"Billow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two. And constantly the boat drew nearer, as I said; they were almost within hail; Dan saw her hair streaming on the wind; he waited only for the long wave. On it came, that long wave,—oh! I can see it now!—plunging and rearing and swelling, a monstrous billow, sweeping and swooning and rocking in. Its hollows gaped with slippery darkness, it towered and sent the scuds before its trembling crest, breaking with a mighty rainbow as the sun burst forth, it fell in a white blindness everywhere, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... dancing, as if in mockery at their success! The structure, but a few hours past, as perfect as human intellect could devise, towering with its proud canvas over space, and bearing man to greet his fellow-man, over the surface of death!—dashing the billow from her stem, as if in scorn, while she pursued her trackless way—bearing tidings of peace and security, of war and devastation—tidings of joy or grief, affecting whole kingdoms and empires, as ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... shallow eye of Benton, and led him into false conclusions. It was not clear sailing for the reform. It was truly a period of stress and storm. Sometimes the reform was in a trough of the sea of public opinion, sometimes on the crest of a billow, and then again on the bosom of a giant ground swell. In Boston in this selfsame year which witnessed Benton's exultation over the fall of Abolitionism, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society was not able to obtain the use of hall or church for its annual meeting, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... are all, in their adult state, locomotive beings. They float freely and incessantly through the ocean, either impelled by their own efforts, or driven by storm and billow. They for the most part frequent the open seas, and shun the shore, their delicate frames being endangered by the perennial strife between land and water. Being designed for constant motion, for the navigation ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... reached. The survivors in addition to Cessair were, her father Bith, two other men, Fintan and Ladru, and fifty women. All of these perished on the hills except Fintan, who slept on the crest of a great billow, and lived to see Partholon, the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... fair land the year thereafter A muster called'st thou out; When thou ploughed'st the seas With sea-steeds full splendid. On darksome billow lay The dragons precious, and uneasy The host thereof saw off land laden were the ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... folds her in his arms, And each upheaving of his drowsy breast Is like a billow upon pleasure's sea, Wafting ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... 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
... 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 at last, after five months' passage, ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... cleft for me," Sung above a coffin lid; Underneath, all restfully, All life's joys and sorrows hid. Nevermore, O storm-tossed soul! Nevermore from wind or tide, Nevermore from billow's roll, Wilt thou need thyself to hide. Could the sightless, sunken eyes, Closed beneath the soft gray hair, Could the mute and stiffened lips Move again in pleading prayer, Still, aye still, the words would be,— "Let me hide myself ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... 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; next bowed the bearded barley; ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Ragusa continued to offer strong resistance in the faubourg of Halle to the repeated attacks of General Blucher; while Marshal Ney calmly saw the combined forces of General Woronzow, the Prussian corps under the orders of General Billow, and the Swedish army, break themselves to pieces ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the sky, The eighth was a tempest most drear, I saw the huge billow rise high! I saw ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... Gotham's wise men bowling o'er the billow, Or him, less wise, Who chose rough bramble-bushes for a ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... four o'clock in the morning they saw 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 to the withy-bands by the rowlocks ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... me!" cried Porthos, drawing himself up. It is a sad thing to have to confess, but a man's heart is like a restless billow; for, from that very moment, Porthos ceased to look at Madame Truechen in that touching manner which had so softened her heart. Planchet encouraged these ambitious leanings in the best way he could. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... full wholesome activity of the whole nature in its legitimate directions, that is the good that we are all longing for. The sea is not stagnant, though it be calm. There will be the slow heave of the calm billow, and the wavelets may sparkle in the sunlight, though they be still from all the winds that rave. Deep in every human heart, in yours and mine, brother, is this cry for rest and peace. Let us see to it that we do not mistranslate the meaning ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Skiff on the Ocean tost, Now high, now low, with each Billow born, With her Rudder broke, and her Anchor lost, Deserted and all forlorn. While thus I lie rolling and tossing all Night, That Polly lies sporting on Seas of Delight! Revenge, Revenge, Revenge, Shall appease my ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... 