"Undulation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the house and then diminishing again when they had passed it, till they looked like two insects at the end of the long white line which stretched as far as the eye could reach, rising and falling with the undulation of the earth. When the grass again sprang up a little girl passed the gate every morning with two thin cows which browsed along the side of the road, and in the evening she returned, taking, as in the morning, one step every ten minutes as she ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... her soul Rushed every way through darkness seeking light, Like winds or tides. Beside her Patrick prayed, And mightier than his preaching was his prayer, Sheltering that crisis dread. At last beneath The great Life-Giver's breath that Human Soul, An inner world vaster than planet worlds, In undulation swayed, as when of old The Spirit of God above the waters moved Creative, while the blind and shapeless void Yearned into form, and form grew meet for life, And downward through the abysses Law ran forth With ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... abated, and we had a very fine passage, till within about a hundred miles of our port, when it fell calm. Never do I recollect a more perfect calm. The sea was like lead in colour, but as smooth as glass, though every now and then there came a long, slow, gently-moving undulation, as if there were some unseen power beneath the water. There was something, I thought, very ominous in the whole appearance of the atmosphere. The barometer, the seaman's warning friend, began also to sink, and each hour the quicksilver got lower and lower. Thus passed two ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... sight for some time. No doubt my melancholy abstraction accounted for that, and perhaps her presence there was to be explained by a London train which I had listlessly observed come in to the town an hour before. This surmise was confirmed, as presently,—over the brow of a distant undulation in the road, I descried a farmer's gig driven by another young woman. The gig immediately hoisted a handkerchief; so did my pedestrian. At this moment I was within a yard or two of overtaking her. And it was then the ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... the plain that he looks; it is, I will suppose, within my brain. Armed with a microscope a la Jules Verne, he succeeds in seeing what is passing beneath my skull, and he notices within my fibres and nerve cells those phenomena of undulation which physiologists have hitherto described hypothetically. This observer notices then, that, while I am looking over the plain, my optic nerve conveys a certain kind of movements—these are, I suppose, displacements of molecules which execute a complicated kind of dance. ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... alert. Wave (noun), billow, breaker, swell, ripple, undulation. Wave (verb), brandish, flourish, flaunt, wigwag. Weariness, languor, lassitude, enervation, exhaustion. Wearisome, tiresome, irksome, tedious, humdrum. Wet (adjective), humid, moist, damp, dank, sodden, soggy. Wet (verb), moisten, dampen, soak, imbrue, saturate, drench Whim, caprice, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... looking for centuries, and I cannot see it. I supposed we were heading for it. I thought sometimes I saw the flash of distant spires, the sunny gleam of upland pastures, the soft undulation of purple hills. Ah! me. I am sure I heard the singing of birds, and the faint low of cattle. But I do not know: we come no nearer; and yet I felt its presence in the air. If the mist would only ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... appeared. Cowperwood realized at once that he was in the presence of a woman who, whatever her present occupation, was not without marked evidences of refinement. She was exceedingly intelligent, if not highly intellectual, trig, vivacious, anything but commonplace. A certain spirited undulation in her walk, a seeming gay, frank indifference to her position in life, an obvious accustomedness to polite surroundings took his fancy. Her hair was built up in a loose Frenchy way, after the fashion of the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... swam with undulation soft, Adrift on Vischer's ocean, And, from my cockboat up aloft, Sent down my mental plummet oft, In hope to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... enough. Treenail was coolness itself, and I aped him as well as I could. The loud murmur, increasing to a roar, of the sea, was trying enough as we approached, buoyed on the last long undulation. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... imposing impression caused by the extremely subitaneous changes to which these waters are subjected. The wide bosom of the lake that sometimes lies motionless and glassy, without a breath of air to cause the slightest undulation, in a very short time may be scourged by a sudden gale. The wild gambols of the waves, accompanied by the roar of the disturbed elements, may well cause the timid to fear; for, as the swell lifts, you would think the bases of the earth are rising beneath it; ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... in the Art of the Singer, says of messa di voce, 'It is by the emission of tones swelling and diminishing that we impart to song that wave-like undulation which gives it vitality and tonal vivacity.' But when speaking of the rendition of Handelian arias, he evidently uses the term vibrato in the same sense as Sieber does tremolando. He declares it probably hopeless to plead for the abolition ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... (ulex)[089] I cannot omit to notice, because it was the plant which of all others most struck Dillenius when he first trod on English ground. He threw himself on his knees and thanked Heaven that he had lived to see the golden undulation of acres of wind-waved gorse. Linnaeus lamented that he could scarcely keep it alive in Sweden ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the gold abounds most at the swells, or highest points of the waves of rock, and that the scarcely less valuable mispickel appears to follow the same law. The spaces between are not found to be so rich as these points of undulation; and this structure must explain the signal contrast in thickness and productiveness which is everywhere seen in sinking a shaft in this district. As the cutting passes through one of these original ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... Convolution — N. winding &c v.; convolution, involution, circumvolution; wave, undulation, tortuosity, anfractuosity^; sinuosity, sinuation^; meandering, circuit, circumbendibus^, twist, twirl, windings and turnings, ambages^; torsion; inosculation^; reticulation &c (crossing) 219; rivulation^; roughness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of health. It is a mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line. Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,—I think I may venture to say there is,—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The "dynamo" which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its momentary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... dwellings of princes. Colonnades, medallions, and massive cornices overhung the canal, as if the art of man had taken pride in loading the superstructure in a manner to mock the unstable element which concealed its base. A flight of steps, on which each gentle undulation produced by the passage of the barge washed a wave, conducted to a vast vestibule, that answered many of the purposes of a court. Two or three gondolas were moored near, but the absence of their people showed they were for the use of those who dwelt ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... plunging movement to the hull of the Flying Fish, at one moment lifting her sharp-pointed nose and some twenty feet of her fore-body clear out of the blue, sparkling brine, and anon causing her to dive into the on-coming undulation until she was buried nearly ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... had reached the highest part of this undulation, I could see many lights—some of them in motion, but most of them stationary. The sounds of a moving army were distinct; I could hear shouts, like those of teamsters, and once I thought I could catch ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... have been formed in a mould, and was very white. His hands were as beautiful as if they had been the works of art. His figure left nothing to be desired, particularly by those who found rather a grace than a defect in a certain light and gentle undulation of the person when he entered a room, and of which you hardly felt tempted to enquire the cause. Indeed it was scarcely perceptible,—the clothes ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... manner of science in the distribution of their substance in the section, for narrow and deep strength; and the shafts are mostly hollow. But when the extending space of a leaf is to be enriched with fulness of folds, and become beautiful in wrinkles, this may be done either by pure undulation as of a liquid current along the leaf edge, or by sharp 'drawing'—or 'gathering' I believe ladies would call it—and stitching of the edges together. And this stitching together, if to be done very strongly, is done round a bit of stick, as a sail is reefed round a mast; and this ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Universal Technique closely, and is identical in many of the essentials. The chief difference between the old way and my new method is in the preparatory work. Now, this will never become a world full of ballet dancers, because not everyone could learn this graceful undulation if they wanted to. (All the more reason, I say, why those who have the talent should profit by it.) Not all of my pupils, nor all of my best pupils in other forms of the art, can hope to become solo ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... should be very soft, thin—like an airy cloud. The left hand is soft too, but the first beat should be slightly accented, the second not; the first is positive, the second negative. Herein lies the idea of the barcarolle, the ebb and flow, the undulation of each measure. ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... I have occasionally observed, after the heart and even its right auricle had ceased pulsating,—when it was in articulo mortis in short,—that an obscure motion, an undulation or palpitation, remained in the blood itself, which was contained in the right auricle, this being apparent so long as it was imbued with heat and spirit. And, indeed, a circumstance of the same kind is extremely ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... containing trunks and furniture. She was evidently the last to leave. The other boats put off at once, and none too soon; for there was a warning cry, a quick swerving of the barge, and the end of the dwelling slowly dropped into the flood, seeming to sink on its knees like a stricken ox. A great undulation of yellow water swept across the street, inundating his office through the open window and half swamping his boat beside it. At the same time he could see that the current had changed and increased in volume and velocity, and, from the cries and warning ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... for their graceful carriage, and it is indeed the poetry of motion, singular as it may appear, when it is remembered that for them to walk abroad is such a rarity. It is not the simple progressive motion alone, but also the harmonious play of features, the coquettish undulation of the face, the exquisite disposition of costume, and the modulation of voice, that engage the beholder and lend a happy charm to ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... continuously-singing upper voice, and you will get the right idea of his playing. But it would be an error to think that Chopin permitted every one of the small notes to be distinctly heard. It was rather an undulation of the A flat major chord, here and there thrown aloft anew by the pedal. Throughout all the harmonies one always heard in great tones a wondrous melody, while once only, in the middle of the piece, besides that chief song, a tenor voice became prominent in the midst of chords. After ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... choir-screen, and falling on her knees at a chair, she buried her face in her hands. She prayed for a long time, and he, standing behind her, could see that she was crying. She wept noiselessly, like women do weep when they are in great, poignant grief. There was a kind of undulation in her body, which ended in a little sob, which was hidden ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... he stood; the three hawthorn trees at his right; every crease and undulation of the sward, every angle and crack in the lichen-covered rock at his feet, recurred with a sharp and instantaneous recognition ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of motion are here obviously active, a motion of translation and a motion of undulation—the race of the river through its gorge, and the great waves generated by its collision with, and rebound from, the obstacles in its way. In the middle of the river the rush and tossing are most violent; at all events, the impetuous force of the individual waves is here most strikingly displayed. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... distinctly the splash of the body and he fired again into the spot whence the noise arose. The waters were still in commotion when he reached them, but there was no one to be found; nothing save the gentle undulation of the surface as it closed over its burden, and gradually became placid under the soft stillness of the night. After several minutes of intense vigilance, he slowly ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Correggio as are the sermons of President Edwards from the love-songs of Tom Moore. These old seers of the pencil give you grave, radiant beings, strong as man, fine as woman, sweeping downward in lines of floating undulation, and seeming by the ease with which they remain poised in the air to feel none of that earthly attraction which draws material bodies earthward. Whether they wear the morning star on their forehead or bear the lily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... by its strange sheen. It began to lean stiffly toward one side—as if falling. It straightened and leaned the other way. Then undulation crept into it, till the top-end followed the outline of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... It is, indeed, a remarkable instance of scientific prevision. In a note to line 373, canto ii. of the poem, the author sets out with, "The progressive motion of fish beneath the water is produced principally by the undulation of their tails;" and after giving the rationale of the process, he goes on to say that "this power seems to be better adapted to push forward a body in the water than the oars of boats;" concluding with the query, "Might not some machinery resembling the tails of fish be placed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... anything I have ever seen. There is nothing in the settled portions of Western Australia equal to it, either in extent or quality; but the absence of permanent water is a great drawback; . . . the country is very level, with scarcely any undulation, and becomes clearer ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... of action, like that of books, and better than books, is that it is a resource. That great principle of Undulation in nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold; and, as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fair boundaries of the counties of Hereford and Worcester rise in a long undulation the sloping pastures of the Malvern Hills. Consulting a big red book on the castles and manors of England, we found Lockley Park to be seated near the base of this grassy range, tho in which county ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... never seen them equalled in nature. Indeed the beauty of this phenomena is amazing. The band, inlaid with various colours, now occupies the whole space, maintaining an equal distance from the closed eyes, and moving continually with a rhythmic undulation, while it constantly becomes more vivid. The moving circle continues to dilate until it slowly fades, and at last completely disappears. From its beginning to the end, the vision occupies from twenty to ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... does not explain (as I think it does) a large number of facts in geographical distribution—geological succession, classification, morphology, embryology, etc. I should really much like to know why such an hypothesis as the undulation of the ether may be invented, and why I may not invent (not that I did invent it, for I was led to it by studying domestic varieties) any ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... The house has been built for some years, consequently the plantations about it and the garden have grown up well, and the willows, gum-trees, and poplars shelter it perfectly, besides giving it such a snug home look. It stands on a vast plain, without even an undulation of the ground near it; but the mountains form a grand panoramic view. There is a large wide verandah round two sides of the house, with French windows opening into it; and I could not help feeling impatient to see my own creepers ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... grace, as facile as grain rippling before the wind, would have put the best ballet in Europe to the blush. Concha's skirts swept Rezanov's feet, her little slippers twinkled before his admiring eyes, and he lost no sinuous turn or undulation of her beautiful figure; but she never vouchsafed ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... him. The hill fell abruptly away, and near the bottom glimmered whitewashed cots along a winding road. Still lower down extended marshy common land, laced with twinkling watercourses and dotted with geese; while beyond, in many a rise and fall and verdant undulation, the country rolled onwards through Teign valley and upwards towards the Moor. The expanse seen from this lofty standpoint extended like a mighty map, here revealing a patchwork of multicoloured fields, here exhibiting ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... into the boat. A slight undulation of the waves carried it farther under the low arch of the crypt, and there Ayrton, with the aid of flint and steel, lighted the lamp. He then took the oars, and the lamp having been placed in the bow of the boat, so that its rays fell before them, Cyrus Harding took the helm ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... in so mighty a ruin perhaps I ought not to allude. I should not presume even to mention that fatal convulsion which shook all Europe and has since left the nations in that state of agitated undulation which succeeds a tempest upon the ocean, were it not for the opportunity it gives me to declare the bounty of my benefactresses. All my own property went down in the wreck; and the mariner who escapes only with his life can never recur to the scene of his escape without a shudder. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... spread one enormous convulsion over an area of 700,000 square miles, agitating, by a single impulse, the lakes of Scotland and Sweden, and the islands of the West Indian Sea. Not, however, by a simultaneous shock, for the element of time comes in with the distance of undulation; and, together with this, another complexity of action in the transmission of earthquake movements through the sea, arising from the different rate of progression at different depths. In the fact that the wave of the Lisbon earthquake reached Plymouth at the rate of 2.1 miles per minute, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... mentioned above, dammed back by the fault-scarp. There is no barrier at its northern end, where the river escapes, except that formed by the gradually increasing throw of the fault. The pool is simply due to the reversal of the natural slope of the river-bed, caused by the formation of a roll or undulation in the ground on the upthrow side of the fault. Its recent origin is evident from the number of dead trees and bamboo clumps still ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... the way. In their approach they always dived while yet well out in the stream, and so entered their door unseen. When they came out they were quite as careful, always swimming some distance under water before coming to the surface. It was several days before my eye could trace surely the faint undulation of the water above them, and so follow their course to their doorway. Had not the water been shallow I should never have found it; for they are the most wonderful of swimmers, making no ripple on the surface, ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... instinct which urged him to fly and an instinct which commanded him to remain, he perceived in the snow at his feet, a few steps before him, a sort of undulation of the dimensions of a human body—a little eminence, low, long, and narrow, like the mould over a grave—a sepulchre in a ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... sequestered shores, some crowned with groves of pine, and others exhibiting only barren precipices of grayish marble, except where the crags were tufted with myrtle and other aromatic shrubs. The sea slept in a perfect calm; its waves, dying in murmurs on the shores, flowed with the gentlest undulation, while its clear surface reflected in softened beauty the vermeil tints of the west. Emily, as she looked upon the ocean, thought of France and of past times, and she wished, Oh! how ardently, and vainly—wished! that its waves would bear her to ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... definite shape. Something bulky, dark, yellowish-black, spotted like a lizard's belly, not a storm-cloud, and not smoke, was crawling with a snake-like motion over the earth. A wide rhythmic undulating movement from above downwards, and from below upwards, an undulation recalling the malignant sweep of the wings of a vulture seeking its prey; at times an indescribably revolting grovelling on the earth, as of a spider stooping over its captured fly.... Who are you, what are ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the light was translucent and cold as the waters of a spring, and when the trees waved in the wind their undulation seemed to communicate itself to all the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... face with an effort, and straightened up as the cheery voice hailed me. She was coming towards me like a woodland sprite, floating, it seemed to me, for her gliding step was so free from any pronounced undulation. Her dress of blue checked gingham just escaped the ground, and she wore a gingham sunbonnet with two long strings, which she held in either hand. The sunbonnet was tilted back, and her laughing face, with its rich, delicate under-color of old ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... hills, rolling together, flung off from each other, an endless undulation. Rounded heads carrying a clump of trees like a comb; long steep groins packed with tree-tops; raking necks hog-maned with stiff plantations. Slopes that spread out fan-wise, opened wide wings. An immense ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... viewed them, looks very much like Beacon Street, in Boston, bordering on the Common, allowing for a considerable enlargement of scale in favor of the Park residences. The Park, however, has not the beautiful elms that overshadow Boston Common, nor such a pleasant undulation of surface, nor the fine off-view of the country, like that across Charles River. I doubt whether London can show so delightful a spot as that Common, always excepting the superiority of English lawns, which, however, is not ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the whole series of transformations (the Mueller-Haeckel "biogenetic-law.") 2. New characters are first acquired by strong adult males (the law of male dominance). 3. New characters appear on definite parts of the body, spreading especially from the rear to the front, (the law of undulation). 4. Varieties are stages in the process of development, through which all the individuals of ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... that seemed an age, went by. The troops had disappeared, hidden by an undulation of the ground; but over yonder, on the side of the Nores plain, the insurgents soon perceived the bayonets shooting up, one after another, like a field of steel-eared corn under the rising sun. At that moment Silvere, who was glowing with feverish agitation, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... blurred by the sheets of rain, was a line of low hills, with a jagged fringe of bluish firs and a solitary windmill. It must be a good mile and a half since we had passed a house, and there was none to be seen in the distance—nothing but the undulation of sere grass, sopped brown beneath the huge blackish oak-trees, and whence arose, from all sides, a vague disconsolate bleating. At last the road made a sudden bend, and disclosed what was evidently the home of my sitter. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... One—two—three—four quarters after eleven tinkled in silvery numbers upon the delicate bell of the clock, yet the closed eyelids and fixed lips moved not, gave no sign; but for the light, though regular undulation of the chest, life itself might seem to have fled forever. Yet ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... The Mont St. Jean, or Waterloo, position does not impress the beholder with any sense of strength. The so-called valley, separating the two arrays, is a very shallow depression, nowhere more than fifty feet below the top of the northern slope. It is divided about halfway across by an undulation that affords good cover to assailants about to attack La Haye Sainte. Another slight rise crosses the vale halfway between this farm and Hougoumont, and facilitates the approach to that part of the ridge. In fact, only on their extreme left could the defenders feel much ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in the large and placid embrace of its quietness, half lost in the fair haze, as if in a dream of infinite and tender clemency. There was no frown, no wrinkle on its face, not a ripple. And the run of the slight swell was so smooth that it resembled the graceful undulation of a piece of shimmering gray silk shot with gleams of green. We pulled an easy stroke; but when the master of the brig, after a glance over his shoulder, stood up with a low exclamation, my men feathered their oars instinctively, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... about which humming-birds now and then whirred and fluttered as we startled them, scarcely more brilliant in color than the gorgeous maples which grew in one or two dry and open spots. For three-quarters of an hour our drive continued, until at length a slight undulation broke the level of the sand, and a fence, inclosing a patch of Indian corn, from which the forest had been driven back, betokened for the first time the proximity of some habitation. In fact, having reached the summit of the slope, I found myself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... however only an extravagant growth of the prolific soil. Mrs. McKinstry gazed at it anxiously. There was no sign of life or movement near or around it; it stood as it had always stood, deserted and solitary. But turning her eyes to the right, beyond the water-course, she could see a slight regular undulation of the grassy sea and what appeared to be the drifting on its surface of half a dozen slouched hats in the direction of the alders. There was no longer any doubt; a party from the other ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... duration of combustion of different powders, the velocity of projectiles, etc. The registering drum, T, is revolved by hand through a winch, L, and the time is inscribed thereon by an electric tuning fork, S, set in motion by the large electro-magnet, E F. Each undulation of the curves corresponds to a hundredth of a second. The tuning-fork and the registering electro-magnets, G and H, are placed upon a regulatable support, C, by means of which they may be given ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... at this place, is several miles broad, and the opposite shore is so low that the snow causes it to appear but a slight undulation of the frozen bed of the river. Indeed, it would not be distinguishable at all, were it not for the willow bushes and dwarf pines, whose tops, rising above the white garb of winter, indicate that terra ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the more intolerable as the body was drained of its moisture. In vain those miserable objects stripped themselves of their clothes, squatted down on their hams, and fanned the air with their hats, to produce a refreshing undulation. Many were unable to rise again from this posture, but falling down, were trod to death or suffocated. The dreadful symptom of thirst was now accompanied with a difficulty of respiration, and every individual ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... in the hollows. The great column is moving forward on our left. Big ambulance waggons, with huge white covers nodding one behind the other, high above the press; the naval twelve-pounders, with ten-oxen teams and sailors swinging merrily alongside; infantry marching with the indescribable regular undulation of masses of drilled men, reminding one of the ripple of a centipede's legs; field artillery, horse artillery, transport waggons, more infantry, more guns—they stretch in a long, dark river right across ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... the reader by explaining the simple process that carried us happily through the deluge. By keeping the canoe bow on, we nobly resisted the shock of every wave, and gradually fell back under the impulse of each undulation. Thus we held on till the heavy clouds discharged their loads, beating down the sea and half filling the canoe with rain water. While the Krooman paddled and steered, I conducted the bailing, and as the African dipper was ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... of space, reaches the earth, and turns the delicate balance of the thermopile. Another discovery was made with the spectroscope; thus, if a boat moves up a river, it will meet more waves than will strike it if going down stream. Light is the undulation of waves; hence if the spectroscope is set on a star that is approaching the earth, more waves will enter than if set on a receding star, which fact is known by displacement of lines in the spectroscope from normal positions. It is found that many fixed stars are approaching, while others ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... back. "Be quick." The heads rose and sank with the undulation of the water. The swift boat appeared ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... beautiful scazons[664] in the Latin tongue; the metre limps no more; a master-hand has wrought it to exquisite melody; the quiet undulation of the sea, the yacht's easy gliding over its surface, live before us in its music. Even more delicate is the homelier description of the gardens of Julius Martialis on the slopes of the Janiculum. It is animated by ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... leads presently into a beautiful park, the only defect of which is that it is without undulation. It is quite level; but still the clumps of noble timber are pleasant to gaze upon. In one spot there still stands the grey wall and buttress of some ancient building, doubtless the relic of an ecclesiastical foundation. The present mansion is not ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... minute, Brendon turned to look again. He heard her singing with all the light-heartedness of youth and he caught a few notes as clear and cheerful as a grey bird's. Then, still walking quickly, she dwindled into one bright spot upon the moor, dipped into an undulation, and was gone—a creature of the heath and wild lands whom it seemed impossible to imagine pent ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... royal majesty. A rocky eminence, inaccessible on one or several sides, or at least a hill, a knoll somewhat elevated above the surrounding plain, have usually been chosen wherever such existed. But this was not the case in Chaldea. There, as far as eye can see, not the slightest undulation breaks the dead flatness of the land. Yet there, more than anywhere else, an elevated position was desirable, if only as a protection from the unhealthy exhalations of a vast tract of swamps, and from the intolerable nuisance of swarms of aggressive ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... Curiosity, in the shape of a Building, where, if you fire off a Pistol; the Sound returns about Fifty times. 'Tis done, they told me, by two Parallel Walls of a considerable length, which reverberate the Sound to each other till the undulation is quite spent. The which, being so informed, I was as wise concerning the Echo as I had ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Spanish dancer a more supple, elastic, and tempting form, than this singular girl, who seemed possessed with the spirit of dancing and perpetual motion, for, almost every moment, a slight undulation of head, hips, and shoulders seemed to follow the music of an invisible orchestra; while the tip of her right foot, placed on the carriage door in the most alluring manner, continued to beat time—for the Bacchanal Queen stood ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... a mile from Blois the road runs over an undulation of the ground that is almost a hill. From the moment that I had left Canaples as the Angelus was ringing, until the moment when our panting horses gained the brow of that little eminence, only half ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... softly round and round, his shadowless red eyes, which looked as if they had scorched their lashes off, turned towards me without looking at me, the disagreeable dints I have formerly described in his nostrils coming and going with his breath, and a snaky undulation pervading his frame from his chin to his boots, I decided in my own mind that I disliked him intensely. It made me very uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I was young then, and unused to disguise what I so ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... an instrument of such power, it only remained to concentrate its energy upon a given object in order that the atoms composing that object should be set into violent undulation, sufficient to burst it asunder and to scatter its molecules broadcast. This the inventor effected by the simplest means in the world—simply a parabolic reflector by which the destructive waves could be sent like a beam of light, but invisible, in any direction and focused ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... was coming more and more laboured. It seemed to Dan's dim consciousness that some of the spring was gone from that glorious stride which swept on and on with the slightest undulation, like a swallow skimming before the wind; but so long as strength remained he knew that Satan would never falter in his pace. As the delirium swept once more shadow-like on his brain, he allowed himself to fall forward, and ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... also a serpentine elegance, a sinuous charm: the shoulders do not swing; the cambered torso seems immobile;— but alternately from waist to heel, and from heel to waist, with each long full stride, an indescribable undulation seems to pass; while the folds of her loose robe oscillate to right and left behind her, in perfect libration, with the free swaying of the hips. With us, only a finely trained dancer could attempt such a walk;—with the Martinique woman of color it is natural as the tint of her skin; and this ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... her eyes very black. It was a troubling effect, but it had been evanescent; he had forgotten it almost till very unexpectedly he saw her coming down the terrace slow and eager, as if she were restraining herself, and with a rhythmic upward undulation of her whole figure. The light from an open window fell across her path, and suddenly all that mass of arranged hair appeared incandescent, chiselled and fluid, with the daring suggestion of a helmet of burnished copper and ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... bite, are both characteristic of the finest Lombard work. The dog's head is 14th century Gothic—a masterpiece of broad, subtle, easy sculpture, getting expression with every touch, and never losing the least undulation of surface, while it utterly disdains the mere imitation of hair, or attainment ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... refraction and reflection from a Ball of Water or Glass, we have much the same Phaenomena, namely, an obliquity of the undulation in the same manner as we have found it here. Which, because it is very much to our present purpose, and affords such an Instancia crucis, as no one that I know has hitherto taken notice of, I shall further examine. For it does very plainly and positively distinguish, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... dirge; in every dark hull that was tossed on its inconstant bosom, I imaged a bier, that would convey to death all who trusted to its treacherous smiles. Farewell to the sea! Come, my Clara, sit beside me in this aerial bark; quickly and gently it cleaves the azure serene, and with soft undulation glides upon the current of the air; or, if storm shake its fragile mechanism, the green earth is below; we can descend, and take shelter on the stable continent. Here aloft, the companions of the swift-winged birds, we skim through the unresisting element, fleetly and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... starting-point, a gesture in which he must have been trained by the husband of his sister, Mme. de Cambremer. This rapid recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's hips, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but this undulation of pure matter, this wholly carnal fluency, with not the least hint in it of spiritual significance, this wave lashed to a fury by the wind of an assiduity, an obsequiousness of the basest sort, awoke my mind suddenly to the possibility of a Legrandin altogether ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... yellow along the mountain, even changing into sear where its sides felt the north wind. On all that shore the full sunlight lay. The opposite hills, on the east, were in dainty sunshine and shadow, every undulation, every ridge and hollow, softly marked out. With what wonderful sharp outline the mountain edges rose against the bright sky; how wonderful soft the changes of shade and colour adown their sloping sides; what brilliant ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... living—I mourn the dead—I break the lightning." These words are inscribed on the great bell of the Minster of Schaffhausen—also on that of the Church of Art near Lucerne. There was an old belief in Switzerland that the undulation of air caused by the sound of a bell, broke the electric ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... surfaces be rarer than the surrounding mediums; then the impulse reflected at the second surface, meeting a subsequent undulation at the first, will render the particles of the rarer medium capable of wholly stopping the motion of the denser and destroying the reflection, while they themselves will be more strongly propelled than if they had been at rest, and the transmitted light will be increased. So that the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... sailing of the fleet began. The bou-boats, two by two, were moored to the harbor wharfs, dipping their masts on the swell as though curtseying to the people ashore, while their hulls went up and down in graceful undulation. Those tiny sea-dogs, with their rough profiles of ancient galleys, made one think of the old armadas of Aragon, or of the fleets of doughty pinnaces with which Roger de Lauria used to spread terror along the coasts of Sicily. And the fishermen, too, as they ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... accustomed to be overshadowed by this unruffled range, are so deliberate in their mental processes and so averse from speculation or experiment. There is a hypnotism of form: a rugged peak will alarm the mind where a billowy green undulation will lull it. The Downs change their complexion, but are never other than soothing and still: no stress of weather produces in them any of that sense of fatality that one is conscious of in Westmoreland. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... antiquity of the place also to be visited at Segeste—its theatre; but we are too immediately below it to know any thing about it at present, and must leave it in a parenthesis. To our left, at the distance of eight miles, this hill country of harmonious and graceful undulation ends in beetling cliffs, beneath which the sea, now full in view, lies sparkling in the morning sunshine. We shall never, never forget the impressions made upon us on first getting sight of Segeste! Paestum we had seen, and thought that it exhausted all that was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... thee: she thereat Laughed, as when dawn touches the sacred night The sky sees laugh and redden and divide Dim lips and eyelids virgin of the sun, Hers, and the warm slow breasts of morning heave, Fruitful, and flushed with flame from lamp-lit hours, And maiden undulation of clear hair Colour the clouds; so laughed she from pure heart Lit with a low blush to the braided hair, And rose-coloured and cold like very dawn, Golden and godlike, chastely with chaste lips, A faint grave laugh; and all they held ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and styles of song. Her's is a genuine soprano, reaching the extra high notes with that ease and certainty which make each highest one a triumph of expression purely, and not a physical marvel. The gradual growth and sostenuto of her tones; the light and shade, the rhythmic undulation and balance of her passages; the bird-like ecstacy of her trill; the faultless precision and fluency of her chromatic scales; above all, the sure reservation of such volume of voice as to crown each protracted climax with glory, not needing a new effort to raise force for the final blow; ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... and rose, pressed their hands to their bosom or voluptuously outspread their arms, which seemed to flutter as the wings of Iris or Nephthys, dragged their limbs, bent the knee, displayed their swift feet with little staccato movements, and followed every undulation of the music. The maids, standing against the wall to leave free space for the evolutions of the dancers, marked the rhythm by snapping their fingers or clapping their hands together. Some of these maids, absolutely nude, had no other raiment than a bracelet of enamelled ware; others ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... the clouds approach within a certain distance, and sometimes the electric cloud perches upon a hill, and then discharges itself. The electricity passes through the clouds in a zig-zag direction, and the undulation of the air which it produces is the cause of the noise which we hear, called thunder, which is more or less intense, and of longer or shorter duration, according to the quantity of air acted upon, and the distance of the place where the report is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... his example of holding them ready to strike at what they could see of the crocodile, and as they were carried closer by the tide and Rodd could just make out below the muddy surface that the water was being stirred by the undulation of the tail of the monster, which was apparently fourteen or fifteen feet long, three poles were sharply thrust together, two of them coming in contact with the creature's head just ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... the Sensible World correspond therefore to the laws of our exertional activity, but the correspondence is relational, not resemblant. Just so, it is by the reflection of Light that we discover the forms of the obstacle which solid bodies oppose to the radiant undulation. The resultant colours correspond to the form of these obstructions; but the correspondence is relational not resemblant. The same is true of sounds, of tactual sensations, of every other sensible obstacle to ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... love for Nature was stirred to its depths. His Alpine walks were a revelation of Nature in her most decided moods, and one particular walk over the Wengern Alp was destined to be long remembered. The mountain summits were glittering in the morning air, every undulation and the face of every hill clear and distinct. Formerly it was their height alone that had impressed him, 'now it was their boundless extent that he particularly felt—their huge, broad masses; the close connection of all those ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... to hear the fearful approach of Evil through the density of the gulf, and to catch glimpses, nearer and nearer at hand, beneath the hideous water of that dragon's head, that maw streaked with foam, and that writhing undulation of claws, swellings, and rings? Must it remain there, without a gleam of light, without hope, given over to that terrible approach, vaguely scented out by the monster, shuddering, dishevelled, wringing its arms, forever chained to the rock of night, a sombre Andromeda white and naked ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... her three big funnels, a hill of foam around her bow, and in her wake a swell like a tidal wave. It was a winning pace, and a magnificent sight she presented as she dashed through the choppy seas with never an undulation of her ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... in this plain, delicate beauty and a weird charm, despite its lack of undulation. Its lonely unplowed sweep gave me the satisfying sensation of being at last among the men who held the outposts,—sentinels for the marching millions who were approaching from the east. For two hours I walked, seeing Aberdeen fade to a series of wavering, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... awhile until the lady could receive him. Gloomily thoughtful, standing with eyes fixed upon those of the great bust of Berenice, he was startled by a sudden cry from within the house, the hoarse yell of a man in agony; it was repeated, and became a long shriek, rising and falling in terrible undulation. He had stepped forward to seek an explanation, when Heliodora's eunuch ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... and the scene became to the eye only a motionless ocean of roofs and gables, amid which one mountainous undulation was distinctly visible. Serapion urged his mule forward, my own at once followed at the same gait, and a sharp angle in the road at last hid the city of S——— for ever from my eyes, as I was destined never to return thither. ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... Undesigned senvola, senintenca. Undignified malinda. Undisciplined malobeema. Undo malfari. Undo (the hair) malligi. Undress (one's self) malvesti, senvestigi. Undulate ondolinii. Undulating ondolinia. Undulation ondolinio. Unearthly supernatura. Uneasiness maltrankvileco. Uneasy maltrankvila. Unemployed senokupa. Unendurable nesuferebla. Unequal neegala. Unerring neerara, certa. Uneven neebena, malglata. Unexpected neatendita. Unexpectedly neatendite. Unexpressed neesprimita. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... keeping up of appearances with the profound workings of nature, and the convulsive movements of uncontrollable agony, of the power of inflicting torture and of suffering it. Not only is the tumult of passion heaved up from the very bottom of the soul, but every the slightest undulation of feeling is seen on the surface, as it arises from the impulses of imagination or the different probabilities maliciously suggested by Iago. The progressive preparation for the catastrophe is wonderfully managed from the Moor's first gallant recital of the story of his love, of 'the ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... would never guess that nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought of a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gardener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monotonous surface of Blenheim,—making the most of every undulation,—flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth out of a giant's hand, wherever it was needed,— putting in beauty as often as there was a niche for it,—opening vistas to every point that deserved to be ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... entrance here I plainly see A line of footsteps printed in the sand. Here are the fresh impressions of her feet; Their well-known outline faintly marked in front, More deeply towards the heel; betokening The graceful undulation of her gait[51]. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... getting command over flat tints, so that you may be able to fill the spaces you have inclosed evenly, either with shade or color, according to the school you adopt; and, finally, to obtain the power of adding such fineness of drawing, within the masses, as shall express their undulation, and their characters ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... the busy company rises on the wing, and with peculiar, wavy flight rise and fall through the air, marking each undulation with a cluster of notes, sweet and clear, that come floating downward from the blue ether, where the birds seem to bound along exultant in their ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... principles are not always developed, it is to be observed, that country is always most beautiful when it is made up of curves, and that one of the chief characters of Ausonian landscape is the perfection of its curvatures, induced by the gradual undulation of promontories into the plains. In suiting architecture to such a country, that building which least interrupts the curve on which it is placed will be felt to be most delightful ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... the hip, keeping constantly the upper part of their body still, and seem to associate with every gesture or pose some definite thought. They cross the stage with a sliding movement, and one gets the impression not of undulation but of continuous ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... minutes Pickett's division disappeared in an undulation of the ground. Then, at less than point-blank range, it seemed to spring out of the very earth, no longer in three lines but one solid mass of rushing gray, cresting, like a tidal wave, to break in fury on the shore. Instantly, as if in answer to a single word, Hunt's guns and Gibbon's rifles ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... set off, at the same astonishing speed that the first had displayed, heading inward from the frontier line. They watched him for about five minutes, and then lost sight of him over the brow of a slight undulation. Beyond the roughly constructed blockhouses there was not a sign of inhabitants in any direction; the land was rough and uncultivated, there were neither cattle nor sheep to be seen; and if, as they strongly suspected, the blockhouses in sight accommodated a few men, none of their ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... hours of undulation and skidding over the November snow, to the somniferous bell jangle of my dirty little horses, the only impression of interest being a weird gypsy concert I came in for at a miserable drinking-booth half buried in the ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... the breeze kept for a time the small boat in the neighbourhood of the brig. The hoisted sail, invisible, fluttered faintly, mysteriously, and the boat rising and falling bodily to the passage of each invisible undulation of the waters seemed to repose upon a living breast. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat up erect, expectant and silent. Mrs. Travers had drawn her cloak close around her body. Their glances plunged infinitely deep into a lightless void, and ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the woman said, her hands caressing a dial. Slowly, with gentle undulation, his chair rose from the floor and cradled the aged tiredness that was Oliver Symmes to his bed. With almost tender devotion, his body was mechanically shifted from the portable chair ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... an undulation of the sea-bed: its highest ridges do not rise more than the height of a man above the salines on either side;—the salines themselves lie almost level with the level of the flood-tides;—the tides are variable, treacherous, mysterious. But when all ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... became the waterfowl. Ducks swam among the flags, or rose with a rush and splashing. Coots and moorhens dived and hid in the reeds. The lesser grebe sank at the sound of the paddle like a stone. A strong northern diver raised a wave as he hurried away under the water, his course marked by the undulation above him. Sedge-birds chirped in the willows; black-headed buntings sat on the trees, and watched him without fear. Bearded titmice were there, clinging to the stalks of the sedges, and long-necked herons rose from the reedy places where they love ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... miles to Rae Bareilly, over a plain with more than usual undulation, and the same doomuteea light soil, tolerably cultivated, and well studded with trees of the finest kind. The festoons of the bandha hang gracefully from the branches, with their light green and yellow leaves, and scarlet flowers, in the dark ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... rationality of the universe. It was by this confidence in finding in the hitherto unexplored domains of nature what reason demanded, that Goethe, from the analogies of the mammalian skeleton, discovered the intermaxillary bone in man; and Sir William Hamilton, from the mathematical consequences of the undulation of light, led the way to the discovery of conical refraction. A similar story is told of Prof. Agassiz and Prof. Pierce, the one the great zooelogist, the other the great mathematician, of Cambridge. Agassiz, having studied the formation of radiate animals, and having found them ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... through which we travelled appeared dreary in the extreme: its level, sandy surface being nowhere varied by the pleasing undulation of hill and dale. This is not the general aspect of Sweden, I know; but, perhaps, I perceive this deficiency the more, being so lately arrived from Denmark, where the landscapes are soft and beautiful, while the natural gloom of its forests is relieved by the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... molten masses, scattered about in the strangest disorder; a valley of the brightest green, over a hundred feet wide, stretching like a river between the fire-blasted cliffs; the trail winding through it in snake-like undulation—all now silent as death under the grim leaden sky, yet eloquent of terrible convulsions in by-gone centuries and of the voices of men long since mingled with the dust. Upon entering the gorge between the shattered walls of lava on either side, the trail makes a rapid ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... interposed between them and death by famine. All along the route lay memorials of the march of the army, and especially of Colonel Cooke's battalion,—a trail of skeletons a thousand miles in length, gnawed bare by the wolves and bleaching in the snow, visible at every undulation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... followed by a little June weather in October. A somnolent influence rested everywhere. Above the undulation of land on the horizon were the clouds, like heavenly hills, reflecting their radiance on those earthly elevations. The celestial mountains and valleys gave wondrous perspective to the outlook, and around them lay an atmosphere, unreal ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"—the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... to the shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect resembled that law of nature by which we now inspire, now expire the breath; by which the heart now draws in, then hurls out the blood,—the law of undulation. So now you must labor with your brains, and now you must forbear your activity and see ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... numerous antelopes; and, dismounting, I ordered one of the hunters to lead my horse while I attempted to stalk a fine buck mehedehet (Redunca Ellipsyprimna). There were several in the herd, but there was a buck with a fine head a few yards in advance; they were standing upon an undulation on open ground backed by high grass. I had marked a small bush as my point of cover, and creeping unobserved towards this, I arrived unseen within about a hundred and twenty yards of the buck. With the Fletcher 24 I made a good shoulder-shot; the buck gave ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the rock acted as a breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a good way beyond it. I thereupon steered for the starboard of this rock, and when I was within it found the heave of the sea dwindled to a scarce perceptible undulation, whereupon I lowered my sail, and, standing to the oar, sculled the boat to a low lump of ice, on to which ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... yelping and occasional baying below, the rustling among the limbs, and the undulation caused by the animals leaping upward among the branches; but they ceased to disturb him after a time, and became like the sound of falling water in the ears of the hunter by his camp-fire. It was not long before slumber stole away his senses, ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... of this discourse ran into my head, and the dregs of the cup still rested in my hand, when a traveller, as passing by, entered the outer circle of the congregation, and its expiring undulation lit upon him. He sent forth such a groan that the others in sympathy with him joined in lamentation, and the rawest of the assembly bubbled in unison. I exclaimed, "Praise be to God! those far off are present in their knowledge, and those near by are distant from their ignorance. If the hearer has ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... disappeared. The elephants which had taken to flight roamed in the horizon with their fired towers. These burned here and there in the darkness like beacons nearly half lost in the mist; and no movement could be discerned in the plain save the undulation of the river, which was heaped with corpses, and was drifting them ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... houses or buried in some abyss about to open under their feet; some, falling to their knees in the snow, cry for mercy; others pass the rest of the night in prayer, because the earthquake still continues with a certain undulation, almost like that of ships at sea, and such that some feel from these shocks the same sickness that they endure upon ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... very close with his skirmishers, lost sight of the blue infantry now behind an orchard-clad undulation. "Billy Maydew! come climb this tree and tell me ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... feet, having descended 330 feet in thirty-six miles, an almost perfectly flat stretch except a hillock or undulation here and there. My fever continued so fierce the whole day that I had not the strength to stand up nor the inclination to eat, the exhaustion caused by the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of the flat region may be noticed. The intense heat of the summer sun striking on the dry sand or the saline efflorescence of the desert throws the air over them into such a state of quivering undulation as produces the most wonderful and varying effects, distorting the forms of objects, and rendering the most familiar strange and hard to be recognized. A mud bank furrowed by the rain will exhibit the appearance of a magnificent city, with columns, domes, minarets, and pyramids; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... show in the water, there was at the very least sixty feet of the animal a fleur d'eau, no portion of which was, to our perception, used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulation. It passed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily recognised his features with the naked eye; and it did not, either in approaching the ship or after it had passed our wake, deviate in the slightest degree from its course ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... when he died, not long after, his wife had to go into the workhouse, and in one season the sorrel and dandelions took possession, and Phoebe's grave became like all the others—a scarcely distinguishable undulation in the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... object was expected to be seen, or why should I have gazed in that direction? Two senses were at once assailed. The same piercing exclamation of HOLD! HOLD! was uttered within the same distance of my ear. This it was that I heard. The airy undulation, and the shock given to my nerves, were real. Whether the spectacle which I beheld existed in my fancy or without, might be doubted. I had not closed the door of the apartment I had just left. The ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... that this curtain did move? he asked himself, fearing that his eyes had deceived him. It was, moreover, such a slight thing, a gentle flutter of drapery, a kind of trembling in its folds, less than an undulation caused by ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the great Downs, and far over the endless fields of the Weald or plain. Thirty fields could be counted in succession, one after the other, like irregular chess-squares, some corn, some grass, and these only extended to the first undulation, where the woods hid the fields behind them. But beyond these, in reality, succeeded another series of fields to the second undulation, and still a third series to the farthest undulation visible. Yet farther there was a faint line of hills, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... horror. It was rising gradually to my side, within the bell, through the gloom of which the pale skin and light robes sent a sickly gleam. I had no power to move myself away from it. My body was bent so that my face was within a few inches of it; and a slight undulation of the waters that were rising into the bell inch by inch, imparted to the corpse a motion that made it dodge upwards and downwards, as if it made efforts to touch my countenance. All was as silent as death; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... a melancholy time, even in the snugness of the Dragon bar. The rich expanse of corn-field, pasture-land, green slope, and gentle undulation, with its sparkling brooks, its many hedgerows, and its clumps of beautiful trees, was black and dreary, from the diamond panes of the lattice away to the far horizon, where the thunder seemed to roll along the hills. The heavy rain beat down the tender branches of vine and jessamine, and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... wind wholly ceased. Nature assumed a dead calm, and ceased to breathe. Upon the mast, where I noticed a sort of slight ignis fatuus, the sail hangs in loose heavy folds. The raft is motionless in the midst of a dark heavy sea—without undulation, without motion. It is as still as glass. But as we are making no progress, what is the use of keeping up the sail, which may be the cause of our perdition if the tempest should suddenly strike us ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... ascending the hill he leaned gently now and then on the arm of a handmaid, evidently the pet-lamb of this kindest of pastors. Ah, such a damsel! Andalus from head to foot; from the rose in her hair, to the fairy shoe and lacework stocking; Andalus in every movement; in every undulation of the body:—ripe, melting Andalus! But then so modest!—so shy!—ever, with downcast eyes, listening to the words of the padre; or, if by chance she let flash a side glance, it was suddenly checked and her eyes once ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... over the river, but whose bed is too narrow for a road: we passed two or three villages, the road undulating over ground covered with granite boulders, or rather small masses, rounded only when exposed to weather; the bottom of each undulation is covered with sward and giving exit to a small stream; sometimes we came on the bed of the river. At six and a half miles we came on a fort, used as a custom house, and diverged again to the east ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith |
