"Mirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the greater and better he thought them. This little incident lays bare the limits of both these great men. Where the one saw, the other was blind. To the one there was the misery and the universal mirk; to the other, the pure white beam was scarcely broken. Carlyle believed in the good, beyond all doubt: he fought his great battle in its strength and won, but "he was sorely wounded." Emerson was Sir Galahad, blind to all but the Holy Grail, his armour spotless-white, his virtue cloistered and ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... the long 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 ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... "Ye hinna the toon mirk rubbed out your een yet, Hamish, or ye would ken the bonny spaewife. I've been watchin' ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... 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 ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... 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 ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... 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. Send ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... 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 is a chandelier for gas, resplendent as though ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... such a stupid,' said Betty stoutly; and they sat together silent in the twilight, missing the little figure that always squeezed up between them during that idle half-hour—''twixt the gloaming and the mirk.' At last Angel stood up and ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... the departure of the family for Italy in 1858. But there must have been in him an ancestral power of resistance still effective after more than two centuries of transplantation; he grew ruddy and robust while facing the mist and mirk, and inhaling the smoky moisture that did service for air. Nor was his health impaired by the long hours in the daily consulate—a grimy little room barely five paces from end to end, with its dusty windows so hemmed in ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... he saw within that murderous den, The warrior stout, within the prison mirk, Singing the praise of God, and worshiping The angels' King. Alone he sat in grief In that drear dwelling. On this earth once more His brother dear he saw—a holy saint Beheld a holy saint—and hope grew strong. 1010 Up rose he quick ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... in a corner of the taproom settle, puffing at an empty pipe and staring at vacancy. "Drunk as an owl" described his condition to a nicety; for at a certain stage in his drinking all the world became mirk midnight to him, and he would grope his way home through the traffic at high noon in profound, pathetic belief that darkness and slumber wrapped the streets; on which occasions the dialogue between him and the barber's parrot ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... them, and the mirk of night doth help me to my will And seconds me, but the white of dawn is hostile to ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... 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
... original that would need translating, although they are words still used by every one who speaks Scots to this day. In one page of twenty-seven lines taken at random we find sixteen such words. They are, micht, nicht, lickt, weel, gane, ane, nane, stane, rowit, mirk, nocht, brocht, mair, sperit at, sair, hert. For those who are Scots it is interesting to know how little the language of the people has changed in five ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... not greatly 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
... bright did glow, Though sleepin' was the sun; But mornin's light did sadly show What ragin' flames had done! Oh, mirk, mirk was the misty cloud That hung o'er thy wild wood! Thou wert like beauty in a ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... the day o' jeedgment. An' there I steid and luikit, till the licht itsel' deid oot, an' naething was left but a gray sky an' a feow starns intil't. An' the cloods gethered, an' the lift grew black an' mirk; an' the haill countryside vainished, till I kent no more aboot it than what my twa feet could answer for. An' I daurna muv for the fear o' the pits o' water an' the walleen (well-eyes—quagmire-springs) on ilka han'. The lee-lang nicht I stood, or lay, or kneeled upo' my k-nees, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... 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, earning thereby the priest's kindly pat ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various |
