"Mirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... o' them, it comesna to a'. Ilk ane maun hae the revelation intil his ain sel', as gien there wasna ane mair. And gien it be sae, hoo are we to win at ony trouth no yet revealed, 'cep we gang oot intil the dark to meet it? Ye maun caw canny, I admit, i' the mirk; but ye maun caw gien ye wad win at onything!" "But suppose you know enough to keep going, and do not care ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... Wardmill Dam," says I, I says; "but if I get oot o't livin', I'll lat the pileece hear o't. A gey Lichtin' Commitee we have, to hae fowk wammlin' aboot i' the mirk like this on their wey to the kirk! There's ower muckle keepin' fowk i' the dark a' roond," says I, I says; "an' there maun be an end till't. It's a ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... is not ruinous, although Great ruins of an unremembered past, With others of a few short years ago More sad, are found within its precincts vast. The street-lamps always burn; but scarce a casement 40 In house or palace front from roof to basement Doth glow or gleam athwart the mirk ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... 'mid mirk and fire, Unfearing din and death, Her eyes upflaming like a pyre, Her fearless ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the window when the nicht was dark and her shadow fell upon it, for she aye cam' oot to meet me when she heard me lilt the sang. And she lilted tae, and we baith sang it thegither till we met, and then we gaed ben thegither and gaed na mair oot till the mirk was by." ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... "I may rue it, but ne'er repent it. I couldna, for the life o' me, keep twa human creatures pleading for shelter, wha kendna whar to gang in a mirk nicht like this. Did ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... "Ye hinna the toon mirk rubbed out your een yet, Hamish, or ye would ken the bonny spaewife. I've been watchin' her this last ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... at the mirk midnight, I cannot sleep in my bed, Now, unless my tale can be told aright, I wot it were best unsaid; It lies, the blood of yon northern knight, On my ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... ditch, loathing the storm; A rocket fizzed and burned with blanching flare, And lit the face of what had been a form Floundering in mirk. He stood before me there; I say that he was Christ; stiff in the glare, And leaning forward from his burdening task, Both arms supporting it; his eyes on mine Stared from the woeful head that seemed a mask Of mortal pain in Hell's ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... the indolent servant's doom. Once more, like the slow toll of a funeral bell, we hear the dread sentence of ejection to the 'mirk midnight' without, where are tears undried and passion unavailing. There is something very awful in the monotonous repetition of that sentence so often in these last discourses of Christ's. The most loving lips that ever spoke, in love, shaped ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Martinmas, when nights are long and mirk, The carline wife's three sons cam hame, and their hats were o' the birk. It neither grew in syke nor dyke, nor yet in ony sheugh, But at the gates o' Paradise that birk ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... of Lyndewode's Provincial Constitutions (a large folio of 366 leaves with a woodcut, the earliest example found in any Oxford book), and the Epistles of Phalaris, with a lengthy colophon in Latin verse. The last book to appear from the press was the Liber Festivalis by John Mirk, a folio of 174 leaves, containing eleven large woodcuts and five smaller ones, apparently meant for an edition of the Golden Legend, as they were cut down to fit the Festial. After the appearance of this book, ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... heard you sing a blythe sang on Saturday at e'en before now. But as for the chaise, Deacon, it hasna been out of the coach-house since Mrs. Bertram died, that's sixteen or seventeen years sin syne. Jock Jabos is away wi' a chaise of mine for them; I wonder he's no come back. It's pit mirk; but there's no an ill turn on the road but twa, and the brigg ower Warroch burn is safe eneugh, if he haud to the right side. But then there's Heavieside Brae, that's just a murder for post-cattle; but Jock kens ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Mysie—"ou, she's sitting some gate aneath the dais in the hall, and I am feared to gae in in the dark for the dogle; and if I didna see the bogle, I could as ill see the hen, for it's pit-mirk, and there's no another light in the house, save that very blessed lamp whilk the Master has in his ain hand. And if I had the hen, she's to pu', and to draw, and to dress; how can I do that, and them sitting by the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... "Oh, mirk, mirk is the midnight hour, And loud the tempest's roar; A waeful wanderer seeks thy tower, Lord Gregory ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... repeated Mungo with contempt. "A man on a horse has aye hunders o' frien's in the gutter, as Annapla says, and it wad need to be somethin' rarer to get into Doom i' the mirk o' nicht. I opened the door to a frien' the ither nicht and he gripped me by the craig and fair choked me afore I could cry ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... of Arabia In my heart, when out of dreams I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn Descry her gliding streams; Hear her strange lutes on the green banks Ring loud with the grief and delight Of the dim-silked dark-haired Musicians In the brooding silence ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... there in hollow dale to hide, But I unto the city turn with glittering weapons girt; Needs must I search all Troy again, and open every hurt, 750 And into every peril past must thrust my head once more. And first I reach the walls again and mirk ways of the door Whereby I wended out erewhile; and my old footsteps' track I find, and mid the dusk of night with close eyes follow back; While on the heart lies weight of fear, and e'en the hush brings dread, Thence to ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... cast on more wood, and pineapples, and sweet it was to Ralph to see her face come clear again from out the mirk of the wood. Then they sat down again together and she said: "We two are seeking the Well at the World's End; now which of us knows more of the way? who is to lead, and who to follow?" Said Ralph: "If thou know no more than I, it is little that ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... accompanied him on a portion of his march, and witnessed his insulting treatment of a Persian envoy, sent by Chosroes to meet him and deprecate his attack. Beyond this point exact information fails us; but we may suspect that this is the expedition commemorated by Mirk-hond, wherein the Great Khan, having invaded the Persian territory in force, made himself master of Shash, Ferghana, Samarkand, Bokhara, Kesh, and Nesf, but, hearing that Hornisdas, son of Chosroes, was advancing against him at the head of a numerous army, suddenly fled, evacuating ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... riding on the tempest, to be shuere, whilk would be what Dauvit was likely ettling at. But, man, they were sair wonders that God showed to the Christ-Anna—wonders, do I ca' them? Judgments, rather: judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons o' the deep. And their souls—to think o' that—their souls, man, maybe no' prepared! The sea—a muckle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bomb proof neared in sight. She had wrought much and suffered more of late, and she knew herself less strong than she had been. When the blue light that hung from a post by the ladder-hole blinked "Home" through the mirk of a night of thin rain and mist-shrouded stars, she knew infinite relief. Her great eyes were as wild and strained as a hunted deer's, and her bosom heaved with her panting breaths. She paused a moment to regain her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... though she came to be as high in God's favour as the blessed Magdalen herself. He was the mate of a Scotch vessel, a grave, steady, strong-faced Highlander. He had come to the Island trading for years, and knew Maggie's story as well as any Islander. But he had seen beyond the mirk of the sin the woman's soul pure as ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... seen except the lady with the candle, viewed by myself, but, being ignorant of the story, I thought she was one of the maids. Perhaps she was, but she went into an empty set of rooms, and did not come out again. Footsteps are apt to approach the doors of these rooms in mirk midnight, the door handle turns, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... the helmsman, with his hands upon the spokes, shifted his eyes alternately between the binnacle and the bows, and gave the wheel a turn now this way and now that, while the captain paced cross-wise between the paddle-boxes, and searched the mirk above and ahead to see whether there was any likelihood that the ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Ravenswood; 'the broad blaze which might have been seen ten miles off—what occasioned that?' 'Hout, awa! it's an auld saying and a true, "Little's the light will be seen far in a mirk night"—a wheen fern and horse litter that I fired in the courtyard, after sending back the loon of a footman.'"—Bride ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... he said, with a heave of his big chest, "I reca' as yestreen the night Maxwell cam aboord. The sun gaed loon a' bluidy, an' belyve the morn rose unco mirk an' dreary, wi' bullers (rollers) frae the west like muckle sowthers (soldiers) wi' white plumes. I tauld the captain 'twas a' the faut o' Maxwell. I ne'er cad bide the blellum. Dour an' din he was, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... bays Thicker the light-ship beacons flash, the lighthouse lanterns blaze. From sweep to sweep, from steep to steep, our shores are starred with light, Burning across the briny floods through the black mirk of night, Forth-gleaming like the eyes of Hope, or like the fires of Home, Upon the eager eyes of men far-straining o'er the foam. Good! But how greatly less than good to fear, to think, to know That inland England's less alert against a whelming ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... the mirk midnight when I was beside you, Who has seen, who has heard, what was said, what was done? 'Twas the night and the light of the stars that espied you, The fall of the ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... original poems by Nick and Archie. They refer to a bit of unhappy advice I gave them, because of which I fell into richly merited disgrace with Mother. Nick has been spending three days or so with Archie, and I suggested that they should explore the White House in the mirk of midnight. They did, in white sheets, and, like little jacks, barefooted. ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... want to. But if Alexander could be so indifferent, he could be determined and ardent. "What's a little mirk and cold? I want to say I've swum in it." He ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... Westphalia, through busy stations with glimpses of sidings full of trucks loaded to the brim, past towns whose very outlines were blurred by the mirk of smoke from a hundred factory chimneys, my thoughts were busy with that swarthy cripple. I had broken away from him with one portion of a highly prized document, yet he had made no attempt to have me arrested at the frontier. Clearly, then, he must still ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... his eyes were used to the mirk of the Pit, and saw beside him the face of a youth, glimmering white as the dead moon at midday, and shining with tears and sweat of agony; and the lad was tearing at the walls, trying to make a way out; but his ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... are now gane, a' wha ventured to save; The new grass is springing on the tap o' their grave: But the sun thro' the mirk blinks blythe in my e'e, 'I'll shine on ye yet in yere ain countrie.' Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be, Hame, hame, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... deer of the forest dark, Whose antlers cut the sky, That vanishes into the mirk And like a dream flits by, And by an arrow slain at last Is but the wind's ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... when they reached the open way, Full free the rein he cast; Oh, never through the mirk midnight Rode man ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... bathes both hands of Sigurd and the hilt of Fafnir's bane, And winds about his war-helm and mingles with his hair, But nought his raiment dusketh or dims his glittering gear; Then it fails and fades and darkens till all seems left behind, And dawn and the blaze is swallowed in mid-mirk stark ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... day, far in the west, has vanish'd frae the scene, And gloamin' spreads her mantle gray owre lake and mountain green; When yet the darklin' shades o' mirk but haflens seem to lower, How dear to love and beauty ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Staupitz, disagreeably conscious of the difficulties of the enterprise, but the hunchback AEsop, who seemed to burn with a passion for slaughter. Lagardere likened him in his mind to some ungainly, obscene bird of prey, as he loomed out of the mirk waving his gaunt arms and shrieking in his rage and hate. "Kill them! kill them!" he screamed, as he rushed across the intervening space, and the bravos, heartened by his frenzy of fight, streamed after him, flinging themselves desperately against the piled-up ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... deeper, Mounsieur Mustardseed! there squats a pestilent sweet notion in that chamber could spellican but set him capering. Prithee your mousemilk hand on this smooth brow, mistress! Your nectar throbbeth like a blacksmith's anvil. Master Moth, draw you these bristling lashes down, they mirk the stars and call yon nothing Quince to mind—a vain, official knave, in and out, to and fro, play or pleasure; and old Sam Snout, the wanton! Lad's days and all—'twas life, Tittany; and I was ever foremost. They'd ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... outline of the ling. Away towards the north, too, the landscape for many miles is limited only by the same horizon of sea, so that we seem to be looking at a section of a very large-scale contour map of England. Below us on the western side runs the Mirk Esk, draining the heights upon which we stand as well as Egton High Moor and Wheeldale Moor. The confluence with the Esk at Grosmont is lost in a haze of smoke and a confusion of roofs and railway lines; and the course of the larger river in the direction of Glaisdale is also ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home |
