Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Rill   Listen
noun
Rill  n.  
1.
A very small brook; a streamlet.
2.
(Astron.) See Rille.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Rill" Quotes from Famous Books



... cried 'Rill, with streaming eyes, "Hopewell won't ever sell it again. I won't let him. And we've got the joyfulest news, Janice! You have doubled our joy to-day. But already we have had a letter from Boston which says that our little Lottie ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... when the thaw comes! It would dash aside every opposition that could be offered it. The calculated and calculating tentatives, and coquettings and nibblings of your practised lovers, who have been in love a dozen times, would be as a trickling rill to an ocean wave, compared to what might be expected from the passion of a heart first strongly moved at the time of life the Marchese has reached. Fascinate such a man as that, and in such a position, bambina mia, and all the governors, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... grooms do ride The coursers to the rill, That Orm set out resolved to wake The dead man in ...
— The Giant of Bern and Orm Ungerswayne - a Ballad • Anonymous

... lured and beckoned. He responded to the call and started back home. In half the time it took to go, he had arrived. But alas, the hills had shrunken. The mighty stream that once ran through Stockbridge was but a rill. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... of the "hero sleeping by a rill", of the guarded king's daughter, with her thirty attendants, the king's son keeping sheep, are part of the regular stock incidents in European folk-tales. So are the Nausicaa incident of the "king's daughter going ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... lush 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 ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... 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 ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... miss'd 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 the wood ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... was the slope 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 ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... heart, to range the sylvan scene; No splendid poverty, no smiling care, No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur, there: There pleasing objects useful thought suggest; The sense is ravish'd, and the soul is blest; On every thorn delightful wisdom grows; In every rill a sweet instruction flows. But some, untaught, o'erhear the whisp'ring rill, In spite of sacred leisure, blockheads still; Nor shoots up folly to a nobler bloom In her own native soil, the drawing-room. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... and fall again In clear and lovely strain Of her sweet voice and shrill, Outclamours with its songs the singing springing rill. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... away! what fearful ground In that savage part I found. If of art I aught could ken, Well behoved me use it then. More I look'd, the more I deem'd That it wild and desert seem'd: Not a road was there in sight; Not a house and not a wight; Not a bird and not a brute, Not a rill, and not a root; Not an emmet, not a fly, Not a thing I mote descry: Sore I doubted therewithal Whether death would me befall. Nor was wonder, for around Full three hundred miles of ground, Right across on every side Lay the desert ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... for a moment cease, Silence fall in the woodland peace; Should I wilfully check the flow Bubbling and dancing up from below; Say to my heart be still—be still, Let the murmur die with the rill; Then should the glittering, grey sea-things Sigh as they wallow the under springs; Where the deep brine-pools used to lie Deserts vast would stare at the sky, And even thy rich heart (O Poet, Poet!) Even thy rich heart ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... drizzle, stillicidum[obs3], plash; dropping &c. v.; falling weather; northeaster, hurricane, typhoon. stream, course, flux, flow, profluence[obs3]; effluence &c. (egress) 295; defluxion[obs3]; flowing &c. v.; current, tide, race, coulee. spring, artesian well, fount, fountain; rill, rivulet, gill, gullet, rillet[obs3]; streamlet, brooklet; branch [U.S.]; runnel, sike[obs3], burn, beck, creek, brook, bayou, stream, river; reach, tributary. geyser, spout, waterspout. body of water, torrent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... 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 by in airy drove; The sun a placid yellow lustre throws; The ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... spring is come, the gentlest season of the year, while Phoebus yet is young and bids us recline in the young herbage, and 'tis sweet to drink the rill that flows among the murmuring grass, with waters neither icy cold nor warm with the sun's heat. Now, too, the garden is crowned with the flowers Dione loves, and the rose ripens brighter than Tyrian purple. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... spring, And 'mid the fragrant grass The daffodil shall watch the rill Like Beauty by her glass But woe for him who pineth Where the clear water shineth, With no voice near to say—How sweet those April ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... I see him still, Blue eyes, where darting gleams of fun shine, A smile like some translucent rill That sparkles in the summer sunshine, A manly mien, and unafraid, Crisp hair, fair face, and square-set shoulders, That made him on the King's Parade The cynosure ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various

... stand and look into its depths at various points, and hear the roar of the stream re-echoing up. It is like a heart that has been rent asunder by a torrent of passion, which has raged and foamed, and left its ineffaceable traces; though now there is but a little rill of ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Howbeit I'll go look." So I limped across the 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 bed; which done, I went back where she lay a-drying her wet ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... slender rill, A stream impelled by Time; To death's dark caverns flowing still, To seek a brighter clime. Though blackened by the stains of earth, And broken be its course, From life's pure fount we trace its birth, ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... its grandeur, testifies To His omnipotence who placed it there; The rushing, mighty torrent verifies His ceaseless working; and His constant care And kindliness is proven by the still And growing meadow, and the purling rill. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... don't believe there's one of them, I couldn't go to school to for half an hour and be the wiser for it. But people you talk with every day have got to have feeders for their minds, as much as the stream that turns a millwheel has. It isn't one little rill that's going to keep the float-boards turning round. Take a dozen of the brightest men you can find in the brightest city, wherever that may be,—perhaps you and I think we know,—and let 'em come together once a month, and you'll find out in ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of 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 ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... when the girl welcomed her. "You be a pleasant sight to see when a body comes 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

... lighted window across the areaway. The blue mercerized dress she slid over a hanger, covering it with one of her cotton nightgowns and putting it into careful place behind the cretonne curtain that served her as clothes closet. Her petticoat, white, with a rill of lace, she folded away. And then, in her bare feet and a pink-cotton nightgown with a blue bird machine-stitched on the yoke, stood cocked to the hurry of indistinct footsteps across her ceiling, and in the narrow slit of hallway outside her door, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... 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 without the walls were marked. To the Romans the world is indebted ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... 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, The last-left haymaker is gone. And from the thyme upon the height, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... Dryads, to haunt the woods again; More welcome were the presence of hungering, thirst- ing men, Whose doubts we could unravel, whose hopes we could fulfil, Our wisdom tracing backward, the river to the rill; Were such beloved forerunners one summer day restored, Then, then we might discover the ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... and seek, by 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 ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang

... neck is the neck of the swan, Whose eyes are the eyes of the dove, Whose hand is as small as the red-oak's leaf, Whose foot is the length of the lark's spread wing, Whose step is the step of the antelope's child, Whose voice is the voice of a rill in the moon, Of the rill's most gentle ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... at eve had drunk his fill, Where danced the moon on Monan's rill, And deep his midnight lair had made 30 In lone Glenartney's hazel shade; But, when the sun his beacon red Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head, The deep-mouthed bloodhound's heavy bay Resounded up the rocky way, 35 And faint, from farther distance borne, Were heard ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... between ground-ash and young larches, they came upon an opening planted round with ilex, arbutus, juniper, and laurel, and backed by one of the rocks which form the outworks of the valley. From a niche in this rock, like the port-hole of a ship, a rill of sparkling water poured, and beginning to make a noise already, cut corner's—of its own production—short, in its hurry to be a brook, and then to help the sea. And across its exit from the rock (like a ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... it approaches the water, leads into a darker shade, and descending some steps, placed to give a picturesque appearance to the bank, you enter a kind of cave, with a dripping rill, which falls into the water below, whose bank is broken by thorns, and hazels, and poplars, among darker shrubs. Here an urn appears with the following inscription:—"M.S. Henrici Bowles, qui ad Calpen, febre ibi exitiali grassante, publice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various

... A tiny rill of cold water trickled down on one side of the outer door of their cave. With this their thirst was slaked, and they ate and ate. The shadows lengthened and Ab replenished again and again the fire. ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... to these wild scenes 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

... obscure assurance that it is not the first time. Travelling in foreign lands, we are ever and anon haunted by a sense of familiarity with the views, urging us to conclude that surely we have more than once trodden those fields and gazed on those scenes; and from hoary mountain, trickling rill, and vesper bell, meanwhile, mystic tones of strange memorial music seem to sigh, in remembered accents, through the soul's plaintive echoing halls, "'Twas auld lang syne, my dear, 'Twas auld ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... we may fill Or with such good works or such ill As loose the bonds or make them strong, Wherein all manhood suffers wrong. By rose-hung river and light-foot rill There are who rest not; who think long Till they discern, as from a hill, At the sun's hour of morning song, Known of souls only, and those souls free, The ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... of it she began to rumble a stanza of By Cool Siloam's Shady Rill; so I chanced it again, remarking on the sign I had observed that day. So she left her desk for a seat before the fire and said yes, and they was other signs of Herman's hid off in the mountains where no one ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... having stopped to quench our thirst at a rill, the rest got in advance of us; and we lost our way in a labyrinth of buffalo tracks which we mistook for the trail, so that we wandered about for three hours before we came up with the party, who began to fear ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... cloud-climb'd rock, sublime and vast, That, like some giant king, o'er-glooms the hill; Nor there the pine-grove to the midnight blast Makes solemn music! but th' unceasing rill To the soft wren or lark's descending trill, Murmurs sweet undersong mid jasmine bowers. In this same pleasant meadow, at your will, I ween, you wander'd—there collecting flowers Of sober tint, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... came upon a tiny creek across which either of them could have jumped. Neewa jumped into the water, which was four or five inches deep, and for the first time in his life Miki voluntarily took a plunge. For a long time they lay in the cooling rill. ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... 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 cowslips from ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... flowers—O day of bliss!— Around those tresses meet and kiss, And roses in her lap of Love the home! Her grace, her port divinely fair, Describe it, Love! myself I do not dare. In mute intent surprise I gazed, as when a hind is seen To dote upon its image in a rill; Drinking those love-lit eyes, Those hands, that face, those words serene, That song which with delight the heaven did fill, That smile which thralls me still, Which melteth stones unkind, Which in this woodland wilderness Tames every beast and stills the stress Of hurrying waters. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... arrived with the frying-pan, when the live adder was killed and the heads of the three taken off. The remainders, being cut into lengths and split open, were tossed into the pan, which began hissing and crackling over the fire. Soon a rill of clear oil trickled from the carcases, whereupon Clym dipped the corner of his handkerchief into the liquid ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... 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

... de la Mare gives us no Thames of song. His genius is scarcely more than a rill. But how the rill shines! How sweet a music it makes! Into what lands of romance does it flow, and beneath what hedges populous with birds! It seems at times as though it were a little fugitive stream attempting ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... the eagle 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, Prince of ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... supposed to break forth in melodious regrets around the footsteps of the wanderers: but we cannot think that Miss Barrett has done justice to nature's strains. Unless lyrical emotion be expressed in language as clear as a mountain rill, and as well defined as the rocks over which it runs, it is much better left unsung. The merit of all lyrical poetry consists in the clearness and cleanness with which it is cut; no tags or loose ends can any where be permitted. But Miss Barrett's lyrical compositions are frequently so inarticulate, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... another, some uneasiness, as if this athletic soul craved a larger atmosphere than it found; as if she were ill-timed and mis-mated, and felt in herself a tide of life, which compared with the slow circulation of others as a torrent with a rill. She found no full expression of it but in music. Beethoven's Symphony was the only right thing the city of the Puritans had for her. Those to whom music has a representative value, affording them a stricter copy of their inward life than any other of the expressive arts, will, perhaps, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... voices, there was no danger of their becoming entirely separated. But, amid the hollow roaring of the wind, and the incessant pelting of the storm, it was neither safe nor practicable to venture far asunder. Several little stony knolls were ascended and descended, and a rippling rill was found, but without bringing with it any traces of the path. The heart of Pierre began to chill with the decreasing; warmth of his body, and the firm old man, overwhelmed with his responsibility while his truant thoughts ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... where the battle poured Its red and awful tide, Beheld the brave New England sword With slaughter deeply dyed. Their bones are on the northern hill, And on the southern plain, By brook and river, lake and rill, And by ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... officers and myself rode to Ribeira Grande, a village a few miles eastward of Porto Praya. Until we reached the valley of St. Martin, the country presented its usual dull brown appearance; but here, a very small rill of water produces a most refreshing margin of luxuriant vegetation. In the course of an hour we arrived at Ribeira Grande, and were surprised at the sight of a large ruined fort and cathedral. This little ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... garden-patch showed intensely green between a waste of fire-blackened stumps. I saw chickens in a coop, and a cow switching forest flies. A cloud of butterflies flew up as I approached, where the running water of a tiny rill made muddy hollows on the path. This doubtless must be the outlet to Waiontha Spring, for there to the left a green lane had been bruised through the elder thicket; and this I followed, shouldering my way amid fragrant blossom and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... years had passed; the boy was fair and tall, Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all. The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill Their balanced urns beside the mountain-rill, The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun, Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son. No voice had reached the Galilean vale Of star-led kings or awe-struck shepherds' tale; In the meek, studious child they only saw The future Rabbi, learned ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... brine; The poor, who once his gen'rous bounty fed, Droop, and bewail their benefactor dead. In death the friend, the kind companion lies, And in one death what various comfort dies! Th' unhappy mother sees the sanguine rill Forget to flow, and nature's wheels stand still, But see from earth his spirit far remov'd, And know no grief recals your best-belov'd: He, upon pinions swifter than the wind, Has left mortality's sad scenes behind For joys to this terrestial state unknown, And glories richer ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley

... charm in a coarse homely face was a set of white even teeth. I found her singularly unattractive. A tear rolled down her cheek and its course was that of a rill ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... 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 emphasis to her ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... 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

... to him, "If the present rill floweth down thus from our world, why doth it appear to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... their name; The woods were peopled with their fame; The silent pillar, lone and gray, Claimed kindred with their sacred clay; Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain, Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain: The meanest rill, the mightiest river, Rolled mingling with their fame forever. Despite of every yoke she bears, That land is glory's still, and theirs! 'Tis still a watchword to the earth: When man would do a deed of worth He points to Greece, and turns to tread, So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head; He looks to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... valley. From its ladder in the Alleghanies it catches a glimpse of the steeples of Johnstown, red with the glow of the setting sun. Again it spurts and spreads as if conscious of its new importance, and the once tiny rill expands into the dignity of a river, a veritable river, with a name of its own. Big with this sounding symbol of prowess it rushes on as if to sweep by the teeming town in a flood of majesty. To its vast surprise the way is barred. The hand ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... 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 ...
— Beside the Still Waters - A Sermon • Charles Beard

... he sat he could almost have thrown a stone into one tiny mountain stream that cut a silver path toward the setting sun, and another, a hundred yards away, that flowed gently toward the rising sun. And he knew—for Bill Dancing had told him—that the one rill emptied at last into the Pacific Ocean, and the other into the Atlantic Ocean. Alongside these tiny streams he could plainly trace the overland trail of the emigrant wagons, and, cutting in straighter lines, but following the same ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... dimpled fountain, at its own capricious will, Each step a note of music, and each fall and flash a thrill, The rill goes singing to the meadow ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... 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 ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... gentle Rill; Hush, whispering Winds, ye ruflling Leaves, be still; Rest, silver Butterflies, your quivering wings; Alight, ye ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... 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 ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... beautiful and full of grace, and only when it came time to go did she assume the disguise of an aged, wrinkled, bent old woman. Sometimes she ran miles and miles at a stretch, darting, springing like a fawn, rushing through the soft, green leaves, leaping rock and rill, her laughter echoing, her bare limbs flashing, her gold hair streaming, her scanty silken draperies whipped to shreds behind her by the very swiftness of her going. Oh, the ecstasy of that! ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... 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 brook Emma saw a large flat rock, around which the ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell

... were rounded away in purple beyond a space 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 thing! Thy way ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... NOTHING earthly save the ray (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye, As in those gardens where the day Springs from the gems of Circassy— O! nothing earthly save the thrill Of melody in woodland rill— Or (music of the passion-hearted) Joy's voice so peacefully departed That like the murmur in the shell, Its echo dwelleth and will dwell— Oh, nothing of the dross of ours— Yet all the beauty—all the flowers That list our Love, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... squirrel's fur, on the far-stretching fields and forests, the wooded dells and the mountain tops. Far, far away from the haunts of men, they roll down some little slope, fall over and come to their bearings, and melt or lose their beauty in the mass, ready anon to swell some little rill with their contribution, and so, at last, the universal ocean from which they came. There they lie, like the wreck of chariot wheels after a battle in the skies. Meanwhile the meadow mouse shoves them aside ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... now, when comes the calm, mild day, As still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee From out their winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, Though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light The waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers Whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood And ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... morn their 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 ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... wings of morning gladly flit away, Yield to the sun's more genial, mighty ray; The white waves kiss the murmuring rill— But thy ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy

... fire, then fetched a bucket of water from a rill that trickled down among the rocks near by. He made as if to prepare their meal, but she ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... though the waters of that antique rill That flows along the heath, no more are cold; Those who remember what it was of old Go forth to draw them in their ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... either deny that there is such a thing as an English tradition or admit that Duncan Grant is in it. For my part, I am inclined to believe that an English pictorial tradition exists, though assuredly it is a tiny and almost imperceptible rill, to be traced as often, perhaps, through English poetry as through English painting. At all events, there are national characteristics; and these you will find asserting themselves for good or ill in the work of our ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... vain: they do not err Who say, that when the poet dies, Mute nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies; Who say, tall cliff and cavern lone For the departed bard make moan; That mountains weep in crystal rill; That flowers in tears of balm distil; Through his loved groves that breezes sigh, And oaks, in deeper groan, reply; And rivers teach their rushing wave To ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... the long-expected morning came, When from the opening arms of that wild bay, Beneath the hill that bears my humble name, Over the waves we took our untracked way; Sweetly the morning lay on tarn and rill, Gladly the waves played in its golden light, And the proud top of the majestic hill Shone in the azure air, serene ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... Hanky Panky quieted considerably, his main object having been accomplished. As he rode along the boy kept watching ahead, hoping that it would not be long before they sighted some oasis in the desert where a sparkling rill ran, or the thrice welcome sweep of an old-fashioned well told of water to be had for the trouble of ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... very pretty and odd scene. The slightly undulating sheep-walk dips suddenly into a wide glen, in the lap of which, by a bright, winding rill, rise from the sward the ruins of a small abbey, with a few solemn trees scattered round. The crows' nests hung untenanted in the trees; the birds were foraging far away from their roosts. The very cattle had forsaken the place. It ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... then to yonder rill, Late so freely flowing; Wat'ring many a daffodil, On its margin glowing— Sun and wind exhaust its store: Yonder riv'let ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... the heir of undiscovered wealth, which would result from an inevitable destiny. The colonies which were established along the coast, and those which were formed in the interior, increased, as increases the gentle rill in its onward course by uniting with other rills and with rivers, until, becoming one vast torrent, it precipitates itself into the ocean. The colonies of Tyre, of Carthage, or Rome were never comparable with the Anglo-American colonies, who appropriated to themselves, in less than a century, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... of twenty minutes, had buttoned up his great-coat again and pulled down his hat, and told Mrs. Chuff that there was no use in his remaining any longer, when, all of a sudden, a little rill of blood began to trickle from the lancet-cut in ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... shortened by the amusing stories and anecdotes of the Doctor, who kept us in good humour during the whole journey. Nearly mid-way between Goderich and Von Egmond's, a small rill crosses the road: here we stopped for an hour, and refreshed ourselves with beef-sandwiches and brandy and water—no ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... 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 Cornelia's ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... Nightingale's long trill, Silver moonlight and the rocking Of the dreaming rill; Nightly light and nightly shadow, Shadow's endless lace— Neath the moon's enchanted changes The Beloved's face. Blinking stars as flash of amber, Snowy clouds on-rush, Tears and happiness and kisses— ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... melting snow this must doubtless be a grand affair, for the fall is full three hundred feet deep; at present a mere rill crept over the centre of the rocky amphitheatre, and, long before it reached the basin beneath, it was changed into a silvery shower of light spray. We found a mill-dam had appropriated all the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... the valley commeth dovvne a riueret, rill, or brooke of fresh vvater, which hard by the sea side maketh a pond or poole, vvhereout our ships were vvatered vvith verie great ease and pleasure. Somewhat aboue the Towne on the North side betweene the two mountaines, the valley vvaxeth somewhat larger then at the townes end, ...
— A Svmmarie and Trve Discovrse of Sir Frances Drakes VVest Indian Voyage • Richard Field

... illustrious liar! Untiring wielder of the nimblest quill That ever shed the stanchless inky rill Upon the virgin whiteness of the quire. What full and varied stores of gold and mire, Magnificence and squalor, good and ill, Prayers, curses, loyalty and treason fill Thy books! But that which children most admire ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... human life is changeful still, As is the fickle wind and wandering rill; Or, like the light dance which the wild-breeze weaves Amidst the fated race of fallen leaves; Which now its breath bears down, now tosses high, Beats to the earth, or wafts to middle sky. Such, and so varied, the precarious play Of fate ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... What kind word to thy playmates spoken'? Whom hast thou pitied, and whom forgiven'? How with thy faults has duty striven'? What hast thou learned by field and hill, By greenwood path, and by singing rill'? ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... tender beech and the sapling oak, That grow by the shadowy rill, You may cut down both at a single stroke, You may cut down ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... rill from a fountain increases as it flows, rises into a stream, swells into a river, so symbolically are the origin and course of a good name. At first, its beginning is small: it takes its rise from home, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... Hellas deemed of heavenly birth,[k] Muse! formed or fabled at the Minstrel's will! Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth,[l][20] Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred Hill: Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill;[m] Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long deserted shrine,[1.B.] Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still; Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine To grace so plain a tale—this lowly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... say, ye sages, who can weigh the cause, And trace the secret springs of Nature's laws; Say why the wave, of bitter brine erewhile, Should be the bosom of the deep recoil, Robbed of its salt, and from the cloud distil, Sweet as the waters of the limpid rill?" ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... stag at eve had drunk his fill Where danced the moon on Monan's rill And deep his midnight lair had laid In lone Glenartney's ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... than of attraction, and I accordingly take pleasure in stating that by those who like a light narrative, in which mystery and romance are pleasingly blended, the author of The Pointing Man can be relied upon to rill the bill every time. Conformity to type is a strong point with this author as far as the mystery and romance are concerned, but within those limits he (or she) provides an admirable range of scene, character and plot. In The Further Side of the Door (HUTCHINSON), ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various

... forbear to wish, that some sluice were opened for these streams of treasure. I should gladly see America return half of what England has expended in her defence; and of the stream that will "flow so largely in less than half a century," I hope a small rill, at least, may be found to quench the thirst of the present generation, which seems to think itself in more danger of wanting money, than ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... between two dismal banks, and dull both in motion and colour, is like a 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, spreads cheerfulness ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... And left on valley sole my foemen, drunk * Not with old wine[FN441] but Death-cup's revelry: Then came the Saintly Hermit, and he showed * His marvels wrought for town and wold to see; When slew they hero-wights who woke to dwell * In Eden bowers wherein sweet rill-lets well." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... dear eyes close? Must the lips be still?— How I love their speech that flows Like a wanton rill! Must those cheeks, soft-tinged with rose, Pallid grow and chill? Give her back to me, angel in disguise! So your mystery I shall learn—yet with tearless eyes. By the pangs, the prayers, By the mother's glee, By her hopes, her fears, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... Loembwe, we were in a more open country, with every few hours a small valley, through which ran a little rill in the middle of a bog. These were always difficult to pass, and being numerous, kept the lower part of the person constantly wet. At different points in our course we came upon votive offerings to the Barimo. These usually consisted of food; and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... is Love's ever-running rill That tells the widow what she once possess'd,— Out of her language blotted "moan" and "sigh"! So then it is Love's brimming tide that rolls Along the placid veins of wedded souls,— That very Love that faced the iron sleet, Trampling inane ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... weight uprooted a bush in his hands, and the clods fell. He missed his footing as he neared the base, and came down with a thump. It was a gravelly spot where he had fallen, and he saw in a moment that it was the summer-dried channel of a mountain rill. As he pulled himself up on one elbow, he suddenly paused with dilated eyes. The evening light fell upon a burnished glimmer;—a bit of stone—was it ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... 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 skeletons of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... I guess," exclaimed Mrs. Scattergood, nodding her head vigorously: "Leastways, 'Rill oughter be. I told her so! I was faithful in season, and outer season, warnin' her what would happen ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... said Isora, sighing; "but the splendour which surrounds us chills and almost terrifies me. I think that every proof of your wealth and rank puts me further from you: then, too, I have some remembrance of the green sod, and the silver rill, and the trees upon which the young winds sing and play; and I own that it is with the country, and not the town, that all my ideas of luxury ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next morning the lamps do after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired when she got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and with the reinforcement of a draught of cold water, she surmounted it most manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains all about ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... relates having heard her sing the grand aria of the Queen of the Night in the "Zauberflote" at this age, "her arms hanging beside her and her eye following the flight of a butterfly, while her voice, pure, penetrating, and of angelic tone, flowed as unconsciously as a limpid rill from the mountain-side." The year after this Henrietta lost her father, and she went to Prague with her mother, where she played children's parts under Weber, then chef d'orchestre. When she had attained the proper age she was admitted to the Prague Conservatory, and spent four years ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... his corps whose opinion he evidently valued; he exchanged a quick glance with one of the men who was but dimly visible in the shadows beyond the still, where there seemed to be a series of troughs leading a rill of running water down from some farther spring and through the tub in which the spiral worm was coiled. This man had a keen, white, lean face, with an ascetic, abstemious expression, and he looked less like a distiller than some sort of divine—some rustic pietist, with strange theories ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... Exe near Killerton, formerly was a lovely trout stream, such as perverts the Devonshire angler from due respect toward Father Thames and the other canals round London. In the Devonshire valleys it is sweet to see how soon a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs on into a rivulet, and a rivulet swells into a brook; and before one has time to say, "What are you at?"—before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we have all the airs and graces, demands and assertions ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore



Words linked to "Rill" :   run, channel, rivulet, runnel, stream, streamlet



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com