"Murk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in two obelisked pillars from which, like a tremendous curtain, stretched a barrier of that tenebrous gloom which, though weightless as shadow itself, I now knew to be as impenetrable as the veil between life and death. In this murk, unlike all others I had seen, I sensed movement, a quivering, a tremor constant and rhythmic; not to be seen, yet caught by some subtle sense; as though through it beat a swift ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... the same fall. In the dusty murk the man separated from the horse. Shiloh whirled and pounded back, away from his rider, and as he went he voiced once more his answer ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Keith's instinct was always to deal actively with danger. But this blow, whether it fell on him by discovery or by confession, could not be countered. As blight falls on a rose from who knows where, the scandalous murk would light on him. No repulse possible! Not even a wriggling from under! Brother of a murderer hung or sent to penal servitude! His daughter niece to a murderer! His dead mother-a murderer's mother! And to wait day after day, week after week, not knowing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rekindled their torches His Reverence, a happier man, stepped boldly out of doors and was swallowed up in the murk. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the sullied hours, While the pirates stood away Out of the murk and horror In a sheer white ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... to it the heavens split over his head with a crash in the lick of a red tongue of flame; and a sudden dreadful gloom fell all round the stunned d'Alcacer, who beheld with terror the morning sun, robbed of its rays, glow dull and brown through the sombre murk which had taken possession of the universe. The Emma had blown up; and when the rain of shattered timbers and mangled corpses falling into the lagoon had ceased, the cloud of smoke hanging motionless under the livid sun cast ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... and other Papers. By Mrs. Murk Peabody. With Humorous Illustrations. New York. Derby & ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... her eyes. Aristide, worker of miracles, strutted by her side choke-full of vanity. They wandered through the picturesque streets of the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches, and meeting the mystery of coloured glass and shadows and the heavy smell ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... darkness &c adj., absence of light; blackness &c (dark color) 431; obscurity, gloom, murk; dusk &c (dimness) 422. Cimmerian darkness^, Stygian darkness, Egyptian darkness; night; midnight; dead of night, witching hour of night, witching time of night; blind man's holiday; darkness visible, darkness that can be felt; palpable obscure; Erebus [Lat.]; the jaws of darkness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and as she stared, moody and quiet, it seemed that the moon had slid beyond her vision and she was looking into great caverns of space, bursting with blackness. Some horror of emptiness was reaching to roll her in pits of murk, where her screams would be battered ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... in, absorb'd by those excited souls—their clothes all saturated with the clay-powder filling the air—stirr'd up everywhere on the dry roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming wagons, artillery, &c.—all the men with this coating of murk and sweat and rain, now recoiling back, pouring over the Long Bridge—a horrible march of twenty miles, returning to Washington baffed, humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts, and the proud boasts with which you went forth? Where are your banners, and your bands of music, and your ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... murk the girls saw the heads and flaunted manes of the coming horses. Just what harm they might do to the motor-cars, which could not be driven rapidly on this rough trail, Ruth and her two chums did not know. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... experience had to conclude it psychical. We were in air absolutely still. Yet above us the trees writhed and twisted and turned and bent and struck back, evidently in the power of a mighty force. Across the calm heavens the murk of flying atmosphere—I have always maintained that if you looked closely enough you could SEE the wind—the dim, hardly-made-out, fine debris fleeing high in the air;—these faintly hinted at intense movement rushing down through space. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... from the mouths of men who could apparently see as well in the dark as in daylight, that the second lifeboat was close to the pier. And then everybody momentarily saw it—a ghostly thing that heaved up pale out of the murk for an instant, and was lost again. ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... playing tricks with Ferris's mind—it seemed to him that he could still see those deep-set dark eyes staring up at him through the murk, with that same fearless and yet piteous look in their depths. It was a look that the brief sputter of match-light had ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... he did not remember and then a time when he began to think there was such a thing as memory, and then a time when he floated without a body, and then another time when the path of every separate nerve in his body seemed to be outlined, a shimmering web in the gray murk. There was a mirror and a face. There were blotchy worms of light like the star-trails of peaking warp-drive through the viewport, colors shifting and receding, a green star, the red ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... the crushed essence of this world, The wine of life, and he who treads the press Is lofty with imperious disregard Of the burst grapes, the red tears and the murk. But nay! that is a thought of the old poets, Who sullied life with the passional bitterness Of their world-weary hearts. We of the sunrise, Joined in the breast of God, feel deep the power That urges all things onward, not to an end, But in an endless flow, mounting ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... houses of rich and poor, the murk of the grapes was boiled in a still and a somewhat bitter brandy thus manufactured. Whether in consequence of the brandy, or of the unusual amount of money about, or of both, the fact is that at that period a great passion for gambling developed in Castro and more crimes were committed ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... sufficiently, as it seemed, to put her into perfect sailing trim, her black hull with its painted ports showing up in strong contrast to the peasoup-coloured flood upon which she rode, her lofty masts stayed to a hair, and all accurately parallel, gleaming like ruddy gold against the dingy murk of the wild-looking sky. Her yards were all squared with the nicest precision, and the new cream-white canvas snugly furled upon them and the booms; the red ensign streamed from the gaff-end; and the burgee, or house flag—a red star in a white diamond ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... absolutely dejected, and looked it. His mare, too, appeared neither happy nor spirited. Except for some nebulous figures, indistinct in the yellow murk, little else was visible. Mac crouched scowling in the lee of the mare, who stood with drooping head and closed eyes, swaying occasionally to the violent buffetings of the desert storm, and patiently waiting for some move on the part of her master. The three squadrons ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... of the brutes. I cried out threateningly, whereupon they discharged their pistols at me and I ran away around the corner. Here I was blocked by an advancing conflagration. The buildings on both sides were burning, and the street was filled with smoke and flame. From somewhere in that murk came a woman's voice calling shrilly for help. But I did not go to her. A man's heart turned to iron amid such scenes, and one heard all too many appeals ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... murky, too, because of the sand and silt stirred up by the storm. The murkiness started about twenty feet below the surface. Not until they were over fifty feet down did the water clear again. The light was reduced somewhat by the murk, but visibility was good. Rick had brought his camera to take motion pictures around the wreck. There ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... expediency. The Boy lay sick in a foreign land, so we went to him. It was full noon when the news came, and nightfall saw us dashing through the murk of a wild mid-December night towards Dover pier, feeling that only the express speed of the mail train was quick enough for ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the divided channel of the St. Lawrence, between Orleans and the mainland. Montmorency Falls in a moment showed dimly white through the murk to our left, a great hanging veil of ice higher than Niagara. Further ahead, the lights of the little village of St. Anne de Beaupre were visible with the gray-black towering ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... fog, have stumbled home through the dark of a winter night across the grim moorland. They tell—half dazed with fear—as they reach at last some house and welcome human companionship, of the wild baying of the hounds that drifted through the murk night to their ears, or of the sudden vision of the pack passing at whirlwind speed across bog and marsh urged onward by a grim black figure astride a giant dark horse from whose smoking nostrils came flame ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... the Tennessee; hark, Bluebird, listen! Was that a bugle note far up the bend, Where the murk waters flush and the white bars glisten, Or dove cooing dove into love notes that blend? And Wood Thrush, sweet, tell me,—that throbbing and humming, Is it march at the double quick or wild bees that hum? And that rumble that ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... felt rather than saw the difference. They had crossed the sand belt, and the contour of the prairie was rising. Then the Cimarron was near! Even as the conviction took shape, the ghostly outline of a small elevation loomed through the murk. He stared at it scarce believing, imagining a delusion, and then sent his cracked voice back in a shout on ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... moment the sun broke through the murk overhead. Its rays shone brilliantly upon the patch of blue sea on which the submarine patrol boat steamed at such a ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... Dimly through the murk Solange saw the evil face of the desert rat, now flushed with drink and greed, and, with a sudden resolution, she turned and walked toward him. He saw her coming and stared, his face growing sallow and his yellow teeth showing. He gave the impression ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... grey beside her tresses blacker than the murk midnight, While the little hand that presses each coquettish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... Folk in the Front Line. Scatheful the sky With no stars shining; Monstrous the mud That lay deep on the Duck Boards. A weary while Wandered he on; No wit he wotted Of fate that followed Stalking his steps. So passed he the posts All silent and sunken In mire and murk, Till fearful he felt for The doubtful Duck Boards No longer beneath him. Then spake Sidni, Steward of Stores: "Now know I well I have come to the Country That men name No Man's;" And with woe his heart Waxed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... fagots were burned out. The half-murk that at first was mystery and enchantment began to put on somberness and melancholy. They rose from the rocky floor and extinguished the brands with their feet. But now they had this cavern in common ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... come into the wind again and was heading westward in pursuit of the pirate, now hidden in the murk ahead. Bob was helped to the cabin and propped up in a bunk while his friends hastened to get some dry clothes on him. A pull of ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the street lights. As the first great fat drops of rain fell, splashing in the dust like veritable clots, citizens scurrying indoors and citizens seeing to flapping awnings and slamming window blinds halted where they were to peer through the murk at the sight of Mr. Dudley Stackpole fleeing to the shelter of home like a man hunted by a terrible pursuer. But with all his desperate need for haste he ran no straightaway course. The manner of his flight was what gave added strangeness to the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with the violence of my effort. I staggered again and swore. I felt the concussions of great guns tear past me through the murk. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... his pleasant fancy, his dream around him like a cloak. All the trouble that was in the world for him that hour was near the earth, like the precipitation of settling waters. Over it he gazed, superior to its ugly murk, careless of whether it might rise to befoul the clear current of his hopes, or sink and settle to obscure his ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... o'clock, and in the room that we were in the electric lights were switched on. The sky was the colour of street mud, through which the sun, a huge, blood-red disc, strove to pierce the depressing murk of London's winter atmosphere, thereby creating ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... not told in ancient song that those of white robes dwell on thrones of gold in Mount Olympus while their vaulted dome doth rest on the shoulders of the slaves and humble, whose red robes have grown dun and murk and brown with soil and toil? Verily there are blood makers and devourers of that blood. Thy father, Jael the fisherman, didst know that the way of hope is the way of Brotherhood. So did he bind ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... of terror answered him, blurred by a swift rush of skirts, and in a breath his shattered nerves quieted and a glimmer of common sense penetrated the murk anger and fear had bred in his brain. He understood, and stepped forward, catching blindly at the ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... in her side Desire, * And Night o'er hung her with blackest blee:— 'O Night shall thy murk bring me ne'er a chum * To tumble and futter this coynte of me?' And she smote that part with her palm and sighed * Sore sighs and a-weeping continued she, 'As the toothstick beautifies teeth e'en so ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... darkness I kept pinching myself to make myself feel that I was in the enemy's land on a wild mission. The rain came on, and we passed through dripping towns, with the lights shining from the wet streets. As we went eastward the lighting seemed to grow more generous. After the murk of London it was queer to slip through garish stations with a hundred arc lights glowing, and to see long lines of lamps running to the horizon. Peter dropped off early, but I kept awake till midnight, trying ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... time and generation, says that "being in bondage to the blues is precisely like being lost in a London fog. The latter is thick and black and obliterates familiar landmarks. A man may be within a few doors of his home, yet grope hopelessly through the murk to find the well-worn threshold. A person under the tyranny of the blues is temporarily unable to adjust life to its usual limitations. He or she cannot see an inch beyond the dreadful present. Everything looks dark and forbidding, and despair ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... After we had verified that there was no listening-post in this slice of the ground we climbed back, with infinite care. Dimly I saw my neighbors to right and left, like sacks of shadow, crawling, slowly sliding, undulating and rocking in the mud and the murk, with the projecting needle in front of a rifle. Some bullets whistled above us, but they did not know we were there, they were not looking for us. When we got within sight of the mound of our line, we took a breather for a moment; one of us let a sigh go, another spoke. Another turned ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... has some of its fields and buttercups; the playing fields are a pleasant oasis which is the last vision of sunlight and grass for the traveller on the Chatham and Dover railway before plunging into the murk of the Penge tunnel. Of its neighbours to the west, Streatham clusters about a tangle of railways; Streatham, which was deep country for Dr. Johnson, knocked down, in 1863, the house and cut up the park ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... flare of the Fourth of July which I once owned. She loved to walk in the fields. Snakes, bugs, worms and spiders enthralled her. Each hour brought its vivid message, its wonder and its delight, and when now and again she was allowed to explore the garden with me at night, the murk and the stars, and the stealthily moving winds in the corn, scared, awed her. At such moments the universe was a delicious mystery. Keeping close hold upon my hand she whispered with excitement, "What was that, Poppie? What was that noise? Was it ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... running; night came on, and the weather grew very thick. They heard the breakers presently, but they could not make out the Point. Old sailor as he was, and knowing as well as any man the perilous ground, the skipper lost his drunken head this time, and presently lost his way also in the dark and murk of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the murk shot a broad beam of light from the open doorway. Behind it Sara could discern white faces peering anxiously—Audrey's and Miles's, and, behind them again, loomed the heads and shoulders of others who had hurried to the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... green light grew and crept down upon us. A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little craft. A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past. We were dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk had fallen again. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... murk or sun of undurn sheeny bright, * Which is she hight who all the three hath might to place in pauper plight, ah! Where on the bending branch alight with grace of stature like to hers * Tho' be the branch by Zephyr deckt and in its ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the gale increased, till at length—when sail after sail, thundering and threshing, had come in—the ship lay almost under bare poles, straining in every timber and nosing her weather bow into the mountainous seas that swept by at intervals, ere they roared away into the murk to leeward. ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... a young Royal gentleman that knows his own mind, while so many do not. Unspeakable imbroglio of negotiations, mostly insane, welters over all the Earth; the Belleisles, the Aulic Councils, the British Georges, heaping coil upon coil: and here, notably, in that now so extremely sordid murk of wiggeries, inane diplomacies and solemn deliriums, dark now and obsolete to all creatures, steps forth one little Human Figure, with something of sanity in it: like a star, like a gleam of steel,—shearing ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... back and took to flight thinking the day would never come to an end nor the curtains of gloom would be drawn by the hand of Night; and they ceased not to battle with swords and to smite till light darkened and murk starkened. Then the kettle- drums of the Infidels beat the retreat, but Gharib, refusing to stay his arms, crave at the Paynimry, and the Believers in Unity, the Moslems, followed him. How many heads and hands they shore, how many necks and sinews they tore, how many knees and spines they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... lips of her now devoted Beaubien. Hour after hour the latter would sit in the twilight of the great hall, with her eyes fastened upon the absorbed girl, and her leaden soul slowly, painfully struggling to lift itself above the murk and dross in which it had lain buried for long, meaningless years. They now talked but little, this strange woman and the equally strange girl. Their communion was no longer of the lips. It was the silent yearning of a dry, desolate heart, striving to open itself to the love which the girl was sending ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to her—to secure her, somehow, before this great, dark future swept her away from him. And yet the latter rains came and went, the green faded from the ground, the mountains grew dimmer and duller, and at last disappeared in the summer murk, before he took in his own mind the next step—from lover to suitor, as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... vine Singing, "Heigho, my dearie! And will you hear this song of mine,— A song of the land of murk and mist Where bideth the bud the dew hath kist? Then let the moonbeam's web of light Be spun before thee silvery white, And I shall sing the livelong ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... his men to the dinghy, and they rowed him away through the fog. It was a touchy job, picking his way through that murk. He stood up, leaning forward holding to his taut tiller-ropes, and more by ears than his eyes directed his course. A few of the anchored craft, knowing that they were in the harbor roadway, clanged their bells lazily once in a while. Yacht tenders ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... sire of spoils,[FN46] O thou lion of war, * Give not my pains to the blamer's gree. I burn with love, I am drowned in tears * For a parting from lover, sore misery! And my thoughts of her in the murk of night * For love ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and stumbled away through the murk toward Darrow's mill. Arrived here he found the fireman banking the fires in the furnace room and while he warmed himself one of them summoned Bert Darrow ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... barque, with disordered topsails almost bursting from the yards as she hurries her hapless crew—all ignorant, perchance, of its proximity—towards the dread lee-shore. Elsewhere, looming through the murk, a ponderous merchantman, her mainmast and mizzen gone, and just enough of the foremast left to support the bellying foresail ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... into a great living room, from the oak floor of which the rugs had been rolled aside for dancing. As MacRae came in out of the murk along the cliffs, his one good eye was dazzled at first. Presently he made out a dozen or more persons in the room,—young people nearly all. They were standing and sitting about. One or two were in khaki—officers. There seemed to be an abrupt cessation ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... minute the trap was found, and raised. The smoke rushed up in a volume, and the boys looked with dismay at the dense murk below. ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... their talent. If they do not possess it to perfection, their race is lost. Hidden in the murk of the past ages, the argument based upon the non-existence of fossil instinct is no better able than the others to withstand the light of living realities; it crumbles under the stroke of fate; it vanishes before ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... grace lending grace. Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring; Ere twice in murk and occidental damp Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp; Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass; What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly, Health shall live free, ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... simplest rustic scene. At rare moments, when a happy chance led me into the National Gallery, I used to stand long before such pictures as "The Valley Farm," "The Cornfield," "Mousehold Heath." In the murk confusion of my heart these visions of the world of peace and beauty from which I was excluded—to which, indeed, I hardly ever gave a thought—touched me to deep emotion. But it did not need—nor does it now—the magic ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... inferno of the shops. The uproar and din were maddening. Overhead, huge cranes were swinging great bulks of steel from one end of the cavernous shed to the other; vague figures were moving obscurely in the murk; the floor was piled and littered with heaps of iron-work of unimaginable shapes. After a time we made our way into another area where there was more quiet but no less confusion. I yelled to my guide, "Such a rumpus and row I never saw; it is chaos come again!" And he replied, "Why, to ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... of a ferryboat bellowed through the murk. Bud started the engine, throttled it down to his liking, and left it to warm up for the flight. He ate another banana, thinking lazily that he wished he owned this car. For the first time in many a day his mind was not filled and boiling over with his trouble. Marie and all the bitterness ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... reached the house of death, the cold was bitter and the darkness dense; and the cold and the darkness were one, and entered into my bones together. But the candle of Eve, shining from the window, guided me, and kept both frost and murk from ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... job. The world closed in on Rick and there was only the murk outside his mask and the rhythmic sound of his own breathing. Only his hands, constantly probing the mud, were in touch with reality. He lost all sense of time. Once, to see how much ground he ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... of the stable. In a dark corner Tunis Latham saw a huge grain box, for once the Ball farm had supported several span of oxen and a considerable dairy herd, its cover raised and its maw gaping wide. There was something moving there in the murk, something fluttering. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... murk grew denser. There was little to look at, but much to feel. The motion of the boat, which was due to the never-ending struggle between the male stones and the force of gravitation, resembled in an exaggerated fashion the violent tossing of a small craft on a choppy sea. The ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the toll-gate, where one may view a prospect unique in all the county, the car stopped, perhaps in obedience to a summons of the master. From the open window Paul looked out over the valley; and a rainbow linked the crescent of the hills, point to point. Backed by the murk of the moving storm, Babylon Hall looked like a giant sarcophagus behind which Titan hands had draped a sable curtain; and it seemed to Paul as he looked, wondering, that the arc of heaven-born colours which no brush may reproduce, rested upon the hidden roof of Dovelands ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... as conditions were ascertained, manned ships. Tulan took the flagship down once. Her coolers labored and her searchlights were swallowed in murk within a few feet. Sounds carried through the hull; the howl of great winds and the thumps of explosions. Once a geyser of glowing ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... to every sentimentalist than the sky. Standing near the folding-over place of Niagara, at the top of the fall, I looked across the perpetual rainbow of the foam, and saw the whole further sky deflowered by the formless, edgeless, languid, abhorrent murk of smoke from the nearest town. Much rather would I see that water put to use than the sky so outraged. As it is, only by picking one's way between cities can one walk under, or as it were in, a pure sky. The horizon ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... The air was cold and raw and tasted coppery. In the street traffic moved at a funeral pace, to the accompaniment of hoarse cries and occasional crashes. Once the sun had worked its way through the murk and had hung in the sky like a great red orange, but now all was darkness and discomfort again, blended with that odd suggestion of mystery and romance which is a London ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... at the idea. "Why did they send her here? I should as soon have expected them to send her into the murk of the bottomless pit. A girl, an innocent girl, you say, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... the dim distance something is moving. It is a world hurrying through space. Somewhat in the foreground but enveloped in the murk sit three figures. They are tending a vast loom. Its myriad threads run through illimitable space and the woof of the loom is time. The three figures weaving through the dark do not know whence comes the power that moves the loom eternally. They have not asked. They work in the pitch ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... It was murk midnight by this time, and the house was still and quiet. There was nothing to interrupt the old man in his ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... escaladder he told someone, "It's cruel to tie ticklers to slow-witted snaily humans when ticklers can think and live ... ten thousand times as fast," he finished, plucking the figure from the murk of his unconscious. ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... might have learned the use of smoke signals from these dust pillars as they learn most things direct from the tutelage of the earth. The air begins to move fluently, blowing hot and cold between the ranges. Far south rises a murk of sand against the sky; it grows, the wind shakes itself, and has a smell of earth. The cloud of small dust takes on the color of gold and shuts out the neighborhood, the push of the wind is unsparing. Only ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... the murk wilderness around her with the glow of her Christian loveliness and faith, Nature had touched her with inspirations of refinement, with a culture as unconscious as the growing of the grass, and the clear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... turned in, Martin went forward to discover which of the forecastle hands would share his vigil. When he came abreast the galley door, where a beam of light shining out lighted dimly a small patch of the pervading, foggy murk, he encountered Sails. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... footsteps hurried by the gate. There was the rattle of a belated cart, the ring of a distant church bell. But even on such nights the casements were opened and little faces looked into the melancholy kirkyard. Candles glimmered for a moment on the murk, and sweetly and clearly ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... pedestrian passed, humming a little tune to himself, striding along through the November murk with swinging gait. It may have been that his voice, coming suddenly within range of the mare's ears, conveyed a sound of encouragement. Perhaps the lights of the village, twinkling out one by one along the street, suggested stables and a nosebag. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... white fingers feeling through the murk. But no searchlight ever made will penetrate a thousand yards of fog, and the dull glares only served to warn the steersman of the launch of dangers to ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... curb of anxiety. The whole vitality and clean vigor of her seemed breathless and questioning. Fear had spurred her into fleetness as she had crossed the hills, yet now she hesitated on the threshold. At first her eyes could make little of the inner murk, where both lamp and fire had guttered low and gray shadows ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the Prince's chamber, near the House of Peers, where his Majesty's body lay in state. This was on the very afternoon of the funeral, that would start for the Abbey after nightfall, and at Westminster I found a throng already gathered in the mud and murk. In the chambre ardente, which was hung with purple, a score of silver lamps depended from the roof around a tall purple canopy, under which the corpse reposed in its open coffin, flanked with six immense silver candelabra. Between the candelabra and at the head and foot of the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... he strove to hold it rigidly erect, passed silently out of the little office. Through the opened door the trio with their eyes followed him while he crossed the concrete floor of the concourse and passed through a gate. They continued to watch until he had disappeared in the murk, going toward where a row of parked sleepers stood at the far end of the ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... incomprehensible phantasma which hovered about Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him. That he sometimes came out of the cloud, and was familiar and earthly, is true; but his dwelling was amid the murk and the mist, and the home of his spirit in the abysm of the storm, and the hiding- places of guilt. He was, at the time of which I am speaking, scarcely two-and-twenty, and could claim no higher praise than having written a clever worldly-minded satire; and yet it was impossible, even ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... music-room to hall. Finally, at four o'clock she has composed herself with a book in the library, and before the fire sits half lost in reading, half in wondering. Without, the early gloom of the short day is gathering, and the bare trees cast murk shadows all across the frostbitten lawns, and late birds twitter their good-night notes, and a few sleepy rooks caw coldly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... figure in turban and sandals and the full flower of that grotesque regalia which passes muster at cheap theatres and masquerade balls for the costume of a Cingalese. The fellow had bent forward out of the deeper darkness of the house-passage into the murk and gloom of the ill-lit street, and was straining his eyes as if in search for some ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Private Macgregor Robinson lay on the Flanders mud, under the murk and rain. A very long time it seemed since that short, grim struggle amid the blackness and intermittent brightness. The night was still rent with noise and light, but the storm of battle had passed from the place where he had fallen. He could not tell whether ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... vomiting funnels, of burning boats and fire-rafts, of belching cannon, of screaming grape and canister and of exploding magazines. And through the middle of it all, in single file—their topmasts, yards, and cordage showing above the murk as pale and dumb as skeletons at every flare of the havoc, a white light twinkling at each masthead, a red light at the peak and the stars and stripes there with it—Farragut and his wooden ships came ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell Hammered on top, but never quite burst through. Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour, Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb. What murk of air remained stank old, and sour With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den, If not their corpses. . . . There we herded from the blast Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... to just try, that there was no 'again' about it, but I didn't. I tried to dig through the murk to her switchboard but I couldn't dig a foot through this area. I waited impatiently until she re-made the connections at her switchboard and I heard the burring of the phone as the other end rang. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... when the candle was out, she kneeled by the window and looked at the stars. There was one very fair and golden, an empress of the night. "That is the princess," said Audrey, and smiled upon the peerless star. Far from that light, scarce free from the murk of the horizon, shone a little star, companionless in the night. "And that is I," said Audrey, and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... the mist and the murk of the morn, From the beaches of Hampton our barges were borne; And we heard not a sound, save the sweep of the oar, Till the word of our Colonel came up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... blended with steam, and foul with the scent of roasting human flesh, poured into the cabin, turning the dimming light into yellow murk. Gasping for breath the while, Ben-Hur knew they were passing through the cloud of a ship on fire, and burning up with the rowers chained to ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... drawer of comparisons between this and that brand of cigarettes, or full expatiator on the merits of some new patent razor. A whole hour and more may be wasted in such humdrum and darkness. And then—something will have happened. There has come a spark in the murk; a flame now, presage of a radiance: Comus has begun. His face is a great part of his equipment. A cast of it might be somewhat akin to the comic mask of the ancients; but no cast could be worthy of it; mobility is the essence of it. It flickers and shifts in accord to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... mullioned windows of the law, grand hotels, the terrific arches of termini, cathedral domes, houses of parliament, and grand hotels, rose darkly around him on the arc of the river, against the dark violet murk of the sky. Huge trams swam past him like glass houses, and hansoms shot past the trams and automobiles past the hansoms; and phantom barges swirled down on the full ebb, threading holes in bridges as cotton threads a needle. It was London, and the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... and went quietly over to the window. Outside the murk of the fog was raw and choking. The stertorous snore of the ferry whistles was uneasy, ominous: the spirit of the town's myriad anxieties. She began to speak with measured ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... The smell of bears was on the air; the river-wind breathed kennels. The Swan play-house stood up, a great, blue blank against the sky. The sound of voices was remote. The river made a constant murmur in the murk beyond the landing-place; ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... their own affairs. In this case it is rather a pity, for the effort is said to have been an eminently successful one. Estimated by its effect, it certainly was, for it materialized with quite spiritistic suddenness, from out the murk of uncertainty and suspicion, the form and substance of a new esprit de corps, among the "Clarion" men, and established the system of Talk-it-Over Breakfasts which made a close-knit, jealously guarded ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... they went on very silently together, of a sudden Black Roger caught Beltane by the arm and pointed into the gloom, where, far before them, small lights winked redly through the murk. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... Camden, four days since. They came together in the murk of the Wednesday morning, my Lord Cornwallis and that poor fool Gates. De Kalb is dead; your blethering Irishman, Rutherford, is captured; and your rag-tag rebel army is scattered to the four winds. And that's not all. On the Friday, Colonel Tarleton came up with ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... said Gleam-o'-the-Murk, "I bring dreams, too. But my dreams are of the night, and they are full of the gentle, soothing music of the winds, of the pines, and of the crickets! and they are full of fair visions in which you shall see the things of Fairyland and of ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... the murk amidships when Terence Reardon rolled groggily down the companion after him. Terence had no means of ascertaining which alleyway the skipper had charged into—and he did not care. Blind with fury he ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... and stared confusedly about him. A ripple of low laughter came to his ears as he widened his pupils in the effort to accommodate his eyes to the murk. Then the moon broke out once more and the place became one of silver light and dark, soft shadow-blots. She was sitting with her back against a tree, her knees gathered between her arms, fingers interlocked. She had thrown a long, rough cape about her, but it ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... darken or destroy it, Locked in me, Though as delicate as lamp-worm's lucency; Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it In the seventies!—could not darken or destroy it, Locked ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... of Paolo's grief Dante fell swooning with pity, and awoke to find himself in the circle where a cold rain fell forever on the gluttons. Cerberus guarded the entrance, and now and again devoured the unhappy ones who lay prone on their faces in the murk and mire. Here Ciacco of Florence recognized and spoke with Dante, falling back in the mire as the poet passed on, to rise no more ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... parting from kin and friends * Hath clothed me, O folk, in this yellow hue: Then, after the joyance had passed away, * Heart-break, abasement and cark I knew, Through the long, long day when the lift is light, * Nor, when night is murk, my pangs cease pursue: So, 'twixt fairest hope and unfailing fear, * My ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... should not fall into as tender hands again; and amid the rain in the early morning, as the town clock tolled the hour of seven, we were driven amongst the flock that was going forth to the slaughter, down the street and into the cars for Brattleboro. Dark was the day with murk and cloud and rain; and, as we rolled down through the narrow vales of eastern Vermont, somewhat of the shadow crept into our hearts and filled them with dark apprehensions of evil fortune ahead; of long, hopeless trials; of abuse ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... one or two of the incandescent lights were on, and beyond that feeble glow there seemed a great void of darkness and storm. The gloom shut in the steamer's world as with a thick curtain; not a star was visible, but now and then a white swirl of foam gleamed for a second through the murk, and then, with a creaking and groaning as if in pain, the good ship lurched, trembled, and as the wave broke with an indescribable noise, steadied herself once more, to plunge onward as fast as steam could force her in the teeth of wind ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... cages Leered as if with discontent at city movement, murk, and grime, And as waiting some procession of great ghosts from bygone ages To exalt ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the dawn, and told themselves it would never come, it was suddenly there. It came, and they could not see it come. The light stole between the trees; the leaves dressed themselves with colour. A little breeze came from the river, and seemed to blow the last of the murk away. By half-past ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... the boys—hungering for novelty as boys only can hunger—the useless and trivial suggestions of friends, the minor arrangements for the move, the decision on domestic questions present and to come, the questions, answers, futile conjectures, all formed a murk through which she labored, striving to please her husband and her children, to uphold authority, quell mutiny, soothe murmurs, and sympathize with enthusiasm; with a tact which shamed diplomacy, and a ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... broken hills half sunk in the mouth Of the bay, with their jagged peaks afoam; and the Captain thought He could pass to the north; but the sea kept shovin' him south, With her harlot hands, in the snow-blind murk, till ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... filial duty; it was not a matter of love; to her it was a matter of existence. She saw her ideals dimly enough at best, and she would burst every cord of affection and convention rather than allow them to be submerged in the grey, surrounding murk ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... settling over Boston, a thick foggy murk that soaked down full of smoke and smell and chill. The streets were oozy with a wet snow which had fallen through the afternoon and had been trodden into mud; and draughty with an east wind, that would have passed unnoticed across the open fields, but which ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Indians? For two days we watched, and the water was unflecked by sign of life. We listened in the murk of night and strained our eyes in the sun's dazzle. But we found nothing but forest and sky and mystery. We were alone with ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the brow of the hill, I suddenly remembered that I must once more pass the gibbet, and began to strain my eyes for it. Presently I spied it, sure enough, its grim, gaunt outline looming through the murk, and instinctively I quickened my stride so as to pass it as soon as ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... man ran before him whose bratta on the wind roared like fire, and there was a sound of voices calling and acclaiming, and a noontide darkness descended upon him and accompanied him as he went, and all became obscure and shapeless, and all the ways were murk. And the mind of Laeg, too, was disturbed and shaken ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Plutina. His arm was about her waist, and their hands were clasped, as they crept with cautious, feeling steps amid the perils of the path. For over the lofty, barren summit, the mist had shut down in impenetrable veils. Yet, through that murk of vapor, the two, though they moved so carefully, went in pulsing gladness, their hearts singing the old, old, new, new mating song. A mist not born of the sea nor of the mountain, but of the heart, was in the lad's eyes while he remembered and lived again ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... him. Sound traveled something like a thousand feet a second, he reflected; that bolt must have struck about a mile distant. Nothing alarming about that, surely. A moment, then he blinked and rubbed his eyes, for out of the murk was born another bonfire like ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... and enjoying the evening; numbers were walking for air; the worry of the day had almost worried itself out, and few but themselves were hurried. As they crossed the bridge, the clear steeples of the many churches looked as if they had advanced out of the murk that usually enshrouded them, and come much nearer. The smoke that rose into the sky had lost its dingy hue and taken a brightness upon it. The beauties of the sunset had not faded from the long light films of cloud that lay at peace in the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... O shades of night! O moody, tearful night! O great star disappeared! O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... fallen star! O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! O great star disappeared—O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... galloped briefly into view as the train whizzed by down the valley, and Weary raised the car window and leaned far out to gaze after them with hungry eyes. He wanted to swing his hat and give a whoop that would get the last wisps of fog and gray murk out of his system—but there were other passengers already shivering and eyeing him in unfriendly fashion because of the open window. He wanted to get out and run and run bareheaded, over the bleak, brown hills; but he closed the window and behaved ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... and black overhead, and when dark was fairly upon me I was, for all practical purposes, like a blind man in an unfamiliar room. It didn't take me long to comprehend that I was merely wasting the strength of my horse in bootless wandering; with moonlight I could have made it, but in that murk I could not hope to find the post. So I had no choice but to make camp in the first coulee that offered, and an exceeding lean camp I found it—no grub, no fire, no rest, for though I hobbled my horse I didn't dare let his rope out of ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... piercing and pealing, Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing, Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting, Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting, Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing, (That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?) Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending, Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting, Along the midnight ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... and light The cottier's else o'ershadowing murk, Filling his hand with cheerful work, And all ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... course shall be so wise, That no complaint shall rise." With cruel kindness Heaven granted The very thing he blindly wanted: At once this novel guide, That saw no more in broad daylight Than in the murk of darkest night, His powers of leading tried, Struck trees, and men, and stones, and bricks, And led his brother straight to Styx. And to the same unlovely home, Some states by such ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... the belongings of a good many of them were being rapidly reduced to ashes, for the whole west wing was certainly doomed, and one is likely to witness some stirring scenes. The firemen worked like gnomes in the murk and smoke, and Shelby and Bolivar seemed to be everywhere, saving everything possible to save, with many willing hands from the neighborhood to help them. And some funny enough rescues were made. Sofa pillows were carried tenderly down two flights of stairs and deposited ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Thus, as he can tell you, my predecessor, Man-kau-ra, he who built the third of the great pyramids, the Pyramid of Her, sleeps, or rather wakes in a dark city, called London, across the seas, a place of murk where no sun shines. Others have been burnt with fire, others are scattered in small dust. The ornaments that were ours are stole away and sold to the greedy; our sacred writings and our symbols are their jest. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard |
