"Plash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day, just as the princess had sat down to dinner, she heard a strange noise—tap, tap—plash, plash—as if something was coming up the marble staircase: and soon afterwards there was a gentle knock at the door, and a little ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... in Europe where to-day we find the most exquisite remains of Mohammedan culture, and, though the fury of Christian conquest dragged the harrow over the soil of Granada, even yet streams and fountains spring up there and gush abundantly and one seldom loses the sound of the plash of water. The flower of Christian chivalry and Christian intelligence went to Palestine to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of pagan Mohammedans. They found there many excellent things which they had not gone out to seek, and the Crusaders produced a kind of premature and abortive ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... tramp, tramp, up and down on the regular beat, sometimes in the full silvery moonlight, sometimes in the shade cast by the hut; one minute only the footsteps to break the silence, or the wallowing plash of one of the great reptiles ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... snare, the ash clusters glow, Ducks plash in the pools; breakers whiten below; More strong than a hundred is the ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... we went on thus in silent pleasure, gazing at the gentle needle as it moved without noise; and, with nothing around but plash of waves, bright sun, and a feeling of hot silence, the spell of sleep was overpowering. Homer sometimes nodded, it is said, and he would have certainly had a good nap had he steered long thus. The sinking off into these delicious slumbers was imperceptible, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... mangrove thickets, now receding in plains dotted with gloomy clumps of gumtrees, as far as the eye, from our low position and by the imperfect light afforded, could reach. As we advanced, the measured plash of the oars frightened from their roosting places in the trees, a huge flock of screeching vampires, that disturbed for a time the serenity of the scene by their discordant notes; and a few reaches further up, noisy flights of our old friends, the whistling-ducks, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... slowly back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles with a pleasant ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... became herself beyond the possibility of her sister's reach. Her danger was imminent; she was sinking. Her father and sister shrieked to Him—who they believed heard them and sent his Messenger; for a plash in the water, a strong man with wonderful—it seemed superhuman—strength and speed, was making his way toward Mary. In one moment more he had grasped her with one hand. She had still enough presence ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in one another's face with mute astonishment, they heard a dull thud against the ship's side—the stroke of a boat-hook as the pinnace was shoved off—then a rattle, as the oars commence working in the tholes, succeeded by the plash of the oar-blades in the water. After that, the regular "dip-dip," at length dying away, as the boat receded, leaving the abandoned vessel silent as a graveyard in the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... dream! Spell of the summer night! Will of the grass that stirs in its sleep! Desire of the honeysuckle! And further away, Like the plash of far-off waves in the fluid night, ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... along, the birds flew up out of the thick second crop of clover, and the bees hummed as if it still were June. There was a flashing of white gulls over the water where the fleet of boats rode the low waves together in the cove, swaying their small masts as if they kept time to our steps. The plash of the water could be heard faintly, yet still be heard; we might have been a company of ancient Greeks going to celebrate a victory, or to worship the god of harvests, in the grove above. It was strangely moving to see this ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... mair?—it was laid till her ere she had a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune.—They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shore-side, at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say —he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise—that's 'Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... it is true, his curiously limited immortality—an immortality that may be, and finally is, curtailed—but she can suffer a punishment worse to her than extinction. The prelude opens with the roar and hoarse scream of the storm as it dashes through the forest—- the plash of the rain, the flashing of lightning and the roll of the thunder. The musical idea was obviously suggested by Schubert's "Erl-king." In each we have the same rapidly-reiterated notes in the upper part, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... the long account. And still the continents and oceans ring With royal torments of the Silver King! Incessant bellowings fill all the earth, Mingled with inextinguishable mirth. He roars, men laugh, Nevadans weep, beasts howl, Plash the affrighted fish, and shriek the fowl! With monstrous din their blended thunders rise, Peal upon peal, and brawl along the skies, Startle in hell the Sharons as they groan, And shake the splendors ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... keep its head and ears in the warmth and shelter, and never once attempted to creep in nearer; and so another hour passed, only broken by the low murmur of Dale's voice as he talked to the guide, and the plash and rush of water. For the dripping was drowned now by the enormous amount which fell, and this went on increasing till there was quite a heavy ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... with which it would have been almost impossible to associate the idea of war and invasion. In the lazy bunting that hung listlessly from peak and mast-head—in the cheerful voices of the sailors, heard afar off in the stillness—in the measured plash of the sea itself, and the fearless daring of the sea-gulls, as they soared slowly above our heads—there seemed something so suggestive of peace and tranquillity, it struck us as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... ears from below the sound of Madame Prune's long prayers, ascending through the floor, monotonous as the song of a somnambulist, regular and soothing as the plash of a fountain. It lasts three quarters of an hour at least, it drones along, a rapid flow of words in a high nasal key; from time to time, when the inattentive spirits are not listening, it is accompanied by a clapping of dry palms, or by harsh ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the Sheriff's supper party came with heavy showers and a sky swept by clouds that let through glimpse of moon nor star. The town lay in pitch darkness, all silent except for the plash of the sea upon the shore or its long roll on the Ramparts. A deserted and wind-swept street, its white walls streaming with waters, its outer shutters on the ground fiats barred to darkness, its gutters running over—it was the ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... pond-lilies, peopled with bullfrogs and water snakes, and haunted by two white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would beat as we approached it; what fearful glances we would throw around! And if by chance a plash of a wild duck, or the guttural twang of a bullfrog, struck our ears, as we stole quietly by—away we sped, nor paused until completely out of the woods. Then, when I reached home, what a world of adventures and imaginary terrors would I have to relate ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... and Clarence. To them it was a beloved friend; and magnificent as was Lynmouth, wonderful as was Clovelly, and glorious as was Hartland, I believe they would equally have welcomed the waves if they had been on the flattest of muddy shores! The ripple, plash, and roar were as familiar voices, the salt smell as native air; and my mother never had thawed so entirely towards Clarence as when she found him the only person who could thoroughly participate ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him: "Rob Donn, according to all accounts, though outwardly of such fair respectability that he attained an honour, unknown to Robert Burns, of acting as an elder of the kirk, was not always so chaste in his words as he might seem to be in his deeds; he took his plash as a poet, and not always in the clearest waters; besides, he had a terrible lash at his command, which he could wield with an effect at times that paid little respect to the bounds set in such matters by Christian charity, or even by social politeness. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... sit for hours, following with reverent pencil the details of an architecture unrivalled on the globe; to watch the sun scale the hills of Scutari and shatter its lances against the fairy minarets of Stamboul; to catch the swing and plash of the rowers rounding their caiques by the bridge of Galata; to wander through bazaar and market, dotting down splashes of robe, turban, and sash; to rest for hours in cool tiled mosques, which in their ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... poised himself for an instant in the air, then closed his wings and shot downward. A whizzing sound! then a plash, and he disappeared beneath the surface, throwing up the water into sparkling foam-wreaths. He was absent but a moment, and then bore upward into the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... horizon. Eastward the huge meadow sank down into bottoms, shaded by trees, and overgrown with reeds and palmettos, shining, as the wind stirred them, like sails in the sunshine. The profound stillness of the sky-bounded plain, only broken by the plash of the waterfowl, or the distant howl of the savanna wolf, and the splendour of the rising sun, imparted an indescribable solemnity and grandeur to the scene. Lower down the river were detached groups of trees, amongst which grazed deer, who, with wondering glances, seemed to ask the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... over-driven galley slaves, indifferent to everything, work, rest, blows, food, sleep and the hope of release. The sky darkens suddenly. There is a sort of horror in the stifling air. People do not talk much, and if they do are apt to quarrel and sometimes to kill one another without warning. The plash of the fountains has a dull sound like the pouring out of molten lead. The horses' hoofs strike visible sparks out of the grey stones in broad daylight. Many houses are shut, and one fancies that there must be a dead man in each whom no one will bury. A few great drops ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... shadowy motive flits faster here and there in a slow swelling din of whispering, to the insistent plash of wave. Suddenly the sense of desolation yields to soothing play of waters—a berceuse of the sea—and now a song sings softly (in horn), though strangely jarring on the murmuring lullaby. The soothing cheer is anon broken by a shift of new tone. There is ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... demurely out of the sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the cabinet de toilette. She moved about in the cabinet de toilette thinking that the waltz out of The Rosenkavalier was divinely exciting. The delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of the shortening ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... defiant, mocking expression. He looked as though he wanted to say: "Yes, in a minute I will tell you something that will make you split your sides with laughing." The little round window was open and a soft breeze was blowing on Pavel Ivanitch. There was a sound of voices, of the plash of oars in the water.... Just under the little window someone began droning in a high, unpleasant voice: no doubt it ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a shout was heard from far down the river; then later the plash of oars; then a cry hailing the approaching boats, and the answer, "All safe!" Presently the boats had come alongside, and the passengers crowded down to the guard to learn the details of the search. Basil heard a hollow, moaning, gurgling sound, regular as that of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my path, but I will tell you," and with the sound of the gurgling river, and the plash of the waves in his ears, Cardo listened to her simple story. "You couldn't see me much before, because only six weeks it is since I am here. Before that I was living far, far away. Have you ever heard of Patagonia? Well then, my father was a missionary there, and he took me and my mother ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... ago—for on our starboard hand, by the edge of the rent, swept down a slope of turf, cropped by the gales, green as an English park; with a thread of a stream dropping to a small wilderness of ferns, and, through this, to plash upon a miniature beach of pink sand, on the edge of which the sea scarcely lapped. Sea-birds of many kinds circled and squawked overhead. Yet it was not our boat that had ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grey stone and full of dim sheep. Below were dusky woods around what I took to be Fosse Manor, for the great Roman Fosse Way, straight as an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its water-meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny village settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was no noise but the twitter of small birds and the night wind in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... side are embowered in fragrant bloom. There is a runnel of water at the roadside, and in one place this water is collected in a round stone basin that looks immensely old; from this it trickles forth again with coolness and musical plash. Having reached this spot, we may as well pass over into Fowey by the ferry here instead of by that from Polruan. If we had already come from Fowey to Bodinnick we should find that the ferryman would carry us back without further payment; the outward fee included ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... The waves plash at your feet, and the seagull, strangely tame, screams close overhead; but glorious as is the unbroken view of sky and ocean, the loneliness of the place, and the unutterable mystery of the sea, and the deep sullen roar, and the memories of the long sad history ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... courts, and a dreamy dulness in its trees and gardens; those who pace its lanes and squares may yet hear the echoes of their footsteps on the sounding stones, and read upon its gates, in passing from the tumult of the Strand or Fleet Street, 'Who enters here leaves noise behind.' There is still the plash of falling water in fair Fountain Court, and there are yet nooks and corners where dun-haunted students may look down from their dusty garrets, on a vagrant ray of sunlight patching the shade of the tall houses, and seldom troubled to reflect a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... crossed the ocean blue;" but everything was clean, and had an air of old-time respectability. The dining-room, which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square courtyard where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of a little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with the rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a raised and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the house, busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... and makes brave this sombreing tide of time. Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear The laurel glorious from that wintry hair— When he, the sovereign of our lyric day, In Charon's shallop must be rowed away, And hear, scarce heeding, 'mid the plash of oar, The ave atque vale ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... I walked along, I heard through the plash of the waves and the sizzle of the foam ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... at last, lay the twilight world he loved. Nature had ceased her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle in the herbage—the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall hardly stirred the dust. In the distance sounded the cry of ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... a hot June day, and out of the welter of din and rumble the cool plash of falling water came to his straining ears refreshingly. At once he considered the dog and, thankful for the distraction, stepped beneath the portico of a provision store and indicated the marble basin ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... told by her that she cannot sleep for the rats. Make the weather fair, to keep the picture at its best, and let her pass the hours till the coming of the dawn, watching the mainmast-truck sway to and fro against the Southern Cross, as the breeze falls and rises, and the bulwark-plash is soft ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... came a clear, gentle voice, that fell from the window in the breaking ripples of a fountain plash. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... passed over her head. "It is better than the beautiful world where I sit on the rocks and wonder, and dream of the great beyond that goes over and meets the sky. There are no cruel Indians then, and I want to wander on and on and listen to the voices in the trees, the plash of the great river, and the little stream that plays against the stones almost like the song you sung. If one could live there always and did not get ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... in a still morning or euening a myle), to get vp and beare mee company a little way. In this foule way two pretty plaine youthes watcht me, and with their kindnes somewhat hindred me. One, a fine light fellow, would be still before me, the other euer at my heeles. At length, comming to a broad plash{8:23} of water and mud, which could not be auoyded, I fetcht a rise, yet fell in ouer the anckles at the further end. My youth that follow'd me tooke his iump, and stuck fast in the midst, crying out to ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... maiden-hair, and all sorts of verdant weeds that thrive in the cracks and crevices of moist marble, tell us that Nature takes the fountain back into her great heart, and cherishes it as kindly as if it were a woodland spring. And hark, the pleasant murmur, the gurgle, the plash! You might hear just those tinkling sounds from any tiny waterfall in the forest, though here they gain a delicious pathos from the stately echoes that reverberate their natural language. So the fountain is not altogether glad, after all ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the fair and lovely Sultan's daughter in the twilight, - In the twilight by the fountain, Where the sparkling waters plash. ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... blue- shirted individuals who were commencing the work of taking down and rolling up the silken awnings, accompanying their labors by a sort of monotonous chant that, mingling with the slow, gliding plash of the river, sounded as weird and mournful as the sough of the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... fell upon them, broken only by the regular plash of the oars. In the young man's conversational attacks there had been nothing but a light play of sunny humour, but in this last retort of hers there was something like the glimmer of cold steel. It ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, it was no marvel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... adorable beauty of an early New England summer. It had no snow-capped mountains in the distance; no amethyst foothills to enchain the eye; no wonderful canyons and splendid rocky passes to make the tourist marvel; no length of yellow sea sands nor plash of ocean surf; no trade, no amusements, no summer visitors;—it was just a quiet, little, sunny, verdant, leafy piece of heart's content, that's what Beulah was, and Julia couldn't spoil it; indeed, the odds were, that it would sweeten Julia! That was what Mother Carey hoped when her heart had ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... enchanted despair of love, time was not marked for them except by the cool plash of the water, which at intervals broke under the half-open window. To the caressing praise of her ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... is the woodland plash, White is the woodland glade, Forth wend those twain, from oak to ash, With ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... kingdom for my thought, Within a river's winding cove, Whose forests form a double grove, And, from the water's silent flow, Appear more beautiful below; While their large leaves the lilies lave, Or plash upon the shadow'd wave; While birds, with darken'd pinions, fly Across that still intenser sky; Fish, with cold plunge, with startling leap, Or arrow-flight across the deep; And stilted insects, light-o-limb, Would dimple o'er the even brim; If, with my hand, in play, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... wonderful to feel clean again, to get the stubble off his cheeks, and to plash the cool water over his head and about his ears. When he had finished he felt measurably nearer to Patsy. He found laid out also clean shirts and neckcloths. Two complete suits of clothes were folded in an open chest of drawers. Patsy had ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... be a graceful and nearly nude woman standing there, and some display of will power on the girl's part was called for before she approached nearer and stifled the first breath of apprehension. Then, delighted by the vague beauty of the scene, with senses soothed by the soft plash of the cascade, she decided to walk around the lake to the spot where Trenholme must have been hidden when he painted that astonishingly vivid picture. Its bold treatment and simplicity of note rendered it an easy subject to carry in the mind's eye, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... drooped above ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of water, and, trying to conceal my own distress for her as well as I could, sat down, silently, near her. Gradually she grew quieter, until the room was so still that we could hear the raindrops from the eaves plash down outside. Peggy pushed back her cloud of bright hair and fastened it in the nape of her neck. At last she said, with conviction: "Mother, Maria didn't say these things, but I know she thinks them ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... they began to sink, till with one spasm of dread she seemed to awake, and find she was a child again in the parlor at evening twilight, and Tom was not really angry. From the soothed sense of that false waking she passed to the real waking,—to the plash of water against the vessel, and the sound of a footstep on the deck, and the awful starlit sky. There was a moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get disentangled from the confused web of dreams; but soon the whole terrible truth urged itself upon her. Stephen was ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... and the gloomy, bat-infested cells beneath. A vagrant breeze drifted now and then across the grim wall above them, and the deserted road in front lay drenched in the yellow light of the tropic moon. There was little likelihood of detection here, where the dreamy plash of the sea drowned the low sound of their voices; and Jose breathed more freely than in the populous plaza which they had ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... together. Her favourite song was "Come, Lasses and Lads"; his was "John Peel"; and they would sing them off and on for an hour at a spell. Thus on a summer evening, when the bay was lying like a tired monster asleep, and every plash of an oar was echoing on the hills, the people on the land would hear them coming around the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... seemed very peaceful here in the hot haze that brooded over the still mountains, and there seemed to be nought to fear. We drew swiftly up to the mound, with the plash of oars only to break the silence, and there was nought amiss that we could see. They had made it on a little flat tongue of land that jutted from the mountain's foot into the deep water, so that on two sides the mound was close ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... to hill, And still consumed, is burning still. Higher and higher leaps the flame, The smoke an ever-shifting frame. He sees a Spanish Castle old, With silver steps and paths of gold. From myrtle bowers comes the plash Of fountains, and the emerald flash Of parrots in the orange trees, Whose blossoms pasture humming bees. He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke Bears visions, that his master-stroke Is out of dirt ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... definitely installed as reader and garde malade in general, and Clement Rutherford soon learned to await her coming with impatience and to welcome her with delight. All his life long will he remember those summer days, when her voice and the low plash of the far-off ocean waves wove themselves together into music as she read, and when the blue splendors of her lustrous eyes lent a new meaning to the poet's story as it flowed in melodious verses from her lips. Then came a day when the book was laid aside, and the impassioned utterances of ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... there in the darkness near Where the shadows clutch and cling, Above the plash of the bitter tear, A song and the lips ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... the bottom of the pit, where the great drops of water fell plash. Many colliers were waiting their turns to go up, talking noisily. Morel gave his answers ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... midnight, but there was no disturbance; nothing was heard but the plash of the mill-stream, and the dripping ooze from the rocks. His old enemies, no doubt, were intimidated, and he was about commencing a snug nap on the idea—when, lo! there came a great rush of wind. He heard it booming on from a vast distance, until it seemed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this instrument of music the movement of things that moved about her—the patter of the leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling of the ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... shore to spawn, and that he seizes too the haddock, having enticed it near by beating the water. Crantz, in his "History of Greenland," evidently alludes to this cunning habit when he observes, "They plash with their feet in the water, to excite the curiosity of some kinds of fishes to come and see what is going forward, and then they snap them up; and the Greenland women have learnt this piece of art from ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... me waiting here, Selah. Of course I'd have enjoyed it all far better in your society—I don't think I need tell you that now, dear—but the sunshine, and the sea breeze, and the song of the larks, and the plash of the waves below, and the shouts of the fishermen down there on the beach mending their nets and putting out their smacks, have all been so delightful after our humdrum round of daily life at Oxford, that I only wanted your presence ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... dishonest, and her press debased, and her society frivolous, and her religion a mere twilight of wilful and self-induced delusion—she in her turn shall fall like Lucifer, son of the morning, and the double oceans which sweep her illimitable shores shall only plash to future empires a more sad, a more desolate, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... "but, Mr. Salter, if that was only all I had to trouble me! Oh, sir, work is occupation, but work harassed with care for others becomes unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now. At my desk I seem to see those low shores and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves between me and that indistinct boundary. I am floating on the river current, drowning ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... friend had obviously been a prey to one of his fits of low spirits, and vexing the kindly soul of the poet by gloomy anticipations of an early death. Suffering, as Maecenas did, from those terrible attacks of sleeplessness to which he was subject, and which he tried ineffectually to soothe by the plash of falling water and the sound of distant music, [Footnote: Had Horace this in his mind when he wrote "Non avium citharoeque cantus somnum reducent?"—(Odes, III. 1.) "Nor song of birds, nor music of the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... needle, making it round and oblong in shape like a fisherman's basket, and after deftly and closely weaving it together, subjects it to the action of the sea waves, that its surface may be rendered waterproof by this plash and cement, and it is hard for even iron or stone to break it. And what is more wonderful still, so symmetrically is the entrance of the nest adjusted to the kingfisher's shape and size, that no beast either greater or smaller can enter it, they even say that it does not admit the sea, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... me what you hear. Only the musical plash of the fountains and the sonorous undertone of the organ, like the distant roar of surf upon the beach? Ah, me! ah, me! how materialistic you are, my children. Your old uncle hears in these myriad-voiced fountains the musical instruments which Boccaccio gave to the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the hero of a romance, but face to face with a hard, practical, terrible reality. It was night when I landed at the Paddington Station, and taking an omnibus for Charing Cross, watched the long lines of lamps on Oxford Street, and the glitter of the Haymarket theatres, and at last the hard plash of the fountains in Trafalgar Square, with the stony statues grouped so rigidly about the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... into innumerable vistas, each grandly mysterious as a cathedral aisle. The sun shot golden arrows through dark boughs, patching the moss with translucent lights, vivid and clear as the lustre of emeralds. The gentle plash of the forest stream, rippling over its pebbly bed, made a tender music that was wont to seem passing sweet to Violet Tempest's ear. To-day she heard nothing, saw nothing. Her brain ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... hounds, heeding nothing the scratching of briars or the whipping of stiff twigs as she sped on. But for all their eager hunting, the quarry outran both dogs and folk, and gat him into a great thicket, amidmost whereof was a wide plash of water. Into the thicket they followed him, but he took to the water under their eyes and made land on the other side; and because of the tangle of underwood, he swam across much faster than they might have any ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... little space Of silence, then the plash and spray, The sound of eager waves that ran To kiss the perfumed locks astray, To touch these lips that ne'er said 'Nay,' To dally with the helpless hands; Till the deep sea in silence ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... through Tempe's vale, or scale the giant Alp, Where roses list the bulbul's late, or snow-wreaths crown the scalp; I'd pause to hear soft Venice streams plash back to boatman's oar, Or hearken to the Western flood in wild and falling roar; I'd tread the vast of mountain range, or spot serene and flower'd, I ne'er could see too many of the wonders God has ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... she said; "close by it, sir. There's one bed in our garden that always thrives, in the hottest summer, by the plash from the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... estuary, arm of the sea, bayou [U.S.], fiord, armlet; frith[obs3], firth, ostiary|, mouth; lagune[obs3], lagoon; indraught[obs3]; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles[obs3]; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough[obs3], mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin[obs3], puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c. (store) 636; alberca[obs3], barachois[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of any habitation, no gleam of light from the shore to cheer us. In vain we strained our ears for the plash of the oar, or welcome sound of the human voice, or bark of some household dog, that might assure us we were not doomed to pass the night in ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... heard saving the plash of the little fountain, and the low soft ripple of the tiny waves that rocked themselves against the edge ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... weighing nearly three hundred tons. Through this immense arterial and venous system circulates the life-blood of the plants, hot water being the vehicle of warmth in winter. These invisible streams will flow when the brooks at the foot of the hill are sealed by frost and the plash of the open-air fountains ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... the channel by which the whole pit was drained. Beyond the light the three men encountered another wall of sand, and from behind it and through it there came to them the dull thud and the plash of heavy water. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... it did not come down—it bounded into the tin eave-trough and rolled slowly along till it came to the big pipe that led to the cistern, and into this it dropped, and went whirring down, and stopped somewhere with a faint plash. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... fence gleamed ghostly in the moonlight and were finally lost in the shadow of the great bluff that abruptly shut in the entire point and plateau and shut out all further sight of lake or land in that direction. Far beneath he could hear the soft plash upon the sandy shore of the little wavelets that came sweeping in the wake of the raft-boat and spending their tiny strength upon the strand; far down on the hotel point he could still hear the soft melody of the waltz; he remembered how the ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... curtain of the tent rolled up, and sat about on the boxes in silence for some time, listening to the plash of the sea upon the beach, every minute somebody ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... the footfall of one of his sergeants coming to apprise him of something worth knowing. From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... deepening into the darker shades of night. It is an eery business to be out on the hills at such a season, for they are deathly quiet except for the lashing of the storm. You will never hear a bird cry or a sheep bleat or a weasel scream. The only sound is the drum of the rain on the peat or its plash on a boulder, and the low surge of the swelling streams. It is the place and time for dark deeds, for the heart grows savage; and if two enemies met in the hollow of the mist only one would ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... that both were heavily muffled about the face. This was all he could see, for in a moment they had passed into the gloom, and the next the angle of the house hid them from view; but he could still hear the plash of their oars above the sounds ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... years—ago— After those water-lilies, till the plash, I know not how, surprised us; and you dared Neither advance nor turn back: so, we stood Laughing and crying until Gerard came— Once safe upon the turf, the loudest too, For once more reaching the relinquished prize! How idle thoughts are, some men's, ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... however, I trudged on alone, plish-plash-plosh, through the clayey sludge, cold, dripping and miserable, stopping occasionally to turn my back to the wind or to tie up a wayward shoestring, and pondering dolefully in my mind that I had full two hours to go, not only before reaching home, but perhaps before ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... it rapidly, and when he got to the side of the well, he, without a moment's hesitation, flung it headlong down, and, listening attentively, he heard it fall with a slight plash, as if there was some water at the bottom ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... caterer; but he was addicted to a sort of dreaming of his own, even when the sun stood in the zenith, and he was walking the poop, in the midst of a circle of his officers. Still, he could not refrain from glancing back at the past, that morning, as plash after plash was heard, and recalling the time when magna pars quorum FUIT. At this delectable instant, the ruddy face of a "young gentleman" appeared in his state-room door, and, first ascertaining that the eyes of his superior were actually open, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... several branches coming down from Ruppin Country, and certain lakes and plashes there, in a southwest direction, towards the Elbe valley, towards the Havel Stream; into which latter, through another plash or lake called GULPER SEE, and a few miles farther, into the Elbe itself, it conveys, after a course of say 50 English miles circuitously southwest, the black drainings of those dreary and intricate Peatbog-and-Sand countries. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... another," said Bob. He did not speak more; but as he leant back his head, and looked straight up at the roof of the shed, (there was a great hole in it which the stars shone through, and now and then a big drop of water from the top came plash, plash, on the muddy floor below,) he looked up, I say, and I wonder whether he was thinking the same thing as I was at that moment: "Rats help one another; do none but human beings ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... assented, and the stranger quitted the house, while Fenwolf lingered to offer some attention to Mabel, which was so ill received that he was fain to hurry forth to the boathouse, where he embarked with his companion. As soon as the plash of oars announced their departure, Mabel went forth to watch them. The stranger, who was seated in the stern of the boat, for the first time fixed his large melancholy eyes full upon her, and did not withdraw his gaze till an angle of the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... swum over, and his fingers were on the window-ledge. Robert never knew how the man had managed to climb up out of the water. But he saw the clinging fingers, and hit them as hard as he could with an iron bar that he caught up from the floor. The man fell with a plop-plash into the moat-water. In another moment Robert was outside the little room, had banged its door and was shooting home the enormous bolts, and calling to ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... a mosque, with its mosaic floor and pillared corridor. The interminable lines of bazaars, with their atmospheres of spice and fruit and fragrant tobacco, the hushed tread of the slippered crowds; the plash of falling fountains and the bubbling of innumerable narghilehs; the picturesque merchants and their customers, no longer in the big trowsers of Egypt, but the long caftans and abas of Syria; the absence ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... cliffs in the summer evenings, when great dark masses of cloud tinged with crimson were piled to the zenith at sundown, and coldly reflected in the dark waters of the bay, she saw the destination of the world; she heard cries of torment, too, in the plash of breaking waves and the unceasing roar of the sea; and as she watched the visitors lounging about in bright dresses, laughing and talking, careless of their doom, she could hardly restrain her tears. Night after night when she went to bed, she put her head under ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... and we stood staring at the black bulk lying motionless on the grey water; stood for a long time, listening. I, to tell the truth, was straining my ears to catch the plash of oars: I thought it possible that some of those on board the yawl might take a ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... no echo, Cataline advanced to the door. There was no lamp in the cell of the atriensis; no sign of wakefulness in any of the casements; yet at the first slight tap upon the stout oaken pannel, although it was scarce louder than the plash of the big raindrops from the eaves, another tap responded to it from within, so faint that it appeared an echo of the other. The rebel counted, as fast as possible, fifteen; and then tapped thrice as he had done before, meeting the same reply, a repetition of his ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings, quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... reflecting the lurid glare, became strangely suggestive of unfathomable depths. The moorhen called again from the reeds near the ford, then flew away over the fire-flushed river and disappeared into the gloom; and a water-vole dropped with a gentle plash into the pool. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Our windows here look out on a small and rather quiet piazza, with an immense palace on the left hand, and a smaller yet statelier one on the right, and just round the corner of the street, leading out of our piazza, is the Fountain of Trevi, of which I can hear the plash in the evening, when other sounds ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... scramble about a little in the high places and doze in the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, felt an ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the dawn began to appear, the air of the March night became sharper, and in the distance the murmur and plash of the tide was heard. Then, standing heavy and dark against the clear pale eastern sky, there arose the dark mass of St. Ebba's monastery, the parent of Coldingham, standing on the very verge of the cliff to which it has left the name of St. Abb's ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for a phantom- boat or a shadow on the dark water. Not a breath of air was stirring; but fortunately the gentle ripple of the sea upon the shore, mingled with the soft roar of the breaker on the distant reef, effectually drowned the slight plash that we unavoidably made in the water by the dipping of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... over their broad skylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden plash and rippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch leaped much higher ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was beyond her strength. She could not move the helpless weight, and, in her despair, she let Tibbie's head fall back with a dull plash upon ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... painting along the Thames, lying in my punt, my face up to the sky, or paddling in and out among the pond-lilies. I had idled, too, on the lagoons of my beloved Venice, listening to Luigi crooning the songs he loves so well, the soft air about me, the plash of my gondolier's oar wrinkling the sheen of the silver sea. It had been a very happy summer; full of color and life. The brush had worked easily, the weather had lent a helping hand; all had been peace and quiet. Ofttimes, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... moment or two he heard nothing but the ripple and plash of the ice-brook descending the side of the berg fifty yards away; but with the burial of his enemy, the lad's self-control had deserted him, and he burst into a passionate outbreak ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... do—making a prodigious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour. As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam-ship paddles further away yet. These, with the creaking little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-water ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... description, nor the news the concierge had given. It was nine o'clock, and very dark, for it had begun to rain towards evening, and a monotonous drip, drip mingled with the plash of the fountain in the garden. Grim fancies came knocking at the door of my brain. It was a mad thing for a boy, little more than a child, to go out alone in the night with a stranger, a "rough-looking peasant-fellow," ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... about them, emphasized rather than broken by the droning chant of a fisherman mending his nets on the beach below, the intermittent plash of the waves on the shingle, and the scream of the gulls that circled overhead. Before the eyes of his flesh was stretched a wide desert of sky and water, and before the eyes of his mind the hopeless desert ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... higher in the heavens, and the yellow lane of light that crossed the violet waters of Loch Roag quivered in a deeper gold. The night-air was scented with the Dutch clover growing down by the shore. They could hear the curlew whistling and the plover calling amid that monotonous plash of the waves that murmured all around the coast. When they returned to the house the darker waters of the Atlantic and the purple clouds of the west were shut out from sight, and before them there was only the liquid plain of Loch Roag, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... in another moment were on top of the big rock. It was almost as good as being at sea; for when they turned their backs to the shore nothing could be seen but water and sails and flying birds, and nothing heard but the incessant plash and dash ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... turned her face to her mother's bosom. And as we went softly out from the room and stood upon the path with the lofty palm-plumes rustling above us, we saw the first swirling wave of the incoming tide ripple round Matautu Point and plash on Hamilton's beach. And from within the silent house answered the wail ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... and black, and where never a ray Of that self-same sun doth find its way Through the heaped-up houses' serried mass— Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng, And the clatter of wheels as they rush along— Or the plash of the rain, or the wind's hoarse cry, Or the busy tramp of the passer-by, Or the toll of the bell on the heavy air— Good friends, let ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... figures all the way to London, Miss Penelles," he said, "but I am quite sure my soul will be wandering on the shingle, and feeling the blowing winds, and hearing the plash of the waves, and singing with ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... edge of the lake, where a couple of boats were always moored; they got into one of them, and Felix, with gentle strokes, propelled it to the opposite shore. The day was the perfection of summer weather; the little lake was the color of sunshine; the plash of the oars was the only sound, and they found themselves listening to it. They disembarked, and, by a winding path, ascended the pine-crested mound which overlooked the water, whose white expanse glittered ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... young, like knapsacks, on their backs; macaws and humming-birds, winged jewels, flew from tree to tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth canal among luxuriant plantations, the air was perfumed music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when the troops disembarked,—five hundred fine young men, the oldest not thirty, all arrayed in new uniforms and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... ways make an agreeable change from the habits of the pestering drones that infest the beach and the neighbourhood of the hotels. The whole of the steep rocky gorge of that tiny torrent the Canneto is full of mills, each emitting a whirring sound which mingles with the continual plash of the water as it descends in miniature cascades the full length of the ravine, providing in its headlong course towards the sea the motive power required to turn all this quantity of machinery. Bridges span the Canneto at several points, whilst either bank is ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... terribly do I repent me of it, Winter. I upbraid myself as bitterly as any can upbraid me for the folly. But hark—listen! I hear the plash of oars. See, there is a boat! It is he—it is Fawkes! I know him by his height and his strong action. Heaven be praised! All cannot yet be lost! Move upwards yet a few paces, and we will speak to him here alone before we take him within doors to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... careless ears they heard the plash And breezy wash of Attitash, The wood-bird's plaintive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... vague murmur, fraying off into nothing, ending like a wave with a long upward plash of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... were now pulling easily, and the long skiff darted up to them faster and faster still. Jack watched their pursuers with a fascinated eye. There was not the faintest sound made, save for the regular plash of the rising and falling oars. They were so near that he could see the naked backs of the oarsmen glisten as they swung their bodies to and fro in the starshine. Nearer, nearer, came the ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... town, mingled with the parti-coloured, muddied figures of the players. I have been strolling half the afternoon along the river bank, watching the boats passing up and down; hearing the shrill cries of coxes, the measured plash of oars, the rhythmical rattle of rowlocks, intermingled at intervals with the harsh grinding of the chain-ferries. Five-and-twenty years ago I was rowing here myself in one of these boats, and I do not wish to renew ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... heard every plash of their oars, and every tone of their voices, as they rowed round his place of refuge. He was not on the islet, but in it. This was such an island as Swein, the sea-king of former days, took refuge in; and Rolf was only following his example. Long before, he ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... reign of King William the Fourth, entitled "An Act to consolidate and amend the Laws relating to Highways in that part of Great Britain called England," I, T. Bradish, of the Town Hall, Smoltham, do hereby give you notice forthwith to cut, prune, plash or lop certain Trees and Hedges overhanging the highway immediately adjoining your premises, No. 15, East Gate, in the Parish of Smoltham, and which are causing an obstruction and annoyance to the said highway, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... when he was alone he quietly opened the cottage door, and lighting his pipe, sat down on the little rustic seat which was just outside. There was hardly a sound—nothing but the night wind sweeping through the valley, the far-off plash of water, the purring noise of a big moth as it flew past and then hovered a second, attracted by the gleam ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn |
