"Plash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dread to hear the noise Of the rapid, rushing rain— And the plash of the wintry drops, that beat Through ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... he was convinced that some in that heap must contain water, and he would persevere. The second and third failed him in like manner, but he would yet persevere. The fourth was heavy, and when he shook it gently he heard the water plash. That thirst at once became burning and uncontrollable. The cry of his body to be assuaged overpowered his will, and while deadly danger menaced he unscrewed the little mouthpiece and drank deep and long. It was not cold and perhaps a little ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... 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 than at ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... 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 ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... seeks the happy hunting ground Just as anxious friends and kindred gather hastily around, Dropping tears unto his memory and with slow and measured tread, Bear away the bold young chieftain, to the mansions of the dead. Fear the falls of Winnewissa sweetly wooing to repose With its murmurous plash of waters perfume-laden of the rose, 'Neath the soil which once his kindred claimed and lived in until we Rising eastward like a storm-cloud, swept the land from sea to sea. Sleepeth well the brave young warrior in ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... progressed the pungent odour of seaweed refreshed him and grew stronger every moment. Suddenly he became aware that although high land lay upon his left hand there was to his right a hollow darkness without shadow or depth. No merry plash of waves came to explain this; the smell of the sea was there, but the joyous tumble of its waters was not to be heard. The traveller stooped low and peered into the darkness. Gradually he discerned a distant line of horizon, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the balcony of the diminutive inn known as "The Hungarian Crown," watching the sunbeams on the broad current of the Danube and listening to the ripple, the plash and the gurgle of the swollen stream as it rushed impetuously against the banks. A group of Servians, in canoes light and swift as those of Indians, had made their way across the river, and were struggling vigorously to prevent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... long-coated spectators sets towards the town, mingled with the parti-coloured, muddied figures of the players. I have been strolling half the afternoon along the river bank, watching the boats passing up and down; hearing the shrill cries of coxes, the measured plash of oars, the rhythmical rattle of rowlocks, intermingled at intervals with the harsh grinding of the chain-ferries. Five-and-twenty years ago I was rowing here myself in one of these boats, and I do not wish to renew the experience. ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rolling flood of silver, and the gigantic trees of the centuries become a ghostly and shadowy splendor. There is a deep and reverent silence everywhere, save the cry of the water-fowl in the high air and the plash of the Cascades. Even the Chinook winds cease to blow, and the ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... went flying, singing "caw, caw," on their way to bed. And how the sun was turning the water to gold! It seemed to be making a great golden pathway across the lake, and the mountains were turning a deep blue, and plash, plash, went the little waves on the rocks, so softly they seemed ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... roofs. Nor that magic bird, the fulmar, a wanderer from the Scottish archipelago, dropping from his bill an oil which the islanders used to burn in their lamps. Nor do you ever find in the evening, in the plash of the ebbing tide, that ancient, legendary neitse, with the feet of a hog and the bleat of a calf. The tide no longer throws up the whiskered seal, with its curled ears and sharp jaws, dragging itself along on its nailless paws. On that Portland—nowadays so changed ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... law, and many other nights with neither moon nor stars had they felt out their trails together. But always, under him and over him on all sides of him, there had been life. And tonight there was no life, nor smell of life. There was no chirp of night bird, or flutter of owl's wing, no plash of duck or cry of loon. He listened in vain for the crinkling snap of twig, and the whisper of wind in treetops. And there was no smell—no musk of mink that had crossed his path, no taste in the air of the strong scented ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... heard them rustling, at daybreak, by these bright clear waters, stretching out in such smiling promise, where no sound broke the deep and blissful seclusion, unless now and then this rustling, or the plash of some fish a little gayer than the others; it seemed not necessary to have any better heaven, or fuller expression of love and freedom than in the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... a soft crashing of waves upon the Black Sea shores, where the huge Caucasus beckoned in the sky beyond; a rustling in the umbrella pines and cactus at Marseilles, whence magic steamers start about the world like flying dreams. He heard the plash of fountains upon Mount Ida's slopes, and the whisper of the tamarisk on Marathon. It was dawn once more upon the Ionian Sea, and he smelt the perfume of the Cyclades. Blue-veiled islands melted in the sunshine, and across the dewy lawns of Tempe, moistened by the spray of many waterfalls, he saw—Great ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... banter, taunts, and fierce boasts of prowess; angry eyes gleamed defiance; and it was well if, in the morning, the household slaves had not to wash blood-stains from the pavement of the hall, or in the still night, when the drunken brawlers lay stupid on the floor, to drag a dead man from the red plash in which he lay. ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... thatched cottage of enormous size, so vast that we might consider it a palace, but only a cottage in the style of its building, its timbers and the nature of its interior, there lived Plash-Goo. ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... 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 in the great ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... breeze through 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 ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Sands 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 silence ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... are days when he may be deeply moved by a Guido Reni martyrdom, or 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 ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... sends piping forth his flute-like notes, And clear and shrill the answers trill from leafy isles and silver throats. The twinkling light on cape and height; the hum of voices on the shores; The merry laughter on the night; the dip and plash of frolic oars,— These tell the tale. On hill and dale the cities pour their gay and fair; Along the sapphire lake they sail, and quaff ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... gratefully low in pastures where fountains are glistening— Hark! in the shade of that rock the pruner with singing rejoices— The dove in the elm and the flock of wood-pigeons hoarsely repining, The plash of the sacred cascade—ah, restful, indeed, are these voices, Tityrus, all in the shade of your ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... to the hearty 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 habitation, they fell down on their knees and ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... there is one way of which doubtless thou knowest naught, for, as I have said, men go forth that way, but enter not by it; and the trick is known only to a few chosen souls, for the victims who pass out seek not to come again. They drop with sullen plash into the black waters of the moat, and the river, which mingles its clearer water with the sluggish stream encircling the Tower, bears thence towards the hungry sea the burden thus entrusted ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... spur the shadowy motive flits faster here and there in a slow swelling din of whispering, to the insistent plash of wave. Suddenly the sense of desolation yields to soothing play of waters—a berceuse of the sea—and now a song sings softly (in horn), though strangely jarring on the murmuring lullaby. The soothing cheer is anon ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... 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 simply then in ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... than the plash Of these wave-whimsies on the shore: "Give us a pearl to fill the gash — God, let our ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... tranquillity. She kept wandering to and fro, from the gate to the door, in a state of agitation which permitted no repose; and at length took up a permanent situation on one side of the wall, near the road: where, heedless of my expostulations and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her, she remained, calling at intervals, and then listening, and then crying outright. She beat Hareton, or any child, at a good passionate fit ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... and learn his first baby lessons without any meddlesome middleman; who is cradled in sweet sounds "from early morn to dewy eve," lulled to his morning nap by hum of crickets and bees, and to his night's slumber by the sighing of the wind, the plash of waves, or the ripple of a river. He is a part of the "shining web of creation," learning to spell out the universe letter by letter as he grows sweetly, serenely, into ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... 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 ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... girls in 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 ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... now overhung by mangrove thickets, now receding in plains dotted with gloomy clumps of gumtrees, as far as the eye, from our low position and by the imperfect light afforded, could reach. As we advanced, the measured plash of the oars frightened from their roosting places in the trees, a huge flock of screeching vampires, that disturbed for a time the serenity of the scene by their discordant notes; and a few reaches further up, noisy flights of our old friends, the whistling-ducks, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... plash of rain and whistle of wind, he heard outcries in the street. Running to the door he was met by Mrs. Joe ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... mair?—it 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 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; ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... broke the stillness, except the steady plash of the water falling into the fountain in the wide court, heard distinctly through the closed windows. The Baroness wondered if any one were awake except the old porter downstairs. She knew the house tolerably well. Only the Princess and her two unmarried daughters slept in the apartment ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the unwavering water needed slight tremors to teach it the tenderness of its calm; then my guide used his blade, and cut into glassiness. We crept noiselessly along by the lake-edge, within the shadows of the pines. With never a plash we slid. Rare drops fell from the cautious paddle and tinkled on the surface, overshot, not parted by, our imponderable passage. Sometimes from far within the forest would come sounds of rustling branches or crackling twigs. Somebody of life approaches with stealthy tread. Gentlier, even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... brilliant point of colour on the blue strait between the sister islands. Red and yellow flags and pennants flutter above the green deck; the clash of gongs and cymbals echoes across the water, and a weird chant accompanies the rhythmic plash of the short oars, as the brown rowers toss them high in air, and bring them down with a sharp splash. A splendid avenue of kanari-trees extends along the shore, the usual Dutch church symbolises the uncompromising grimness of Calvinistic creed, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... as an abbot: 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 it, was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... alluvial soil. It was a solitary, a melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... dashing prig, With my strummel faked in the newest twig, [17] Fake away! With my fawnied famms and my onions gay, [18] Fake away! My thimble of ridge and my driz kemesa, [19] All my togs were so niblike and plash. [20] Readily the queer screens I then could smash. [21] Fake away! But my nuttiest blowen one fine day, [22] Fake away! To the beaks did her fancy-man betray, [23] And thus was I bowled at last, And into the jug for a ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... slowly, half-afloat and half-ashore, was bordered by a fringe of silver. When at one moment a gentle breeze lifted the water into ripples, countless stars floated, down a white waterway from yonder argent moon. Not a house on the banks of the mere; not a sign of life; only the low plash of wavelets on the pebbles. Hark! What cry was that coming clear and shrill? It was the curlew. And when the night bird was gone she left a ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... departed. The lights were twinkling here and there all over the placid bay. It was still nearly an hour to dinner-time at the general's mess, and he wished to be alone to think over matters, to hear the soothing plash and murmur of the little waves, and Stuyvesant vowed in his wrath and vexation that Satan himself must be managing his affairs, for, over and above the longed-for melody of the rhythmic waters, he was hailed by the buzz-saw stridencies of Miss Perkins, whose first ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... efforts; of the wind roaring in the chimney; of the church-bells ringing in the distance; of the ever-increasing moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubber wheels of several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravel ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... 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. By that she could—she ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... 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 ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... 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
... have a great idea of our power," whispered Hollis, hopelessly. And then again there was a silence, the feeble plash of water, the steady tick of chronometers. Jackson, with bare arms crossed, leaned his shoulders against the bulkhead of the cabin. He was bending his head under the deck beam; his fair beard spread out magnificently over his ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... lived in the shadow of the great trees, happy when the piping of the birds was in his ears, and joying to listen to the plash and murmur of the brook that ran merrily beside his hut; or pausing 'twixt the strokes of his ponderous hammer to catch ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... 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 ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... The paddles plash, The wavelets dash, We see the summer lightning flash; While now and then, In marsh and fen Too muddy for the feet ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... dabbling and paddling in the wavelets, and digging up the ridges of yellow sand, which take the print of their pattering footsteps, nothing is more pleasant than to let the transparent stream of the quiet tide plash musically with its light and motion to your very feet; nothing more pleasant than to listen to its silken murmurs, and to watch it flow upwards with its beneficent coolness, and take possession of the shore. But it is ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... of the Mere. The break of shallow water at thy feet, Its plash among long weeds and grasses sere, And its weird sobbing,—hollow music meet For ears like thine; listen and take thy till, And dream on it by night ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... start. A rush of wind, a sudden plash of water were followed by the whizzing of an arrow through the air. He was close to the water. Softly peering through the reeds he saw, palpitating and stricken with fear, a snowy swan. The arrow had missed the stainless breast and it was unhurt. The wild creatures ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... 