"Murmurous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very warm and very still, and upon the quietude stole a sound—softer, yet more insistent than the whisper of wind among leaves,—a soothing, murmurous sound that seemed to make the pervading ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... filled the warm air, and what was garish below, here, behind the balustrade, became filtered and strained to delicate streaks and bars of light which crossed and recrossed their cloth, their hands, their faces—what was noisy below was here no more than a soft insect bustle, a murmurous background to their talk. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... under 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 ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... fussing with my trousseau, gowns, stockings, slippers, hovering over them with Paigie and Marye in murmurous and intimate rapture. They lead me about to shops and in busy thoroughfares; and I see and understand, and I hear my own voice as at an infinite distance, and I am happy in the same indefinite way. But, try ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... stared anxiously up the pathway, my candle caught a gleam, far up the passage. At the same moment, I became conscious of a murmurous roar, that grew louder, and filled the whole cavern with deafening sound. From the Pit, came a deep, hollow echo, like the sob of a giant. Then, I had sprung to one side, on to the narrow ledge that ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... 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 said ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... be successful. One other idea struck him forcibly by reason of its strangeness: namely, that the works was proceeding exactly as usual, raw material always coming in, finished goods always going out, the various shops hot and murmurous with toil, money tinkling in the petty cash-box, the very engine beneath his floor beating its customary monotonous stroke; and his comfortable home was proceeding exactly as usual, the man hissing about the stable yard, the servants ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... they breathe, these masks, to each Sir or Madam Who lingers there, and their lively speech Affords an interpreter much to teach, As their murmurous accents seem to come Thence hitheraround in a radiant hum, All ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... two later that the Richlings, one afternoon, having been out for a sunset walk, were just reaching Mrs. Riley's door-step again, when they were aware of a young man approaching from the opposite direction with the intention of accosting them. They brought their conversation to a murmurous close. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... first with its grotesqueness; but now the poor little phantom was dead, I was conscious that there had been something pathetic in it all along. Shortly after midnight the wind sunk down, coming and going fainter and fainter, floating around the eaves of the tavern with an undulating, murmurous sound, as if it were turning itself into soft wings to bear away the spirit of ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... turned about, flickered into the shadow, stood for a moment retrospective at the door, and then closed it on us; and once more we were in that murmurous mystery of darkness ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the night, murmurous with little rivulets of snow-water, the gurgling of full troughing, and the patter of rain on the iron roof of the house and the miniature roofs of the beehives, Hazel, waking from uneasy slumber, heard those ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... 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, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... speaking in her low, thrilling voice, "I have loved you—from the—very beginning, I think!" And, with a soft, murmurous sigh, she gave herself ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... open doorway of the ranch came the faint clink of glasses and the murmurous flow of voices. Presently the boom of the veterans' jovial laugh swelled the "concourse of sweet sounds," ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... and hark! not sound, but sensation—the great rapturous stir of the air; a drowsy thunder in the roof of nave and choir; the grim saints stirred and rattled ill their leaded casements, while the melodious roar died away as softly as it had begun, sinking to silence with many a murmurous pulsation, many a ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a rippling blue river that shone like glass where the willows dipped and trailed, and a girl who sang a murmurous little song to herself as she slid down the bank into ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... in this light," he whispered after a moment. There were silences as murmurous as sound. There were pauses that seemed about to shatter and were only to be snatched back to oblivion by the tightening of his arms about her and the sense that she was resting there as a caught, gossamer feather, drifted ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... night! O day and night! Love sits between us. Far out the rising tide comas sweeping o'er the sand. The murmurous pine trees lend their purple shade to screen us, And breathe their fragrant sighs above the quiet land. And, like a sigh, the sunset blaze is over, The folding grey has veiled its colours bright; While swift from view fade out the gulls that hover, As round us sinks at last, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... 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 ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... moodily, with a visible aspect of soreness. A murmurous sound was thick about his head, wherefore it is to be surmised that he communed with his familiar, and one vehement, oft-repeated phrase beat like a tocsin of revolt ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... of acute anticipation. Yet he would scarcely acknowledge even to himself the possibility of such an appearance as that affirmed by Sir Graham. They drew near to the grave of little Jack, round which the chill winds of night blew gently and the dull voices of the waves sang hushed and murmurous nocturnes. Uniacke was taken by an almost insurmountable inclination to pause, even to turn back. Their progress to this grave seemed attended by some hidden and ghastly danger. He laid his hand upon the painter's arm, as if to withhold ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... 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
... raging unknown left the lobby quiet; Canby had gone near to the inner doors. Listening fearfully, he heard through these a murmurous baritone cadencing: Talbot Potter declaiming the inwardness of "Roderick Hanscom"; and then—oh, bells of Elfland faintly ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... to fill the air, yet not with an obtrusive clangor. The sound was of a murmurous character, soft, attractive, persuasive, friendly. The sculptor fancied that such might have been the original voice and utterance of the natural man, before the sophistication of the human intellect formed what we now call language. In ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tremulous mist where morning wakes Illimitable shadows from their dark abodes, Or in this woodland glade tumultuous grown With all the murmurous language of the trees, No blither presence fills the vocal space. The wandering rivulets dancing through the grass, The gambols, low or loud, of insect-life, The cheerful call of cattle in the vales, Sweet natural sounds of the contented hours,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... ungrammatical young men of any American city, so nearly transcend provincialism as in an enthusiasm over their favorite minor cynic, Elbert Hubbard or John Kendrick Bangs, or, in Walter Babson's case, Mr. Fitzgerald's variations on Omar. Una had read Omar as a pretty poem about roses and murmurous courts, but read him she had; and such was Walter's delight in that fact that he immediately endowed her with his own ability to enjoy cynicism. He jabbed at the menu with a fork and glowed and shouted, "Say, isn't it great, that quatrain about 'Take ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of the 7th a strange, murmurous clangor arose from the British camp, and was borne on the moist air to the lines of their slumbering foes. The blows of pickaxe and spade as the ground was thrown up into batteries by gangs of workmen, the rumble of the artillery as it was placed in position, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... not tell what change has come to you, Since when, amid the pine-trees' murmurous stir, You spoke to me of love most deep and true: I only know you ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 with dusk ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... steady humming filled the air; a murmurous, musical sound that calmed every sense. It was like the turning of a great wheel or the ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... 