"Plash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decke his fortune with his vertuous deedes: And therefore Tranio, for the time I studie, Vertue and that part of Philosophie Will I applie, that treats of happinesse, By vertue specially to be atchieu'd. Tell me thy minde, for I haue Pisa left, And am to Padua come, as he that leaues A shallow plash, to plunge him in the deepe, And with sacietie seekes to quench ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and had an air of old-time respectability. The dining-room, which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square courtyard where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of a little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with the rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a raised and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the house, busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while on all that ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... on the lake. Mabel readily assented, and the stranger quitted the house, while Fenwolf lingered to offer some attention to Mabel, which was so ill received that he was fain to hurry forth to the boathouse, where he embarked with his companion. As soon as the plash of oars announced their departure, Mabel went forth to watch them. The stranger, who was seated in the stern of the boat, for the first time fixed his large melancholy eyes full upon her, and did not withdraw his gaze till an angle of the lake hid ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hoped to find the wine-cellars, and presently descended, her candlestick in one hand, and the two great keys in the other. As she went down into the stone basement, which was built with the solidity of a dungeon, she heard the plash of the tide, and felt that she was now on a level with the river. Here she found herself again in a labyrinth of passages, with many doors standing ajar. At the end of one passage she came to a locked ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... sheltering covert of dark-green leaves, mingled with the breath of the snowy-petaled dogwood, and the blue violets that were bedded in the rich moss on the banks of the little stream. The brook itself went singing on its way as it wound through the darksome forest, and fell with a plash, and a murmur, over the huge stones that would have turned it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... a great 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 third ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the boats draw near and go by. The houses to the left hid them from her: but she leaned out, hearkening to the soft plash of oars, the creak of thole-pins, the girls' voices in hushed chorus practising the simple native harmonies they would lift aloud as they returned after sunrise. She recognised the tune, too; the old tune of "The ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 hard ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... of 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 ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the plash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... When we went away, she ordered a very large sow, big with young, to be taken down to the boat, and accompanied us thither herself. She had given directions to her people to carry me, as they had done when I came, but as I chose rather to walk, she took me by the arm, and whenever we came to a plash of water or dirt, she lifted me over with as little trouble as it would have cost me to have lifted over a child ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... and stolen back to the balcony that opened upon the Canal Grande from the vast upper salon, impelled by her longing for freedom and light. The ripple of the water to the plash of passing gondolas took on the note of distance and soothed her like a lullaby, as the charming maid yielded herself to the golden daydream—the soft breezes lifting the bright rings of hair that clustered about her dainty head, while the wonderful ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... stay-tackle falls were let go entirely, and all on board saw, with an exultation that words can scarcely describe, the important craft suspended directly over the sea. No music ever sounded more sweetly to the listeners than the first plash of the massive boat as it fell heavily upon the surface of the water. Its size, its roof, and its great strength gave it an appearance of security, that for the moment deceived them all; for, in contemplating the advantage they had so unexpectedly gained, they forgot the many obstacles that existed ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... 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 floating on the ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... 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 ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... minutes had elapsed, when the plash of another paddle was heard, and a second canoe made its appearance, carefully approaching that of the Huron. In it was seated an Indian boy, not more than twelve years of age, who handled it with a skill scarcely second to that of his ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... 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 broken by a shift of new tone. There is a fluctuation of pleasant ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... through the main part of the bedroom into the cabinet de toilette. She moved about in the cabinet de toilette thinking that the waltz out of The Rosenkavalier was divinely exciting. The delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of the shortening cigarette was in ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... stream of 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. I cannot conceive why and in what moment of feeble ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... feeding all day; flaring acridly across was a transitory reek of burnt lubricating oil, and the hint of a cigar so faint that it was gone before he could be sure of it. . . . The lumbering creak of the mill-wheel rose assertively above the drone and plash of the stream; a shiver of rain and a gentle sigh of wind in the top branches of the trees behind him were suddenly swallowed by the hoot of ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... touching the soul. Like the distant frog-concert and chirp of the cicada, the creak of the water- wheel and the stroke of hammers upon the anvil from afar, the murmur of the fountain, the sough of the wind and the plash of the wavelet, they occupy the sensorium with a soothing effect, forming a barbaric music full of sweetness ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... but up to the necks of the piers of Hammersmith Bridge, and the island at Chiswick was nearly submerged. Willows standing in lakes were recording the existence of towing-paths no longer able to speak for themselves, and the insolent plash of ripples over wharves that had always thought themselves above that sort of thing seemed to say:—"Thus far will I come, and a little farther for that matter." Father Thames never quite touched the landing of the boat-ladder, at the end of the garden at The Pigeons, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... with batches of cakes on their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds. The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified or obstinate bullock ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... 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, felt an almost ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... but she is hidden behind heavy masses of clouds —welcome clouds that shelter lovers' secrets. The fountains, whose silvery showers keep such sweet time to the murmurings of love, plash gently on, hushing the sound of lovers' voices; on the bosom of yonder marble-tinctured lake, two snow-white swans are floating silently; and, far amid groves of myrtle and olive, the nightingale warbles her notes of love. Not a step ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... to sleep that night by the murmuring plash of falling water, and the tinkling of our horses' bells from the forest behind our tent, I thought that nothing could be more delightful than ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 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 lay On ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... one of late twilight, when outlines lose their distinctness and sea and shore melt into one mass of uniform gray. There was no wind and the waves came in with a soft plash, but so near to the level of the road that it was evident, even to these strangers, that the tide was at its height and would ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... "I'll have none of your plash to-day; I tuck my skinful of good stiff stirabout that's worth a shipload of it. Drink it yourselves—I'm ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... spyglass turned full upon us a minute ago." We all four stepped from the parade upon the rocks, and approached the Delameres' party, who were seated on rugs and shawls spread upon the huge dry rocks overlooking the deep, clear water which lapped underneath with a gentle and regular plash and sucking sound. It was a brilliant day. Not a cloud was in the sky, and the blue-green seas lay basking in the sunshine. A brisk but gentle air had begun to crisp the top of the water, making it sparkle and bubble; and there was just ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... was addicted to a sort of 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 ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... boatman were now pulling easily, and the long skiff darted up to them faster and faster still. Jack watched their pursuers with a fascinated eye. There was not the faintest sound made, save for the regular plash of the rising and falling oars. They were so near that he could see the naked backs of the oarsmen glisten as they swung their bodies to and fro in the starshine. Nearer, nearer, came ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... he could have sat down and cried. Blackest night seemed to nestle under those matted boughs, and the sullen gleams of stagnant water—the plash of a frog jumping in—the wading birds that stalked about—told him what to expect if he went farther. At the same instant a gleam of copper sunset struck across the heavens on the tops of the evergreens, and the west ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Arthur with a hundred spears Rode far, till o'er the illimitable reed, And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle, The wide-winged sunset of the misty marsh Glared on a huge machicolated tower That stood with open doors, whereout was rolled A roar of riot, as from men secure Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ease Among their harlot-brides, an evil song. 'Lo there,' said ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... clanking of iron—a boat-chain; then stillness. Only the lights showed that the boat had been launched into the middle of the river and was floating down stream. Soon the murmur of voices again, and the plash of oars, and now these sounds were quite close to Ivanov. One of the men was teasing the girls, the latter laughed at first, then all at once they ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... nearly nude woman standing there, and some display of will power on the girl's part was called for before she approached nearer and stifled the first breath of apprehension. Then, delighted by the vague beauty of the scene, with senses soothed by the soft plash of the cascade, she decided to walk around the lake to the spot where Trenholme must have been hidden when he painted that astonishingly vivid picture. Its bold treatment and simplicity of note rendered it an easy subject to carry in the mind's eye, and Sylvia thought it would be rather nice ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... out from the shelter of the great portico to see the sheets of rain falling on the pavement. Silence reigned supreme but for the steady plash of the raindrops as they rattled on the pavements. To walk half a mile on such a night meant getting wet through; and Gurdon somewhat ruefully regarded his thin slippers and his light dust overcoat. Half a dozen times the ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... that, while a gloom as of death settled over the ocean, broken only by the plash of waves and the constant creaking of the yawl as it rolled and pitched in ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... 