"Billow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you can find a competent assassin, I wouldn't make it a point with him to oblige Mr. Markley. I don't care particularly to have the poet buried in the weltering sea. If he can't find a roaring billow, I'll be perfectly satisfied to have him chucked into a creek. And I dare say that it'll make no material difference whether the dolphins gobble him or the catfish and eels nibble him up. It's all the same in the long run. Mention this to your murderer when you speak to him, will you? ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... road; there is a narrower one below, which used to be called the Rue de la Paille, because the cottages lining it were formerly all thatched with cane straw; and there is one above it, edging the cane-fields that billow away to the meeting of morne and sky. There is nothing of architectural interest, and all is sombre,—walls and roofs and pavements. But after you pass through the city and follow the southern route that ascends the Sguinau ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... grands bois odorants, harmonious tunes, Rasant les ilots verts et les Following in their dreams and dunes d'opale, voices mellow, De meandre en meandre, au fil To wander and wander in the l'onde pale, thread of the pale billow, Suivre le cours des flots Past islands hushed and errants. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... But suddenly, wonderful enough, there came a breeze, a brisk spurt out of the north. The bunting caught it, twisted upon itself, tumbled, writhed, then suddenly shook itself free, and in a single long billow rolled out into the Stars and Stripes of ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... lightning showed the mainsail ripped from the second reef earing up to the peak. Though the waves rushed by the vessel with the velocity of the fleetest steeds, and demolished everything that obstructed their career, our craft appeared to defy their fury, and sprung from billow, to billow with the playful ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... words in such a scene! Yon rosy mists on high careering,— The Moorish cavaliers who fleet With hawk and hound and distant cheering,— The dipping sail puffed to the gale, The prow that spurns the billow's fawning,— How can they fade to dimmer shade, And how this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... on yon snaw-cover'd thorn, Mournfu' and lane is the chirp o' the Robin, He looks through the storm, but nae shelter can see; Come, Robin, and join the sad concert wi' me. Oh, lang may I look o'er yon foam-crested billow, And Hope dies away like a storm-broken willow; Sweet Robin, the blossom again ye may see, But I'll ne'er see the blink ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... usually placid river, there was but one bark found bold enough to venture upon her angered bosom, and this, although but an epitome of those that have subdued the world of waters, and chained them in subservience to the will of man, now danced gallantly, almost terrifically, from billow to billow, and, with the feathery lightness of her peculiar class, seemed borne onward, less by the leaping waves themselves than by the white and driving spray that fringed their summits. This bark—a canoe evidently of the smallest ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... taken in utterly useless, the storm-wind sweeps the boat before it at full speed as though it had been a bit of straw. Selim and I sat with a large mackintosh sheet over our hunched backs, thus offering a breakwater to the waves; happily for us, the billow-heads were partly cut off and carried away bodily by the raging wind, and the opened fountains of the firmament beat down the breakers before they could grow to their full growth. Otherwise we were lost men; the southern shore was still two miles distant, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... desire to escape from the noise and traffic of the city, Freshwater Bay affords a delightful retreat. During the bright days of summer the sea breaks in gentle murmur on the sand and shingle of the beach, but in winter when lashed by S.W. Gales "it tumbles a billow on chalk and sand." The roar of the ocean can be heard for miles inland. The esplanade shown in the picture has been destroyed by the breakers. Temporary repairs have been effected, but a fierce controversy is still raging as to the ultimate solution ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... now a constant delight to them. Zillah would sit for hours on the shore, watching the breakers dashing over the rocks beyond, and tumbling at her feet; or she would play like a child with the rising tide, trying how far she could run out with the receding wave before the next white-crested billow should come seething and foaming after her, as if to punish her for her temerity in venturing within the precincts of the mighty ocean. Hilda always accompanied her, but her amusements took a much more ambitious turn. She had formed a passion for collecting marine curiosities; and while Zillah ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... reaching the other shore. Having exhausted his arrows, he took up his javelin, and although already nearly half engulfed, with his arm alone above the water, he hurled it, a powerless weapon, against the unknown God whom he still braved from the depths of the abyss. A mighty billow, which rolled two or three times over the edge of the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... turn, then suddenly the canoe beneath them was lifted like a straw and tossed high into the air. A mighty mass of water boiled up beneath it and around it. Then the foam rushed in, and vaguely Geoffrey knew that they were wrapped in the curve of a billow. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... kisses! How they burned on Edith's lips, making her so happy—and how they blistered on Arthur's heart, making him doubt the propriety of having given or received them. His was the braver spirit now. He had buffeted the billow with a mightier struggle than Edith had ever known. Around his head a blacker, fiercer storm had blown than any she had ever felt, and from out that tumultuous sea of despair he had come a firmer, a better man, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... and send him into helpless bankruptcy, with the poor consolation that, though legally responsible, he was not morally bound to pay other people's debts. But Scott's own sanguine carelessness had been partly to blame for the Ballantyne failure; and he faced the billow as it suddenly appeared, bowed to it in grief but not in shame, and, while not pretending to any stoicism, instantly resolved to devote the remainder of his life to the repayment ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... gentleman of my merit. That is to say, far better than you British know how to treat an American officer and meek-hearted Christian captured in honorable war, by ——! Every one tells me, as you yourself just breathed, and as, crossing the sea, every billow dinned into my ear, that I, Ethan Allen, am to be hung like a thief. If I am, the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress shall avenge me; while I, for my part, shall show you, even on the tree, how a Christian gentleman can die. Meantime, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... carries his one only home along with him: that home is his hammock. "Born under a gun, and educated on the bowsprit," according to a phrase of his own, the man-of-war-man rolls round the world like a billow, ready to mix with any sea, or be sucked down to death in the maelstrom of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... artillery besides many assaults and entries; and (seeing) that himself and the ship must needs be possessed of the enemy who were now all cast in a ring round about him, the Revenge not able to move one way or another, but as she was moved by the waves and billow of the sea, commanded the Master Gunner, whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and sink the ship, that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory to the Spaniards: seeing in so many hours' fight, and with so great a navy, they were not able to take her, having had ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... waxed great in their bosoms, and nothing escaped them: for them the nightingale was singing, the stars were shining, and the trees were softly whispering, lulled both by slumber and by the softness of the summer, and by the warmth. Lavretzky surrendered himself wholly to the billow which was bearing him onward,—and rejoiced; but no word can express that which took place in the young girl's pure soul: it was a secret to herself; so let it remain for all others. No one knows, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... as we hollow'd his narrow bed And smooth'd down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow! ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... hunger was as plain as his rags, was calm as the wintry sky. She wondered, but she needed not have wondered; for storm of anger, drought of greed, nor rotting mist of selfishness, had passed or rested there, to billow, or score, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Aurelius, Catullus' friends, Whether extremest Indian shore he brave, Strands where far-resounding billow rends The shattered wave, Or 'mid Hyrcanians dwell he, Arabs soft and wild, 5 Sacae and Parthians of the arrow fain, Or where the Seven-mouth'd Nilus mud-defiled Tinges the Main, Or climb he lofty ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... pororocca—a vast wave rising across the whole width of the stream, to the height of twelve or fifteen feet— sweeps up the stream. Advancing noiselessly over the deeper portions of the river-bed, it rises into an angry billow, with a fearful roar when passing over a shallow, or meeting any impediment in its course. A French traveller describes an island where he and his companions had rested on their voyage down the stream. They had happily gone over to the mainland on the previous evening, when, as they stood on the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... you, and am going to have less, for I a)n going into Norfolk. I have stayed till I have not one acquaintance left: the next billow washes me last off the plank. I have not cared to stir, for fear of news from Flanders; but I have convinced myself that there will be none. Our army is much superior to the Count de Saxe; besides, they have ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... us!" I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself through the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar between two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes's waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly fixed, held on with one hand, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... dash'd upon the billow, Our opening timbers creak, Each fears a watery pillow. ... To cling to slippery shrouds Each breathless seaman crowds, As she lay Till the day In the Bay of Biscay O! ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... almost mythical Etruscan city of Veii, the Troy of Italy. The view in this direction is bounded by the advanced guard of the Sabine range, the blue peak of Soracte looking, as Lord Byron graphically says, like the crest of a billow about to break. In front, at your feet, is the city, broken up into the most picturesque masses by the irregularity of the ground; here and there a brighter light glistening on some stately campanile or cupola, and flashing back from the graceful columns of Trajan and Antonine. ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... knew—if only I could tell you something—" She broke off, lowered her head to her hand, and he saw her breast rise on a billow of emotion. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... like the present one, for the commission of errors, ignorances, or sins, which in their turn must inevitably produce their due effect of sickness, disability, or woe. Thus is the soul tossed about from life to life, from billow to billow in the great ocean of transmigration. And there is no escape save for the very few, who, during their birth as men, attain to a right knowledge of the Great Spirit: and thus enter into immortality, or, as the later [94] philosophers taught, are absorbed ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the billow Lifts high its white crest O'er his lone, sea-weed pillow On Ocean's dark breast; No shroud is around him, No flowers bloom above, No mourners surround him ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... I caught at each sound; I clutched and I caught as a man that drown'd. . . . Only the sullen low growl of the sea Far out the flood street at the edge of the ships. Only the billow slow licking his lips, Like a dog that lay crouching there watching for me; Growling and showing white teeth all the night, Reaching his neck and as ready to bite— Only the waves with their salt flood tears Fawning white stones of a ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... writer, therefore, made the best of his way aft, and, on a second attempt to look out, he succeeded, and saw indeed an astonishing sight. The sea or waves appeared to be ten or fifteen feet in height of unbroken water, and every approaching billow seemed as if it would overwhelm our vessel, but she continued to rise upon the waves and to fall between the seas in a very wonderful manner. It seemed to be only those seas which caught her in the act of rising which struck her with so much violence and threw such quantities of ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hour!" it would make her strong again. For, she found that if her heart was rising on a broad breath, suddenly, for no reason that she knew, it seemed to stop in its rise, break, and sink, like a wind-beaten billow. Once or twice, in a quick fear, she thought: "What is this? Is this a malady coming before death?" She walked out gloomily, thinking of the darkness of the world to Wilfrid, if she should die. She plucked flowers, and then reproached herself with plucking them. She tried to sing. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... even the Eskimo dogs; though times and seasons can scarcely be chosen when travelling in Athabasca, for a storm comes unawares. Upon the plains you will see a cloud arising, not in the sky, but from the ground—a billowy surf of drifting snow; then another white billow from the sky will sweep down and meet it, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... of the appointed end, For this I sigh! The billow, poised above, Fell on thee like a beast that leaps to rend: Thou couldst not know thy bridegroom Death ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... period of tense silence or blurred murmurings was ended by a second great surge of cheers from front to rear. We all cheered till we were hoarse. Again we peered and listened and questioned each other, again came a roar of cheering like a sea billow. Again and again alternated the half silence and the uproar. Before we learned what was happening or had happened word came from mouth to mouth that we were going on. The press in front of us gradually melted away, we were able to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... of the rugged old ocean, To the caves in the billow he rides his foamed steed: As o'er the grim surge with his chariot in motion, He spreads desolation, and laughs ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... that time, the earth increased so much in size, that all on board the canoe were able to disembark upon it. After a long and perilous drifting of the canoe hither and thither, its voyagers were at length able to lay their heads down at night upon solid land, and to sleep unrocked by the tempestuous billow. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... reefs which encircles the island, and which she had passed through in a place where no vessel had ever passed before. She presented her head to the waves that rolled in from the open sea, and as each billow rushed into the narrow strait where she lay, her bow lifted to such a degree as to show her keel; and at the same moment her stern, plunging into the water, disappeared altogether from our sight, as if it were swallowed up by ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... visited by the great wave, and some of these islands were completely submerged by it. The lonely Opara Isle, where the steamers which run between Panama and New Zealand have their coaling station, was visited at about half-past eleven in the evening by a billow which swept away a portion of the coal depot. Afterward great waves came rolling in at intervals of about twenty minutes, and several days elapsed before the sea resumed its ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... lesser driuing yce. [Sidenote: Hard shifts.] But when they must needes forgoe this new found fort by meanes of other yce, which at length would vndermine and compasse them round about, and when that by heauing of the billow they were therewith like to be brused in peeces, they vsed to make fast the shippe vnto the most firme and broad peece of yce they could find, and binding her nose fast thereunto, would fill all their sayles whereon the winde hauing ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... gold tassels, that nearly touched the huge anklets of green jade with which her two little bare feet were loaded, as if to help them to stand firm. And a soft broad band of gold ran right round her just below her lovely breast, that lay held in its gold cup like a great double billow made of the creamy lather of the sea, prevented from escaping as it swelled up by the delicious dam formed by the curve of her shoulders meeting the soft bulge of the upper part of her rounded arms, which came out from each side and seemed ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... ear against the Word Divine: The thing he saw he trusted; nought beyond. Three years went by. Once, when his friend had named The Name all-blessed, Kenwalk frowned. Since then That Name was named no more. O'er hill and dale They chased the wild deer; on the billow breathed Inspiring airs; in hall of joyance trod The mazes of the dance. Then war broke out: Reluctant long King Anna sought the field; Hurled back aggression. Kenwalk, near him still, Watched him with ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... found the weather overcast, the sea gray but calm. Hardly a billow. I hoped to encounter Captain Nemo there—would he come? I saw only the helmsman imprisoned in his glass-windowed pilothouse. Seated on the ledge furnished by the hull of the skiff, I inhaled the sea's salty aroma ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... again, and they were almost buried beneath the waters. The boat rose, however, and the men, nowise daunted by the danger and difficulty, again strained every nerve to reach the rock. But a terrible billow again came over them, and this time two of their oars were snapped to pieces. Soon after a receding wave left a space around the rock uncovered, and Robert, eager to reach the sufferers, leaped across. But just then another huge wave swept the boat back, and Mr. ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... a red flame, as if the sun had glanced on a billow, lighted the spot for an instant; but the Feather of Flames, Wassamo of the Fire-Plume, had disappeared from home and kindred, and the familiar paths ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... for weeks together I could be sure of witnessing every evening one of these glorious sunsets. For while the mighty monsoon clouds used to roll up on to the line of Himalayan peaks and pile themselves up there, billow upon billow, in magnificent array, dark and fearful in the general mass, but clear-edged and silver-tipped along the summits, yet beyond that line, in Tibet, the sky was nearly always clear and blue of ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... gale which quieted the machine a little, and checked the sparkling flow of wit and humour. When, during the course of the gale, a toppling billow overbalanced itself and fell inboard with a crash that nearly split the deck open, sweeping two of the quarterboats away, Mr Blurt, sitting in the saloon, was ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... to do but give the hunt time to cool off, and at this thought the prospect of days of lurking in this room of right angles and horsehair-covered furniture, rose up before him like a black billow. Then came the almost comforting thought, he could not lurk without creating suspicion on the part of Mrs. Henshaw. He would have to get out, somehow. The weather was glorious, and the strip of seaweed hanging by the mantelpiece dry as tinder. A sea-side visitor who sat all day in his ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... coming upon them through the darkness a breaker of such a height that at first Elias thought they must be quite close ashore near the surf swell. Nevertheless, he soon recognised it for what it really was—a huge billow. Then it seemed to him as if there was a laugh over in the other boat, and something said, "There goes thy boat, Elias!" He, foreseeing the calamity, now cried aloud: "In Jesus' Name!" and then bade his sons hold on with all their might ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... combustible part of the slash, and on which had been left standing an enormous dry pine, that towered so up high above the surrounding forest as to have long served as a landmark for the hunters and fishermen, in setting their courses through the woods or over the lake. Here the fiery billow, as if governed by the human tactics of a military assault, paused, parted, and swept by on either side, till it had inclosed the elevation; when suddenly it shot up from every side in an hundred converging tongues ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... song for the willow, the wild weeping willow, That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days, And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays! A musical ditty to scatter the sadness, A warble of wildness to banish its tears, Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness Be sounding and bounding through all of ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... long threads, on each of which hung an oat-grain—the harvest here was mostly of oats—had got dry and brittle; and the grains began to spread out their chaff-wings, as if ready to fly, and rustled with sweet sounds against each other, as the wind, which used to billow the fields like the waves of the sea, now swept gently and tenderly over it, helping the sun and moon in the drying and ripening of the joy to be laid up for the dreary winter. Most graceful of all hung those delicate oats; ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... nightfall, coming into touch with the left of the French Fifth Army under Franchet d'Espercy. At Dornans you are only a few miles north of the Marshes of St. Gond, where General Foch, after some perilous moments, won his brilliant victory over General Billow and the German Second Army, including a corps of the Prussian Guards; while at Chalons I look up from a record I am reading of the experiences of the Diocese during the war, written by the Bishop, to watch ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on, the sea roughened: larger waves swayed strong against the vessel's side. It was strange to reflect that blackness and water were round us, and to feel the ship ploughing straight on her pathless way, despite noise, billow, and rising gale. Articles of furniture began to fall about, and it became needful to lash them to their places; the passengers grew sicker than ever; Miss Fanshawe declared, with groans, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... hearts! to Britain's pride, Once so faithful and so true, On the deck of fame that died With the gallant, good Riou— Soft sigh the winds of Heaven o'er their grave: While the billow mournful rolls, And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing glory to ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... as the two were about to leave the platform, a voice, as yet far distant, was heard in the depths of the shaft. It came up like a sonorous billow, swelling as it advanced, and becoming more and ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... through the boiling zig-zag current, now avoiding great, jagged rocks by a hair's-breadth, now bounding like a deer over a smooth incline, now plunging into a seething white billow; and, when at last they swept round into the quiet bay at the foot of the cataract, Dan leaped up, and waving his paddle on high uttered a wild war-whoop learned long ago in the swamps of the Oro. There was an answering cheer from the group of men waiting at the landing. "Well done, Big Scalper!" ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... in short trousers and jacket of white silk, with fez-caps on their heads. On each side of the ship there are fourteen of these rowers, under whose vigorous exertions the barge flies forward over wave and billow like a dolphin. The beautifully regular movements of the sailors have a fine effect. The oars all dip into the water with one stroke, the rowers rise as one man, and fall back into their places ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Acroceraunus fronts the brine, — Ill-famed — against whose base the billow heaves, Nor against Boreas stands the mountain pine, That has a hundred times renewed its leaves, And towering high on Alp or Apennine, With its fast root the rock as deeply cleaves, So firmly as the youth resists the will Of that foul woman, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... they went, through foam and spray, till on the beach, where the fresh winds played among her falling hair, and the waves broke sparkling at her feet, the lonely mother still stood, gazing wistfully across the sea. Suddenly, upon a great blue billow that came rolling in, she saw the Water-Spirits smiling on her; and high aloft, in their white gleaming arms, her child stretched forth his hands to welcome her; while the little voice she so longed to hear ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... left her early pillow, And the heavens grew rosy-rich, and rare; Laughed the dewy plain and glassy billow, For the Golden God himself was there; And the vapour-screen Rose the hills between, Steaming up, like incense, in ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... tribune, incessantly vibrating, gushed forth perpetually a sort of sonorous flood, a mighty oscillation of sentiments and ideas, which, from billow to billow, and from people to people, flowed to the utmost confines of the earth, to set in motion those intelligent waves which are called souls. Frequently one knew not why such and such a law, such and such an institution, was tottering, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... observed maneuvers, rising up from a pile head on unflapping wings, then plunging forward against the wind and subsequently rising higher than his starting point, must either time his ascents and descents exactly with the variations in wind velocities, or must meet a wind billow rotating on a horizontal axis and come to a poise on its crest, thus ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... and low Ever, o'er the curved shells, Wanders with a fitful flow As the billow sinks or swells. Now, to faintest whispers hushing, Now, in louder cadence gushing, Wakens from their pleasant sleep All the tuneful Nereid-throng, Till their notes of wreathed song Float in magic streams along, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... truth, Master Varney," said Anthony Foster. "He that is head of a party is but a boat on a wave, that raises not itself, but is moved upward by the billow ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... That night we went to the icy Pole, And there on the rocks we stood together, And saw the ocean before us roll. No moon shone down on the hermit sea, No cheering beacon illumed the shore, No ship on the water, no light on the lea, No sound in the ear but the billow's roar! But the wave was bright, as if lit with pearls, And fearful things on its bosom played; Huge crakens circled in foamy whirls, As if the deep for their sport was made, And mighty whales through the crystal dashed, And upward sent the far glittering spray, Till ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... a flame: I know not what it bore of freight or host, But white it was as an avenging ghost. It levelled strong Euphrates in its course; Supreme yet weightless as an idle mote It seemed to tame the waters without force Till not a murmur swelled or billow beat: Lo, as the purple shadow swept the sands, The prudent crocodile rose on his feet And shed appropriate tears and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... A mighty billow flings its cloud of foam over the faces of Claude and the shrinking girl by his side, and blinds them with salt spray. But high as the tide is, the Chair is still above its reach, and although the wave may sprinkle them, it ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the sea! flood, flood o'er billow surges! In vain the bird fatigued its faltering wing here urges. Billows beneath, waves, waves around; Ever the floods (no end!) by urging floods repulsed; The eye sees but the waves, in an abyss engulphed, Roll 'neath ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the subject of closed ports was given in our cabin, where the fair chatelaine was reclining in her berth reading, fanned by the genial air which floated in at the open port,—a truculent Red Sea billow, meeting a slight roll of the ship, entered the cabin in an unbroken fall on the lady's head. A damp tigress flew out through the door, wildly demanding the steward, a set of dry bedding, and the instant execution of the captain, the officer ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... greater interest in it than has the cheesemonger in the cheese he weighs and deals. Meanwhile, the glimpse we may take of him shows Bill Wyvern urging along his pen until clean paper became magic manuscripts; living upon a billow of hope when the envelopes were sped, submerged beneath oceans of gloom when they were returned; trembling into Fleet Street deliciously to inhale the thick smell of printer's ink that came roaring up from a hundred basements; with goggle eyes venerating the men who with assured steps passed ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... from shore; a little steam-tug put out from the land; she was an object of thrilling interest; she would climb to the summit of a billow, reel drunkenly there a moment, dim and gray in the driving storm of spindrift, then make a plunge like a diver and remain out of sight until one had given her up, then up she would dart again, on a steep slant toward the sky, shedding Niagaras ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on the top of the drill. Almost immediately, it developed into a tongue of rocket flame. Then a glow appeared at the base of the drill and flame began to billow out from beneath the tube. The drill began to sink into the surface, and the planetoid began to move ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... distance the loud choral song was rolling through the darkness and the silence. Some one was whistling, keeping time to the refrain, and this shrill sound, which pierced the ear, ran ahead of the billow of powerful voices. Foma looked in that direction and saw the tall, black wall of forest, the bright fiery spot of the bonfire shining upon it, and the misty figures surrounding the fire. The wall of forest was like a breast, and the fire like a bloody wound ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From Love to titled age and crime And an unholy pillow— From me, and from our misty clime Where ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... billows delighteth to wander. When I am old, to the green-growing land I, too, will cling, with the grass for my pillow. Now I will drink and will fight with free hand, Now I'll enjoy my own sorrow-free billow." ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... on the invisible threshold underneath; then we saw him running downstairs, and my heart leapt for he never once looked up. I can see him still, foreshortened by our bird's-eye view into a Turkish fez and a fringe of white hair and red neck, a billow of dressing-gown, and bare heels peeping out of bedroom slippers at every step that we could follow; but no face all the way down, because he was a bent old boy who never looked like ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the billow Though they flowed so far apart, And has filled with its freshness and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... pinioned to the seats with it, and the arms of the driver kept free only by incessant motion. It was no longer snowing; it was "snowballing;" it was an avalanche out of the slopes of the sky. The exhausted horses floundered in it; the clogging wheels dragged in it; the vehicle at last plunged into a billow of it—and stopped. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... on my pillow, As a ship without rudder or spars Is tumbled and tossed on the billow, 'Neath the glint and the glory of stars. 'Tis midnight and moonlight, and slumber Has hushed every heart but my own; O why are these thoughts without number Sent to me by the man ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... death rushes greedily in; But their signal unheeded is waving, For the shouts by their billow-toss'd consort unheard Are lost ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... support! But for myself alone, May all the winds of Heaven howl down the Gulf, 140 And tear the vessel, till the mariners, Appalled, turn their despairing eyes on me, As the Phenicians did on Jonah, then Cast me out from amongst them, as an offering To appease the waves. The billow which destroys me Will be more merciful than man, and bear me Dead, but still bear me to a native grave, From fishers' hands, upon the desolate strand, Which, of its thousand wrecks, hath ne'er received One lacerated like the heart which then 150 Will ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... shining, and with death for life Big now to birth and ripe with child, full-blown With fear and fruit of havoc, takes the sun Out of our eyes, darkening the day, and blinds The fair sky's face unseasonably with change, A cloud in one and billow of battle, a surge High reared as heaven with monstrous surf of spears That shake on us their shadow, till men's heads 490 Bend, and their hearts even with its forward wind Wither, so blasts all seed in them ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the inquisition advanced, the countless throng sunk on their knees before it; they bowed their faces to the very earth as it passed, and then slowly rose again, like a great undulating billow. A murmur of tongues prevailed as the prisoners approached, and eager eyes were strained, and fingers pointed, to distinguish the different orders of penitents, whose habits denoted the degree of punishment they were to undergo. But as those ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... 'Tis where Ontario's billow like ocean's surge is curled, Where strong Niagara's thunders wake the echo of the world; Where red Missouri bringeth rich tribute from the west, And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps on ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... white drawing-room where the only spots of colour were the roses—masses of pink roses in gold bowls—a Madonna-like being was reclining in a green and white billow of a lace tea gown, on a white sofa. She held out both hands to Mrs. Ess Kay, and looked at me, apologising ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... circuitous route; and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with engulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... wave and wind Have weightier blows in store, That we who keep the watch assigned Must stand to it the more; And as our streaming bows rebuke Each billow's baulked career, Sing, welcome Fate's discourtesy Whereby it ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... she had accused her mother of being. But the conversation finally flagged so much that Joan began to worry about the weather once more. The wind was now frightful, the icy rain rattled against the windows, and at the open door Joan could hear billow on billow, crash on crash, shrieking blast on shrieking blast. She was unable to preserve her cheerfulness. Like all strong hearts in anxiety, she became silent. The platitudes of Denas, dropped without interest, annoyed her; she only ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... tiny as children's toys—then the azure gleam of the sea and the boats dancing like bits of cork upon it,—then finally the plainer, broader view, wherein the earth with its woods and hills and rocky promontories appeared to heave up like a billow crowned with varying colours,—and so steadily, easily down to the pattern of grass and flowers from the centre of which the Palazzo d'Oro rose like a little white house for the ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... will not repeat. Well—she did no more than all publishers did. Though my prospects were marred, I can pity and pardon them. Blindness, mere blindness! And yet it was hard. For a poet, Bill, is a blossom—a bird—a billow—a breeze— A kind of creature that moves among men as a wind among trees. And a bard who is also the pet of patricians and dowagers doubly can Express his contempt for canaille in his fables where beasts are republican. Yet with all my disdainful ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Bo-Peep, from my friendly pillow I gaze at the even star; Then I sail away on a gentle billow, Where dreaming and visions are. And never a doubt nor a fear assails me The whole of the long night through, And the welcomest dream of all ne'er fails me, For I constantly dream of you, Of you, Of you, ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... swiftly ran Through the loud-glorying sea that it began To lose its late gained lordship of the land, Uprose the billow like an angered man, And flung its prone strength far along the sand; Almost, almost to the old bound, the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... he opened the throttle. Like knight tilting against knight, wave and engine met. There was a hissing as of the plunging of a great red-hot bar into a vat. A roaring sheet of water, thrown into the air by our momentum, washed cab and tender and car, as a billow pours over a laboring ship; and we stood on the steps, drenched to the skin, the water swirling about our ankles as we rushed forward. Then we heard the scream of triumph from the whistle, with which Schwartz cheered ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... first day out it is a novelty and after that a monotony—except when it is rough; and then it is a doggoned nuisance. Poets without end have written of the sea, but I take it they stayed at home to do their writing. They were not on the bounding billow when they praised it; if they had been they might have decorated the billow, but they would never ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... a qualm. But when they left him to himself again, Twist, like a fiend's breath from a distant room Diffusing through the passage, crept; the smell Deepening had power upon him, and he mixt His fancies with the billow-lifted bay Of Biscay, and the rollings of ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... mischief-devising, fearful wretch, would that, on the day when first my mother brought me forth, a destructive tempest of wind had seized and borne me to a mountain, or into the waves of the much-resounding ocean, where the billow would have swept me away before these doings had occurred. But since the gods have thus decreed these evils, I ought at least to have been the wife of a braver man, who understood both the indignation and the many reproaches ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... mountain-cleft Was the Troglodyte concealed; And the roving Nomad left, Desert lying, each broad field. With the javelin, with the bow, Strode the hunter through the land; To the hapless stranger woe, Billow-cast on that ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the ocean, Down, down through vast storeys of darkness, behold, in the tower Of the heaven, the thunder! on stairways of cloudy commotion, Colossal of tread, like a giant, from echoing hour to hour Goes striding in rattling armor ... The Nymph, at her billow-roofed dormer Of foam; and the Sylvan—green-housed—at her window of leaves appears; —As a listening woman, who hears The approach of her lover, who comes to her arms in the night; And, loosening ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... let us rest on the oar, And vex not a billow that sighs to the shore:— For sacred the spot where the starry waves meet With the beach, where the breath of the citron is sweet. There's a spell on the waves that now waft us along To the last of our Muses, the Spirit ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was fitted with banks of oars. Sixty officers and gentlemen volunteers embarked with him. A boat, two wherries, and a barge carried forty more. They were victualled for a month. The ships anchored near los Gallos in the Gulf of Paria. Twenty miles of sea were crossed 'in a great billow' to Guanipa Bay, where dwelt savages who shot poisoned arrows. Then the expedition was entangled in a labyrinth of rivers. These were the eight branches of the Orinoko. 'All the earth,' wrote Ralegh, 'doth not yield the like confluence of streams.' That is hardly an exaggerated ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing |
