"Purling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alone under the clouds of night, and no sound was audible but that of the purling tributaries of the Stour, he said, "So Gillingham, my friend, you had no stronger ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... lazily. He was lounging over the rail with his back to us and his words came faintly. The deck was shrouded in gloom, and the vague outlines of the pilot-house, only a dozen feet away, was the length of our vision aft. A soft, purling sound came from over the side where the waves lapped against the steel hull. A shovel grated stridently now and then in the fire room, and occasionally a block rattled or a halliard flapped against the foremast overhead. The ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... leaves together sing Like those birds in clouds that choir. Aching-sweet from silver string, Purling flute and golden wire Music flows no mortal knows Even in April thronged with voices. Deeper glory throbs and glows ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... Lucy Mowbray, who had just arrived with her brother, bent their steps toward the grove, through which ran a purling stream; and thither they were followed after a little by Miss Martha Wayles and her admirer, Bathurst. We cannot follow them and listen to their conversation—that would be indecorous. But we may be permitted to say that two young ladies—one ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... perfection of human wisdom which proportions our esteem of every object by its real merit, and prevents us from over or undervaluing whatever we hope for, we enjoy, or we lose. It doth not foolishly say to us, Be not glad, or, Be not sorry, which would be as vain and idle as to bid the purling river cease to run, or the raging wind to blow. It prevents us only from exulting, like children, when we receive a toy, or from lamenting when we are deprived of it. Suppose then I have lost the enjoyments of this world, and my expectation of future pleasure and profit is for ever disappointed, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... he done?" she asked, in a voice which, to me, was as sweet as the sound of a brook purling its way through a ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... stream was a mere thread of water, but broken by stone and drooping bough to the semblance of urgency, and with its mazy lights went a clear murmur of sound. Georgie took off her little cloth jacket and threw herself down on the grassy slope that, amidst a tangle of hemlock, edged the purling water. Between her and the sunlight drooped an alder; she saw against the sun the showers of yellow catkins all gleaming transparent, like sunlit raindrops caught at the moment when they lengthen.... She lay under the glory of this Danaean shower and half-closed ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... in a low, soft voice. To Juliet, to whom every purling syllable was painfully audible, it sounded cooingly, like ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... wooed her in undertones like that of the purling milk—at the cow's side, at skimmings, at butter-makings, at cheese-makings, among broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs—as no milkmaid was ever wooed before by ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... resuscitated) on Fourteenth Street, I held my breath till I got over alive, and I blessed Heaven for my safe passage at Forty-second and Twenty-third streets, and at divers places on Third Avenue. Now I regard these interlacing iron currents with no more anxiety than I would so many purling brooks, with stepping-stones in them to keep my feet from the wet: they are like gentle eddies—soft, clear, slow tides—where one may pause in the midst at will, compared with the deadly expanses of Fifth Avenue, with ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... grandeur, testifies To His omnipotence who placed it there; The rushing, mighty torrent verifies His ceaseless working; and His constant care And kindliness is proven by the still And growing meadow, and the purling rill. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... surface the freshwaters form a very small fraction, about a hundredth, but they make up for their smallness by their variety. We think of deep lake and shallow pond, of the great river and the purling brook, of lagoon and swamp, and more besides. There is a striking resemblance in the animal population of widely separated freshwater basins: and this is partly because birds carry many small creatures on their ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... the Holy Spirit, the love of God, and the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. The valleys were her places of worship; her meeting houses were fitted up with stone seats, rock pulpits, granite walls, green carpets, and azure ceilings. A row of stones was her sacramental table, and the purling stream her baptismal bowl. The mountains round about were filled with angelic hosts, and the plains were covered with the manna of heaven; the banner of Christ's love waved over the worshipers, and the glory of God filled the place. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... vile world, for that matter," said the expert; "and the country no better than the town, for all it looks so sweet with its green fields and purling rills. There they sow anonymous letters like barley. The very girls write anonymous letters that make my hair stand on end. Yes, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... I blush with shame when to my inward view The devious paths return where Cupid drew His willing slave, with all my hopes and fears— When Phoebus seem'd to rise and set in tears For many a spring—and when I used to dwell A lonely hermit in a silent cell. How upwards oft I traced the purling rills To their pure fountains in the misty hills! The rocks I used to climb, the solemn woods, Where oft I wander'd by the winding floods! And often spent, whene'er I chanced to stray, In amorous ditties all the livelong ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... poetical Arcadia so remote from known reality and speculative possibility, that we can never support its representation through a long work. A pastoral of a hundred lines may be endured; but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers, and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life; but will be, for the most part, thrown away, as men grow wise, and nations ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... fourth angel—an angel with another spick-and-span blouse, and the light of devotion in her eyes and the sound of it in her purling voice. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... curling, The silver streamlet purling, The meadow wildflowers furling Their leaflets to repose: All woo me from ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... there Some fountain gurgling from the rifted rock, Of pure translucent wave, whose margent green Is loved by gentlest nymphs, and all the train Of that chaste goddess of the silver bow; For silent, shady groves, by purling springs, Delight the train, and through the gliding hours Their nimble feet in mazy trances wind; And oft at eve, the wondering swain hath heard The Arcadian pipe and breathing minstrelsy, From joyous troops of those rude ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... makes me sick, Move, you thief! Leave now these grounds, sir, or our dogs will help you quick." Then the man with dragging footsteps hopeless, wishing himself dead, Crept away from sight of plenty, starved in place of being fed, Wandered farther from the mansion, till he reached a purling brook, Babbling, trilling broken music by a green and shady nook, Here sweet Flossie found him fainting; in her hands were food and drink; Pale like death lay he before her, yet the child-heart did not shrink; Then the rags from off ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... pinks. Henceforward flower-gardens, the May sunshine, the birds in their nests, exquisite tints, radiant blossoms, boxes of orange trees and daphne odora, velvet petals upon which golden bees alight, the sacred odours of spring-tide, balms, incense, purling brooks, and soft green grass are associated with this bandit. The divine smile of nature penetrates ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... something of this kind; either a foolish sentimentality, or a morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most curious ignorance. You will find all its descriptive expressions at once vague and monotonous. Brooks are always "purling;" birds always "warbling;" mountains always "lift their horrid peaks above the clouds;" vales always "are lost in the shadow of gloomy woods;" a few more distinct ideas about hay-making and curds and cream, acquired ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... says I, 'this sounds like the purling of a rill to me. I thought we came here to teach the millionaires business, instead ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... hill, And I loved the silent vale, With its dark and purling rill That murmur'd in the gale. Of sighs I'd none to share, They were stored for riper years, When I drain'd the dregs of care ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the middle of this state-table runs a purling brook crossed by quaint bridges, in which gold and silver fish frisk about between banks of moss and flowers. The whole scene is lit with wax candles in chandeliers, and in countless candelabra ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... direction to that the earl had taken, and in a little while—still followed by the valet, who bore his painting tools—had climbed into a field knee-deep in grass which was ready for the scythe. At the bottom of this meadow ran a little purling stream, with a slant willow growing over it. In obedience to the young gentleman's instructions, the valet set down his burden here, and having received orders to return in an hour's time, departed. The young gentleman sketched the willow ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... "Minne-ha-ha," and could almost fancy the silvery song and light laughter of the Indian girl in the happy purling music of the waterfall, and, as it glided off into the gentler murmur of the stream, below, I could imagine the still sadder song of the spirit ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... at last under the shade of a big beech, for the afternoon sun was rather oppressive. It was a pleasant spot to while away an hour. A purling brook went babbling by, singing to itself as it journeyed to the sea. Insects droned about in busy flight. There was a perfume of honeysuckle wafted to us on the summer wind, which stirred the beech-tree and rustled its young leaves lazily, so that the ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... happy, we glided along, enjoying, not entranced, comfortable, but not sublime, content to drink in the sunny sweetness of the summer day, happy only from the pleasant sense of being, tangling each other in silly talk out of mere wantonness, purling up bubbles of airy nothings in sheer effervescence of animal delight; falling into periodic fits of useful knowledge, under the influence of which we consulted our maps and our watches in a conjoint and clamorous endeavor to locate ourselves, which would no sooner be satisfactorily ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing, Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling and boiling, And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming, And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing, And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping, And curling and whirling and purling and twirling, And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping. And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing; And so never ending, but always descending, Sounds and motions forever and ever are blending, All at once, and all o'er, with ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... my blood flows calm as a purling river, When my heart is asleep and my brain has sway, It is then that I vow we must part forever, That I will forget you, and put you away Out of my life, as a dream is banished Out of the mind when the dreamer awakes; That I know it will be, when the spell has vanished, Better for ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... deserts will divide you. Under the ledge of Atlas lies a cave, Cut in the living rock by Nature's hands, The venerable seat of holy hermits; Who there, secure in separated cells, Sacred even to the Moors, enjoy devotion; And from the purling streams, and savage fruits. Have wholesome ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... time the song had been purling from her smiling lips, Mrs. Strathsay's eyes were laid, a weight like lead, on me, and then she had risen as if it hurt her, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Nothing could be more picturesque than the appearance of this spot: steep hills, thickly clad with groves and forests of chestnuts, surrounded it on every side; the village itself was almost embowered in trees, and close beside it ran a purling brook. Here we found a tolerably large and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... about, there was yet a picturesque air about the place and its extraneous features, which would have captivated the eye of one in search of nature's sunshiny spots. Deeply embosomed within the autumnal tinted wood, a purling spring that burst from the green slope of a little mound was the feature which had attracted the Indians to the locality. Rank grass had once covered the whole surface of this forest meadow, but this the ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... with his breath. And the poor Poet cries out, "Pump! the water is gaining on us, and our shop is going to ruin. Pump!" Whereupon the lazy, absent-minded one resumes pumping, while yearning all the while for the plashing stone-rollers and the purling eaves of his home in Baalbek. And once in a pinch,—they are labouring under a peltering rain,—he stops as is his wont to remind Shakib of the Arabic saying, "From the dripping ceiling to the running gargoyle." He is labouring again under a hurricane ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... oh may you be For ever mirths blest nursery, May pure contents For ever pitch their tents Upon these downs, these Meads, these rocks, these mountains, And peace stil slumber by these purling fountains Which we may every year find when we come ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... mine host then comes forward, shakes hands, gives me the letter to Mudura Ghana, and permits me to depart. He has provided two zaptiehs to escort me outside the town, and in a few minutes I find myself bowling briskly along a beautiful little valley; the pellucid waters of a purling brook dance merrily alongside an excellent piece of road; birds are singing merrily in the willow-trees, and dark rocky crags tower skyward immediately around. The lovely little valley terminates all too soon, for in fifteen minutes I am footing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... every wealthy home of America there hung, among other things, two staple oil paintings—a still-life for the dining room, showing a dead fish on a plate, and a pastoral for the parlor, showing a collection of cows drinking out of a purling brook. A dead fish with a glazed eye and a cold clammy fin was not a thing you would care to have around the house for any considerable period of time, except in a picture, and the same was true of cows. People who could not ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... offing of Port Arthur was like a pleasure trip; our fleet of old crocks pounded along steadily, with a soft, soothing sound of purling water rising from under their bows, dominated from time to time by the clank of our crazy engines, which our mechanics had doctored up as thoroughly as time permitted, in order to ensure that they should outlast ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... whose Beams increase As he advances upward to our View; We gaze with growing Wonder till we're blind, And every Beauty fades and dies but his. Thus shall I always view your growing Charm, And every Day and Hour with fresh Delight. Witness thou Sun and Moon, and Stars above, Witness ye purling Streams and quivering Lakes, Witness ye Groves and Hills, and Springs and Plains, Witness ye Shades, and the cool Fountain, where I first espied the Image of her Charms, And starting saw her on th' adjacent Bank, If I to my ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... the country. It is probable also that the charm which ever accompanies the sound of running water exercised its power over their imagination. They heard with delight the gentle whisper of the fountain, lulling the senses with its low, rippling tones; the soft purling of the brook as it rushes over the pebbles, or the mighty voice of the waterfall as it dashes on in its headlong course; and the beings which they pictured to themselves as presiding over all these charming ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... he scrambled down one of the narrow ravines, and, climbing over a low ridge at the further end, he led them into a short valley with a stream purling down the centre of it and a very thick growth of elder and of box upon either side. Pushing their way through the dense brushwood, they looked out upon a scene which made their hearts beat harder and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dozes by the purling brook, No friend to lonely places; Or, if he toy with Strephon's crook, His Chloes ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... turbulence troubled the half-naked boughs, and a lonely leaf would occasionally spin downwards to rejoin on the grass the scathed multitude of its comrades which had preceded it in its fall. The river by the pavilion, in the summer so clear and purling, now slid onwards brown and thick and silent, and enlarged ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... plain-work, and to purling brooks, Old-fashion'd halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks... (To) divert her eyes with pictures in the fire, Hum half a tune, tell stories to ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... little where be my grave— Or on the land or in the sea, By purling brook or 'neath stormy wave, It matters little or naught to me; But whether the Angel Death comes down, And marks my brow with his loving touch, As one that shall wear the victor's crown, It ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... And Sedu[3] softly dances on the leaves, And a rich odorous breath from them receives; Where tulips peep with heliotrope and pink, With violets upon a gleaming brink Of silver gliding o'er a water-fall That sings its purling treasures o'er a wall Of rugged onyx sparkling to the sea: A spot where Zir-ri[4] sport oft merrily, Where Hea's[5] arm outstretched doth form a bay, Wild, sheltered, where his sea-daughters play; A jasper rock here peeps above the waves Of emerald hue; with ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... broad gulfs, feeling that already they were his own. The vastness of the great unknown world took hold on him. The forests of Picardy were like stubble beside these unbroken stretches of wooded country; and the mightiest river of France was but as a purling brook when compared with the gigantic sweep of the river of Hochelaga, which stretched inland ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... hyssop fear and tremble? When anglers draw the great leviathan from his mighty deeps, what hope have the fish of the shallow pond? When the fishing-line is dropped into the dashing torrent, can they feel secure, the waters of the purling brook? ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... the water ripples over the old, brown oak sill, and he who listens may hear the brook telling a story all day long in purling undertones. I fancy its language a simple one, too, but its words of one syllable tumble so swiftly over one another that, in spite of their liquid purity of tone, I never quite catch them. It is the brook's rapidity of utterance that troubles me. I am ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... in his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr and the purling rill!" —Pope, Essay ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... the poetical Arcadia so remote from known reality and speculative possibility that we can never support its representation through a long work. A pastoral of an hundred lines may be endured, but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life, but will be for the most part thrown away as men grow ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... thou easer of all woes, Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose On this afflicted prince; fall, like a cloud, In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud Or painful to his slumbers; easy, light, And as a purling stream, thou son of Night, Pass by his troubled senses; sing his pain, Like hollow murmuring wind or silver rain; Into this prince gently, oh, gently slide, And kiss him ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... thirst, went to drink in a clear, purling rivulet; but the current, with its circling eddy, snatched her away, and carried her down the stream. A Dove, pitying her distressed condition, cropped a branch from a neighbouring tree and let it fall into the water, by means ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... on distant ridge and point the cavalry vedettes keep vigilant watch, against surprise or renewed attack. Down along the banks of a clear, purling stream a sentry paces slowly by the brown line of rifles, swivel-stacked in the sunshine. Men by the dozen are washing their blistered feet and grimy hands and faces in the cool, refreshing water; men by the dozen lie soundly sleeping, some in the broad glare, some in the shade of the little ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... there first, and was down on her knees on the bank, dabbling her hands in the purling little stream, ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... about Janenne the world is hollow. The hills are mere bubbles, and the earth is honeycombed with caverns. By the side of the road which leads to Houssy a river accompanies the traveller's steps, purling and singing, and talking secrets (as shallow pebbly-bedded streams have a way of doing), and on a sudden the traveller misses it. There, before him, is a river bed, wide, white, and stony, but where is the river? If he be a curious ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... he is characterized by a childlike inability to comprehend the very existence of sin in the world. Of course his environment has a good deal to do with this. The innocent shepherd poet, shut off from crime by many a grassy hill and purling stream, has a long tradition behind him. The most typical pastoral poet of our period, the hero of Beattie's The Minstrel, suffers a rude shock when an old hermit reveals to him that all the world ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and asked the pianist to join them in another drink. Whiskey was sent up to the platform, and the musician drank it at a gulp, his right hand purling over the figuration of "Auf dem Wasser zu Singen." But he took no water. Then making them a little bobbing, startled bow, he began playing. Again it was something of Chopin. On his lean features there was a look of detachment; and the watchers were struck with the interesting ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the nocturnal hunt. She warns her mistress, and begs her to wait. Beauty rests upon the scene like a benediction. To Isolde the horns are but the rustling of the forest leaves as they are caressed by the wind, or the purling and laughing of the brook. Longing has eaten up all patience, all discretion, all fear. In spite of Brangane's pleadings she extinguishes the torch, and with wildly waving scarf beckons on her hurrying lover. Beneath the foliage they sing their ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... with just desires, What need, not luxury, requires; Give me, with sparing hands, but moderate wealth, A little honour, and enough of health; Free from the busy city life, Near shady groves and purling streams confined, A faithful friend, a pleasing wife; And give me all in one, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... river. Some rough tools were first hewn out, and he had soon the whole tribe at work, and the canal and conduits were laid out among the crops. And there stood the witch-doctors put to shame, as they heard the water purling ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... old olive, by the river's brim, Annunziata sat on the turf, head bowed, so that her curls fell in a tangle all about her cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... on the broad bosom of the loch, the stillness lay grey and smooth like glimmering steel, with little puffs of night wind purling across it, and disappearing like breath from a new knife-blade. He saw where the smooth satin plane rippled to the first water-break, as the stream collected itself, deep and black, with the force of the water behind it, to flow beneath the bridge. When Ebie Farrish came to the bridge he was ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... species of migrant birds, the male is the first to arrive; and he does not seem to be particularly interested in house-hunting until the arrival of the female, when the courtship begins without delay, and the delicate purling song with the refrain, "Dear, dear, think of it, think of it," and the low, two-syllabled answer of the female is heard in every orchard. The building of the nest is not an important function,—merely gathering of a few wisps and straws, with some chance feathers for lining. It seems to be ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... the grandest, biggest, most glorious thing. We often prate of "reserved force." Salvini had it, for the simple reason that his was the gigantic force which may be restrained because of its immensity. Men have no need to dam up a little purling brook. If they do it in acting, it is tame, absurd and pretentious. But Salvini held himself in, and still his groan was like a tempest, his ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... were, and look down into the dale of the stripling Teviot, electro clarior (then held by the Scotts); we descend and ford "Borthwick's roaring strand," as Leyden sings, though the burn is usually a purling brook even where it joins Teviot, three ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... chocolate, bacon, fruit, and a few bottles of wine. With their Andalusian horses they penetrated into an unknown country, where they perceived no beaten track. At length they came to a beautiful meadow intersected with purling rills. Here our two adventurers fed their horses. Cacambo proposed to his master to take some food, and he ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... loves small swift purling Brooks or Rivers, that run upon Stones or Gravel, and in the swiftest deepest part of them, getteth behind some Stone-block and there feeds. He delights in a Point of a River where the Water comes Whirling like the Eddy, to catch what the Stream ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... things on the wrong side of the dividing line. His hearty contempt for sham pastorals and sham love-poetry will be probably shared by modern readers. 'Who will hear of sheep and goats and myrtle bowers and purling rivulets through five acts? Such scenes please barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life, but will be for the most part thrown away as men grow wise and nations grow learned.' But ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... crosses the Rea, I remember there was a footbridge, and beyond that the river was a pretty, purling, sylvan stream, with bushes and rushes growing on its green banks. A field walk past an old farm house led on to Moseley Hall, which was looked upon as being quite away in the country. As for Moseley itself, it was a pretty little village in those days. The old village green, the rustic ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... beauteous rays, scatt'ring the gawdy light, Might grace the feast, and revels of the night: What tho' no gold adorns; no music's sound With double sweetness from the roofs rebound; Yet underneath a loving myrtle's shade, Hard by a purling stream supinely laid, When spring with fragrant flow'rs the earth has spread, And sweetest roses grow around our head; Envy'd by wealth and pow'r, with small expence We may enjoy the sweet delights of sense. Who ever heard a fever tamer grown In ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... so many mysterious living things—frogs and tadpoles and newts and strange water-insects, nixies and pixies. Undines and Sabrinas fair and water-babies; and such strange plants grow in them; and who can guess the meaning of the tales they tell, in that never-ceasing, purling tongue of theirs? . . . And Signor Ranocchio? What do you suppose he is thinking of, as he floats there, so still, so saturnine, so indifferent to us? He is plainly in a deep, deep reverie. How wise he looks—a grey, wise old water-hermit, with his head full of strange, unimaginable water-secrets, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... me without the tent, I say,— Me and my ottoman,— I'll see the messenger myself! It is the caravan From Africa, thou sayest, And they bring us news of war? Draw me without the tent, and quick! As at the desert well The freshness of the purling brook Delights the tired gazelle, So pant I for the voice of him ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... found ourselves, in the course of an hour and a half, about ten miles from our starting-point, in the midst of a beautifully wooded, park-like plain about five miles in width, with the stream, now considerably augmented in volume, purling musically over a shingly bed on the eastern margin of the plain, and the high land, rising by this time almost to the dignity of hills, still shutting us in on ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... A purling brook from the woodland glade Drops down o'er the stones and around it sweeps, Whence a fresh stream is drawn by the rough cane's aid; That in the still night its murmur has made, And in the day's ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... orchard in the slanting afternoon sunlight of an early June afternoon. The hot white light of this open country makes my eyes ache and seems to dry my soul up. I can't help thinking of cool green shadows, and musky little valleys of gloom with a brook purling over mossy stones. I long for the solemn greenery of great elms, aisles and aisles of cathedral-like gloom and leaf-filtered sunlight. I'd love to hear an English cuckoo again, and feel the soft mild sea-air that blows up through Louis's dear little ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... afternoon of the twentieth day they came to a halt upon the bank of a small stream that fell purling over a long, smooth slide of limestone into the river. Mountains had loomed into existence in the last few days. In the distance they made a vast blue rampart which seemed to prop the western skies. When the sun sank behind them it was as though a mighty warrior had entered his fortress. Nearer ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... built in a comparatively small compass: for the whole of the ground is so romantically tossed about by the sportive hand of Nature,—presenting here a lofty ridge of rocks, there a woody dell adorned with a purling stream or a limpid pool, that most of the houses are completely ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... immense ranks of people, with as much tranquillity as you do in your green alleys. The men I meet with make the same impression on my mind as would the trees of your forests, or the flocks of sheep grazing on your common. The busy hum too of these merchants does not disturb one more than the purling of your brooks. If sometimes I amuse myself in contemplating their anxious motions, I receive the same pleasure which you do in observing those men who cultivate your land; for I reflect that the end of all their labours is to embellish the city which I inhabit, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a paroquet and as gay as a lark. She prattled on in a perpetual, purling stream of music. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... first landed on the uncharted continent these trees were already ancient. There they stood, straight and majestic with green and foam-flecked streams purling here and there at their feet, crowning the rugged landscape with superlative beauty, overtopped only by the snow-capped mountains—waiting for the hand of man to put them to the multitudinous uses of modern civilization. Imagine, if you can, the ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... with daintiest noiselessness, I moved to a thread of moss that from the glade passed into the thicket, and along its winding way I stepped, in the direction of the sound. Now my ears caught the purling noise of a brooklet, and following the moss-path, I was led into a mass of bush only two or three feet higher than my head. Through this, prowling like a stealthy cat, I wheedled my painful way, emerged upon a strip of open long-grass, and now was faced, three yards before me, by a wall of acacia-trees, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... song, what sing ye? Woodland meadows? Rocks, trees and rills where sunlight glints to gold? Sing ye the hills, adown whose sides blue shadows Creep when the westering day is growing old? Sing ye the brooks where in the purling shallows The small fish dart and gleam? Sing ye the pale green tresses of the willows That stoop to kiss the stream? Or sing ye burning streets, foul with the breath Of sweatshop, tenement, where endlessly Spawned swarms of folk serve tyrant masters twain— Profit, and his twin-brother, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... in a state of mutiny and murmur, and I have found the reason: it is because we will affect to have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore-throats and agues with attempting to realise these visions. Master Damon writes a song, and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... silken slumbers in the night. Nor has the darkness power to usher in Fear to those sheets that know no sin; But still thy wife, by chaste intentions led, Gives thee each night a maidenhead. The damask'd meadows and the pebbly streams Sweeten and make soft your dreams: The purling springs, groves, birds, and well-weav'd bowers, With fields enamelled with flowers, Present their shapes; while fantasy discloses Millions of lilies mix'd with roses. Then dream ye hear the lamb by many a bleat Woo'd to come suck the milky teat: While Faunus ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... disdain. Grant me, kind Heaven, a more propitious boon; direct her genial regards to one whose love is without example, and whose constancy is unparalleled. Bear witness to my constancy and faith, ye verdant hills, ye fertile plains, ye shady groves, ye purling streams; and if I prove untrue, ah! let me never find a solitary willow or a bubbling brook, by help of which I may be enabled to put a period to my ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... south and what was now Nevada, on the north, for we had reached the boundary line shortly after emerging from the canyon. We still travelled nearly directly west. The ferry was in charge of a Cornishman who also had as pretty a little ranch as one could expect to find in such an unlikely place. A purling stream of water, piped from somewhere up in the hills, had caused the transformation. The ranch was very homey with cattle and horses, sheep and hogs, dogs and cats, all sleek and contented-looking. The garden proved that ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... first night. But Constantia had just gone away; he had seen her. There must be some mistake, some joke. No, no, by another path she had managed to get back to the house. Ay! but what playing. Again came that purling rush of notes, those unison passages, as if one gigantic hand grasped them—so perfect was the tonal accord. He did not hesitate. At a bound he was in the corridor and pushed open the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... But without, scarcely twenty paces from the inn, on the other side of the road, lay the celebrated valley, a garden made by nature herself, and whose charm consists of trees and bushes, wells and purling brooks. ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... love-making, homage none; From his mines no golden mintage; No rich traffic in the sun; No more purple-purling vintage. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... fashion when danger threatened. The banks thus became honeycombed, and it was not unusual to find a whole family perched all day long with their backs against the protecting wall and their eyes fixed meditatively on the purling stream, awaiting with resignation the whims of ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the midst of summer, Mr. Drake and his son Albert took a walk in some of the most agreeable environs of the city. The sky was clear, the air cool; and the purling streams, and gentle zyphyrs rustling in the trees, lulled the mind into an agreeable gloom. Albert, enchanted with the natural beauties that surrounded him, could not help exclaiming, "What a lovely evening!" He pressed his father's hand, and, looking up to him, said, "You know ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... to deny the importance of size in winning our first regard: it is a law inseparable from the thing itself; but I must protest against the taste of the age being supplied always with mere physical attributes. The purling stream and babbling brook; the small rill falling from on high, till its feathery stream is lost in mist, are and should be as much sought after as the roaring torrent or the thundering cascade. The effect of the one is to produce awe, that of the other tranquil pleasure. The ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... their influence in mingling a melancholy with the pleasing reminiscences of the past. Much has been said on this principle of association, and truly much remains unsaid on the subject. Scarcely is there a green sod, or a purling brook, a shady forest-tree, or a smiling flower, an enchanting and fairy landscape, or a barren and desolate heath; scarcely an object in nature, or a work of art, which does not awaken some gratefully pleasing, yet painful recollections of ...
— The Village Sunday School - With brief sketches of three of its scholars • John C. Symons
... poplar-like leaves. Travelling for twelve miles on this bearing, we struck the Finke again, running nearly north and south. Here the river had a stony bed with a fine reach of water in it; so to-night at least our anxiety as regards the horses bogging is at an end. The stream purling over its stony floor produces a most agreeable sound, such as I have not heard for many a day. Here I might say, "Brightly the brook through the green leaflets, giddy ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... great, But whist'leth to thy flock in cold and heat. Viewing the Sun by day, the Moon by night Endimions, Dianaes dear delight, Upon the grass resting your healthy limbs, By purling Brooks looking how fishes swims, If pride within your lowly Cells ere haunt, Of him that was Shepherd then King go vaunt. This moneth the Roses are distil'd in glasses, Whose fragrant smel all made perfumes surpasses The cherry, Gooseberry are now in th' prime, And for all sorts ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Mendelssohn, and Schubert, and Verdi, and all the great masters, caught their sweetest dreams from nature's musicians. I think their richest airs of mirth, and gladness, and joy, were stolen from the purling rivulet and the rippling river. I believe their grandest inspirations were born of the tempest, and the thunder, and the rolling billows ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... place to place in his ancient shovel-topped buggy. About her now there was naught to suggest the prancing rozin-back she once had been; the very look of her eye conjured up images of simple pastoral scenes—green meadows and purling brooks. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... see the riders now, Thrown off with sudden whirl, A score within the purling brook, Enjoyed ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... protected the soil from the beating storms; when these slopes, now furrowed with gulleys and spread with stones, were covered with orchards and clad with verdure, where the flocks might 'lie down midst pastures of tender grass;' and when these dried up waterways were purling brooks, where the flocks were 'led beside the waters of quietness.' I believe that David's description of this country was a true picture of the land as it appeared then. 'Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly; thou settlest the furrows thereof; thou makest it soft with showers; ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... work them in ribs, four in each row, knitting two stitches; and purling two; both sides must be alike. Continue this till you come to the beginning of the lightest shade; then begin to decrease one stitch at the beginning of every row, till only one stitch remains in the middle; fasten this off, break ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... of taking a walk as of yore through the fields, wandered too far, and got lost. The sky was dotted with little fleecy clouds, the wind was shaking the tiny bells of the oats; a stream was purling along through a meadow—and then, all at once, an infectious odour made them halt, and they saw on the pebbles between the thorn trees the putrid carcass of ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... "thrice-cursed sophists"; which he thinks would drive him mad if he heard it again, and was nearly sending him headlong over some cliff as it was. He retires for relief with his inquirer to a pleasant place, shadowed by planes, where swallows and nightingales are singing, and a quiet brook is purling. Triephon, his friend, expresses a fear lest he has heard some incantation, and is led by the course of the dialogue, before his friend tells his tale, to give some account of Christianity, being himself a Christian. After speaking of the creation, as described by Moses, he falls at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... marvelous tenor voice in one of those weird folk-songs of the far-away that fairly tear the listener's heart out of his body—a song as sinisterly metallic as the hum of hate along a dagger-blade; a song as rapturously surprised at its own divinity as the first trill of a nightingale; a song of purling brooks and grim, gray mountain fortresses; a song of quick, sharp lights and long, low, lazy cadences; a song of love and hate; a song of all joys and all sorrows—and then death; the song of Sex as Nature sings it—the plaintive, wheedling, passionate song of Sex as Nature sings it ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a mightier dread to let bugbears turn me back. I ran right on until the branch, a silver ribbon on the dark bosom of the meadow, was before me. Grasses and weeds were laden with dew, and the water whirled and whispered about the roots. I could have believed that the purling formed itself into words when I knelt down to fumble for the snake-bite cure. I would not let myself be scared. I kept saying over and over—"To save his ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... that of Dyoonboors which it joined at a mile and a half from where we had been encamped. At three miles, having crossed a low ridge of forest land, we entered a fine valley, backed on the west by romantic forest hills, and watered by some purling brooks which united in the woods on the east. The flat itself had a few stately trees upon it, and seemed quite ready to receive the plough; while some round hillocks on the north were so smooth and grassy that the men said they looked as if they had already been depastured ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... the eras glide With muffled tread to their eternal dreams, While I have lived in vale and mountain side, With leaping torrents and sweet purling streams. ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... shoe-shining stand, with a bowl of indirect light above it. The artist was busy in the barber shop near-by. Admirable opportunity. I mounted the throne and fell to. The first thing I saw was a quaint Japanese woodcut of a buxom maiden washing garments in a rapidly purling stream. She was treading out a petticoat with her bare feet, presumably on a flat stone. In a black storm-cloud above a willow tree a bearded supernatural being, with hands spread in humorous deprecation, gazes down half ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... indeed, are comparatively humble. "What of the baths of the freedmen? a mass of statues! What a multitude of pillars supporting nothing, but put there only for ornament! What an amount of water running over steps with a purling noise—and all for show!" ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker |
