"Plash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the canal below Don't you hear the plash of oars Underneath the lantern's glow, And a thrilling voice begins To the sound of mandolins? Begins singing of amore And delire and dolore— ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beechen pillars led the eye away into innumerable vistas, each grandly mysterious as a cathedral aisle. The sun shot golden arrows through dark boughs, patching the moss with translucent lights, vivid and clear as the lustre of emeralds. The gentle plash of the forest stream, rippling over its pebbly bed, made a tender music that was wont to seem passing sweet to Violet Tempest's ear. To-day she heard nothing, saw nothing. Her brain was ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... a little space Of silence, then the plash and spray, The sound of eager waves that ran To kiss the perfumed locks astray, To touch these lips that ne'er said 'Nay,' To dally with the helpless hands; Till the deep sea in ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... that he is saying anything that is worth while. As the late Professor Harris said, one of the last times I saw him, "There are unsounded depths in a man's nature of which he himself knows nothing till they are revealed to him by the plash and ripple of his own conversation with other men." This great principle of life, when applied in conversation, may be stated ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... was feeling its way across the room from the long glass door that gave upon the verandah. Outside in the garden the crows and squirrels were awake, and talkative. The well-wheel had begun its plaintive music, punctuated with the plash of falling water, and the new day, in a sheet of flame, rolled up unconcernedly from the other ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... every plash of their oars, and every tone of their voices, as they rowed round his place of refuge. He was not on the islet, but in it. This was such an island as Swein, the sea-king of former days, took refuge in; and Rolf was ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... precipitous, and the cottages abutting on its side are embowered in fragrant bloom. There is a runnel of water at the roadside, and in one place this water is collected in a round stone basin that looks immensely old; from this it trickles forth again with coolness and musical plash. Having reached this spot, we may as well pass over into Fowey by the ferry here instead of by that from Polruan. If we had already come from Fowey to Bodinnick we should find that the ferryman would carry us back ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... covered all the stone; but the third sprang into the air with delicate triumph, fine and high, satisfied, tenuous and exultant. This one tossed its summit into the light, and, alone of the things in the garden, the plash of its waters recalled and suggested activity—though that in so discreet a way that it was to be heard rather than regarded. The birds flew off in circles over the roofs of the town below us. Very soon they went ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... weeds that thrive in the cracks and crevices of moist marble, tell us that Nature takes the fountain back into her great heart, and cherishes it as kindly as if it were a woodland spring. And hark, the pleasant murmur, the gurgle, the plash! You might hear just those tinkling sounds from any tiny waterfall in the forest, though here they gain a delicious pathos from the stately echoes that reverberate their natural language. So the fountain is not altogether glad, after all its three ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her ere she had a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune. They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shoreside at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a saltwater dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say—he's on board an excise yacht. I hae a cousin at the board of excise; that's Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the broad expanse of valley opening away to the south is just lighting up in chill, half-reluctant fashion, as though the night had been far too short or the revels of yester-even far too long. There is a swish and plash of rapid running waters close at hand, and here and there, where the stream is dammed by rocky ridge, the wisps of fog rise slowly into air, mingling with and adding to the prevailing tone of chilly gray. Through these fog-wreaths there stands revealed a ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... he said. He started for the Platz. "How uncertain life is. It seems that I did not come to Bleiberg carelessly in the way of amusement, but to work out a part of my destiny." He arrested his steps at the fountain and listened to the low, musical plash of the water, each drop of which fell with the light of a dazzling jewel. The cold stars shone from above. They were not farther away than she. A princess, a lonely and forlorn princess, hemmed ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... of summer sky. Under him his reflection rippled along, like the rush of a gorgeous fish through the glassy water. Opposite my canoe he checked himself, poised an instant in mid-air, watching the minnows that my paddle had disturbed, and dropped bill first—plash! with a silvery tinkle in the sound, as if hidden bells down among the green water weeds had been set to ringing by this sprite of the air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for a brief instant; the ripples gathered and ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... lay the twilight world he loved. Nature had ceased her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle in the herbage—the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall hardly stirred the dust. In the distance sounded the cry of a lost soul. It was ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... moments when Bart fancied that he could see the salmon plash in the river, but he could make out the birds in the depths below as they floated and skimmed about from shore to shore, and over the tops of the trees that looked like shrubs ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... the bottom of the pit, where the great drops of water fell plash. Many colliers were waiting their turns to go up, talking noisily. Morel gave his answers short ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... They'd cry: and straight the plash of oar, And creak of sail were stilled; And every ear Was tent to catch the strains her sweet voice trilled. Avast to gloomy thoughts and boding fear! Alack the day when she should witch their ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... in the rectory gardens. Three of them enclose the orchard, which is planted quincunx-wise, with yew hedge and grass-walk all round it. The "Archdeacon's Walk" that grass- walk should be named, for my father paced it morning after morning. The pike and roach would plash among the reeds and water-lilies; and "Fish, fish, do your duty," my father would say to them. Whereupon, he maintained, the fish always put out their noses and answered, "If you do your duty, we do our ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... comfort, and he was quite content to remain in passive enjoyment of the same, to feel the gentle current of air softly fanning his brow, to yield himself to the easy, luxurious swing of the cot in which he was lying, and to listen dreamily to the soothing sough of the wind and the plash and gurgle of the water along ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... on the desolate Border hills on a drear November evening of 1715. Throughout a melancholy day, clinging mist had blurred the outline of even the nearest hills; distance was blotted out. Thin rain fell chillingly and persistently, drip, dripping with monotonous plash from the old inn's thatched eaves; a light wind sobbed fitfully around the building, moaning at every chink and cranny of the ill-fitting window-frames. "A dismal night for any who must travel," thought the stableman of the inn, as he looked east and then west along the darkening ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... decke his fortune with his vertuous deedes: And therefore Tranio, for the time I studie, Vertue and that part of Philosophie Will I applie, that treats of happinesse, By vertue specially to be atchieu'd. Tell me thy minde, for I haue Pisa left, And am to Padua come, as he that leaues A shallow plash, to plunge him in the deepe, And with sacietie seekes to quench ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tons. Through this immense arterial and venous system circulates the life-blood of the plants, hot water being the vehicle of warmth in winter. These invisible streams will flow when the brooks at the foot of the hill are sealed by frost and the plash of the open-air ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... emphasized rather than broken by the droning chant of a fisherman mending his nets on the beach below, the intermittent plash of the waves on the shingle, and the scream of the gulls that circled overhead. Before the eyes of his flesh was stretched a wide desert of sky and water, and before the eyes of his mind the hopeless desert of ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... I lost sight of him. Presently I went on, too, and walked across the Head until I came within sight of Port Soderick. Then I sat down by a great bowlder. So quiet up there, Nelly; not a sound except the squeal of the sea birds, the boo-oo of the big waves outside, and the plash-ash of the little ones on the beach below. All at once I heard a sigh. At that I looked to the other side of the bowlder, and there was my friend of the monkey jacket. I was going to rise, but he rose instead, and begged me not to trouble. Then I was vexed with myself, and said ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... or two he heard nothing but the ripple and plash of the ice-brook descending the side of the berg fifty yards away; but with the burial of his enemy, the lad's self-control had deserted him, and he burst into a passionate outbreak ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... little sandy bay or sparkling weir, it leaves an impression of melody on the soul like the echo of a sweet song just sweetly sung. High up the lanes run;—low down on the shoreline they come to an end,—and the wayfarer, pacing along at the summit of their devious windings, can hear the plash of the sea below him as he walks,—the little tender laughing plash if the winds are calm and the day is fair,—the angry thud and boom of the billows if a storm is rising. These bye-roads, of which there are so many along the Somersetshire coast, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... cool air fanned his face and the sun smiled upon him, a loose piece of canvas of an awning near him flapped backwards and forwards with a monotonous musical sound, the plash and gurgle of the tumbling waves fell soothingly on his ears. Gradually sleep came over him gently, and enwrapped his strained, wearied body, his ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... "There's a big dance over on the beach to-night, and a keg of rum, and the native women. Jump in." "No, I think I'll stay on board and read." "Come on. Don't be a fool." "No, go ahead and enjoy yourselves. I'll stay on board." And there would be the plash of oars as they rowed shoreward, and maybe a song raised.... And he would make himself comfortable under the awning of the after deck, and read the bundles of newspapers from home, of how Thomas Chalmers, the great Scottish ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... became dumb in its immobility, half sheen, half night, with its arcades, the soothing plash of water, with its expiring lights, in a suggestion of Castilian severity, enveloped by the exotic softness of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... of the mark the bullets splash: "Now drown thee, wizard! at thy pleasure," The Dutchmen hiss through teeth they gnash. He answers not; for o'er the plash Of waves he hears Joost's gasping measure ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... more than a red rose rapping, And fear is a plash of wings. What, then, if a scarlet rose goes flapping Down the bright-grey ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... my little maid, There saw her flaxen tresses first; She filled the cup for one who lean'd (A soldier, crippl'd and athirst) Against the basin's carven rim; Her dear small hand's white loveliness Was pinkly flush'd, the gay bright drops Plash'd on her brow ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... with the thorns of the marine needle, making it round and oblong in shape like a fisherman's basket, and after deftly and closely weaving it together, subjects it to the action of the sea waves, that its surface may be rendered waterproof by this plash and cement, and it is hard for even iron or stone to break it. And what is more wonderful still, so symmetrically is the entrance of the nest adjusted to the kingfisher's shape and size, that no beast either greater or smaller can enter it, they even say that it does not admit the sea, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... smell where a flock of geese had been feeding all day; flaring acridly across was a transitory reek of burnt lubricating oil, and the hint of a cigar so faint that it was gone before he could be sure of it. . . . The lumbering creak of the mill-wheel rose assertively above the drone and plash of the stream; a shiver of rain and a gentle sigh of wind in the top branches of the trees behind him were suddenly swallowed by the hoot of ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... blade plash bream dress twine glade clash cream swim blind grade crash dream spend grind shade smash gleam speck spike trade trash steam fresh smile skate slash stream whelp while brisk drove blush cheap carve quilt grove flush ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... every fish knows the lures, the fun is mainly over. In April, no doubt, something may still be done, and in the silver twilights of June, when as you drift on the still surface you hear the constant sweet plash of the rising trout, a few, and these good, may be taken. But the water wants re-stocking, and the burns in winter need watching, in the interests of spawning fish. It is nobody's interest, that ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... are on the mountain blast? Like bullet from the arbalast, Was it the hunted quarry past Right up Ben-ledi's side?— So near, so rapidly he dash'd, Yon lichen'd bough has scarcely plash'd Into the torrent's tide. Ay!—The good hound may bay beneath, The hunter wind his horn; He dared ye through the flooded Teith As a warrior in his scorn! Dash the red rowel in the steed, Spur, laggards, while ye may! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... display of will power on the girl's part was called for before she approached nearer and stifled the first breath of apprehension. Then, delighted by the vague beauty of the scene, with senses soothed by the soft plash of the cascade, she decided to walk around the lake to the spot where Trenholme must have been hidden when he painted that astonishingly vivid picture. Its bold treatment and simplicity of note rendered it an easy subject to carry in the mind's eye, and Sylvia ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... lay as calm as a lake. The whole scene resembled Fairyland, with the lovers as two spirits watching over the Cove. The tide rose higher and higher, and the only sound to be heard in that lone, desolate spot was the lazy plash of the waves on the shore, and ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... we went on thus in silent pleasure, gazing at the gentle needle as it moved without noise; and, with nothing around but plash of waves, bright sun, and a feeling of hot silence, the spell of sleep was overpowering. Homer sometimes nodded, it is said, and he would have certainly had a good nap had he steered long thus. The sinking off into these delicious slumbers ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... his own house, the Portuguese nunnery. Through its desolate, lime-coated spaces, his meagre belongings were scattered all too easily; but the new servants, their words and ways, not only kept his hands full, but gave strange food for thought. The silent evenings, timed by the plash of a frog in a pool, a cry from the river, or the sing-song of a "boy" improvising some endless ballad below-stairs; drowsy noons above the little courtyard, bare and peaceful as a jail; homesick moments at the window, when beyond the stunted orangery, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... waves. A flash of lightning illumined the whole river, and tipped with a spectral light even the distant piles of building. The boat and the toiling figure of the single rower were distinctly perceptible. Now all again was darkness; the wind suddenly subsided; in a few minutes the plash of the oars was audible, and the boat apparently stopped ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... which was fast reaching its height. The flashes of lightning were more frequent, the crashes of thunder followed fast, sound overlapping sight. The rain became a flood. The girl watched, with the intense, self-forgetful delight of a child, the plash of the great blobs of rain on the macadamized road outside. They came to look to her exactly like little figures chasing one another in an unintermittent race of annihilation. She smiled, watching them. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... more ease and confidence, but with increased caution. I was getting too near to risk making the slightest noise in the water; a single plash ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the boughs o'erhead. My coming strikes a terror on the scene. All the sweet sylvan sounds are hushed; I catch Glimpses of vanishing wings. An azure shape Quick darting down the vista of the brook, Proclaims the scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs Startle my wandering eye like basking snakes. Where ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Act to consolidate and amend the Laws relating to Highways in that part of Great Britain called England," I, T. Bradish, of the Town Hall, Smoltham, do hereby give you notice forthwith to cut, prune, plash or lop certain Trees and Hedges overhanging the highway immediately adjoining your premises, No. 15, East Gate, in the Parish of Smoltham, and which are causing an obstruction and annoyance to the said highway, so that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... to cut and plash the hedges, and make the ditches 3 feet by 2 feet, or pay or cause to be paid to the landlord 1s. per rood for such as shall not be done after three months' notice has been given ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, 'Ah! Stali!" struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and when at last the boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... lulled into an almost death-like slumber by the cadence of innumerable fountains. Near the Patenta is the Garden of Fountains, which I shall tell you about in another message. It was the plash and rivulous current of these water courts that brought ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... orchard. Not that this young man's way lay through that orchard exactly; yet, walled up as was that orchard with all its forbidden fruit, that evil fruit would hang over the wall so that if any lusty youth wished to taste it, he had only to reach up to the over-hanging branches and plash down on himself some of the forbidden bunches. Now, that was just what Matthew had done. Till we have him lying at the House Beautiful, not only not able to enjoy the delights of the House and of the season, but so pained in ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... plaintive melody, sounded to Lambert as refreshing as the plash of a brook in the heat of the day. He stood listening, his elbow on the show case, thinking vaguely that Alta had a good voice for singing babies ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the trees, she looked and listened with most painful anxiety to discover if any living thing were in that seeming solitude, or if any sound disturbed the heavy stillness. But she saw only Nature in her wildest forms, and heard only the plash and murmur (almost inaudible, because continual) of the little waterfall, and the quick, short throbbing of her own heart, against which she pressed her hand as if to hush it. Gathering courage, therefore, she began to ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... keystone, he forced it from its form, and broke the masonry of a thousand years. Amid a loud and awful shriek, horses and horsemen, and the dissolving fragments of the scene for a moment mingled as it were in airy chaos, and then plunged with a horrible plash into the fatal depths below. Some fell, and, stunned by the massy fragments, rose no more; others struggled again into light, and gained with difficulty their old shore. Amid them, Iskander, unhurt, swam like a river god, and stabbed ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... And as the waters run out so does my soul float away!" and she turned her face to her mother's bosom. And as we went softly out from the room and stood upon the path with the lofty palm-plumes rustling above us, we saw the first swirling wave of the incoming tide ripple round Matautu Point and plash on Hamilton's beach. And from within the silent house answered the ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... Thou broad briny water, With thy ripple and thy plash, And thy waves as they lash The old gray rocks on the shore. With thy tempests as they roar, And thy crested billows hoar, And thy tide evermore ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... each of them a real fountain; not like the drinking-fountains— though they are great and needful boons—which you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great deal of expensive stone: but real fountains, which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place with life, and light, and coolness; and sing in the people's ears the sweetest of all earthly songs—save the song of a mother over her child—the song of 'The ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... once. The waves, with ceaseless motion, Do day and night plash on the pebbled shore; But the strong tide of the resistless ocean Sweeps in but one hour ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with a ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... out through the silence sweet, Plash of fountain and song of bird Are the only sounds in my lov'd retreat By which the air is ever stirred; It is like a long-drawn aisle of prayer, So hushed is ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... brink of the river; its foundations are deep set in the water, and its rugged and buttressed walls are reflected stone by stone in the clear, tremulous mirror. The glancing lights on the bright stream, the wealth of leafy foliage, the sweet cadence of the ripples as they plash against the walls of the Quay, and the beauty of the long reflections—quivering lines of grey, green, and purple—increase the beauty of what is probably the most picturesque corner of the town, while over the tops of the trees peers the grey ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... again, till the riders struck the savage unroweled spur into their refreshment. At this they jerked their noses up, and looked at one another to say that they expected it, and then they lifted their weary legs and began to plash through the river. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... of some old palace, step into a gondola, and glide swiftly and noiselessly away, instead of jolting and rumbling along over the cobble-stones! And then to come back by moonlight, and hear the low plash of the oar in the water, and the distant voices of the boatmen singing some love-sick song,—oh, it's as good ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... as usual, were tempting the trout with false fly or real worm, and I was roaming along the bank, seeking spring flowers, and hunting early butterflies and moths. Suddenly there was a little plash in the water at the spot where Ralph was fishing, the slender tip of his rod bent, I heard a voice cry out, "Strike him, sonny, strike him!" and an old man came quickly but noiselessly through the bushes, just as Ralph's line flew up into space, with, ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... bade That life and light would not go out together. The hope seem'd vain. From out the gloom there came The grinding keel—the tread of hurrying feet— Clashing of words, of steel, and all was dark— And all was still. But hark! a sound—the faint Breathing of one who swims with pain, the plash Of nerveless hands nearer and nearer comes, Yet ever fainter. What boots it now to have Escaped the vengeful swords that smote his kin? The waves engulf him and his bubbling cry. But unhoped help is near—a friendly word— A plunge, then stroke on stroke, and timeously A ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... him to the edge of the lake, where a couple of boats were always moored; they got into one of them, and Felix, with gentle strokes, propelled it to the opposite shore. The day was the perfection of summer weather; the little lake was the color of sunshine; the plash of the oars was the only sound, and they found themselves listening to it. They disembarked, and, by a winding path, ascended the pine-crested mound which overlooked the water, whose white expanse glittered between the trees. The place was delightfully ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... a few bars she passed demurely out of the sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the cabinet de toilette. She moved about in the cabinet de toilette thinking that the waltz out of The Rosenkavalier was divinely exciting. The delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of the shortening cigarette was ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... and fell into a circular basin a few yards in diameter. Overflowing this basin, it found its way into the lake by another descent of a few feet. Around the basin, and on both sides of the waterfall, were several curious columns of basalt, and irregular picturesque piles of basaltic rock. The plash of the water, falling into the rocky basin, was the only sound that broke the Sabbath-like silence that pervaded the valley. There was, or seemed to be, something unreal and dream-like about the scene, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... almost the rush of my breath in the profound silence,—I lowered my boy into the boat. The basket followed. The negro fastened the boat-hook to the cabin window, and on this, lame as I was, I followed the basket. Fortunately, not a plash, a crack, or a footfall disturbed the silence. I looked aloft, and no one was visible on the quarter-deck. A slight jerk brought the boat-rope softly into the water, and I drifted away ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... a plash in the canal, and see a gondola moving from the shore. It is he, and I scarcely can refrain from calling to him. Now the whole thing is clear—it was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of surprise back at his comrade, but the obedient gondola shot by the gloomy, though rich abode, as if the little bark had suddenly obeyed an inward impulse. In a moment more it whirled aside, and the hollow sound, caused by the plash of water between high walls, announced its entrance into a narrower canal. With shortened oars the men still urged the boat ahead, now turning short into some new channel, now glancing beneath a low bridge, and now uttering, in the sweet shrill tones of the country and their ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ring through the forest. The wounded lift their weary heads, behold the advancing line, and weep tears of joy. The steamers cast off their fastenings. The great wheels plash the gurgling water. They move to the other side. The panting soldiers of the army of the Ohio rush on board. The steamer settles to the guards with her precious cargo of human life; recrosses the river ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... cry of the sailors, as with a plash and a cheer the anchor goes down, just in the deep water inside of Long Point; and then, says their journal, "being now passed the vast ocean and sea of troubles, before their preparation unto further proceedings as to seek out a place for ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and walked slowly back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the snow region; but, as they pass slowly downward through clouds of vapour, they gather together and attract others (by a law which I have not time to explain); and, descending faster and faster, at length plash down to the earth in large drops. Whenever it rains, then, at any particular place, you may be almost certain that it is snowing at the same time over that place—only at a point in the atmosphere far above it. I have been convinced ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... in another moment were on top of the big rock. It was almost as good as being at sea; for when they turned their backs to the shore nothing could be seen but water and sails and flying birds, and nothing heard but the incessant plash and dash ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... over the wall; and being mellow, they that found them did gather them up, and oft eat of them to their hurt. So Christiana's boys, as boys are apt to do, being pleased with the trees, and with the fruit that did hang thereon, did plash[58] them, and began to eat. Their mother did also chide them for so doing, but still ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her a glass of water, and, trying to conceal my own distress for her as well as I could, sat down, silently, near her. Gradually she grew quieter, until the room was so still that we could hear the raindrops from the eaves plash down outside. Peggy pushed back her cloud of bright hair and fastened it in the nape of her neck. At last she said, with conviction: "Mother, Maria didn't say these things, but I know she thinks them for me, thinks that a woman's love is just all forgiveness and indulgence. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... awoke it was dark under the trees. I started up and went into the broad promenade. The garden was deserted; I could hear the plash of the fountains, but no other sound therein. Lights were gleaming from the windows of the Tuileries, lights blazed along the Rue de Rivoli, dotted the great Square, and glowed for miles up the Champs Elysees. There were the steady roar of wheels and the tramping of feet without, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his fortune with his virtuous deeds: And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study, Virtue and that part of philosophy Will I apply that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev'd. Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left And am to Padua come as he that leaves A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep, And with satiety ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... absorbed in the "Marriage a la Mode"; days when even Giorgione's Pastoral may (as in Rossetti's sonnet) mean nothing beyond the languid pleasure of sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of water and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion, the same interest and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an inn-parlour oleograph. Then, as regards scientific interest and pleasure, there may be days when the diarist ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... on with the other, until the arrows began to fall short, and at last ceased. A Welshman's bow has no long range, so that I had not far to go thus. But all the while I feared most of all to hear the plash of oars that would tell me that they had put off another boat in chase ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... crept into the conversation. Her son wasn't so sorry for this as Mrs. Iggulden, who dozed and waked with starts, on principle, outside in the passage unseen. He could stand at the wide-open window, and hear the little waves plash "Sally" in the moonlight, and the counter-music of the down-drawn shingle echo "Sally" back. Sometimes the pebbles and the water gave place for a moment to the tread of two persistent walkers up and down—men who smoked cigars, and became a little audible and died ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth canal among luxuriant plantations; the air was perfumed music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when the troops disembarked,—five hundred fine young men, the ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the great work of building began. Mr. Perrin kindly consented to act as foreman and set to work a whole army of workmen—the M.A.'s of course. And soon the sound of saw and hammer mingled with the plash of waves and cries of sea-birds, and gangs of stalwart M.A.'s in their seaweed tunics bent themselves to the task of shaping great timbers and hoisting them to the top of the highest tower, where other gangs, under Mr. Noah's own eye, reared a scaffolding to support ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... we drifted on into the final week of July. There was scarcely any snow left on the hillsides by this time; the air was filled with the incessant cry of birds and the constant plash of falling waters. We could sleep well enough once more on the green grass in the open air; and another period of watching now began, for here it was that the vessels passed every year, as the savages told us. Sometimes, however, they did not ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... midnight, but there was no disturbance; nothing was heard but the plash of the mill-stream, and the dripping ooze from the rocks. His old enemies, no doubt, were intimidated, and he was about commencing a snug nap on the idea—when, lo! there came a great rush of wind. He heard it booming on from a vast distance, until it seemed to sweep over the building in one wide ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Ochtertyre; 495 They mark just glance and disappear The lofty brow of ancient Kier; They bathe their coursers' sweltering sides, Dark Forth! amid thy sluggish tides, And on the opposing shore take ground, 500 With plash, with scramble, and with bound. Right-hand they leave thy cliffs, Craig-Forth! And soon the bulwark of the North, Gray Stirling, with her towers and town, Upon their fleet career looked ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... captain, were anxious to discover the mystery, if mystery there was,—and we all, by one instinct, pressed to the gangway as he descended the companion ladder and entered the boat, which glided away immediately with a low and rhythmical plash of oars. We could watch it as it drew nearer and nearer the illuminated vessel, and our excitement grew more and more intense. For once Mr. Harland and his daughter had forgotten all about themselves,—and Catherine's customary miserable ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... was a delight above all to my mother and Clarence. To them it was a beloved friend; and magnificent as was Lynmouth, wonderful as was Clovelly, and glorious as was Hartland, I believe they would equally have welcomed the waves if they had been on the flattest of muddy shores! The ripple, plash, and roar were as familiar voices, the salt smell as native air; and my mother never had thawed so entirely towards Clarence as when she found him the only person who ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and lovely Sultan's daughter in the twilight, - In the twilight by the fountain, Where the sparkling waters plash. ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... for an instant in the air, then closed his wings and shot downward. A whizzing sound! then a plash, and he disappeared beneath the surface, throwing up the water into sparkling foam-wreaths. He was absent but a moment, and then bore upward into ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... by Warkworth, and its castle, and hermitage; over the Coquet stream, beloved by the friends of gentle Izaak Walton; on, by the sea-side - almost along the very sands - with the refreshing sea-breeze, and the murmuring plash of the breakers - the Misses Green giving way to childish delight at this their first glimpse of the sea; on, over the Aln, and past Alnwick; and so on, still further north, to a certain little station, which is the terminus of their railway journey, and the signal of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... madame had hung against the arbor shed a yellow light, throwing into clear relief the sharply cut features of monsieur. Up and down the silent stream drifted here and there a phantom boat, the gleam of its light following like a firefly. From some came no sound but the muffled plash of the oars. From others floated stray bits of song and laughter. Far up the stream I heard the distant whistle of ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... their boats rowed hard and fast across the silvery water with a steady plash, plash of the dipping oars in the calm bay, and ever Ida Lewis was in the lead, heading toward the island with a straight course, and keeping a close watch for the rocks of which the Bay was full. She would turn her head, toss back her hair, and call out in ringing tones to the flock, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... them to grow radiant with rosy splendor, as we pushed out from the island in our sail-boat. The place was remarkably still. Only the nightingale broke into song among the fragrant bushes by the frowning prison. All else was silent, save the silvery plash of the oars that broke the surface of the water in ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... more definite than a cry, often swept out from her into the vast silence, unbroken except by her husband's breathing or the plash of the wave or the creaking of the masts; but if ever she thought of definite help, it took the form of Deronda's presence and words, of the sympathy he might have for her, of the direction he might give her. It was sometimes after a white-lipped fierce-eyed temptation with murdering fingers ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... practical, terrible reality. It was night when I landed at the Paddington Station, and taking an omnibus for Charing Cross, watched the long lines of lamps on Oxford Street, and the glitter of the Haymarket theatres, and at last the hard plash of the fountains in Trafalgar Square, with the stony statues grouped so rigidly about the column ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... open doorway into the interior of the palace. The first thing that they saw was a spacious hall, and a fountain in the middle of it, gushing up towards the ceiling out of a marble basin, and falling back into it with a continual plash. The water of this fountain, as it spouted upward, was constantly taking new shapes, not very distinctly, but plainly enough for a nimble fancy to recognize what they were. Now it was the shape of a man in a long robe, the fleecy whiteness of which was ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and the stranger quitted the house, while Fenwolf lingered to offer some attention to Mabel, which was so ill received that he was fain to hurry forth to the boathouse, where he embarked with his companion. As soon as the plash of oars announced their departure, Mabel went forth to watch them. The stranger, who was seated in the stern of the boat, for the first time fixed his large melancholy eyes full upon her, and did not withdraw his gaze till an angle of the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... dream'd; but Arthur with a hundred spears Rode far, till o'er the illimitable reed, And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle, The wide-wing'd sunset of the misty marsh Glared on a huge machicolated tower That stood with open doors, whereout was roll'd A roar of riot, as from men secure Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... place from which the Brazilians had thrown the rope. They could hear the quiet plash of the water in the cleft. Piled against a low-lying rock were the funnel and other debris of the Andromeda. The black hull was plainly visible beneath the surface. Even while they were looking at the wreck ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the noise of the waterfall behind Casa Felice died away, the spectral facade faded and only the plash of the oars and the tinkle of fishermen's bells above the nets, floating here and there in the lake, were audible. The distant lights of mountain villages gleamed along the shores, and the lights of the stars ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... long now is the green earth renewed 5 With the bright sea-wind and the yellow blossoms. From the cool shade I hear the silver plash Of the blown ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... a circle, silent and still, as Prudence had ordered, their eyes tightly closed. They felt the hot beams of the sun pouring over them, and the cool salt wind blew on their faces and through their hair; their toes curled and wriggled in the warm, wet sand, and in their ears was the plash-plash of the little waves beating backwards and forwards on the beach. It was very pleasant. It seemed quite easy to think of those three nice things. And presently each child felt a warm and friendly glow steal up ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... looking at each other for a moment. They had passed through much together—danger, excitement, and now they were dabbling in sorrow. It would appear that this same sorrow runs like a river across the road of our life. Some of us find the ford and plash through the shallows—shallow ourselves—while others flounder into deep water. These are they who look right on to the greater events, and fail to note the trivial details of each little step. Paul was wading through the deep water, and this good friend of his ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... and the sparks they flew, As if hammers did anvils beat; And the red blood ran, till the ground began To plash beneath their feet. ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... trudged on alone, plish-plash-plosh, through the clayey sludge, cold, dripping and miserable, stopping occasionally to turn my back to the wind or to tie up a wayward shoestring, and pondering dolefully in my mind that I had full two hours to go, not only before reaching home, but perhaps before finding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... was laid till her ere she had a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune.—They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shore-side, at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say —he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise—that's 'Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... course. Helen Heath was drowsy and half-nodding in the bow, nodding with the more ease that it was still so dark and that Mr. Raleigh's back was toward her. Mrs. Laudersdale reclined in the stern. Mr. Raleigh once in a while sent them far along with a strong stroke, then only an occasional plash broke the charm of perfect stillness. Ever and anon they passed under the lee of some island, and the heavy air grew full of idle night-sweetness; the waning moon with all its sad and alien power hung low,—dun, malign, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... peace. Upon the further side of the lawn, so that I could hear it but not see it, a fountain was playing into a basin. By the sound it was one of those high French fountains which the people who built such houses as these two hundred years ago delighted in. The plash of it was very soothing, but I was so tired and drooping that at one moment it sounded much further ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... this sombreing tide of time. Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear The laurel glorious from that wintry hair— When he, the sovereign of our lyric day, In Charon's shallop must be rowed away, And hear, scarce heeding, 'mid the plash of oar, The ave atque vale ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... side to side, like that of an animal stricken to death. Her throat had grown tight, her eyes were hot and burning, the sound, as of the plash of waves, sang in her ears; but she could not cry. It seemed to her that she would never be able to cry again. She looked vaguely at the other women as they walked at the far end of the terrace, and she shivered ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... perceived only just in time to prevent her stepping into it. These pillars and other dark masses of rock sprang up and up till her eye lost them in the darkness; and if there was a roof, she could not see it. A drip from above made a plash about once in a minute in the pool; and the murmur from without was so subdued—appeared to be so swallowed up in vastness and gloom—that the minute drop was loud in comparison. Lady Carse lay down on the soft sand, to rest, and listen, and think—to ponder plans of hiding and escape. ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... fence gleamed ghostly in the moonlight and were finally lost in the shadow of the great bluff that abruptly shut in the entire point and plateau and shut out all further sight of lake or land in that direction. Far beneath he could hear the soft plash upon the sandy shore of the little wavelets that came sweeping in the wake of the raft-boat and spending their tiny strength upon the strand; far down on the hotel point he could still hear the soft melody of the waltz; he remembered how the band used to play that same air, and wondered ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... lover! And thou dost not glance at her, oh hard, hard that thou art, but still thou sittest at thy sweet piping. Ah see, again, she is pelting thy dog, that follows thee to watch thy sheep. He barks, as he looks into the brine, and now the beautiful waves that softly plash reveal him, {36} as he runs upon the shore. Take heed that he leap not on the maiden's limbs as she rises from the salt water, see that he rend not her lovely body! Ah, thence again, see, she is wantoning, light as dry thistle-down in the scorching summer weather. She flies when thou art wooing ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... burdened with great bunches of ripening fruit. And huge, golden melons of the papaia, ready for the eating, globuled directly from the slender-trunked trees not one-tenth the girth of the fruits they bore. And, for Jerry, most delightful of all, there was the gurgle and plash of a brooklet that pursued its invisible way over mossy stones under a garmenture of tender and delicate ferns. No conservatory of a king could compare with this wild ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... in the darkness near Where the shadows clutch and cling, Above the plash of the bitter tear, A song and the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... hear the swift blades dip and plash Of unseen rowers; On unknown land the waters dash; Who knows how it be wise or rash To meet the rowers! Premi! Premi! Venetia's boatmen lean and cry; With voiceless lips I drift and lie Upon the ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... placid, and the sea like a smooth lake. When we had got some way out, and the sounds of the water on the yacht, together with the human noises of her crew, had faded, a singular silence fell. The plash of the oars was the only sound that broke on the ears. The air was soft and serene; nature seemed to have at last relented, and to be out of key with those tragic deeds committed on the sea. As I sat, passing such ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... capstan-bar cleared away this obstruction, and the boat swung off. The stay-tackle falls were let go entirely, and all on board saw, with an exultation that words can scarcely describe, the important craft suspended directly over the sea. No music ever sounded more sweetly to the listeners than the first plash of the massive boat as it fell heavily upon the surface of the water. Its size, its roof, and its great strength gave it an appearance of security, that for the moment deceived them all; for, in contemplating ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... and no abbot could have presided over a more festive Sunday. The wine flowed merrily and long; the discourse kept pace with it; and next morning, in returning to town, we felt ourselves very thirsty. A pump by the road-side, with a plash round ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... hilly ridge, on which the olives, mulberries, and vineyards join their colours and melt subtly into distant purple. After crossing this we reach L'Isle, an island village girdled by the gliding Sorgues, overshadowed with gigantic plane-boughs, and echoing to the plash of water dripped from mossy fern-tufted millwheels. Those who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to be some trickling poet's rill emerging from a damp grotto, may well be astounded at the rush and roar of this azure river so close upon its fountain-head. It has a volume and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... early, hours. Among them he clearly distinguished the musical note of the long-tailed duck and the harsh scream of the great northern diver, while the profound calmness of the weather enabled him to hear at intervals the soft blow and the lazy plash of a white whale, turning, it might be, on his other side in his ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... busy waters, multitudinous, Lip the dry beach, and rippling every pool, Embathe the limpets in their swirling cool, And plash upon the rocks, returning thus To their old haunts ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling |
