"Murmurous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though the sea-shell cheats the ear, And from my blood, free-coursing near, Unspheres the far and murmurous phantom Of breaking seas that I ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... evening about a 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 ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... burst of leaf and bloom, The sun shines redly through the gloom, And the wind with its many melodies Hath a murmurous sound like the noise of bees, Singing and humming,—blowing and growing, Of springing blade, and of fountain flowing; And night and silence under the ground Listen—and thrill—and move to the sound, And ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... the light-illumined steep, And brightly beautiful continuous smiles A fecund blessing on those Indian Isles! Like eastern woods which sweeten as they burn, So, the parched earths to odorous flowrets turn, And feathered fayes their murmurous wings expand, Waked by the magic of his conjuror's wand, Flash their red plumes, and vocalize each dell Where browse the fecho and the dun-gazelle,[11] While half forgetful of her changing sphere, The loathful summer lingers year by year. Here, in the light of God's supernal eye— ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... 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
... the voice of waters falling From cliffs that echo back their murmurous song; Less sweet the summer sound of breezes calling Through pine-tree tops sonorous all day long; Than are thy rhymes, the soul of grief enthralling, Thy rhymes o'er field and forest borne along: If she but hear them, at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... builds a triumphal arch, 150 Through which I see a sceptre and a throne. The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills, Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee,— The songs of maidens pressing with white feet The vintage on thine altars poured no more,— 155 The murmurous bliss of lovers, underneath Dim grapevine bowers, whose rosy bunches press Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unpaled By thoughts of thy brute lust,—the hive-like hum Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil 160 Reaps for itself the rich earth made its ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... 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 and Aunt Annie reluctantly retired in a ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... far, murmurous whisper of expected marine cerebration there rose an uncoordinated mishmash of thought from at least two ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... vernacular for the successful squire of dames was then unknown. The girl, who had been leaning forward, all chat and animation when Harris sat there, now lay dreamily back in the rude but easy chair, her eyelids drooping, her long lashes sweeping the soft cheek, listening, drinking in the murmurous flow of Willett's almost inaudible words, and the stern young face of his classmate hardened in the moonlight, for Harris had seen and heard before. Briefly he gave his instructions to the silent Apache and closed with the sign, "I ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... 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, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... yet no army," repeated Decius, in a murmurous monotone, when, for a moment, there were silence and space around him. "We marched by the Lake Trasimenus, and the fog lay thick upon us. Then came a noise of shouts and clash of arms and shrieks, but we saw nothing—only sometimes a great, white, naked body swinging a huge sword, and again a ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... was 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
... the thing naturally? Then there was the square hall—positively a 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 thrilled to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... 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 buys, To mark the manner of their merchandise; Till chancing upon one who cried for ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... river through the forests, always, I noticed, by a route which took us away from the village. Each day I discovered some new accomplishment. Sometimes I would read Heine or Goethe to her, and she would grow rapt and silent. In the midst of some murmurous stanza I would suddenly stop, only to see her start and look at me as though I had committed a sacrilege, in that I had spoiled some dream of hers. Then again I myself would become lost in dreams, to be aroused by a soft voice saying: "Well, why do you not go on?" Two people ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... "Romeo and Juliet," and began to read, not silently, nor yet aloud, but in a low, dreamy tone, in which the sounds of Nature about her, the gurgle of a brook behind the hedge, the sighing of the winds among the pendulous branches of the willow, the silver shiver of the lance-like leaves, the murmurous coming and going of bees, the loving duets of nest-building birds, all seemed to mingle and merge. As she read, a new light seemed to illumine the page, caught from her recent experience of dramatic personation and scenic effects, limited ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... 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 house, and take up his rifle to put in the rest of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... silently, listening to the roaring down there in the depths. It grew and grew, became for a moment a harsh menacing, overwhelming screech, and then slowly subsided to the murmurous moaning ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... 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 ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... prayers 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 ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... murmurous with little rivulets of snow-water, the gurgling of full troughing, and the patter of rain on the iron roof of the house and the miniature roofs of the beehives, Hazel, waking from uneasy slumber, heard those words ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... 