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 Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... forever,' but, 'O King, live as long as you like!'" and Mark Twain rose, his snow-white hair gleaming above that brilliant assembly, it seemed that a world was speaking out in a voice of applause and welcome. With a great tumult the throng rose, a billow of life, the white handkerchiefs flying foam-like on its crest. Those who had gathered there realized that it was a mighty moment, not only in his life but in theirs. They were there to see this supreme embodiment ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... headed straight for Ascalon it dropped out of sight, and one unused to the trend of things might wonder if it had gone off on another line. Presently it would appear again, laboring up out of a dip, rise the intervening billow of land, small as a toy that one could hold in the hand, and sink out of sight again. This way it approached Ascalon, now promising, now denying, drawing into ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the billow Now the day is done Resting on her rocky pillow Sits and looks across the billow Toward ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... few days later and lift the mole again. Underneath, in a pool of sanies, is a surging mass of swarming sterns and pointed heads, which emerge, wriggle and dive in again. It suggests a seething billow. It turns one's stomach. It is horrible, most horrible. Let us steel ourselves against the sight: it will be ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... pleasure full many a measure; It has thrilled with love's red wine; It has hope and health, and youth's rare wealth— Oh rich is this heart of mine. Yet it is not glad—it is wild and mad Like a billow before it breaks; And its ceaseless pain is worse than vain, Since it knows not ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... face of Ankarstrom, who was close behind him. Then a burning, rending pain took him in his side, and he grew sick and dizzy. The uproar of voices became muffled; the lights were merged into a luminous billow that swelled and shrank and ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... we moved on toward the plain, the sound of low chanting began to swell from the crowd. The strain gained in distinctness; power gathered on it; passion grew in it; prayer ascended from it. I could not help being moved by this billow of sweet sound. The forms and faces of the people melted together before my eyes; their outlines seemed to quiver in the flood of song; it was as if their manifold personalities blurred in the unity of their feeling; ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... ne're shooke our Battlements: If it hath ruffiand so vpon the Sea, What ribbes of Oake, when Mountaines melt on them, Can hold the Morties. What shall we heare of this? 2 A Segregation of the Turkish Fleet: For do but stand vpon the Foaming Shore, The chidden Billow seemes to pelt the Clowds, The winde-shak'd-Surge, with high & monstrous Maine Seemes to cast water on the burning Beare, And quench the Guards of th' euer-fixed Pole: I neuer did like mollestation view On ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... watched the skipper scramble aboard again onto the submerged decks, and then vanish altogether in a great billow. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... "the waves ran mountain high," which means from twenty to forty feet; perhaps, on this occasion, twenty-five feet from the trough of the sea to the crest of the billow. Even this is a great height to be tossed up and down on the water; and to the boys of the Young America the effect was grand, if not terrific. The deck was constantly flooded with water; additional life-lines had been stretched across ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... more billow on the sea of graves; One joyaunt voice the fewer in life's throng; One hand the less to help the world along; One Hero more 'mongst earth's ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... quite out of sight. The country about him was rolling, and as the wind waved the tall grass before his eyes, it was as if he were looking upon a great gray-green sea, and the ravine doubtless lay between the billow-like swells of land that spread out in vast ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... of wind whirled it round with violence, and a man was struck down from the cross-trees into the sea, which was working like yeast below. In a short time he emerged; I saw his head on the crest of a billow, and instantly recognised in the unfortunate man the sailor who a few moments before had related his dream. I shall never forget the look of agony he cast whilst the steamer hurried past him. The alarm was given, and everything was ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... a fierce scream, and sprang to the door. But what noise was that which all at once drew nigh; which suddenly, like a wild billow, came roaring on, and filled the anterooms and the halls? What were these affrighted, shrieking voices calling? What were they screaming to the queen, and the physicians, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... banked in haze, with a little rain-swept half-circle under our very eyes, churned and lashed into one tossing stretch of foam. So heavy was the wind upon the waves that little sea could rise, for the crest of each billow was torn shrieking from it, and lashed broadcast over the bay. Clouds, wind, sea, all were rushing to the west, and