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 Parley ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... The very space which tonight was still Isabel's room would be cut into new shapes by new walls and floors and ceilings; yet the room would always live, for it could not die out of George's memory. It would live as long as he did, and it would always be murmurous with ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... be able to do the thing naturally? Then there was the square hall—positively a room! That alone impelled him to a new life. When he thought of it all, the reception-rooms, the scientific kitchen, the vast scullery, the four large bedrooms, the bathroom, the three attics, the cistern-room murmurous with water, and the water tirelessly, inexhaustibly coursing up and down behind walls—he ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... 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 ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... swallow swooped so near that his darting shadow fell across her book; while all about her sounded the pleasant hum of a summer's day—the soft susurration of the pleasant hum of a thousand insect voices blending into an indefinite, murmurous vibration ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... their "vacation" together and a house with a little garden where she can sew and he can putter around,—to Ted, Elinor Piper, the profile pure as if it were painted on water, passing like water flowing from the earth in springs, in its haughty temperance, its retired beauty, its murmurous quiet—other faces, some trembling as if touched with light flames, some calm, some merely grotesque with longing or too much pleasure—all these pass. A great nearness, fiercer and more slumbrous than any nearness of body takes their place. It wraps the two closer and closer, ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... 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 ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... in drowsy trance The dim horizon bounds, Where all the air is resonant With sleepy summer sounds,— The life that sings among the flowers, The lisping of the breeze, The hot cicada's sultry cry, The murmurous dream of bees. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and mother, too, exchanged glances of dismay and chagrin. The throng of friends pressing forward in noisy salutation was silenced as if a great hand were clapped over every murmurous mouth. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... sing of nobler themes Than the weak griefs which haunt men's coward souls. The torrent of their lusty music rolls Not through dark valleys of distempered dreams, But murmurous pastures lit by sunny streams; Or, rushing from some mountain height of Thought, Swells to strange music, that our minds have sought Vainly to gather from the doubtful gleams Of our more gross perceptions. Oh, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;{6} Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... scarce heard through sleep, Murmurous as the August bees That fill the forest hollows deep ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... 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 with clusters of pigeon berries. Pigeon berries are not to be eaten. They ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... troubled the atmosphere between them. In wild, savage gusts, she heard the military bands playing the infamous Dequelo, whose notes of blood and fire commingled, shrieked in every ear—"NO QUARTER! NO QUARTER!" A prolonged shout, the booming of cannon, an awful murmurous tumult, a sense of horror, of crash and conflict, answered the merciless, frenzied notes, and drowned them in the shrieks and curses they ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... shaggy brows with clustering clouds As if with wreaths of laurel! ye that count Your years by thousands, and your bosoms robe With all the pageantry of Autumn's gold, And lull your sleep of ages with the wild And murmurous drone of woodland waterfalls, And multitudinous ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... distilled. But the necessity of 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
... 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 ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... and his mother entered, a thrill seemed to pass through the whole congregation. Nobody had thought they would come. Mrs. Gordon, gliding with even pace, softly murmurous in her Sunday silk, followed her son, who walked with brave front, although he was undeniably pale, up the aisle to their pew. He stood about to let his mother enter, meeting the eyes of the people as he did so; then sat down himself, and a long glance and a long nudge ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... noting their rich colors and soft, yet firm, texture, a murmurous rustle on the palm-thatched roof announced the coming of the rain. It was unthinkable to my host that a stranger should leave his house at nightfall, and in a downpour that might become a deluge before morning. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... chair, the other tremulously pressed to her cheek, convinced that her father had stooped over her and shouted the sentence in her ear. For it was his voice, and the house rang with the words; all the rooms, halls, and even the walls, seemed still murmurous with the sudden sound, like the tingling of a bell after it had been struck. And yet—everything ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... where there should have been the gold anthers of the flower lay the lovely Queen, wrapped in a mantle of canary-birds' down, and nested on one arm slept the Child of the Kingdom, Maya. Presently a cloud of honey-bees swept through the wide windows, and settling upon the ceiling began a murmurous song, when, one by one, the flower-fairies entered, and flitting to their tripods, each garlanded with her own blossom, awaited the coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... out. Very gently he entered the place of the soulless one. I heard a low, murmurous sound, with a deal of contentment in it. After a few moments they came out. He asked me again to carry the lamp. I went up before them. I couldn't go after; I was afraid of words, or I knew not what, coming ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... 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 manner of ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... were all seated, as usual, in the open-air, under a lime-tree on the lawn. The sun was beginning to set, and the rain of golden sunlight fell over them through the green ambrosial foliage of the tree, whose pale blossoms were still murmurous with bees. Eric was leaning back in an easy chair, with Wildney sitting on the grass beside his feet, while Montagu, resting on one of the mossy roots, read to them the Midsummer Night's Dream, and the ladies ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar |