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 ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 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 descend; and, starting often at ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sweeps athwart in storm— They flash across the darkness of my brain, The many pleasant days, the moolit nights, The dewy dawnings and the amber eyes, When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I Were borne about the bay, or safely moor'd Beneath some low brow'd cavern, where the wave Plash'd sapping its worn ribs (the while without, And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine, And shook its earthly socket, for we heard, In rising and in falling with the tide, Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and creak), Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent; And mine, with love too ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... spring-tides, with heavy plash, From the cliffs invading, dash Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow, Till white and thundering down they go, Like the avalanche's snow, On the Alpine vales below; Thus at length, outbreathed and worn, Corinth's sons were downward ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... 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 its left arm, through its heart, down its right arm—and so ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... Hardly breathing, and bending low, the better to catch every sound that came, they listened with beating hearts until it ceased. Once they had detected the click of stones striking together as if moved by a human foot and twice caught the faint plash of a bush or limb of tree dropping into the water. Then the sounds ceased, and only the faint murmur of that slow-running stream disturbed ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... would stop; he would scramble about a little in the high places and doze in the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the mighty, but mouldering 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 to the heart the only strong ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... boat was passing with four or five young men and girls who sang in good time and tune. Only a song of the music-hall or of the nigger minstrels, but it sounded pleasantly with the plash of the oars. A fine sunset had begun to glow upon the river; its warmth gave a tone to Monica's ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... all delightful, and almost as good as a holiday. The city clerk, the jaded shopman, the weary milliner, the pessimistic dyspeptic, should each read the book. It will bring a suggestion of sea breezes, the plash of waves, and all the accessories of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... from the front which might have a menacing significance—a shout, a shot, or the footfall of one of his sergeants coming to apprise him of something worth knowing. From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the princess had sat down to dinner, she heard a strange noise—tap, tap—plash, plash—as if something was coming up the marble staircase: and soon afterwards there was a gentle knock at the door, and a little voice cried ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... long as it could keep its head and ears in the warmth and shelter, and never once attempted to creep in nearer; and so another hour passed, only broken by the low murmur of Dale's voice as he talked to the guide, and the plash and rush of water. For the dripping was drowned now by the enormous amount which fell, and this went on increasing till there was quite a heavy roar, as of ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... the darkness near Where the shadows clutch and cling, Above the plash of the bitter tear, A song and ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... by the dawn began to appear, the air of the March night became sharper, and in the distance the murmur and plash of the tide was heard. Then, standing heavy and dark against the clear pale eastern sky, there arose the dark mass of St. Ebba's monastery, the parent of Coldingham, standing on the very verge of the cliff ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... darkling fears and 'mid the battle-shock To screen me with huge might: Now he is lost in night And horror. Where again Shall gladness heal my pain? O were I where the waters hoary, Round Sunium's pine-clad promontory, Plash underneath the flowery upland height. Then holiest Athens soon would come in sight, And to Athena's self I might declare ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... Corinna[302] chanced that morn to make: 70 (Such was her wont, at early dawn to drop Her evening cates before his neighbour's shop,) Here fortuned Curll to slide; loud shout the band, And Bernard! Bernard! rings through all the Strand. Obscene with filth the miscreant lies bewray'd, Fallen in the plash his wickedness had laid: Then first (if poets aught of truth declare) The caitiff vaticide conceived a prayer: 'Hear, Jove! whose name my bards and I adore, As much at least as any god's, or more; 80 And ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... of blissful 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 ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... howled dismally, throwing down gusts of rain. It dripped and pattered off the skin-covering on to the boat and on to the rocks. Now and then a faint scream from high aloft declared the passage of some lonely seabird; and the ceaseless swash and plash of the sleepless sea filled out in my mind a picture of home-sick misery. It is no time, or at least the worst of all times, to reflect on one's woes in the night when just awakened from dreams: better turn over and go to sleep again. But I had not got that lesson quite so well learned ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the suspense had become intolerable and the two had already begun to exchange glances almost of despair, a plash was heard, and Asgeelo emerged far to the right. He struck out strongly toward the boat, which was at once rowed toward him. In a few minutes he was taken in. He did not ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the Cascine down to the Arno, where its yellow waters plash monotonously about a couple of stray willows. There I sit, and cast up my final accounts with existence. I let my entire life pass before me in review. On the whole, it is rather a wretched affair—a few joys, an endless ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... 