"Purling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the cooing of a dove in the spring, to its mate; pure as the purling of a brook among meadow flowers; rich as the deep notes of a nightingale in his passion for the moon. And for the song, it was the heart-breaking cry of a young Rhaetian peasant who, lying near death in a strange land, ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... family peculiarity. Mother Fromm was endowed with an inexhaustible store of that treasure called eloquence: and a sharp, strong voice, too, which forbade the interruption of any one else, with a flow like that of the purling stream. The grandmamma had an equally generous gift, only she had no longer any voice: only every second word was audible, like one of those barrel-organs, in which an occasional note, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... court decided that the State was not responsible for the consequences. John's Brook, which flows into the Au Sable near the farmhouse at which we stayed, bears wild marks of this desolating freshet; indeed, one can scarcely credit the fact that the pretty little stream and smoothly purling river could ever have met in such desperate conflict as is evidenced by the scars and rifts ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. The valleys were her places of worship; her meeting houses were fitted up with stone seats, rock pulpits, granite walls, green carpets, and azure ceilings. A row of stones was her sacramental table, and the purling stream her baptismal bowl. The mountains round about were filled with angelic hosts, and the plains were covered with the manna of heaven; the banner of Christ's love waved over the worshipers, and the glory of God filled the place. Such was the Church of the Covenanters in the ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... the riders now, Thrown off with sudden whirl, A score within the purling brook, Enjoyed their ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... camel-trails that afford quite excellent wheeling. The Nishapoor Valley impresses me as about the finest area of cultivation seen in Persia, except, perhaps, the Tabreez Plain; and toward Gadamgah the country gets positively beautiful—at least, beautiful in comparison. Crystal streamlets come purling and gurgling across the road over pebbly beds; and, looking northward for their source, one finds that the usually gray and uninteresting foot-hills have changed into bright, green slopes, on whose cheerful ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... its real merit, and prevents us from over or undervaluing whatever we hope for, we enjoy, or we lose. It doth not foolishly say to us, Be not glad, or, Be not sorry, which would be as vain and idle as to bid the purling river cease to run, or the raging wind to blow. It prevents us only from exulting, like children, when we receive a toy, or from lamenting when we are deprived of it. Suppose then I have lost the enjoyments ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... Phillotson was alone under the clouds of night, and no sound was audible but that of the purling tributaries of the Stour, he said, "So Gillingham, my friend, you had no stronger ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Sebastia great, But whist'leth to thy flock in cold and heat. Viewing the Sun by day, the Moon by night Endimions, Dianaes dear delight, Upon the grass resting your healthy limbs, By purling Brooks looking how fishes swims, If pride within your lowly Cells ere haunt, Of him that was Shepherd then King go vaunt. This moneth the Roses are distil'd in glasses, Whose fragrant smel all made perfumes surpasses The cherry, Gooseberry are now in th' prime, And for all sorts of Pease, this ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... the day was filled up by long walks broken by delightful rests under the shade of cornricks on grassy hillslopes beside some purling brook. Then Pilar would sit on the rug or the camp stool, while Wilhelm lay at her feet with his head in her lap caressed by the little hands that played with his hair or wandered softly over his face, resting fondly on his lips for him to kiss. If there were flowers within reach, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... The silver streamlet purling, The meadow wildflowers furling Their leaflets to repose: All woo me from the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... air of the river-brink, and only popped their heads under cover in ostrich fashion when danger threatened. The banks thus became honeycombed, and it was not unusual to find a whole family perched all day long with their backs against the protecting wall and their eyes fixed meditatively on the purling stream, awaiting with resignation the whims ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... draw the Judge about from place to place in his ancient shovel-topped buggy. About her now there was naught to suggest the prancing rozin-back she once had been; the very look of her eye conjured up images of simple pastoral scenes—green meadows and purling brooks. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... nevertheless have some special vocation for the poetic life. Academies cannot shut him out from the odour of the violet or the song of the nightingale. He hears the lark's song filling the heavens, as the happy bird fans the milk-white cloud with its wings. He listens to the purling of the brook, the bleating of the lamb, the song of the milkmaid, and the joyous cry of the reaper. Thus his mind is daily fed with the choicest influences of nature. He cannot but appreciate the joy, the glory, the unconscious delight of living. "The beautiful ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... and pretty to look upon, like suddenly grown girls, and the sun was beginning to shine hot. Now she passed over rustic bridges, under posted warnings to drive slow or pay a fine, or through sandy fords across purling streams, hearing the monotone of some unseen mill-dam, or scaring the tall gray crane from his fishing, or the otter from his pranks. Again she went up into leagues of clear pine forest, with stems ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... silence for a little while, the light from Rowena's torch dancing acappella rigadoons on bare walls and dripping ceilings, Easy Money's hoofbeats hardly audible above the purling of the stream. Presently Rowena said, "It were best that ye drew out thy sword, fair sir, for anon ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... wallet with bread, chocolate, bacon, fruit, and a few bottles of wine. With their Andalusian horses they penetrated into an unknown country, where they perceived no beaten track. At length they came to a beautiful meadow intersected with purling rills. Here our two adventurers fed their horses. Cacambo proposed to his master to take some food, and he set ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... hereabouts, so we turned aside forthwith and having gone but a few yards, found ourselves quite hidden from the highway, so thick grew the trees and so dense and tangled the thickets that shut us in; and here ran this purling brook, making sweet, soft noises in the shallows mighty soothing to be heard. And here I would have stayed but Sir Richard shook wise head and was for pushing farther into the wild. "For," said he, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... eras glide With muffled tread to their eternal dreams, While I have lived in vale and mountain side, With leaping torrents and sweet purling streams. ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... those they made her kindred; 20 And still, the harsher and hide-bounder The damsels prove, become the fonder. For what mad lover ever dy'd To gain a soft and gentle bride? Or for a lady tender-hearted, 25 In purling streams or hemp departed? Leap'd headlong int' Elysium, Through th' windows of a dazzling room? But for some cross, ill-natur'd dame, The am'rous fly burnt in his flame. 30 This to the Knight could be no news, With all mankind so much in use; Who therefore ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... a glorious existence, where the sun shines bright through the entire night in meadows red with roses, an extensive plain full of shady trees ever in bloom never in fruit, watered by gentle purling streams, and there the blest ones pass their time away in thinking and talking about the past and present in social converse....[909] But the third road is of those who have lived unholy and lawless lives, that thrusts their souls to Erebus and the bottomless pit, where sluggish streams of ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the shade of a big beech, for the afternoon sun was rather oppressive. It was a pleasant spot to while away an hour. A purling brook went babbling by, singing to itself as it journeyed to the sea. Insects droned about in busy flight. There was a perfume of honeysuckle wafted to us on the summer wind, which stirred the beech-tree and rustled its young leaves lazily, ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... would drive him mad if he heard it again, and was nearly sending him headlong over some cliff as it was. He retires for relief with his inquirer to a pleasant place, shadowed by planes, where swallows and nightingales are singing, and a quiet brook is purling. Triephon, his friend, expresses a fear lest he has heard some incantation, and is led by the course of the dialogue, before his friend tells his tale, to give some account of Christianity, being himself a Christian. After speaking ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... come out for to see, is it?" he mused, aloud. "That's the precious old town that we've dodged Indians, and shot rattlesnakes, and sunburnt our noses, and rain-soaked our dress suits for! That's why we've pillowed our heads on the cushiony cactus and tramped through purling sands, and blistered our hands pullin' at eider-down ropes, and strained our leg-muscles goin' down, and busted our lungs comin' up, and clawed along the top edge of the world with nothin' but healthy climate between us and the bottom of the bottomless pit. Humph! ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... there any fears Within the sons of conquerors for full a thousand years? Can treason spring from out a soil bedewed with martyrs' blood? Or has that grown a purling brook, which long rushed down a flood?— By Desmond swept with sword and fire—by clan and keep laid low— By Silken Thomas and his kin,—by sainted Edward, no! The forms of centuries rise up, and in the Irish ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... have found the reason: it is because we will affect to have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore-throats and agues with attempting to realise these visions. Master Damon writes a song, and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... call me Oroondates, Cesario, Amadis, all that romance can in a lover paint, and then I 'll answer. O Archer! I read her thousands in her looks, she looked like Ceres in her harvest: corn, wine and oil, milk and honey, gardens, groves, and purling streams played on her ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... electricity follows the track of a person far better on a stair than on a ladder, it may be remarked. Thick walls, high window-sills, a commanding position, and a murmuring brook, are great securities against hypnotism, and these would be found in older Scotch castles. Another element of safety, the purling brook, is here mentioned; all noise is a good antidote; it is perhaps the case that with hypnotism from a distance the hypnotic state is continually waxing and waning, one link, generally a weaker one, succeeding another in the chain of impressions on the temperament. The ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... were my numbers; who could take offence, While pure description held the place of sense? Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme, A painted mistress, or a purling stream. Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;— I wished the man a dinner, and sat still. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answered,—I was not in debt. If want provoked, or madness made them print, I waged no ...
— English Satires • Various
... heath-clad hill, And I loved the silent vale, With its dark and purling rill That murmur'd in the gale. Of sighs I'd none to share, They were stored for riper years, When I drain'd the dregs of care With many ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? If Nature thundered in his opening ears, And stunned him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill? Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... knoll. On either side were tall and stately trees. A purling brook at the left rolled its silvery current down a gentle declivity, and in front, for half a mile, ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... The light vanished from the sky but the mysterious charm of the time was not broken. In the east a softer and more quiet splendor tipped the foliage with silvery radiance, edging the fleecy clouds with mellow light. Only the purling music of the distant waterfall now broke the restful solemnity of the mountain solitudes. Night with its thoughts of other fairer worlds than this, was here and we with all Nature were preparing ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... taking a walk as of yore through the fields, wandered too far, and got lost. The sky was dotted with little fleecy clouds, the wind was shaking the tiny bells of the oats; a stream was purling along through a meadow—and then, all at once, an infectious odour made them halt, and they saw on the pebbles between the thorn trees the putrid carcass ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... listen to the purling Of foam athwart the keel? To hear the nearing rapids softly swirling Among their stones, to feel The boat's unsteady tremor as it braves The ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... pianist to join them in another drink. Whiskey was sent up to the platform, and the musician drank it at a gulp, his right hand purling over the figuration of "Auf dem Wasser zu Singen." But he took no water. Then making them a little bobbing, startled bow, he began playing. Again it was something of Chopin. On his lean features there was a look of detachment; and the watchers were struck with the interesting forehead, the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... down around the heights on which the castle stood, and crossed the purling little river by means of stepping-stones. Once Toza fell into the water, but was rescued by his guide. There was still no alarm from the castle as daylight began to break. As it grew more light they both crawled into a cave which had a low opening difficult to find, and there Paulo gave the brigand ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... early dinner, and walked across the Common to the Thatched Cottage. I cannot tell you what it was to me to catch sight of the chimney and the purling smoke again; I had to stand still and wait a while, my heart thumped so. (A fool, eh?) I crept noiselessly into the house, and through the hall, then stealthily opened the study door. There he sat on the ground by the fire, with his back ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... the midst of summer, Mr. Drake and his son Albert took a walk in some of the most agreeable environs of the city. The sky was clear, the air cool; and the purling streams, and gentle zyphyrs rustling in the trees, lulled the mind into an agreeable gloom. Albert, enchanted with the natural beauties that surrounded him, could not help exclaiming, "What a lovely evening!" He pressed his father's hand, and, looking up to him, said, "You know ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... the purling of the water, and could not resist the seductive freshness of its voice; I leaned over the rocks of the fountain, took off my glove and caught in the hollow of my hand the sparkling water that fell from the cascade, and eagerly drank it. As I was intoxicating myself with this innocent ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... England orchard in the slanting afternoon sunlight of an early June afternoon. The hot white light of this open country makes my eyes ache and seems to dry my soul up. I can't help thinking of cool green shadows, and musky little valleys of gloom with a brook purling over mossy stones. I long for the solemn greenery of great elms, aisles and aisles of cathedral-like gloom and leaf-filtered sunlight. I'd love to hear an English cuckoo again, and feel the soft mild sea-air that blows up through Louis's dear little Devonshire ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... water-insects, nixies and pixies. Undines and Sabrinas fair and water-babies; and such strange plants grow in them; and who can guess the meaning of the tales they tell, in that never-ceasing, purling tongue of theirs? . . . And Signor Ranocchio? What do you suppose he is thinking of, as he floats there, so still, so saturnine, so indifferent to us? He is plainly in a deep, deep reverie. How wise he looks—a grey, wise old water-hermit, with his head full of strange, unimaginable water-secrets, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... listening heavens fill, And Roman women smile. He does not know; or feel A moment's joy or one triumphant thrill. He heeds them not. He sees as in a dream His home and Cyrasella's citron groves; A youth again, beside some purling stream, With gladsome heart and joyous ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... craggy mountains, or traverse the flowery vale;—whether thick woods set limits to the light, or the wide common yields unbounded prospect;—whether the ocean rolls in solemn state before you, or gentle streams run purling by your side, nature in all her different shapes delights; each progressive day brings with it fresh matter to admire, and every stage you come to presents at night customs and manners new and ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... floor sloping and but just washed, sand strewn thickly on it, and the air was damp and cold. But without, scarcely twenty paces from the inn, on the other side of the road, lay the celebrated valley, a garden made by nature herself, and whose charm consists of trees and bushes, wells and purling brooks. ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... To see that ev'ry glass was fine. At last, grown prouder than the devil With feeding high, and treatment civil, Don Carlos now began to find His malice work as he design'd. The winter sky began to frown: Poor Stella must pack off to town; From purling streams and fountains bubbling, To Liffey's stinking tide in Dublin: From wholesome exercise and air To sossing in an easy-chair: From stomach sharp, and hearty feeding, To piddle[2] like a lady breeding: From ruling there the household singly. To be directed here by Dingley:[3] ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... spoke he scrambled down one of the narrow ravines, and, climbing over a low ridge at the further end, he led them into a short valley with a stream purling down the centre of it and a very thick growth of elder and of box upon either side. Pushing their way through the dense brushwood, they looked out upon a scene which made their hearts beat harder ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with lace-like plumes forming a lattice for the deep green of the slender bushes that bear the rich clusters of crimson buffalo berries. He knows and loves the wild flowers that hang their golden heads along the banks of the purling stream or that in gleaming colours enamel the wide stretches of the plain. There are a thousand leaves in every book, and with every book in nature's library he is familiar to the ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... not an ideal camping-ground, and Jane, whose rosy dreams of camping in Kashmir had pictured her little white canvas home set up in a flowery mead by the side of a purling brook, gazed upon the rugged slopes which rose around—the cold snow gleaming through the shaggy pine-trees—with a shiver and a distinct air ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... generally with beautiful slopes, and scarcely at any place with so much abruptness as to forbid cultivation. Upon these lovely acclivities were built the cabins of the emigrants, at the base of which, and near the house, was always to be found a fountain of pure, sweet water, gushing and purling away over sand and pebbles, meandering through a valley which it fertilized, and which abounds in shrubs flowering in beauty, and sheltered by forests of oak, hickory, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... wont to steal O'er the lyre in gentle mood. From the sparkling waterfalls, From the brook that purling calls, Shall Silenus' loathsome beast Be allow'd at will to feast? Aganippe's * wave he sips With profane and spreading lips,— With ungainly feet stamps madly, Till the ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... decent, though not at all a dashing, rider, (having staved in a rib at eighteen, in the course of scampering), and was sufficient of fence, particularly of the Highland broadsword,—not a bad boxer, when I could keep my temper, which was difficult, but which I strove to do ever since I knocked down Mr. Purling, and put his knee-pan out (with the gloves on), in Angelo's and Jackson's rooms in 1806, during the sparring,—and I was, besides, a very fair cricketer,—one of the Harrow eleven, when we played against Eton in 1805. Besides, Rousseau's way of life, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... amid the trees In bosky groves, while from the vivid sky The sun's gold arrows fleck the fields at noon, Where weary cattle to their slumber hie. How sweet the music of the purling rill, Trickling adown the grassy hill! While dreamy fancies come to give repose When the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... landscape here assumes a quite different stamp. The road which before ran over an unbroken plain, thickly peopled, and cultivated like a garden, now begins to pass between steep uncultivated hills, overgrown with tall, uncut, withered grass, separated by valleys in which run purling rivulets, nearly concealed by exceedingly luxuriant bushy thickets. Ikaho is celebrated for the warm, or more correctly hot, springs which well up from the volcanic hills which surround the little town, which is beautifully situated on a slope. As at the baths of Europe, invalids seek ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... these down grades had a sharp turn at the bottom, with a purling stream running under a rustic bridge immediately at the base of the mountain. On the other side of the bridge, the road rose abruptly up the side of another mountain. The descent was made nicely ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the broad bosom of the loch, the stillness lay grey and smooth like glimmering steel, with little puffs of night wind purling across it, and disappearing like breath from a new knife-blade. He saw where the smooth satin plane rippled to the first water-break, as the stream collected itself, deep and black, with the force of the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... kind Heaven, a more propitious boon; direct her genial regards to one whose love is without example, and whose constancy is unparalleled. Bear witness to my constancy and faith, ye verdant hills, ye fertile plains, ye shady groves, ye purling streams; and if I prove untrue, ah! let me never find a solitary willow or a bubbling brook, by help of which I may be enabled to put a ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... now crosses the Rea, I remember there was a footbridge, and beyond that the river was a pretty, purling, sylvan stream, with bushes and rushes growing on its green banks. A field walk past an old farm house led on to Moseley Hall, which was looked upon as being quite away in the country. As for Moseley itself, it was a pretty little village in those days. ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... free! Heart, thou art desolate. Farewell, O sun. Vain are the plains of the earth, its flowers, and purling streams. I loved you all once—but now no longer love. Thee I woo, kind Death! Wa-shu-pa calls me hence. In life we were one. We'll bask together in the Spirit Land. Short is my pass to thee. Wa-shu-pa, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the horrors of the tedious night, Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades, Or desperate lady near a purling stream, Or lover pendent on a willow tree. Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose. But if a slumber haply does invade My weary limbs, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Arcadia so remote from known reality and speculative possibility that we can never support its representation through a long work. A pastoral of an hundred lines may be endured, but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life, but will be for the most part thrown away as men grow wise ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... ranks of people, with as much tranquillity as you do in your green alleys. The men I meet with make the same impression on my mind as would the trees of your forests, or the flocks of sheep grazing on your common. The busy hum too of these merchants does not disturb one more than the purling of your brooks. If sometimes I amuse myself in contemplating their anxious motions, I receive the same pleasure which you do in observing those men who cultivate your land; for I reflect that the end of all their labours is to embellish the city which I inhabit, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... see her yet, The white smoke from her red lips curling, Her dreaming eyes, her soft replies, Her gentle sighs, her laughter purling! Ah, dainty roll, whose parting soul Ebbs out in many a snowy billow, I, too, would burn if I might earn Upon her lips ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... to read them, the Prince stops him with the words: "Je dechire." Even when a woman whom he has nicknamed "Little Spring"—"because the water sleeping in her eyes or purling in her voice has often cooled his fever"—announces her departure, hoping he may detain her, he lets her go, whispering again ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... Sylvanus, guardian of his boundaries! Sometimes he delights to lie under an aged holm, sometimes on the matted grass: meanwhile the waters glide along in their deep channels; the birds warble in the woods; and the fountains murmur with their purling streams, which invites gentle slumbers. But when the wintery season of the tempestuous air prepares rains and snows, he either drives the fierce boars, with many a dog, into the intercepting toils; or spreads his thin nets with the smooth pole, as a snare for the voracious thrushes; or catches in ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... the time the song had been purling from her smiling lips, Mrs. Strathsay's eyes were laid, a weight like lead, on me, and then she had risen as if it hurt her, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... slow step, with daintiest noiselessness, I moved to a thread of moss that from the glade passed into the thicket, and along its winding way I stepped, in the direction of the sound. Now my ears caught the purling noise of a brooklet, and following the moss-path, I was led into a mass of bush only two or three feet higher than my head. Through this, prowling like a stealthy cat, I wheedled my painful way, emerged upon a strip of open long-grass, and now ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... a time, without a word spoken by either of them. The only sound was the rustling of Jacqueline's stolen silks and the purling of a small stream of water near them, some ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... of all woes, Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose On this afflicted prince; fall, like a cloud, In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud Or painful to his slumbers; easy, light, And as a purling stream, thou son of Night, Pass by his troubled senses; sing his pain, Like hollow murmuring wind or silver rain; Into this prince gently, oh, gently slide, And kiss him into ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the offing of Port Arthur was like a pleasure trip; our fleet of old crocks pounded along steadily, with a soft, soothing sound of purling water rising from under their bows, dominated from time to time by the clank of our crazy engines, which our mechanics had doctored up as thoroughly as time permitted, in order to ensure that they should outlast the run ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... said Barbara, "'into the little sheltered valley of the Speed; let us follow the brown trout stream that goes purling—'" ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... thrilling with the rapture each found in the near presence of the other. The glamour of romance was like a golden mist over all the scene, irradiating each leaf and flower, softening the bird-calls to fairy flutings, draping the nakedness of distant rugged peaks, bearing gently the purling of the limpid brook along which the path ran in devious complacence. Often, indeed, the lovers' way led them into the shallows, through which their bare feet splashed unconcerned. The occasional prismatic ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... aversion was never interrupted or suspended, except for a few years in the younger part of my life, during a period in which I had set my affections upon a charming young woman. Every man, while the passion is upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves and meadows and purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted just familiarity enough with rural objects to understand tolerably well ever after the poets, when they declaim in such passionate terms in favor ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... and it always awoke him at the first peep of dawn. The seasons for him were marked by the variation of these sounds—the thunderous roar when the spring freshets or the autumn rain-falls came, the gentle purling when the summer droughts parched the stream to a narrow thread, and the plaintive moan, as of electric wires, when the ice-bound cascade was touched upon ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... seemed half forgot, I wandered on till I had strayed Beneath an oak tree's ample shade, Whose lofty top towered up so high, It seemed aspiring for the sky. Just at the basement of the hill, A modest little purling rill Shone like a mirror in the sun,— Flashing and sparkling as it run. The lofty oak scarce deigned to look Upon the little murm'ring brook, But tossed his head in proud disdain, And thus began his boasting strain:— "I've lived almost since time began, The friend and favorite of man; Since ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... the plateau from its hidden source ran the purling stream which was destined to yield to sun and thirsty earth long before it twisted down the lower slopes of the hills. Along its edges the grass was thick and rich, shot through everywhere with little blue blossoms and the ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Nothing could be more picturesque than the appearance of this spot: steep hills, thickly clad with groves and forests of chestnuts, surrounded it on every side; the village itself was almost embowered in trees, and close beside it ran a purling brook. Here we found a tolerably large ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... that haunt green groves, purling brooks, and mountain valleys seemed to have fled forever from these deserts. Pan alone, the great and mysterious Pan, was hiding somewhere nearby in the chaos of nature, and with mocking glance seemed ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... oh may you be For ever mirths blest nursery, May pure contents For ever pitch their tents Upon these downs, these Meads, these rocks, these mountains, And peace stil slumber by these purling fountains Which we may every year find when we come ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... Purling, "heiress of the Purlings"; imperious, emphatic, self-opinionated, as women become who have had their own way all ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... who could take offence When pure description held the place of sense? Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme, A painted mistress or a purling stream. Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill— I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answer'd,—I was not ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... more to repose than a purling brook; and ere long something sonorous let the fair culprit know she had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... lounging over the rail with his back to us and his words came faintly. The deck was shrouded in gloom, and the vague outlines of the pilot-house, only a dozen feet away, was the length of our vision aft. A soft, purling sound came from over the side where the waves lapped against the steel hull. A shovel grated stridently now and then in the fire room, and occasionally a block rattled or a halliard flapped against the foremast overhead. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... longest grass we could find. In that dry region no shelter was required at night, so we lay down to sleep among our bales, with our saddles for pillows, and our rifles by our sides. I had been sleeping soundly, dreaming of purling streams and babbling fountains, when I awoke to find my throat as dry and parched as ever. Hoping to find a few drops of water in my bottle, I sat up to reach for it; when, as I looked across the fire, what was my dismay to see a large tiger-like animal stealthily approaching, ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... path is wider. You may walk beside me—if you like." She glanced up from under her black lashes. "The hall is but a short half mile down the stream here to the left." They proceeded, walking slowly, the brook purling and murmuring at their side. The girl drew in her ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... world is hollow. The hills are mere bubbles, and the earth is honeycombed with caverns. By the side of the road which leads to Houssy a river accompanies the traveller's steps, purling and singing, and talking secrets (as shallow pebbly-bedded streams have a way of doing), and on a sudden the traveller misses it. There, before him, is a river bed, wide, white, and stony, but where ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... wealthy home of America there hung, among other things, two staple oil paintings—a still-life for the dining room, showing a dead fish on a plate, and a pastoral for the parlor, showing a collection of cows drinking out of a purling brook. A dead fish with a glazed eye and a cold clammy fin was not a thing you would care to have around the house for any considerable period of time, except in a picture, and the same was true of cows. People who could not abide the idea of a cow in the kitchen gladly ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Woods and purling Streams, I spend my Life in pleasing Dreams; And would not for the World be thought To change my false delightful Thought: For who, alas! can happy be, That does the Truth of all things see? For who, alas! can happy be, That does the Truth of ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... months. It is impossible for any spot to be better adapted for a number of houses being built in a comparatively small compass: for the whole of the ground is so romantically tossed about by the sportive hand of Nature,—presenting here a lofty ridge of rocks, there a woody dell adorned with a purling stream or a limpid pool, that most of the houses are completely hid ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr and the purling rill!" —Pope, Essay on ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... charm which ever accompanies the sound of running water exercised its power over their imagination. They heard with delight the gentle whisper of the fountain, lulling the senses with its low, rippling tones; the soft purling of the brook as it rushes over the pebbles, or the mighty voice of the waterfall as it dashes on in its headlong course; and the beings which they pictured to themselves as presiding over all these charming sights and sounds of nature, corresponded, in their graceful appearance, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... had reached the boundary line shortly after emerging from the canyon. We still travelled nearly directly west. The ferry was in charge of a Cornishman who also had as pretty a little ranch as one could expect to find in such an unlikely place. A purling stream of water, piped from somewhere up in the hills, had caused the transformation. The ranch was very homey with cattle and horses, sheep and hogs, dogs and cats, all sleek and contented-looking. The garden proved that this country ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... toward me, salaam; mine host then comes forward, shakes hands, gives me the letter to Mudura Ghana, and permits me to depart. He has provided two zaptiehs to escort me outside the town, and in a few minutes I find myself bowling briskly along a beautiful little valley; the pellucid waters of a purling brook dance merrily alongside an excellent piece of road; birds are singing merrily in the willow-trees, and dark rocky crags tower skyward immediately around. The lovely little valley terminates all too soon, for in fifteen minutes I am footing it up another mountain; but it proves ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... never printed, but attributed to Thomas Moore. The Kiss, or Lady Francis W- W-'s Frolic, had nearly produced a fatal catastrophe. How would poor Lady Anne W-m have borne such a misfortune? or what purling stream would have received the divine form of the charming Mrs. H-d-s? But alas! he escaped little W-'s ball, only to prove man's base ingratitude, for he has since cut with both these beauties for the interesting little Josephine, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... not attempt to deny the importance of size in winning our first regard: it is a law inseparable from the thing itself; but I must protest against the taste of the age being supplied always with mere physical attributes. The purling stream and babbling brook; the small rill falling from on high, till its feathery stream is lost in mist, are and should be as much sought after as the roaring torrent or the thundering cascade. The effect of the one ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... on the alert: the search for the trail was resumed. Again the Indians refused to go out without the troops; but the men themselves found the tracks of Tonto moccasins along the bed of a little stream purling through the canyon, and presently indications that they had made the ascent of the mountain to the south. Leaving a guard with his horses and pack-mules, the lieutenant ordered up his men, and soon the little command was ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... spraying, Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing, Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling, And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming, And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing, And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping, And curling and whirling and purling and twirling, And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping, And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing; And so never ending, but always descending, Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending, All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar; And this ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... stand there, while in the moonlight pale Their rifle barrels and polished bayonets gleam; Nought is heard but the owl's low, plaintive wail, And the soft musical voice of the purling stream; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... tug at the great rope that bound the houseboat to the little motor tug. The motor boat moved out into the bay, and with almost no perceptible motion and no noise, except the gentle ripple of the water purling against the sides of the craft, the houseboat followed it. The longed-for vacation on the ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... said Mr. Leek, assuming an oratorical attitude—"here you have the umbrageous trees stooping down to dip their leaves in the purling waters; here you have the sweet foliage lending a delicious perfume to the balmy air; here you have the murmuring waterfalls playing music of the spheres to the listening birds, who sit responsive ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... purple and gold, the sea a purling mass of molten amber, and only two stars were visible low in the west, where a waning moon swung on the edge of the distant misty hills. The air was chill, and a silvery haze hung above the moaning waves, and partially veiled the windings of the beach. Under the trees that clustered so ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... table richly spread in regal mode, With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, Gris-amber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore, Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained Pontus, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... verse except enchanted groves And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines? Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves? Must all be veiled, while he that reads divines Catching the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that most of his friends were Protestants. If the truth must be told, I did not like his best things at first, but long remained chiefly attached to his rubbishing pastorals, which I was perpetually imitating, with a whole apparatus of swains and shepherdesses, purling brooks, enamelled meads, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... leaves,—I believe a species of ash,—some of a rich claret, and the never-failing arbutus, here quite a tree, with its orange and crimson berries, all these massed together formed admirable contrasts in shape and colour. And then there was the gentle brook, never roaring or boisterous, but purling among rocks dividing it into still pools, with giant ferns hanging over the stream and bunches of hassock-grass luxuriating in the alluvial soil of its little deltas, and, where the forest receded, a graceful growth of shrubbery ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... was every morning fed With a full mess of milk and bread. One day the boy his breakfast took, And eat it by a purling brook Which through his mother's orchard ran. From that time ever when he can Escape his mother's eye, he there Takes his food in th' open air. Finding the child delight to eat Abroad, and make the grass his seat, His mother lets ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... your desire! I hear the sound of the horns." Isolde again listens. "No!" she discourses in her over-running tender exhilaration, "the sound of horns was never so pleasing as that! It is the soft purling of the fountain whose music comes so sweetly borne to us; how could I hear it, if hunting-horns were still blaring near by? In the silence, all I hear is the murmured laughter of the fountain. The one who is waiting for me in the hushed night, are you determined to keep ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... are made to run among Pebbles, and by that means taught to Murmur very agreeably. They are likewise collected into a Beatiful Lake that is Inhabited by a Couple of Swans, and empties it self by a litte Rivulet which runs through a Green Meadow, and is known in the Family by the Name of The Purling Stream. The Knight likewise tells me, that this Lady preserves her Game better than any of the Gentlemen in the Country, not (says Sir ROGER) that she sets so great a Value upon her Partridges and Pheasants, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Hutchinson, where the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad crosses the historic little stream,[23] was, like Big and Little Coon creeks, a most dangerous point in the transcontinental passage of freight caravans and overland coaches, in the days of the commerce of the prairies. It was on this purling little prairie brook that McDaniel's band lay in wait for the arrival of the ill-fated Don Antonio, whose imposing equipage came along, intending to encamp on the bank, one of the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... fermenting for the coming days. Even now a windy turbulence troubled the half-naked boughs, and a lonely leaf would occasionally spin downwards to rejoin on the grass the scathed multitude of its comrades which had preceded it in its fall. The river by the pavilion, in the summer so clear and purling, now slid onwards brown and thick and silent, and enlarged to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Sleep, thou easer of all woes, Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose On this afflicted prince; fall like a cloud In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud Or painful to his slumbers,—easy, sweet And as a purling stream, thou son of Night, Pass by his troubled senses; sing his pain Like hollow murmuring wind or silver rain, Into this prince gently, oh gently, slide And kiss him into ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... heroine, the rural charms of their secluded village were a source of ever pleasing variety. Spring, with its verdured fields, flowery meads, and vocal groves: its vernal gales, purling rills, and its evening whippoorwill: summer, with its embowering shades, reflected in the glassy lake, and the long, pensive, yet sprightly notes of the solitary strawberry-bird;[A] its lightning and its thunder; autumn with its mellow fruit, its yellow ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... little rill, Purling round its storied pebble, Tinkling to the selfsame tune, From September until June, Which no drought ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... upward to our View; We gaze with growing Wonder till we're blind, And every Beauty fades and dies but his. Thus shall I always view your growing Charm, And every Day and Hour with fresh Delight. Witness thou Sun and Moon, and Stars above, Witness ye purling Streams and quivering Lakes, Witness ye Groves and Hills, and Springs and Plains, Witness ye Shades, and the cool Fountain, where I first espied the Image of her Charms, And starting saw her on th' adjacent Bank, If I to my Monelia ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... shame when to my inward view The devious paths return where Cupid drew His willing slave, with all my hopes and fears— When Phoebus seem'd to rise and set in tears For many a spring—and when I used to dwell A lonely hermit in a silent cell. How upwards oft I traced the purling rills To their pure fountains in the misty hills! The rocks I used to climb, the solemn woods, Where oft I wander'd by the winding floods! And often spent, whene'er I chanced to stray, In amorous ditties all the livelong day! What mournful ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... that of Dyoonboors which it joined at a mile and a half from where we had been encamped. At three miles, having crossed a low ridge of forest land, we entered a fine valley, backed on the west by romantic forest hills, and watered by some purling brooks which united in the woods on the east. The flat itself had a few stately trees upon it, and seemed quite ready to receive the plough; while some round hillocks on the north were so smooth and grassy ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... wooed her in undertones like that of the purling milk—at the cow's side, at skimmings, at butter-makings, at cheese-makings, among broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs—as no milkmaid was ever wooed before ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... distant ridge and point the cavalry vedettes keep vigilant watch, against surprise or renewed attack. Down along the banks of a clear, purling stream a sentry paces slowly by the brown line of rifles, swivel-stacked in the sunshine. Men by the dozen are washing their blistered feet and grimy hands and faces in the cool, refreshing water; men by the dozen lie soundly sleeping, ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... thirst, went to drink in a clear, purling rivulet; but the current, with its circling eddy, snatched her away, and carried her down the stream. A Dove, pitying her distressed condition, cropped a branch from a neighbouring tree and let it fall into the water, by means of which the Ant saved herself and got ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... safety, we rolled merrily away down hill, till we reached Colonel Beam's tavern, a neat, low-browed, Dutch, stone farmhouse, situate in an angle scooped out of a green hill-side, with half a dozen tall and shadowy elms before it—a bright crystal stream purling along into the horse-trough through a miniature aqueduct of hollowed logs, and a clear cold spring in front of it, with half a score of fat and lazy trout floating ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... to plain-work, and to purling brooks, Old-fashion'd halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks... (To) divert her eyes with pictures in the fire, Hum half a tune, tell stories to ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... all of them inveterate Cockneys, talk of the joys of the country, of purling streams and lowing kine and frisking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... may ye be For ever mirth's best nursery! May pure contents, For ever pitch their tents Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these mountains, And peace still slumber by these purling fountains, Which we may every year Find ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... blood flows calm as a purling river, When my heart is asleep and my brain has sway, It is then that I vow we must part forever, That I will forget you, and put you away Out of my life, as a dream is banished Out of the mind when the dreamer awakes; That I know it will be, when the spell has vanished, Better ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the genuine new poets, who know what they are about, and doubtless why they are about it, I regard with all deference, hailing especially their good fight to free poetry of its ancient inversions, its mincing vocabulary, its thous and thees, its bosky dells and purling streams, its affectations and unrealities, both of speech and subject. But I do say they miss a certain triumphant craftsman's joy at packing precisely what you mean, hard enough to express in unlimited prose, into a fettered, singing line; and I do ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... long moment they stood entranced. Kaydessa then gave a little cry, held out her hands to the purling mist and brought them to her lips again to suck ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... neighbouring river. Some rough tools were first hewn out, and he had soon the whole tribe at work, and the canal and conduits were laid out among the crops. And there stood the witch-doctors put to shame, as they heard the water purling and filtering into ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Sun, heavens brightest birth, Hath with his burning fervour cleft the earth, Under a spreading Elme, or Oake, hard by A coole cleare fountaine, could I sleeping lie, Safe from the heate? but now, no shadie tree, Nor purling brook, can my refreshing bee? Oft when the medowes were growne rough with frost, The rivers ice-bound, and their currents lost, My thick warme fleece, I wore, was my defence, Or large good fires, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... behind the closed blinds of the villa. Music! And the music he had overheard that first night. But Constantia had just gone away; he had seen her. There must be some mistake, some joke. No, no, by another path she had managed to get back to the house. Ay! but what playing. Again came that purling rush of notes, those unison passages, as if one gigantic hand grasped them—so perfect was the tonal accord. He did not hesitate. At a bound he was in the corridor and pushed open the door of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... condescended to land in the Wild Island, to dry and refresh some of his men (whom the physeter had wetted and bedaubed), at a small desert seaport towards the south, seated near a fine pleasant grove, out of which flowed a delicious brook of fresh, clear, and purling water. Here they pitched their tents and set up their kitchens; nor ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... realities deserves all respect in both cases, but in both cases he puts many things on the wrong side of the dividing line. His hearty contempt for sham pastorals and sham love-poetry will be probably shared by modern readers. 'Who will hear of sheep and goats and myrtle bowers and purling rivulets through five acts? Such scenes please barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life, but will be for the most part thrown away as men grow wise and nations grow learned.' But elsewhere he blunders into terrible misapprehensions. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... that protected the soil from the beating storms; when these slopes, now furrowed with gulleys and spread with stones, were covered with orchards and clad with verdure, where the flocks might 'lie down midst pastures of tender grass;' and when these dried up waterways were purling brooks, where the flocks were 'led beside the waters of quietness.' I believe that David's description of this country was a true picture of the land as it appeared then. 'Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly; thou settlest the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... family in such piteous state Was out of question, so young GOODWORTH took The horses out—for now 'twas growing late— To quench their thirst at a clear purling brook, And gave them food within a sheltered nook; Then found some boards and made a coffin rude. Meanwhile the father took God's holy Book And read such portions as teach fortitude To us, that all immoderate grief ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... while ears and eyes feasted on the symphonies of Nature and the ever changing beauty of the hills; or stood beside Joanna in a trance of delight out in the fragrant dairy, whose windows opened into a wild sweetness of fluttering leaves, and whose cool stone floor made a channel for a purling brook, watching her as with dexterous hands she shaped and moulded the bubbley dough or tossed up an omelet or made one of her delicious cherry pies, conscious through it all of the sweet influence which seemed to pervade every corner of ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... the cliff that towered above them, casting an ink-black shadow. But beyond it the emblazoned firmament glowed irradiant, and at their feet the encircling waters ran, a broad ribbon of black silk purling between the cliff and the opposing shores, where a thicket of tamarisks rose, a ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... lacks a river. "One thing is wanting—and happy is the situation that wants no more; for in this place notwithstanding the medicinal waters, and sufficient of sweetes for domestic use, are not to be heard the precipitant murmurs of impetuous cascades. There are no purling streams in our groves, to tempt the shrill notes of the warbling choristers, whose never-ceasing ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... I, 'this sounds like the purling of a rill to me. I thought we came here to teach the millionaires business, instead of learning art ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... to large and universal passions. Yet it is in the lighter scenes, the scenes of comedy, like the marionette show, the scenes of mild pathos, like the monologues of Iris, and the scenes of mere accessory decoration, like that of the laundresses, the mousmes in the first act, with its purling figure borrowed from "Les Huguenots" and its unnecessarily uncanny col legno effect conveyed from "L'Africaine" that it ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... two men dragged the little flat boat to the water's edge. The river had risen to full flood during the night and out of the darkness came the crash and grind of ice, the dull roar and splash of undermined banks, and the purling rumble of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... placed them several days ago; but it was not the interior that held us but the view looking eastward across the sunlit meadows. In fact this side of the barn had the wide openings of an observatory. The gnarled apple trees of the orchard still bore pink-and-white wreaths on the shady side, and the purling of bluebirds blended with the voice of the river that ran between the hills afar off—the same stream that further up country was to be pent between walls and prisoned to make a reservoir. Sitting there, we gazed ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... royalty before which Solomon's grandeur paled. We have piled stone and brick where the forest oak towered, and voice our strident city cries where the imperious roar of the forest king once startled the echoes. We have turned the oil and filth of our refineries into the streams that once crept purling and laughing through the wild-flowers and grasses, and the black smoke of our factories has silenced the plaintive note of the thrush and strangled the wondrous song of the nightingale. Our grandeur is ostentation and our dignity a dead-letter. The ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
