Murmur

“ The river murmured solemnly along the shore. All my senses were overwhelmed in the madness of that hour. The moon seemed enlarged to the dimensions of a sky; the murmur of the river sounded like a cataract, and in the vast murmur I heard voices which seemed then like the voices of the dead. But the lustre of that exaggerated glow, and the booming concord of fancied spirit-voices were all contemned as trifles. I cared for nothing either natural or supernatural. Only one thought was present—the place where she was laid. ”

“ No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously for ever. ”

“ A low murmur began; constantly it increased in volume and in eagerness; for it was a chant of triumph and greeting to the orb of day which they worshipped as the visible sign that their god smiled upon them. ”

“ Yet the mountain has the unrivalled advantage of silence. We accustom ourselves so quickly to the murmur of the torrents that roll at the bottom., and even that murmur is like the hidden refrain that accompanies a day-dream. ”

“ A perfectly beautiful face, blanched to the pallor of marble, was revealed by the action. A murmur of admiration arose from the spectators, blent with subdued exclamations of horror from three who were nearly stricken lifeless by her unexpected advent. ”

“ And with the coming of day a widening murmur grew out of the invisible, a swelling monotone through which, incessantly, near and distant, broken, cheery little flurries of bugle music, and far and farther still, where mists hung over a vast hollow in the hills, the dropping shots of the outposts thickened to a steady patter, running backward and forward, from east to west, as far as the ear could hear. ”

“ Murmur faint dreams of summer harvestries;
The creamy sun at even scatters down
A gold-green mist across the murmuring town.
[Pg 3]
By the slow streams the frogs all day and night
Dream without thought of pain or heed of ill,
Watching the long warm silent hours take flight,
And ever with soft throats that pulse and thrill,
From the pale-weeded shallows trill and trill,
Tremulous sweet voices, flute-like, answering
One to another glorying in the spring. ”

“ Then a faint murmur came up through the rain and darkness. Speaking voices are not heard far, but voices raised in song have wings. The crowd was beginning to sing.
It was also beginning to take shape. From the foot of the inclined plane out into the black esplanade, streamed two long files of light, purposeful, with the sharp, forward-piercing line of the arrow. The procession was beginning to form.
The murmur rose into a chant as the crowd, hearing the first notes, took it up, singing as they [100] fell into line. ”

“ In some places nought can be heard but the stunning sounds of ‘deep calling unto deep’; in others, the mind is led to musing by the quiet murmur of the brook, that falls upon the ear like distant music. ”

“ The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver—over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. ”

“ As we sat with the window open to enjoy the freshness of the air, the massive outline of the opposite rocks, just distinguished through the gloom of night, and the silence of evening, which was only broken by the low murmur occasioned by a fall in the river, created very pleasing sensations in our minds. ”

“ Listen to the murmur of yonder rippling stream, that breaks like far off music upon the ear, and although half a century of years have passed since I first stood upon its margin, and listened to its dirge-like hum, no trace of age is left upon it. The silent years that have swept over its surface, bearing away the generations of men, have left this stream sporting and dancing on in all the freshness of youth and beauty. ”

“ However still the day, you can hear the deep breathing of the tides, sighing as they sleep, and a mystical murmur running through the swish of the breakers, that is the song of the deep sea waves, riding steadily in shore, ruffled but in no wise impeded by the west winds that vainly press them in the contrary direction. ”

“ But now a brow of gloom
Pourtrays, in characters of care,
That it is pleasure's tomb.
Yet none shall hear the sigh
That struggles to be free,
No tear shall trace this sallow cheek,
Nor murmur burst from me. ”

“ The strange confused and animated murmurs, which seemed born and to exist in virtue of the sun, that respiration of nature which is unceasingly heard amidst all other sounds, could not be heard now, and never had the silence been so profound. ”

“ The ever-importunate murmur, "Dramatise it, dramatise it!" ”

“ The warm and humming air is filled with insect sounds, ranging from the murmur of invisible gnats and midges, to the impetuous whirring of the great Libellulae, large almost as swallows, and hawking high in air for their food. Swift butterflies glance by, moths flutter, flies buzz, grasshoppers and katydids pipe their shrill notes, sharp as the edges of the sunbeams. Busy bees go humming past, straight as arrows, express-freight-trains from one blossoming copse to another. ”

“ And presently, the murmuring of the night to grow somewhat, and, afterward, the sound of the muttering of the fire-pit to come unto us; and the murmuring to die unto our ears that did be hearing now only the dull muttering, and so we to know that the murmuring of the night did be truly the far-off muttering of the fire-holes, and our eyes to guide our hearing, and our reason to explain and knit the sounds ”

“ But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called—called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come. ”

“ And slender forms of nuns, that weep
In moonlight by the murmuring deep.
When fancy moulds upon the mind
Light visions on the passing wind,
And woos, with faltering tongue and sigh,
The shades o'er memory's wilds that fly. ”

“ In soothing murmurs to complain;
My tongue some secret magic ties,
My murmurs sink in broken sighs!
Condemn'd to nurse eternal care,
And ever drop the silent tear,
Unheard I mourn, unknown I sigh,
Unfriended live, unpitied die! ”

“ Every now and then a hoarse echoing rumble of sound went wandering about in the hollows of the hills with a deep cavernous tone, which sounded astonishingly threatening and foreboding. I suppose that everybody knows more or less the feeling which associates itself with the first view of any memorable place, and fixes itself as it were upon his recollection of it. ”

“ That low deep roar, born of silence itself—the sad sighing of the wind—the tall, column-like trunks, resembling huge sentinels keeping guard over the mysteries of ages—the silent sea of foliage overhead, that seems to shut in a world of its own—all have an influence, peculiar, irresistible and sublime. ”

“ Bright like a sun,—
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose slowly, slowly,
Dimming,
Hiding,
The light of my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky,—
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow. ”

“ Feet half in the water, there in a row,
⁠Long hair in the wind afloat.
"Therefore," said fair Yoland of the flowers,
"This is the tune of Seven Towers."
No one walks there now
⁠Except in the white moonlight
The white ghosts walk in a row. ”

“ Ever since I entered the woods, even while listening to the lesser songsters, or contemplating the silent forms about me, a strain has reached my ears from out the depths of the forest that to me is the finest sound in nature,—the song of the hermit-thrush. ”

“ For the ground has climbed up stone and wall for fifteen hundred years, and the moss is deep on both; rich with a green no dye can rival, for the soaking of yesterday's rain is on it still. But she can see nothing for the moment, for the dog has leapt the wall and vanished. ”

“ I had ever before me the old dark murky rooms--the gaunt suits of mail with their ghostly silent air--the faces all awry, grinning from wood and stone--the dust and rust and worm that lives in wood--and alone in the midst of all this lumber and decay and ugly age, the beautiful child in her gentle slumber, smiling through her light and sunny dreams. ”

“ When you scream at the silence it goes to jingling pieces like a silver mirror broken into tiny bits. Perhaps its wings are made of glass— perhaps it lives down in a dark, dark cave and only comes up to warm its wings in the sun.... ”

“ But while we have yet lingered, the sun has finished his journey, and hid his bright beams behind the curtain of the west, and already have the shadows of coming twilight gathered around us, and the white marble slabs, dimly seen in its shadows, assume strange, mysterious shapes, and seem almost like moving things of life, while the darker slate are lost to view. ”

“ The countless dismal windows, vacant and forlorn, stared, sightless, from their marble walls; the whole sad city taking on the semblance of scattered mounds of dead men's sun-bleached skulls—the casements having the appearance of eyeless sockets, the portals, grinning jaws. ”

“ At another time he paints how the night wind whistles round an old church and whirls the screaming weather-cock round and round, how it moans and rattles with invisible hand against the doors, forces its way through the windows, and, once shut in its stony prison, seeks a way out again, howling and wailing. ”

“ Sounds are not far heard on a mountain-top; they are lost in the abyss of vacant air. But amid these low, dense, dark spruces, which make a sort of canopied privacy of every square rod of ground, what could be more in keeping than this delicate musical whisper? ”

“ Thus the pursuer had evidently kept abreast of them, speeding along in great leaps through the lush growth of huckleberry bushes, wild grasses, pawpaw thickets, silvered by the moon, all fringing the great forests that had given way on the shelving verge of the steeps where the road ran. Had he overheard their unguarded, significant words? Who could divine, so silent were the windless mountains, so deep a-dream the darksome woods, so spell-bound the mute and mystic moonlight? ”

“ How light, as if illuminated by more than the sun; the sky is full of light; light seems to be streaming up all around the horizon. The leafless trees make no shadows; the woods are flooded with light; everything shines; a day large and imposing, breathing strong masculine breaths out of the north; a day without a speck or film, winnowed through and through, all the windows and doors of the sky open. ”

“ As darkness falls The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, Moving like music, secret and rich and warm. How shall we live tonight? Where shall we turn? To what new light or darkness yearn? A thousand winding stairs lead down before us; And one by one in myriads we descend By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades, Through half-lit halls which reach no end. ”

“ In their going they leap spirit-like along the golden stairs which the sun lets down to them and pass up for the building of rainbows, their white light breaking in its mystical seven colors, a visible ecstasy to all who watch the heavens. To plunge in these waters at dawn is to feel this cool fire thrill through the marrow of your bones, and only by total immersion shall you know to the full its purity. ”

“ Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest hour of the day. And as the hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and symbols. ”

“ The Broken Mirror. I.
IN my chamber of gloom and sadness,
A broken mirror lies;
It gleams with a boding madness,
Like the light from a thousand eyes;
And I know not what evil spirit
Hath spread its sombre wing,
That my fate should ever merit
So sad a happening.
{12}
II.
Oh, once its case of amber
Flashed a glory o’er the walls!
But now in my dreary chamber
The sunlight never falls;
For shattered and broken forever
Lies that mirror on the floor,
And the peace I once knew shall never
Return to my bosom more! ”

“ Motionless in the sun, or dark with rain; Walls pierced with windows, where the light may enter; Walls windowless where darkness is desired; Towers and labyrinths and domes and chambers,— Amazing deep recesses, dark on dark,— All these are like the walls which shape your spirit: You move, are warm, within them, laugh within them, Proud of their depth and strength ”

“ The light falls upon the dull red walls or elaborate frescoes, and upon the sides of the sleeping figure, but loses itself at last in the dim recesses of the lofty roof. When the eye has become accustomed to the gloom, the peculiar wonder of the spectacle begins to be appreciated. ”

“ There were glimpses of that most alluring vista known to man: a strip of woodland thin enough to let through a twinkle of light from the other side. What a mystery there is about the edge of a wood, as you push through and wonder just what you may be coming to. ”

“ Without quite visualizing either wall or sea, he was yet recalling old dreams of a moonlit wall by a warm stirring southern sea. If there was a girl in the dream she was intangible as the scent of the night. ”

“ Presently the giant grey shadow, or wall of night, rises slowly in the east; the blazonry of evening waxes faint and wan in the west, and without a shade of 'gloaming;' for here night comes on with a single stride, earth looks old and pallid and cold—alt, kalt und ungestalt—the spectre of her former self. ”