"Billow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... bottom. Occasionally a pursuing sea cast the stern upward, as if about to throw it in advance of the bows; but le Feu-Follet was too much accustomed to this treatment to be disturbed, and she ever rose on the billow, like a bubble, and then the glancing arrow scarce surpassed the speed with which she hastened forward, as if to recover ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the mountain-cleft Was the Troglodyte concealed; And the roving Nomad left, Desert lying, each broad field. With the javelin, with the bow, Strode the hunter through the land; To the hapless stranger woe, Billow-cast ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of a boat:— There was once a boat on a billow: Lightly she rocked to her port remote, And the foam was white in her wake like snow, And her frail mast bowed when the breeze would blow, And bent ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... retreating wave as you dare, and then, with a walking stick or an umbrella, or your finger, if nothing better is to be had, write your name, or draw a hideous spook on the wet sand. You have to be quick about it, too; for just as you are putting the finishing touches to the work, another great billow is sure to come tearing at you, with a wide, deep hollow of emerald green, and foaming crest, looking like molten silver in the moonlight. Crash! it falls on the beach; and a long rush of foam slides up the sand as you scamper out of reach, not always without ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... not an eye was closed in slumber, excepting in the case of little Inez Hawthorne, who felt the situation only to the extent that it compelled her to stay close in the cabin, while the vessel pitched and tossed from the crest of one tremendous billow, down, seemingly, into the fathomless depths between, and then laboriously climbed the mountain in front, with the spray and mist whirling about the deck and rigging like millions of fine shot. But the gallant Coral rode it out safely, and the steady breeze caught her and she sped swiftly ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... touched him on the shoulder. He turned his head, and looked into the set face of Ankarstrom, who was close behind him. Then a burning, rending pain took him in his side, and he grew sick and dizzy. The uproar of voices became muffled; the lights were merged into a luminous billow that swelled and shrank ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From Love to titled age and crime And an unholy pillow— From me, and from our misty clime Where weeps ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... 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 named the Valley of the Wreck. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... left her early pillow, And the heavens grew rosy-rich, and rare; Laughed the dewy plain and glassy billow, For the Golden God himself was there; And the vapour-screen Rose the hills between, Steaming up, like incense, in ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... A mighty billow flings its cloud of foam over the faces of Claude and the shrinking girl by his side, and blinds them with salt spray. But high as the tide is, the Chair is still above its reach, and although the wave may sprinkle them, it cannot swallow them up. Only they are deafened ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... a delightful change from the im-moral way in which elections used to be conducted!)—I felt it was safe for me to wing my flight to fresh scenes and pastures new!—not that I wanted any "new pastures," having been a grass-widow for some time;—but having had enough of the "rolling billow"—(by the way, the rolling "Billow" at Stockbridge didn't roll fast enough)—I yearned for the silvery smoothness of Father Thames, so started for Henley with my faithful Eulalie—(I really must change her name, it sounds like a Swiss joedel); but, ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892 • Various
... music 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, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... broke on the rocks; The tide lilted in with a rhythmical motion; The sea-gulls dipped downward in time-keeping flocks. I watched while a giant wave gathered its forces, And then on the gray granite precipice burst; And I knew as I counted, while other waves mounted, I knew the tenth billow ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 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 ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... day's dawning! My soul bounds upward On beams of light to the vault of heaven; My ship-steed sniffing its flank is laving With buoyant zest in the cooling billow. With song the sailor to masthead clambers To clear the sail that shall swell more freely, And thoughts are flying like birds aweary Round mast and yard-arm, but find no refuge. ... Yes, toward the ocean! To follow Vikar! To sail like him and to sink as he did, For great King Olaf the prow ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... 