"Murk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had ended writing the verses she continued, "These words are from her who saith that melancholy destroyeth her and that watching wasteth her; in the murk of whose night is found no light and darkness and day are the same in her sight. She tosseth on the couch of separation and her eyes are blackened with the pencils of sleeplessness; she watcheth the stars arise and into the gloom she strains her eyes: verily, sadness ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... been nearly at the full, but I could not guess its position behind the even murk of cloud that muffled the whole face of the sky. Yet, it was not very dark. The broad masses of the garden through which Jervaise led me, were visible as a greater blackness superimposed on a fainter background. I believed that we were passing through some kind of formal pleasance. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... most questions, mine's the middle view, And looks on all creation as the work Of God All-wise, most kind and mighty too. This frees my mind from all vain thoughts which lurk In its recesses, dissipates the murk Of idol worship and religious pride, And makes me proof 'gainst each insidious quirk Thrown out by those who do my views deride; Whose judgment seems to me from truth and ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... assisted us in getting our baggage aboard. Johnny and I peppered him with questions, to which he vouchsafed no answer. When we had paid off the boatman, he led the way down a hatch into a very dark hole near the bows. A dim lantern swayed to and fro, through the murk we could make out ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... 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
... nothing in the yellow murk of dust, a high cloud of sand overleapt the northern peaks and came sifting down the slopes of Shadow Mountain. The gusts of wind began to wail in boding fury and then the storm struck the town. Dirt and papers flew before it; tin cans leapt forth from holes and ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... 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 its shadow afar on the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... rescuer 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
... 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 ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... 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 that Dr. Johnson knew when they belonged to the Thrales. He would not recognise the church—the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... 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 my heart. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... turned to blackness, and then out of the murk shot a living green ball of fire, and ploughed into the earth. Then sheets of water, that seemed to come simultaneously from earth and sky, swept the prairie, and in the midst of it struggled Henderson, weak as a little child, half bereft of sense by the strange ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... 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 man of all folk is foolish enough to stir abroad ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... beneath the tread, With starting planks that, gaping, show long lines of sullen red; Great, hissing, scalding jets of steam that, lifting now, disclose A crouching figure gripping tight the nozzle of a hose, The dripping, rubber-coated form, scarce seen amid the murk, Of Fireman Mike O'Rafferty attending ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was a spectacle of fantastic beauty. It was as if a huge, rounded piece of amber, mellow, golden, lay in the murk of the sea-floor. Not steel, hard and grim, but of transparent, shimmering stuff she was built, all coated a soft yellow by her lights, clearly visible inside. Ken had known something of her radical construction; ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... the buildings lined a cobbled street, from dawn to dark a thoroughfare for thundering lorries and, twice daily, in murk of early morning and gloom of early night, scoured by a nondescript rabble employed in the vast dockyards whose man-made forests of masts and cordage, funnels and cranes, on either hand lifted angular black silhouettes against the misty ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... 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 ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... stealeth from the 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
... She wished the slides could all be broken. She wished it could be gone for ever, like a lantern-slide which was broken. She wanted to have no past. She wanted to have come down from the slopes of heaven to this place, with Birkin, not to have toiled out of the murk of her childhood and her upbringing, slowly, all soiled. She felt that memory was a dirty trick played upon her. What was this decree, that she should 'remember'! Why not a bath of pure oblivion, a new birth, without any recollections or blemish ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... 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 ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... myself upon my frighten'd barb, Just as the shades began to grow less murk, And sun-beams clad the sky ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... is a building which recently was dismissed with a brief, humorous reference in a new guide to our City—a cobbled forecourt, tame pigeons, cabs, a brick front topped by a clock-face: Fenchurch Street Station. Beyond its dingy platforms, the metal track which contracts into the murk is the road to China, though that is, perhaps, the last place you would guess to be at the end of it. The train runs over a wilderness of tiles, a grey plateau of bare slate and rock, its expanse cracked and scored as though by a withering heat. Nothing grows ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... boon To the 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 heavy within him For horror of Hun ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... licked their way slowly through the grass in a narrow irregular band extending sometimes for miles. Behind it was blackened soil, and above it rolled dense clouds of smoke. Always accompanied it thousands of birds wheeling and dashing frantically in and out of the murk, often fairly at the flames themselves. The published writings of a certain worthy and sentimental person waste much sympathy over these poor birds dashing frenziedly about above their destroyed nests. As a matter of fact they are taking greedy advantage of a most excellent ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... mercy, heed, And grant me this decree, That I, in turn, may lead— My brother, follow me. My 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 an ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... 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 hills behind them. Historic region! But Alan and I ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... thought, with a fierce blazing up through the murk of her musing. "I hate t' live. But they ain't no hope. I'm tied down. I can't leave the children, and I ain't got no money. I couldn't make a living out in the world. I ain't never seen anything an' ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... For outside the fog still held. 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 ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... though it was barely three 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 a lurid ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... doors and passages, and at length came upon the shrieking 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 ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... he cast himself back into the wall of snow, and listened. At first he heard nothing, and made sure that all was over; but presently a faint soft gurgle, like a dying sob, came through the murk. With all his might he dashed toward the sound, and laid hold of a hairy chin just foundering. "Rise up, old chap," he tried to shout, and he gave the horse a breath or two with the broad-brimmed hat above his nose. Then Marmaduke rallied for one last ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... same boat as the officer in command of the expedition. His intimate knowledge of the position of the war vessels would be of use in this murk and darkness. Humphrey took an oar in the same boat; and the little fleet got together, and commenced its silent voyage just as the clocks of the fortress boomed ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Skale caught him. They were in the corridor again—cold, cheerless, full of December murk and shadows—and the secretary was leaning against the clergyman's shoulder breathless and trembling as though ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... seaward, lingering there and refusing to be driven completely away, and in the gray of dawn the morning star rose out of them, overmatching with its clear light that of the Gurnet which shone from the murk of their depths below. The frozen ground rang beneath the heel and the cold had bitten deep. Out of the northwest a few flakes of snow came and it was long before the sun shone through the clouds and touched the top of Manomet Hill. Yet when it did it came ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... had gone out. The mindless old man—he who had been President—went with it. A New Year had come in, and on its infant heels shambled a tall, gaunt shape that seated itself by the White House windows and looked out into the murk of things with ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... family as by the disgrace of self. 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, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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
... 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 darkness ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... "They will keep me a few hours from the dark! When I die I will go straight up to God and implore his curse upon you, on your bed and board, your hands and tools, your body and soul. May your every prayer be lost in the wide murk, and never come at his ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... 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 to focus thoughts ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... disappeared into 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 lurched into ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... shattered the wall in front of him. He stared through the murk, across the broken glass. He was Corporal Harry Read, UN Inspector Corps—a very special man. If he didn't do a good job here, he wasn't the man he claimed to be. This might be the only real ...
— The Green Beret • Thomas Edward Purdom |