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 ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... broader lanes, in between the high hummocks. White, snow-laden floes and lumps of ice float on the dark surface, looking like white marble on a black ground. Occasionally there is a larger dark-colored pool, where the wind gets a hold of the water and forms small waves that ripple and plash against the edge of the ice, the only signs of life in this desert tract. It is like an old friend, the sound of these playful wave-lets. And here, too, they eat away the floes and hollow out their edges. One could almost imagine one's self in ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... dreaming of his own, even when the sun stood in the zenith, and he was walking the poop, in the midst of a circle of his officers. Still, he could not refrain from glancing back at the past, that morning, as plash after plash was heard, and recalling the time when magna pars quorum FUIT. At this delectable instant, the ruddy face of a "young gentleman" appeared in his state-room door, and, first ascertaining that the eyes of his superior were actually ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... French gate, the men on guard, drawn up in line on each side, gazed on us as we passed at shoulder arms. We passed the outposts, and the drum ceased playing as we turned to the right. Nothing was heard but the plash of footsteps in the mud, for the ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... with her mamma, in being obliged to wear fine clothes, to learn music and dancing, "and other tiresome things," and never being free to run wild on the hills and heaths, wade in the ponds, and plash in the burns, like ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... Mr. Salter, if that was only all I had to trouble me! Oh, sir, work is occupation, but work harassed with care for others becomes unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now. At my desk I seem to see those low shores and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves between me and that indistinct boundary. I am ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the fresh, monotonous plash of the waves, when the tide served, was his favourite resort. He could stand still and look out over the expanse of ripples, or wander on, as he pleased, watching the ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... swell of the broad Atlantic was rolling its deep blue tide. The evening was perfectly calm, and at a little distance from the shore the surface of the sea was without a ripple. The only sound breaking the solemn stillness of the hour, was the heavy plash of the waves, as in minute peals they rolled in upon the pebbly beach, and brought back with them at each retreat, some of the larger and smoother stones, whose noise, as they fell back into old ocean's bed, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... they rowed in peace over a summer sea; then came the fog again and they laid on their oars that night. All around them dim islands seemed to float, scarcely discernible in the fog; sometimes from the top of each a point would show itself, as of a mighty hand, and they could hear an occasional plash and roar, as if this hand came downwards. Once they heard a cry, as if of sailors from another vessel. Then they strained their eyes to gaze into the fog, and a whole island seemed to be turning itself upside ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... moment more, and Queen and lady of honour had disappeared together, and De Launay was left alone. A little bird, swinging on a branch above his head, piped a few tender notes to the green leaves and the sunlit sky, but beyond this, and the measured plash of the fountain, no sound disturbed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... up, and I rushed fiercely at him. With the quickness of a cat he dodged me, spat in my face as I turned, and, with a horrible laugh, sprang headlong into the well. Down deeper and deeper sank the laugh—then it died away—then a faint plash—and all was silent. Rama Ragobah was gone! For fully ten minutes I stood dazed and irresolute and then returned mechanically to the house. I at first thought of informing the authorities of the whole affair, but, when I realised how ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... outwardly of such fair respectability that he attained an honour, unknown to Robert Burns, of acting as an elder of the kirk, was not always so chaste in his words as he might seem to be in his deeds; he took his plash as a poet, and not always in the clearest waters; besides, he had a terrible lash at his command, which he could wield with an effect at times that paid little respect to the bounds set in such matters by Christian charity, or even by social politeness. The consequence has been that much ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... thou with them—fancies all!— Thy hunting and thy fountain brink? What wouldst thou? By the city wall Canst hear our own brook plash and fall Downhill, if thou ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... he wanted to say: "Yes, in a minute I will tell you something that will make you split your sides with laughing." The little round window was open and a soft breeze was blowing on Pavel Ivanitch. There was a sound of voices, of the plash of oars in the water.... Just under the little window someone began droning in a high, unpleasant voice: no doubt ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... combinations, and transported from port to port, from town to town, from sea to sea. One can look nowhere without seeing this ceaseless activity progressing. Everywhere there is a whir of wheels, a plash of waves, a din of assembly, as the new ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... rosy as an abbot; 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 it, was a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... deal more than was there, and yet not seeing many of the items enumerated in her Murray. Rome, as Ralph said, confessed to the psychological moment. The herd of reechoing tourists had departed and most of the solemn places had relapsed into solemnity. The sky was a blaze of blue, and the plash of the fountains in their mossy niches had lost its chill and doubled its music. On the corners of the warm, bright streets one stumbled on bundles of flowers. Our friends had gone one afternoon—it was the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... 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 his bowels and so pulled together with inward pains, that he sometimes cried ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... in Venice—human voices calling in ceaseless interchange from shore to shore, resonant in the brilliant atmosphere, quarrels softened to melodies across the water, cries of the gondoliers telling of ceaseless motion, the constant lap and plash of the wavelets and the drip of the oars making a ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... indicated by the peculiar character of the sound emitted by the falling drops. Sometimes a soaking hiss proclaimed that they were passing by a pasture, then a patter would show that the rain fell upon some large-leafed root crop, then a paddling plash announced the naked arable, the low sound of the wind in their ears rising and falling ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... taken to the bank; Eve stood in the bow, awaiting her bearers, and watching the distant bays of the stream, each one of which seemed just on the verge of opening into an impossible midnight glory. She heard the plash of feet in the water, but did not heed it other than to fold her cloak more conveniently about her, her eye caught the contour of a vague approaching form, and then shadowy arms were reaching up to encircle her. She was bending, and just yielding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... up the intervals of its columns; but elsewhere the sun burns down and flashes everywhere. Mounted on the colonnade are masses of people leaning over, beside the colossal statues. Through all the heat is heard the constant plash of the two superb fountains, that wave to and fro their veils of white spray. At last the clock strikes. In the far balcony are seen the two great snowy peacock fans, and between them a figure clad in white, that rises from a golden chair, and spreads his great sleeves like wings as he raises ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... verandah opened on to a large and beautiful garden partially enclosed on two sides. As I lay in bed of a morning reading Prescott's 'History of Mexico,' or watching the brilliant humming birds as they darted from flower to flower, and listened to the gentle plash of the fountain, my cup of enjoyment and romance was ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... are fish in all parts of the island, that Knox says, not the running streams alone, but the reservoirs and ponds, "nay, every ditch and little plash of water but ankle deep hath fish in it."[1] But many of these reservoirs and tanks are, twice in each year, liable to be evaporated to dryness till the mud of the bottom is converted into dust, and the clay cleft by the heat into gaping apertures. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... upon seven o'clock, and night was at hand. Already the moon was showing her large, full face above the tree-tops by Chambord, and casting a silver streak athwart the stream. The plash of oars from the Marquis's boat was waxing indistinct despite the stillness, whilst by the eye the boat itself was no ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... supposed, or finance—the two chief motives of life. For himself, the thought of Diana's childhood between the pine woods and the sea gave him pleasure; it added another to the poetical and romantic ideas which she suggested. There came back on him the plash of the waves beneath the Portofino headland, the murmur of the pines, the fragrance of the underwood. He felt the kindred between all these, and her ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... suggestion, a light plash was heard close to the ship's side, and a voice said, in a hoarse whisper, "Heave us a rope, will ye. Look alive, now. Guess I'll go under in two minits if ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... shall haunt me wherever life reaches, Thy day-dreams of fancy, thy night's balmy sleep, The plash of thy waters along the smooth beaches, The shade of ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... where never a ray Of that self-same sun doth find its way Through the heaped-up houses' serried mass— Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng, And the clatter of wheels as they rush along— Or the plash of the rain, or the wind's hoarse cry, Or the busy tramp of the passer-by, Or the toll of the bell on the heavy air— Good ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... might of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by which the social body is fed, clothed, and housed. It had laid hold of his imagination in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer where roof or keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of the furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... The "plash-plash" of the Foam Flake's hoofs and the squeak and grind of buggy wheels died away along the invisible main road. Captain Sears stared at the ropes of rain laced diagonally across the lighted window ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... his hat, the boat pushed off, the oars fell in the water, and the galley glided down the creek with a velocity that soon rendered her but a shadow in the grey tide. In a few minutes I lost sight of her altogether; but I still distinguished the faint measured plash of the oars, and the feeble wail of the infant's voice float along the ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... in the wind Are tapping at the window-sash. A hawk is in the sky; his wings Slowly begin to plash. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... in crash, rash, gash, flash, clash, lash, slash, plash, trash, indicate something acting more nimbly and sharply. But ush, in crush, rush, gush, flush, blush, brush, hush, push, imply something as acting more obtusely and dully. Yet in both there is indicated a swift and sudden ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... with it by energy and occupation; but it was something even worse in the evening, in the dark, solitary library, where the very size of the room gave an additional sense of loneliness; and in the silence he could hear, through the closed shutters, the distant plash and surge of the tide,—a sound, of which, in former years, he had never been sensible. There, evening after evening, he sat,—his attention roaming from his employment to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 fountains is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... topaz fire of votive urns. He sees it fling from hill to hill, And still consumed, is burning still. Higher and higher leaps the flame, The smoke an ever-shifting frame. He sees a Spanish Castle old, With silver steps and paths of gold. From myrtle bowers comes the plash Of fountains, and the emerald flash Of parrots in the orange trees, Whose blossoms pasture humming bees. He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke Bears visions, that his master-stroke Is out of dirt and misery To light the fire of poesy. He sees the glory, yet he knows ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... scrambled accordingly, and 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
... all went into the woods above and behind our house, and sat down and wove wreaths of red and russet leaves, and dreamed and mused with a far-off sound of booming waves and plash of sea on smooth beach in the pine-trees about us. It was beautiful to see the serene gleam of Una's face, fleckered with sunlight; and Julian, with his coronet of curls, sitting quiet in the great peace. My husband, at full length on the carpet of withered pine, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... and would carry us in that direction. We still hoped to come within sound of the ship's gun, and kept straining our ears incessantly to hear the wished-for report. But no such sound ever came again, and we heard nothing except the plash of the waves and the crash of breaking ice. Thus all that day we rowed along, resting at intervals when exhausted, and then resuming our labors, until at length night came; and again to the snow and ice and waves was added the horror of great darkness. We ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... general, and Clement Rutherford soon learned to await her coming with impatience and to welcome her with delight. All his life long will he remember those summer days, when her voice and the low plash of the far-off ocean waves wove themselves together into music as she read, and when the blue splendors of her lustrous eyes lent a new meaning to the poet's story as it flowed in melodious verses from her lips. Then ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... basking in the balmy atmosphere, looking lazily at that bright, almost insupportable picture of blue sea under blue sky, there came the dip of oars, making music, and a sound of coolness with every plash of water. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 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 ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... crystal waters spanned By other marbles: founts may plash on stone, And fashionably-branched trees may stand As thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... last words of the conversation; but Ethel, leaning from her window to listen to the plash of the waves, suspected that the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over that revelation of the motives of the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cold and fleas and unutterable, nerve-dissolving fatigue. Not far off occasionally the rustle of clothes or the tinkle of an entrenching tool, as a sleeper turned over or the group sentry shifted arms on the parapet; and always in a lulling undertone the plash of rain on grass or wire, and the heavy breathing of tired men. For four years these nocturnal sounds of war had been familiar in the ears of Lawrence Hyde. He could hear them now, the river-murmur repeated them. And then as now he had taken young Stafford's head on his arm, the boy lying as ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde |