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 ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... faces they raised their heavy hands and matched their might in deadly strife. Hereupon the Bebrycian king even as a fierce wave of the sea rises in a crest against a swift ship, but she by the skill of the crafty pilot just escapes the shock when the billow is eager to break over the bulwark—so he followed up the son of Tyndareus, trying to daunt him, and gave him no respite. But the hero, ever unwounded, by his skill baffled the rush of his foe, and he quickly noted the brutal play ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... their boat near the rock, then suddenly a tremendous wave dashed them back again, and they were almost buried beneath the waters. The boat rose, however, and the men, nowise daunted by the danger and difficulty, again strained every nerve to reach the rock. But a terrible billow again came over them, and this time two of their oars were snapped to pieces. Soon after a receding wave left a space around the rock uncovered, and Robert, eager to reach the sufferers, leaped across. But just then ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... 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 old ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... country and the staying qualities of a great mind. What would have been the outcome of Charles's career if pitted against almost any other monarch of Russia that one could name it is difficult to imagine. But pitted against Peter the Great he was like a foaming billow hurling ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... alone; Her face is fair and awful, and a gold crown girdeth her head; And a sword of the kings she beareth, and her sun-bright hair is shed O'er the laps of the snow-white linen that ripples adown to her feet: As a swan on the billow unbroken ere the firth and the ocean meet, On the dark-blue cloths she sitteth, in the height of the golden place, Nor breaketh the hush of the hall, though her eyes be set ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... have enough of looking on her. Forsooth there was cause, so fair she was, and he now come far into his eighteenth year. She was that day clad all in black, without any adornment, and her hair was knit up as a crown about her beauteous head, which sat upon her shoulders as the swan upon the billow: her hair had darkened since the days of her childhood, and was now brown mingled with gold, as though the sun were within it; somewhat low it came down upon her forehead, which was broad and white; her eyes were blue-grey and lustrous, her cheeks a little hollow, but the jaw was truly wrought, ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... motion on the 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
... me!" cried Porthos, drawing himself up. It is a sad thing to have to confess, but a man's heart is like a restless billow; for, from that very moment, Porthos ceased to look at Madame Truechen in that touching manner which had so softened her heart. Planchet encouraged these ambitious leanings in the best way he could. He talked over, or rather gave exaggerated ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... stirs its waves, But the spirits of the braves Hov'ring o'er, Whose antiquated graves Its still water laves On the shore. With an Indian's stealthy tread It goes sleeping in its bed, Without joy or grief, Or the rustle of a leaf, Without a ripple or a billow, Or the sigh of a willow, From the Lyndeboro' hills To the Merrimack mills. With a louder din Did its current begin, When melted the snow On the far mountain's brow, And the drops came together In that rainy weather. Experienced ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... if you can find a competent assassin, I wouldn't make it a point with him to oblige Mr. Markley. I don't care particularly to have the poet buried in the weltering sea. If he can't find a roaring billow, I'll be perfectly satisfied to have him chucked into a creek. And I dare say that it'll make no material difference whether the dolphins gobble him or the catfish and eels nibble him up. It's all the same in the long run. Mention this to your murderer ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... later, on a giant roller, the wave burst into awful masses of towering foam, so high above and around the lugger that for an instant she was out of sight, overwhelmed, and the crowds cried, 'She's lost!' but upwards she rose again on the crest of the following billow, and with the speed of an arrow flew to the land on ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... situation was still desperate. Should a storm spring up,—even an ordinary gale,—not only would their canvas water-cask be bilged, and its contents spilled out to mingle with the briny billow, but their frail embarkation would be in danger of going to pieces, or of being whelmed fathoms deep under the frothing waves. In a high latitude, either north or south, their chance of keeping afloat would have been slight indeed. A week, or rather only a single day, would ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... like the birds, seemed pitifully tiny. But, unlike the birds, they did not seem purposeless. It was evident they were moving, though one could not see rowers, oars, or splashes, for they progressed in short jumps and above the dulled rattle of a billow breaking on the pebbles, the faint click-thud of oars between thole-pins was plainly audible. I had an odd fancy that the six men were rowing through immensity, into eternity, to meet God; and that they ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the fields where, row on row, The blackberries hang dark with fruit; Where, nesting at the elder's root, The partridge whistles soft and low; The fields, that billow to the foot Of those old hills we used ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... and with a baleful smile The vassal knight reel'd off— Like a huge billow from a bark Toil'd in the deep sea-trough, 55 That shouldering sideways in mid plunge, Is travers'd by a flash. And staggering onward, leaves the ear With dull and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... her neck, and threw O'er her clear nutbrown skin a lucid hue, Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave, Which draws the diver to the crimson cave. Such was this daughter of the southern seas, HERSELF A BILLOW IN ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... blindly across the wind with a thin trailing edge behind it and a rolling billow of descending mist as its forefront. It rolled up to and across a concrete highway, watched by perspiring motor cops who had performed miracles in clearing a path for it among the horde of sightseeing cars. It swept on into a ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... feeble, faint, and wan. "If not for love, yet, love, for pity-sake, Me in thy bed and maiden bosom take; At least vouchsafe these arms some little room, Who, hoping to embrace thee, cheerly swoom: This head was beat with many a churlish billow, And therefore let it rest upon thy pillow." Herewith affrighted, Hero shrunk away, And in her lukewarm place Leander lay; Whose lively heat, like fire from heaven fet, Would animate gross clay, and higher ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... I'll dare the billow's roar, For her I'll trace a distant shore, That Indian wealth may lustre throw Around ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... without definite color. But suddenly, wonderful enough, there came a breeze, a brisk spurt out of the north. The bunting caught it, twisted upon itself, tumbled, writhed, then suddenly shook itself free, and in a single long billow rolled out into the Stars and Stripes ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... gigantic body. The acorn, from which that oak grew, must have been planted long before, and the tree which grew from it have been dressed many times in its summer robe of green, and it was, doubtless, flourishing when the "Mayflower" left the English Channel. When she was slowly making her way from billow to billow, through the then almost unknown sea, bearing some of the most brave and liberty-loving men and women the world, at that time, could produce; when the hearts of the Pilgrim Fathers were beating high with hopes of liberty and escape from tyranny, when their breath came low and ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... verge;— If these on all some transient hours bestow Of rapture tingling with its hectic glow, Then all are poets; and if earth had rolled Her myriad centuries, and her doom were told, Each moaning billow of her shoreless wave Would wail its requiem ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ocean your helpless faces, Ye over stormy seas leading long and dreary processions, Ye, too, brood of the wind, whose coming is whence we discern not, Making your nest on the wave, and your bed on the crested billow, Skimming rough waters, and crowding wet sands that the tide shall return to, Cormorants, ducks, and gulls, fill ye my imagination! Let us not talk of growth; we are still ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... are requisite in a play, in those narrow channels which are proper to each of them; to conduct his imaginary persons through so many various intrigues and chances, as the labouring audience shall think them lost under every billow; and then, at length, to work them so naturally out of their distresses, that, when the whole plot is laid open, the spectators may rest satisfied, that every cause was powerful enough to produce the effect it had; and that the whole chain of them was with such due order linked together, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... when to rejoice in this fluctuating world? Every wave of prosperity has its reacting surge, and we are often overwhelmed by the very billow on which we thought to be wafted into the haven of our hopes. When Yusef Aben Comixa, the vizier of Boabdil, surnamed El Chico, entered the royal saloon of the Alhambra and announced the capitulation of El Zagal, the heart of the youthful monarch leaped for joy. His great wish was accomplished; ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... and it drizzled, it hiss'd and it whirl'd, And it bubbled like water when mingled with flame, And columns of foam to the heaven were hurl'd, And billow on billow tumultuously came; It seem'd that the womb of the ocean would bear Sea over sea to the ...
— The Song of Deirdra, King Byrge and his Brothers - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... Pot," which he looked upon as one of the best things he had written, was lost to him. In despair, casting about frantically among the magazines, he had sent it to The Billow, a society weekly in San Francisco. His chief reason for submitting it to that publication was that, having only to travel across the bay from Oakland, a quick decision could be reached. Two weeks later he was overjoyed to see, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... reappearing, rising like a sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white—rising swiftly higher and higher, shoulders and chest and loins and limbs, until he stood poised on the smoking crest of a mighty, mile- long billow, his feet buried in the flying foam, hurling beach-ward with the speed of an express train and stepping calmly ashore at their astounded feet. That had been her first glimpse of Steve. He had been the youngest ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... her idol.[230] Her fleet consisted of three ships, but two foundered before Ireland was reached. The survivors in addition to Cessair were, her father Bith, two other men, Fintan and Ladru, and fifty women. All of these perished on the hills except Fintan, who slept on the crest of a great billow, and lived to see Partholon, the giant, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Ages, cleft for me," Sung above a coffin lid; Underneath, all restfully, All life's joys and sorrows hid. Nevermore, O storm-tossed soul! Nevermore from wind or tide, Nevermore from billow's roll, Wilt thou need thyself to hide. Could the sightless, sunken eyes, Closed beneath the soft gray hair, Could the mute and stiffened lips Move again in pleading prayer, Still, aye still, the words would be,— "Let me ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... "But not Acroceraunus fronts the brine, — Ill-famed — against whose base the billow heaves, Nor against Boreas stands the mountain pine, That has a hundred times renewed its leaves, And towering high on Alp or Apennine, With its fast root the rock as deeply cleaves, So firmly as the youth resists the will Of that foul ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... and mounted. So did the dance. Wave followed on ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow. Limb after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play; yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,—as limp as flowing, rushing water,—she whirled and swayed through all the emotions until, at the highest ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... usually placid river, there was but one bark found bold enough to venture upon her angered bosom, and this, although but an epitome of those that have subdued the world of waters, and chained them in subservience to the will of man, now danced gallantly, almost terrifically, from billow to billow, and, with the feathery lightness of her peculiar class, seemed borne onward, less by the leaping waves themselves than by the white and driving spray that fringed their summits. This bark—a canoe evidently of the smallest ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... their line of scalloped peaks across the entrance to the Notch. Beyond that shadowy vale, the swelling summits of Cannon Mountain rolled away to meet the tumbling waves of Kinsman, dominated by one loftier crested billow that seemed almost ready to curl and break out of green silence into snowy foam. Far down the sleeping Landaff valley the undulating dome of Moosilauke trembled ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... round which our company has uncertainly wandered since the morning. I saw a limitless gray plain, across whose width the wind seemed to be driving faint and thin waves of dust, pierced in places by a more pointed billow of smoke. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the bathers, by hundreds dash in; and diving under the swells, make straight for the outer sea, pausing not till the comparatively smooth expanse beyond has been gained. Here, throwing themselves upon their boards, tranquilly they wait for a billow that suits. Snatching them up, it hurries them landward, volume and speed both increasing, till it races along a watery wall, like the smooth, awful verge of Niagara. Hanging over this scroll, looking down from it as from a precipice, the bathers halloo; every limb in motion ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... moment? I believe I did not hear the dull roar of the explosion. But the rocks suddenly assumed a new arrangement: they rent asunder like a curtain. I saw a bottomless pit open on the shore. The sea, lashed into sudden fury, rose up in an enormous billow, on the ridge of which the unhappy raft was uplifted bodily in the air with all ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Bear not the crash of bark far on the main, Bear not the cry of men, who cry in vain, The crew's dread chorus sinking into death! Oh! give not these, ye pow'rs! I ask alone, As rapt I climb these dark romantic steeps, The elemental war, the billow's moan; I ask the still, sweet tear, that ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... railway line—a pretty stiff little obstacle—the narrow gauge metals being on top of a narrow embankment. Then across a level field of veldt, and they commence to ascend a slight depression, which is just behind a shouldering billow of veldt. It is hard work for the artillery horses over this ground, but it is fine the way they tug and strain at their work. The officers urge the men to hurry forward. Already a gun is heard from the Boers. They have ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... line of woolly forms, lifting like the crest of a yellow wave, plunged out and down in rounded billow over the canyon rim. With din of hoofs and bleats the sheep spilled themselves over the precipice, and an awful deafening roar boomed up from the river, like the spreading thunderous crash ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... on the Ocean tost, Now high, now low, with each Billow born, With her Rudder broke, and her Anchor lost, Deserted and all forlorn. While thus I lie rolling and tossing all Night, That Polly lies sporting on Seas of Delight! Revenge, Revenge, Revenge, Shall ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... wave and wind Have weightier blows in store, That we who keep the watch assigned Must stand to it the more; And as our streaming bows rebuke Each billow's baulked career, Sing, welcome Fate's discourtesy Whereby it ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... I caught at each sound; I clutched and I caught as a man that drown'd. . . . Only the sullen low growl of the sea Far out the flood street at the edge of the ships. Only the billow slow licking his lips, Like a dog that lay crouching there watching for me; Growling and showing white teeth all the night, Reaching his neck and as ready to bite— Only the waves with their salt flood tears Fawning white stones of ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... air-vision. Of the Mitre Tavern nothing but the bare walls remain there; of London, of England, of the World, nothing but the bare walls remain; and these also decaying, (were they of adamant,) only slower. The mysterious River of Existence rushes on: a new Billow thereof has arrived, and lashes wildly as ever round the old embankments; but the former Billow with its loud, mad eddyings, where is it?—Where?—Now this Book of Boswell's, this is precisely a Revocation ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... and myself had cast To stop him as he outward pass'd; But, lighter than the whirlwind's blast, He vanish'd from our eyes, Like sunbeam on the billow cast That glances ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... feet in great gold tassels, that nearly touched the huge anklets of green jade with which her two little bare feet were loaded, as if to help them to stand firm. And a soft broad band of gold ran right round her just below her lovely breast, that lay held in its gold cup like a great double billow made of the creamy lather of the sea, prevented from escaping as it swelled up by the delicious dam formed by the curve of her shoulders meeting the soft bulge of the upper part of her rounded arms, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... upsets, and fell to crying. It took her some time to get down the waves of emotion so that speech would live upon them. At last it ventured out,—showing at intervals, like the boat rising on the billow, sinking into the hollow, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... and twined a fish-hook in the long and glistening hair, and drew it, laughing as she went, through dust, and mire, and gore, and over the rough stones of the town, and through the shouting crowds of the multitudes, and tossed it out on to the sea, laughing still as the waves flung it out from billow to billow, and the fish sucked it down to make their feast. "Voila tes secondes noces!" she cried where she stood, and laughed by the side of the gray angry water, watching the tresses of the floating hair sink downward like a heap ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... one huge billow rising, curving, high as the gaff of the main, it seemed to him, as he grasped at the coil of the main halyards. Down came the tons of water, booming on the deck that bent under the blow, spilling in a great cataract that swashed across ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... his wheat, like the crest of an advancing billow, crossing the Pacific, bursting upon Asia, flooding the Orient in a golden torrent. It was the new era. He had lived to see the death of the old and the birth of the new; first the mine, now the ranch; first gold, now wheat. Once again he became the pioneer, hardy, brilliant, taking ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... The billow of white smoke filled the northern sky. A whirl of gray wood ashes, light as air, floated on and ever on over Superior. The site of the mill, the squares where the piles of lumber had stood, glowed incandescence over which already a white ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... 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 it—and stopped. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... centre, by Murat and Regnier. In the hottest of the battle, two Saxon cavalry regiments went over to Bluecher, and General Normann, when about to be charged at Taucha by the Prussian cavalry under Billow, also deserted to him with two Wuertemberg cavalry regiments, in order to avoid an unpleasant reminiscence of the treacherous ill-treatment of Luetzow's corps. The whole of the Saxon infantry, commanded by Regnier, shortly afterward went, with thirty-eight guns, over to the Swedes, five ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... one made the loosened sheet taut, the canvas caught the gust and the craft gained sufficient headway to enable her to run over, and not be run down by the seas. As she careened and plunged, racing down a frothing dark billow, the convict, relieved of his burden, clung to the lower gunwale. By a desperate effort he drew himself up, when a face vaguely remembered—as part of a bad dream—looked into his, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... 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 ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... term for the other water-hosts living not only in the sea, but also in the rivers, lakes, cataracts, and fountains, is Ahtolaiset (inhabitants of Ahtola), "Water-people," "People of the Foam and Billow," "Wellamo's Eternal People." Of these, some have specific names; as Allotar (wave-goddess), Koskenneiti (cataract-maiden), Melatar (goddess of the helm), and in The Kalevala these are sometimes personally invoked. ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... in heavy mood from her seat, whereas she sat like unto swan on billow, having a sword in her hand, and a helm on her head, and being clad in a byrny, "O Gunnar," she says, "speak not to me of such things, unless thou be the first and best of all men; for then shalt thou slay those my wooers, if ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... A segregation of the Turkish fleet: For do but stand upon the foaming shore, The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds; The wind-shak'd surge, with high and monstrous main, Seems to cast water on the burning Bear, And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole; I never did like molestation view On the ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... glorious "Stonewall" Jackson, with ten thousand at his back; And Longstreet, too, and gallant Hill, and Rhodes, and brave Huger,[1] And he whose name is worth a host, our bold, devoted Lee; And back to where the lordly James his scornful billow rolls, The recreant foe is fleeing fast—those men of ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... awe-inspiring rapidity. Now only her three funnels were seen above the surface of the water; a few minutes later nothing was visible save the top of the mast and the top-pennants hoisted for battle. Then a mighty, foaming billow rose on high, and only the breaking of the waves marked the spot where ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... life's wide sea, when tempests gathering dark Pour the fierce billow on the shatter'd bark, The surge may break, the warring winds may rave, 'Tis God controls the vengeance of the wave; And those who trust in his Almighty arm No storm shall vex, nor hurricane alarm; He is their stay when earthly ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... chimed in, "an' I brought him home with me 'cause he's going to help me to find a fortune, an' he hasn't got any place to go to 'cause his home's far, far beyond the 'bounding billow,'—so you will let him ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... they plunged anew in the gloomy deeps of swamp and brake, the friendly lights were lost and the depressed wayfarers struggled on with something of the feeling of a crew cast away at sea, who, thrown upon the crest of a rising billow, catch a near glimpse of a great ship, light and taut, riding serenely havenward to lose it the next in the dire waste. Presently the melancholy bird-notes that had puzzled Jack in the same vicinity ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... night, Sadly to greet her,— Moon in her silver light, Stars in their glitter; Then sank the moon away Under the billow, Still wept the maid alone— ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that the wave would be upon him before he could reach the deck, and that there was only one way of escape. Thrusting his slim figure between the beams of the open-work, where no full-grown man could have passed, he held on with all his strength. Crash came the great billow against the side, making the whole ship quiver from stem to stern; but Austin remained unhurt. The next moment ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... men 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 rapture of infinite ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... circuitous route; and now, driven in fury before the raging tempest, in their scarcely seaworthy vessel. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight, against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Charybdis rising, Against encounter'd billow dashing breaks; Such is the dance this wretched race must lead, Whom more than elsewhere numerous here I found, From one side and the other, with loud voice, Both roll'd on weights by main forge of their breasts, Then smote together, and each one forthwith Roll'd them back voluble, turning again, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... in boldness and efficiency, they declared the Girondists to be the friends of the monarch, and the enemies of popular liberty. Upon this tumultuous wave of polluted democracy, now rising with resistless and crested billow, Danton and Robespierre were riding into their terrific power. Humanity shut its eyes in view of the hideous apparition of wan and haggard beggary and crime. The deep mutterings of this rising storm, which no earthly ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... therefore, made the best of his way aft, and, on a second attempt to look out, he succeeded, and saw indeed an astonishing sight. The sea or waves appeared to be ten or fifteen feet in height of unbroken water, and every approaching billow seemed as if it would overwhelm our vessel, but she continued to rise upon the waves and to fall between the seas in a very wonderful manner. It seemed to be only those seas which caught her in the act of rising which struck ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 some ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... nuptial right in Heaven's pure sight Pollution were, death-laden, rude; Ah woe is me! woe! woe! Alas for sorrow's murky brood! Where will this billow hurl me? Where? Hear, hill-crowned Apia, hear my prayer; Full well, O land, My voice barbaric thou canst understand, While oft with rendings I assail My byssine vesture and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... left the quarter deck, and went below to snatch, if possible, a few minutes sleep. He had been in his cabin only long enough to change his damp clothing for dry, when a fearful crash told him the ship had struck upon the rocks. In a moment he was back on the quarter deck. He found that a surging billow had struck the hinder part of the ship, tore off part of the sheathing, and carried away the watch-house in which two women were sleeping—all efforts to rescue them were in vain. Whilst the storm-tossed ocean ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... 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
... upon me before I had thought to execute these instructions, I straightened myself out rigidly, and lo! I shot in like a torpedo on the very top of the billow, holding the point of the board up, yelling like a Comanche Indian. So fast, so straight did I go, that it was all I could do to swerve in the shallow water and not be hurled ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... that was enough. A Vesuvian explosion seemed to heave in his capacious bosom, and found vent in a furious roar. Round he went like an opera-dancer on one leg, and lowered his shaggy head. The horse's chest went slap against it as might an ocean-billow against a black rock, and the rider, describing a curve with a high trajectory, came heavily down ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... no more, Cupids round it rise. Hasten, Zephyr, waft from roses All their loveliest bloom! Haste where Chloe now reposes, Wake her from her tomb! To the fairest's couch repair, Wanton round her pillow; O'er her lip and bosom fair Bathe thy blandest billow! She wakes the whispers to the gale, Wakes from her morning dream; Whilst so the stream, and thro' the vale, I er'st have breathed ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... just in front of them, the gorge seemed to end, for the place was blocked by a wall that ran across the narrow rift at right angles, and against this the whole body of water was propelled, to strike straight upon it, and rise up like a billow of the sea and fall back with a furious roar. Here the foam formed so dense a mist that Dale had crept right into it before he realised that, as the water fell back, it shot away through the gloom to his left, forming a fresh billow against a perpendicular ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... the low-lying Tuamotu 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 ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... ship's side, to which it was still attached by part of the rigging. Three of the men who had clung to the shrouds of the foremast were swept overboard and drowned. Once more the wreck recoiled, rose again on a towering billow, and was launched on the rocks with such violence that she was forced forward and upwards ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... softness or relief. The narrow valleys are only dark shadows; the lakes are bits of broken mirror. From horizon to horizon there is a tumultuous sea of billows turned to stone. You stand upon the highest billow; you command the situation; you have surprised Nature in a high creative act; the mighty primal energy has only just become repose. This was a supreme hour to Old Phelps. Tea! I believe the boys succeeded in kindling ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with us!" I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself through the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar between two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes's waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly fixed, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... departed day Hushed seems its motion. Slowly o'er yon blue coast Onward she's treading, 'Till its dark line is lost, 'Neath her veil spreading. The bark on the rippling deep Hath found a pillow, And the pale moonbeams sleep On the green billow. Bound by her emerald zone Venice is lying, And round her marble crown Night winds are sighing. From the high lattice now Bright eyes are gleaming, That seem on night's dark brow Brighter stars beaming. Now o'er the bright lagune Light barks are ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... the scanty remains of the almost mythical Etruscan city of Veii, the Troy of Italy. The view in this direction is bounded by the advanced guard of the Sabine range, the blue peak of Soracte looking, as Lord Byron graphically says, like the crest of a billow about to break. In front, at your feet, is the city, broken up into the most picturesque masses by the irregularity of the ground; here and there a brighter light glistening on some stately campanile or cupola, and flashing back from the graceful columns ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... with intensity of pain, And wash'd him in the sea; it only brought Wild reason, like a demon, and he thought Strange thoughts, like dreaming men—he thought how those Were round him he had seen, and many rose His heart had hated; every billow threw Features before him, and pale faces grew Out of the sea by myriads:—the self-same Was moulded from its image, and they came In groups together, and all said, like one, "Be cursed!" and vanish'd in the deep anon. Then thirst, intolerable as the breath Of Upas, fanning ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... flash of red flame, and a billow of thick, yellow smoke filled all the air. The cabin was afire. The hatchet-man with whom Wilbur was fighting had been backing in this direction. He was close in when the fire began to leap from the one window; ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... piteous terror of the appointed end, For this I sigh! The billow, poised above, Fell on thee like a beast that leaps to rend: Thou couldst not know thy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... sea, with haughty roar, Calms each wild wave and billow rude, Retreats submissive from the shore, And swells the ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... almost unapproachable by the immense waves which fall upon them. Even in the calmest weather these huge breakers may be seen falling with prolonged roar on the beach. The lightest undulation on the sea, which might almost escape observation away from land, takes the form of a grand, quiet billow as it draws near to an islet or reef, and finally, coming majestically on, like a wall of rolling crystal, breaks the silence suddenly by its thunderous fall, and gives to the sands a temporary fringe ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... home returning With hopes high burning, With wealth for you, If my bark, which bounded o'er foreign foam, Should be lost near home— Ah! what would you do?"— "So thou wert spared—I 'd bless the morrow, In want and sorrow, That left me you; And I 'd welcome thee from the wasting billow, This heart thy pillow— That 's what I ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... veins of the crevices; and folds of pinewood undulations closed by a shoulder of snow large on the blue; and a dazzling pinnacle rising over green pasture-Alps, the head of it shooting aloft as the blown billow, high off a broken ridge, and wide-armed in its pure white shroud beneath; tranced, but all motion in immobility, to the heart in the eye; a splendid image of striving, up to crowned victory. And see the long valley-sweeps of the hanging meadows and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... watching the small canoe which contained Frank and his two Indians. It had been left some distance behind by the others, and was now approaching with arrow speed on the summit of a large wave. Suddenly the top of the billow curled over, and in another moment the canoe was turned bottom up! Like a cork it danced on the wave's white crest, then falling beneath the thundering mass of water, it was crushed to pieces and cast empty ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... flourish, and Philosophy shed its mild beams to enlighten and instruct the posterity of Ham, returning "redeemed and disenthralled," from their long captivity in the New World. But, Sir, be all these benefits enjoyed by the African race under the shade of their native palms. Let the Atlantic billow heave its high and everlasting barrier between their country and ours. Let this fair land, which the white man won by his chivalry, which he has adorned by the arts and elegancies of polished life, be kept sacred for his descendants, untarnished by the footprint of him who hath ever been ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... and toss on my pillow, As a ship without rudder or spars Is tumbled and tossed on the billow, 'Neath the glint and the glory of stars. 'Tis midnight and moonlight, and slumber Has hushed every heart but my own; O why are these thoughts without number Sent to me by the man in ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... land are we, Tossing about on the roaring sea— From billow to bounding billow cast, Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast. The sails are scattered abroad like weeds; The strong masts shake like quivering reeds; The mighty cables and iron chains; The hull, which all ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... strange, incomprehensible, unearthly sound seemed to pervade the whole city; one felt that something unusual and terrible was happening in all the streets, now dark as ocean's most unfathomable caves. From time to time a dull sound was heard, like that of a rising tempest or a billow of the sea; but nothing clear, nothing distinct, nothing intelligible; it was like those mysterious subterraneous noises that ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 the ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... hundred shot of great artillery besides many assaults and entries; and (seeing) that himself and the ship must needs be possessed of the enemy who were now all cast in a ring round about him, the Revenge not able to move one way or another, but as she was moved by the waves and billow of the sea, commanded the Master Gunner, whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and sink the ship, that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory to the Spaniards: seeing in so many hours' fight, and with so great a navy, they were not able to take her, having ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... faith," because, unseen by the world, he sees Someone standing with His hand upon the tiller, Someone Whom he believes to have supreme power in the last resort over the waves, and Who he knows, at exactly the right moment when it is best for him, will say the word before which every billow and every storm sinks to rest, "Peace ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... us rest on the oar, And vex not a billow that sighs to the shore:— For sacred the spot where the starry waves meet With the beach, where the breath of the citron is sweet. There's a spell on the waves that now waft us along To the last of our Muses, the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writing he heard a voice which attracted his attention in spite of himself. Seeing that the waves were rolling in higher than ever, he looked all round, and presently saw a lovely lady floating gently toward him upon the crest of a huge billow, her long hair spread all about her; in one hand she held a mirror, and in the other a comb, and instead of feet she had a beautiful tail like a ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various |
