fever of excitement—characters going bankrupt, collectors wandering in a fruitless quest. One little rill that flowed into the swift river of national trouble issued from the bosom of my clerk, Mr. 'Cub' Sayles. It had been one of the most placid bosoms in Pointview. Now it was in the midst of what I have since referred ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller

... destiny. Far the foremost man in urging and encouraging this glorious endeavour was Thomas Davis. From sources the most extraordinary, and the least known, there welled forth abundant and seductive inspiration. He struck living fire from inert wayside stones. To him the meanest rill, the rugged mountain, the barren waste, the rudest fragment of barbaric history, spoke the language of elevation, harmony and hope. The circle, of which he was the beloved centre, was composed of men equally sincere, resolute and hopeful; there was not one ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... like emeralds in the sparkling shower. Lovely—but lovelier from the charms that glow Where Latium spreads her purple vales below; The olive, smiling on the sunny hill, The golden orchard, and the ductile rill, The spring clear-bubbling in its rocky fount, The mossgrown cave, the Naiad's fabled haunt, And, far as eye can strain, yon shadowy dome, The glory of the earth, ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... had drank his fill, When danced the moon on Monan's rill, And deep his midnight lair had made In lone Glenartney's hazel shade. * * * Roused from his lair, The antler'd monarch of the waste Sprang from his heathery couch in haste. * * * With one brave bound the copse he clear'd, And, stretching forward free and far, Sought the ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... rent, by a Russian prince. The Arno flows, or rather stands still, under my windows, for the water is low, and near the western wall of the city is frugally dammed up to preserve it for the public baths. Beyond, this stream so renowned in history and poetry, is at this season but a feeble rill, almost lost among the pebbles of its bed, and scarcely sufficing to give drink to the pheasants and hares of the Grand Duke's Cascine on its banks. Opposite my lodgings, at the south end of the Ponte alla Carraia, is a little oratory, before the door of which ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... road doth wind by forests deep, Where soft the welcome shadows creep. Down the valley, up the hill, And then beside the rippling rill. The welcome flowers line the way, Throughout the livelong summer day, The birds ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield

... descend in song from sunny skies, Smiling her into life. The sad wind sighs Through flowerless woods, glowing towards their death, In Winter's cruel, poison-breathing breath. Fierce grows the murmur of the woodland rill, Foaming in fury thro' the pensive trees, Down the steep glen of the mist-mantled hill; Deeper the roar of death-presageful seas; While in the changeful woods the rivers seem Wandering for ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various

... powerless to worry her to-day, when the sun shone and the wind blew and the ferns, washed by the rill running through the culvert under the road, gave forth a delicious moist odour reminding her of the flower store where her sister Lise had once been employed. But at length she arose, and after an hour or more of sauntering the farming landscape was left behind, the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... describe. A bat flew over our heads, and we heard a few faint notes of birds from time to time, perhaps the myrtle-bird for one, or the sudden plunge of a musquash, or saw one crossing the stream before us, or heard the sound of a rill emptying in, swollen by the recent rain. About a mile below the island, when the solitude seemed to be growing more complete every moment, we suddenly saw the light and heard the crackling of a fire on the bank, and discovered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... cleared the moor, and soon gained the little grey street, lying calm and peaceful beneath the bright winter moon, which was only now and then obscured for a moment by the last flying clouds of the late storm hurrying after their fellows. The rill which ran brawling loud through the village, swollen by the late rains, at length forced on his perception that he was fearfully thirsty, and that his throat was parched ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... morn broke, and found Juan slumbering still Fast in his cave, and nothing clashed upon His rest; the rushing of the neighbouring rill, And the young beams of the excluded Sun, Troubled him not, and he might sleep his fill; And need he had of slumber yet, for none Had suffered more—his hardships were comparative[bl] To those related in my ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... eye, And honor'd with a Christian's mind The Christ who loves humility! Loud through the pasture, brawls and raves A brook—the rains had fed the waves, And torrents from the bill. His sandal-shoon the priest unbound, And laid the Host upon the ground, And near'd the swollen rill! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... leering light. Over its illimitable surface surged and shivered women, white, dazzling, numberless. As waves that, lap on lap, sweep fiercely across the sky-line, as bisons that furiously charge upon grassy wastes, "as the rill that runs from Bulicame to be portioned out among the sinful women," these hordes of savage creatures rose and fell in their mad flight across the Plain. No sudden little river, no harsh accent of knoll or hill, broke the immeasurable whiteness of bared breast and ivoried shoulder. It was ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... lark's wild-warbled lay, Sweet the tinkling rill to hear; But, Delia, more delightful still Steal thine ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Others are planted in ridges about three or four feet broad, and two, or two and a half high. On the middle or top of the ridge, is a narrow gutter, in and along which is conveyed, as above described, a little rill that waters the roots, planted in the ridge on each side of it; and these plantations are so judiciously laid out, that the same stream waters several ridges. These ridges are sometimes the divisions to the horizontal plantations; and when this method is used, which is for the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... like mountain tide, That, swelled by winter storm and shower, Rolls down in turbulence of power, A torrent fierce and wide; Reft of these aids, a rill obscure, Shrinking unnoticed, mean and poor, Whose channel shows displayed The wrecks of its impetuous course, But not one symptom of the force By which these ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... art I aught could ken, Well behoved me use it then. More I look'd, the more I deem'd That it wild and desert seem'd: Not a road was there in sight; Not a house and not a wight; Not a bird and not a brute, Not a rill, and not a root; Not an emmet, not a fly, Not a thing I mote descry: Sore I doubted therewithal Whether death would me befall. Nor was wonder, for around Full three hundred miles of ground, Right across on every side Lay the desert bare and ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... palate must be dull, one would think, to eat it, and the smell is a sure test. The blue flower of the brooklime is not seen here; you must look for it where the springs break forth, where its foliage sometimes quite conceals the tiny rill. ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... and the sapling oak, That grow by the shadowy rill, You may cut down both at a single stroke, You may ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... slope that we climbed I could hardly believe it possible how fast we had ascended, when at the end of a couple of hours we sat down to rest by a rill of clear intensely cold water that was bubbling amongst the stones. For on peering through a clump of trees I gazed at the most lovely landscape I had seen since I commenced my journey. Far as eye could reach it was one undulating forest of endless shades of ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... I see him still, Blue eyes, where darting gleams of fun shine, A smile like some translucent rill That sparkles in the summer sunshine, A manly mien, and unafraid, Crisp hair, fair face, and square-set shoulders, That made him on the King's Parade The cynosure of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various

... the expense of distinctness, would have detracted from the value of the map for handy reference in the usually dim light of the observatory, without adding to its utility in other ways. Every named formation is prominently shown; and most other features of interest, including the principal rill-systems, are represented, though, as regards these, no attempt is made to indicate all their manifold details and ramifications, which, to do effectually, would in very many instances require a map on a much larger scale than any ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... Hawthorne called them, which aim not to tell a story but to give an impression of the past. "The Old Manse" (in Mosses from an Old Manse) is an excellent introduction to this group. Others in which the author comes out from the gloom to give his humor a glimpse of pale sunshine are "A Rill from the Town Pump," "Main Street," "Little Annie's Ramble," "Sights from a Steeple" and, as suggestive of Hawthorne's solitary outings, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... from the hot and dusty road Where, 'mid green shade, a rill soft-bubbling flowed, A brook that leapt and laughed in roguish wise, Whereat Sir Pertinax with scowling eyes Did frown upon the rippling water clear, And sware sad oaths because it was not beer; Sighful he knelt ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... mountains, those huge ladders of granite that God has planted upon the earth, as if to invite ungrateful man to come nearer to him, descend many a stream and dancing rill of pure and crystal waters. No part of France can be said to be more salubrious. "Centenarians" are by no means uncommon, and a patriarch of that age may ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... garden-patch showed intensely green between a waste of fire-blackened stumps. I saw chickens in a coop, and a cow switching forest flies. A cloud of butterflies flew up as I approached, where the running water of a tiny rill made muddy hollows on the path. This doubtless must be the outlet to Waiontha Spring, for there to the left a green lane had been bruised through the elder thicket; and this I followed, shouldering my way amid fragrant blossom and sun-hot foliage, then through an alder run, and suddenly out ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... his wayward Fancies he wou'd rove, 'Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, 'Or craz'd with Care, or cross'd in hopeless Love. 'One Morn I miss'd him on the custom'd Hill, 'Along the Heath, and near his fav'rite Tree; 'Another came; nor yet beside the Rill, 'Nor up the Lawn, nor at the Wood was he. 'The next with Dirges due in sad Array 'Slow thro' the Church-way Path we saw him born. 'Approach and read (for thou can'st read) the Lay, 'Grav'd on the Stone ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray

... me speaks and seems to trickle forth a rill of light within my darkness: it is a voice that has never yet deceived me. It is the king you ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Foreigners are struck with the immense consumption of water as a beverage in this country. They do not realize the aridity of our summer climate, which makes it sometimes as much of a luxury here as it is in the desert. A rill of living water, let it issue from a mossy rift in the hillside or the mouth of a bronze lion, comes to us often like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. We lead fevered lives, too, and this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... substantial enough in all conscience, and the wine nearly as heavy as the food. Imagine quenching one's thirst with sherry in the dog-days! Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, and then, on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of champagne began to trickle into the V-shaped glasses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its appearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, as soon as the ladies and the schoolboys departed, the men applied themselves, with much seriousness of purpose, to ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... night suppers of beans and brown bread, but Nancy returns with her lantern at nightfall to tack down the carpet in the old Peabody pew and iron out the tattered, dog's eared leaves of the hymn-book from which she has so often sung "By cool Siloam's shady rill" with her lover in days gone by. He, still a failure, having waited for years for his luck to turn, has come back to spend Christmas in the home of his boyhood; and seeing a dim light in the church, he enters quietly and surprises Nancy at her task of carpeting the Peabody Pew, so that it ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... for a moment cease, Silence fall in the woodland peace; Should I wilfully check the flow Bubbling and dancing up from below; Say to my heart be still—be still, Let the murmur die with the rill; Then should the glittering, grey sea-things Sigh as they wallow the under springs; Where the deep brine-pools used to lie Deserts vast would stare at the sky, And even thy rich heart (O Poet, Poet!) Even thy ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... half reveal'd, With sighs we view the hoary hill, The leafless wood, the naked field, The snow-stopp'd cot, the frozen rill. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... the sects the Jains are the most colorless, the most insipid. They have no literature worthy of the name. They were not original enough to give up many orthodox features, so that they seem like a weakened rill of Brahmanism, cut off from the source, yet devoid of all independent character. A religion in which the chief points insisted upon are that one should deny God, worship man, and nourish vermin, has indeed no right to exist; nor has it had as a system much influence on the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... diffused; the colour of daytime invaded the ground at our feet, flitting like some arterial rill through the dun spaces. Wonderful, this magic touch of awakening! It is the same swiftness of change as at sunset, when the desert folds itself to sleep, like some gorgeously palpitating flower, in the chill of nightfall; ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... "every river, brook, and rill. The reason why the streams flow is, that the earth attracts the water from the mountains and hills, down into the valleys and towards ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... she paused in the act of filling her pail and stared at a mark in the mud at the edge of the tiny rill formed by the overflow from the catch basin. She leaned over and examined the mark more closely. It was the track of a bare foot. Then, for the first time in many days, the girl threw back her head and laughed. "Microby Dandeline!" she cried. "And I was picturing some ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... my fond-eyed mother went long ago, And my dear twin-sisters walk hand in hand. My Father, listen—my words are true," And sad was her voice as the whippowil When she mourns her mate by the moon-lit rill, "Wiwaste lingers alone with you; The rest are sleeping on yonder hill— Save one—and he an undutiful son— And you, my Father, will sit alone When Sisoka[27] sings and the snow is gone. I sat, when the maple leaves were red, By the foaming ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... What promise of morn is left unbroken'? What kind word to thy playmates spoken'? Whom hast thou pitied, and whom forgiven'? How with thy faults has duty striven'? What hast thou learned by field and hill, By greenwood path, and by singing rill'? ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... be comforted! Jesus often makes you portionless here, to drive you to Himself, the everlasting portion. He often dries every rill and fountain of earthly bliss, that He may lead you to say, "All my springs are in Thee." "He seems intent," says one who could speak from experience, "to fill up every gap love has been forced to make; one of his errands from heaven was to bind up the broken-hearted." How beautifully ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... fire, then fetched a bucket of water from a rill that trickled down among the rocks near by. He made as if to prepare their meal, but she ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... hearts rejoice In Music's simplest tone, And hear in Nature's every voice An echo to their own! Not till these scorn the little rill That runs rejoicing from the hill, Or the soft, melancholy glide Of some deep stream, through glen and glade, Because 'tis not the thunder ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... clear crystal spring does incessantly flow, To supply and refresh the fair valley below; No dog-star's brisk heat e'er diminished the rill Which sweetly doth prattle on 'Robin ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... of the Peak There lies a quiet hamlet, where the slope Of pleasant uplands wards the north-wind's bleak; Below wild dells romantic pathways ope; Around, above it, spreads a shadowy cope Of forest trees: flower, foliage, and clear rill Wave from the cliffs, or down ravines elope; It seems a place charmed from the power of ill By sainted words of old: so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various

... mentions a beautiful rill in Barbary, which is received into a large basin, called shrub we krub, (drink and away,) there being great danger of meeting there with rogues and assassins. If such places are proper for the lurking of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... within a day's travel, was the land that held Aurelia and Redemption; but even in that same moment there surged up that bitter something which chilled the generous feelings and staled the fluttering hopes. Cruel and vexatious thought! There was not a rill of water on these mossy stones which did not race unimpeded, or, if impeded, gathering force and direction from the very obstacle, towards Aurelia; yet here was I, sentient, adoring, longing, who had travelled so far and endured so much, unable to move one step beyond a painted ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... in the present day could there produce. The prettiest portions of these much-vaunted precints are the shady knoll, overhanging a romantic glen, down which a brawling streamlet leaps its frothing course over a craggy bed; and the rural walk by the gothic fount, into which a pellucid mountain-rill pours its refreshing waters. Among the remembrances of former days, is the effigy of a guardian 'lion,' (which, under the name of a 'bear,' has been noted by an author whom we have quoted;) the melancholy quadruped is now considerably "used up," and excites a laugh at the burlesque ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin

... breathing, Nightingale's long trill, Silver moonlight and the rocking Of the dreaming rill; Nightly light and nightly shadow, Shadow's endless lace— Neath the moon's enchanted changes The Beloved's face. Blinking stars as flash of amber, Snowy clouds on-rush, Tears and happiness and kisses— And the dawn's ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... denomination from the diving of the rill, and its rising again. Mr. Cambden saieth, In this shire is a small rill called Deverill, which runneth a mile under ground,* like as also doth the little river Mole in Surry, and the river Anas [Guadiana ?-J. B.] in Spain, and the Niger ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... of that pure rill, that well'd From forth the fountain of all truth; and such The rest, that to my ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... them and these flowers, too, free. Perhaps you have something to give me? Wait till next time. The better the day . . . The Lord couldn't make a better, I say; If he could, he never has done." So off went Jack with his roll-walk-run, Leaving his cresses from Oakshott rill And ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... me then to yonder rill, Late so freely flowing; Wat'ring many a daffodil, On its margin glowing— Sun and wind exhaust its store: Yonder riv'let glides ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... agate, not in stone. Our seconds in brittle, not in bone. Our thirds in pitcher, not in bowl. Our fourths in wheel, but not in roll. Our fifths in chance, but not in skill. Our sixths in stream, but not in rill. As classic city and classic land, Our names united ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... watched her as she chattered on, her voice like a soft, purling rill. Presently Dinah called Miss Recompense out in the kitchen to consult her about the breakfast, for she went to bed as soon as she had the kitchen set to rights. Then Doris glanced over to him in a shy, asking fashion, and brought her chair to his side. He inquired ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... unbidden, when breathing adieu,— With the change of our years, our hearts are changed too! And, haply, the world, with its coldness, will chill My feelings at length, as bleak winter the rill. ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... September 8, 1867, Garibaldi, at Genoa, announced his intention of marching upon Rome, an echo woke in many a poet's heart "by rose hung river and light-foot rill," but left Ibsen simply disconcerted. If Rome was to be freed from Papal slavery, it would no longer be the somnolent and unupbraiding haunt of quietness which the Norwegian desired for the healing of his spleen and his ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... made his speech, his "voice, meantime, having a far-off and remote echo," and when, as we learn from others, a burst of applause greeted a few well-chosen words drawn from that full well of thought, that pellucid rill of "English undefiled," the unobtrusive gentleman by his side applauded and said to him, "It was handsomely done." The compliment pleased the shy man. It is the only compliment to himself which ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... fertilized, considerable portions of the waters of all these rivers continue to reach their old deathbeds in the desert, indicating that in these salt valleys there still is room for coming farmers. In middle and eastern Nevada, however, every rill that I have seen in a ride of three thousand miles, at all available for irrigation, has been claimed and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... snow this must doubtless be a grand affair, for the fall is full three hundred feet deep; at present a mere rill crept over the centre of the rocky amphitheatre, and, long before it reached the basin beneath, it was changed into a silvery shower of light spray. We found a mill-dam had appropriated all the surplus ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... apple tree on the lawn O-pee-chee the Robin chanted his morning song. "Te rill, te roo, the sky ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... 'tis you my chief Parnassus are, Where for my safety I must ever climb. My winged thoughts are Muses, who from far Bring gifts of beauty to the court of Time; And Helicon, that fair unwasted rill, Springs newly in my tears upon the earth, And by those streams and nymphs, and by that hill, It pleased the gods to give a poet birth. No favoring hand that comes of lofty race, No priestly unction, nor the grant of kings, Can on me lay such ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... turned in ecstasy, and cried: "See, pupil dear, this lovely sight, The smooth-floored shallow, pure and bright, With not a speck or shade to mar, And clear as good men's bosoms are. Here on the brink thy pitcher lay, And bring my zone of bark, I pray. Here will I bathe: the rill has not, To lave the limbs, a fairer spot. Do quickly as I bid, nor waste The precious time; away, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... hill is another cloister, long and narrow, with round arches resting on square piers, and a well under a picturesque penthouse roof. Here it was that the herbs and simples were grown. By the side of the steep stair (which goes up still higher) a little rill of water flows, I suppose, to the lower cloister. The convent cost 28,000 ducats to the public treasury, besides much given by generous donors, the Ghent merchants especially contributing largely. The top of ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... am doing no good!" said a little rill, As it rippled along at the foot of a hill, "I am doing no good with my babbling here, No one is listening,—no one ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... were fine and lofty, in others only stringy-bark or low bushes. A river passed in front at the distance of less than a quarter of a mile, full and flowing in winter, but after the heats of summer consisting of a succession of water-holes connected by a trickling rill. During the shearing season the river was a scene of the greatest animation, as all the flocks from far and near were driven up to it, that the sheep might be washed before being deprived of their fleeces. After a sudden downfall of rain, the quiet stream became a roaring, boiling ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston

... heaven, when lo! they looked on what had yesterday been tilled land or barren moor, and there was a great sheet of blue. Was it sky? Had a sheet of the "blue field of heaven" fallen down? Was it the ocean? They came near it, tasted it. It was fresh and sweet as a fountain-rill. They looked at it from the hill-tops, and, seeing its outline, called it "the lake of the four-stringed lute." Others, proud of their new possession, named ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of yellow-flowering shrubs, and rose-bushes, with their reddened leaves and glossy seed-berries, sprout from each crevice; at every glance, I detect some new light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the stern, gray rock. A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a little cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it fresh and pure. This recess shall be my dining-hall. And what the feast? A few biscuits, made savory by soaking them in seawater, ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... written a long didactic poem on Marriage) to a page on Children's Games. (My book shall have a chapter on Children's Games, with their proper tunes.) As for poetry—poetry, says Mr. Dobson, with our Dutch poet is not by any means a trickling rill from Helicon: 'it is an inundation a la mode du pays, a flood in a flat land, covering everything far and near with its sluggish waters.' As for the illustrations, listen to this for the kind ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... oak and ash and thorn, while Alva flashed and swirled, between green boughs below, clear coffee-brown from last night's rain. Some miles up the turnpike road he went, and then away to the right, through the ash-woods of Trebooze, up by the rill which drips from pool to pool over the ledges of grey slate, deep-bedded in dark sedge, and broad bright burdock leaves, and tall angelica, and ell-broad rings and tufts of king, and crown, and lady-fern, and all the semi-tropic luxuriance of the fat western soil, and steaming western woods; ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... silent awe I hail the sacred morn, That slowly wakes while all the fields are still! A soothing calm on every breeze is borne; A graver murmur gurgles from the rill; And echo answers softer from the hill; And sweeter sings the linnet from the thorn: The skylark warbles in a tone less shrill. Hail, light serene! hail, sacred Sabbath morn! The rooks float silent by in airy drove; The sun a placid yellow lustre throws; ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... little hill, At the dark noon of night, Close by a frozen snow-hid rill, Where branches close unite Even in winter's leafless time, The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... lay of the lark or the linnet? The babble of brooklet or rill? Nay, that "Voice," to their ears, hath more in it Than sounds in the nightingale's trill. There's a song, though to some it sounds raucous, For them most seductively rolls; 'Tis the crow of a bird (the "Caw-Caw-Cus") Whose song is so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various

... evening comes, the fields are still. The tinkle of the thirsty rill, Unheard all day, ascends again; Deserted is the half-mown plain, Silent the swaths! the ringing wain, The mower's cry, the dog's alarms, All housed within the sleeping farms! The business of the day is done, The last-left haymaker ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... up, and went with uneven steps to a little rill hard by, and plunged her face in it: then filled her beaver hat, and came and dashed water repeatedly in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... wild scenes haste; The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length'ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd: O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight; Or with the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... the church and within hearing of the bells, when we reached a wayside trough, whose brimming measure was for ever overflowed by as bright a rill as ever ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... are on the hill, And sparkle in the fountain rill, Whose welcome waters, cool and clear, Draw blessings from the mountaineer: 540 Here may the loitering merchant Greek Find that repose 'twere vain to seek In cities lodged too near his lord, And trembling for his secret hoard— Here may he rest where none can see, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... sighing of a reed, There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if man had ears; The earth is but an ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark

... course of human life is changeful still, As is the fickle wind and wandering rill; Or, like the light dance which the wild-breeze weaves Amidst the fated race of fallen leaves; Which now its breath bears down, now tosses high, Beats to the earth, or wafts to middle sky. Such, and so varied, the precarious play Of fate ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... beautiful at these Falls of the Ammonoosuck. The stream which never here can be a river, is now, by the unusual droughts of the summer, shrunken to a mere rill, but even now, and at all seasons, it must be worth the drive to see it. Worth the drive! a drive any where in these hills 'pays'—to borrow the slang of this bank-note world—for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly saw young partridges ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and away in the hush of the morning, Who 's for the road? Vagabond he, all conventions a-scorning, Who 's for the road? Music of warblers so merrily singing, Draughts from the rill from the roadside up-springing, Nectar of grapes from the vines lowly swinging, These on ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... conflicts between the new and the old creed are connected with fountains. In one page of the Life of Columba we find the saint, on a child being brought to him for baptism, in a desert place where no water was, striking the rock like Moses, and drawing forth a rill, which remained in perennial existence—a fountain surrounded by a special sanctity. In the next page he deals with a well in the hands of the Magi. They had put a demon of theirs into it to such effect, that any unfortunate person washing himself in the well or drinking ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... warblers still delight the ear, And all of Summer, but her leaves, is here. Here, on this winding garden's sloping bound, 'Tis sweet to listen to each rustic sound, The distant dog-bark, and the rippling rill, Or catch the sparkling of the water-mill. The tranquil scene each tender feeling moves; As the eye rests on Holwood's naked groves, A tear bedims the sight for Chatham's son, For him whose god-like eloquence could stun, Like some vast cat'ract, Faction's clam'rous tongue, Or ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... always the most sublime feature in a landscape, and no view can be truly grand in which it is wanting. From a child, it always had the most powerful effect upon my mind, from the great ocean rolling in majesty, to the tinkling forest rill, hidden by the flowers and rushes along its banks. Half the solitude of my forest home vanished when the lake unveiled its bright face to the blue heavens, and I saw sun and moon, and stars and waving trees reflected there. I would sit ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... its shores. A large natural fountain, or spring, thirty feet in diameter, and inclosed partly by natural rocks and partly by an artificial wall, issued from the ground in the center of the island, and sent forth a beautiful and fertilizing rill into a rich and happy valley, through which it meandered, deviously, for several miles, seeking the sea. There was a large and populous city near the port, and the whole island was adorned with temples, palaces, colonnades, and other splendid architectural structures, ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... softest tone, By shadowy grove and rill; Thy song will soothe us while we own That his ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the gate, then a half-mile or so along the road, green along the edges with the green of spring, and lined with the May hawthorn, white, clean as air, with a fragrance like sustained music, a long rill of rolling white cloud. There was nothing in the world like the hawthorn. First it put out little bluish-green buds firm as elastic, and then came a myriad of white stars. And then the white drift turned a delicate red, dropped, and the scarlet haws came out, a tasteless bread-like fruit you ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... gods wailed and moaned; the sky was red and dripped blood, and the altar that was to have received the body sank through the rock, leaving a hole from which gushed steam and dust. At that hour every well, brook, and spring in the island went dry, save a rill in a cave back of Hana that the gods devoted to the daughter-in-law of the murdered priest and to the old woman who attended her, while a nightly dew fell thereafter about the sons of the dead man, providing ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... the brown heath: no demon fell, No wizard foe, with magic spell, To chain the senses, chill the heart, No wizard guided POWEL'S cart; He of our nectar had the care, All our ambrosia rested there. At leisure, but reluctant still, We join'd him by a mountain rill; And there, on springing turf, all seated, Jove's guests were never half so treated; Journies they had, and feastings many, But never came to ABERGANY; Lucky escape:—the wrangling crew, Mischief to cherish, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield

... where I stand I can see his fair land Sloping up to a broad sunny height, The meadows new-shorn, and the green wavy corn, The buckwheat all blossoming white: There a gay garden blooms, there are cedars like plumes, And a rill from the mountain leaps up in a fountain, And shakes its glad locks in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various



Words linked to "Rill" :   watercourse, channel, stream, rivulet



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