"Mirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 and blind." ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... I give unto my fellows 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, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... mirk is the midnight hour, And loud the tempest's roar; A waeful wanderer seeks thy tower, Lord Gregory ope ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... sky. For four days there had not been a breath of air to dissipate the heavy mist, and into this mist the smoke of a million chimneys had rolled, mingled, and settled down in the streets in one horrible yellowish-black mirk. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... at the mirk and midnight hour The fairy folk will ride, And they that wad their true-love win, At ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... All in 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 moon, and the ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... Hugh, 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 lady's hand ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... window—fearing one moment, hoping the next, that her message had not reached him in time, that he would not come—till another night, though she was aware that it must be now or never.... And at last, down below, a mere spark of light moved in the mirk. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... stays on the roof," said Stella. "It doesn't always. I spent a gruesome night in an old country farmhouse last summer. The roof leaked and the rain came pattering down on my bed. There was no poetry in THAT. I had to get up in the 'mirk midnight' and chivy round to pull the bedstead out of the drip—and it was one of those solid, old-fashioned beds that weigh a ton—more or less. And then that drip-drop, drip-drop kept up all night until my nerves just went to pieces. You've no ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with the first cock of the morning, yet must take the sacrament. Before it was grey in the east he did so, fully armed in mail, with his red surcoat of leopards upon him, his sword girt, his spurs strapped on. Outside the chapel in the weeping mirk a squire held his shield, another his helm, a groom walked his horse. Milo the Abbot was celebrant, a snuffling boy served; the Count knelt before the housel-cloth haloed by the light of two thin candles. Hardly had the priest begun his introibo when Jehane Saint-Pol, who had been ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... not 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 ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... consisting of one hundred lines in which pious exhortation is mixed with instruction in etiquette, such as lads and even men unaccustomed to polite society and correct deportment would need. These lines were in great part extracted from Instructions for Parish Priests, by Mirk, a manual in use at the time. The whole poem, if so it may be called, is imbued with the spirit of freedom, of gladness, of social good will; so much so, that both Gould and Albert Pike think it points to the existence ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... saw her ride 'mid mirk and fire, Unfearing din and death, Her eyes upflaming like a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sabbath-train whirls by; But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... mirk nights of winter were come, Sigmund and his foster-son went their way to the home of Siggeir and sought to lurk therein. Then Sinfiotli led the way to a storehouse where lay great wine-casks, and whence they could see the lighted feast-hall, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... and aye draw, drawing further ben. Then, I shame to say it, a sair dwawm cam ower me, I gae a bit chokit cry, and I kenned nae mair till I cam to mysel, a' the candles were out, and the chamber was mirk and lown. I heard the skirl o' a passing train, and I crap to the bed, and the skirl kind o' reminded me o' living folk, and I felt a' ower the bed wi' my hands. There was nae corp. Ye ken that the Enemy has power, when a corp lies in a room, and the door is hafflins ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Through the mirk loomed up the outlines of a canvas collapsible boat crowded with men. At two lengths from the shore the rowers laid on their oars. One of the men gave vent to a low whistle resembling the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... acuteness through the speed of her own flight. They were mingled steps—a feeble hurrying footfall, and an iron tread. She threaded a group of bystanders, and, weak and helpless as she was, prepared to dive into a mirk close. Not that black opening, Nelly Carnegie, it is doomed to bear for generations a foul stain—the scene of a mystery no Scottish law-court could clear—the Begbie murder. But it was no seafaring man, with Cain's red right hand, that rushed after trembling, fainting Nelly Carnegie. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... 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 air cast. ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... loneliness, the year was kind to her, feeding her mother love with small social triumphs. For one, Lola was chosen to sit with three other tots, the most beautiful of Tewana's children, at the feet of the Virgin in the Theophany of the "Black Christ" at the eastern fiesta. From morning to mirk midnight, it was a hard vigil. By day the vaulted church reeked incense; by night a thousand candles guttered under the dark arches, sorely afflicting small, weary eyelids; yet Lola sat it out like a small thoroughbred, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... colour, settles into the lower channels of the New York streets; while the upper heights of the sky-scrapers, clear of the roofs, are still lit on the sunward side with a mellow glow, curiously serene. To the man in the mirk of the street, they seem to exude this light from the great spaces of brick. At this time the cars, always polyglot, are filled with shop-hands and workers, and no English at all is heard. One is surrounded with Yiddish, Italian, and Greek, broken by Polish, or Russian, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... she, 'my ain bairn, when ye hae won the croun, use it na' at all, though a' the fiends fra' hell tempted ye, but carry it to the kirkyard at mirk midnight; an' when ye hae cannily lichted a bit bleeze, burn the king's croun, an' say wha' I shall tell ye. "I gie back more than I hae taken, an' I rest on Christ's smercy;" an' then shall ye be safe an' happy if ye fail na' to be constant ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... Carlisle; a branch of it keeps along the Ayrshire coast to Ardrossan and Ayr. In a little while we are skimming the surface of a bleak, black moor; it is a dead level, and not in the least interesting: but, after a plunge into the mirk darkness of a long tunnel, we emerge into daylight again; and there, sure enough, are the bright waters of the Clyde. We are on its south side; it has spread out to the breadth of perhaps a couple of miles. That rocky height on its north shore is Dumbarton Castle; that great ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... fell about the 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 ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the mirk midnight, When the dew fell cold and still, When the aspin grey forgot to play, And the mist ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... comes forth the next good shield, With a sun dispelling the mirk; And that by Asbiorn Milde is borne; He sets the knights' backs at ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... my Mary! The simmer-skies are blue; The dawnin' brings the dazzle, An' the gloamin' brings the dew,— The mirk o' nicht the glory O' the moon, an' kindles, too, The stars that shift aboon the lift.— But nae ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... old carpets and curtains which spit dust at you if you touch them. (Is there not some fabulous animal which does the same, thereby to escape in the mirk it has itself created?) Most of the furniture has been removed, but here and there bulky pieces remain, an antique sideboard, maybe too large to be taken away; like Robinson Crusoe's boat, too heavy to be launched. In each room ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks |
