"Murmurous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and 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 it ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 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 still served as in the days when they had followed North that kindly Yankee ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... 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
... clearest prettiest court, for his own dwelling, which thus became 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 ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... motionless and soundless, save for the faint rustle where it impinged upon the cliff in a narrow line of white. No outward pull or inward swell of the sea's breast was visible; it was as though that fine edge of murmurous whiteness were always made of the same particles of water, hissing perpetually ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... evening—orange and rosy lights reflected on the glassy river, willows stirred with a murmurous movement by faintest zephyrs—a wind no louder than a sigh. Brian proposed that they should go on the river; his boat was there ready, it was only to step into the light skiff, and drift ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... 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 ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... 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 them, though ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... 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 own By its own labor, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... in the late afternoon. Great tranquillities were all about them in land and sea and sky. Silvery gulls were soaring over them. The horizons were laced with long trails of frail, pinkish clouds. The hushed air was threaded with a murmurous refrain of minstrel winds and waves. Pale asters were blowing in the sere and misty meadows between ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which Jacob Crayford had built to "knock out" the Metropolitan Opera House filled slowly. Those dark and receding galleries, which had drawn the eyes of Charmian, were already crowded, alive with white moving faces, murmurous with voices. In the corridors and the lobbies many men were standing and talking. Smartly dressed women began to show themselves in the curving ranges of boxes. Musical critics and newspaper men gathered in knots and discussed the musical ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... 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. ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... wound through a forest of fir, where a wood wind wove its murmurous spell and a wood brook dimpled pellucidly among the shadows—the dear, companionable, elfin shadows—that lurked under the low growing boughs. Along the edges of that winding path grew banks of velvet green moss, starred ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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, ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... for some 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, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... 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 still ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... and the pageants of the streets by quaint corners, rich with 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 ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... 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
... all directions, with De Launay beneath, missing most of the destruction. The stair well was dark and obscure, but at the bottom was a narrow space where the battle waged wildly. De Launay managed to get to his hands and knees, but over him surged and swept a murmurous, sweating, reeking crowd who struck and battered each ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... But hark to the sunny doves That make my roof the arena of their loves, That gyre about the gable all day long And fill the chimneys with their murmurous song: Our house, they say; and mine, the cat declares And spreads his golden fleece upon the chairs; And mine the dog, and rises stiff with wrath If any alien foot profane the path. So too the buck that trimmed my terraces, Our whilome gardener, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Poets 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... being risen, the 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 Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... beauty stole upon him like the breath of its gardens, as it rose delicately from its sea station, murmurous like a shell with the whisper of joyous adventure. It was, as he told himself, a part of the sense of renewal which the girl had afforded him, that he was able to accept its incomparable charm as the evidence of the continuity of the world ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... sampling the cordial frequently during the process of manufacturing it leads the reverend father eventually to become an habitual drunkard. And toward the end of the story an ironic contrast is drawn between the solemn monastery, murmurous with chants and prayers, and Father Gaucher in his distillery hilariously singing a ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... Geranium cheek to thy yet whiter breast? Ah, doubtless sweet; to feel him draw the stream That fills with strength his lily limbs! And laughs Thine own heart with his deeply dimpled laughter, Answering straight thy dainty finger's touch? And understandeth he that murmurous moan, Wherewith thou ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... 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,— All seem less jubilant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... escape!" he muttered; and then, after a calm feeling of thankfulness had pervaded him for a time, he lay there enjoying the soft salt breeze that blew gently upon his cheeks, and listening with delight to the murmurous plash of the waves. ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... 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 this wild, wayward, glowing, and glorious ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... heard only 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 had ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... 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 lung-gymnastics ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... chairs, a table, books, and tangled work. Somehow, he rather disliked asking for Molly to prolong her visit; so he determined to swallow his bitter first, and then take the pleasure of the delicious day, the sweet repose, the murmurous, scented air. Molly stood by him, her hand on his shoulder. He sate opposite ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of perfect 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 delight. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... something better than a task; and since, though I have 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... 128, measure 1) a delectable episode. Over a murmurous accompanying figure given out by violas, 'cellos, harp, and horn, a clarinet sings a variant of the Melisande theme. The harmonic changes are kaleidoscopic, the orchestral color of prismatic variety. The lovely rhapsody ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... vernal arches, where a murmurous rustle seemed to whisper, "Stay!" along shadowless sweeps, where the blue turned to gold and dazzled with its unsteady shimmer; passed islands so full of birds they seemed green cages floating in the sun, or doubled capes that opened long vistas ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... from pipe, or reed, or string, Made such dulcet ravishing. 'Twas like no earthly 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
... 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 silence flow. ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... my arrival, amid the omnipresent murmurous palaver of conversation, there fell an unusual noise. The unusual is always formidable in jail. The noise was nothing in itself, and would have passed unheeded in a hotel dining-room. But over us, crowded together there, spread an instant hush. All knew that men had been stabbed, frenzied ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... was a tranquil time, An evening half divine, When the low breeze like murmurous rhyme Sighed through the ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... though the sea-shell cheats the ear, And from my blood, free-coursing near, Unspheres the far and murmurous phantom Of breaking ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... when tempestuous wind Rolled the rank herbage into billows vast, And rushing tides, which never found a shore. And tender clouds, and veils of morning mist Cast flying shadows, chased by flying light, Into interminable wildernesses, Flushed with fresh blooms, deep perfumed by the rose, And murmurous with flower-fed bird and bee. The deep-grooved bison-paths like furrows lay, Turned by the cloven hoofs of thundering herds Primeval, and still travelled as of yore. And gloomy valleys opened at our feet— Shagged ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... glade at a little distance: in recurrent pauses in the talk, the sound of their grazing on the scanty grass came to the ear; all else was silence save the tinkling of a mountain rill,—a keen detached appoggiatura rising occasionally above the monody of its murmurous flow,—and the melancholy chiming of some lingering cicada, the latest spared ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... rode together into the murmurous peace of the forest. Io leaned in her saddle as they drew near the cabin, to lay a hand on her ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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. He accepted it; not very graciously, ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... 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 ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... is 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 ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... the full sun emerging from the deep, Climbs with red eye, 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 ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... she had nothing to do we would wander along the 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 of ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... whisper, a sigh faintly breathed, but at the sound she had crossed the wide chamber on feet swift and noiseless, had sunk upon her knees beside the low bed to lean above him all murmurous love and sighing tenderness, while she stole a timid hand to touch the hair that curled upon his pallid brow; then, for all his helplessness, she flushed ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... 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 ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... a party of his friends filled the omnibus boxes, those tribunes at the side of the stage whence success or failure was pronounced. Things had been done with Lumley's consummate art; the packed house was murmurous with excitement. She was a raving beauty, said report—and then, those intoxicating Spanish dances! Taglioni, Cerito, Fanny Elssler, all ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... awake that night, and throughout Christendom a sombre murmur hung in the keen air over the countryside 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 pray. And overhead, growing larger and brighter, as the earth rolled on its way and the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... woe, Feels music's soul through every fibre sent, Whispers the ravished strings More than he knew or meant; Old summers in its memory glow; The secrets of the wind it sings; It hears the April-loosened springs; And mixes with its mood All it dreamed when it stood In the murmurous pine-wood Long ago! ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... 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 ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce |
