"Murmurous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... week after their arrival, when they were all seated, as usual, in the open air, under a lime-tree on the lawn. The sun was beginning to set, and the rain of golden sunlight fell over them through the green ambrosial foliage of the tree whose pale blossoms were still murmurous with bees. Eric was leaning back in an easy chair, with Wildney sitting on the grass, cross-legged at his feet, while Montagu, resting on one of the mossy roots, read to them the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the ladies were busy ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... doorstep in the late afternoon. Great tranquillities were all about them in land and sea and sky. Silvery gulls were soaring over them. The horizons were laced with long trails of frail, pinkish clouds. The hushed air was threaded with a murmurous refrain of minstrel winds and waves. Pale asters were blowing in the sere and misty meadows between ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the cliffs lay Cransac, bristling with tall chimneys and in a cloud of dark coal-smoke that filled the valley. Here, instead of the solemn calm of the barren uplands, the murmurous chanting of rills and shallow rivers, and the mystical voices that speak from the depths of the forest, I heard the fretful buzz of a human beehive. Here was human life intensified and yet lowered in tone by aggregation, by the strain of organized effort that suppresses ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... looked as if he could so sit and peruse till the end of time. I knew that his response would be so cordially given that it would brim over me, and so melodiously that it would echo in my heart for a great while; yet it would be as brief as the single murmurous stroke of one from a cathedral tower, half startling by its intensity, but which attracts the birds, who wing by preference to that lofty spot. A source of deep enjoyment to my father was a long visit from his sister, Ebie Hawthorne (he ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... had gone slack. He walked in a heavy white dream. The city drew him deeper into its murmurous heart. The walls pressed closer and hid him away. The souks swallowed him under their shadowy arcades. The breath of the bazaar, fetor of offal, stench of raw leather, and all the creeping perfumes of Barbary, attar of roses, chypre ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... risen, the Prince in brief while went Forth to the market-place, where babblement Of them that bought and them that sold was one Of many sounds in murmurous union— buzzing as of bees about their hives, With shriller gossiping of garrulous wives Piping a tuneless treble thereunto: In midst whereof he went his way as who Looketh about him well before he ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... with many noises that come up from below as an exhalation; white flames of steam wave from the tops of buildings below me. Up here on this giddy height a hot wind of the upper air is blowing, and a vibrating, murmurous throbbing pulsates through the building itself. This latter is caused by the elevators, those veins and arteries of the structure, and their motion must never cease or else a clot of humanity would be left marooned in the ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... she said, speaking in her low, thrilling voice, "I have loved you—from the—very beginning, I think!" And, with a soft, murmurous sigh, she gave herself ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... experience so far as to make himself a transparent medium for the emotions of mankind; but he still lacked a definite connection with the multifarious drama of human fellowship; he could not catch his cue and play his answering part, and therefore gave voice to a constantly murmurous, moralizing "aside." He delights to let the current of action flow around him and beside him; he warms his heart in it; but when he again withdraws by himself, it is with him as with the old toll-gatherer at close of day, "mingling reveries of Heaven with remembrances of earth, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... to feel him draw the stream That fills with strength his lily limbs! And laughs Thine own heart with his deeply dimpled laughter, Answering straight thy dainty finger's touch? And understandeth he that murmurous moan, Wherewith thou ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... inquired across the buzz and whiz and hum of the wheel. Through the low window, betwixt the leaves of the many plants that shaded it, he could see the sun shining hot upon the bare street; but inside was soft gloom filled with murmurous sound. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... distance: in recurrent pauses in the talk, the sound of their grazing on the scanty grass came to the ear; all else was silence save the tinkling of a mountain rill,—a keen detached appoggiatura rising occasionally above the monody of its murmurous flow,—and the melancholy chiming of some lingering cicada, the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... thrill Led me, half against my will, To look up. Abashed I see His dark eyes full fixed on me. What he said I do not know, But his voice was soft and low, As he spoke in careless chat, Now of this and now of that, While the murmurous waves of sound Wafted me a ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... trees, fragrant, and filled with murmurous sound. The street here was quiet; only a few passing people. As the two approached the corner there turned it a slight figure, a girl dressed in homespun with a blue sunbonnet. In her hands was a cheap carpet-bag, covered with roses ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... flitting going on. Leaving the water-side, where rushes stood thick and tall in a stream that was becoming sluggish and low, he wandered country-wards, crossed a field or two of pasturage already looking dusty and parched, and thrust into the great sea of wheat, yellow, wavy, and murmurous, full of quiet motion and small whisperings. Here he often loved to wander, through the forest of stiff strong stalks that carried their own golden sky away over his head—a sky that was always dancing, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... It caused him quickly to veer again, to turn to his right, the west, and to enter the open space between the now deserted quarters of the permanent commander and those of Captain Wren adjoining them to the north. Another moment and he stopped short. Girlish voices, low and murmurous, fell upon his ear. In a moment he had recognized them. "It won't take me two minutes, Angela. I'll go and get it now," were the first words distinctly heard, and, with a rustle of skirts, Kate Sanders bounded lightly from the piazza to the sands and disappeared ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the path wound through a forest of fir, where a wood wind wove its murmurous spell and a wood brook dimpled pellucidly among the shadows—the dear, companionable, elfin shadows—that lurked under the low growing boughs. Along the edges of that winding path grew banks of velvet green moss, starred ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... scarcely acknowledge even to himself the possibility of such an appearance as that affirmed by Sir Graham. They drew near to the grave of little Jack, round which the chill winds of night blew gently and the dull voices of the waves sang hushed and murmurous nocturnes. Uniacke was taken by an almost insurmountable inclination to pause, even to turn back. Their progress to this grave seemed attended by some hidden and ghastly danger. He laid his hand upon the painter's arm, as if to ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a slope that when I saw it was goldenly sunny, and the turf was strewn by his wife's hand with lilies—for it was Easter morning! Close at his left was a steep, grassy bank, radiantly blue with violets, and there was in the shining air the murmurous hum of bees, making a slumbrous, restful music. Blaine's monument is a hickory tree whose broken top speaks of storms, and at his feet is a stone white as new snow, and on it only—and they are enough—the initials "J.G.B.," that were the battle-cry ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... Gordon and his mother entered, a thrill seemed to pass through the whole congregation. Nobody had thought they would come. Mrs. Gordon, gliding with even pace, softly murmurous in her Sunday silk, followed her son, who walked with brave front, although he was undeniably pale, up the aisle to their pew. He stood about to let his mother enter, meeting the eyes of the people as he did so; then sat down himself, and a long glance and ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mailed in ice, Let swarm thy snow-white bees upon these vales! O West Wind, from each rude and swooping wing Shake forth thy salty tempests, from the plains Transport me healing! Golden Orient, sing, And fan me with thy murmurous painted vanes. O whirlwinds, rash and rude! O headlong wrath Of your unbridled and cyclonic staves! Shall man yet tread you like some earthly path? Shall I, your king, ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... or wearied by them. My Father's acts of supplication, as I used to witness them at night, when I was supposed to be asleep, were accompanied by stretchings out of the hands, by crackings of the joints of the fingers, by deep breathings, by murmurous sounds which seemed just breaking out of silence, like Virgil's bees out of the hive, 'magnis clamoribus'. My Father fortified his religious life by prayer as an athlete does his physical life by lung-gymnastics ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... out for a sunset walk, were just reaching Mrs. Riley's door-step again, when they were aware of a young man approaching from the opposite direction with the intention of accosting them. They brought their conversation to a murmurous close. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... only a funny scratchy sound; then a murmur, growing louder, as she tuned the instrument to the required wave length. The murmurous sound grew louder—more distinct. Amy squealed right out loud! For it seemed as though somebody ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... atmosphere between them. In wild, savage gusts, she heard the military bands playing the infamous Dequelo, whose notes of blood and fire commingled, shrieked in every ear—"NO QUARTER! NO QUARTER!" A prolonged shout, the booming of cannon, an awful murmurous tumult, a sense of horror, of crash and conflict, answered the merciless, frenzied notes, and drowned them in the shrieks and ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... stars were beginning to dot the dark azure sky. The night breezes in low murmurous whispers swept lightly over the fragrant meadows. The brooks babbled louder, and the trees rustled in the distant woods round about Then Frederick and Reinhold went down the slope playing and singing, and the sweet ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... with the frozen air. They had, it seemed, lost all desire to talk. The memory of Markue's party lingered like the last vanishing odor of his incense; there was a confused vision of the murmurous room against the lighted exterior where the drinks sparkled on a table. Linda made up her mind that she would not go to another. Then she wondered if she'd see Pleydon again. The Russian singer had been ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... room! That alone impelled him to a new life. When he thought of it all, the reception-rooms, the scientific kitchen, the vast scullery, the four large bedrooms, the bathroom, the three attics, the cistern-room murmurous with water, and the water tirelessly, inexhaustibly coursing up and down behind walls—he ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Harney, sun-browned, rock-diademed, a few wisps of cloud streaming down the wind from his brow, locks heavy with the age of the great Manitou whom he was supposed to represent. Eastward, the prairie like a peaceful sea. Above, the alert sky of the west. And through all the air a humming—vast, murmurous, swelling—as the mountain breeze touched simultaneously with strong hand the chords, not of one, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... rippling blue river that shone like glass where the willows dipped and trailed, and a girl who sang a murmurous little song to herself as she slid down the bank into ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... to meet a passing breeze, then fell back against the softness of her arm. A great grey-winged night moth fluttered past them. From the high bough of a distant maple came the frightened twitter of little birds, wakeful in the night, and the soft, murmurous voice of the brooding ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the world of other people which she did not understand; one thing more or less made no great difference. But she did understand the sunlit roof, the twilight halls, the patterned floor of the forest. Blossoms drifting down, fleeing shadows, voices of wind and water, and all murmurous elfin life spoke to her. They spoke the language of her land; when she stepped out of the door into the air and faced the portals of her world, they called to her to come. Lithe and slight and light of foot, she answered to their piping. The orchard through which she ran was ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... and her beauty supreme, They have found her at dawn or at eve, By the marge of some motionless stream, Or where shadows rebuild or unweave In a murmurous alley of pine, Looking upward in silent surprise, A figure, slow-moving, divine, With ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... see the royal city, known Afar, and win the lover's fee complete, If thou subdue thy thunders to a tone Of murmurous gentleness, and taste the sweet, Love-rippling features of the ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves; And mid-May's wildest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... countryside! Suns of apotheosis, beautiful lights sleeping on the lawns, penetrating and translucent verdure without one shadow where the palette of Veronese, the riot of purple, and of blonde tresses may find sleep. Rural delights! murmurous and gorgeous decorations! gardens thick with brier and rose! French landscapes planted with Italian pines! villages gay with weddings and carriages, ceremonies, toilettes, and fetes stunned with the noise of violins and flutes leading the bridal of Nature and the Opera to a Jesuit fane! ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... discovered a pretty bit of woods a mile west of Lucy's house, and an unexpected rustic seat built among a company of murmurous young pines beside a lake. Opposite the seat is an ecstatic little maple tree, at this season of the year flaunting all the pinks and reds and yellows of a fiery opal. There, sheltered by the pines, undisturbed except by a scurrying chipmunk or two ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... pageants of the streets by quaint corners, rich with sculptures of the Renaissance, and spanned by arches of architects that builded for Agrippa, under grated windows with arms of Frangipanni or Colonna, and pillars that Apollodorus raised; to go into the great courts of palaces, murmurous with the fall of water, and fresh with green leaves and golden fruit, that rob the colossal statues of their gloom and gauntness, and thence into the vast chambers where the greatest dreams that men have ever had, are written on panel and on canvas, and the immensity ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... arrival, amid the omnipresent murmurous palaver of conversation, there fell an unusual noise. The unusual is always formidable in jail. The noise was nothing in itself, and would have passed unheeded in a hotel dining-room. But over us, crowded together there, spread an instant hush. All knew that men had been stabbed, frenzied ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... snow-covering into triangles and ovals and upon them many tiny people scurried here and there, without sound, like a fish at the bottom of a pool. It was only the vehicles that sent high, unmistakable, the deep bass of their movement. And yet after listening one seemed to hear a singular murmurous note, a pulsation, as if the crowd made noise by its mere living, a mellow hum of the eternal strife. Then suddenly out of the deeps might ring a human voice, a newsboy shout perhaps, the cry of ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... love is sweet and sane; That may repeat, so none but I may hear— As one might tell a pearl-strung rosary— Some epic that the trees have learned to croon, Some lyric whispered in the wild-flower's ear, Whose murmurous lines are sung by bird and bee, And all the insects of the ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... of creeds was stilled in the darkened and sumptuous chamber, as the three women bent with murmurous affection over the bed on which lay, swathed in a redolent apparatus of eau-de-Cologne and fine linen, their hope and the hope of English literature. Towards midnight, when the agony had somewhat abated, Mrs. Knight ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... reveals to our wondering sight the rich meshes of creation, so the microphone can interpret to our ears the jarr of molecular vibrations for ever going on around us, perchance the clash of atoms as they shape themselves into crystals, the murmurous ripple of the sap in trees, which Humboldt fancied to make a continuous music in the ears of the tiniest insects, the fall of pollen dust on flowers and grasses, the stealthy creeping of a spider upon his silken web, and even the piping of a pair of love-sick butterflies, or the trumpeting ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Drawn from pipe, or reed, or string, Made such dulcet ravishing. 'Twas like no earthly instrument, Yet had something of them all In its rise, and in its fall; As if in one sweet consort there were blent Those archetypes celestial Which our endeavouring instruments recall. So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain To heavenly viols, that again - Aching with music—wailed back pain; Regals release their notes, which rise Welling, like tears from heart to eyes; And the harp thrills with thronging sighs. Horns in mellow flattering Parley with the cithern-string:- Hark!—the ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... that glory; to see unveiled the beauty that should be, and, unveiled too, the shame that is; to have a spiritual nature that thrills at the touch of the perfect love and life, and responds to every note of pain borne in upon it from the murmurous trouble of the world,—this is to have inward fitness for the high work of the Kingdom. Yes, and it is the pledge that this work shall be done. There is such a thing as artistic grief. There is the vain and languorous pity of aestheticism. Its robe of sympathy ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... and very still, and upon the quietude stole a sound—softer, yet more insistent than the whisper of wind among leaves,—a soothing, murmurous sound that seemed to make the pervading quiet but the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... was conscious that there had been something pathetic in it all along. Shortly after midnight the wind sunk down, coming and going fainter and fainter, floating around the eaves of the tavern with an undulating, murmurous sound, as if it were turning itself into soft wings to bear away the ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... old Poets sing of nobler themes Than the weak griefs which haunt men's coward souls. The torrent of their lusty music rolls Not through dark valleys of distempered dreams, But murmurous pastures lit by sunny streams; Or, rushing from some mountain height of Thought, Swells to strange music, that our minds have sought Vainly to gather from the doubtful gleams Of our more gross perceptions. Oh, their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... three days of triumph, excitement, congratulations, a sort of sunburst of gladness, after a long night of gloom and anxiety; then two or three days of calming down, by degrees —a receding of tides, a quieting of the storm-wash to a murmurous surf-beat, a diminishing of devastating winds to a refrain that bore the spirit of a truce-days given to solitude, rest, self-communion, and the reasoning of herself into a realization of the fact that she was actually done with bolts and bars, prison, horrors and impending, death; then came a day ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... the sun Till on its amber throne, like drapery doffed, Lay piled th' imperial purple. Then the stir Of an awakened world swept through the crowd, As forest leaves are wind-swept after lulls, And, with the sense of a renewing joy, The murmurous people turned them ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... disappeared behind the horizon, though the days no longer extended themselves into the long, murmurous twilight of summer; instead, the evening fell with a certain definiteness, precursor of the ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... tonight was still Isabel's room would be cut into new shapes by new walls and floors and ceilings; yet the room would always live, for it could not die out of George's memory. It would live as long as he did, and it would always be murmurous with ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... striking in all directions, with De Launay beneath, missing most of the destruction. The stair well was dark and obscure, but at the bottom was a narrow space where the battle waged wildly. De Launay managed to get to his hands and knees, but over him surged and swept a murmurous, sweating, reeking crowd who struck and battered each other in ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... and by his shadow Beltane judged it the noon hour; very hot and very still it was, for the wind had died and leaf and twig hung motionless as though asleep. And presently as he went, a sound stole upon the stillness, a sound soft and beyond all things pleasant to hear, the murmurous ripple of running water near by. Going aside into the green therefore, Beltane came unto a brook, and here, screened from the sun 'neath shady willows, he laid him down to drink, and to bathe face and hands in ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... light; it grew murmurous with ecstatic approval. The virginal face of Laurencine shot its rapture to Lucas as she turned to shake hands ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... leaps to meet him! Her mouth to greet him Burns at his own. Away! To the canoes, To the yoked war canoes! The sea in murmurous tone Whispers the story of their loves, Re-echoes the story of their loves — The story of Tui Viti, Of Sina and Tui Viti, By the rising tide, The rising tide, Sina, beneath the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... used as bait, and when the ground is thawing out beneath a warm spring sun we put the plant on the southern veranda and watch. Day after day nothing happens, then suddenly, some noon, it has scarcely been set on the ground when its blossoms stir, and it is murmurous with bees. Then we know that spring indeed has come, and we begin to rake the lawns, wherever the frost is out, wheeling great crate loads of leaves and rubbish upon the garden, and filling our neighbors' houses with ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... carried her to the topmost, or all but topmost, storey of the vast hotel, swarming, murmurous. She entered a small sitting-room, pretentiously comfortless, and from a chair by the open window—for it was a day of hot sunshine—Mrs. Strangeways rose to greet her; quite in the old way, smiling with head aside, cooing rapidly an effusive welcome. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... a slave. We are left to imagine the quiet air of dispatch with which as many of the counsel as were present gathered up any papers they may have had, exchanged a few murmurous words with their clients, and, hats in hand, hurried off and out to other business. Also the silent, slow dejection of Salome, Eva, Frank, and their neighbors and kin—if so be, that they were there—as they rose and left the hall where a man's ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... baffled prowling beast. He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin. He felt some dark presence moving irresistibly upon him from the darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a flood filling him wholly with itself. Its murmur besieged his ears like the murmur of some multitude in sleep; its subtle streams penetrated his being. His hands clenched convulsively and his teeth set together as he ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... concentrate my own will, and went the opposite way, skirting the circle of that haunted ground,—as now, on one side its lofty terrace, the houses of the neighbouring city came full and close into view, divided from my fairy-land of life but by the trodden murmurous thoroughfare winding low beneath the ivied parapets; and as now, again, the world of men abruptly vanished behind the screening ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the spoils you cast, not all the dark was bearing In dream across the sea, across the murmurous sea; Not beauty that has passed or crowns the stars were wearing Or flame that fierce and fast through darkness hunted me; Not the frustrate desire, the web of memory broken, The silence where your speech dizzies through all the air; Not these elude my reach when ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... immoral catalogues, sweet sirens for a man's undoing! How you sang to me of sedums, and whispered of peonies and irises—yea, even of German irises! How you spoke in soft, seductive accents of wonderful lilacs, and exquisite spireas, and sweet syringas, murmurous with bees! How you told of tulips and narcissuses, and a thousand lovely things for beds and borders and rock work—at so much a dozen, so very much a dozen, and a dozen so very few! I did not resort to cotton in my ears, but to tears ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... 128, measure 1) a delectable episode. Over a murmurous accompanying figure given out by violas, 'cellos, harp, and horn, a clarinet sings a variant of the Melisande theme. The harmonic changes are kaleidoscopic, the orchestral color of prismatic variety. The lovely ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... world surrounded her; and this world, even if she put love out of her life, was brimming over with beauty. It was good to be alive; it was good to watch the crowd in the street, to see the sunlight on the pavement, to taste the air, to feel the murmurous currents of the city flow around her as she walked home in the twilight. It was good to earn her bread and to go back in the evening to the joyful shouts of two well and happy children. She saw it all as an adventure—the whole ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... for a moment that an appeal to Uncle Meshach could be successful. One other idea struck him forcibly by reason of its strangeness: namely, that the works was proceeding exactly as usual, raw material always coming in, finished goods always going out, the various shops hot and murmurous with toil, money tinkling in the petty cash-box, the very engine beneath his floor beating its customary monotonous stroke; and his comfortable home was proceeding exactly as usual, the man hissing about the stable yard, the servants discreetly moving in the immaculate kitchens, Leonora ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... unlighted save by the stars. Toward dawn a sea-wind stirred the trees; the fountain jet rained on the surface of the pool or, caught by a sudden breeze, drifted in whispering spray across the grass. Everywhere the darkness grew murmurous with sounds, vague as wind-blown voices; sweet as the call of children from some hill-top where the stars are very near, and the new moon's sickle flashes ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... form before the light, A gleaming face against the night, Clutched hands across a halo bright Of blowing hair,—her fixed sight Stares down where moving black, below, The river's deathly waves in murmurous silence flow. ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... mahogany that broke upward along the shining bouldered coasts of San Jacinto. the chaparral at this season took all the changes of the incoming surf, blue in the shadows, darkling green about the heads of the gulches, or riffling with the white under side of wind-lifted leaves. Once its murmurous swell had closed over them, the mule-deer would have his own way with the Pot Hunter. Often after laborious hours spent in repairing the garden, the man would hear his enemy coughing in the gully behind the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... afternoon she was well on the way to get a very comfortable doze. The day was warm; the room was carefully darkened Miss Munnion sat holding her book close to a crack in the Venetian blind, reaching aloud in a subdued and murmurous voice. Whether Mrs Fotheringham slept or not she had to go on for an hour. The old lady, drowsy with the unusual heat, was just on the edge of slumber, but still partly conscious; sometimes she lost a whole page of the book at a time, ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... other tremulously pressed to her cheek, convinced that her father had stooped over her and shouted the sentence in her ear. For it was his voice, and the house rang with the words; all the rooms, halls, and even the walls, seemed still murmurous with the sudden sound, like the tingling of a bell after it had been struck. And yet—everything ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... later in the stillness of the last hours of night. The room was scarcely lit by the smoldering brands of the fire; its silence hardly stirred by the murmurous hissing of the logs. Without, small marsh frogs trilled their silver welcome to the spring, an unceasing jingle of tiny bell-notes. Kirk was cuddled close beside Ken, and woke abruptly as ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... watched the long grass swirled By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge, For though the summer oozed into their veins Like the injected drug for their bones' pains, Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass, Fearfully flashed ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... hand across his brow, as if to clear away some mist that had gathered there, and said, in a deep murmurous voice, 'Why the last time, dearest, why the last time? Know you not how long a time remains yet? the old man came last night to the ivory house and told me it would be a hundred years, ay, more, before ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... cordial frequently during the process of manufacturing it leads the reverend father eventually to become an habitual drunkard. And toward the end of the story an ironic contrast is drawn between the solemn monastery, murmurous with chants and prayers, and Father Gaucher in his distillery ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... stars and the sky were all, and there was no sound but the slight murmurous lipping of the slow swell against the edges of the planks. Then Clementina said, "Did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... realisation of sound. The world about me was alive with a murmurous humming. It was as if in passing through the silent aisles of sleep, some door had been unexpectedly thrown open and let in the tumultuous roar of life from without—or as if after a brief absence I had returned and with one movement ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... upon the shady steps of the veranda, and Julia, dressed for a walk, occupied a wicker chair above her. "Julia, dressed for a walk"—how scant the words! It was a summer walk that Julia had dressed for: and she was all too dashingly a picture of coolness on a hot day: a brunette in murmurous white, though her little hat was a film of blackest blue, and thus also in belt and parasol she had almost matched the colour of her eyes. Probably no human-made fabric could have come nearer to matching them, though she had once met a great traveller—at least ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... on and on. The blue, sunlit arch overhead, the waving trees that sent dancing shadows like troops of elfin sprites over the water, the fret in one place where a rock broke the murmurous lapping, the swish somewhere else, where grasses and weeds and water blooms rooted in the sedge rocked back and forth with the slow tide—how ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... dark road—he hears them faintly. The road, like a sombre river, quietly flowing, Moves among murmurous walls. A deeper breath Swells them to sound: he hears his steps more clearly. And death seems nearer to ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... cheats the ear, And from my blood, free-coursing near, Unspheres the far and murmurous phantom Of breaking seas that ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... not sleep until I know her safe—come let us go look!" and speaking, she reached me her hand. So I arose, and thus with her soft, warm fingers in mine we went amid the shadows where I had tethered the goat to a tree hard beside the murmurous rill and found the animal lying secure and placidly enough, the kid beside her. The which sight seemed to please my ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... this admonition. The light clouds above the elms puffed idly in the heavy air. It was a hot bright day, murmurous with bees and the idle, half notes ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... a thing to invent—the smell of a larch wood! It is the essence of the earth-odour, distilled in the thousand-fold alembics of those feathery trees. And the light winds that awoke blew murmurous music, so sharply and sweetly did that ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... far-off cloudbergs springs A crag, and, hurtling under, From cliff to cliff the rumor flings, So she from flight-foreboding wings Shook out a murmurous thunder. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... a perfect day of warm spring sunshine. He looked up into a blue unflecked sky. The tireless hum of insects made murmurous music all about him. The air was vocal with the notes of nesting birds. His eyes ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Where, 'mid green shade, a rill soft-bubbling flowed, A brook that leapt and laughed in roguish wise, Whereat Sir Pertinax with scowling eyes Did frown upon the rippling water clear, And sware sad oaths because it was not beer; Sighful he knelt beside this murmurous rill, Bent steel-clad head and bravely drank his fill. Then sitting down, quoth he: "By Og and Gog, I'll drink no more—nor horse am I nor dog To gulp down water—pest, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... of perfect bliss," Beth pursued, "when my work is done, and my friends are not with me, is to lie my length upon a cliff above the sea, listening to the many-murmurous, soothed by it into a sense of oneness with Nature, till I seem to be mixed with the elements, a part of sky and sea and shore, and akin to the wandering winds. This mood for my easy moments; but give me work for my live delight. I know nothing so altogether ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... was visible, motionless and soundless, save for the faint rustle where it impinged upon the cliff in a narrow line of white. No outward pull or inward swell of the sea's breast was visible; it was as though that fine edge of murmurous whiteness were always made of the same particles of water, hissing perpetually along ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... within the murmurous vestibule His young disciple. "'Tis no common rule, Lycius," said he, "for uninvited guest To force himself upon you, and infest With an unbidden presence the bright throng Of younger friends; yet must I do this wrong, And you forgive me." Lycius blush'd, and led The ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... of quiet tilth and cote, Of little woods and streams, Of gentle skies and clouds afloat, And swift sun-gleams! A land where knee-deep cattle keep, Chewing as they stand; Of hillsides murmurous with sheep— That is my ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... In the south wind there was the tang of ocean salt, mingled with the sweeter scents of woodland and withered garden nearer home. There was a crackling of boughs in the old apple-trees, and from the ridge behind the house came the deep, soft, murmurous soughing ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... together into the murmurous peace of the forest. Io leaned in her saddle as they drew near the cabin, to lay a ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... rank herbage into billows vast, And rushing tides, which never found a shore. And tender clouds, and veils of morning mist Cast flying shadows, chased by flying light, Into interminable wildernesses, Flushed with fresh blooms, deep perfumed by the rose, And murmurous with flower-fed bird and bee. The deep-grooved bison-paths like furrows lay, Turned by the cloven hoofs of thundering herds Primeval, and still travelled as of yore. And gloomy valleys opened at our feet— Shagged with ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... Kedzie was wakened by murmurous voices. A man was talking to a woman. They might have been Romeo and Juliet in Verona for the poetry of their grief, but they were in the Bronx Borough, and he was valet and she a housemaid, or so Kedzie judged. The man was saying in a dialect new ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... sun which from the centre flings Grand music and redundant fire, The burning belts, the mighty rings, The murmurous planets' rolling choir, The globefilled arch that, cleaving air, Lost in its effulgence sleeps, The lawless comets as they glare, And thunder thro' the sapphire deeps In wayward strength, are full of strange Astonishment and ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... glimmering plain in drowsy trance The dim horizon bounds, Where all the air is resonant With sleepy summer sounds,— The life that sings among the flowers, The lisping of the breeze, The hot cicada's sultry cry, The murmurous ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... held her attention intermittently. It was more suited to her idle humour, she reflected. You could read one of the brief lyrics and let the book slide down on to your knee and enjoy the quivering blue and gold, and soft, murmurous, chirruping sounds of the summer's day, while your mind played round the idea embodied in ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Walk. In August it was a place of shady sweetness, fragrant with the odour of ripening apples, full of dear, delicate shadows. Through its openings we looked afar to the blue rims of the hills and over green, old, tranquil fields, lying the sunset glow. Overhead the lacing leaves made a green, murmurous roof. There was no such thing as hurry in the world, while we lingered there and talked of "cabbages and kings." A tale of the Story Girl's, wherein princes were thicker than blackberries, and queens as common as buttercups, led to our discussion of kings. We wondered what it would be like ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... were hours in the glowing garden, murmurous with bees, heavy with delicate perfume of box and verbena and mignonette; hours in the great old house, with its family treasures of plate and china and mahogany, where ancient Chloe and Sylvester still served ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... fill the air, yet not with an obtrusive clangor. The sound was of a murmurous character, soft, attractive, persuasive, friendly. The sculptor fancied that such might have been the original voice and utterance of the natural man, before the sophistication of the human intellect formed what we now ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to deal with by any remedy but time. Mine was not a bad case, but it excited sympathy. There was an ancient, faded old lady in the house, very kindly, but very deaf, rustling about in dark autumnal foliage of silk or other murmurous fabric, somewhat given to snuff, but a very worthy gentlewoman of the poor-relation variety. She comforted me, I well remember, but not with apples, and stayed me, but not with flagons. She went in her benevolence, and, taking a blue and white soda-powder, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... visible aspect of soreness. A murmurous sound was thick about his head, wherefore it is to be surmised that he communed with his familiar, and one vehement, oft-repeated phrase beat like a tocsin of revolt upon the air: ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... her betwixt us and then suddenly with a soft, murmurous cry, she lifted her arms to the glory of the wide firmament above us and with shuddering sigh let them slowly fall, and with this sigh the strange, wild soul of her sped away back to the ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... of mist, the lamplight fell upon a face upturned from a murmurous gutter, a yellow face, wide and flat, with lips grinning back from locked teeth and eyes frozen in a staring question to which no living man ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... flickered into the shadow, stood for a moment retrospective at the door, and then closed it on us; and once more we were in that murmurous mystery of darkness into ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells |
