"Rill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to yonder rill, Late so freely flowing; Wat'ring many a daffodil, On its margin glowing— Sun and wind exhaust its store: Yonder riv'let glides ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... blessedness in life More full than that which springs in solitude; A fount unruffled by the outer world, Unmingled with its honey or its gall; But welling through the spirit silently, Like a pure rill within a garden's bounds. Let my life float, like the sad Indian's lamp, Along the waves of Time, unpiloted Save by the breath of heaven, and the stirred tide, Till when its course be run it sink to rest Beyond the ken ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... summer, about three years after they became orphans, that rain had been for a while withheld from the earth, the hillsides began to parch, the grass in the vales to wither, and the stream of Corrie was diminished between its banks to the size of an ordinary rill. The shepherds drove their flocks to moorlands, and marsh and tarn had their reeds invaded by the scythe to supply the cattle with food. The sheep of his sister were Elphin's constant care; he drove them to the moistest pastures during the day, and he often watched ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... growth, and it is a wild, shy thing that is easily scared away. The plow must respect it, and the fence or hedge make way for it. It requires a settled state of things, unchanging habits among the people, and long tenure of the land; the rill of life that finds its way there must have a perennial source, and flow there tomorrow and the next day ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... conversazione, how could I hope to escape? At first, it was a little awkward, when I went to a party, to see people who were talking together glance at me and murmur on with increased interest. Sometimes, when the wave of talk retreated a little, I would catch the prattle of some retiring rill to this effect: "But who are these Hurribattles? What an odd name! I wonder if that had anything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... commentary on Russian politics quite opportune to-day. La Peine de Mort has been used by Socialists as a protest against capital punishment. Les Diables Froids personifies the impassible artist. It is a page torn from the book of hell. Rops had read Dante; he knew the meaning of the lines: "As the rill that runs from Bulicame to be portioned out amid the sinful women"; and more than once he explored the frozen circles of Gehenna. Victor Hugo was much stirred by the design, Le Pendu, which depicts a man's corpse swinging under a huge bell in some vast and immemorial, raven-haunted, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... was the slope that we climbed I could hardly believe it possible how fast we had ascended, when at the end of a couple of hours we sat down to rest by a rill of clear intensely cold water that was bubbling amongst the stones. For on peering through a clump of trees I gazed at the most lovely landscape I had seen since I commenced my journey. Far as eye could reach it was ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... Daphne wreathed, Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wailed the sweet Philomel, The tears of Ceres swelled in yonder rill— Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill Heard ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Wildman, about the Abbey lands, we found ourselves in one of the prettiest little wild woods imaginable. The road to it had led us among rocky ravines overhung with thickets, and now wound through birchen dingles and among beautiful groves and clumps of elms and beeches. A limpid rill of sparkling water, winding and doubling in perplexed mazes, crossed our path repeatedly, so as to give the wood the appearance of being watered by numerous rivulets. The solitary and romantic look of this ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... glimmering of a waxen flame? Who that, from Alpine heights, his labouring eye Shoots round the wide horizon, to survey Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave Through mountains, plains, through empires black with shade, 180 And continents of sand, will turn his gaze To mark the windings of a scanty rill That murmurs at his feet? The high-born soul Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft Through fields of air; pursues the flying ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... emerald pasture. Now, Ruark beheld the heaviness of Bhanavar, and that she drooped in her seat, and he halted her by a cave at the foot of the mountains, browed with white broom. Before it, over grass and cresses, ran a rill, a branch from others, larger ones, that went hurrying from the heights to feed the meadows below, and Bhanavar dipped her hand in the rill, and thought, 'I am no more as thou, rill of the mountain, but a desert thing! Thy way is forward, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "You be a pleasant sight to see when a body comes home. And I be glad to get home. I tell my son's wife I can't make many more of these trips to Skunk's Holler. It's too fatiguing, and at my age I like my own bed and my own fireside. I s'pose Rill's well?" ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... and chess-pawns. To the right, a labyrinth of young trees, similarly clipped in the fashion of the time, led by a thousand devious turns to a mysterious valley, where one heard continually a low, sad murmur. This proceeded from a nymph in terra-cotta, from whose urn dripped, day and night, a thin rill of water into a small fishpond, bordered by grand old poplars, whose shadows threw upon its surface, even at mid-day, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next morning the lamps do after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired when she got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and with the reinforcement of a draught of cold water, she surmounted it most manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... were powerless to worry her to-day, when the sun shone and the wind blew and the ferns, washed by the rill running through the culvert under the road, gave forth a delicious moist odour reminding her of the flower store where her sister Lise had once been employed. But at length she arose, and after an hour or more of sauntering the farming landscape ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 an arrow-like rapidity that communicate the feeling of exuberance and life. In passing, let it not be forgotten that it ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... in the act of filling her pail and stared at a mark in the mud at the edge of the tiny rill formed by the overflow from the catch basin. She leaned over and examined the mark more closely. It was the track of a bare foot. Then, for the first time in many days, the girl threw back her head and ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... lush grass, the shining snake, Loving the sun, a sinuous way doth take, Its fixed journey to its home 'twill make. Even as in tranquil vale reluctant rill, In sportive twinings nigh its parent hill, Proceedeth onward ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... to the rill languidly, where stooping she drank from her palm. Most of the water that she dipped escaped before reaching her lips; and Bryant doubted if she were really successful in quenching her thirst. The heat, the dust, and the ride appeared to have been almost too much for her strength, ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... What promise of morn is left unbroken'? What kind word to thy playmates spoken'? Whom hast thou pitied, and whom forgiven'? How with thy faults has duty striven'? What hast thou learned by field and hill, By greenwood path, and by singing rill'? ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... to tell a story but to give an impression of the past. "The Old Manse" (in Mosses from an Old Manse) is an excellent introduction to this group. Others in which the author comes out from the gloom to give his humor a glimpse of pale sunshine are "A Rill from the Town Pump," "Main Street," "Little Annie's Ramble," "Sights from a Steeple" and, as suggestive of Hawthorne's solitary outings, "Footprints on ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... a long, but not unnecessary digression. Convinced as I am of the immense advantage of following up words to their sources, of 'deriving' them, that is, of tracing each little rill to the river from whence it was first drawn, I can conceive no method of so effectually defacing and barbarizing our English tongue, of practically emptying it of all the hoarded wit, wisdom, imagination, and history which it contains, of cutting the ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... Madonna! wake; Even now the purple lake Is dappled o'er with amber flakes of light; A glow is on the hill; And every trickling rill In golden threads leaps down ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Wood is white and still, Over the pines the bleak wind blows, Voiceless the brook and mute the rill, Silence too where the river flows. Still I catch the scent of the rose And hear the white-throat's roundelay, Footing the trail that Memory knows, Over the hills and ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... a site "far up the hill" is, that it must have been a pool of some size, if "both flocks and herds might drink" all round it; and there is no stream, scarce even a rill that joins Rydal beck on the right, all the way up from its junction with the Rothay. The late Mr. Hull of Rydal ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... I display, That help'd delightfully the time away. From distant vales, where bubbles from its source A crystal rill, they dug a winding course: See! thro' the grove a narrow lake extends, Crosses each plot, to each plantation bends; And while the fount in new meanders glides, The forest brightens with refreshing tides. Tow'rds us they taught the new-born stream to flow, Tow'rds us it crept, irresolute ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... noon, we halted in the shade by the side of a little rill, trickling among the trees into the river beneath, to rest and lunch. Nothing could be more delightful, after a long walk in the sun; for the temperature of the valleys is high even at this season. Antoine ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... hill, At the dark noon of night, Close by a frozen snow-hid rill, Where branches close unite Even in winter's leafless time, The skeletons of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... the boy was fair and tall, Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all. The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill Their balanced urns beside the mountain-rill, The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun, Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son. No voice had reached the Galilean vale Of star-led kings or awe-struck shepherds' tale; In the meek, studious child they only saw The future Rabbi, learned in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a green bower by the rill o' yon glen, Afar from the din and the dwellings of men; Where still I might linger in many a dream, And mingle my strains wi' the voice o' the stream. From the cave and the cliff, where the hill foxes roam, Where ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year's hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass-blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower draws from it ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... because he enjoys it. He feels no special attraction toward any of his schoolmates until one winter day this same little blue-eyed girl asks him for a place on his sled. He shares it with her as a well-behaved boy should, and so begins the first faint bond of feeling that like a tiny rill on the hillside slowly gathers power, until at last, a mighty river, it sweeps all ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... private panics in Pointview. It was my privilege to observe, under calm exteriors, a raging fever of excitement—characters going bankrupt, collectors wandering in a fruitless quest. One little rill that flowed into the swift river of national trouble issued from the bosom of my clerk, Mr. 'Cub' Sayles. It had been one of the most placid bosoms in Pointview. Now it was in the midst of what I have since referred to as the 'Violet and ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... As a rill from a fountain increases as it flows, rises into a stream, swells into a river, so symbolically are the origin and course of a good name. At first, its beginning is small: it takes its rise from home, its natural source, extends to the neighborhood, stretches through ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... will you dream a dream Of tropic shades in the lands of shine, Where the lily leans o'er an amber stream That flows like a rill of wasted wine,— Where the palm-trees, lifting their shields of green, Parry the shafts of the Indian sun Whose splintering vengeance falls between The reeds ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... inducement enough for us instantly to leave our present quarters. Our course lay along an old wood-road, and much of the time we were to our knees in water. The woods were literally flooded everywhere. Every little rill and springlet ran like a mill-tail, while the main stream rushed and roared, foaming, leaping, lashing, its volume increased fifty-fold. The water was not roily, but of a rich coffee-color, from the leachings of the woods. No more trout for the next three ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... finally got up and made his speech, his "voice, meantime, having a far-off and remote echo," and when, as we learn from others, a burst of applause greeted a few well-chosen words drawn from that full well of thought, that pellucid rill of "English undefiled," the unobtrusive gentleman by his side applauded and said to him, "It was handsomely done." The compliment pleased the shy man. It is the only compliment to ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... came from the higher ground, and I looked about for a pathway up the steep bank on my right. At the most promising point I could select I started my climb. Unfortunately that very spot had been already chosen by a small rill, a mere trickle of water, to come down. It was not big enough to make itself a channel and keep to it, but it sprawled all over the land. Now it lingered in the cows' footprints and made a little round pool of each; then it loitered on a level bit of ground, and soaked it ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... frying-pan, when the live adder was killed and the heads of the three taken off. The remainders, being cut into lengths and split open, were tossed into the pan, which began hissing and crackling over the fire. Soon a rill of clear oil trickled from the carcases, whereupon Clym dipped the corner of his handkerchief into the liquid and anointed ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... and so government finally gave him up and ennobled his mother to show its gratitude for the services her son had rendered to science. And once government sent Sir Grass Hopper to hunt for the sources of the rill that emptied into the swamp; and afterward sent out many expeditions to hunt for Sir Grass, and at last they were successful—they found his body, but if he had discovered the sources meantime, he did not let ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... began to blow; the images of the gods wailed and moaned; the sky was red and dripped blood, and the altar that was to have received the body sank through the rock, leaving a hole from which gushed steam and dust. At that hour every well, brook, and spring in the island went dry, save a rill in a cave back of Hana that the gods devoted to the daughter-in-law of the murdered priest and to the old woman who attended her, while a nightly dew fell thereafter about the sons of the dead man, providing drink ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... friends, his mother, and his sisters—questions indicating such seclusion, and such lack of familiarity with modes and forms, that Giovanni responded as if to an infant. Her spirit gushed out before him like a fresh rill that was just catching its first glimpse of the sunlight and wondering at the reflections of earth and sky which were flung into its bosom. There came thoughts, too, from a deep source, and fantasies of a gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and rubies sparkled upward among the bubbles of the fountain. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... voice of the creek in our ear on the right. I approached it once, and found it swarming with trout. The water was as cold as one ever need wish. After a while the ascent grew steeper, the creek became a mere rill that issued from beneath loose, moss-covered rocks and stones, and with much labor and puffing we drew ourselves up the rugged declivity. Every mountain has its steepest point, which is usually near the summit, in keeping, I suppose, with the providence that makes the darkest ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... from its cell the tender infant born Feels the cold chill of Life's aerial morn; Seeks with spread hands the bosoms velvet orbs, With closing lips the milky fount absorbs; 170 And, as compress'd the dulcet streams distil, Drinks warmth and fragrance from the living rill; Eyes with mute rapture every waving line, Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine, And learns erelong, the perfect form confess'd, IDEAL BEAUTY ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... glass of wine, diluted with water brought by the guide from a neighboring rill,—glacier water being used only as a last resource,—were delectable after a steady two hours' walk. The early morning meal of coffee and a roll had lost some of its flavor when consumed apparently in the middle of the night, ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Spirit land, Where my dark eyed mother went long ago, And my dear twin sisters walk hand in hand. My Father, listen,—my words are true," And sad was her voice as the whippowil When she mourns her mate by the moon-lit rill, "Wiwst lingers alone with you, The rest are sleeping on yonder hill,— Save one—and he an undutiful son,— And you, my Father, will sit alone When Siska [27] sings and the snow is gone. I sat, when the maple leaves ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... elders, and willows and a show of clay and gravel, forced on my notice the likelihood that here, too, had once been a spring, if no more. I scratched at its head with a stick and out came an imprisoned rill like a recollected word from the scratched head of a schoolboy. Happily the spot was just at the bottom of the impassably steep fall of ground next the edge of the lawn and was almost in the centre of those four ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... face drawn and yellow. Vermin were visible on his person. His lips twitched, and his gums, discolored, were as those of a camel that has journeyed too far. A tooth projected, green as a fresh almond is; the chin projected too, and from it on one side a rill of saliva dripped upon the naked breast. On the terrace he was a blur, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... voice within me speaks and seems to trickle forth a rill of light within my darkness: it is a voice that has never yet deceived me. It is the king you are ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... yon oak his broad arms flingeth O'er the sloping hill, Beautiful and freshly springeth That soft-flowing rill, Through its dark roots wreathed and bare, Gushing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in what is higher still, those mystic and ineffable communings subsisting between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a past eternity? We can thus regard the friendship of Jesus on earth—like all ennobled, purified affections—as an emanation from the Divine; a sacred and holy rill, flowing direct from the Fountain of infinite love. How our adorable Lord in the days of His flesh fondly clung even to hearts that grew faithless when fidelity was most needed! What was it but a noble ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... at himself. What was this that had come to him? A new pleasure in life. A little trembling rill of joy bubbling up in his heart; a rift in the dark clouds of fate; a show of sunshine where he had expected never to see the light again. Why was it so pleasant to have that little hand resting upon his arm? Was it ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sun-dial, then through the gate, then a half-mile or so along the road, green along the edges with the green of spring, and lined with the May hawthorn, white, clean as air, with a fragrance like sustained music, a long rill of rolling white cloud. There was nothing in the world like the hawthorn. First it put out little bluish-green buds firm as elastic, and then came a myriad of white stars. And then the white drift turned ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... I watch to hear, Stealing its sweetness o'er some plaining rill, Or soothing ocean's wave, when storms are near, Or swelling in the breeze ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... is—for thou hast been, Child of my heart, my peaceful dove, Gladdening life's sad and chequer'd scene, An emblem of the peace above. Now all is calm, and dark, and still, And bright the beam the moonlight throws On ocean wave, and gentle rill, And on thy slumbering cheek of rose. And may no care disturb that breast, Nor sorrow dim that brow serene; And may thy latest years be bless'd As thy ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... eye. Rich in the things contentment brings, In every pure enjoyment wealthy, Blithe as a beautiful bird she sings, For body and mind are hale and healthy. Her eyes they thrill with right goodwill - Her heart is light as a floating feather - As pure and bright as the mountain rill That leaps and laughs in the Highland heather! Go search the world and search the sea, Then come you home and sing with me There's no such gold and no such pearl As a bright and ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the absorbent nature of the rock—which is perhaps partly owing to the sulphuric or muriatic acid it contains[150]—and the evaporation caused by this current produces a coating of ice on the floor of the grotto, where there is a superficial rill of water. The more rarified the lower external air, the more rapid will be the current of cool air; and, therefore, the greater the evaporation. The winter phenomenon is to be explained by the fact that the current of air will be about ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... very pretty and odd scene. The slightly undulating sheep-walk dips suddenly into a wide glen, in the lap of which, by a bright, winding rill, rise from the sward the ruins of a small abbey, with a few solemn trees scattered round. The crows' nests hung untenanted in the trees; the birds were foraging far away from their roosts. The very cattle had forsaken the place. It ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... and more favorable conditions for man devised. But before this hypothesis can be sustained, the skeptic from the beginning of time must have scanned the history of every individual and studied it in its minutest details. He must have explored every rill and river of influence entering into his character. He must have understood every relation of the individual to every other person through all the ages. He must have mastered all the facts and laws of our earth. And as it sustains a vital connection with the solar ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... and then cliff, and above that mountainous heights glittering with ice and snow, and here and there in some opening a frozen river looking as if it were rushing headlong down to the sea, but hanging there solid, save for a little rill which trickled forth from a cavern of ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... tender beech and the sapling oak, That grow by the shadowy rill, You may cut down both at a single stroke, You may cut down ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of the valley commeth dovvne a riueret, rill, or brooke of fresh vvater, which hard by the sea side maketh a pond or poole, vvhereout our ships were vvatered vvith verie great ease and pleasure. Somewhat aboue the Towne on the North side betweene the two mountaines, the valley ...
— A Svmmarie and Trve Discovrse of Sir Frances Drakes VVest Indian Voyage • Richard Field
... waves, That pour into the soul a melody, Like to the far down music of the caves Of ocean, heard not, felt not, save within, Seeking to joy the darker depths to win— Oh! while your sweet and sacred voices steal Into my spirit, as the joyous fall Of the warm sunbeam on the frozen rill, To wake the voice that slumbereth, and call To bear you company In your glad hymnings, let the wretched own He ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... a golden cup, The marigold is like a golden frill, The daisy with a golden eye looks up, And golden spreads the flag beside the rill, And gay and golden nods the daffodil, The gorsey common swells a golden sea, The cowslip hangs a head of golden tips, And golden drips the honey which the bee Sucks from sweet hearts of ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... considerably, his main object having been accomplished. As he rode along the boy kept watching ahead, hoping that it would not be long before they sighted some oasis in the desert where a sparkling rill ran, or the thrice welcome sweep of an old-fashioned well told of water to be had for the trouble ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... first four pages are devoted to an inflamed eulogy of Woman—simply woman in general, or perhaps as an institution—wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a unique one to her voice. He says it "fills the breast with fond alarms, echoed by every rill." It sounds well enough, but it is not true. After the eulogy he takes up his real work and the novel begins. It begins in the woods, near the village of ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... low, "Why should I fear? for I soon will go To the broad, blue lodge in the Spirit land, Where my dark eyed mother went long ago, And my dear twin sisters walk hand in hand. My Father, listen,—my words are true," And sad was her voice as the whippowil When she mourns her mate by the moon-lit rill, "Wiwaste lingers alone with you, The rest are sleeping on yonder hill,— Save one—and he an undutiful son,— And you, my Father, will sit alone When Sisoka [27] sings and the snow is gone. I sat, when the maple leaves were red, By the foaming falls of the haunted river; ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... in active operation, and he hoped to attract to his community young men from the English universities, who were going over to Rome through discontent with the comfortable worldliness of the mother Church. "I have at command," he wrote, "a rill of water, a shady wood, a rocky cave, and roots of fern, for every one of these would-be anchorites." But the would-be anchorites found no attraction in the hard work which New Zealand offered, and the bishop's college was recruited chiefly from the grey-haired missionaries ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... And guiltless heart, to range the sylvan scene; No splendid poverty, no smiling care, No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur, there: There pleasing objects useful thought suggest; The sense is ravish'd, and the soul is blest; On every thorn delightful wisdom grows; In every rill a sweet instruction flows. But some, untaught, o'erhear the whisp'ring rill, In spite of sacred leisure, blockheads still; Nor shoots up folly to a nobler bloom In her own native soil, the drawing-room. The squire is proud to see his coursers strain, Or well-breath'd beagles sweep ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... While I beheld the bloom Of laughing flowers—O day of bliss!— Around those tresses meet and kiss, And roses in her lap of Love the home! Her grace, her port divinely fair, Describe it, Love! myself I do not dare. In mute intent surprise I gazed, as when a hind is seen To dote upon its image in a rill; Drinking those love-lit eyes, Those hands, that face, those words serene, That song which with delight the heaven did fill, That smile which thralls me still, Which melteth stones unkind, Which in this woodland wilderness Tames every beast and stills the stress Of hurrying waters. Would that ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... every field of strife, made red By bloody victory. Each valley, where the battle poured Its red and awful tide, Beheld the brave New England sword With slaughter deeply dyed. Their bones are on the northern hill, And on the southern plain, By brook and river, lake and rill, And by the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the prairie land which the sunlight floods and fills, To the north the open country, southward the Cyprus Hills; Never a bit of woodland, never a rill that flows, Only a stretch of cactus beds, and the wild, sweet prairie rose; Never a habitation, save where in the far south-west A solitary tepee lifts its solitary crest, Where Neykia in the doorway, crouched in the red ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... groin, and drove the brass quite through. Falling, he gave a crash, and greatly grieved the people of the Greeks. As when a lion presses on an unwearied boar in fight, and they twain, high spirited, contend upon the mountain tops for a small rill, for they both desire to drink, but the lion subdues him by force, panting much; so Hector, the son of Priam, in close fight with his spear, deprived the gallant son of Menoetius of life, having slain many; and, boasting over ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... their name; The woods were peopled with their fame; The silent pillar, lone and gray, Claimed kindred with their sacred clay; Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain, Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain: The meanest rill, the mightiest river, Rolled mingling with their fame forever. Despite of every yoke she bears, That land is glory's still, and theirs! 'Tis still a watchword to the earth: When man would do a deed of worth He points to Greece, and turns to tread, So sanctioned, on the tyrant's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... nursed upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill: Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd Under the opening eye-lids of the morn, We drove a-field, and both together heard What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, Oft till the star that rose at evening bright Toward ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... with bolts of substantial new material, out of which we made comfortable bedding and clothing. Here we had no care about furnishing, and no anxious fear for their support. With pleasure we saw the vast contrast in conveniences and supplies compared with our little rill in which we so long paddled our own canoe, and in which faithful laborers were still at work. It matters not by whom this great work was accomplished; it matters not by what agencies our prayer of more ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... blurs of a grayish vegetation. But at his pleased exclamation Carmena told him that he was looking at no oasis. What he saw was only the green of mesquite and palo verde, the fluted columns of the giant sahuaro, and the gray of sagebrush. In all that wide waste of desolation no trickling rill or even the smallest of pools glinted under the fierce rays of the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... rise; Lash'd on a wheel, a whirling felon flies; A wretch, with members chain'd and liver bare, Writhes and disturbs the vulture feasting there: One strains to roll his rock, recoiling still; One, stretch'd recumbent o'er a limpid rill, Burns with devouring thirst; his starting eyes, Swell'd veins and frothy lips and piercing cries Accuse the faithless eddies, as they shrink And keep him panting still, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... confidant, to the exclusion of all others—"by Jove! I believe she can peer into my very soul; and if she can, my hopes are blasted, for she must be able to see that a soul like mine is no more worthy to become the affinity of one like hers than a mountain rill can ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... love,—he was quite conscious that there were degrees in brotherly love, and that if she had been homely or stupid, he would never have disturbed her in the stagnant life of the house behind the cedars. There had come to him from some source, down the stream of time, a rill of the Greek sense of proportion, of fitness, of beauty, which is indeed but proportion embodied, the perfect adaptation of means to ends. He had perceived, more clearly than she could have appreciated it at that time, the undeveloped elements of discord between Rena ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... fountains. In one page of the Life of Columba we find the saint, on a child being brought to him for baptism, in a desert place where no water was, striking the rock like Moses, and drawing forth a rill, which remained in perennial existence—a fountain surrounded by a special sanctity. In the next page he deals with a well in the hands of the Magi. They had put a demon of theirs into it to such effect, that any unfortunate person washing himself in the well or drinking ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... I had a quiet tomb, Beside a little rill; Where birds, and bees, and butterflies, Would ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... shimmering noon of summer past Some unrecorded beam slanted across The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew; Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind, The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill, Which now through all its course stands still and dumb Its own memorial,—purling at its play Along the slopes, and through the meadows next, Until its youthful sound was hushed at last In the staid current of the lowland stream; Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned, And where ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... for the hook, too small for the frying-pan, too small for aught else but beauty, and gracefulness of form; and yet not the young of a larger fish, but full grown of himself. In every brook in the State he may be found, yea, even in the rill, no more than a foot in width, which leads away from the old spring-house on the hillside. You will not find him swimming about like the minnows in the still, deep water of the stream, but where the clear, cold water is rushing rapidly over the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... Nancy returns with her lantern at nightfall to tack down the carpet in the old Peabody pew and iron out the tattered, dog's eared leaves of the hymn-book from which she has so often sung "By cool Siloam's shady rill" with her lover in days gone by. He, still a failure, having waited for years for his luck to turn, has come back to spend Christmas in the home of his boyhood; and seeing a dim light in the church, he enters quietly and surprises Nancy at her task of carpeting the Peabody Pew, so that it shall ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... rill, the only one they crossed, a long water-snake endeavored to escape before the rapid wagon could strike it, but the Captain rose to his feet quick and cat-like, and projected the long lash into the roadside, and the snake ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Mrs. Scattergood, nodding her head vigorously: "Leastways, 'Rill oughter be. I told her so! I was faithful in season, and outer season, warnin' her what would happen if she married ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... instant I heard the crack of carbines behind, and they had a magical influence upon my speed. I rode along a stretch of chestnut and oak wood, attached to the famous Webb estate, and when I came to a rill that passed by a little bridge, under the way, turned up its sandy bed and buried myself in the under-brush. A few breathless moments only had intervened, when the roadway seemed shaken by a hundred hoofs. The imperceptible horsemen yelled like a war-party of Camanches, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... are you?" muttered the detective, who, after all, was a humane and merciful fellow, and he proceeded to a running rill near by and got some water in a rubber cup which he always carried ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... always necessary. Others are planted in ridges about three or four feet broad, and two, or two and a half high. On the middle or top of the ridge, is a narrow gutter, in and along which is conveyed, as above described, a little rill that waters the roots, planted in the ridge on each side of it; and these plantations are so judiciously laid out, that the same stream waters several ridges. These ridges are sometimes the divisions to the horizontal plantations; and when this method is used, which is for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the colour of daytime invaded the ground at our feet, flitting like some arterial rill through the dun spaces. Wonderful, this magic touch of awakening! It is the same swiftness of change as at sunset, when the desert folds itself to sleep, like some gorgeously palpitating flower, in the chill of nightfall; or rather, to use a metaphor which has often ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... wher'e'r war's trumpets sound, The wanderer went; yet, Caledonia, still Thine was his thought in march and tented ground; He dreamed mid Alpine cliffs of Athole's hill, And heard in Ebro's roar his Lynedoch's lovely rill. ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... morning gladly flit away, Yield to the sun's more genial, mighty ray; The white waves kiss the murmuring rill— But thy deep silence ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... the line of downs ran luminously edged against the pearly morning sky, with its dark landward face crepusculine yet clear in every combe, every dotting copse and furze-bush, every wavy fall, and the ripple, crease, and rill-like descent of the turf. Beauty of darkness was there, as well ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... part of Devonshire, and the other telescopically on the open sea,—the two climbed high up the village, and stopped before a quaint little house, on which was painted, "MRS. RAYBROCK, DRAPER;" and also "POST-OFFICE." Before it, ran a rill of murmuring water, and access to it was gained ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... aggrandizement of a State is to be seen in its increase of inhabitants, and consequent progress in industry and wealth. Of the vast tide of emigration, which now rushes like a cataract to the West, not even a trickling rill wends its feeble course to the Ancient Dominion.—Of the multitude of foreigners who daily seek an asylum and a home, in the empire of Liberty, how many turn their steps toward the regions of the slave? None. No not one. There is a malaria in the atmosphere ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... still slept; McKay fed the three carrier-pigeons, washed himself at the snow-rill in the woods, then went over to the crag's gritty edge under which for three days now the ghoulish clamour of a lammergeier had seldom ceased. And now, as McKay peered down, two stein-adlers came flapping to the shelf on which hung ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... eye, And honor'd with a Christian's mind The Christ who loves humility! Loud through the pasture, brawls and raves A brook—the rains had fed the waves, And torrents from the bill. His sandal-shoon the priest unbound, And laid the Host upon the ground, And near'd the swollen rill! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... to these wild scenes haste; The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length'ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd: O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight; Or with the mimic ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Dwarf's well. Klaus, arriving there, reined his horse up, and looked upon the spring with profoundly cogitative eyes. It was clear and still. Pearly bright the water ascended from the rent basaltic bottom, and rippled in a small thread-like rill through whispering rushes, across meadows and fields, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various |