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 ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... 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 and the silence of them all ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... was very narrow. Rhoda could see the individual leaves of the aspens on the opposite wall as they moved close in the shadow of the other. The floor, watered by a clear brook, was level and green. On either side the walls were murmurous with delicately quivering aspens and ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... a gentle, steady humming filled the air; a murmurous, musical sound that calmed every sense. It was like the turning of a great wheel or the rocking of an ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... There 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 ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... down that broad, smooth flooring gay couples swayed, eye to eye and breast to breast: anachronisms reconciled by the witchery of the dance. And when Sally darted across and down the steps she found the lawns, the terrace, and the formal garden, too, peopled with paired shadows, murmurous with soft ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 a faraway jackal ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... my dear sir. Patients have described to me their sensations many times, and their testimony is quite in agreement. When the circuit is closed there is a bubbling, murmurous sound in the ears, a warm sensation where the wires touch the cranium, and a feeling as of a motion through the brain, entering at one point and going out at another. There are also sparks of fire seen under the closed eyelids, an ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... reins about the mare's arched neck, started off, and, without so much as flicking her long tail, Queen Bess fell in behind, obedient to her cooing, murmurous calls. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... The hushed oboe and the distant din, Of muffled drum or viol's raucous groan— Sudden arises one pure voice-like tone, A silver trumpet's tongue that stirs the soul To feel the theme, and the harmonious whole A sonant setting seems for that alone; So, high above earth's murmurous stir and strife, Riseth thy voice in clear enringing song— No minor plaint of dull despairing pain, But one true note of hope that bids us long For higher things; and all the din of life Seems to subserve the sweetness of ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... soldiers had laid their glittering helmets down in long straight ranks on a carpet of cloth o' gold. Over these fields of garnered wheat came a breeze from the sea, with a tang of salt like a tonic mixture, and there was a murmurous sound on the air, a message ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 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 ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... shone with light; it grew murmurous with ecstatic approval. The virginal face of Laurencine shot its rapture to Lucas as she turned to ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... 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 ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... A few murmurous sounds, and then the voice that had uttered its confession in that deep confessional of a gloomy soul said, and there was almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... persons who knew no better give Mr Wentworth credit for tact, a quality unknown to him. He was walking slowly in a perplexed manner under the lime-trees. They were all in glorious blossom, filling the air with that mingling sense of fragrance and music which is the soul of the murmurous tree: but the short figure of the Squire, in his morning-coat, with his perplexed looks, was not at all an accessory in keeping with the scene. He was taking his walk in a subdued way, pondering something—and it puzzled him sorely in his straightforward, unprofound understanding. He shook his head ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... 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
... moments at the crimson and yellow trees, on which a murmurous laughter of mocking winds arose, at times, and rustled on, and died away into the psithurisma of Theocritus; and the songs of the oriole and mocking-bird fluttering among the ripe fruit, or waving up into the sky, brought a pleasant smile to her lips. The lark, too, was pouring ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... while she talked, and, for the moment, she lost entirely her resemblance to Jane, who was never animated, though she made a perpetual murmurous sound. Unlike Jane, Fanny was vivacious, pert, and, for her years, extraordinarily sophisticated. Already she dressed with extreme smartness; already she was thinking of men as of possible lovers; and already she was beginning, in her mother's phrase, "to manage her life." Her trite little ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... 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 ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... 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 ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... of gold and white went out into the Pozzo Depinto and turned up towards the Pontecorbo Gate; as the music and chanting—"Candida Ippolita, premio d'Amore! Grazia insolita del sommo Fattore!"—died away to a murmurous underflow of sound, perhaps a tongue or two was thrust into a cheek or two, perhaps a bare shoulder shrugged or one shock-head wagged to another. The air was sharp, beds still warm—whose business was it? The street was left to the rats ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... flame that glowed on Amanda's wasted cheeks, and bearing, too, on its waves fragrances that recalled a long-lost paradise, and sounds—the echo of days when no discordant note marred the music of her life. These moorland breezes—how redolent, how murmurous of what had been! In a few moments Amanda closed her eyes, the wind caressing her into peacefulness and singing her ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... hear the murmurous sound That from the vocal woods doth rise, To mark the pigeons wheeling round, And think how nice they'd ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... palm-hung pleasances Came through the lattice bars With scents and murmurous harmonies; Like splintered scimitars The moonbeams through the banyan trees ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... down upon the valley of home. It was the season of goldenrod and aster on the hillsides: a hot swooning silence lay upon the late afternoon. The weight and closeness of the air had struck even the insects dumb. Under the pines, generally so murmurous, there was something almost gruesome in the blank stillness: a suspension so absolute that the ears felt dull and sealed. He tried, involuntarily, to listen more clearly, to know if this uncanny hush were really so. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... ye sons of Sorrow come Only wishing to be numb: Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies, Our breasts are soft as silken roses, And our hands are tenderer Than the breaths that scarce can stir The sunlit eglantine that is Murmurous with hidden bees. Come, ye sorrowful, and steep Your tired brows in a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... 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 ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... called, it warned at the turning of the corners, it greeted friends, it hurled curses at rivals. Crack-crack! till Merrihew's ears ached. It was all very crowded and noisy till they reached the upper terrace of the Corso Vittorio; then the sounds became murmurous and pleasing. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... folds and fades and changes under my glance as a cloud at twilight; and the beauty of the spring is as elusive as the foam upon a wave. In the midst of summer, the summer that we anticipated in January seems farther off. It sinks constantly into itself. The deep solitude of rest, the murmurous silence of woods at noon, these are as real in winter as when we are melting in June. The senses will have their share. It is melancholy that a man with the stomach-ache cannot enjoy Shakespeare; and that ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... about her. She responded immediately, with an accelerated breath, and the resemblance was gone. Greatly to his relief, a man cut in on them, and once more he found himself dancing with Anette. She asked him, in a murmurous warmth, if he liked her, at all. And, with a new and surprising, a distasteful, sense of lying, he replied that he did, tremendously. No, a feeling in him, automatic and strange, responded—not Anette! He wanted to leave her, to leave everyone here, and go. For what? At the ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... never seen so many cities as the much-wandering man, nor grown so wise, yet have heard and seen and remembered, for myself, words and things from crowded streets and fairs and shows and wave-washed quays and murmurous market-places, in many lands; and for his [Greek: Kimmerion undron demos],—his people wrapt in cloud and vapor, whom "no glad sun finds with his beams,"—have been borne along a perilous path through thick mists, among the crashing ice of the Upper Atlantic, as well as sweltered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... 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 curses they ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... 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 ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... 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
... of voices wreathing out of the gloom, Out of the lilied dusk at the firelight's invitation. Then, in the muffled hour, one, strange and gracious and sad, Moves from the phantom hearth, and, with infinite delicacies, Looses his lissome hands along the murmurous keys. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... through which he had passed; but for a moment and no more. A shudder, an emotion of prayerful pity, and he recalled his thoughts. In the quiet of the cool room, looking on the sunny, vine-clad court, with the tinkle of the lute and the murmurous sound of women's voices in his ears, it was hard to believe that the things from which he had emerged were real. It was still more unpleasant, and as futile, to dwell on them. A day of reckoning would come, and, if La Tribe were right, the cause would rally, bristling with pikes and snorting ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... in her wide open, glassy eyes, he with the arms which had held her lying limply on the blood stained floor beside him? He seemed to see them both as he hovered above. It was death? Well, what matter? She had gone out with him, and in some cloud-walled castle, murmurous with harmonies of quiring spheres, and gleaming with their radiance, they would dwell together. Human vengeance could not reach them there, and for love there is no death. The soul cannot die, and love, its chiefest offspring, shares its immortality. It persists throughout the ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... listening eagerly for any sound. He moaned to himself like some 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 suffered the agony of its penetration. He stretched out his arms ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... had not quite 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
... murmurous noise. The dozen spearmen came marching into the great hall. They carried loot. It dripped on the floor and they blandly ignored such things as stray golden coins rolling off away from them. Stay-at-home inhabitants of the castle gazed ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... to the account, let it be said, Colonel Stewart, when he appeared at the Y. M. C. A. saw no murmurous, mutinous, wildly excited men, such as the mob psychology of a mutiny would necessarily call for. Instead, he saw men seated orderly and respectfully. And they listened to his remarks that cleared up the situation and to his proud declaration that American soldiers on duty never quit till the job ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... what's it like in Kansas? I'm going down through there some day." He spoke harshly. But the real Carl was robed in light and the murmurous wake of evening, with the tropics ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... had ceased; there was no sound of music, and the bells had left off their clangour; while in place there came a low, dull, murmurous roar as of surf beating upon some rocky coast, a strange mingling of voices, hurrying foot-steps, indescribable, indistinct, and yet apparently expressive of excitement and the change from joy ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... any American city, so nearly transcend provincialism as in an enthusiasm over their favorite minor cynic, Elbert Hubbard or John Kendrick Bangs, or, in Walter Babson's case, Mr. Fitzgerald's variations on Omar. Una had read Omar as a pretty poem about roses and murmurous courts, but read him she had; and such was Walter's delight in that fact that he immediately endowed her with his own ability to enjoy cynicism. He jabbed at the menu with a fork and glowed and shouted, "Say, isn't it great, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... trundle-bed, where I wondering saw The stars through the window, and listened with awe To the sigh of the winds as they tremblingly crept Through the trees where the robin so restlessly slept: Where I heard the low, murmurous chirp of the wren, And the katydid listlessly chirrup again, Till my fancies grew faint and were drowsily led Through the maze of the dreams of ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... motionless; not a shadow stirred, save that which was cast by the tremulous wings of a black and purple butterfly, which, near to his Majesty, fell, rose and sank again. From a drove of wild bees, swimming hither and thither in quest of the final sweets of the year, came a low murmurous hum, such as a man sometimes fancies he hears while standing alone in the vast auditorium ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... elegant, entre cour et jardin, and showed all the happy symmetries and proper conventions. Here flourished, or rather, I surmise at this time of day, here languished, a domestic drama of which we enjoyed the murmurous overflow: frankly astounding to me, I confess, how I remain still in sensitive presence of our resigned proprietor's domestic drama, in and out of which I see a pair of figures quite up to the dramatic mark flit again with ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... yon tremulous mist where morning wakes Illimitable shadows from their dark abodes, Or in this woodland glade tumultuous grown With all the murmurous language of the trees, No blither presence fills the vocal space. The wandering rivulets dancing through the grass, The gambols, low or loud, of insect-life, The cheerful call of cattle in the vales, Sweet natural sounds of the contented hours,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... hush Chanteth the Missel-thrush The harp o' the heart makes answer with murmurous stirs; When Robin-redbreast sings, We think on budding springs, And Culvers when ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... clusters; now and again a ladybird flickered by or a swallow swooped so near that his darting shadow fell across her book; while all about her sounded the pleasant hum of a summer's day—the soft susurration of the pleasant hum of a thousand insect voices blending into an indefinite, murmurous vibration ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... way to a moral adventure for humanity. The race was to found a new order here on this delectable land, which no man approached without receiving, as the old voyagers relate, you remember, sweet airs out of woods aflame with flowers and murmurous with the sound of pellucid waters. The hemisphere lay waiting to be touched with life,—life from the old centres of living, surely, but cleansed of defilement, and cured of weariness, so as to be fit for the virgin purity of a new bride. The whole thing ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... like blue myosotis, her lips—poppy-petals, and her ivy-like grace! Tell me if this way of leaning against the green barrier of her garden-close, or of lying under the murmurous arbor of mid-Summer, is not worth the starched manner, that old magistrate de Vigny—with his neckcloth wound three times around, and rigid in his trousers' straps—imposed upon his goddesses? Madame Colette Willy is a live woman, a real woman, who has dared ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... shrill voices like magicians Against this baleful dusk, this wail of rain.... But you are nothing! Your pages turn to water Under my fingers: cold, cold and gleaming, Arrowy in the darkness, rippling, dripping— All things are rain.... Myself, this lighted room, What are we but a murmurous pool of rain?... The slow arpeggios of it, liquid, sibilant, Thrill and thrill in the dark. World-deep I lie Under a sky of rain. Thus lies the sea-shell Under the rustling twilight of the sea; No gods remember it, no understanding Cleaves the long darkness ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... hung before Him in a maze of wings, and looked into His pure heart: and, as they looked, a soft murmurous sound came from them, drowsy-sweet, full of peace: and as they hung there like a breath in frost they ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... diurnal sphere" There floats a World that girds us like the space; On wandering clouds and gliding beams career Its ever-moving murmurous Populace. There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below Ascending live, and in celestial shapes. To that bright World, O Mortal, wouldst thou go? Bind but thy senses, and thy soul escapes: To care, to sin, to passion close thine ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... heads broke as though upheaved by an earthquake, and the house rose, rustling and murmurous, and began crowding into the aisles. The young man, leaning against the rail behind the last row, watched it, a dense, coagulated mass, animated by a single impulse and moving as a unit. Crowding ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... country is it all enacted, what land of sweet visions? What do the tall trees and the sleeping pool hide from me, and in what romantic region of joy and sadness does the dreamer muse for ever, in the long afternoon, so full of warmth and fragrance and murmurous sound? That is the joy of art, of the symbol—that it remains and rests within itself, in a world that seems, for a moment, more real and true than the clamorous and obtrusive ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 of flies ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... its primordial and undisguised appeal to the carnival spirit, its frank, exotic festivity, its volatile and almost too vital atmosphere, and, above all, its glowing and over-odorous gardens and flowerbeds, its overcrowded and grimly Dionysian Promenade, its murmurous and alluring restaurants on steep little boulevards—it was all a blind, Durkin argued with himself, to drape and smother the cynical misery of the place. Underneath all its flaunting and waving softnesses life ran grim and hard—as grim and hard ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... thinking, the doctor spoke. They were low, faint, murmurous sounds, for the lips were nearly at rest. Wanted no more for utterance, they were going back to the holy dust, which ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... in with the jostling crowd, and even as I entered I could hear the murmurous chant of the Chorus Halls, borne hither-ward on the morning wind. It now seemed a long time, although but one day apparently had elapsed since I sat, a trail of luminous ether, undergoing the strange process ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... 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
... 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
... speaking, and there was a slight murmurous sound in the room, as of wind long pent up in many lungs suddenly exhaled; while Runi, still unmoved, emitted a low grunt. Then I rose, and detaching the silver ornament from my cloak, presented it to him. ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... 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 and pansies. She looked tired and discouraged, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... shaggy brows with clustering clouds As if with wreaths of laurel! ye that count Your years by thousands, and your bosoms robe With all the pageantry of Autumn's gold, And lull your sleep of ages with the wild And murmurous drone of woodland waterfalls, And multitudinous song ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Coaxed by the bright promise of the place, she drew near, and, seeing no one, entered softly. It was all kinglier than her father's home, and as she stood in wonder and awe, soft airs stirred about her. Little by little the silence grew murmurous like the woods, and one voice, sweeter than the rest, took words. "All that you see is yours, gentle high princess," it said. "Fear nothing; only command us, for we are here ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... 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 ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 strains Nerve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... breathe, these masks, to each Sir or Madam Who lingers there, and their lively speech Affords an interpreter much to teach, As their murmurous accents seem to come Thence hitheraround in a radiant hum, All ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... out again, vibrant, strangely disquieting, harmonious. Murmurous chanting it was at first, rhythmic and low; ripples and flutings, tones and progressions utterly unknown to me; unfamiliar, abrupt, and alien themes that kept returning, droppings of crystal-clear jewels of sound, golden tollings—and ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... they were sauntering along the street. It was full and murmurous. The lights were bright in the shop windows, and the scuffling of footsteps, more audible than during the day, when it is drowned by the roar of carriage-wheels upon the pavement, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... girls out on a quiet stroll, their arms about each other and their words murmurous, not any border of Suez was quite so alluring as the woods and waters seen from the parapet of this ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... positions of his which 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 having given her that pretty title instead ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... 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 peaceful ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... her calm 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, ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... 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
... trout in the upper part, but a succession of falls, cascades, flumes, and pools that would delight an artist. It is not an easy bed for anything except water to descend; and before we reached the level reaches, where the stream flows with a murmurous noise through open woods, one of our party began to show ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and dusty road 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, I ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 dream of bees. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a restless, troubled sleep. The air is vocal 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 upper storeys. Across the river on the west side a row of lights are moving ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... slept the white man was on a clearing between the forest and the river. Silence, the silence murmurous and unquiet of a tropical night, brooded over the hut that, baked through by the sun, sweated a vapour beneath the cynical light of the stars. Mahamo lay rigid and watchful at the hut's mouth. In his upturned eyes, ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... know it, with its bright days and its soft nights, murmurous with voices? Paris with its crowded pavements—and such a crowd, where every man and woman awakens interest, excites speculation! Paris, with its blue sky and its trees, and its color—and its fascination there is ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... forests here, I wander now long leagues from shore, And still the old song haunts my ear, The century singing ocean's roar; And now I know, fond soul of love; Why still the murmurous echoes live, And sound for aye the hills above That back ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... you are well awake, you find you are twice as good as new, and after breakfast, if you are sagacious, no one belonging to you will have any peace until you are striking out into the woods again,—the green, murmurous woods, tenanted by innumerable hosts of butterflies in their sunny outskirts, light-winged Psyches hovering in the warm, rich air, stained and spotted and splashed with every bright hue of yellow and scarlet ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... amiable and radiant 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
... appeared to 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 call language. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by a carved wooden lattice and from the balcony Stephen could look over hills, near and far, dotted with white villas that lay like resting gulls on the green wave of verdure which cascaded down to join the blue waves of the sea. Up from that far blueness drifted on the wind a murmurous sound like AEolian harps, mingled with the tinkle of fairy mandolins in the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to have been intimately associated with oaks in particular, especially at her sacred grove of Nemi. Perhaps, then, Egeria was the fairy of a spring that flowed from the roots of a sacred oak. Such a spring is said to have gushed from the foot of the great oak at Dodona, and from its murmurous flow the priestess drew oracles. Among the Greeks a draught of water from certain sacred springs or wells was supposed to confer prophetic powers. This would explain the more than mortal wisdom with which, according to tradition, Egeria inspired her royal ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... awake that night, and throughout Christendom a sombre murmur hung in the keen air over the country side like the belling of bees in the heather, and this murmurous tumult grew to a clangour in the cities. It was the tolling of the bells in a million belfry towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more, to sin no more, but to gather in their churches and ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... imperturbable sky, amongst these common, passive things—these paths, those trees, that grass, this bench—within this seclusion of that murmurous investment of this city, the ceaseless roar of London, standing like patient walls, eternal and indifferent, about her quietudes. Oh, wonderful in these accustomed and insensible surroundings thus to be calling "Harry," ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... 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 ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... minds that are thinking now. We have only to pass through a doorway to see sublimer works of art. But though Troyon and Courbet were greater artists than Morland, Morland whispers something that is beyond art, beyond even our present life; as a shell with the sound of the sea, these canvases are murmurous with the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... mockery. Again and again she whirled,—she flew, she sprang,—and wild cries of "Hail, Nelida!" "Triumph to Nelida!" resounded uproariously through the dome. Suddenly the character of the music changed, ... from an appealing murmurous complaint and persuasion, it rose to a martial and almost menacing fervor; the roll of drums and the shrill, reedy warbling of pipes and other fluty minstrelsy crossed the silvery thread of strung harps and viols, ... the light from the fiery globe shot forth a new effulgence, this time in two ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the 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
... of lachrymosity.) Dear, alluring, 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 ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... 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 ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... thine ambient rill How oft I've snuffed the Berkshire breezes, Or, prone on some adjoining hill, Thrown off with my accustomed skill The weekly fytte of polished wheezes; How oft in summer's languorous days, With some fair creature at the pole, I Have thrid the Cherwell's murmurous ways And dared with lobster mayonnaise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... met 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 ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... enforced interest in our proceedings. Like a dove above the dovecot, he circled for an hour or two about the table—a deal one, such as thimble-riggers use, borrowed, under protest, from his own humble bedroom—and then, with a murmurous coo about the weather showing no signs of clearing up, he took a hand. Constant dropping—and it was much worse than dropping—will wear away a stone, and it is my belief if it had gone on much longer his reverence ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... 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— ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... taking her part in some hymn of praise. Fanny Assingham looked rapt in devotion—Fanny Assingham who forsook this other friend as little as she forsook either her host or the Princess or the Prince or the Principino; she supported her, in slow revolutions, in murmurous attestations of presence, at all such times, and Maggie, advancing after a first hesitation, was not to fail of noting her solemn, inscrutable attitude, her eyes attentively lifted, so that she might escape being provoked to betray an impression. She betrayed ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Virginian woods, The scarlet creeper reddens over graves, Among the solemn trees enlooped with vines; Heroic spirits haunt the solitudes,— The noble souls of half a million braves, Amid the murmurous pines. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... admired these, noting their rich colors and soft, yet firm, texture, a murmurous rustle on the palm-thatched roof announced the coming of the rain. It was unthinkable to my host that a stranger should leave his house at nightfall, and in a downpour that might become a deluge before morning. To have refused ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien |
