"Murmur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some writers find literary perception and power of expression quickened at the influence of music itself. The great church was empty. Janaway had left for his tea; the doors were locked, no strangers could intrude; there was no sound, no murmur, no voice, save only the voices of the organ-pipes. So Westray listened. Stay, were there no other voices? was there nothing he heard—nothing that spoke within him? At first he was only conscious of something—something ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... A little murmur of disappointment ran around the room. "Instead," he continued, smiling down at their troubled faces, "I want you to entertain me. The book we have been reading teaches us kindness to animals, and I should like to hear from each one of you of some ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... in order, and go to bed for a week," said Hilary brightly, flushing with pleasure at Miss Carr's words of praise, and at the murmur of assent which they had evoked from her companions; but it appeared that other people were more energetically inclined than herself, for both Miss Briggs and Raymond seized the opportunity to air ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Jane, and immured myself in her stateroom, where I passed an enlivening evening listening to her moans. She showed a faint returning spark of life when I mentioned Cuthbert Vane, and raised her head to murmur that he was Honorable and she understood though not the heir still likely to inherit and ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... more now to the grandmother's house, and it was well that he had made it so safe, for it was not touched again for a long time. The days were sad again now for the old blind woman, and not one passed but what she would murmur complainingly, "Alas! all our happiness and pleasure have gone with the child, and now the days are so long and dreary! Pray God, I see Heidi again once more ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... before noon we were running down the coast of our destination, Fakarava: the air very light, the sea near smooth; though still we were accompanied by a continuous murmur from the beach, like the sound of a distant train. The isle is of a huge longitude, the enclosed lagoon thirty miles by ten or twelve, and the coral tow-path, which they call the land, some eighty or ninety miles by (possibly) one furlong. That part by which we sailed was all ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The murmur of thanksgiving heard from one or two voices brought her head down. It had nearly overcome her. But she controlled herself, and presently went on; though not daring to look again into Mr. Rhys's face, the expression of whose eyes ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... bathing languidly in the water and sunshine of the tank. Even the buffaloes have nothing to do but float the livelong day deeply immersed in the bulrushes. Everything is steeped in repose. The bees murmur their idylls among the flowers; the doves moan their amorous complaints from the shady leafage of pipal trees; out of the cool recesses of wells the idle cooing of the pigeons ascends into the summer-laden air; the rainbow-fed chameleon slumbers on the branch; the enamelled ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... eagerly to its deep murmur and then the thought arose—"Free! free! How happy to be free, even barefooted and in ragged clothes!" Sometimes, when such thoughts crossed his mind, the fiery nature rose within him, and he beat the wall ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... and stunted growth of alders and birches fringed the foot of the steep slopes, and between them the stream spread out across a stretch of milk-white stones. The hollow was flooded with light and filled with the soft murmur of running water. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... There would be a conjunction of the light of the moon, for example, with the soft, love-lorn weather of June—the shadows of the alders on the winding road to Squid Cove and the sleepy tinkle of the goats' bells dropping down from the slopes of The Topmast into the murmur of the sea. There had been just such favorable auspices of late, however—June moonlight and the music of a languorous night, with Dickie Blue and pretty Peggy Lacey meandering the shadowy Squid Cove road together; ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... symbol—if it be no more than a symbol—has been sufficient to awaken in me all that was most enjoyable in our relations. I shall often wander in these woods, among the cloud-like masses of odorous blossom, in this windless harbour of sunlight and the murmur of leaves, in the hope of finding the little visitant here. She will never fail to remind me, but without disturbance, of all that was happiest in a series of relations which grew at last not so wholly felicitous as they ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... with his manner of doglike obedience, got carefully down like a crone stooping. He stretched out with a murmur of relief and comfort. The ground felt like the ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... while a handkerchief was secured tightly over my eyes. Directly afterwards I heard a scuffle, and my uncle's voice among that of many others; blows were struck, and two or three pistols were fired; and then there appeared more scuffling, and all was quiet except the suppressed murmur of apparently many voices as I was dragged forward by the people who held me. We went along the seashore for some way, and then up the cliffs; and next we descended, and I was led along what seemed a narrow path by the careful way in which ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... waking ear from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of your dream. While yet in suspense, another clock flings its heavy clang over the slumbering town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner. You count the strokes—one—two, and there they cease, with a booming sound, like the gathering of a third stroke ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... appearance showed all the signs of a full, flourishing, and well-disciplined seminary. As I traversed the classes in company with M. Pelet, a profound silence reigned on all sides, and if by chance a murmur or a whisper arose, one glance from the pensive eye of this most gentle pedagogue stilled it instantly. It was astonishing, I thought, how so mild a check could prove so effectual. When I had perambulated the length and breadth of the classes, M. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... day seven abominations in my heart: 1. Inclining to unbelief; 2. Suddenly to forget the love and mercy that Christ manifesteth; 3. A leaning to the works of the law; 4. Wanderings and coldness in prayer; 5. To forget to watch for that I pray for; 6. Apt to murmur because I have no more, and yet ready to abuse what I have; 7. I can do none of those things which God commands me, but my corruptions will thrust in themselves. When I would do good, ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... in our little corner we feel the first impulse to murmur, we hear, forthwith, from the great apostle: "There hath no trial taken you but such as is common to man." And yet the trial is none the less severe, the distress is none the less intense, because it is universal. It may be that "misery likes company," though I could never see why, ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... under a spreading chestnut-tree in full bloom. Not many yards away the swarthy Clodine had her kitchen beneath an acacia. Strange as it may seem, the hissing of her frying-pan as she dropped into it the shining fish did not mingle unpoetically with the murmur of lagging bees overhead and the soothing plaint of the river running over its shallows below. Nor, when the purple flush faded on the water's face, and little points of fire began to show between branches laden with the snow of flowers, did the fragrant ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... with its countless throng, And sun, and moon, and planets' song, And every flower that light receives, And every dew that tips the leaves, And every murmur of the sea— Tunes its sweet voice to ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... the summer; Singing, singing in the snow; Glad to hear the brooklets murmur, Patient when the wild winds blow, Heart and I, can we do this? Yes, because of ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... While my companions wandered here and there gathering flowers and fruit I sat down in a shady place, and, having heartily enjoyed the provisions and the wine I had brought with me, I fell asleep, lulled by the murmur of a clear brook ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... fellow-members were unwilling to be taught. It so happens that he is Pa[vs]i['c]'s godson, and on one occasion when the little Communist was talking with great vehemence the old gentleman, who was turning over the pages of some document, was heard by an appreciative House to murmur: "Oh, be still, my child, be still!" But the most unfortunate episode in Markovi['c]'s oratory was when he expressed the hope that Communism would rage through the country like an epidemic, forgetting for the moment that those municipalities which had gone over to Communism had won general praise ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... himself from so doing by a desire of not shocking the feelings of others, for we were sensible of one another's weakness of intellect though blind to our own. Yet we were calm and resigned to our fate, not a murmur escaped us, and we were punctual and fervent in our addresses ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... Lady Southminster in there," said Lady Southminster in a feverish murmur—she seemed not averse to the sensation caused by her hair in the twilight of the hotel—"I expect I should lose my place, and I don't want to lose it. He'll be coming by presently, and he'll see me, and it'll be a lesson to him. We're always ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... her timidity. Quite accidentally she stood toying with a bud that she had picked from the flower-bordered roadway. She turned as Sundown jingled up and met him with a murmur of surprise and pleasure. He swung from his horse hat in hand and advanced, bowing. Anita flushed and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... paragraph. Again, in the year 1841, precise orders were sent out on the same subject, orders which Lord Ellenborough seems to me to have studied carefully for the express purpose of disobeying them point by point, and in the most direct manner. You murmur: but only look at the orders of the Directors and at the proclamation of the Governor General. The orders are, distinctly and positively, that the British authorities in India shall have nothing to do with the temples ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he, returning, chide,— "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... amidst the vague general radiance. The air was sweet and clear; the white steam blown from the engines on Hungerford Bridge showed that the wind was westerly. Two lovers walked below, in the Embankment gardens, probably listening but little to the murmur of the great city around them. Surely the spring had come again, and youth and love and hope! The solitary occupant of this chamber that overlooked the gardens and the shining river did not stay to ask why his heart ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... vastness and unmeasured strength. This man rules, and is not ruled. The stern and fiery energies of a most passionate soul lie silent in the centre of his being; a trembling sensibility has been inured to stand, without flinching or murmur, the sharpest trials. Nothing outward, nothing inward, shall agitate or control him. The brightest and most capricious fancy, the most piercing and inquisitive intellect, the wildest and deepest imagination; the highest thrills of joy, the bitterest ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... into his study after dinner the room was dark. I heard him murmur something about the servants and fumble for the switch. Before he found it, the robot closed the door and turned on the lights. I sat behind his desk, all his personal papers before me—weighted down with a pistol—and as fierce ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... Bibber, "it's the dog!" He was out of the room in a moment and down into the hall. He heard the murmur of voices in the drawing-room, and the sympathetic tones of the women who were pitying the men. Van Bibber pulled on his overshoes and a great-coat that covered him from his ears to his ankles, and dashed out into the snow. The dog had just enough spirit left to try and dodge him, ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... birdes shrouded in chearefull shade Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet: The angelical soft trembling voices made To th' instruments divine respondence meet. The silver sounding instruments did meet With the base murmur of the water's fall; The water's fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; The gentle warbling wind ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... our pilgrim path there sprang A pleasant little rill, Whose murmur, ever in our ear, Was ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... the perfume of flowers was heavy in the air. From the woods came a great song of birds; in the water below her a fish jumped at intervals—a cool sound on a hot day. She had this part of the terrace to herself for a little while, but from another part, round an angle of the house, came the murmur of voices and sometimes laughter, now a man's, now a woman's. It had all been just the same before, many, many times, yet now the girl was conscious of a sound of discord in it. Nothing had really changed. The Abbey was full of guests, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... secluded cove of Leymouth. With one sheer fall of a hundred fathoms the stern cliff meets the baffled sea—or met it then, but now the level of the tide is lowering. Air and sea were still and quiet; the murmur of the multitudinous wavelets could not climb the cliff; but loops and curves of snowy braiding on the dark gray water showed the set of tide and shift of current in and ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... fall, the grass, the flowers, and the trees revived, the springs were filled, and the sweet murmur of running water was again heard in the brooks and rivers. The wild folk drank and ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... house opposite, drawing on a pair of gloves. The men standing in line looked curiously at the limousine. They could see that two of the tires were flat and that the glass was broken. There were scratches on the drab paint and in the door three long jagged holes that obliterated the number. A little murmur went down the line of men. The door opened with difficulty, and a major in a light buff-colored coat stumbled out. One arm, wrapped in bloody bandages, was held in a sling made of a handkerchief. His face ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the fair Corinna comes! 'mid thunders of acclaim, That rush unto the lips of all at the murmur of her name. Scatter sweet roses all around; fling perfumes to the air; And strew her path with all that breathes ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... was much to impress a mind like his, in the scene before him: the unearthly moonlight, the few glimmering stars, the sky—whose southern clearness and brightness were, to his unaccustomed eye, doubly wonderful—the constant though subdued sounds in the camp, the murmur of the river, and, far away in the dark expanse of night, the sparkling of a multitude of lights, which marked the encampment of the enemy. There was a strange calm awe upon his spirit. He spoke in a low voice, and Gaston's careless light-hearted ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... There was a murmur of voices in the hall, the room door was thrown open, and Isabel Irish came in breathlessly. She threw a quick glance round the circle of faces as ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... were there, very few, all persons of distinction, laden with years and decorations, talking on the arm of a divan or leaning over the back of a chair with the condescending air we assume in conversing with children. But amid the placid murmur of the private conversations, one voice rang out, loud and discordant, the voice of the Nabob, who was threading his way through that social conservatory with the self-assurance due to his immense fortune and ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the bottle in one hand, the other thrust itself mechanically into her hair. No one was about, and the house was profoundly still, save for the voices coming up from the room below in a subdued and not unpleasant murmur, with now and then the child's shrill babble breaking in through the deeper tones like occasional notes in a sonata. Out of doors were all the pleasant sights and sounds of the peaceful evening coming on after the labors of the busy day. The birds were calling to each other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... be regarded as an epithalamium, the celebration of the mystery and bliss of the wedding night, the hoao ana of a high chief and his high-born kapu sister. The murmur of the breeze, the fury of the winds, the heat of the sun, the sacrificial ovens, all are symbols that set forth the emotions, experiences, and mysteries ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... from earth, is heard by God in heaven? Abel, therefore, who when alive was patient under injuries and gentle and placid of spirit, now, when dead and buried in the earth, can not brook the wrong inflicted. He who before dared not murmur against his brother, now fairly shrieks, and so completely enlists God in his cause that he descends from heaven, to charge the murderer with his crime. Moses, accordingly, here uses the more pregnant term. He does ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... anxiety, with barred windows and bolted doors, did the banditti pass the day immediately succeeding Matteo's murder; every murmur in the street appeared to them a cause of apprehension; every footstep which approached their doors made them tremble till it ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... for love, she was meant for him), and that his arriving at the point at which he wished to arrive was only a question of time. This happy consciousness made him extraordinarily tender to her; he couldn't put enough reassurance into his smile, his low murmur, as he said: "Only give me ten minutes; don't receive me by turning me away. It's my holiday—my poor little holiday; ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... acts: but the tender age, and doubtful faith, of the son of Justina, appeared to require the prudent care of an orthodox guardian; and his specious ambition might have excluded the unfortunate youth, without a struggle, and almost without a murmur, from the administration, and even from the inheritance, of the empire. If Theodosius had consulted the rigid maxims of interest and policy, his conduct would have been justified by his friends; but the generosity of his behavior ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... be confiscated; with the proviso that should he be able to find Banzayemon, and recover the lost Muramasa blade, he should be restored to his former position. Sanza, who from the first had made up his mind that his punishment would be severe, accepted the decree without a murmur; and, having committed his wife and son to the care of his relations, prepared to leave the country as a Ronin ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... porter unlocked with the solemn slowness of age. Indeed, a strange, mysterious awe of the centuries that had passed away since this chateau was built, came over me as I waited for the turning of the ponderous keys in the ancient locks. I could almost have fancied that I heard a mighty rushing murmur (like the ceaseless sound of a distant sea, ebbing and flowing for ever and for ever), coming forth from the great vacant galleries that opened out on each side of the broad staircase, and were to be dimly perceived in the darkness ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... land did not appear. Each evening the sun as it went down dipped behind an interminable horizon of water. The crews who had several times been the victims of an optical illusion, now began to murmur against Columbus, "the Genoese, the foreigner," who had enticed them so far away from their country. Some symptoms of mutiny had already shown themselves on board the vessels, when, on the 10th of October, the sailors openly declared ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... have a better Copy of those inestimable Documents!—Inarticulate notions, fancies, transient aspirations, he might have, in the background of his mind. One day, sitting for a while out of doors, gazing into the Sun, he was heard to murmur, "Perhaps I shall be nearer thee soon:"—and indeed nobody knows what his thoughts were in these final months. There is traceable only a complete superiority to Fear and Hope; in parts, too, are half-glimpses of a great motionless interior lake of Sorrow, sadder than any tears ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sitting on the stairs peering up obliquely at him out of hideous eyes? Was that a sound of whispering and shuffling down there in the dark halls and forsaken landings? Was it something more than the inarticulate murmur ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... they murmur, as the opening strains follow hot upon the soup, and if no contradiction is forthcoming from any better-informed quarter they break forth into subdued humming by way of supplementing the efforts of the musicians. Sometimes the melody starts ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... at the ease with which he learned, and at the quickness of his memory. The perfume of the little flowers of the lime-tree fell through the air upon them like rain; while time seemed to move ever more slowly to the murmur of the bees in it, till it almost stood still on June afternoons. How insignificant, at the moment, seem the influences of the sensible things which are tossed and fall and lie about us, so, or so, in the environment of early childhood. How indelibly, as we afterwards discover, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... plain, rich with the hues of Autumn. Tranquil it was and warm. Men and women, children, and the beasts worked and played and wandered there in peace. Under the blue sky and the white clouds low-hanging, great trees shaded the fields; and from all the land there arose a murmur as from bees clustering on the rose-colored blossoms of tall clover. And, in my dream, I roamed, looking into every face, the faces of prosperity, broad and well favored—of people living in a land of plenty, of people drinking of the joy of life, caring nothing ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... lads!" he would murmur aloud, with just a touch of his parents' accent, and press a button which discharged an ancient brass cannon mounted at the edge of the cliff. Whenever he saw one of his ships in the offing—and he could identify his ships as far as he could see ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... balcony, at the end of a long, narrow room. In front of us, windows rose to the ceiling, and it was evident that the floor of the room was about twenty feet below ground level. Outside, I could see the barbecue still going on, but not a murmur of noise penetrated to us. What seemed to be the judge's bench was against the outside wall, under the tall windows. To the right of it was a railed stand with a chair in it, and in front, arranged in U-shape, were three tables at which a number of men were hastily conferring. There were nine ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... meet hereafter. Adieu; perhaps we may never see each other again in this world. You are away, I wished to hold you fast, and prevented you from going this morning. But He who is wisdom itself ordains events; we must submit to them. Least of all should I murmur. I, on whom so many blessings have been showered,—whose days have been numbered by bounties,—who have had such a husband, such a child, and such a father. O pardon me, my God, if I regret leaving these. I resign myself. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... loath to break the intimacy of the last half hour. In the solitude, the dead silence of the place, there seemed to lurk misfortune and pain. Suddenly from a distance sounded the whirr of an electric car, passing on the avenue behind them. The noise came softened across the open lot—a distant murmur from the big city that was ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... now: a low murmur of questions, rapid orders, the rustle of paper, the quick alarum of telephones. Boys keep bringing telegrams in orange envelopes. Each sub-editor is bent over his little lot of news. One sorts out the speeches from bundles of flimsy. The middle of Lloyd George's ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... he would doubtless take boat with them for a cruise up the East Coast. He would be sufficiently reinvigorated to rough it out with them rigorously to the end. The East Coast route might not entail quite so many hardships. Vine sighed, but he was a man of his word. He went to Zimbabwe without a murmur. He had longed for seventy-five miles of the dusty Umvuma post-cart, but alas, the day was the third of the new month! The railway extension to Victoria had been opened on the first. The organizer rubbed his hands as he told them ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... A subdued murmur (almost, it seemed to me, like suppressed "Vive le rois") announced to me that he was just entering the door, and as I sat by the aisle down which he was coming, and far to the front, by turning ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... among them a little rapturous murmur, and somehow it broke the spell which had rested upon the man outside. He started, shivered slightly and turned away. He went up to the bare coldness of his own room and sat down, forgetting that it was either cold or ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Will they began to whisper and murmur among themselves, and at length one man cried, 'Why don't you ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... He looks like a night porter," said Savile. "Good-bye." He then turned back to murmur. "I say, Aunt William. Thanks most awfully." She ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... not enter into the deep love I bore yon princely boy, nor the feeling that picture brings. Marie, I would cast aside my crown, descend my throne without one regretful murmur, could I but hold him to my heart once more, as I did the night he bade me his glad farewell. It was for ever! Thy husband speaks ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... from her knees. Looking down she saw a stain of blood on her skirt, and she clung to his arm for a moment, swaying as though she would fall. There was a murmur among the people of pity and sympathy. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... half a gale in June—the wind and the sun streaming over every little twig and leaf, the tree throwing out its branches in a kind of ecstasy and bathing them in the passionately boisterous caresses of its two visitants; or he will have heard the deep glad murmur of some huge sycamore with ripening seed clusters when after weeks of drought the steady warm rain brings relief to its thirst; and he will have known that these creatures are but likenesses of himself, intimately and deeply-related to him in their love and hunger longing, and, like ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... royal office, told him of his father's gentleness and mercy to his enemies, and made him promise to be as merciful if he should ever reign, and he soon was made to feel that greatness comes not with titles, but with character, and once in his sleep was heard to murmur: ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... regiment of Stanley—in all seven thousand foot and thirteen hundred horse—Mondragon marched straight across Brabant and Gelderland to the Rhine. At Kaiserworth he reviewed his forces, and announced his intention of immediately crossing the river. There was a murmur of disapprobation among officers and men at what they considered the foolhardy scheme of mad old Mondragon. But the general had not campaigned a generation before, at the age of sixty-nine, in the bottom of the sea, and waded chin-deep for six hours long of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... extended arm. The caution of the chief, and the luck of a little thing, each in turn prevented the ending of the combat at its outset. Half falling onward, the Mexican slipped upon a tuft of the hard gray grass and went down headlong. A murmur arose from the Indians, who thought at first that their leader's blow had proved fatal. A sharp call from Curly seemed to bring the Mexican to his feet at once. The Indian lost the half moment which was ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... night, still and calm, and with a radiance of starlight overhead. There was the busy hum of insect life from the adjacent woods, a deep murmur from the sluggish tide of the great Caribou River which drained the country for miles around. The occasional sigh that floated upon the air spoke of lofty pine crests bending under a light top breeze which refrained from disturbing the lower air. The night left the impression ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... prayer—what then? I dare not think too long of that, for the hearts of men are not like the hearts of women. What will you say when you learn that the Rosa Varona whom you favored with your admiration is not the Rosa of to-day? I hear you murmur, "The girl forgets herself!" But, oh, the standards of yesterday are gone and my reserve is gone, too! I am ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... unworthily? But if there should be one or another who dreads to share all dangers with me, he,"—continued his Majesty, with an interrogative look, and then pausing for answer,—"can have his Discharge this evening, and shall not suffer the least reproach from me."—Modest strong bass murmur; meaning "No, by the Eternal!" if you looked into the eyes and faces of the group. Never will Retzow Junior forget that scene, and how effulgently eloquent the veteran ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... be no miracle," said Raffaelle, hearing him murmur this; "it will be myself, and that which the dear God ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... subtle hands may pluck the strings, Making even Love in music audible, And earth one glory. I am but a shell That moves, not of itself, and moving sings; Leaving a fragrance, faint as wine new-shed, A tremulous murmur from ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... regions That sunder the Marne from the Aisne We advanced to the rear with our legions Long ago and have done it again; Fools murmur of errors committed, But every intelligent man Has accepted the view that we ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... to go away. Then something seemed to occur which his stepdaughter fancied must really be a hallucination of hers. A murmur apparently came from Henchard's lips in which she detected the words, "You refused to see me!" reproachfully addressed to Lucetta. She could not believe that they had been uttered by her stepfather; unless, indeed, they might have been spoken to one of the yellow-gaitered ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... comes into the room. As she grows older and more professional, and the nephews and nieces become more numerous, she will give up hiding her work. People who are intimately connected with the family will show no surprise, and to inquisitive strangers, unless she is very religious, she can murmur something about a creche, so long, of course, as ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... fair wood of live-oak, and a few hundred yards further at last assumes the aspect of a primeval forest. A delicious coolness fills the air; the long, shadowy aisles greet the aching eye with a soothing twilight; the murmur of unseen brooks is heard, and, by a strange irony, the enormous, widely-spaced stacks of wild oats are replaced by a carpet of tiny-leaved mosses and chickweed at the roots of trees, and the minutest clover in more ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... furnish details, her mood being communicative, but Mrs. Baxter led the way into the "living-room"; the hall was vacated, and only the murmur of voices and laughter reached William. What descriptive information Jane may have added was spared his ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... Zoe's senses; but the mere game did not monopolize her attention many seconds. There were other things better worth noting: the great varieties of human type that a single passion had brought together in a small German town. Her ear was regaled with such a polyglot murmur as she had read of in Genesis, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... officers, he alone looked quiet, gentlemanly, and high bred. The theatre was crowded to suffocation; boxes, pit, and galleries. There was no applause as he entered. One solitary voice in the pit said "Viva Santa Anna!" but it seemed checked by a slight movement of disapprobation, scarcely amounting to a murmur. The opera was Belisarius; considered a propos to the occasion, and was really beautifully montee; the dresses new and superb—the decorations handsome. They brought in real horses, and Belisarius entered in a triumphal ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... translated; who had not known and who never could know any death. I cannot account for the sweet calm which I felt through all these weeks. I shed no tears; I did not seem even to sorrow. I accepted all, as Annie herself accepted it, without wonder, without murmur. During the long hours of this last night I lived over every hour of her precious, beautiful life, as I had known and shared it, until the whole seemed to me one fragrant and perfect flower, ready to be ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads, harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulance did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... were never invited to these assemblies, but there was a murmur of anticipation in the whole school when the invitations went round. Who were to be the lucky ones? Who was to go? Who was not to go? As a rule, it was so managed by the Specialities that the whole of the upper school was invited once during the term to a delightful evening in one of the special ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... was turning from the door, a voice from the witness-box behind her made her suddenly pale and pause to look again. The Court itself appeared, at that moment, affected, for a murmur ran through it, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... him—prison for the rich thieves!" his thin, piping voice rose above the dull murmur of the crowd. "My confidence was betrayed, your confidence was betrayed—the thief! Why, my father's money was entrusted to his grandfather and his father. It was an honorable house until he took hold of it. I thought my money was as safe as with the ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... defeated the affair will not be without advantage. The Franks will begin to see that, easy as was their first victory, the Egyptians are not a flock of sheep to be maltreated and robbed without even venturing to murmur, and that they cannot afford to scatter their forces all over the country. Moreover, the news that Cairo is in insurrection will spread through the country and excite a feeling of resistance. Many will die, but their blood will not have been ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chenier, and Lemercier, yet they could not be compared with Lagrange, Laplace, Monge, Fourcroy, Berthollet, and Cuvier, whose labours have so prodigiously extended the limits of human knowledge. No one, therefore, could murmur at seeing the class of sciences in the Institute take precedence of its elder sister. Besides, the First Consul was not sorry to show, by this arrangement, the slight estimation in which he held literary men. When he spoke to me respecting them he called them mere manufacturers of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... To the east, vivid against the blue sky, rose a solitary mountain peak, a true purple in color, capped with snow. To the north, a green black shadow was etched against the horizon. Except for the slight rustle of the pepper tree, the vague murmur of the water, the silence ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... to draw her nearer to him and murmur softly that her counsel had aided him to break the power of the terrible goddess, but he grasped the empty air. At the same time the deep voice of his love's father, whose opposition threatened to cloud his new happiness, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gnawed by hunger, and pierced to the bone with cold. They thought his presence unpropitious to their hunting, and the women especially hated him. His demeanor at once astonished and incensed his masters. He brought them fire-wood, like a squaw; he did their bidding without a murmur, and patiently bore their abuse; but when they mocked at his God, and laughed at his devotions, their slave assumed an air and tone of authority, and sternly rebuked them. [ Lalemant, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... had a soothing odor and a neat, restful appearance, and one was more or less forgotten there. More important, it lay directly under the long living-room, and sounds carried easily through the primitive plank floor. Up to now the murmur of the company's voices had been a negligible quantity, a background for thought, merely, but suddenly a ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... sorrow will teach it us: sorrow is teaching it some of us now. We surely are beginning to see, that to suffer patiently for conscience sake, is the most beautiful thing on earth or in heaven: we begin to see that those poor soldiers, dying by inches of cold and weariness, without a murmur, because it was their Duty, were doing a nobler work even than they did when they fought at Alma and Inkermann; and that those ladies who are drudging in the hospitals, far away from home, amid filth and pestilence, are doing, if possible, a nobler work still, a nobler work than if they ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... heads and open to look at her; the horse neighs to say that he is awake again and knows her; the little winds come back and murmur softly at first among the leaves; then they get bolder and kiss her cheek and lift her hair and shake it out to the light, and whisper to her hero and ask him if he saw any gold like that in the dragon's ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... the horizon, where I thought I observed something like a black cloud against the dark sky. Being always on the alert for squalls, I ran to the bow. There could be no doubt it was a squall, and as I listened I thought I heard the murmur of the coming gale. Instantly I began to work might and main at my cumbrous tackle for shortening sail, and in the course of an hour and a half had the most of it reduced—the top-sail yards down on the caps, the top-sails clewed up, the sheets ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... pickets are beginning to catch faint glimpses of those lights, and are opening fire, for vigilant officers are there to interpret every sound and sight, and with the first break of the wintry dawn they grasp the meaning of the murmur that has come for hours from the upper shore. "The Yanks are laying bridges" is the word that goes from mouth to mouth, and long before the day is fairly opened the nearing sounds and the will-o'-the-wisp lights out there in the fog tell the shivering ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... there listless. And presently the talking forms seemed to cease their talking; they grew blurred and dim, running into one another, and all mingling together to form one great shapeless creature that seemed to murmur and gibber over me, some such monster as a man sees in his dreams. I hated to see it, and closed my eyes; its murmurings and gibberings haunted my ears for awhile, making me restless and unhappy; then they died away. Their going made me happy; I sighed in contentment; ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... his watch as if to look at the time, "it is just upon midnight; you know the governor's orders, so you must go." The men, habituated like all Russians to passive obedience, went without a murmur, and Gregory found himself alone with Ivan and the two ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... hemming us in fell back silently, reverently, the sound of their voices sinking into a subdued murmur. It had all occurred so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that even these witnesses could scarcely grasp the truth. They were dazed, leaderless, struggling to restrain themselves. As I stood there, almost ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... is to sum up after lunch. I am highly pained and disappointed that my friend WITHERINGTON should have shown himself a perfidious, and have taken the liberty as he quitted the Court to murmur the plaintive remonstrance of "Et tu, Brute!" into the cavity of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... beautiful figure of alabaster. Then he touched the lips with the golden tip of the wand. In an instant there came a marvellous change. He saw the stone melt, and begin to grow flexible and soft. He saw it become warm, and the cheeks and lips grow red with life. Meantime a murmur had begun to rise all through the palace. It grew louder and louder—it became a shout. The figure of the queen that had been stone ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... triumph, became enamoured of the war, and granted such liberal subsidies for its support, as no other minister would have presumed to ask, as no other nation believed they could afford. Nor did they murmur at seeing great part of their treasure diverted into foreign channels; nor did they seem to bestow a serious thought on the accumulating load of the national debt, which already exceeded the immense ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the book and did as she requested. Soon she fell into a sleep which lasted about one hour, and again I commenced saying my rosary beads. Presently I heard her murmur, and, listening, I heard her whisper, 'My feet! oh, my feet!' I arose from my chair and removed the sheet with the intention of rubbing her limbs; as I did so her feet were disclosed. A thrill of horror passed through my being as I looked at them, for they were all cut, festered and bruised; ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... not be quiet. Philosophy was not a sufficient reply to the warning of the sixth sense, and, leaning far over the edge of the boat, he listened with ears long trained to every sound of the wilderness. He heard only the stray murmur of the wind among the leaves—and was that a ripple in the water? He strained his ears and decided that it was either a ripple or the splash of a fish, and he sank ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... very fond of the little lake which occupied so many of Mr. Wentworth's numerous acres, and of a remarkable pine grove which lay upon the further side of it, planted upon a steep embankment and haunted by the summer breeze. The murmur of the air in the far off tree-tops had a strange distinctness; it was almost articulate. One afternoon the young man came out of his painting-room and passed the open door of Eugenia's little salon. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... speech was in Dick Forrest's tongue, and before Graham could murmur a reply to Paula, Dick was challenging him for data on the subject from the South American tribes among which he had traveled. To look at Dick's face it would have been unguessed that he was aught but a carefree, happy arguer. Nor did Graham, nor did Paula, Dick's dozen years' wife, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... dared no longer instance the Count, her husband. She was heard to murmur that citizen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be glad to vibrate faintly in unison with the music of a more favored neighbor; it would bring a sensation of the possibility of music. The stronger harmony is caught up and carried on forever in endless sound waves, but the slight responsive murmur of the passive strings ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... to break the spell; She murmur'd something in my ear; The words fell vague, I did not hear, And ere I knew, I said farewell; And homeward went, with happy heart And spirit dwelling in a gleam, Rapt to a Paradise apart, With all ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... on him, and now he stood there laughing at them, not the least bit angry with them. What was more, he had called them comrades; so he did not despise them! "Pelle is here!" they said quietly; further and further spread the news, and their tongues dwelt curiously on his name. A murmur ran through the shops. "What the devil—has Pelle come?" they cried, stumbling to their legs. Pelle had leaped onto a great anvil. "Silence!" he cried, in a voice of thunder; "silence!" And there was silence in the great building. The men could ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... near to Dulcissima, and there, before them all, he fell on his knee. And a murmur ran ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... the murmur of their voices as she drank the milk and ate the corn bread. "I wish I had some bread to take with me," she thought. "I'll take my blue cape, and my shoes and white stockings, for I'm sure I ought to wear them on ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... the refreshment-room, to a door which led to an apartment in an adjoining tenement. It was closed, but unfastened. The sound of voices, an occasional buzz, or a slight murmur, came to our ears from within; that of rattling dice and rolling balls was more regular and more intelligible. Kingsley laid his hand upon the latch, and looked round to me. His eye was kindled with a playful sort of malicious light. A smile of pleasant ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... great misfortune, one of the greatest that can be inflicted upon a human being—but she does not murmur. She confides in the love of those around her, and feels as if their eyes were her own. Were I to ask her to walk over burning coals, she would put her hand in mine, to lead her, so entire is her trust, so undoubting ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Cosmo's heart had got a little quieter, and no longer making such a noise in his ears, allowed him to hear better. After a few words seemingly unconnected, though probably with a perfect dependence of their own, she began to murmur something that sounded like verses. Cosmo soon perceived that she was saying the same thing over and over, and at length he had not only made out every word of the few lines, but was able to remember them. This was what he afterwards ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... sounds in the low murmur of memory, are the echoes of certain voices I have heard at rare intervals. I grieve to say it, but our people, I think, have not generally agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that shed water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly padded ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Olga; nor of this appeared An explanation: she was scared, Alarmed by jealous agonies: A hand of ice appeared to seize(62) Her heart: it seemed a darksome pit Beneath her roaring opened wide: "I shall expire," Tattiana cried, "But death from him will be delight. I murmur not! Why mournfulness? He ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... at Mr. Ellsworth's feet the roll of bills. "Sir," said he, "it is the sense of this meeting that the railroad shall not come into Heart's Desire. Is it so?" he asked of the eyes and the darkness; and a deep murmur said that ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... than usual. Half in my dreams I was dimly conscious that something was going on in the room, and gradually became aware that my wife had dressed herself and was slipping on her mantle and her bonnet. My lips were parted to murmur out some sleepy words of surprise or remonstrance at this untimely preparation, when suddenly my half-opened eyes fell upon her face, illuminated by the candle-light, and astonishment held me dumb. She wore an expression such as I had never seen before—such as I should have thought her incapable ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
