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Lurk   /lərk/   Listen
Lurk

verb
(past & past part. lurked; pres. part. lurking)
1.
Lie in wait, lie in ambush, behave in a sneaky and secretive manner.  Synonym: skulk.
2.
Be about.  Synonyms: footle, hang around, lallygag, linger, loaf, loiter, lollygag, lounge, mess about, mill about, mill around, tarry.  "Who is this man that is hanging around the department?"
3.
Wait in hiding to attack.  Synonyms: ambuscade, ambush, bushwhack, lie in wait, scupper, waylay.



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"Lurk" Quotes from Famous Books



... Ganem—son of old Shalnassar, The carpet-dealer—and 'tis three years now Since first I knew him. But since yesteryear I have not seen him more. This I have said, this last thing I reveal, Because I will permit no sediment Of secrecy and lies to lurk within me. I care not thou shouldst know: I am no vessel Sold off as pure, but lined with verdigris To eat its bottom out—and then because I wanted to be spared his frequent visits In this abode—for that were ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... "Vita Nuova" our soul is at first filled and resounding with the love of Beatrice. Whatever habits or capacities of noble loving may lurk within ourselves, have been awakened by the solemn music of this book, and have sung in unison with Dante's love till we have ceased to hear the voice of his passion and have heard only the voice of our own. When the excitement ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... and butternut, with branches high above our heads, and a far outlook under the trees in every direction. There is no gloom such as evergreens make; no barricade of dark impenetrable foliage, behind which might lurk anything one chose to imagine, from a grizzly bear ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... Mr. Watson as a poet, it is impossible not to recognise that at least two radical flaws lurk in his agnostic argument. In the first place, he makes the mistake of judging issues by origins instead of origins by issues; the sub-human beginnings of man trouble us not at all, since we can see in the subsequent history of the race how great were the possibilities infolded in that "gibbering ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... had to "lurk" at this particular juncture Grant could not probably have told. There was not the slightest necessity for lurking. There were no windows in the side of the house toward him, and no one was visible about the place, but he knew what he had read, and he knew that the savages ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... proclaimed a text: 'I am the Resurrection and the Life!' As if by magic, consciousness revisited the prostrate form; the man opened his eyes; sat up; stared about him; and then began to speak. A wondrous virtue seemed to lurk in the majestic words that the boy recited. By that virtue Sydney Carton, Frank Bullen, and a host of others passed from death into ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... irreconcilable enmity to Spaniards. For many years they had been accustomed to make incursions into the Spanish territories, and to wage war with the Indians within their bounds. In their return from those southern expeditions, it had been a common practice with them to lurk in the woods round Augustine, until they surprized some Spaniard, and brought him prisoner home to their towns. On the bodies of these unfortunate prisoners they were accustomed to exercise the most wanton barbarities; sometimes cutting them ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... will not have to be so constantly on your guard against contagions that harm the soul as well as the body. I was told that there are rattle-snakes on Schunemunk, but greater dangers for Winnie and Merton lurk in this street—yes, in this very house;" and I exulted over the thought that we were about to bid Melissa Daggett ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... a low voice): Go! lurk in ambush there, One at this street corner, and one at that; And if a passer-by should here ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... are as various as the tribes which overran the empire; the nature, agreement, or dissimilarity in religious worship with those vestiges of its ritual and celebration which, by the "pious frauds" and connivance of the early church, still lurk in the pastimes of our rural districts:—the new science of which we have spoken, by taking cognisance of these and all other existing sources of legitimate investigation, will settle the source and affinities of nations upon a plan as much superior to that of Grotius ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... we not, with equal pity, view The fair frail wanderer, doom'd, through perjur'd vows, To lurk beneath a rigid stoic's frown, 'Till that sweet moment comes, which her sad days Of infamy, of want, and pain have wing'd. But here the reach of human thought is lost! What, what must be the parent's heart-felt pangs, Who sees his child, perchance his only child! ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales. Yet in famed Attica such lovely dales Are rarely seen; nor can fair Tempe boast A charm they know not; loved Parnassus fails, Though classic ground and consecrated most, To match some spots that lurk within this lowering coast. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... footstool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the bed; I opened the curtains and ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... General Brock, and Commodore Barclay were present, there could be no ground for an impression that slight was intended. Both these officers saw the difficulty under which their host laboured, and sought by every gentlemanly attention, to remove whatever unpleasantness might lurk in the ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... growth of "Modernism," as it is called by the Pope, who, having lost his mediaeval preservatives of unity, strives to quell Modernism by denunciation. Anglicanism resorts to a grand pageant of uniformity, beneath which, however, lurk Anglo-Catholicism, Evangelicism, and Liberalism, by no means uniform in faith. The Protestant Churches proper, their spirit being more emotional, feel the doctrinal movement less. But they are not unmoved, ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith

... seeing Ushitza, the captain, who accompanied me, returned to his family, at Derlatcha, and, I lament to say, that at this place he was attacked by the robbers, who, in summer, lurk in the thick woods on the two frontiers. The captain galloped off, but his two servants were ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... old house. Even the aristocratic breed of fowls, of "queer, rusty, withered aspect," are an emblem of the decay of the Pyncheon family. The people are apt to be merged into the dense shadows that lurk in the gloomy passages, but when the sun shines on them they stand out with arresting distinctness. The heroic figure of Hepzibah Pyncheon, a little ridiculous and a little forbidding of aspect, but cherishing through ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... Who are they? who are the cowled monks, the hooded friars who glide with shrouded faces in the procession of life, muttering in an unknown tongue words of mysterious import? Who are they? the midnight assassins of reputation, who lurk in the by-lanes of society, with dagger tongues sharpened by invention and envenomed by malice, to draw the blood of innocence, and, hyena-like, banquet on the dead? Who are they? They are a multitude no man can number, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... desire it is that good shall triumph and evil be put to shame and overthrown remains but partially satisfied; and the last conflict and its issues leave Mansoul still subject to fresh attacks. Diabolus was still at large. Carnal Sense broke prison and continued to lurk in the town. Unbelief 'was a nimble Jack: him they could never lay hold of, though they attempted to do it often.' Unbelief remained in Mansoul till the time that Mansoul ceased to dwell in the country of the Universe; and where Unbelief was Diabolus would not be without ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... above us," I replied, "and by going south it would appear that we shall go away from the sea. I propose, then, that we turn our backs on the star and march southward, trusting to find some wood or perchance some ruin where we may lurk a ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... excuse, although he had been rather conscience- stricken about Connie of late. She had developed a taste for exploring that beguiling land of Flirtation where the boundary lines have never been defined, and dangers are known to lurk beyond the borders. As an old and experienced adventurer he felt that he had already accompanied ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... government, a wisely balanced economic system, and wise social arrangements without telling how it was brought about, and how it is sustained against the vanity and self-indulgence, the moody fluctuations and uncertain imaginations, the heat and aptitude for partisanship that lurk, even when they do not flourish, in the texture of every man alive, is to build a palace without either ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... under this one rule, that to-day is given us to win our freedom from their power—to- day and not to-morrow. The question which is pressed home through the warning of this parable is thus a very plain one: "What is my future hope or prospect, if I let this or that particular sin lurk and linger in my heart, feeding upon me every day, and growing stronger in consequence? What if I do not resist any fault that has a hold upon me? What if I do not pray to be delivered from it? What if I ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... set the ever-during mark On him a Wanderer, where all earth was dark. And how uncertain is the hold on life, In those sad lands of gold and constant strife. Fiends strike by day; by night they ever lurk, By wood or cottage, swift to do Death's work; Till even when none are near to deal the blow, Imagination sees a hidden foe, Behind each tree, and by the little cot, Till gloomy Apprehension shades ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... show, that even gross errors of grammar may lurk where they are least to be expected, in the didactic phraseology of professed masters of style or oratory, and may abound where common readers or the generality of hearers will ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... until midnight and found that it maintained a steady course toward Chillicothe. Henry was satisfied that Timmendiquas meant to fall back on the town, and make a stand there where he could hope for victory, but he was not sure that smaller bands would not lurk in Clark's path, and try to cut up and weaken his force as it advanced. Hence, he left the great trail and turned to the right. In a mile or so they heard sounds and peering through the woods saw Braxton Wyatt, Blackstaffe and about ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... ethnologist and the moralist. Here roam the Comanches and the Apaches, the most remorseless and bloodthirsty of all the North American aboriginal tribes. Mexican bandits traverse the plains and lurk in the mountain passes, and American outlaws and desperadoes here find a refuge ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... god, "And rov'd the world in human form around. "'Twere long to tell what turpitude I saw "On every side, for rumor far fell short, "Of what I witness'd. Through the dusky woods "Of Maenalus I pass'd, where savage lurk "Fierce monsters; o'er the cold Lycean hill, "With pine-trees waving; and Cyllene's height. "Thence to th' Arcadian monarch's roof I came, "As dusky twilight drew on sable night. "Gave signs a god approach'd. The people ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... besides power. Quiroz had eyes that were mysterious and deep. Not even the Texan could read the secrets they masked. Cruelty might lurk there, perhaps, or friendliness—who could say? At the governor's soft-spoken invitation, Kid Wolf took a chair ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... a distinguished amateur will sustain a variety of assumption-parts, and in particular, Samuel Weller and Mrs. Gamp, of which I say no more. I am pining for Broadstairs, where the children are at present. I lurk from the sun, during the best part of the day, in a villainous compound of darkness, canvas, sawdust, general dust, stale gas (involving a vague smell of pepper), and disenchanted properties. But I hope to get down on Wednesday ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... said Elizabeth, thoughtfully, to herself, "what then? There is no happiness in it! They will give me another title, they will place a crown upon my head, and bind me to a throne. I shall no longer be free to act according to my will, to live as I would. Thousands of spies will lurk around me. Thousands of eyes will follow my steps, thousands of ears will listen for my every word, in order to interpret and attach a secret meaning to it! They will call me an empress, but I shall be a slave bound with golden fetters, upon whose head sits a golden crown ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... monstrosity on the hillside behind them roared and howled its rage to the darkening sky. Trailing the wolverines, the men caught up with the animals drinking from a small spring and thankfully shared that water. Then they pushed on, not able to forget that somewhere in the peaks about must lurk the Throg flyer ready ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... touch of her hand or the scent of her hair. To be in her presence was to be closeted with the awfulness and splendour of God. I read immortality in her eyes. A smile from her blinded me, a gentle word or caressing look and I went faint and dizzy, and I was content to lurk in some corner and gaze upon her secretly with all my soul. And I took long, solitary walks, with book of verse beneath my arm, and learned to love as lovers ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... when the snowdrop from the snowy ground Lifting a maiden face, foretells the flowers That lurk and listen, till the chaffinch sound Spring's advent with the glistening willow crown'd, Sheathed in their silken bowers:— E'en so the promise of her life appears Through those white childhood-years; —Whether in seaside happiness, and air Rosing the fair cheek,—sand, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... drainage is easy and pure air and sunshine are abundant; there is water without price for cleansing purposes, and sanitation is possible without excessive cost. In most cases it is lack of information that prevents a realization of perils that lurk, and every rural community should have instruction in hygiene from school-teacher, physician, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... and contradictory stories. Some have asserted that it has appeared on the very day on which the bite was inflicted, or within two or three days of that time. Dr. Bardsley, on the other hand, relates a case in which twelve years elapsed between the bite and the disease. If the virus may lurk so long as this in the constitution, it is a most lamentable affair. According to one account, more than thirty years intervened. The usual time extends from three weeks to ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... peeped out from behind its trunk and swept the plain for his foe. Nothing was to be seen of him. Slowly and patiently his eyes again went over the semi-circle before him, for where death may lurk behind every foot of vegetation, every bump or hillock, the plainsman leaves as little as may be to chance. No faintest movement could escape the sheepman's eyes, no least stir fail to apprise his ears. Yet for many minutes he waited in vain, and the delay told him that he had to do ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a conclusion was at bottom merely a process of decay that had begun with the death of the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read too carefully; difficulties lurk behind every word. I confess—I hope it will not be held against me—that it is precisely for this reason that they offer first-rate joy to a psychologist—as the opposite of all merely naive corruption, as refinement par excellence, as an artistic triumph in psychological corruption. ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... popular and is generally attended by the King, who gives gold cups for prizes. Hunting is in great favor, for game can be found near Bangkok, and at not a remote distance lurk the rhinoceros, buffalo, tiger, leopard, deer, antelope, hare, and crocodile. Elephants abound, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... thoughtfully. "I want the pedestal of my hero to be a low one; and Cooee declares that she wishes no pedestal at all. If her hero is worthy of the name, he must bear inspection even from above. The worst flaw of all might lurk in the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... Leith about the 10th of December, where being disappointed of a meeting with the west-country gentlemen, he kept himself retired for some days, and then became very uneasy and discouraged, and being asked the reason, he replied, "I have laboured to bring people out of darkness, but now I lurk as a man ashamed to shew himself before men:" by this they understood that he desired to preach, and told him that they would gladly hear him; but the danger into which he would throw himself thereby, prevented them from advising him to ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... spring out upon the unwary and drown them. To warn people against these dangerous elementals, a stone or pillar called "The Fat-pee," on which the name of the future Buddha or Pam-mo-o-mee-to-foo is inscribed, is set up near the place where they are supposed to lurk, and when the hauntings become very frequent the evil spirit is exorcised. The ceremony of exorcism consists in the decapitation of a white horse by a specially selected executioner, on the site of the hauntings. The head of the ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... Luminary lumigilo. Luminous lumiga. Lump bulo. Lunacy lunatikeco. Lunar luna. Lunatic lunatikulo. Lunch tagmezomangxo. Lung pulmo. Lurch sxanceligxi. Lure trompi, logi. Lurid malhela. Lurk sin kasxi (insideme). Luscious bongusta. Lust avideco. Lustre (lamp) lustro. Lustre brilo. Lusty fortega. Lute liuto. Lutheran luterano. Luxury lukso. Luxurious luksa. Lyceum liceo. Lye lesivo. Lymph limfo. Lynx linko. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... salt. Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown, And twice with vinegar procured from town; True flavor needs it, and your poet begs The pounded yellow of two boiled eggs; Let onion's atoms lurk within the bowl, And, scarce suspected, animate the whole; And, lastly, in the flavored compound toss A magic spoonful of anchovy sauce. O great and glorious! O herbaceous treat! 'Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat, Back to the world he'd turn his weary soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss

... If death lurk there! Hence to the everlasting resting-place, And not one step beyond!— Thou'rt leaving me? Oh Henry! would that I could go ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... such a manner as that public opinion may in the end be securely defied, by having been previously respected and dreaded. No direct false judgment is apprehended from the tribunals of this country; but it is feared that partiality may lurk and nestle in the abuse of our forms of proceeding. It is necessary, therefore, that nothing in that proceeding should appear to mark the slightest trace, should betray the faintest odor of chicane. God forbid, that, when you try the most serious of all causes, that, when you ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... were contemptuously allowed to publish the selfishness of their morality, and to declare that they were content to see the establishment of a great slave empire, provided they themselves were free from the taint of connection with it. If any others let Southern proclivities lurk in the obscure recesses of their hearts they were too prudent to permit these perilous sentiments to appear except in the masquerade of dismal presagings. So in appearance the Northern men were united, and in fact were very nearly so—for a ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... of Eloise which finally aroused me to action. Muttering an imprecation upon my faint-heartedness, I instantly swung off on to the dangling rope, slipping silently downward through the shadows to meet whatsoever fate might lurk below. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... war; and of her I carried, as I marched, an ambrotype in a closed case, which I had obtained deviously. She smiled in it, a little questioning, inciting smile, that seemed to lurk back in her eyes rather than along her lips. It was the smile that had availed to keep me firm in my ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... speak after they reached the house. Her face had lost its animation. They stood still for some time, gazing into the peaceful garden plot and the bronzed oaks beyond, as if loath to break the intimacy of the last half hour. In the solitude, the dead silence of the place, there seemed to lurk misfortune and pain. Suddenly from a distance sounded the whirr of an electric car, passing on the avenue behind them. The noise came softened across the open lot—a distant murmur from the big city that ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... hide in the blinding glory, I lurk in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, In death, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... the least want of perfect mastery, would make the bright, swift messengers of certain death! Such skill is full of concealed anxiety, terror, and anguish! From the complication of circumstances, danger may lurk in the slightest inadvertence, in the least imprudence, in possible accidents, while powerful assistance may suddenly spring from some obscure and forgotten individual. A dramatic interest may instantaneously arise from interviews ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... twisted language of this mele is allegorical, a rope whose strands are inwrought with passion, envy, detraction, and abuse. In translating it one has to choose between the poetic verbal garb and the esoteric meaning which the bard made to lurk ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... started south. Not until noon of the next day did he halt, and then only because many of the mares were in bad shape. For a week the band was moved on. During intervals of rest a sharp lookout was kept. Watering places, where an enemy might lurk, were approached only after the most ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... of the hunting-field connects cunning with a mask. And so perhaps came man's anger at the embellishment of women—that lovely mask of enamel with its shadows of pink and tiny pencilled veins, what must lurk behind it? Of what treacherous mysteries may it not be the screen? Does not the heathen lacquer her dark face, and the harlot paint her cheeks, because sorrow has ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... of the eyes and seemed to feed the fire of their glances, the radiant youth beneath their transparent brows, to watch over them, to shelter them, to protect them from the black cold wind without, from ghosts, pitfalls, misery and terror, from all the sinister things that lurk in an out-of-the-way quarter of Paris on ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... had closed behind her, his courage forsook him for a moment. And, if he had not been ashamed to appear a weakling before the woman he loved, who knows if any power on earth could have kept him in that house where from every corner a secret seemed to lurk! ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... Shadows seemed to lurk in its corners. It was an attic in name only, since it held no stored treasures of former days. It stood consecrated to a great endeavor. The children knew that, and instinctively paused at the threshold. ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim, How alert in attendance be. From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw They have nothing of harm to dread, But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank Or before his Gorgonian head: Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth In white triple tiers of glittering gates, And there find a haven when peril's abroad, An asylum in jaws of the Fates! They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey, Yet never partake ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... telling us what becomes of the pathogenic bacteria after being eliminated from the body of the patient; how they may exist for a long time still active; how they may lurk in filth or water dormant but alive, or how they may even multiply there. Preventive medicine is telling us how to destroy those thus lying in wait for a chance of infection, by discovering disinfectants and telling us especially where and when to ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn

... Eastern star When the British warrior queen When the sheep are in the fauld, when the kye 's come hame When this old cap was new When we two parted Where gang ye, thou silly auld carle Where the bee sucks, there lurk I While larks with little wing Who is Sylvia? what is she Why does your brand so drop with blood Why do ye weep, sweet babes? Can tears Why so pale and wan, fond lover ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... thou never wake to mystery! Thine is a dang'rous age: my Isidora, Thou little know'st, that while thy path is strew'd With flow'rs, how many serpent dangers lurk ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... relaxed. Evidently he had made up his mind that death did not lurk in the bushes, for he slid down into the wash and stepped across to the fire. Phyllis started to follow him, but at the first sound of slipping rubble her friend had ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... quote a proverb appropriately without the slightest idea of its origin or meaning beyond that it is the right thing to say in a certain connection. As we ascend in the scale of education, there is more and more of this reasoning by rote, so that critical incompetence is more easily concealed and may lurk unsuspected even in the pulpit and the professorial chair, where logic alone seems paramount. The "hagnostic" greengrocer, in all the self-confidence of his ignorance, is but the lower extreme of a class that runs up much higher in the social ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... with the grace which never forsook her, though, in the present case, there might lurk under it a little gentle ridicule, she offered a small embroidered purse to the Chamberlain, who, with extended hand and arched back, his learned face stooping until a physiognomist might have practised the metoposcopical science upon it, as seen from behind ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... persists, Keeping the features it is reckoned by, While each component atom breaks or twists; If, wandering past strange groups of shifting forms, Cells at their hidden marvels hard at work, Pale from much toil, or red from sudden storms, I might attain to where the Rulers lurk; If, pressing past the guards in those grey gates, The brain's most folded, intertwisted shell, I might attain to that which alters fates, The King, the supreme self, the Master Cell; Then, on Man's earthly peak, I might behold The unearthly ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various

... sunshine, and monotonous with chiming bells, had passed languidly away. Dr Simon had come and gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inward dissatisfaction over a patient behind whose taciturnity a hint of mockery and subterfuge seemed to lurk. Even Mrs Lawford had appeared to share her husband's reticence. But Dr Simon had happened on other cases in his experience where tact was required rather than skill, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... twelfth-century origin, the Taliesin, and other poems, though obscure and artificial, the work of many a "confused bard drivelling" (to cite the words of one of them), preserve echoes of the old mythology.[328] Some of the gods may lurk behind the personages of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Britonum and of the Arthurian cycle, though here great caution is required. The divinities have become heroes and heroines, kings and princesses, and if some of the episodes are based ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... Falsehoods lurk in adjectives as well as substantives. Misapplied terms are strongholds of self-deception. Nobody says, 'I am unfortunate, therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.' Such words are fortifications to keep self-knowledge and its ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... stand, is constructed on the old principle of relatively blank external walls, like a castle, with an interior courtyard, on which all the apartments open, and almost all the decoration is lavished. Reminiscences of defense lurk about the Louvre. It can best be understood by comparison with such ornate, yet fortress-like, Italian palaces as the Strozzi at Florence. Notice the four opposite portals, facing the cardinal points, which can be readily shut by means of great doors; while the actual doorways of the various ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... to Mukoki, and Rod crouched with his face to the narrow trail leading down from the top of the mountain. Deep shadows were beginning to lurk among the trees and he was determined that any movement there would draw his fire. Fifteen minutes later Wabi returned, eating ravenously at a big hind quarter of ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... Foeke Siverd. Leowarden, 1769. 8vo.—We insert the title of this work, though not strictly within our plan, because it gives an accurate account of a part of Germany, the dialect of which more resembles old English than any other German dialect; and in which there still lurk many very curious traditions, customs, and superstitions, which throw much light on our ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... lurk, or cause to lurk; used both transitively and intransitively. Apparently the root of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... porthole, his madness suggesting to him that no one should know how he died. He would have strength enough to do this, for he died quietly, bled to death, in fact, and gradually fell into a comatose condition, hence no sign of a struggle. It is impossible to conceive what devilish power may lurk about those things which have been used for devilish purposes. I am very strong on this point, as you ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... Undine. "The stems of the trees looked so bright in the morning sunshine, as it played upon the green turf, and the leaves whispered together so pleasantly, that I could not but laugh at those who imagined any evil to lurk in such a beautiful place. I shall very soon have ridden through it and back again, thought I, pushing on cheerily, and before I was aware of it, I found myself in the depths of its leafy shades, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... Italianism. The eloquence of Sannazzaro is that of the Arcadian the world over. He sighs and weeps and calls upon dryads, hamadryads and oreads to pity his consuming passion. When he sees his mistress she is walking in the midst of pastoral scenes where satyrs lurk behind every bush and the song of the shepherd is heard in the land. Sannazzaro's "Arcadia" was the inspiration of Sir Philip Sidney's. It was a natural outburst of the time and it conveys perfectly the spirit of Italian ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... in a drawing, by a multitude of lines up and down, from chin and nose;—a Simian jaw, remindful of the Descent of Man. All the accumulated hand-to-mouth wisdom of generations of peasantry seemed to lurk behind the old woman's quick eyes; to be ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... vegetable life of these islands is very abundant. In their woods live elephants, rhinoceroses, and tapirs; in the brushwood lurk tigers and panthers; and in the depths of their primeval forests dwell monkeys of various species. The largest is the orang-utang, which grows to a height of five feet, is very strong, savage and dangerous, and is almost ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... firm faith of almost all the Europeans living in the East that Plague is conveyed by the touch of infected substances, and that the deadly atoms especially lurk in all kinds of clothes and furs. It is held safer to breathe the same air with a man sick of the plague, and even to come in contact with his skin, than to be touched by the smallest particle ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... should be discovered, death would only stare me in the face about a minute. If he waited five minutes, who would believe my story of going to sleep and not hearing the drums? And if it were true, why didn't I go at once to the gate, and not lurk round there all night like another Clement? And then I wondered if it was not the disagreeable habit of some night-patrol or other to beat round the garden before the Sire went to bed for good, to find just such characters as I was gradually getting to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... making a trinity of truth-tellers. In like manner have the frenzy of wine and the madness of the gods been associated in every age with oracle and sign, and into this oracular trinity enters also the child. Said De Quincey: "God speaks to children also, in dreams and by the oracles that lurk in darkness," and the poet Stoddard has clothed in exquisite language ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... in surprise. It was the first indication that he had ever had from an habitue of Feinheimer's that there might lurk within their breasts any of the finer characteristics whose outward indices are pride and shame. He was momentarily at a loss as to what to say, and as he hesitated the girl's gaze went past him ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... reproof in Mrs. Ledoux's voice. The girl's face clouded as she turned away in response to the summons. But she threw the Boy a challenge over her shoulder—a hint of that mischief that always seemed to lurk in ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... eloquent darkness, are fearsome places for imaginative boys to pass alone. Hobgoblins—the very name sent chills up and down Bruce's spine—would be most apt to lurk in some such place, waiting, waiting to jump on his back! ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... country to couple a man and woman together in the labors of harvest; and on this occasion his partner was Nelly Kilpatrick, with whom, boy-like,—for he was in his seventeenth year and she a year younger,—he liked to lurk behind the rest of the hands when they returned from their labors in the evening, and who made his pulse beat furiously when he fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... it, economic fear will be removed out of life.... No one will be haunted by the dread of poverty.... The unsuccessful professional man will not live in terror lest his children should sink in the scale.... In such a world, most of the terrors that lurk in the background of men's minds will no longer exist."[3] "In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope. It is not so that ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... eccentricities. Though many absorb the atmosphere of age to their great advantage, there must be other temperaments among the descendants of so unique and so impressionable a body of men as the early settlers of this region, which would succumb to the awesome and depressing influences that also lurk in the air; and these may easily pass from piquant personality into mere errant grotesqueness. Whether from instinctive recognition of this or not, it has never seemed to me remarkable that people here should see apparitions of themselves, and die within ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... Po-et-se where rocks of weird shapes stood like gray and white giants to bar his way. He thought at times voices sounded from the stone pillars, but it might be the echo of his own.—He knew evil spirits did lurk along his trail—no mortal could escape their shadows. Even the god who had lived in the sun had been hurled to earth by them when the earth was new, and the first trees—the pines, had begun to grow at the edges of ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... clothes, and drove out into the wilderness a cutter containing three jugs and some cigars in boxes. He anticipated trouble. Perhaps he would even have to lurk in the woods, awaiting his opportunity to smuggle his liquor ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... she was not the only child in the ward who felt about it that way. Her discovery was a matter of intuition rather than knowledge; for—as if by silent consent—the topic was carefully avoided in the usual ward conversation. One does not make it a rule to talk about the hobgoblins that lurk in the halls at night, or the gray, creeping shapes that come out of dark corners and closets after one has gone to bed, if one is so pitifully unfortunate as to possess these things in childhood. Instead one just remembers and waits, shivering. Only to ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... golden honey the drops of water on the yellow oilskins. In all the corners dark shadows seemed to come and go, while up in the eyes of her, beyond the pall bits, descending from deck to deck, where they seemed to lurk like some dragon at the cavern's mouth, it was dark as Erebus. Now and again, the light seemed to penetrate for a moment as the schooner rolled heavier than usual, only to recede, leaving it darker and blacker than before. The roar of the wind through ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... more clearly to their ears they held their breath in voiceless anticipation. A few hundred yards ahead of them was the treasure which men long since dead had discovered more than half a century before; between the black mountain walls that so silently guarded that treasure there seemed to lurk the spirit presence of the three men who had died because of it. Here, somewhere very near, John Ball had been murdered, and Rod almost fancied that along the sandy edge of the chasm stream they might stumble on the footprints of the men whose skeletons they had discovered ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... gaudy show, And leave the victim to substantial woe: Yet hope can live beneath the stormy sky, And empty pleasures have their pinions ply; And frantic pride exalts the lofty brow, Nor marks the snares of death that lurk below. Uncertain, whether now the shaft of fate Sings on the wind, or heaven prolongs my date. I see my hours run on with cruel speed, And in my doom the fate of all I read; A certain doom, which nature's self must feel When the dread sentence checks the mundane wheel. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... seems to others an egregious violation of the principle itself. What with reforming legislation on the one hand and the lack of it on the other, the once sweet air of the American political mansion is soured by complaints. Privileges and discriminations seem to lurk in every political and economic corner. The "people" are appealing to the state to protect them against the usurpations of the corporations and the Bosses. The government is appealing to the courts to protect the shippers against ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... the Minister was in a mood for jesting, "hast thou had no fear that some hidden danger might lurk beneath the calm exterior of the peace which covers England? Do not smile, but hear me. Thou knowest the Viscount Effingston is in France, at the Court of Henry, and hath mingled much with some who are close to the throne. Perhaps it may not have reached ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... God bids me go: Now I would rest; God bids me work. He breaks my heart tossed to and fro, My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk And ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... held him had begun to work when he went behind the scenes; and, in spite of its horrors, the atmosphere of the place, its sensuality and dissolute morals had affected the poet's still untainted nature. A sort of malaria that infects the soul seems to lurk among those dark, filthy passages filled with machinery, and lit with smoky, greasy lamps. The solemnity and reality of life disappear, the most sacred things are matter for a jest, the most impossible things seem to be true. Lucien felt as if he had taken ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... lines of transport pass continually. "Sempre Avanti Savoia!" "Sempre Avanti Italia!" I find my eyes wet with tears, for the beauty and the glory and the insidious danger of that intoxicating war-cry; for the blindness and the wickedness and the selfish greed that lurk behind it, exploiting the generous emotions of the young and brave; for the irony and bitter fatuity of any war-cry in a world that should be ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... knights his followers. Some of those who would fain leave the life in the woods still cling to it because they think that it would be mean to desert their comrades, who being serfs are still bound to lurk there; but methinks that this is a great opportunity for them. They are valiant men, and the fact that they are fond of drawing an arrow at a buck does not make them one whit the worse Christians. I will do my best to move their hearts, and if they will but agree ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... Search, try, O God, my thoughts and heart, If mischief lurk in any part; Correct me where I go astray, And guide ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... was occupied by its plantation or fishing hamlet. He paused, for one instant, while he surveyed what he well knew to be virtually his dominions. He said to himself that with him it rested to keep out strife from this paradise—to detect whatever devilish cunning might lurk in its by-corners, and rebuke whatever malice and revenge might linger within its bounds. With the thought he again sprang forward, again plunged down the steeps, scudded over the wilds, and splashed through ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... by the power of the Cross, and 'twas little Robert Molyneux of Rossatorc recked of the sweet Christ who perished that men should live—against whose Cross the demons of earth and the demons of air, the malevolent spirits that lurk in water and wind, and all witches and evil doctors, are powerless. But the thought of the death-spancel must have come straight from the King of Fiends himself, for who else would harden the human heart to desecrate a new grave, and to cut from the helpless dead the strip of skin unbroken from ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... cheerless chill of the morning light, Out on the track where the night shades still lurk; Ere the first gleam of the sungod's returning light, Round come the race-horses early ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... stirring these waters at one time of our lives; and in the attempt to make matters more clear, only, it may be, succeeded in muddying them. Stolberg, Matthison, Schiller, Frederika Brun, Schelling, and others, whom he has been supposed to have robbed of trifles, he could not expect to lurk[8] in darkness, and particularly as he was actively contributing to disperse the darkness that yet hung over their names in England. But really for such bagatelles as were concerned in this poetic part of the allegation—even Bow Street, with the bloodiest Draco ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... public and to my friends that though the responsibility might be laid to Braman and Foster, I would fight so viciously that no one would be spared. Besides, between the Addicks scandal and that other which we agreed must unquestionably lurk in the hasty appointment of the receiver, the whole affair must eventually be ventilated in court. It is always hard for Mr. Rogers to forego an advantage, but by this time he was tired of the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... fit it were, That none but such as were known patriots, Sound lovers of their country, should be suffer'd To enjoy them in their houses; and even those Seal'd at some office, and at such a bigness As might not lurk ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... guest of an inn, to lurk round the kitchen door waiting for a chance to address a waitress is wholly undignified, but Archie was doing this very thing the moment he could escape from the Governor and Congdon. Mrs. Leary was upstairs preparing additional rooms against the chance of further arrivals ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... have I been mistaken! What an inhuman, merciless creature have I set my heart upon? Oh, I am happy to have discovered the shelves and quicksands that lurk beneath that faithless, ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin." With what heart then does a man set himself to examine, and scrupulously weigh the evidence on one side and the other, when some undiscerned frailty, some secret bias that all his care cannot detect, may lurk within, and insure for him the "greater condemnation?" I well remember in early life, with what tingling sensation and unknown horror I looked into the books of the infidels and the repositories of unlawful tenets, lest I should ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... moment symptoms of inflammation began to lurk in the nose of each lady; and perhaps, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, in ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... result that the widow had found herself left almost penniless, with no apparent resource but to allow her daughter Lucy to go out into a cold, unsympathetic world to earn her own living and face the many perils that lurk in the path of a young, lovely, innocent, and unprotected girl. But here was a way out of all their difficulties; for, as Harry rapidly bethought himself, if all his expenses were to be paid while engaged ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... plunged in the torpor of this artificial sleep. Thanks to the material power that opium exerts over the immaterial part of us, this man with the powerful and active imagination reduced himself to the level of those sluggish forms of animal life that lurk in the depths of forests, and take the form of vegetable refuse, never stirring from their place to catch their easy prey. He had darkened the very sun in heaven; the daylight never entered his room. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... well you read me. Yes, being still famished, I thought I'd see if some last morsel of food did not lurk under the papers. So I emptied out everything and what should I find scrawled in pencil across the bottom of the ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... perfect palace of confusion—chaos on chaos heaped of chemical apparatus, books, electrical machines, unfinished manuscripts, and furniture worn into holes by acids. It was perilous to use the poet's drinking-vessels, less perchance a seven-shilling piece half dissolved in aqua regia should lurk at the bottom of the bowl. Handsome razors were used to cut the lids of wooden boxes, and valuable books served to support lamps or crucibles; for in his vehement precipitation Shelley always laid violent hands on what he found convenient to the purpose of the moment. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... greater Syrte, that sailors often cast In peril great of death and loss extreme, They compassed round about, and safely passed, The Cape Judeca and flood Magra's stream; Then Tripoli, gainst which is Malta placed, That low and hid, to lurk in seas doth seem: The little Syrte then, and Alzerhes isle, Where dwelt the folk that ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... passed with so ordered a calm that little would any but a profound thinker have fancied tragedy to lurk so near their placid surface. Mrs. Effie and Mrs. Belknap-Jackson continued to plan the approaching social campaign at Red Gap. Cousin Egbert and the Mixer continued their card game for the trifling stake of a shilling a game, or "two bits," as it is known in the American monetary ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... He closes his sadness over him, or wanders in the perplexed intricacies of things, or projects his purpose from him clean-cut and sincere, or bares himself to the sunlight. But these spiritualities, felt rather than seen, can but lurk about architectural form as volatile effects, to be gathered from it by reflexion; their expression is not really sensuous at all. As human form is not the subject with which it deals, architecture is the mode in which the artistic effort centres, when the thoughts of man concerning himself are ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... and Miss Carrington was drawn to think of a certain thing Ferdinand Laxley had said he had heard from the mouth of this lady's brother when ale was in him. Alas! how one seed of a piece of folly will lurk and sprout to confound us; though, like the cock in the eastern tale, we peck up ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... adored it, it was such a contrast to herself.[FN66] At first she did what many clever women do —she invested him with the brightness of her own imagination. Still water, she pondered, runs deep; certainly under this disguise must lurk a brilliant fancy, a penetrating but a mature and ready judgment —are they not written by nature's hand on that broad high brow? With such lovely mustachios can he be aught but generous, noble-minded, magnanimous? Can such ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... all this statesmanlike prose, touched with the special dryness of the jurist, lurk the romance of the poet and the purposeful vagueness of the modern evolutionist; the fantasy of the Hungarian, the dramatic self-consciousness of the literary artist, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... timely Care, through Ignorance or Obstinacy, will permit the Distemper to lurk about them so long, till at last it has reduced them to an irrecoverable, lingering, ill Habit of Body; especially if they live meanly, drinking too much Water, and eating too much salt Meat; and this Cachexy generally ends their Lives ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... are of a homely character. I lurk in lodgings at the village dressmaker's. I have one room at the back of the house, its dormer window looking over a grass plot and a chicken coop. Fortunately the cock is as morose and reserved an individual as I am myself, without my sense of humour—or else he's henpecked. He never opens ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... to ruin as quickly as they would, and their sites are still so pestilential, after the lapse of centuries, that travelers are publicly guarded against them. Ravening beasts and poisonous reptiles lurk in those abodes of the riches and the poverty that are no longer known to our life. A part of one of the less malarial of the old cities, however, is maintained by the commonwealth in the form of its prosperity, and is studied ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... and their very names, have a peculiar fascination for the stranger. Some of us who know them intimately, and who how what discomfort and inefficient catering may lurk behind such a picturesque nomenclature as the "Rose and Crown" or the "Hawthorne Inn," have a certain disregard for the romance of it all. If one is an automobilist he has all the more reason to ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... rights as a parent. But the state of the law reflected only too faithfully the opinions of society, and these opinions in their turn formed the minds of women. Civilised people amuse themselves to-day by detecting how much of the old prejudices still lurk in a shamefaced half-consciousness in the minds of modern men. There was no need in the eighteenth century for any fine analysis to detect the naive belief that women exist only as auxiliary beings to contribute to the ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... all the negroes believed in witches and all sorts of impossible tales, so Estralla's words did not at all frighten her, but she did wish that she was safe in her own home. The streets were now dark and silent, and black shadows seemed to lurk at every corner as, hand in hand, Estralla ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis

... it would have served only to aggravate the suspicions he begun to entertain about the Long Beard, as he and the woman called Holden. As an Indian, he was suspicious of even the kindness of the white man, lest some evil design might lurk beneath. What wonder, when we consider the relation of one to the other? How much of our history is that of the wolf, who charged the lamb, who drank below ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... know what danger may lurk in the valley. The fact that I wish to keep you here—is a ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... infinite unseen beyond us and within our souls. Nothing can take us back to Phoebus or to Pan. Nothing can again identify us with the simple natural earth. 'Une immense esperance a traverse la terre,' and these chapels, with their deep significances, lurk in the fair landscape like the cares of real life among our dreams of art, or like a fear of death and the hereafter in the midst of opera music. It is a strange contrast. The worship of men in those old times was symbolised by ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... is! I can endure no longer To creep on tiptoe round this house, and lurk In ambush for a favorable moment: This loitering, this ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... great Brass Jack and glittering Pots and Pans! can ye any longer gleam and glitter and twinkle in doubt? Alas! I trow not. Therefore it is only natural and to be expected that beneath your outward polish lurk black and bitter feelings against this curly-headed giant, and a bloodthirsty desire for vengeance. If so, then one and all of you have, at least, the good feeling not to show it, a behavior worthy of gentlemen—what do I say?—of ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... To build fine temples in whose sacred shadows will lurk the gaunt specter of Famine and the grisly gorgon of Crime. To buy grand organs and costly bells to peal praises to One who had nowhere to lay his head. To pay stall-fed preachers five, ten, twenty thousand dollars a year ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... favourite system was a surprise or furious onslaught. A siege soon exhausted their patience and resources. They were as treacherous as they were brave. In the shades of the forest, whose intricacies and secrets they understood so well, they were most to be feared. Behind every tree might lurk a warrior, when once a party was known to be on the warpath. To steal stealthily at night through the mazes of the woods, tomahawk their sleeping foes, and take many scalps, was the height of an Indian's bliss. Curious to say, the Indians took little precautions to guard against such ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... to beauty, but she had certain attributes that made one suddenly class height with other bloodless statistics. From her crown of brown hair to her tiny slippers she was alive. Vitality did not radiate from her, but it seemed to lurk, like a constant, in her whole body and in her every supple movement. Lewis did not see it, but she was of the type that forever takes ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... flat-nosed and nearly black in colour, who were once the free dwellers in this land, and now have become slaves or serfs to their Aryan conquerors. Around the village are fields where bullocks are dragging rough ploughs; and beyond these are woods and moors in which lurk wild men, and beyond these are the lands of other Aryan tribes. Life in the village is simple and rude, but not uneventful, for the village is part of a tribe, and tribes are constantly fighting with one another, as well as with the dark-skinned ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... "Dangers lurk there, O my Master," the negro answered, hitching his burnouse about his shoulders. "We must travel by ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... as fast as horses could carry them, to Lancaster, for warrants, a sheriff, and his posse, to be on the ground as early as possible the next morning; while others were to proceed up the Magalloway, and lurk round in the woods within sight of the house of Gaut Gurley, as spies ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... cave[240] she stood, its walls Were hung with marble icicles; the work Of ages on its water-fretted halls, Where waves might wash, and seals might breed and lurk; Her hair was dripping, and the very balls Of her black eyes seemed turned to tears, and mirk The sharp rocks looked below each drop they caught, Which froze to marble ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... table strewn with newspapers and soiled by cigarette ash. He had the unkempt and pallid look of one who has not seen the sun or breathed fresh air for days. For, as Concepcion had said, this was a conspirator who preferred to lurk in friendly shelter while others played the bolder game at the front. Larralde had, in fact, not stirred abroad for nearly ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... he moves in a world of shadows, cast by the lurid light of his own emotions; they take grotesque shapes and beckon to him, or terrify him. All realities are immaterial and insubstantial; they shift their expressions, and lurk in many forms, leaping forth from the most unlikely disguises, and vanishing as suddenly ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... Governor Tom to the law-making boys: "I will warn you of dangers that lurk In the ways of your dangerous work; If the lobbies entice, You should take my advice, And turn a deaf ear to their noise,—" Said Governor Tom ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... that he had never conceived or meditated. Things are so intimately connected and so interdependent, the near and the remote are so closely related, and all parts of the universe are so mutually sympathetic, that it is impossible to tell what momentous secrets may lurk under the most trifling facts, or what grand and beautiful results may be attained through low and unimportant means. It seems that Nature delights in surprise, and in underlying our careless existences ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... dry leaves, for the mice and frogs to harbour in: yea, the locusts too, camp in the hedges among the dry leaves, in the cold day, and 'when the sun ariseth they flee away' (Nahum 3:15-17). When 'tis a cold day for them in a nation, then they lurk in the hedges, though their ordinances lie there, as leaves that are dry, and fallen down from the tree; but when the sun ariseth, and waxeth warm, they abide not, but betake them to their wings, and fly away. But one would think that fallen leaves should have no great nourishment in them: True, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the blackest Congo. Even the well-inhabited quarter of Kings Port (and I had now come within this limited domain) holds narrow lanes and recesses which teem and swarm with negroes. As cracks will run through fine porcelain, so do these black rifts of Africa lurk almost invisible among the gardens and the houses. The picture that these places offered, tropic, squalid, and fecund, often caused me to walk through them and watch the basking population; the intricate, broken wooden galleries, the rickety outside stair ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... blossom. Below us a stone mill grumbled over its unending task, and from the meadows came the blithe call of the killdee. It was all home to me from the fringing pines on the ridge-top, across the land to the mountains by the river, for on such a threshold one casts off fear. Danger might lurk about us in the shadows of the woods, but never out there in the broad day under the kindly eye of God. Nathan might gallop through tangled brush, but here even his mood changed and he walked sedately. Even the strange road was friendly to me, for it led into a friendly ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... meridian hour No creature thence: If Spirit of other sort, So minded, have o'er-leaped these earthly bounds On purpose, hard thou knowest it to exclude Spiritual substance with corporeal bar. But if within the circuit of these walks, In whatsoever shape he lurk, of whom Thou tellest, by morrow dawning I shall know. So promised he; and Uriel to his charge Returned on that bright beam, whose point now raised Bore him slope downward to the sun now fallen Beneath the Azores; whether the prime orb, Incredible how ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... their nest! Still every year, and all the year, They fix their fated dwelling here; And some their infant plumage try, And on a tender winglet fly; While in the shell, impregned with fires, Still lurk a thousand more desires; Some from their tiny prisons peeping, And some in formless embryo sleeping. Thus peopled, like the vernal groves, My breast resounds, with warbling Loves; One urchin imps the other's feather, Then twin-desires ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... that it had grown out of the soil, like some monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to wail, whistle, or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking tin basin and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were red with the sinking sun, as though bloodshot and inflamed from ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... said Wade, "our orders are precise! Not so much as a kerchief is to be taken from these chambers till search hath been made. We know what practices may lurk in the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the horror of what might lurk in the future was greater than the horror of what lay back there behind her. Again she urged her puzzled horse back to the stream, flinging herself down just at the edge of the pool. Far down at the bottom upon the white sand, wedged between two white stones, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... Shakspere puts in his blackest tragedies. The crowd that hemm'd around consisted I should think of thirty to forty thousand men, not a single one his personal friend—while I have no doubt, (so frenzied were the ferments of the time,) many an assassin's knife and pistol lurk'd in hip or breast-pocket there, ready, soon ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... except from shore to shore To bid the ocean's troubled billows roar. With hungry cries the wolf her coming greets; Then Rapine stalks triumphant through the streets; Avarice and Fraud in secret ambush lurk, And Treason's sons their desperate purpose work. But, lo! the Sun with orient ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... committing, of which I will nominate two or three more. And, First, He could not endure the Lord's day, because of the holiness that did attend it; the beginning of that day was to him as if he was going to prison, except he could get out from his father and mother, and lurk in by-holes among his companions, until holy duties were over. Reading the Scriptures, hearing sermons, godly conference, repeating of sermons and prayers, were things that he could not away with; and, therefore, if his father on such days, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... face as it passes, he looks up at the houses, searching with eager eye their blank, close-shuttered walls, as if in hope of seeing through the barriers of brick and stone, and surprising the secrets that may lurk within. Now and then a house seems to take his fancy, for he stops, and still looking up at the windows, plays a tune. It is generally the same tune,—a simple, homely old air, which the street-boys ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards

... face and the Boston dress, that a coat from New York or a visage from Chicago is at once conspicuous to you; and in these people there was not only this strangeness, but the different oddities that lurk in out-of-way corners of society everywhere had started suddenly into notice. Long-haired men, popularly supposed to have perished with the institution of slavery, appeared before me, and men with ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... them inveigh against ambition and deceit, under whatever political opinions these vices might chance to lurk; but I learned from their discourses that men are not guilty in the eye of God for any opinions concerning political government which they may profess with sincerity, any more than they are for their mistakes in building a house or in driving a furrow. I perceived that these ministers of ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... the painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave 5 Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. I knew one who had lifted it—he sought, For his lost heart was tender, things to love But found them not, alas! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... was usually odd it is true, and I certainly did not pay much attention to it; but that sort of obscure intention, which seemed to lurk in his nonchalance like a wary old carp in a pond, had never before come so near the surface. He had distinctly aroused my expectations. I would have been unable to say what it was I expected, but at all events I did not expect the absurd ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad

... seen him, so definite was their approach straight toward the thicket where he hid. He crouched, frightened. It would be a very awkward matter to be found there by them, and, besides, he did not know who might be out of sight within the hidden still. It was quite possible that there might lurk a deadly enemy. He must worm back through the thicket with great caution, and, following the secluded ways which he had traversed in his coming, get back to the railroad ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... length of the village. He registered a vow against short cuts—save in broad daylight—for his present surroundings inspired him with the liveliest distrust. They were to him positively nightmarish. He suffered the nastiest little fears of what might follow him, what might, even now, peer and lurk. Heretofore he had considered the earth as so much dead matter, to be usefully and profitably exploited by all-dominant man—specially by men of his own creed and race. But now the power of the earth laid ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... to his feet, a cry of warning shaping, but not to be uttered. He padded after the other. There was plenty of time to stop the man before he reached the danger which might lurk ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... home, nothing is caught. The fly is the only lure on Fish Lake. The average fish is from 1/2lb. to 1-1/4lb., though fish of 2lb. are common, while anything over 3lb. is unknown. I have seen several of 3lb., but nothing over it, and if larger fish lurk in the depths of the lake they have never been caught by Indian or white man. There is nothing but rainbow trout in the lake, and in general colour and appearance they vary very little, being handsome, bright-coloured ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert

... no objection to a musk-rat running about my room quietly if I do not startle him. I never allow one to be killed, and encourage their presence in the house, for I think the temporary inconvenience of a whiff of musk is amply repaid by the destruction of the numerous objectionable insects which lurk in the corners of Indian houses. The notion that they do damage by gnawing is an erroneous one, the mischief done by mice and rats being frequently laid to their charge; they have not the powerful dentition necessary for nibbling through ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale



Words linked to "Lurk" :   conceal, be, lurch, prowl, wait, hide



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