"Billow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... group were visited by the great wave, and some of these 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 ebb ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... present occasion, it must be confessed there was not much bounding, nor much billow. Nor, again, would it have been easy for any one to see her, even if he had been brought close to her; for the simple reason that the "Parson," as she went on her way, carrying Zac and his fortunes, had become involved in a fog bank, in the midst ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... and already the foaming surge filled us with terror. Each wave that came from the open sea, each billow that swept beneath our boat, made us bound into the air; so we were sometimes thrown from the poop to the prow, and from the prow to the poop. Then, if our pilot had missed the sea, we would have been sunk; the waves would have thrown us aground, and we would have been buried among the ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... came the sun, turning lowering sky and tempestuous ocean to glory; every ragged cloud became as it were streaming banners enwrought of scarlet and gold, every foaming billow a rolling splendour rainbow-capped, insomuch that I stood awed by the ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... star on the breast of the sea My lover rests on the heart of me; The lord of the tempest hies him down From his billow-crest to his cavern-throne, And 'tis peace as wide as the eye can see When my lover rests on ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... hand reached out to open the car door, and other hands caught and cared for the billow of satin and costly lace with which she was surrounded, as if it, and not she, ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... 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 ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... a speck was seen in the horizon; now it is visible above the hollow wave, now curtained from our sight by the swelling billow: we approach nearer; the speck divides, and two spots appear; ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... dash'd 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 ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he awoke in every bosom at Versailles! Huge Paris, in all conceivable and inconceivable vehicles, is pouring itself forth; from each Town and Village come subsidiary rills; Versailles is a very sea of men. But above all, from the Church of St. Louis to the Church of Notre-Dame: one vast suspended-billow of Life,—with spray scattered even to the chimney-pots! For on chimney-tops too, as over the roofs, and up thitherwards on every lamp-iron, sign-post, breakneck coign of vantage, sits patriotic Courage; and every window bursts with patriotic ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... not 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 ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... rest? What is the thought in the songs Which the lark in the sky prolongs? What mean the dolphin's rays, Winding his watery ways? What is the thought of the stag, Stately on yonder crag? What doth the albatross think, Dreaming upon the brink Of the mountain billow, and then Dreaming down in its glen? What is the thought of the bee Fleeting so silently, Flitting from part to part, Speedily, gently roving, Like the love of a thoughtful heart, Ever at rest, and moving? What is the life of their thought? ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... him with his eyes on the ground, for in thought he was with those who were descending to the village. They soon came in sight of the inn, which was scarcely visible, so small did it look, a mere black speck at the foot of that enormous billow of snow. When they opened the door, Sam, the great curly dog, began ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... generations, by little tributes from the streams which meet at its feet, and it is never still. Every flood increases or diminishes its size, and weaves its restless sands into some new fantastic curve or billow. The sun which beats upon it bakes the sand almost to boiling point, and the heat-haze dances above it, like some restless phantom above a grave. And who shall say that ghosts of the dead and gone do not haunt this sandbank far away in the heart of the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... 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 ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... interruptions, and short counter-movements: even when the tide is coming in upon the shore, every wave retires after its advance; and he who follows incautiously the retreating waters, may be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming again for an instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child standing by the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it seems, irregular advance and retreat of the water, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... after they had remained fast a little longer they were saved, thus: Suddenly the wind dropped, then it rose again in a last furious squall, driving before it a very mountain of water. This vast billow, as it rushed shorewards, caught the galley in its white arms and lifted her not only off the rock whereon she lay, but over the further reefs, to cast her down again upon a bed of sand and shells, within a stone's throw of the beach, where she remained fast, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... scudding 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
... on yon snaw-cover'd thorn, Mournfu' and lane is the chirp o' the Robin, He looks through the storm, but nae shelter can see; Come, Robin, and join the sad concert wi' me. Oh, lang may I look o'er yon foam-crested billow, And Hope dies away like a storm-broken willow; Sweet Robin, the blossom again ye may see, But I'll ne'er see the blink ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... as an aeon, she held her hands upon me—then slowly opened her eyes. Out of them flashed the living soul of my Athanasia. She closed the lids again slowly over the lovely splendour; the water in which we stood rose around us; and on its last billow she floated away through the winding passage of the cave. I sought to follow her, but could not. I ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... you like!'" and Mark Twain rose, his snow-white hair gleaming above that brilliant assembly, it seemed that a world was speaking out in a voice of applause and welcome. With a great tumult the throng rose, a billow of life, the white handkerchiefs flying foam-like on its crest. Those who had gathered there realized that it was a mighty moment, not only in his life but in theirs. They were there to see this supreme embodiment of the American spirit as he scaled the mountain-top. He, too, realized ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... so, when they had safely passed O'er many a land and billow, Before a grave they stopped at last, Beneath a weeping willow: The moon upon the humble mound Her softest light was flinging; ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... boiling zig-zag current, now avoiding great, jagged rocks by a hair's-breadth, now bounding like a deer over a smooth incline, now plunging into a seething white billow; and, when at last they swept round into the quiet bay at the foot of the cataract, Dan leaped up, and waving his paddle on high uttered a wild war-whoop learned long ago in the swamps of the Oro. There was an answering cheer from the group of men waiting ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... isn't, let us look him over, starting from the feet and working upward. A matter of inches above his insteps brings us to the bottom of his trouser-legs. Now these trouser-legs of his are morally certain to be too long, in which event they billow down over his feet in slovenly and ungraceful folds, or they are too short, in which event there is an awkward, ugly cross-line just above his ankles. If he is a thin man, his dress waistcoat bulges away ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... vibrating, gushed forth perpetually a sort of sonorous flood, a mighty oscillation of sentiments and ideas, which, from billow to billow, and from people to people, flowed to the utmost confines of the earth, to set in motion those intelligent waves which are called souls. Frequently one knew not why such and such a law, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... 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 ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... reminding us, through our readings in journals, of the wicked overblown Prince Regent and his Court, together with the view taken of honest labour in the mind of supercilious luxury, even if indebted to it freshly for a trifle; and the hoar-headed nineteenth-century billow of democratic ire craved the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... A mighty billow flings its cloud of foam over the faces of Claude and the shrinking girl by his side, and blinds them with salt spray. But high as the tide is, the Chair is still above its reach, and although the wave ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... he thrust his distorted face into the wagon with a grin, but the wagon was a wagon no longer, the horses were not horses—all was transformed to foam and vanished in the hissing waves, and even the wagoner himself, rising as a gigantic billow, drew down the vainly struggling horse beneath the waters, and then swelling higher and higher, swept over the heads of the floating pair, like some liquid tower, threatening to bury ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... rise suddenly from the sea, bold, harsh, immitigable, yet softened by their aspect of gray endurance. Hacked and scored, tossed, fissured, and torn, weather-beaten and bleached, their bluntness becomes grave, their hardness pathetic. About their caverned bases the billow thunders in perpetual assault, proclaiming the purpose of the sea to reclaim what it has lost. Above, the frost inserts its potent lever, and flings down from time to time some bellowing fragment to its ally below. The shores, as if to escape from this warfare, hurry down, and plunge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... visible. An eagle flying straight from our eyrie might traverse Lombardy and light among the snow-fields of the Valtelline between sunrise and sundown. Nor is the prospect tame to southward. Here the Apennines roll, billow above billow, in majestic desolation, soaring to snow summits in the Pellegrino region. As our eye attempts to thread that labyrinth of hill and vale, we tell ourselves that those roads wind to Tuscany, and yonder stretches Garfagnana, where Ariosto ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 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
... wild and low Ever, o'er the curved shells, Wanders with a fitful flow As the billow sinks or swells. Now, to faintest whispers hushing, Now, in louder cadence gushing, Wakens from their pleasant sleep All the tuneful Nereid-throng, Till their notes of wreathed song Float in magic streams along, Chanting joyaunce ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... silk had turned beautifully. It looked good as new, if not more so; the fresh lining hunched it out behind, till a good-sized baby could have sat on it, as such little fellows billow themselves among the clouds in an old picture. Contrast, I have told you, was my idea—novelty my object. Pink and white roses I had worn, black velvet, too, and natural geranium-leaves, which are given to wilting fearfully; so I cast these things all aside, and looped ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... nothing visible but the scattered rocks, sun-bleached sand, and the dark, smooth surface over which the foaming water raced back each time a glistening billow curved over and broke. And in proof that the enemy were some distance away, I could see the pale-feathered, white-breasted gulls passing here and there in search of food, while able at any moment to spread ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... obligation rests upon each member which cannot be put into language. The wailings of a dying race call loudly for our zeal. The groans of the lost gather strength as they ascend the pit. The voice of heaven, from angels, saints, and God, urge us onward in the discharge of duty. Oh, the wreck is on the billow; hasten with the means of safety. The plague-spot is in the camp; offer the incense of atonement. And let all your efforts be put forth in faith, and under a deep impression of the truth of Cecil's memorable words: "Faith is the master-spring ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... 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 is still raging as to the ultimate solution of the question, how to prevent further ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... quite over it in many places. This surf never ceased its roar, for, however calm the weather might be, there is always a gentle swaying motion in the great Pacific, which, although scarce noticeable out at sea, reaches the shore at last in a huge billow. The water within the lagoon, as before said, was perfectly still. There were three narrow openings in the reef; one opposite each end of the valley which I have described as crossing the island; the other opposite our own valley, which we afterwards ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... cascade may begin at one end and run along the length of the ridge; it may begin at both ends and twirl inward, meeting in the middle; it may (but very rarely) begin in the middle and work outward. As the billow is at its height, before it combs over, the fisherman sees the sunlight gleaming through it—an ecstasy of perfect lucid green, with the glimmer of yellow sand behind. Then, for a brief moment—so brief that the details can never be memorized—he sees ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the snow-curled billow, See the river-spirits fair Lay their cheeks, as on a pillow, With the foam-beads in their hair. Thus attended, hither wending, Floats the lovely oread now, Eden's arch of promise ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... could have dreamt That times should come like these! Prophets, indeed, taught lies when we were young, And people loved to have it so; For they teach well who teach their scholars' tongue! But that the foolish both should gaze, With feeble, fascinated face, Upon the wan crest of the coming woe, The billow of earthquake underneath the seas, And sit at ease, Or stand agape, Without so much as stepping back to 'scape, Mumbling, 'Perchance we perish if we stay: 'Tis certain wear of shoes to stir away!' Who could have dreamt That times should come like these! Remnant of ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... in the midst of its maddest flow, bid all the gigantic billows stop and congeal in their places, and there they stood, just as He froze them grand and gloomy. There was the long swell, and there the cresting, bursting billow—and there, too, the deep, black, cavernous gulf." Those in our country who think only the Alps and Apennines can inspire awe and veneration should force their way through thick fir, dwarf evergreen and deep moss to the top of Mount Marcy, where it pushes its ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Every billow buried the base of the point in snowy foam and sent the spray flying far up its rugged front. Using the utmost caution, the boys descended to the limit of safety. At the next flash they peered ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... red flame, as if the sun had glanced on a billow, lighted the spot for an instant; but the Feather of Flames, Wassamo of the Fire-Plume, had disappeared from home and kindred, and the familiar paths of ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... 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 ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... tossing boat and shouted to the rowers, who were bending their backs to the oars that every now and then would sink deep into a towering wave and the next instant swing viciously through the air as the boat rolled up on the crest of a big billow. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... shaken is In some decuman billow of bliss, Who feels his gradual-wading feet Sink in some sudden hollow of sweet, And 'mid love's us-ed converse comes Sharp on a mood which all joy sums— An instant's fine compendium of The liberal-leav-ed writ of love; ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... ropy noose on its head. And fastened by the noose, the fish, O king and conqueror of hostile cities, towed the ark with great force through the salt waters. And it conveyed them in that vessel on the roaring and billow beaten sea. And, O conqueror of thy enemies and hostile cities, tossed by the tempest on the great ocean, the vessel reeled about like a drunken harlot. And neither land nor the four cardinal points of the compass, could ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Eric's ears as his boat hit the first incoming billow. The former rescue in the moonlight had held a quick thrill, but it had been nothing like this tense eager race in the darkness. Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed in the station-house before the rescued man had recovered consciousness ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... for the maiden's pillow, Far beyond the Atlantic's billow, Love's apple, and when we have found it, Draw the magic circle round it;(1) Fearless pluck it, then no charm That it bears may do us harm; Place it near the sleeper's head, It will bring love's visions nigh, And when the ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... gash themselves and leap from precipices into the sea. To unaccustomed eyes the first sight of passion is always terrifying and is usually repellent. One must learn to adventure the big wave, the great hissing, towering billow that conceals behind its menace the wild ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... princes whom it held up conspicuously to the admiration of the world and he rode so gracefully and gallantly on the lofty crest that mankind have given him the credit of raising and sustaining the magnificent billow on which he was borne. How far we are to consider him as founding the monarchy, or the monarchy as raising and illustrating him, will appear more fully in the course ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... cutting and serving the material with no greater interest in it than has the cheesemonger in the cheese he weighs and deals. Meanwhile, the glimpse we may take of him shows Bill Wyvern urging along his pen until clean paper became magic manuscripts; living upon a billow of hope when the envelopes were sped, submerged beneath oceans of gloom when they were returned; trembling into Fleet Street deliciously to inhale the thick smell of printer's ink that came roaring up from a hundred basements; ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... Marian! Such a lump. You are like an undulating billow warmed by the sun. And all this fluff of muslin about you is ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... easily touched. She looked and saw that the face of the 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, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... mists forewarned dawn. He had climbed the roll of stone slowly, picking each step, for, perhaps, two-hundred feet, when that trail sense of feel made him stoop to examine the ground. The roll of moraine he had climbed met another stone billow; and between the two ran a groove, a little narrow hardened tracing where the tracks of game going to and from watering place had packed and worked in between the rolling pebbles the ice ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... bowling o'er the billow, Or him, less wise, Who chose rough bramble-bushes for a ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... danger was to be faced, but now the barque was plunging and tossing through an inky obscurity. With a wild scooping motion she was hurled up on the summit of a great wave, and thence she shot down into the black gulf beyond with such force that when checked by meeting the next billow her whole fabric jarred from truck to keelson. There were two seamen at the wheel and two at the relieving tackles, yet it was all that they could do among the wild commotion to keep ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Differ from mortals? In that the former See endless billows Heaving before them; Us doth the billow Lift up and swallow, So ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... watched the skipper scramble aboard again onto the submerged decks, and then vanish altogether in a great billow. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... deliberate, and the almost lyrical, applause of the greatest historian who has yet laid hand on the story of the Constitution: "Henry showed his genial nature, free from all malignity. He was like a billow of the ocean on the first bright day after the storm, dashing itself against the rocky cliff, and then, sparkling with ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... 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
... With wealth for you, If my bark, which bounded o'er foreign foam, Should be lost near home— Ah! what would you do?"— "So thou wert spared—I 'd bless the morrow, In want and sorrow, That left me you; And I 'd welcome thee from the wasting billow, This heart thy pillow— That 's what ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow. Oh, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the billow, Or hermit ray of evening sky, Like ripplings round a weeping willow Are tears ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... and sympathises With human passion. When the restless sea Turns in its futile search for peace, and rises To plead and to pursue, it pleads for me. And with each desperate billow's anguished fretting. Your heart must tell you, ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... loved of the lotus Thy waters adorning, Pour, Joliba! pour Thy full streams to the morning? The halcyon may fly To thy wave as her pillow; But wo to the white man Who trusts to thy billow! Alas! for the white man! o'er deserts a ranger, No more shall we welcome the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... 