there, looking down at this mad jumble of elements, I waited on day after day, my sole companion a white, silent woman, with terror in her eyes, her forehead ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... behold the surf Lit by the sun into gold, Curl and glitter and gleam, In a ring-like billow rolled, But I think of another ring, A simple, delicate band, That in the night of our troth I placed ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... casement She looks upon the sea; Thank God that the sight She saw that night So rare a sight should be! Hemmed in by many a billow With mad and foaming lip, A mile from shore, Or hardly more, She ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... weather, 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 ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... when they had safely passed O'er many a land and billow, Before a grave they stopped at last, Beneath a weeping willow: The moon upon the humble mound Her softest light was flinging; Sad ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... streamers seem'd the flood to fire: The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd, Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire. With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... the foaming lines of surf. Presently they were in the welter of white. Once when the little craft went completely out of sight behind a monster swell, Loll, watching from the cabin top, shouted in alarm, but yelled again in delight as it rose high on the same billow. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... eagre, bore, swell, billow, breaker; ripple; whitecap; signal, flourish; swelling, excitement, tide. Associated Words: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the English borders outnumbered the colonists perhaps ten to one. If the Spanish and the French had succeeded in the conspiracy to unite on their side all the tribes, a red billow of tomahawk wielders would have engulfed and extinguished the English settlements. The French, it is true, made allies of the Shawanoes, the Delawares, the Choctaws, and a strong faction of the Creeks; and they finally ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... hundred shotte of great Artillerie, besides many assaults and entries; and that himselfe and the shippe must needes be possessed by the enemy, who were now all cast in a ring round about him (The Reuenge not able to moue one way or the other, but as she was moued with the waues and billow of the sea) commanded the Master gunner, whom hee knew to be a most resolute man, to split and sinke the shippe; that thereby nothing might remaine of glory or victory to the Spaniards: seeing in so many houres fight, and with so ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... put into language. The wailings of a dying race call loudly for our zeal. The groans of the lost gather strength as they ascend the pit. The voice of heaven, from angels, saints, and God, urge us onward in the discharge of duty. Oh, the wreck is on the billow; hasten with the means of safety. The plague-spot is in the camp; offer the incense of atonement. And let all your efforts be put forth in faith, and under a deep impression of the truth of Cecil's memorable words: "Faith is the master-spring ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... not pretend that such emotions filled the breasts of all the twenty passengers on deck that day. One man was a little seasick, and after every great rushing plunge of the steamer from a billow summit into a sea valley he vented his irritation by wishing that he had there some of the poets that—here he paused and gasped as the ship balanced itself on another crest preparatory to another shoot down the flank of a swell, while the screw, thrown clean out of the water, rattled wildly ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... [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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... Somme area the German front was held by the right wing of the Second Army, once Von Billow's, but now commanded by Otto von Below a brother of Fritz von Below commanding the Eighth Army in the east. The area of Von Below's army in the Somme region began south of Monchy, while the Sixth Army under the Crown ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... 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, of ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... wonderful about standing rye, when one is close enough to see the individual stalks. They are so tall and slim that you cannot understand why the lightest wind does not lay them flat. Yet all day long they sway and ripple and billow in the summer wind, and unless the heavy, driving storm comes the ranks remain unbroken to the last and face the sickle in golden ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... on a hill. And that hill was Bleakridge, the summit of the little billow of land between Bursley and Hanbridge. Trafalgar Road passed over the crest of the billow. Bleakridge was certainly not more than a hundred feet higher than Bursley; yet people were now talking a lot about the advantages of living 'up' ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of his house, Nimbus, his wife, and two men whom he had employed were engaged in cutting the tobacco which waved—crinkled and rank, with light ygjlowish spots showing here and there upon the great leaves—a billow of green in the autumn wind. The new-comers halted and watched the process for a moment as they rode up to the barn, while the sheriff explained ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... and praised the tone and language. But when Bourqueney began to ask what he had to say to the fond, he only talked of the practical difficulties, and ended without saying anything the least promising or satisfactory, though nothing decidedly the reverse. Bourqueney had previously been with Billow, who is just come back, and who desires no better on the part of his Government than to join in any conciliatory measure we may adopt; and Esterhazy, who is expected every hour, will, he doubts not, be equally well disposed. But although such is the disposition both of Austria and Prussia, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... between the receded tide and the road, and all along huge islets of somber stone defended themselves as best they could against the attack of the surf. Signs of surrender showed in some, caverns and arches cut by the constant hammer of swell and billow. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Edward Marvel, closing his eyes, and letting his thoughts go, swift-winged, across the billow sea. "Shall I never look on your sweet face again? Never feel your light arms about my neck, or your breath warm on my cheek? Oh, that I had never left you! Heaven give thee strength to ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... without definite color. But suddenly, wonderful enough, there came a breeze, a brisk spurt out of the north. The bunting caught it, twisted upon itself, tumbled, writhed, then suddenly shook itself free, and in a single long billow rolled out into the Stars and Stripes of ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green, The moon o'er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... a crash—and the first cable snapped like a pistol shot. The ship rebounded; then drove before the back-wash of the angry sea. With no fate possible but the wall of rocks ahead, the terrorized crew began heaving the dead overboard in the moonlight; but another roaring billow smashed the St. Peter squarely broadside. The second hawser ripped back with the whistling rebound of a whip-lash, and Ofzyn was in the very act of dropping the third and last anchor, when straight as a bullet to the mark, as if hag-ridden by ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... sight. Of a sudden, a mass of Cuirassiers rushed forth from the invaders' ranks, flung itself uphill, and girdled the grim earthwork with a stream of flashing steel There, for a brief space, it was stayed by the tough Muscovite lines, until another billow of horsemen, marshalled by Grouchy and Chastel, swept all before it, took the redoubt on its weak reverse, and overwhelmed its devoted defenders.[266] In vain did the Russian cavalry seek to save the day: Murat's ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... evening, when the dusk was just beginning to smoothe the break of billow and to blunt the edge of rock, young Dan Tugwell swung his axe upon his shoulder, with the flag basket hanging from it in which his food had been, and in a rather crusty state of mind set forth upon his long walk home to Springhaven. As Harry Shanks ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 of his ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... the sea, with the forces of the tides and winds, and the sunlight gleaming on the white crests of the waves. They speak to thoughts lurking in the mind; they float between life and death as with a billow on either hand; their anchors go down to the roots of existence. This is real work, real labour of man, to draw forth food from the deep as the plough draws it from the earth. It is in utter contrast to the artificial ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... means: "Answering spake unto her great glittering-helmeted Hector;" or tout simplement, 'Hector answered.' And hardly can anyone open his lips, but it must be brought in with some variation of that sea-riding billow, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... men gash themselves and leap from precipices into the sea. To unaccustomed eyes the first sight of passion is always terrifying and is usually repellent. One must learn to adventure the big wave, the great hissing, towering billow that conceals behind its menace the wild ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... yell and rave; They had no power above the wave, But they heaved the billow before the prow, And they dashed the surge against her side, And they struck her keel with jerk and blow, Till the gunwale bent to the rocking tide. She wimpled about in the pale moonbeam, Like a feather that floats on a wind tossed-stream; And momently athwart her track ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... comparison can be made between the two evils. We hear sometimes of dreadful calamities at sea, where entire families are swept away; where, as on the 'Austria,' the only alternative is the mode of death, whether it shall be on the burning ship or beneath the cold, dark billow. What experience can be more awful, in the life of any man, than that which compelled this father to throw child after child into the sea, not with any hope of rescue, but merely to prolong for a few moments a life that could no longer be endured ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... curled like the fantastic edge of a surf wave, was flecked with a faint play of rose and cream and silver, that melted imperceptibly into the moonlit sea. When she turned the shell over she found that she could not see its heart. The blue-green side of the shell curled under like a smooth billow, and then broke into a world of caves, and caves within caves, whose final secret she could not discover. But within and within the color grew deeper and deeper, bottomless blues and unfathomable greens, shot with such gleams of light as made her heart throb, for they were like the gleams ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... breastworks, with strong, loose ropes attached, so that those who clung to this refuge might support themselves with comparative safety, or rather have a chance for life, when our "floating grave" should hang suspended perpendicularly on the steep side of a mountain-billow, or ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... stunned. {268} Recovering again just in time, I saw another wave send the dingey once more on board with a crash, and splinters flew up, so we thought she was smashed, but it was the jigger-boom that was broken by the collision. The very next billow broke the dingey's painter of strong canoe rope, but much worn. Away floated the tiny cockleshell, and it was very soon hid in the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... walking stick or an umbrella, or your finger, if nothing better is to be had, write your name, or draw a hideous spook on the wet sand. You have to be quick about it, too; for just as you are putting the finishing touches to the work, another great billow is sure to come tearing at you, with a wide, deep hollow of emerald green, and foaming crest, looking like molten silver in the moonlight. Crash! it falls on the beach; and a long rush of foam slides up the sand as you scamper out of reach, not always without a wet ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... leddy, I mean! There was naething intill 't but a pennyworth o' blastin' pooder. It wadna blaw the froth aff o' the tap o' a jaw (billow)." ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... mine. The saffron waters of the Salmon shot upward until they topped the main rampart, and there separated into a cloud of spray which rained down in a deluge. Out from the fallen mass rushed a billow which gushed across the channel, thrashed against the high bank, then inundated it until the alder thickets on its crest whipped their tips madly. A giant charge of fragments of every size flew far out across the flats or lashed the waters to ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... its motion. Slowly o'er yon blue coast Onward she's treading, 'Till its dark line is lost, 'Neath her veil spreading. The bark on the rippling deep Hath found a pillow, And the pale moonbeams sleep On the green billow. Bound by her emerald zone Venice is lying, And round her marble crown Night winds are sighing. From the high lattice now Bright eyes are gleaming, That seem on night's dark brow Brighter stars beaming. Now o'er the bright lagune ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... a boat:— There was once a boat on a billow: Lightly she rocked to her port remote, And the foam was white in her wake like snow, And her frail mast bowed when the breeze would blow, And bent like a wand ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... The glad earth and the sea; And every wind and billow fleet, Bears on the jubilee. Where Hebrew bard hath sung, Or Hebrew seer hath trod, Each holy spot has found a tongue; "Let glory ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... raving about, in hopeless confusion; now letting it sink in the hollow of the waves, and lifting above it cold glittering walls of water, that becalmed it as in a sheltered vale, while the hurricane roaring above, flung arches of writhing waters across from billow to billow overhead, and threatened to close, as in a transparent tomb, boat and boy. At length, when the boat rose once more, unwilling, to the awful ridge, jagged and white, a yet fiercer blast tore it from the top of the wave. The dreamer found himself choking ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... with His hand upon the tiller, Someone Whom he believes to have supreme power in the last resort over the waves, and Who he knows, at exactly the right moment when it is best for him, will say the word before which every billow and every storm sinks to ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... increased strength, upon Berlin; he himself hastened to Macdonald's beaten troops in Silesia, and rallied them for a new assault upon Bluecher. All was in vain. Ney, advancing on Berlin, was met by the Prussian general Billow at Dennewitz, and totally routed (Sept. 6): Bluecher, finding that Napoleon himself was before him, skilfully avoided battle, and forced his adversary to waste in fruitless marches the brief interval which he had ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... phosphoric on the billow, Or hermit ray of evening sky, Like ripplings round a weeping willow Are tears ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... its underjets and it shouldered heavily upward, just missing the jagged crest. A gout of fire forward, another, and it went into a long flat glide, following the fall of a foothill to the plain beyond. It held course and reduced speed, letting the ground billow up to it rather than descending. There was a moment of almost-flight, almost-sliding, and then a rush of dust and smoke which over-took and passed them. When it cleared, they were part of the plain, ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... throat. A sense of the decent formalities of the occasion impelled him to make a hasty catch at his cap. As he removed it, an impish windgust snatched it away from his nerveless grasp and presented it to a large and hungry billow, which straightway swallowed it and retired with a hiss of ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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
... grave, in the first tremulous sensation of the beauty of our being, in the most glorious perception of the lightning of our life; there, indeed, our expatiation of spirit, when it meets the pulse of outward sound and joy, the voice of bird and breeze and billow, does demand some power of liberty, some space for its going forth into the morning, some freedom of intercourse with the lovely and limitless ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... the clinging billow's clasp, From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather, The British oak with rooted grasp Her slender handful holds together;— With cliffs of white and bowers of green, And Ocean narrowing to caress her, And hills and threaded streams between,— ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... daybreak a speck was seen in the horizon; now it is visible above the hollow wave, now curtained from our sight by the swelling billow: we approach nearer; the speck divides, and two spots ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... under close-reefed topsails. She was not too heavily laden; and, being a good sea-boat, she rose easily on the lift of the waves, almost skimming the surface like one of Mother Carey's chickens, and jumping, as it were, from billow to billow as the wind ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... A mighty billow flings its cloud of foam over the faces of Claude and the shrinking girl by his side, and blinds them with salt spray. But high as the tide is, the Chair is still above its reach, and although the wave may sprinkle them, it cannot swallow them up. Only they are deafened as well as blinded, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue, Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave, Which draws the diver to the crimson cave. Such was this daughter of the southern seas, Herself a billow in her energies, To bear the bark of others' happiness. Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less: Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... standing on for twelve hours longer, nothing should turn up to improve the present aspect of affairs. It was now eleven o'clock; P. M. Fitz and Sigurdr went to bed, while I remained on deck to see what the night might bring forth. It blew great guns, and the cold was perfectly intolerable; billow upon billow of black fog came sweeping down between the sea and sky, as if it were going to swallow up the whole universe; while the midnight sun—now completely blotted out—now faintly struggling through the ragged breaches of the mist—threw ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... as he again fell prostrate on the wet sail. A huge billow broke over the side of the boat, and deluged him with brine. He did not heed it, having again relapsed into his former ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... in Wiesbaden. On the 5th June Bulow conducts the first concert there, at which Bronsart's beautiful and valuable "Fruhlings-Fantasie," Billow's music to Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," and my "Faust Symphony" will be performed. Bulow kindly plays the piano the same evening, and has chosen Tschaikowsky's Concerto. Besides this his favorite pupil Schwarz produces several "Etudes transcendantes." [By Liszt] ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... as 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 moved ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... understands and sympathises With human passion. When the restless sea Turns in its futile search for peace, and rises To plead and to pursue, it pleads for me. And with each desperate billow's anguished fretting. Your heart must tell you, ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 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
... inundation divided itself into separate wavelets, the last lagging behind, crested by a foaming parasol, which hid all details, except a general white muslin filminess. But Terry and I had not much chance to observe the third billow. Our attention was caught by the first glittering rush of pink and ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... when it mirrors most Whate'er is grand or beautiful above; The billow which would woo the flowery coast Dies in the first expression of its love; And could the bard consign to living breath Feelings too deep for thought, the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... poet's billow swells! The God! the God! his boast: A boast how vain! what wrecks abound! Dead bards ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... 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 ordinary ebb ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... was upon me before I had thought to execute these instructions, I straightened myself out rigidly, and lo! I shot in like a torpedo on the very top of the billow, holding the point of the board up, yelling like a Comanche Indian. So fast, so straight did I go, that it was all I could do to swerve in the shallow water and not be hurled ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... down when there was a sudden flare as though the sun had risen, and I saw still a few heads bobbing and a few arms waving frantically around me. At the same instant a terrific detonation split the ears; and when I rose on the next bald billow, where the ship lay burning a few seconds before, there remained but a red-hot spine that hissed and dwindled for another minute, and then left a blackness through which every star shone with ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... busy islands and over the broad deeps and out of the day and into the night, and then two little orphans cried themselves to sleep with their arms about each other's necks. After all, it was not much like my picture of the great world, this lonely sea, this plunging up from billow on to billow, this burrowing down in the heart of green-gloomed hollows, this rocking and creaking and straining, this buoyant bounding over the crests,—yet the freedom, the monotony, the wild career of the winds fired me; it set my blood a-tingle; I liked it. And then I thought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... horrible spasm seized the girl, and brought her to a sitting posture; again her hand clutched Thyrsis' with a grip like death, and again the veins on her forehead leaped out. Like the surging of an ocean billow, it seemed to sweep over her; and then suddenly she screamed, and sank back ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... her, half buried in a grey-green mountain of foam and flying spray that left her spouting cascades of water from her scuppers; one moment, as she rose, heaving her fore-foot clean out of the water, showing the glint of the copper on her bottom; the next, plunging wildly down, till some mighty billow, roaring aloft between the vessels, hid each from the other's ken as effectually as if the ocean ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... whose 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 ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... that it was noon, Ivra's steps grew slower and slower, dragged and dragged, until at last she stood still in a billow of leaves. ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... the future. And because you have delayed the work of centuries for a few days, you think you have shattered the hourglass of Eternity. There is much pride in this grief, Lelia! But God will make this billow of stormy centuries, that for him are but a drop in the ocean, float by. The devouring hydra will perish for lack of food; and from its world-covering corpse a new race will issue, stronger and more patient than ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... back outside again before it could be identified. The dog sunfished and landed on all four. Then the thing went off with a dull pouf! outside. There was a gentle flash of quick light that was smothered by a billow of smoke. Buregarde leaped into the cloud and disappeared. There was a hoarse shriek and the mad scrabble of dog-claws on the hard floor, the sound of a heavy thud, and the angry snarl of a dog with ...
— History Repeats • George Oliver Smith
... life-buoy, moved close to the girl's side, and looking anxiously out ahead saw a faint line of foam in the thick darkness which had succeeded the explosion. Already the distant roar of the billow was heard, proving that it had ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Grande Rue, is simply a continuation of the national 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 promontory, you can obtain ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... whole Cathedral was glowing with a reddish yellow light. This billow of candles which crossed it illuminated the lower arches of the side-aisles, the depth of the chapels, and glittered upon the glass of some shrine or upon the gold of some tabernacle. The rays even ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... by the spirit of ruth. Ere Spring returns, far Canadian homesteads will house their contingents of "Nobody's Boys." Let them take with them kind thoughts of Old England, and memories sweet of its rare rural joys. Let them "camp out" once again, by the ocean, and plunge in the billow, and rove on the sands; Know the true British brine-whiff by experience. Help, British Public, their friends' kindly hands. Good is the work, and the fruit of it excellent; giving poor wastrels a fair ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... in drops of gladness swims. I have bathed thee with the pleasant myrrh; Thy locks are dripping balm; Thou shalt not wander hence to-night, I'll stay thee with my kisses. To-night the roaring brine Will rend thy golden tresses; The ocean with the morrow light Will be both blue and calm; And the billow will embrace thee with a ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... seem to hear him. He was stretching his gaze into the dim south up the river, where leaden hills rolled billow upon billow, engarnitured with their sad gray sage. Whatever his thoughts were, they bound him in a spell which the creaking of Taterleg's saddle, as he shifted in ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... Ever the heavy billow rears All its sea-length in green, hushed wall; But totters as the shore it nears, Foams to its fall; Where was its mark? on what vain quest Rose that great water ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... himself on his face, coughed out the smoke he had swallowed, and caught one refreshing gasp of sweet air blowing up the tunnel. Then the fresh air was driven back by the huge billow of smoke, and the heavy clouds settled about Jack. He could not have moved now had he wished. He was the prey of the thick suffocating smoke, and a swift merciful unconsciousness fell upon him and put an end to the agonies he ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... peep'd frae behint the dark billow, The slow sinking moon half illumined the scene; As I lifted my head frae my care-haunted pillow, An' wander'd to muse on the days that were gane. Sweet hope seem'd to smile o'er ideas romantic, An' gay were the dreams that my soul would beguile; But my eyes fill'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... in front of the island, and in the opposite direction from the other fire, another great billow of smoke arose spirally into the air. The people and animals who had been fleeing toward the creek, which they thought contained water, but which was dry, all turned and came running toward the island grove. Even the birds ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... and a most skilful physician, was standing by the sea-side, his servants brought to him a chest, which they said the sea-waves had thrown on the land. 'I never saw,' said one of them, 'so huge a billow as cast it on our shore.' Cerimon ordered the chest to be conveyed to his own house and when it was opened he beheld with wonder the body of a young and lovely lady; and the sweet-smelling spices and rich casket of jewels made him conclude it was some great ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 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 of the watch, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... situation, "The Pot," which he looked upon as one of the best things he had written, was lost to him. In despair, casting about frantically among the magazines, he had sent it to The Billow, a society weekly in San Francisco. His chief reason for submitting it to that publication was that, having only to travel across the bay from Oakland, a quick decision could be reached. Two weeks later he was overjoyed to see, in the latest number on the news-stand, his story ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... savage beasts, nor Phoebus, dread With deadly bow. Alcides too shall be my theme, And Leda's twins, for horses be, He famed for boxing; soon as gleam Their stars at sea, The lash'd spray trickles from the steep, The wind sinks down, the storm-cloud flies, The threatening billow on the deep Obedient lies. Shall now Quirinus take his turn, Or quiet Numa, or the state Proud Tarquin held, or Cato stern, By death made great? Ay, Regulus and the Scaurian name, And Paullus, who at Cannae gave His glorious soul, fair record ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... went the brave youths and soon saw the shores of the Goths, their homeland. Beowulf and his men brought the ship high up on the shore lest the billow's force might wreck it. Then Beowulf ordered them to carry the noble gifts of Hrothgar. Near the sea-wall was the home of Hygelac. The bright sun, the candle of the world, was shining when the brave Beowulf and his men ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... which are the scanty remains of the almost mythical Etruscan city of Veii, the Troy of Italy. The view in this direction is bounded by the advanced guard of the Sabine range, the blue peak of Soracte looking, as Lord Byron graphically says, like the crest of a billow about to break. In front, at your feet, is the city, broken up into the most picturesque masses by the irregularity of the ground; here and there a brighter light glistening on some stately campanile or cupola, and flashing back from ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... sorry," he said gently. He knew himself this day the glories and the pangs of love. He was sunk ocean-deep one moment in the sense of his unworthiness, the next he knocked his head against the stars on the soaring billow of his pride. He could not but feel for Stella, who had passed through the same furnace. He could not but grieve that the wondrous book of which he was racing through the first pages had been closed for her by him. Might she not open it again, some time, with ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... at this instant swept past them, their frail vessel shook in every timber, and, mounting on a sweeping wave that came howling along, was sent forward with frightful impetuosity to a great distance; when, as if the angry billow disdained its weight, it was precipitated into a gulf of foam which dashed above the sunken rocks whose points received it. "Oh, Beatrix!" exclaimed the young fisherman; "it is all over; we shall meet no more; our fate has overtaken ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... horrors is not akin to them and was never meant to be. Rather should their footsteps lead them where the bobolink sings as he circles over a green meadow, and the blue water lilies stoop to kiss the brook that ripples through it; or where the fields of grain bend and billow in the summer breeze; or the old mill-wheel splashes, while the white flowers in the pond above smile in the sunlight. If the patient reader will but follow their lives a little further, only peace and happiness and all the gentle voices of nature ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... Why now blow winde, swell Billow, And swimme Barke: The Storme is vp, and all is ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... went on deck to have some fresh air. It was icy cold, and as I walked up and down I met a lady dressed in black with a sad resigned face. The sea looked gloomy and colourless, and there were no waves. Suddenly a wild billow dashed so violently against the ship that we were both thrown down. I immediately clutched hold of the leg of one of the benches, but the unfortunate lady was flung forward. Springing to my feet with a bound, I was just in time to seize hold of the skirt of her dress, and with the help of my maid ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt |
