"Rill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked; but I had not breath enough to ask the curate a question. I observed carving on the bark of some of the trees: 'twas indeed the only mark of human art about the place, except that some branches appeared to have been lopped, to give a view of the cascade, which was formed by a little rill at ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... terminated in a turnstile. Here the boy paused, and making me a sign to go on, went back his way whistling. I passed the turnstile, and found myself in a green field, with a row of stunted willows hanging over a narrow rill. I looked round, and saw Vivian (as I intend still to call him) half kneeling, and seemingly intent upon some object ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the Peak There lies a quiet hamlet, where the slope Of pleasant uplands wards the north-wind's bleak; Below wild dells romantic pathways ope; Around, above it, spreads a shadowy cope Of forest trees: flower, foliage, and clear rill Wave from the cliffs, or down ravines elope; It seems a place charmed from the power of ill By sainted words of old: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... and flowers Quiet treads, On the meads and mountain-heads, Along with Pleasure, close ally'd, Ever by each other's side; And often, by the murmuring rill, Hears the thrush, while all is still, Within ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... shots die down. The Tumbled ruin now Smoke faintly in the summer light, and lifts The trodden bough. A sigh stirs in the trampled green, and held And tainted red The rill creeps o'er a dead man's face and steals along its bed. One deep among the lilacs thrown Shock all the stillness with a moan. Peace like the snowflake lights again where utter silence lies, And softly with white finger-tips ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... which are interesting and some beautiful. The sunset over Sainte-Marie and the lie Noirmoutier, with the birds who sing to the dead, and the coming of the nightwind and the tide, is as largely wrought as the description of the mountain rill—the "infant of mist and dew," and its voyage to the sea is minute and delicate. There is also that magnificent description of a sunset which I have already quoted. It is drawn to illustrate some remote point in the argument, and is far too magnificent for the thing ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... home. And I be glad to get home. I tell my son's wife I can't make many more of these trips to Skunk's Holler. It's too fatiguing, and at my age I like my own bed and my own fireside. I s'pose Rill's well?" ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... beach to where showed a great fissure in the cliff hard beside a lofty tree; being come within this cleft I found it narrow suddenly, and at the end a small cave very dry and excellent suited to our purpose. Moreover, close at hand was a little rill that bubbled among mossy rocks, mighty pleasant to be heard. And hereabouts grew all manner of vines, sweet-smelling shrubs and fern; of these I gathered goodly quantity and strowing them within the cave therewith made a very passable ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... and his sisters—questions indicating such seclusion, and such lack of familiarity with modes and forms, that Giovanni responded as if to an infant. Her spirit gushed out before him like a fresh rill that was just catching its first glimpse of the sunlight and wondering at the reflections of earth and sky which were flung into its bosom. There came thoughts, too, from a deep source, and fantasies of a gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... my heart-cure a heart that goes; * And from hill-foot of eyelids the tear-rill flows: And parting and sorrow and exile and dole * And farness from country and throe that o'erthrows: Naught am I save a lover distracted by love, * Far parted from loved one and wilted by woes. And 'tis Love that hath brought me such sorrow, say where * Is the noble of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... enjoys it. He feels no special attraction toward any of his schoolmates until one winter day this same little blue-eyed girl asks him for a place on his sled. He shares it with her as a well-behaved boy should, and so begins the first faint bond of feeling that like a tiny rill on the hillside slowly gathers power, until at last, a mighty river, it sweeps all ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... 'Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man in Earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate, And, moulded of one element With the days and firmament, Teach him on these as stairs to climb And live on even terms with Time; Whilst upper life the slender rill Of human ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... love, which all things sees, The fragrance-breathing jasmine trees— And the golden flowers—and the sloping hill— And the ever-melancholy rill— Are full of holiest sympathies, And tell of love a thousand tales. They are not all sweet nightingales, That fill with songs the flowery vales, But they are the little silver bells Touched by the winds in the smiling dells; Magic bells of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the time, led by a thousand devious turns to a mysterious valley, where one heard continually a low, sad murmur. This proceeded from a nymph in terra-cotta, from whose urn dripped, day and night, a thin rill of water into a small fishpond, bordered by grand old poplars, whose shadows threw upon its surface, even at mid-day, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... that we climbed I could hardly believe it possible how fast we had ascended, when at the end of a couple of hours we sat down to rest by a rill of clear intensely cold water that was bubbling amongst the stones. For on peering through a clump of trees I gazed at the most lovely landscape I had seen since I commenced my journey. Far as eye could reach it was one undulating forest of endless shades of green, amidst which, ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... itself away, palm plumes and cassava boughs, overhanging the silvery Tjiligong, drop showers of diamonds into the current, and giant bamboos creak in the spicy wind, redolent of gardenia and clove. The hills, scaled by green rice-terraces, each with tiny rill and miniature cascade, are vocal with murmuring waters. Lilac plumbago, red hybiscus, and golden allemanda mingle with pink and purple lantana, yellow daisies, and hedges of scarlet tassels, enclosing wicker huts in patches of banana and cocoanut. Brown girls, in blue and orange ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... low and dark ravine Beneath a rugged hill, Where stood the Boykin Mill Spanning the creek, whose rill Flows ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... waters of all these rivers continue to reach their old deathbeds in the desert, indicating that in these salt valleys there still is room for coming farmers. In middle and eastern Nevada, however, every rill that I have seen in a ride of three thousand miles, at all available for irrigation, has been ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... morn I missed him on the custom'd hill, Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... in all conscience, and the wine nearly as heavy as the food. Imagine quenching one's thirst with sherry in the dog-days! Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, and then, on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of champagne began to trickle into the V-shaped glasses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its appearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, as soon as the ladies and the schoolboys departed, the men applied themselves, with much seriousness ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... up, and went with uneven steps to a little rill hard by, and plunged her face in it: then filled her beaver hat, and came and dashed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... tells of having found her when she was eight years old, in 1812, sitting on a table, where her mother had placed her, and singing the grand aria of the Queen of the Night from the "Magic Flute," her voice, "pure, penetrating and of angelic tone," flowing as "unconsciously as a limpid rill from the mountain side." At fifteen she made her regular debut, and we are told that she sang "with the volubility of a bird." During her four years at the Conservatory of Prague she had won the prize in every class of ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... of rock into a niche immediately over the fall, and the mass had now crashed down into the channel on the very verge, blocking all the waterway. This, however, was a door hard to keep shut, when every affluent rill and runnel out on the broad mountain shoulders went darting swift and white, so that every minute swelled the forces gathering pent in the barred passage. As the bridled torrent seethed and climbed, hissing, behind that barrier, the great stone tottered and swayed, and before the first ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... nearly to the ground. Here and there a niche and recess which seemed done by human art, but which in fact was Nature's handiwork, was seen, and every point of spar, from the lofty roof to the stalagmites below, was glittering in the light of a huge fire of brushwood fed by Curly Tom. A small rill of water trickled from a fissure in the rock above, and wound its way through the sand towards the sea. It was the very beau-ideal of a robber's cave. Its existence was known to few: only accessible at low water, the entrance had escaped notice, and the few that did find it were discouraged ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... oftener, When Mother Earth begins to stir, And like a Hadji who hath been To Mecca, wears a caftan green; When jasmines and azalias fill The air with sweets, and down the hill Turbid no more descends the rill; The wonder of thy hazel eyes, Soft opening on the misty skies— Dost smile within thyself to see Things uncontained in, seemingly, The open book upon thy knee, And through the quiet woodlands hear Sounds full of mystery to ear Of grosser mould—the myriad cries ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... 55 Of this bright day, sent down to say That Paradise on Earth is known, Resound around, beneath, above. All we hope and all we love Finds a voice in this blithe strain, 60 Which wakens hill and wood and rill, And vibrates far o'er field and vale, And which Echo, like the tale Of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of one musing sadly on the dead— 'Twas Julio; it was his wont to be Often alone within the sanctuary; But now, not so—another: it was she! Kneeling in all her beauty, like a saint Before a crucifix; but sad and faint The tone of her devotion, as the trill Of a moss-burden'd, melancholy rill. ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... of Greek medicine had dwindled to a very tiny rill when the fall of Constantinople (1453) dispersed to the West many Greek scholars and ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... sir," gave him no sign. He could watch her slight, virginal figure, and the bend of her head in answering Mrs. Adams gave him transient glimpses of her fair face; but there was no message in all its changes for him. In fact, in spite of Mrs. Smith's little rill of social complaining, he felt quite "out" of the inner circle of the company's interests, and he was also deeply mortified at ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... silent awe I hail the sacred morn, That slowly wakes while all the fields are still! A soothing calm on every breeze is borne; A graver murmur gurgles from the rill; And echo answers softer from the hill; And sweeter sings the linnet from the thorn: The skylark warbles in a tone less shrill. Hail, light serene! hail, sacred Sabbath morn! The rooks float silent ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... that little hill, At the dark noon of night, Close by a frozen snow-hid rill, Where branches close unite Even in winter's leafless time, The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... across the tiny sand-path and the running rill of water to the great trees stirred by the cool breeze ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... comes, the fields are still. The tinkle of the thirsty rill, Unheard all day, ascends again; Deserted is the half-mown plain, Silent the swaths! the ringing wain, The mower's cry, the dog's alarms, All housed within the sleeping farms! The business of the day is done, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... boast of the ancient Romans that all roads led to their city. Rome was the centre and mistress of the world; and as the loneliest rill that rises in the bosom of the far-off mountain leads, if followed, to the ocean, so every path in the remotest corner of the vast empire conducted to the great gilded column in the Roman Forum, upon which all distances ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... she chattered on, her voice like a soft, purling rill. Presently Dinah called Miss Recompense out in the kitchen to consult her about the breakfast, for she went to bed as soon as she had the kitchen set to rights. Then Doris glanced over to him in a shy, asking fashion, and brought her chair to his side. He inquired about Father Langhorne, and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Of all the sects the Jains are the most colorless, the most insipid. They have no literature worthy of the name. They were not original enough to give up many orthodox features, so that they seem like a weakened rill of Brahmanism, cut off from the source, yet devoid of all independent character. A religion in which the chief points insisted upon are that one should deny God, worship man, and nourish vermin, has ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... is a kind of family name, pronounced 'Ma-rill- yer,'" explained Mrs. Spruce with considerable pomposity; "Many folks never gets it right—it wants knowledge and practice. But if you remember the pictures in the gallery at the Manor, sir, you may call to mind ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... have been made and more favorable conditions for man devised. But before this hypothesis can be sustained, the skeptic from the beginning of time must have scanned the history of every individual and studied it in its minutest details. He must have explored every rill and river of influence entering into his character. He must have understood every relation of the individual to every other person through all the ages. He must have mastered all the facts and laws of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... love grew tenderer, With every eve deeper and tenderer still; 10 He might not in house, field, or garden stir, But her full shape would all his seeing fill; And his continual voice was pleasanter To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill; Her lute-string gave an echo of his name, She spoilt her half-done broidery ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... paused beside this selfsame rill, And as she ceased, a daffodil Held up reproachfully his head And fluttered into ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... grass, the shining snake, Loving the sun, a sinuous way doth take, Its fixed journey to its home 'twill make. Even as in tranquil vale reluctant rill, In sportive twinings nigh its parent hill, Proceedeth onward to ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... that far sea against the shore brake soft. And through that blossom-burdened land as oft She roamed and far, sweet sped the passing days. Till one dawned fairest, in whose noon-tide haze Sweet slumbering she lay; and dreamed-steeped still, Half conscious, caught the tinkle of a rill In far-off Paradise. More silver clear Across her thoughts, as once she loved to hear, Rippled the waters, low against the stones Where poised gemmed dragon-flies; and sudden moans Shook 'mong blue flags. Waked, vague unrest And tender yearning rose within her breast, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... time, and not perceiving that Corbould made his appearance, continued on his way home, having now given up all thoughts of killing any venison. He walked fast, and was within six miles of the cottage, when he stopped to drink at a small rill of water, and then sat down to rest himself for a short time. While so doing, he fell into one of his usual reveries, and forgot how time passed away. He was, however, aroused by a low growl on the part of Holdfast, and it immediately occurred to him that Corbould must have ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... but another, too small for the hook, too small for the frying-pan, too small for aught else but beauty, and gracefulness of form; and yet not the young of a larger fish, but full grown of himself. In every brook in the State he may be found, yea, even in the rill, no more than a foot in width, which leads away from the old spring-house on the hillside. You will not find him swimming about like the minnows in the still, deep water of the stream, but where the clear, cold water ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... is white and still, Over the pines the bleak wind blows, Voiceless the brook and mute the rill, Silence too where the river flows. Still I catch the scent of the rose And hear the white-throat's roundelay, Footing the trail that Memory knows, Over ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... all unable to note how new continents are now being formed in the ocean's stillest depths, from whose hardened and uplifted strata future ages may dig out the relics of so much that has been dear and precious to us; we fail to notice how every running stream, from the tiniest mountain rill to muddy Po and fertilizing Nile, is perpetually at work to carry down the hills into the plains, and to change the world's familiar face. But so it is, and so, we have some right to conclude, it has been always. God's chosen ways of working in the physical world are not wholly ...
— Beside the Still Waters - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... like a mountain rill in the sunlight as she seated herself before him. "Pepito—Anita's babe—he is not blind, you know." Her head bobbed vigorously, as was her wont when she sought to give ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 'this sounds like the purling of a rill to me. I thought we came here to teach the millionaires business, instead of ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... testifies To His omnipotence who placed it there; The rushing, mighty torrent verifies His ceaseless working; and His constant care And kindliness is proven by the still And growing meadow, and the purling rill. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... bay, chaste Daphne wreathed, Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wailed the sweet Philomel, The tears of Ceres swelled in yonder rill— Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... as it was light, I sent the boats out again, to examine any place where they could get on shore. They returned with a few casks of water, which they had filled at a small rill, and reported, that the wind being at S.E. blew so strong on the east side of the island, and raised so great a sea, that they could not come ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... the cow-bells on the slopes—"the sweet bells of the sauntering herd"—to the music of the cicadas in the sunshine, and the shouts of the neat herdlads, echoing back from Alp to Alp. I hear the bubbling of the mountain rill, I watch the emerald moss of the pastures gleaming in the light, and now and then the soft white mist creeping along the glen, as our poet says, "puts forth an arm and creeps from pine to pine." And see, the wild flowers, even in this waning season of the year, the delicate lilac of the dear ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... Wales ii. Myfanwy iii. Liberty iv. Climb the hillside v. Change and Permanence vi. Homewards vii. Daybreak viii. The White Stone ix. The Traitors of Wales x. A Mother's Message xi. Mountain Rill xii. Llewelyn's Grave xiii. Rhuddlan Strand xiv. The Steed of ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... contentment brings, In every pure enjoyment wealthy, Blithe as a beautiful bird she sings, For body and mind are hale and healthy. Her eyes they thrill with right goodwill - Her heart is light as a floating feather - As pure and bright as the mountain rill That leaps and laughs in the Highland heather! Go search the world and search the sea, Then come you home and sing with me There's no such gold and no such pearl As a bright and ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... The dying man drew up his knees and at the same time threw his right arm across his breast and grasped the steel so tightly that the knuckles of the hand visibly whitened. By a violent but vain effort to withdraw the blade the wound was enlarged; a rill of blood escaped, running sinuously down into the deranged clothing. At that moment three men stepped silently forward from behind the clump of young trees which had concealed their approach. Two were hospital ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... wood and hill, Thine ancient love of dawn and dew; There comes no voice from mere or rill, Her dance is over, fallen still The ballad burdens that she knew: And thou must wait for her in vain, Till years bring back ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... beans and brown bread, but Nancy returns with her lantern at nightfall to tack down the carpet in the old Peabody pew and iron out the tattered, dog's eared leaves of the hymn-book from which she has so often sung "By cool Siloam's shady rill" with her lover in days gone by. He, still a failure, having waited for years for his luck to turn, has come back to spend Christmas in the home of his boyhood; and seeing a dim light in the church, he ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of Opium, Gentian, Henbane, Hop, Pulv. Ipecacuanhae, which for lack Of breath to utter men call Ipecac, Camphor and Kino, Turpentine, Tolu, Cubebs, "Copeevy," Vitriol,—white and blue,— Fennel and Flaxseed, Slippery Elm and Squill, And roots of Sassafras, and "Sassaf'rill," Brandy,—for colics,—Pinkroot, death on worms,— Valerian, calmer of hysteric squirms, Musk, Assafoetida, the resinous gum Named from its odor,—well, it does smell some,— Jalap, that works not wisely, but too well, Ten pounds of Bark and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... microscopically on the geological formation of that part of Devonshire, and the other telescopically on the open sea,—the two climbed high up the village, and stopped before a quaint little house, on which was painted, "MRS. RAYBROCK, DRAPER;" and also "POST-OFFICE." Before it, ran a rill of murmuring water, and access to it was gained by ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... gone: as yonder silent rill, Slow eddying o'er thick leaf-heaps lately shed, My spirit, as I walk, moves awed and still, By thronging fancies wild and ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... I see this robin now, Like a red apple on the bough, And question why he sings so strong, For love, or for the love of song; Or sings, maybe, for that sweet rill Whose silver tongue ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... heart surprise. Warm from its cell the tender infant born Feels the cold chill of Life's aerial morn; Seeks with spread hands the bosoms velvet orbs, With closing lips the milky fount absorbs; 170 And, as compress'd the dulcet streams distil, Drinks warmth and fragrance from the living rill; Eyes with mute rapture every waving line, Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine, And learns erelong, the perfect form confess'd, IDEAL BEAUTY ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... earth will yield me roots, These will I eat, and woodland fruits; And as with thee I wander there I will not bring thee grief or care. I long, when thou, wise lord, art nigh, All fearless, with delighted eye To gaze upon the rocky hill, The lake, the fountain, and the rill; To sport with thee, my limbs to cool, In some pure lily-covered pool, While the white swan's and mallard's wings Are plashing in the water-springs. So would a thousand seasons flee Like one sweet day, if spent with thee. Without my ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... and found Juan slumbering still Fast in his cave, and nothing clashed upon His rest; the rushing of the neighbouring rill, And the young beams of the excluded Sun, Troubled him not, and he might sleep his fill; And need he had of slumber yet, for none Had suffered more—his hardships were comparative[bl] To those related in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... his spiritual influence like a strong dark stream that swept down the hearer—hopelessly struggling to keep his head above the torrent, and dreading to be overwhelmed at the next word. Father Phil's religion bubbled out like a mountain rill—bright, musical, and refreshing. Father Dominick's people had decidedly need of cork jackets; Father Phil's might drink ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... twilight half reveal'd, With sighs we view the hoary hill, The leafless wood, the naked field, The snow-stopp'd cot, the frozen rill. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... in tones unknown, and hears The strange vibrations with unpractised ears; Seeks with spread hands the bosom's velvet orbs. With closing lips the milky fount absorbs; 30 And, as compress'd the dulcet streams distil, Drinks warmth and fragrance from the living rill;— Eyes with mute rapture every waving line, Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine, And learns erelong, the perfect form confess'd, 35 Ideal Beauty from its mother's breast. Now in strong lines, with bolder tints design'd, You sketch ideas, and portray the mind; Teach how fine atoms of impinging ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... and overlooking miles of these successive precipices and intermediate templed levels, we see the dark gorge of the granite trench, and, deep within it, wherever its windings permit a view of its bottom, a narrow ribbon of brown river. This is the Colorado—a rill; but when we have descended six thousand feet of altitude to its edge we find it a rushing turbulent torrent of muddy water. Its average width is three hundred feet; its average depth thirty feet. It is industriously digging the Grand Canyon still deeper, and perhaps as rapidly as ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... clime, wher'e'r war's trumpets sound, The wanderer went; yet, Caledonia, still Thine was his thought in march and tented ground; He dreamed mid Alpine cliffs of Athole's hill, And heard in Ebro's roar his Lynedoch's lovely rill. ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... companions. Looking down, the view was equally striking. The thin mists were not totally dispersed in the glen, so that it was often through their gauzy medium that the eye strove to discover the motions of the hunters below. Sometimes a breath of wind made the scene visible, the blue rill glittering as it twined itself through its rude and solitary dell. They then could see the shepherds springing with fearless activity from one dangerous point to another, and cheering the dogs on the scent, the whole so diminished by depth and distance that they ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Sundown, clad in oil-spotted overalls that did not by many inches conceal his riding-boots and his Spanish spurs, puttered about the engine until he happened to glance at the distant tank. A silvery rill of water was pouring from the top of the tank. He shut off the engine, wiped his hands, and strode to ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... a deodorizer of dead dogs, but was unable to practice his useful and humble profession because no one would employ him. The dead dogs in consequence reeked rascally. Then they struck! From every vacant lot and public dumping ground, from every hedge and ditch and gutter and cistern, every crystal rill and the clabbered waters of all the canals and estuaries—from all the places, in short, which from time immemorial have been preempted by dead dogs and consecrated to the uses of them and their heirs and successors forever—they trooped innumerous, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... stray, Thither the brook pursues its way, And tinkling rill, There all are equal; side by side The poor man and the son of pride ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sell. Take them and these flowers, too, free. Perhaps you have something to give me? Wait till next time. The better the day . . . The Lord couldn't make a better, I say; If he could, he never has done." So off went Jack with his roll-walk-run, Leaving his cresses from Oakshott rill And his ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... air, crisp with the touch of spring, pouring into their cavern. It was like the breath of Heaven, taking away the sting of smoke from nostrils and throat. The place itself soon filled entirely with a new atmosphere, vital and strong. Then, one by one, they bathed their eyes and faces at the rill, and soon they were all gathered together again at the door, feeling as if they had been re-created. Indians were still visible on the opposite slope, and pity swelled once more in ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... believe him," I said, feeling a rill of joy flowing into some dry places in my heart and changing the wilderness there. "But he was silent, and ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... dollar-mark grew blurred in her mind's eye, and shaped itself into letters that spelled such words as "truth" and "honor" and now and then just "kindness." Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, where a rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these times the spear of Nimrod himself ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... demon fell, No wizard foe, with magic spell, To chain the senses, chill the heart, No wizard guided POWEL'S cart; He of our nectar had the care, All our ambrosia rested there. At leisure, but reluctant still, We join'd him by a mountain rill; And there, on springing turf, all seated, Jove's guests were never half so treated; Journies they had, and feastings many, But never came to ABERGANY; Lucky escape:—the wrangling crew, Mischief to cherish, or to brew, Was all their sport: and when, in rage, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... and stop, and run, and turn, Yet ne'er shall find your "native urn." How oft has rolled down thy stream Things which in song not well would seem, Ere scavengers their scrapers plied To drag manure from out thy tide, Or hydrants bade thy scanty rill Desert its banks and cellars fill. Last Thursday morn, so very cold, A morn not better felt than told, Then first in all its bright array, Did I thy "frozen form" survey; And, goodness! what a great big steeple! What sights ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... rivers, and wide-spread fields of corn and grain; but looking down a gentle slope of the hill she saw a delightful place—it was a bend of the little brook gliding through the meadow-ground of Appledale. The pines had cast their spiral leaves there, so that the hill-side and the borders of the rill looked as though covered with sunlight, though there was in fact nothing but shade, for the trees clustered together, and locked their green arms, as if to shut the brook from day-light; yet close upon the borders of that ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... an impression of the past. "The Old Manse" (in Mosses from an Old Manse) is an excellent introduction to this group. Others in which the author comes out from the gloom to give his humor a glimpse of pale sunshine are "A Rill from the Town Pump," "Main Street," "Little Annie's Ramble," "Sights from a Steeple" and, as suggestive of Hawthorne's solitary outings, "Footprints on ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... consisting of three or four little cabins, or tents, made of blankets and sail-cloth, spread over hoops that were stuck in the ground. It was on one side of a green lane, close under a hawthorn hedge, with a broad beech-tree spreading above it. A small rill tinkled along close by, through the fresh sward, that looked ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Hinckman was a delightful place to me, for many reasons. It was the abode of a genial, though somewhat impulsive, hospitality. It had broad, smooth-shaven lawns and towering oaks and elms; there were bosky shades at several points, and not far from the house there was a little rill spanned by a rustic bridge with the bark on; there were fruits and flowers, pleasant people, chess, billiards, rides, walks, and fishing. These were great attractions; but none of them, nor all of them together, would have been sufficient to ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... haste; The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length'ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd: O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight; Or with the mimic statue trap ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... bough of an apple tree on the lawn O-pee-chee the Robin chanted his morning song. "Te rill, te roo, the sky is ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... three of alcohol, corking tightly, and letting it stand about fourteen days, when the tincture may be filtered or poured off from the drugs, and will be ready for use. Prepared in this imperfect manner, they rill be found to be much more reliable than any of the fluid extracts found in the drug-stores. An excess of the crude drug should be used in preparing the tincture to insure a perfect saturation of the alcohol ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... uniting to overwhelm the succours which Sir Marmaduke Langdale was conducting to join Duke Hamilton and the Scotch Loyalists. But, however limited its means, a good heart will ever discover some way of shewing its benevolence. Charity was now a scanty rill, not an ample stream; but its source was fed by a regular supply, and where it ran it fertilized. Constantia roused her mind from the apathy of grief to obey and support her father. She found she could instruct the ignorant; and though no longer ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... ravine-eager, Raven of my race, to-day Better surely hast thou catered, Lord of gold, than for thyself; Here the morn come greedy ravens, Many a rill of wolf[14] to sup, But thee burning thirst down-beareth, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... hollow eye which deadens the countenance; and over a sluggard, silent stream, creeping heavily along all together, hangs a gloom, which no art can dissipate, nor even the sunshine disperse. A gently murmuring rill, clear and shallow, just gurgling, just dimpling, imposing silence, suits with solitude, and leads to meditation; a brisker current, which wantons in little eddies over a bright sandy bottom, or babbles among pebbles, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... my windows, for the water is low, and near the western wall of the city is frugally dammed up to preserve it for the public baths. Beyond, this stream so renowned in history and poetry, is at this season but a feeble rill, almost lost among the pebbles of its bed, and scarcely sufficing to give drink to the pheasants and hares of the Grand Duke's Cascine on its banks. Opposite my lodgings, at the south end of the Ponte alla Carraia, is a little oratory, before the door of which every ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... rose-bushes, with their reddened leaves and glossy seed-berries, sprout from each crevice; at every glance I detect some new light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the stern gray rock. A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a little cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it fresh and pure. This recess shall be my dining-hall. And what the feast? A few biscuits made savory by soaking them in sea-water, a tuft of samphire ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of emerald pasture. Now, Ruark beheld the heaviness of Bhanavar, and that she drooped in her seat, and he halted her by a cave at the foot of the mountains, browed with white broom. Before it, over grass and cresses, ran a rill, a branch from others, larger ones, that went hurrying from the heights to feed the meadows below, and Bhanavar dipped her hand in the rill, and thought, 'I am no more as thou, rill of the mountain, but a desert ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clear the depths where its eddies play, And dimples deepen and whirl away, And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot The swifter current that mines its root, Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill, The quivering glimmer of sun and rill With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, Like the ray that streams from the diamond-stone. Oh, loveliest there the spring days come, With blossoms, and birds, and wild-bees' hum; The flowers of summer are fairest there, And freshest the breath of the summer air; And sweetest the golden ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Will! He has leaped the hedge and rill,— He has clambered up the hill, Ere the beaming Of the rising sun, to sweep With its golden rays the steep, Till he's tired, ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... our progress in the knowledge of His truth, and for the sake of the very work which some of us count so precious, there is need that we shall betake ourselves to that still communion. The stream that is to water half a continent must rise high in the lonely hills, and be fed by many a mountain rill in the solitude, and the men who are to keep the freshness of their Christian zeal, and of the consecration which they will ever feel is being worn away by the attrition even of faithful service, can only renew and refresh it by resorting again to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... in his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr and the purling rill!" ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... (For Jove had turn'd the nation all to stone.) The gods themselves, at length relenting gave The unhappy race the honours of a grave. Herself a rock (for such was heaven's high will) Through deserts wild now pours a weeping rill; Where round the bed whence Achelous springs, The watery fairies dance in mazy rings; There high on Sipylus's shaggy brow, She stands, her own sad monument of woe; The rock for ever lasts, the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... could be a boy again For fifteen minutes, or even ten, I'd make a bee-line for that old mill, Hidden by tangled vines down by the rill, Where the apples were piled in heaps all 'round, Red, streaked and yellow all over the ground; And the old sleepy horse goes round and round And turns the wheels while the apples ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... cloister, long and narrow, with round arches resting on square piers, and a well under a picturesque penthouse roof. Here it was that the herbs and simples were grown. By the side of the steep stair (which goes up still higher) a little rill of water flows, I suppose, to the lower cloister. The convent cost 28,000 ducats to the public treasury, besides much given by generous donors, the Ghent merchants especially contributing largely. The top of the campanile was replaced after the earthquake ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... drops from a slow-distilling spring. The public knew nothing of the internal movement which had opened this slight fountain, nor suspected the dark concamerations through which the current made its way to the surface. The smallest mountain rill often has a thunder-storm at its back; but the average reader of that day thought he had done quite enough, when he guessed that the new writer was a timid young man fabling under a feigned name, excellent in his limited way, who would be a great deal better if ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... points to the fact that the steak and kidney pudding had been excellent, even as my benefactor had said; wherefore, drowsing in somnolent content, I sat amid leaves beside a prattling rill musing comfortably as a well-fed young philosopher may, when these reflections were banished in sudden alarm, for upon the drowsy afternoon stillness rose a stir of leaves, a snapping of twigs, the sounds of one who burst through all ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol |