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 ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Bumpus was heard to call out, as he clung to something with all his might and main; for the little cruiser seemed to be lifted high in the air, and carried forward on the top of a giant billow, only to sink down in the trough of the sea with a heavy motion; but ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... eye behind him for the oncoming waves and swells that occasionally curl over the bulwarks and irrigate and irritate them in the rear. Most of the mules seem capable of kicking at their neighbors and at a wave at the same time; but it is when their undivided attention is centred upon the crested billow of a swell that sweeps alongside the ship and flings a white, foamy cataract at the business end of each mule as it advances, that their marvellous heel-flinging capacity becomes apparent. Each mule batters frantically away as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... wave of melody: From heaving waters of the impassioned soul A billow of tidal music one and whole Flows, in the "octave"; then, returning free, Its ebbing surges in the "sestet" roll Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... in July, and during their time the bore is the most mischievous. The big wave comes up the river at the rate of twenty miles an hour. All boats run for the middle of the river, where the billow does not break against the shore. Ships often part their cables, and knock themselves to pieces against the walls. Sometimes the bore is twelve feet high, though not much more than ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... alone, May all the winds of Heaven howl down the Gulf, 140 And tear the vessel, till the mariners, Appalled, turn their despairing eyes on me, As the Phenicians did on Jonah, then Cast me out from amongst them, as an offering To appease the waves. The billow which destroys me Will be more merciful than man, and bear me Dead, but still bear me to a native grave, From fishers' hands, upon the desolate strand, Which, of its thousand wrecks, hath ne'er received One lacerated like ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... elephants were upon him, he had folded his arms across his breast, calmly prepared to meet his doom. In another instant he was whirled through the air, like a straw caught up by a tornado; then the living, irresistible billow swept ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... to build an empire; and the attempt was courageous to the verge of wonder. There was in the Frenchman a careless ease and courage and sprightliness of temper, which lifted him above danger, as a boat is lifted on a billow's shoulders. Those perils were his drink; with a laugh and a jest he met his appointment with death as he would have met tryst with a woman. In "The Romance of American Geography," I have described the genius of the French voyager, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... distance the loud choral song was rolling through the darkness and the silence. Some one was whistling, keeping time to the refrain, and this shrill sound, which pierced the ear, ran ahead of the billow of powerful voices. Foma looked in that direction and saw the tall, black wall of forest, the bright fiery spot of the bonfire shining upon it, and the misty figures surrounding the fire. The wall of forest was like a breast, and the ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... reef earing up to the peak. Though the waves rushed by the vessel with the velocity of the fleetest steeds, and demolished everything that obstructed their career, our craft appeared to defy their fury, and sprung from billow, to billow with the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... absolutely frantic. Now they would sweep up far into the air as if they never intended to descend again, and then taking curvatures, would skim away like birds; others would cluster together, and then roll along like a great quivering billow; others again would circle around in eddies like whirlpools, soaring up now and then in the likeness of a water-spout, whilst frequently tall columns would march down the broad aisles of the forest in the most majestic manner, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... when the block was not more than half a cable's length from the "Jeune-Hardie," a dull sound was heard, and a veritable waterspout fell upon the bow of the vessel, which then rose on the back of an enormous billow. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... a wind, which drove him out to sea, till he was lost to the hermit's view; and he ceased not to fare on over the abysses of the ocean, one billow tossing him up on the crest of the wave and another bearing him down into the trough of the sea, and he beholding the while the terrors and wonders of the deep, for the space of three days, at the end of ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... the same emotion twice: No two ships ever ploughed the self-same billow; The waters change with every fall and rise; So, Guilo, ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... quaint old casement She looks upon the sea; Thank God that the sight She saw that night So rare a sight should be! Hemmed in by many a billow With mad and foaming lip, A mile from shore, Or hardly more, She ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... ever. He had let his skiff drift far down toward the Falls. Often he could see the wide smooth curve where the green volume first lapses vastly on a lazy slope, to shoulder up below as a huge calm billow, before pitching into the madness of waves whose confusion of tossing and tortured crests hurries to the abyss. The afternoon grew toward evening before he pulled steadily home, crawling away from the roarers ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... like a stiffened billow of the sea, green with purple glints. The clear western sky was ruddy gold, the sun's great ball approaching the horizon. But when it dipped the short June night would know little dark in this northern land. The air struck most fresh and pure. Glenfernie came presently upon the ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... o'clock and went on deck to have some fresh air. It was icy cold, and as I walked up and down I met a lady dressed in black with a sad resigned face. The sea looked gloomy and colourless, and there were no waves. Suddenly a wild billow dashed so violently against the ship that we were both thrown down. I immediately clutched hold of the leg of one of the benches, but the unfortunate lady was flung forward. Springing to my feet with a bound, I was just in time to seize hold of the ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... said; they were almost within hail; Dan saw her hair streaming on the wind; he waited only for the long wave. On it came, that long wave,—oh! I can see it now!—plunging and rearing and swelling, a monstrous billow, sweeping and swooning and rocking in. Its hollows gaped with slippery darkness, it towered and sent the scuds before its trembling crest, breaking with a mighty rainbow as the sun burst forth, it fell in a white blindness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... thrust, Each clansman's execration just Shall doom him wrath and woe.' He paused;—the word the vassals took, With forward step and fiery look, On high their naked brands they shook, Their clattering targets wildly strook; And first in murmur low, Then like the billow in his course, That far to seaward finds his source, And flings to shore his mustered force, Burst with loud roar their answer hoarse, 'Woe to the traitor, woe!' Ben-an's gray scalp the accents knew, The joyous wolf from covert drew, The exulting eagle screamed afar,— ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... from her, or of her. I had answered her letter by a brief note, friendly but calm, in which no mention of continued correspondence or further visits was made. At that hour my bark hung on the topmost curl of a wave of fate, and I knew not on what shoal the onward rush of the billow might hurl it; I would not then attach her destiny to mine by the slightest thread; if doomed to split on the rock, or run a aground on the sand-bank, I was resolved no other vessel should share my disaster: but six weeks was a long time; ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... eagerly for the man-of-war's cutter. At that moment she was lost to view in the trough of the sea. Instead of springing overboard, as all expected, he asked another instant of delay. The yawl sank into the trough itself, and rose on the succeeding billow. Then he saw the cutter, and Wallace and Mulford standing in its bows. He waved his hat to them, and sprang high into the air, with the intent to make himself seen; when he came down the boat had shot her length away from the place, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... until the enemy was almost upon us. At the right instant our rifles poured out a perfect billow of death. Painted bodies reeled and fell; horses sank down, or rushed mad with pain, upon their fallen riders; shrieks of agony mingled with the unearthly yells; while above all this, the steady roar of our guns—not a wasted bullet in all the line—carried ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... thrown into the sea, and while it was yet early morning, as Cerimon a worthy gentleman of Ephesus, and a most skilful physician, was standing by the sea-side, his servants brought to him a chest, which they said the sea-waves had thrown on the land. "I never saw," said one of them, "so huge a billow as cast it on our shore." Cerimon ordered the chest to be conveyed to his own house, and when it was opened he beheld with wonder the body of a young and lovely lady; and the sweet-smelling spices and rich casket of jewels made him conclude it was ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... glacier, the road was bad, a steep, rocky path, with loose, rolling stones. When we came to the Ice Sea, the young lady, as was natural, took the guide's hand, and I, the last of the caravan, strode cautiously along, my alpenstock in my hand, over the slippery, billow-like ice. But soon it began to split up into deep crevasses, and farther on we came to places where the path you had to follow was no wider than a few hands' breadth, with yawning precipices in the ice on both sides. I grew hot to the roots of my hair, and occasionally my heart ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... think of me far away on the billow and drop a silent tear—I say, how are you going to ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... we go. Swing his coffin to and fro; As of old the lusty billow Swayed him on his heaving pillow: So that he may fancy still, Climbing up the watery hill, Plunging in the watery vale, With her wide-distended sail, His good ship securely stands Onward to the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... whole, England preserved peace with all foreign states during the rage of this political tempest. Her attitude was morally sublime. The waves rose, and the hurricane raged around her, but she towered above the billow and the tempest, her crown bright with the glory which the sun of liberty shed upon it. The stranger who found a refuge and a home within her borders, might well offer to her the tribute which the poet Moore so gracefully inscribed upon the pedestal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... carked with care, in the ice-cold sea, Overwent the winter on my wander-ways, All forlorn of happiness, all bereft of loving kinsmen, Hung about with icicles; flew the hail in showers. Nothing heard I there save the howling of the sea, And the ice-chilled billow, 'whiles the crying of the swan. All the glee I got me was the gannet's scream, And the swoughing of the seal, 'stead of mirth of men; 'Stead of the mead-drinking, moaning of the sea-mew. There the storms ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the billow now behind her is white with the bubbles of her passage, rising, too, from her rudder. Steering athwart with a widening angle from the land, she is laid to clear the distant point of Dungeness. Next, a steamer glides ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the surging billow's roar, 'Tis not that fatal, deadly shore; Tho' death in ev'ry shape appear, The wretched have no more to fear: But round my heart the ties are bound, That heart transpierc'd with many a wound: These bleed afresh, those ties I tear, To leave ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... are the long surges and white combers of the mournful and misty Atlantic. They roll like the waving prairie-land, curl their huge heads, and dash down in a fury of foam. 'On the top of a billow we ride,' with a witness. Here and there black dots peer through the surf, and to touch them is death. This foul shore presents a formidable barrier to landing: there absolutely is no safe place between Apollonia and the Ancobra. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... subtle as a flame: I know not what it bore of freight or host, 40 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 ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... The long-succeeding numbers who can name? But all were Greeks, and eager all for fame. Fierce to the charge great Hector led the throng; Whole Troy embodied rush'd with shouts along. Thus, when a mountain billow foams and raves, Where some swoln river disembogues his waves, Full in the mouth is stopp'd the rushing tide, The boiling ocean works from side to side, The river trembles to his utmost shore, And distant rocks re-bellow ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... 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, they were not able to take her, having had ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... breaking against a stone wall, had found some breach through which to pour its waters. The contagion of battle spread. Caution was forgotten; and those at the back, seeing Jemmy Vetch raised upon the crest of that human billow which reared its black outline against an indistinct perspective of struggling figures, responded to his grin of encouragement by rushing ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... 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
... Devonshire and Manchester Regiments by train, and the 42nd Field Battery, with a squadron of the 5th Dragoon Guards, by road. They arrived, and there fell on us the common lot of reconnaissances. We dismounted, loosened girths, ate tinned meat, and wondered what we should do next. We were on a billow of veldt that heaved across the valley: up it ran, road and rail; on the left rose tiers of hills, in front a huge green hill blocked our view, with a tangle of other hills crowding behind to peep over its ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... since the early part of the seventeenth century resembles the great ocean billows during a rising tide. Sweeping over the watery waste with a steady roll, dragged by the lunar force, each billow dashes higher and higher on the beach, until the attractive influence has been spent and the final limit reached. The spirit of religious liberty and of adventure carried the European across the Atlantic. This was the first wave of emigration. The achievement of our Independence ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... sooner are the winds at point to rise, Than either Ocean's firths begin to toss And swell, and a dry crackling sound is heard Upon the heights, or one loud ferment booms The beach afar, and through the forest goes A murmur multitudinous. By this Scarce can the billow spare the curved keels, When swift the sea-gulls from the middle main Come winging, and their shrieks are shoreward borne, When ocean-loving cormorants on dry land Besport them, and the hern, her marshy haunts Forsaking, mounts above the soaring cloud. Oft, too, when wind is toward, the ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... was rising on the roll of the last billow, to be caught next moment by a dozen hands, and dragged up the shingle. It was evening, or rather, verging that way, and from under the magnolia- trees below the cathedral there came the sound of the band summoning the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the fated moment, sturdy Scyld to the shelter of God. Then they bore him over to ocean's billow, loving clansmen, as late he charged them, while wielded words the winsome Scyld, the leader beloved who long had ruled.... In the roadstead rocked a ring-dight vessel, ice-flecked, outbound, atheling's barge: there laid they ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... seats with it, and the arms of the driver kept free only by incessant motion. It was no longer snowing; it was "snowballing;" it was an avalanche out of the slopes of the sky. The exhausted horses floundered in it; the clogging wheels dragged in it; the vehicle at last plunged into a billow of ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... grieve thy sight * In the thickest gloom of the black-haired Night! And hath love of slumber deprived those eyes * And the phantom-vision vexed thy sprite? I cried to the Night, whose glooms were like * Seas that surge and billow with might, with might: 'O Night, thou art longsome to lover who * Hath no aid nor help save the morning light!' She replied, 'Complain not that I am long: * 'Tis love is the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton |