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; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must have heard of, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... drowsy and half-nodding in the bow, nodding with the more ease that it was still so dark and that Mr. Raleigh's back was toward her. Mrs. Laudersdale reclined in the stern. Mr. Raleigh once in a while sent them far along with a strong stroke, then only an occasional plash broke the charm of perfect stillness. Ever and anon they passed under the lee of some island, and the heavy air grew full of idle night-sweetness; the waning moon with all its sad and alien power hung low,—dun, malign, and distant, a coppery blotch on the rich darkness of heaven. They floated ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... heard the plash of oars quite near to the Fatma and deep voices of men chanting, almost muttering, a monotonous song that set the time for the oars. And although it rose up to him out of a golden world, it was like a ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Isoult. The horse below them shuddered, failed to come up to the rein, bowed his head to the jerked spur. Galors left off spurring, and slackened his rein. Though he would not look behind him he heard the plash of the ford, heard also Prosper's low, "Steady, mare, hold up!" Prosper was over; Galors halfway up the hill. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... in some little sandy bay or sparkling weir, it leaves an impression of melody on the soul like the echo of a sweet song just sweetly sung. High up the lanes run;—low down on the shoreline they come to an end,—and the wayfarer, pacing along at the summit of their devious windings, can hear the plash of the sea below him as he walks,—the little tender laughing plash if the winds are calm and the day is fair,—the angry thud and boom of the billows if a storm is rising. These bye-roads, of which there are so many along the Somersetshire coast, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... 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 ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... and the Nietzsches, wandered homelessly among the hills, while to-day we seek any feeble substitute for the cloister wherein to work at leisure in the free air of Nature, and hear the song of the birds and the plash of the ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... out the gloom there came The grinding keel—the tread of hurrying feet— Clashing of words, of steel, and all was dark— And all was still. But hark! a sound—the faint Breathing of one who swims with pain, the plash Of nerveless hands nearer and nearer comes, Yet ever fainter. What boots it now to have Escaped the vengeful swords that smote his kin? The waves engulf him and his bubbling cry. But unhoped help is near—a friendly word— A plunge, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... our starboard hand, by the edge of the rent, swept down a slope of turf, cropped by the gales, green as an English park; with a thread of a stream dropping to a small wilderness of ferns, and, through this, to plash upon a miniature beach of pink sand, on the edge of which the sea scarcely lapped. Sea-birds of many kinds circled and squawked overhead. Yet it was not our boat that ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had come to heighten its beauty, and it looked like some exquisite carving in the whitest marble, rising fairylike out of a sapphire sea. My landing in the evening was just as full of charm. I hurried to the Alameda, the public promenade, where the silence was unbroken, save by the plash of the waves breaking at the foot of the ramparts, or the whisper of the breeze amongst the palm-trees. I caught sight of mysterious couples sitting in the shadows of the alamos, black dresses and mantillas blending ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the roots of the larger plants and in many open spaces. The air was very soft and warm, moist and full of heavy odours as the still atmosphere of an island in southern seas, and the silence was broken only by the light plash of softly-falling water. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... will be among figures all the way to London, Miss Penelles," he said, "but I am quite sure my soul will be wandering on the shingle, and feeling the blowing winds, and hearing the plash of the waves, and singing ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... burning twigs on thatched 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
... Platz. "How uncertain life is. It seems that I did not come to Bleiberg carelessly in the way of amusement, but to work out a part of my destiny." He arrested his steps at the fountain and listened to the low, musical plash of the water, each drop of which fell with the light of a dazzling jewel. The cold stars shone from above. They were not farther away than she. A princess, a lonely and forlorn princess, hemmed ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... days when Mulai Abd er Rahman ruled at Fez and Marrakesh, and then Mediunah boasted quite a thriving connection with the coasts of Portugal and Spain. The little bay wherein one is accustomed to swim or plash about at noonday, then sheltered furtive sailing-boats from the sleepy eyes of Moorish authority, and a profitable smuggling connection was maintained with the Spanish villages between Algeciras and Tarifa Point. Beyond the rocky caverns, where patient countrymen still ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... violence to take away his breath. The danger of being swept before the furious tide of the driving element was also an accident not impossible. When the lull returned, no exertion of his faculties could catch a single sound foreign to the proper character of the scene, such as the plash of the water, and the creaking ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... air fanned his face and the sun smiled upon him, a loose piece of canvas of an awning near him flapped backwards and forwards with a monotonous musical sound, the plash and gurgle of the tumbling waves fell soothingly on his ears. Gradually sleep came over him gently, and enwrapped his strained, wearied body, his sore ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... the northern shore. Henry and Shif'less Sol, although they could not see it at first, knew it had started, because their keen ears caught the plash of the paddles. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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, the precision and variety of muscular effort wherever ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... dictionary are those which may in almost every instance be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the Transactions of the English Dialect Society, she has explained her methods ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... of the fruit-trees that grew in that garden shot their branches over the wall; and being mellow, they that found them did gather them up, and oft eat of them to their hurt. So Christiana's boys, as boys are apt to do, being pleased with the trees, and with the fruit that did hang thereon, did plash[58] them, and began to eat. Their mother did also chide them for so doing, but still the boys ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... made me known in palaces as a painter of beauty and magnificence; and I have been in demand, to do for wealth what wealth cannot do for itself,— namely, make it live a little, or, at least, spread as far, in fame, as the rings of a stone-plash ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... midnight had entered (Alatri lies at a good elevation) I awaited my companion in the dusk of dawn. Soon enough, I knew, we should both be roasted. This half-hour's shivering before sunrise in the square of Alatri, and listening to the plash of the fountain, is one of those memories of the town which are graven most clearly in my mind. I could point out, to-day, the very spot whereon ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... 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 appear ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... but shows us afresh how many quite incalculable but none the less clear sources of enjoyment for the infatuated artist, how many copious springs of our never-to-be-slighted "fun" for the reader and critic susceptible of contagion, may sound their incidental plash as soon as an artistic process begins to enjoy free development. Exquisite—in illustration of this—the mere interest and amusement of such at once "creative" and critical questions as how and where and why to make Miss Gostrey's false connexion carry itself, under a due high polish, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... 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 feed on ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... peer, As if from heroes, nay from gods she came; In the transparent sheen her foot she laves; The tender life-fire of her noble frame She cools in yielding crystal of the waves.— Of swiftly moving wings what sudden noise? What plash, what plunge the liquid glass destroys? The maidens fly, alarmed; alone, the queen, With calm composure gazes on the scene; With womanly and proud delight, she sees The prince of swans press fondly to her knees, Persistent, tame; familiar now he grows.— But suddenly up-floats a misty shroud, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... study, Virtue and that part of philosophy Will I apply that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev'd. Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left And am to Padua come as he that leaves A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep, And with satiety seeks to ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... ring through the forest. The wounded lift their weary heads, behold the advancing line, and weep tears of joy. The steamers cast off their fastenings. The great wheels plash the gurgling water. They move to the other side. The panting soldiers of the army of the Ohio rush on board. The steamer settles to the guards with her precious cargo of human life; recrosses the river in safety. The line of blue winds up ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... piazza in the evening, we saw the light from on board some vessel move slowly through the distant obscurity,—so slowly that we were only sensible of its progress by forgetting it and looking again. The plash and murmur of the waves around the island were soothingly audible. It was not unpleasantly cold, and Mr. Laighton, Mr. Thaxter and myself sat under the piazza till long after dark; the former at a little distance, occasionally smoking his pipe, and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The paddles plash, The wavelets dash, We see the summer lightning flash; While now and then, In marsh and fen Too muddy for the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... to 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 chest; he looked colossal, ineffectual, and mild. There was something ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... heard every plash of their oars, and every tone of their voices, as they rowed round his place of refuge. He was not on the islet, but in it. This was such an island as Swein, the sea-king of former days, took refuge in; and ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... the mist of that night vanish'd stars that were bright, Nor by tally nor price shall their worth be replaced; Ah, boded the morning of our brave unreturning, When it drifted the clouds in the rush of its blast. As we march'd on the hill, such the floods that distil, Turning dry bent to bog, and to plash-pools the heather, That friendly no more was the ridge of the moor, Nor free to our tread, and the ire of the weather Anon was inflamed by the lightning untamed, And the hail rush that storm'd from the mouth of the gun, Hard pelted the stranger, ere we measured our danger, And broadswords were ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... room opened to the level of the ground upon the terrace at the head of the garden. It was in the end of July, and everything was open, for the weather was warm. As I sat alone I heard the unceasing plash of the great fountains, and I fell to thinking of the Woman of the Water. I rose, and went out into the still night, and sat down upon a seat on the terrace, between two gigantic Italian flower-pots. ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... deserted, save for the presence of several copper-colored, blue- shirted individuals who were commencing the work of taking down and rolling up the silken awnings, accompanying their labors by a sort of monotonous chant that, mingling with the slow, gliding plash of the river, sounded as weird and mournful as the sough of the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... woman and a man; and as the boat dropped swiftly down on the ebb he had time to notice that both were heavily muffled about the face. This was all he could see, for in a moment they had passed into the gloom, and the next the angle of the house hid them from view; but he could still hear the plash of their oars above the sounds ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... out one by one, save those in the mill itself, for barges had come with loads of grain, and the mill was working all night. They could hear the steady "throb," "throb" of the great mill-wheel and the plash of the distant waters; but just before the new dawn these sounds gave way to a hum that played a muffled music in the trees. The men's footsteps never sounded at all, till they were close at hand; and then the mill slowly ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... was heard saving the plash of the little fountain, and the low soft ripple of the tiny waves that rocked themselves against ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... There was a plash and the-receding sound of voices. Jack darted through the screen of branches, but he could not distinguish the figures, for it was growing every instant dimmer twilight. He turned to Kate. She was ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... broad streets, and the mighty sturgeon was so abundant in the Delaware that one could hardly remain a minute on the wharf in early morn or ruddy evening without seeing some six-foot monster dart high in air, falling on his side with a plash. In the winter-time the river was allowed to freeze over, and then every schoolboy walked across to Camden and back, as if it had been a pilgrimage or religious duty, while meantime there was always a kind of Russian carnival on ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the passing beetle's hum The Elfin army's goblin drum To pigmy battle sound; And now, where dripping dew-drops plash On waving grass, their bucklers clash, And now their quivering lances flash, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... blade plash bream dress twine glade clash cream swim blind grade crash dream spend grind shade smash gleam speck spike trade trash steam fresh smile skate slash stream whelp while brisk drove blush cheap carve quilt grove flush peach farce filth stove slush teach parse ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... 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 ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... but the good oak planks being driven into place to make the vessel fit for the real voyage." Or, again, one night when they were in a rowboat on the lagoon in the park and all about them in the darkness was the plash of oars in the water, the screams of excited girls, and the sound of voices calling, he let the boat float in against the shores of a little island and crept along the boat to kneel, with his head in her lap and whisper, "It is not the love of a woman that ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Through its desolate, lime-coated spaces, his meagre belongings were scattered all too easily; but the new servants, their words and ways, not only kept his hands full, but gave strange food for thought. The silent evenings, timed by the plash of a frog in a pool, a cry from the river, or the sing-song of a "boy" improvising some endless ballad below-stairs; drowsy noons above the little courtyard, bare and peaceful as a jail; homesick moments at the window, when beyond the stunted ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... 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 ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and now and then a ghostly lighter with a large dark sail, like a warning arm, would start up very near them, pass on, and vanish. At this time of their watch, the water close to them would be often agitated by some impulsion given it from a distance. Often they believed this beat and plash to be the boat they lay in wait for, running in ashore; and again and again they would have started up, but for the immobility with which the informer, well used to the river, kept quiet ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of the hills stretched out before her eyes. The sides were so bold, the sweep of them so extended, the woods so luxuriantly rich, the scene so desolate in its loneliness and wildness, that she sat down to dream in a trance of enjoyment. Not a sound now but the plash of the water, the scream of a wild bird, and the rustle of leaves. Not a human creature in sight, or the trace of one. Wych might imagine the times when red Indians roved among those hillsides—the place looked like them; but rare were the white hunters that broke their solitudes. ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... sounds are on the mountain blast? Like bullet from the arbalast, Was it the hunted quarry past Right up Ben-ledi's side?— So near, so rapidly he dash'd, Yon lichen'd bough has scarcely plash'd Into the torrent's tide. Ay!—The good hound may bay beneath, The hunter wind his horn; He dared ye through the flooded Teith As a warrior in his scorn! Dash the red rowel in the steed, Spur, laggards, while ye may! St. Hubert's shaft to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... hoarse-throated cannon belch fiery breath, And hurl forth the murderous rain, Which dances along on its message of death, And sings o'er the dying and slain! Crash! Crash! Then a leap and a dash! Hand to hand—face to face, goes the fight; The bayonets plunge, and the red streams plash, And up goes a shout of delight— "The enemy runs!—Men flinch from their guns! On! Forward! For God and for Right! Advance!—Advance!—Men of England and France! Press forward, for Freedom and Right! On—On—On! Hurrah! the goal's won; See! the old colours flutter and dance, And proudly ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... we waded—years ago— After those water-lilies, till the plash, I know not how, surprised us; and you dared Neither advance nor turn back: so, we stood Laughing and crying until Gerard came— Once safe upon the turf, the loudest too, For once more reaching ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth canal among luxuriant plantations; the air was perfumed music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when the troops disembarked,—five hundred fine young men, the oldest ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... bottom of the pit, where the great drops of water fell plash. Many colliers were waiting their turns to go up, talking noisily. Morel gave ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... raised the carbine to his shoulder, took deliberate aim, and fired. Almost simultaneously with the report, the huge animal came tumbling down from the tree, and fell with a dull, dead plash upon the water. It was ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... 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
... lovely country, and we do not ask or care why they are gathered together. We have all had dreams of Elysian fields, "where falls not any rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," where all is rest and freedom, where music blends with the plash of fountains, and fruits ripen, and lovers dream away the days, and no one asks what went before or what follows after. The Golden Age, the haunt of fauns and nymphs: there never has been such a day, or such a land: it is a mood, a ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... at each other for a moment. They had passed through much together—danger, excitement, and now they were dabbling in sorrow. It would appear that this same sorrow runs like a river across the road of our life. Some of us find the ford and plash through the shallows—shallow ourselves—while others flounder into deep water. These are they who look right on to the greater events, and fail to note the trivial details of each little step. Paul was wading through the deep water, and this good friend of his was ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... as fly-fishing, so that every fish knows the lures, the fun is mainly over. In April, no doubt, something may still be done, and in the silver twilights of June, when as you drift on the still surface you hear the constant sweet plash of the rising trout, a few, and these good, may be taken. But the water wants re-stocking, and the burns in winter need watching, in the interests of spawning fish. It is nobody's interest, that I know of, to take trouble and incur expense; and free fishing, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... There is a runnel of water at the roadside, and in one place this water is collected in a round stone basin that looks immensely old; from this it trickles forth again with coolness and musical plash. Having reached this spot, we may as well pass over into Fowey by the ferry here instead of by that from Polruan. If we had already come from Fowey to Bodinnick we should find that the ferryman would carry us back without further payment; the outward fee included ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... swayed about on the water, lifting and falling gently as the waves went in shore. We were not a very long way from the lighthouse, and once we could see Mrs. Kew's big white apron as she stood in the doorway for a few minutes. There was no noise except the plash of the low-tide waves and the occasional flutter of a fish in the bottom of the dory. Kate and I always killed our fish at once by a rap on the head, for it certainly saved the poor creatures much discomfort, and ourselves as well, and it made it easier to take them off ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... kind, and here a bird And there a flower beguiled his way; And, cool, in summer noons, he heard The fountains plash and play. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fair and lovely Sultan's daughter in the twilight, - In the twilight by the fountain, Where the sparkling waters plash. ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... surface is tenderly rippled with gold and blue. And while the children play beside you, 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 a very different thing when there rises behind you a wall of frowning cliff, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... round—his head and forepart were over dry land—the three guns were pointed—the eyes of the three hunters were about to glance through the sights of their pieces, when all at once he was seen to rock and stagger,—and then roll over! With a loud plash, his vast body subsided into the water, sending great waves to every ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... clear relief the sharply cut features of monsieur. Up and down the silent stream drifted here and there a phantom boat, the gleam of its light following like a firefly. From some came no sound but the muffled plash of the oars. From others floated stray bits of song and laughter. Far up the stream I heard the distant whistle ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... sultry August evening. No breeze was stirring in the garden; no cool dews refreshed the parched and heated earth; yet from the languishing flowers rich sweets exhaled. The plash of a fountain fell pleasantly upon the ear, conveying in its sound a sense of freshness to the fervid air; while deep and drowsy murmurs hummed heavily beneath the trees, making the twilight slumberously musical. The westering sun, which filled the atmosphere with flame throughout the day, was ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... better spirits when he went out. He whistled as he went. The plash of the blue sea all along the shingle seemed to have a sort of laugh in it: he was in love with Penzance and all its beautiful neighborhood. Once again, he was saying to himself, he would spend a quiet and delightful afternoon with Wenna Rosewarne, even if that were to be the last. He would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... but the oars in the boat ahead continued their regular plash. It may be that Tregarthen had failed to discern the small sail astern of him in the gloom of the land. She lowered it quietly, stowed it, found and inserted the thole-pins, and shipped the paddles. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowing cinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatched to let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowls and the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plants as the briny ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... for all on board. It was on a moonlight night and we were going smoothly, consequently I was not ill, and Captain Totten proposed that we should sing the song. Everybody was on deck enjoying the delightful evening. Everything was still; only the puffing of the smokestack and the plash of the wheel were heard. We all clustered around mother and began ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson |
