"Memnon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... snickering, smiling, and exchanging suspicions, surmises, and a thousand speculations in regard to our pretty hostess and her singular companion. I fear that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic, who sat like a voiceless Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene indifference of the Past in his passionate eyes upon our wordy counsels. In the midst of an exciting discussion the door opened again, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... it was the Dodonian kettle, or the portico called Heptaphone in Olympia, or the eternal humming of the colossus raised on Memnon's tomb in Thebes of Egypt, or the horrid din that used formerly to be heard about a tomb at Lipara, one of the Aeolian islands. But this did not square ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... translated from that dialect into the Greek tongue, and laid up in the private recesses of the Egyptian Temples. These pillars were found in subterranean caverns, near Thebes and beyond the Nile, not far from the sounding statue of Memnon, in a place called Syringes; which are described to be certain winding apartments underground; made, it is said, by those who were skilled in ancient rites; who, foreseeing the coming of the Deluge, and fearing lest the memory of their ceremonies should be obliterated, built and contrived vaults, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... clasp thy fair arms round my neck," Kildare cried to the lovely lady; "Thy weight black Memnon will not check, Nor stay his gallop, swift and steady;" The blush, one moment, dyed her cheek; The next, her arms are round his neck; And placed before him on his horse, They ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... bubbles; they seemed to approach his very face, and anon were an immeasurable distance away. He heard, somewhere, the continual throbbing of a great drum, with desultory bursts of far music, inconceivably sweet, like the tones of an aeolian harp. He knew it for the sunrise melody of Memnon's statue, and thought he stood in the Nileside reeds, hearing, with exalted sense, that immortal anthem through the silence of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... fiction.[38] "I find one of these," he says, "has survived the waste-paper basket, and it may amuse my readers to see the sort of composition I was guilty of at the age of thirteen. My tale was entitled 'Memnon, or Human Wisdom,' and is as follows." Then we have a fair translation of Voltaire's romance, "Memnon," or "La Sagesse Humaine." The old lord, when he was collecting his papers for his autobiography, had altogether ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... answer me—"not all! Prophetic sounds and loud arise forever From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, 35 As melody from Memnon to the Sun. We rule the hearts of mightiest men—we rule With a despotic sway all giant minds. We are not impotent, we pallid stones: Not all our power is gone, not all our fame, 40 Not all the magic of our high renown, Not all the wonder that encircles us, Not all ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... light only when we are 'in the Lord.' There are many so-called Christians in this day who stand tragically unaware that their 'lamps are gone out.' When the sun rises and smites the mountain tops they burn, when its light falls on Memnon's stony lips they breathe out music, 'Arise, shine, for thy ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... bells at wrist and anklet as the Kabaros drummed; and hard by, in the brake, brown nymphs, their little breasts pointing to the zenith, moved in languorous rhythms, droning hoarse sacrificial chaunts. The colossus Memnon hymned; priests of Baal screamed as they lacerated themselves with knives; Druid priestesses crooned sybillic incantations. And over this pageant of woman and music the proud sun of old Egypt scattered splendid ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... funeral pyre. Sarpedon also, a solar hero, is made to fight on the side of the Niblungs or Trojans, attended by his friend Glaukos ("the brilliant one"). They command the Lykians, or "children of light"; and with them comes also Memnon, son of the Dawn, from the fiery land of the Aithiopes, the favourite haunt of Zeus and the gods ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... lieu of buttons or hooks. The drainings of the lake of Monte Falterona brought to light the most attractive objects of the next three cases (71-73), including the fine Etruscan statue of Mars, the large statue of a youth; and here also are a group of Aurora bearing off Memnon; and a satyr and a bacchante for the top of a candelabrum. Finely ornamented mirrors, with figures chased, bas-relief, representing, among other subjects, Minerva before Paris; Achilles arming before Thetis; a winged Hercules killing the Lernean Hydra; Juno ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... Achilles dragged the body of Hector three times round the walls of Troy, and was selling it for gold. And AEneas groaned when he saw the man whom he loved, and the old man Priam reaching out helpless hands. Also he knew himself, fighting in the midst of the Grecian chiefs; black Memnon also he knew, and the hosts of the East; and Penthesilea leading the army of the Amazons with shields shaped as the moon. Fierce she was to see, with one breast bared for battle, and a golden girdle beneath it, a damsel daring ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... patera with pomegranates, another with barley, the seven-eared wheat of Scripture, bread and grapes, besides other fruits and dainties which were supplied to the dead when deposited in the Theban tombs. On a tablet here we find the name of that Amenophis or Phamenoph, who is celebrated as the Memnon of the Greeks. We also find bricks as made by the Israelites, and stamped probably in accordance with the regulations of the revenue department of old Egypt. There are preserved in this and the adjoining apartments some beautiful ancient manuscripts, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... the inscriptions Larrak, or Larsa, in which some of the best Orientalists have recognized at once the Biblical Ellasar, the Laranchue of Berosus, and the Larissa of Apollodorus, where the king held his court who sent Memnon to the siege of Troy. The identification is perhaps doubtful; but, at any rate, we have here the remains of a second Chaldaean capital, dating from the very earliest times. The ruins, which bear now the name of Senkereh ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... distinguishable history. She is merely an appendage to Macedon. Everything is absorbed in the Macedon conqueror. With an army incredibly small for the task before him, he entered Asia Minor, and routed the Persian forces on the river Granicus. The Greek Memnon, the one able leader for the Persians, would have organised against him a destructive naval power; but death ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the burning flats, far off Seen by the high-necked camel on the verge Journeying southward? Where are thy monuments Piled by the strong and sunborn Anakim Over their crowned brethren [Greek: ON] and [Greek: ORE]? Thy Memnon, when his peaceful lips are kissed With earliest rays, that from his mother's eyes Flow over the Arabian bay, no more Breathes low into the charmed ears of morn Clear melody flattering the crisped Nile By columned Thebes. Old Memphis hath gone ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... fast asleep with a huge waterproof over his great-coat which descended with sweeping lines on to a tarpaulin. All this rose out of a cloud of steam from the horses. He had a short clay pipe in his mouth but, for the moment, he looked just like Memnon. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Syme was gripped with a fear that when he was quite close the face would be too big to be possible, and that he would scream aloud. He remembered that as a child he would not look at the mask of Memnon in the British Museum, because it was a face, ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... Egyptian sculpture is the frequent representation of their Kings in a colossal form. The two most famous colossi are the seated figures in the plain of Thebes. One is recognized to be the vocal Memnon (Amunoph III.) mentioned by Strabo. They are forty-seven feet high, and measure about eighteen feet three inches across the shoulders. But the grandest and largest colossal statue was the stupendous statue of King Remeses II., a Syenite granite, in the Memnonium, at Thebes. It represented ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... sculpture will marvel that the infuriated mob spared the statues of the Tuileries at the bloody climax of the French Revolution,—that a "love of the antique" knit in bonds of life-long friendship Winckelmann and Cardinal Albani,— that among the most salient of childhood's memories should be Memnon's image and the Colossus of Rhodes,—that an imaginative girl of exalted temperament died of love for the Apollo Belvidere,—and that Carrara should win many a pilgrimage because its quarries have peopled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... was applauded by the entire assemblage. Then Queen Dido after asking Aeneas many questions about Priam and Hector, and Achilles, and Memnon, and Diomede and other heroes of the Trojan war, begged him to tell the whole story from the beginning. "Come, my guest," said she, "relate to us from the very first the stratagems of the Greeks, the adventures of your friends, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... disrupted there my yolk; And I felt my yellow streaming Through my white; And the dream that I was dreaming Of posterity was broke In a night. Then from the papyrus-patch By the rising waters rolled, Passing many a temple old, I proceeded to the sea. Memnon sang, one morn, to me, And I heard Cambyses sass ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... shoulders I won for myself." But who he is and from whence, he does not declare in these places, though in other places he has declared this. Some of those who have seen these carvings conjecture that the figure is that of Memnon, but herein they are very far ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... work. Every moulding bears the impress of utter refinement, and modulates the light which falls upon it with exquisite and harmonious gradations of shade. The sun, as it touches it, makes visible music there, as if it were the harp of Memnon,—now giving us a shadow-line sharp, strict, and defined, now drawing along a beam of quick and dazzling light, and now dying away softly and insensibly into cool shade again. All the phenomena of reflected lights, half ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... noble than three score of men, She sees herself in every woman else, And so she wears her error like a crown To blind the truth and me: for her, and her, Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix The nectar; but—ah she—whene'er she moves The Samian Here rises and she speaks A Memnon ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... before the invention of the alphabet. Thus when the Spanish adventurers, under Cortez, invaded America, intelligence of their debarkation and movements was daily transmitted to Montezuma, by drawings, which corresponded with the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The antiquity of statuary appears from the Memnon and sphinxes of Egypt; that of casting figures in metals from the golden calf of Aaron; and that of carving in wood from the idols or household gods, which Rachel stole from her father Laban, and hid beneath her garments as she sat upon the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... speed which, if sustained, would have carried her from New York to Queenstown in eight days and seventeen hours. This speedy passage was made in 1851, and only two years earlier the record for the same voyage of fifteen thousand miles had been one hundred and twenty days, by the clipper Memnon. ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... large temple, built by Rameses II., who is said to have had sixty-nine sons and seventy daughters. There are also extensive remains of another temple called Medinet Habu. About a half a mile away from this ruin are the two colossal statues of Memnon, which were surrounded by water, so I could not get close to them. The following dimensions of one of them are given: "Height of the figure, fifty-two feet; height of the pedestal on which the feet rest, ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... subsequently took ship for Egypt, and carried on their studies there together, Demetrius practising the Cynic philosophy under the famous sophist of Rhodes, while Antiphilus, it seems, was to be a doctor. Well, on one occasion Demetrius had gone up country to see the Pyramids, and the statue of Memnon. He had heard it said that the Pyramids in spite of their great height cast no shadow, and that a sound proceeded from the statue at sunrise: all this he wished to see and hear for himself, and ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... chain, occasional regimentals, and wealth and grandeur immeasurable—those were the warm rays that set poor Hetty's heart vibrating and playing its little foolish tunes over and over again. We do not hear that Memnon's statue gave forth its melody at all under the rushing of the mightiest wind, or in response to any other influence divine or human than certain short-lived sunbeams of morning; and we must learn to accommodate ourselves ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Memnon, king of the Ethiopians. He went to the assistance of his uncle, Priam, and was slain by Achill[^e]s. His mother, Eos, inconsolable at his death, weeps for him every morning, and her tears constitute what we ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... glowing morning flood Pours through this charmed solitude; All silent now, this Memnon-stone Will murmur to the rising sun; The busy life this vein shall beat,— The rush of wheels, the swarm of feet; The Arachne-threads of Purpose stream Unseen within the morning gleam; The Life will move, the Death be plain; The bridal throng, the funeral train, Together in the crowd ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... single rough garment with their baggy elephant-legged trousers! And they know nothing of the mystic land of the old gods, filled with profound enigmas of the supernatural, dark secrets yet unexplored except in this book. Well might the great Memnon murmur after this lapse of these thousand ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... concert, in which, if we could boast of but little variety in the tones produced, we might at least challenge all Europe for an instrument of the kind which produced them. It seemed less wonderful that there should be music in the granite of Memnon, than in the loose Oolitic sand of the Bay of Laig. As we marched over the drier tracts, an incessant woo, woo, woo, rose from the surface, that might be heard in the calm some twenty or thirty yards away; and we found that where a damp semi-coherent stratum lay at the depth of ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Amunoph III. is engraved on the oval face of the ring, exactly as it appears on the tablet of Abydus in the British Museum. Amunoph (who reigned, according to Wilkinson, B.C. 1403-1367) is the same monarch known to the Greeks as Memnon; and the colossal "head of Memnon," placed in the British Museum through the agency of Mr. Salt, has a similar group of hieroglyphics sculptured on its shoulder. There was another kind of official ring, which we can recognise ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... the sun. Thus the Christian tower immediately becomes associated with the tenderest and most poetical ideas of monastic and pastoral religion. It seemed emulous from the beginning to be the first to catch the beams of morning, and, like the statue of Memnon, to respond to the golden touch by sounds of music. Then the fervid heart of Italy took fire, and from her bosom uprose over all her cities the beautiful campanile. Still and solemn it stood on the plains of Lombardy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... 'nostri ad dimicandum procedunt, id quod adversarios existimabamus esse facturos.' He is apt to be bombastic (c. 5, 'hic alternis non solum morti mortem exaggerabant, sed tumulos tumulis exaequabant'), and makes a ridiculous show of learning (quoting the combat of Achilles and Memnon, c. 25, and Ennius, c. 23, 'nostri cessere parumper'; c. 31, 'pes pede ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... face all you can read into it, and nothing more. It gives you what you bring, and nothing else. It is as silent as the lips of Memnon, as voiceless as the Sphinx. It suggests to you every joy that you have ever felt, every sorrow you have ever known, every ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... its midst. His figure was tall, and his bearing noble; he had a finely moulded head and thick white hair—white from his youth; his brown eyes were soft, yet piercing; his nose somewhat of the Semitic type, which gave his face the cast of the young Memnon; his mouth had a generous curve, and his features, for beauty and true power, were such as can have no parallel in our portrait gallery, where it is to be hoped the likeness of him, in Mr. Murray's possession, may one day find a place. Borrow and his family ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... at some period or another of their history, the Egyptians had conceived a beau-ideal superior to the beautiful which nature habitually produced in their country, we have only to examine the young Memnon, at the British Museum, and the heads of many of the sphinxes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... to match in any morning's walk. It is when she smiles that her face, it seems to me, is one of the most wonderful in the world. Till she smiles, it is like the score of some great composer's song before the musician releases it warbling for joy along the trembling keys; it is like the statue of Memnon before the dawn steals to kiss it across the desert. White Soul's face when she smiles is made, you would say, of larks and dew, of nightingales ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... western Aryans and for southern Europe, there is another epoch, between 6000 and 5000 B. C. at latest, namely, the march of the Cushite (Turanian) Nimrud (Memnon?) by Susiana, and then across Northern Africa to Spain. The discovery of Curtius, of the Ionians being Asiatics that had migrated from Phrygia, who disputed with the Phoenicians for the world's commerce long before the colonies started from Europe, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... it, by only pulling the pin out of the pole, to which the yoke was tied, and afterwards drawing off the yoke itself from below. From hence he advanced into Paphlagonia and Cappadocia, both which countries he soon reduced to obedience, and then hearing of the death of Memnon, the best commander Darius had upon the sea-coasts, who, if he had lived, might, it was supposed, have put many impediments and difficulties in the way of the progress of his arms, he was the rather encouraged to carry the war into the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of Nero hardly Did I comprehend their doings; Now still less I understand them. But this much I have discovered, That the climate here is chilly. Amun-Re, thou god of sunlight, Take me home to my old friends there, To the Sphinx, and let me once more Hear the prayer of Memnon's column Through ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... such as Homer mentions, in actual use and represented in works of art we consult Mr. Leaf on The Armour of Homeric Heroes.' He finds Memnon in a white corslet, on a black-figured vase in the British Museum. There is another white corsleted [Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. iv. pp. 82, 83, 85.] Memnon figured in the Vases Peints ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... smile except the imperial lady, who had woke the Memnon into life; and as she took her seat upon the throne, she slightly bent ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... o'er the sea from her old love comes she That draws the day from heaven's cold axletree. Aurora, whither slid'st thou? down again! And birds for[204] Memnon yearly shall be slain. Now in her tender arms I sweetly bide, If ever, now well lies she by my side. The air is cold, and sleep is sweetest now, And birds send forth shrill notes from every bough. Whither runn'st ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... to Western Thebes, we arrive at two seated colossi, one of which is the famous musical statue of Memnon. It is fine to see him still seated on his throne, dignified and serene, on the plain of Thebes. This colossus is fifty feet in height; and its base is covered with inscriptions of Greek and Roman travellers, vouching that they ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... handsome Papilio memnon, a splendid butterfly of a deep black colour, dotted over with lines and groups of scales of a clear ashy blue. Its wings are five inches in expanse, and the hind wings are rounded, with scalloped edges. This applies to the males; ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... finally the Sun, on Monday the 4th of May, has risen;—unconcerned, as if it were no special day. And yet, as his first rays could strike music from the Memnon's Statue on the Nile, what tones were these, so thrilling, tremulous of preparation and foreboding, which he awoke in every bosom at Versailles! Huge Paris, in all conceivable and inconceivable vehicles, is pouring itself forth; from each Town and Village come subsidiary rills; Versailles ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Intensity of search gathered in his eyes, and filled them with power. He remained for a little time longer in a state of tension so extreme, so strung to an act that there might have streamed a music from him, as from the Memnon in the sands when light and heat thrill the fibres of the stone. His look was concentrated upon a point above him where, look as one might, one could have seen nothing to break the ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... be able to mate a cucuius, would you not? We will tell you. But perhaps you would like to know what, in the name of Memnon, a cucuius is? Well, we ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... literally the eternal houses of the dead, are the Pompeii of the Egyptian antiquary. At Thebes are the magnificent and temple-like palaces of the greatest of the Pharaohs, the halls of their assemblies and their counsels, the records of their wars and conquests. At Thebes, too, is the Memnon, a mutilated statue of Amnoph, which never was vocal except by trick or in imagination, and the Obelisks, whose form is sufficiently explained, without obscenity or mystery, by the fancy for monolithic monuments and the possession of large blocks of granite. The remains of the Labyrinth ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... sing to Jove, And Phoebus selfe playes on his Lyre above. The Cretan Gods, or glorious men, who will Imitate right, must wonder at thy skill, Best Poet of thy times, or he will prove As mad as thy brave Memnon was with love. ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... gone, and her glory hath vanished as a phantasma. Her youthful days are over, and her face hath become wrinkled and tetric. She poreth not upon the heavens; astronomy is dead unto her, and knowledge maketh other cycles. Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth not to the sun, and Nilus heareth strange voices. Her monuments are but hieroglyphically sempiternal. Osiris and Anubis, her averruncous deities, have departed, while Orus yet remains dimly shadowing the principle of vicissitude and the effluxion of things, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... mirrored in my sighing soul The lofty temples and bastioned walls Of Memphis, Balback, Nineveh, Babylon— Gone from the earth like vapor from old Nile, When thy noonday beams lick up its waters! Hark! I hear again the vanished voices Of lofty Memnon, where proud pagan priests Syllable the matin hour, uttering Prophecies from Jupiter and Apollo— To devotees deluded, then as now, By astronomical, selfish fakirs, Who pretend claim to heavenly agency And power over human souls divine. Poor bamboozled man; know ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... only who have the receipt of making that liquor wherewith Memnon's daughter lengthened out her grandfather's declining days: it is I that am that Venus, who so far restored the languishing Phaon, as to make Sappho fall deeply in love with his beauty. Mine are those herbs, mine those charms, that not only lure ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... the banks of the sacred Nile, Iris no longer wandering weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, and his golden beams still smite the lips of Memnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests, and the old beliefs wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead Odin, the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... thy tall cedars, Lebanon, I have not heard the nations' cries, Nor seen thy eagles stooping down Where buried Tyre in ruin lies. The Christian's prayer I have not said In Tadmor's temples of decay, Nor startled, with my dreary tread, The waste where Memnon's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the same as the men of her people had been trained, regarded as mere pastime that which they considered one of the heights of earthly attainment. The woman who at sunrise had listened daily to the song of the Memnon, who had experienced the shock of battle, whose life lived close to nature had taught her the meaning of the ethics of the dust and instilled into her veins the rippling laughter of water and sunshine and the song of the winds, and whose every breath had been the rapturous ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... waited for in Egypt," answered the Swallow. "To-morrow my friends will fly up to the Second Cataract. The river-horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the God Memnon. All night long he watches the stars, and when the morning star shines he utters one cry of joy, and then he is silent. At noon the yellow lions come down to the water's edge to drink. They have eyes like green beryls, and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... prostration of the colossal statue of Memnon, which has been again restored (Letronne, 'La Statue Vocale de Memnon', 1835, p. 25, 26), presents a fact in opposition to the ancient prejudice that Egypt is free from earthquakes (Pliny, ii., 80); but the valley of the Nile does lie external ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... separated in the cabinet, and on the wing are quite undistinguishable. But one of the most curious cases is the fine yellow-spotted Papilio coeon, which is unmistakeably imitated by the female tailed form of Papilio memnon. These are both from Sumatra; but in North India P. coeon is replaced by another species, which has been named P. doubledayi, having red spots instead of yellow; and in the same district the corresponding female tailed form ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Grant Chalybon perish the whole of the race, Eke who in primal times ore seeking under the surface Showed th' example, and spalled iron however so hard. 50 Shortly before I was shorn my sister tresses bewailed Lot of me, e'en as the sole brother to Memnon the Black, Winnowing upper air wi' feathers flashing and quiv'ring, Chloris' wing-borne steed, came before Arsinoe, Whence upraising myself he flies through aery shadows, 55 And in chaste Venus' breast ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... approached, the zeal of the parties was kindled into such a flame, that scarcely did parents refrain from offering violence to their own sons. There was present a man of Pallene, named Rhisiasus, whose son, Memnon, was a demiurgus, and was of that party which opposed the reading of the decree and taking the votes. This man, for a long time, entreated his son to allow the Achaeans to take proper measures for their common safety, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... the strong came forth sweetness,' saith the Hebrew record. And so from the sturdy Andrew Marvell have proceeded such soft and lovely strains as 'The Emigrants,' 'The Nymph complaining for the Death of her Fawn,' 'Young Love,' &c. The statue of Memnon became musical at the dawn; and the stern patriot, whom no bribe could buy and no flattery melt, is found sympathising in song with a boatful of banished Englishmen in the remote Bermudas, and inditing ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... for a sort of sign. Artemus climbed astride the barrel, and somebody brought a beer-glass and put it in his hand. Virginia City looks out over the Eastward Desert. Morning was just breaking upon the distant range-the scene as beautiful as when the sunrise beams across the plain of Memnon. The city was not yet awake. The only living creatures in sight were the group of belated diners, with Artemus Ward, as King Gambrinus, pouring a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with thy lips, and, breathe o'er mine Their breath, for I consume with love's desire,— Thine ivory arms about me clasp and twine, And beam upon mine eye thine eye's soft fire; Clasp me yet closer, till my heart feels thine Thrill, as the chords of Memnon's mystic lyre Thrilled at the sun's uprising! thou who art The lone, the ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... that infatuate Egypt finds Gods to adore in brutes of basest kinds? This at the crocodile's resentment quakes, While that adores the ibis, gorged with snakes! And where the radiant beam of morning rings On shattered Memnon's still harmonious strings; And Thebes to ruin all her gates resigns, Of huge baboon the golden image shines! To mongrel curs infatuate cities bow, And cats and fishes share the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... stood this Angelo Four hundred years ago; So grandly still he stands, Mid lesser worlds of art, Colossal and apart, Like Memnon breathing songs across ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... expedition to reopen ancient trade with the Hottentots of Punt. A new strain of Negro blood came to the royal line through Queen Mutemua about 1420 B.C., whose son, Amenhotep III, built a great temple at Luqsor and the Colossi at Memnon. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... appetites and an age without appetites to exhaust its means; the story of the poor man who found treasure and the rich man who hanged himself; the fable of the vine's revenge upon the goat, are typical instances of the prosaic epigram.[12] The noble lines inscribed upon the statue of Memnon at Thebes[13] are an example of the vivid imaginative touch lighting up a sufficiently obvious theme for the rhetorician. Under the walls of Troy, long ages past, the son of Dawn had fallen under Achilles' terrible spear; yet now morning by morning the goddess salutes her son and he makes ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... a trace remains except the two seated colossi which, rising from the Theban plain, have astonished travellers from the times of Pausanias and Strabo down to our own. These mutilated figures, one of which has been known ever since classic times as the "vocal Memnon," are 56 feet high, and once flanked the entrance to the forecourt of the temple of Amenophis. The plan of the Ramesseum, with its sanctuary, hypostyle hall, and forecourts, its pylons and obelisks, is shown in Figure8, and may be compared with those of other temples ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Babylon and Nineveh, in indistinct confusion, without poetry, as without existence; but to whatever spot of earth these ruins were transported, if they were capable of transportation, like the obelisk, and the sphinx, and the Memnon's head, there they would still exist in the perfection of their beauty, and in the pride of their poetry. I opposed, and will ever oppose, the robbery of ruins from Athens, to instruct the English in sculpture; but why did I do so? The ruins are as poetical in Piccadilly as they ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... like Babylon and Nineveh, in indistinct confusion, without poetry, as without existence; but to whatever spot of earth these ruins were transported, if they were capable of transportation, like the obelisk, and the sphinx, and Memnon's head, there they would still exist in the perfection of their beauty, and in the pride of their poetry. I opposed, and will ever oppose, the robbery of ruins from Athens to instruct the English in sculpture; but why did I do so? The ruins are as poetical in Piccadilly ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... to us as motion—molecular vibration, or the thrill of the atoms. At the heart of the most massive rock this whirl of the atoms or corpuscles is going on. If our ears were fine enough to hear it, probably every rock and granite monument would sing, as did Memnon, when the sun shone upon it. This molecular vibration is revealed to us as heat, light, sound, electricity. Heat is only a mode of this invisible motion of the particles of matter. Mass motion is quickly converted into this molecular motion when two ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... above all, there is music in light! And what Light is in this world, Truth is in that glorious world to which the mind of man returns after its long exile. Yes, there is music in light! Hence, Phoebus is god of the Sun and of the Lyre, and Memnon yields sweet sounds to welcome approaching day. For this reason, the disciples of Zoroaster and Pythagoras hail the rising sun with the melody of harps; and the birds pour forth their love of light in song. ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... panic. They all fly with cries of consternation. The torch is thrown down and extinguished in the rush. Darkness. The noise of the fugitives dies away. Dead silence. Suspense. Then the blackness and stillness breaks softly into silver mist and strange airs as the windswept harp of Memnon plays at the dawning of the moon. It rises full over the desert; and a vast horizon comes into relief, broken by a huge shape which soon reveals itself in the spreading radiance as a Sphinx pedestalled on the sands. The light still clears, until the upraised ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... of the merles, She not remembers Memnon when she mourns: That faithful flame which in her bosom burns From crystal conduits throws those liquid pearls: Sad from thy sight so soon to be removed, She so her grief delates. —O favour'd by the fates Above the happiest states, Who art of ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... motionless with his arms folded; he was in this attitude when she approached and smiled upon him in all her glory. He breathed, he lived, he moved, he spoke.—Not the influence of the sun on the statue of Memnon was ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... therewith descended Through the window-arch a glory-gleam, All effulgent—and with music blended, For such solemn sounds arose as stream From the Memnon-lyre, When the morning fire Gilds the giant's forehead ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... While [7] chastening thoughts of sweetest use, bestowed By wisdom, moralise his pensive road. Host of his welcome inn, the noon-tide bower, To his spare meal he calls the passing poor; 30 He views the sun uplift his golden fire, Or sink, with heart alive like Memnon's lyre; [F] Blesses the moon that comes with kindly ray, To light him shaken by his rugged way. [8] Back from his sight no bashful children steal; 35 He sits a brother at the cottage-meal; [9] His humble looks no shy restraint ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... goes up from Sardis to Susa: and if the royal road has been rightly measured as regards leagues, and if the league 45 is equal to thirty furlongs, 46 (as undoubtedly it is), the number of furlongs from Sardis to that which is called the palace of Memnon is thirteen thousand five hundred, the number of leagues being four hundred and fifty. So if one travels a hundred and fifty furlongs each day, just ninety days are ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... les trsors de Memnon, Et la vague engloutit ses voeux et son navire; Dans le sein de la gloire o son gnie aspire, L'autre meurt enivr par l'cho ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... many other Poetes, that the warres of the Grecians against the Troians, was for beautifull Helena, and continued tenne yeres. The Goddes and Goddis toke partes, and all the people of Grece, aided Menelaus, and the kyng Aga- memnon, to bryng home again Helena, neclecting their own countrie, their wife and chidre[n], for one woma[n]. The Grekes inuentyng a huge and mightie horse made of Firre tre, and couered with brasse, as huge as ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... stand Of Memnon or of Janus, half with night Veiled, and fast bound with iron; half with light Crowned, holding all ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Mountain King collapses and Peer is standing alone on a mountain. The scene may be construed as one of his supernatural experiences, as a nightmare, or as the allegory of a stricken conscience. "Daybreak" which opens the second roll is in Egypt, Peer standing before the statue of Memnon in the first hush of dawn and waiting for the rays of the rising sun to evoke the music which according to tradition many thousand years old, is drawn from the statue by the sunrise. In this number Grieg paints the colors of an Oriental daybreak ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... in position. In several chambers there are small daises, and in one the remains of a throne, built of brick and mud covered with plaster and stucco, upon which the Pharaoh Amenhetep sat. This is the palace of him whom the Greeks called Memnon, who ruled Egypt when Israel was in bondage and when the dynasty of Minos reigned in Crete. Here by the side of his pleasure-lake the most powerful of Egyptian Pharaohs whiled away his time during the summer heats. Evidently ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... Her son, Memnon, was made king of the Ethiopians, and in the war of Troy he was overcome by Achilles. When Aurora, who was watching him from the sky, saw him fall she sent his brothers, the Winds, to take his body to the banks of a river in Asia Minor. In the evening the mother and the ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... rule their conduct or purify their heart. But only those who seek truth with their whole being are her true children; and to these the voice of Christ, when it is discerned, is like the sunrise to the statue of Memnon or as the call of spring ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... sake of many readers, whose hearts may go along earnestly with a record of infant sorrow, but whose course of life has not allowed them much leisure for study, I pause to explain—that the head of Memnon, in the British Museum, that sublime head which wears upon its lips a smile coextensive with all time and all space, an Aeonian smile of gracious love and Pan-like mystery, the most diffusive and pathetically ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... murders Memnon, and while he deforms the muddy source of the Rhine, I amuse myself with these satires; which can neither be recited in the temple [of Apollo], as contesting for the prize when Tarpa presides as judge, nor can have ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... silent Memnon waits Behind his temple's folded gates; But when the seventh day's sunshine falls Through rainbowed windows on the walls, He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills The quivering air with rapturous thrills; The roof resounds, the pillars shake, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... kiss the clouds; but to the student of mankind none were more significant, to the historian none more interesting, to the poet none will appeal more powerfully through the long ages yet to be. It will be a new and grander Memnon in masonry, ever sounding celestial music for him that hath ears to hear, when smitten by the golden shafts of Justice's shining orb, when gilded with the celestial radiance ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... joy, In thy magnificence? What though thou art Unconscious and material, thou canst reach The inmost immaterial mind's recess, And with thy tints and motion stir its chords To music, like the light on Memnon's lyre! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... the Persian army was a Rhodian named Memnon, who wanted to starve out Alexander by burning and destroying all before him; but the satrap Arsaces would not consent to this, and chose to collect his forces, and give battle to the Greeks on the banks of the river Granicus, a stream ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... introduced here have all the elegance and precision of a Greek statue; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light, and musical as the strings of Memnon's harp! ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Dardanelles B.C. 334, with an army of about forty thousand men, of which one-eighth was cavalry; he forced the passage of the Granicus in opposition to an army under Memnon, the Greek, who commanded for Darius on the coast of Asia, and he spent the whole of the year 333 in establishing his power in Asia Minor. He was seconded by the Greek colonies, who dwelt on the borders of the Black Sea ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Pharaohs crowned divine Are dust among the dust that once obeyed them. Their land is one mute burial mound, Save when across the drifted years Some chant of hollow sound, Some triumph blent with tears, From Memnon's lips at dawn ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... debate. Both parties desired a council to adjust the dispute. The Emperor Theodosius II, in an edict of November 19, 430, called a council to be held on the following Whitsunday at Ephesus. The council was opened by Cyril and Memnon, bishop of Ephesus, June 22, a few days after the date assigned. This opening of the synod was opposed by the imperial commissioner and the party of Nestorius, because many of the Antiochians had not yet arrived. Cyril and Memnon, who had undertaken ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... the Trojan wall Dragged Hector; there the slayer sells the slain. Sighing he sees him, chariot, arms and all, And Priam, spreading helpless hands in vain. Himself he knows among the Greeks again, Black Memnon's arms, and all his Eastern clan, Penthesilea's Amazonian train With moony shields. Bare-breasted, in the van, Girt with a golden zone, the maiden fights ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the Goddess of Dawn. She was the mother of Boreas, Zephyrus, Eurus, and Notus, the north, west, east, and south winds. Another of her sons was Memnon, King of AEthiopia, who was slain by Achilles. Ever since his death Aurora has wept constantly, and the dew of the early morning is caused by her tears falling to earth. Aurora is pictured as driving a chariot and four horses, or ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... enjoyment to me. I cannot imagine heaven without inexhaustible means of increasing knowledge and excellence.... Perhaps in that state, dear Emily, we shall be able to find out how a mummy of the days of Memnon should have preserved in its dead grasp a living germ for 3000 years.... [This last sentence referred to a striking fact, which Miss Fitz Hugh's uncle, Mr. William Hamilton, told us, of a bulb found in the sarcophagus ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... horses charge! in, boys! boys, in! The battle totters; now the wounds begin: O how they cry! O how they die! Room for the valiant Memnon, armed with thunder! See how he breaks the ranks asunder! They fly! they fly! Eumenes has the chase, And brave Polybius makes good his place: To the plains, to the woods, To the rocks, to the floods, They fly for succour. Follow, follow, follow! Hark ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... has a certain hardness of character and pitilessness of purpose, improved by my instructions, which will carry him far, but not far enough, I think. You're right not to look flattered" (Guy's face had moved no more than the marble Memnon's); "you are only a shade better than the rest. Our effete world is not worthy of that rare creature: she was born ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... all into the shade. I think of other statues that I have not seen—statues suspected of holding something back from even the clearest-eyed men who have stood beholding and soliciting them. But how obvious, beside Umberto, the Sphinx would be! And Memnon, how tamely he sits ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... either of the others, I need not say that I should not be preaching here. I will go further, and say, that if I believed either of those theories, or any save that which stands out in the text, sharp-cut and colossal like some old Egyptian Memnon, and like that statue, with a smile of sweetness on its lips which tempers the royal majesty of its looks,—if I did not believe that, I say—I should be inclined to confess with Homer of old, that man is the most miserable of all the beasts ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... goddess, sage and holy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, And, therefore, to our weaker view O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue. Black, but such as in esteem Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, Or that starred Aethiop queen that strove To set her beauty's praise above The sea-nymphs, and their ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... between the West and the East, the Greeks assimilate with an astonishing rapidity the results of progress; and the ancient East, that unfortunate mummy of history, begins to be born again, to revive, to breathe, to speak, like the legendary statue of Memnon, under the breath and at the approach of the new spirit casting its vivifying rays on the motionless and silent body of the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... were hushed with vague desire; We breathed in kingdoms wildly new, Enthralled by Memnon's mystic lyre In regions whence the Ph[oe]nix flew; Dumb splendour round us blown, and higher On heaven's deep dome—the peacock's hue, Bright flakes ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... some original shape, or form Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power (Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fix'd hour) To this grey ruin, with a voice to charm. Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower; The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such The fact:—I 've heard it—once perhaps ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Egypt, in her infatuation, worships. One part venerates the crocodile; another trembles before an ibis gorged with serpents. The image of a sacred monkey glitters in gold, where the magic chords sound from Memnon broken in half, and ancient Thebes lies buried in ruins, with her hundred gates. In one place they venerate sea-fish, in another river-fish; there, whole towns worship a dog: no one Diana. It is an impious act to violate or break with the teeth a leek or an onion. O holy nations! ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Therefore suspended he his crook above, Dropped it, and heard it rolling step by step: He entered, and a mingled sound arose Like one (when shaken from some temple's roof By zealous hand, they and their fretted nest) Of birds that wintering watch in Memnon's tomb, And tell the halcyons ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... Amen-hotep) IIIrd of the XVIIIth Dynasty, the Memnon of the Greeks,[51] (circa 1500-1466 B.C.,) had a number of large scarabs made, their object was not sepulchral nor were they to be used as talisman, but they apparently were made for the incising upon them, of purely historical inscriptions; ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... The Colossi of Memnon, the two enormous seated figures in the midst of level cultivated fields, were passed and photographed as we returned to Luxor. Their hugeness may be judged by comparing their size with the height of the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... word. Doubtless he understood as I did: the overheated rocks, the crackling of the stone, a whole series of physical phenomena, the example of the singing statue of Memnon.... But, for all that, this unexpected concert reacted no less painfully ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... the banks, and the notes of many birds told that we were now among strangers of the feathered tribe. The beautiful trogon, with bright scarlet breast and black back, uttered a most peculiar note, similar to that we read of as having once been emitted by Memnon, and likened to the tuning of a lyre. The boatmen answered it by calling "Nama, nama!"—meat, meat—as if they thought that a repetition of the note would be a good omen for our success in hunting. Many more interesting birds were met; but I could make no collection, as I was proceeding ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... from persecution." Mr. Wallace has been good enough to give us the following note on the above passage: "The above quotation deals solely with the question of how certain females of the polymorphic species (Papilio Memnon, P. Pammon, and others) have been so modified as to mimic species of a quite distinct section of the genus; but it does not attempt to explain why or how the other very variable types of female arose, and this was Darwin's difficulty. As the letter I wrote in reply is lost, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Argives; but, ah, how he smote with the sword that son of Telephus, the hero Eurypylus, and many Ceteians {*} of his company were slain around him, by reason of a woman's bribe. He truly was the comeliest man that ever I saw, next to goodly Memnon. And again when we, the best of the Argives, were about to go down into the horse which Epeus wrought, and the charge of all was laid on me, both to open the door of our good ambush and to shut the same, then did the other princes and counsellors of the Danaans ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... to the piazza. It is my box-royal; and this amphitheatre, my theatre of San Carlo. Yes, the scenery is magical—the illusion so complete. And Madam Meadow Lark, my prima donna, plays her grand engagement here; and, drinking in her sunrise note, which, Memnon-like, seems struck from the golden window, how far from me the weary face ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... answer me—"not all! "Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever "From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, "As melody from Memnon to the Sun. "We rule the hearts of mightiest men—we rule "With a despotic sway all giant minds. "We are not impotent—we pallid stones. "Not all our power is gone—not all our fame— "Not all the magic of our high ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... storms, victories, of the unseen and intellectual world, which, wrought out into the bodily form, give it an interest and significance [211] communicable to it alone. The art of Egypt, with its supreme architectural effects, is, according to Hegel's beautiful comparison, a Memnon waiting for the day, the day of the Greek spirit, the humanistic spirit, with ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... it that you give yourself to Him. That great Light will gladden your eyes, will guide your activity, and, like the sunrise striking Memnon's voiceless, stony lips, will bring music. Thought will have one boundless home of 'many mansions.' Work will have one law, one motive, its consecration and strength; and as in some solemn procession, all our steps and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... him to visit Egypt, where he erected hydraulic machines for the Pasha, and, through the influence of Mr. Salt, the British Consul, was employed to remove from Thebes, and ship for England, the colossal bust commonly called the Young Memnon. His knowledge of mechanics enabled him to accomplish this with great dexterity, and the head, now in the British Museum, is one of the finest ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... original shape, or form Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power (Though less than that of Memnon's statue,[673] warm In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fixed hour) To this grey ruin: with a voice to charm, Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower; The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such The fact:—I've heard it,—once ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... warlike spirit ceased to prevail at the Court of Thebes. Nothing more was to be gained by Egypt in Western Asia, and the tastes of the new king lay in other directions than war. The two celebrated Colossi of Memnon (statues of himself), many great buildings, the important part played by his favourite wife Teye, the well-filled harem, the cultivation of "wisdom" (which practically, no doubt, was tantamount to what we ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... could refuse admiration to the tender, lovely woman who, with the gracious smile of goodness, walked at his side; none could refuse love to the wife of the conqueror, whose countenance of brass received light and lustre from the beautiful eyes of Josephine, as Memnon's statue from ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... And paint the sable skies With azure, white, and red: Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed That she may thy career with roses spread: The nightingales thy coming eachwhere sing: Make an eternal spring! Give life to this dark world which lieth dead; Spread forth thy golden hair In larger locks than ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... respect to their memory, and then penetrates also into India, where he hears from the lips of a Buddhist monk an exposition of Nirvana philosophy, which, however, is unacceptable to him (p. 111). The Oriental scenes that are brought before our mind, both in this poem as well as in "Memnon" (vol. vii. p. 5 seq.), are of course portrayed with poetic feeling as well as scholarly accuracy. The haji who owns the wonderful elixir,—which, by the way, is said to come from India (p. 33),—and who interprets each vision that the poet lives through from the standpoint ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... vestigia communia of the senses, the latency of all in each, and more especially as by a magical penny duplex, the excitement of vision by sound and the exponents of sound. Thus, "The echoing walks between," may be almost said to reverse the fable in tradition of the head of Memnon, in the Egyptian statue. Such may be deservedly entitled the creative words in the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... have heard tell), must be treated of men, and the ideas of men, which are—it is policy to be emphatic upon truisms—are actually the motives of men in a greater degree than their appetites: these are my theme; and may it be my fortune to keep them at bloodheat, and myself calm as a statue of Memnon in prostrate Egypt! He sits there waiting for the sunlight; I here, and readier to be musical than you think. I can at any rate be impartial; and do but fix your eyes on the sunlight striking him and swallowing the day in rounding him, and you have an image of the passive receptivity of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his authorities, and the use he made of their writings, there has been more difference of opinion. Since his narrative covers the same ground as the "Aethiopis" ("Coming of Memnon") and the "Iliupersis" ("Destruction of Troy") of Arctinus (circ. 776 B.C.), and the "Little Iliad" of Lesches (circ. 700 B.C.), it has been assumed that the work of Quintus "is little more than an amplification or remodelling of the works of these two Cyclic Poets." This, however, must ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... and shortcomings of this strange movement, as well as all its terrible fire, swiftness, sincerity, and strength. The rays from Voltaire's burning and far-shining spirit no sooner struck upon the genius of the time, seated dark and dead like the black stone of Memnon's statue, than the clang of the breaking chord was heard through Europe, and men awoke in new day and more spacious air. The sentimentalist has proclaimed him a mere mocker. To the critic of the schools, ever ready with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Mr. Grey, "beware of endeavouring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed: these are fearful odds. Admirer as you are of Lord Bacon, you may perhaps remember a certain parable of his, called 'Memnon, or a youth too forward.' I hope you are not going to be one of those sons of Aurora, 'who, puffed up with the glittering show of vanity and ostentation, attempt actions above ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... things for ages hid, Hast sat upon the shapeless tomb In the forlorn and dripping pyramid; Awake! Arise! Though thou behold the day no more That saw thy pride and pomp of yore; Though, like the sounds that in the morning ray Trembled and died away From Memnon's statue; though, like these, the voice 150 That bade thy vernal plains rejoice, The voice of Science, is no longer heard; And all thy gorgeous state hath disappeared: Yet hear, with triumph, and with hope again, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... world with Nance as its most attractive figure. Sometimes she laughed her way through a play; and again she committed suicide for the edification of the audience, as when she appeared in "Busiris." This was a windy tragedy by Dr. Young (he of the "Night Thoughts"), wherein Wilks, as Memnon, also had to kill himself. The performance was, naturally enough, far from cheerful, and no particular inspiration could have been obtained from the presence of Busiris himself, that semi-savage Egyptian ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... granite peak His bright feet touch'd, and there he stay'd to view The misery his brilliance had betray'd To the most hateful seeing of itself. 370 Golden his hair of short Numidian curl, Regal his shape majestic, a vast shade In midst of his own brightness, like the bulk Of Memnon's image at the set of sun To one who travels from the dusking East: Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon's harp He utter'd, while his hands contemplative He press'd together, and in silence stood. Despondence seiz'd again ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... matter of antiques. Her taste was not limited to the oddities of the present day, and, in the dealer, she found a person perfectly inclined to gratify her with wonders. He had sold her a model of the Alexandrian library, a specimen of the original type invented by Memnon the Egyptian, and a manuscript of the first play acted by Thespis. These had not exhausted the stock of the dealer: he possessed the skin of a giraffe killed in the Roman amphitheatre; the head of King Arthur's spear; and the breech of the first cannon fired at the siege of Constantinople. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Hesych. Petrus Hebraeo sermone agnoscens notat. Arator. From these examples we may, I think, learn that the priest was styled Petor, and Pator: and that it was the place, which properly was called Patora. The Colossal statue of Memnon in the Thebais was a Patora, or oracular image. There are many inscriptions upon different parts of it; which were copied by Dr. Pocock[758], and are to be seen in the first volume of his travels. They are all of late date in comparison of the statue itself; the antiquity of which is ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... well—him, his star-sapphire, and his congested church service: lands fertile, barren, savage, civilized, utilitarian, dithyrambic. He had worshipped at Mecca and at Salt Lake City. He had looked into the face of Memnon, and upon the rocks of Midian, 'graven with an iron pen,' upon the head waters of the Congo, and the foliate columns of Palmyra; he had traversed the whole length of the Sao Francisco, crossed the Mississippi and the Ganges. Then, too, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... land See worshipped Nilus bland, Taking the silver road he gave the world, To wet his ancient shrine With waters held divine, And touch his temple steps with wavelets curled, And list, ere darkness change to gray, Old minstrel-throated Memnon chanting ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... man," said he, "I passed some time in Egypt, my father having sent me to that country for my education. I took it into my head to sail up the Nile to Coptus, and thence pay a visit to the statue of Memnon,[127] and hear the curious sound that proceeds from it at sunrise. In this respect, I was more fortunate than most people, who hear nothing but an indistinct voice: Memnon actually opened his lips, and delivered me an oracle in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... The very dawn of Time Beheld thee sculptured from the living rock! Still wears thy face its primal look sublime, Surviving all the hoary ages' shock: Still royal art thou in thy proud repose, As when the sun on tuneful Memnon ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the fane of my soul is glowing The joy of a hope to come, That will touch with its Memnon finger The lips ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... none other one! It was for thee that young Sarpedon died, And Memnon's manhood was untimely spent; It was for thee gold-crested Hector tried With Thetis' child that evil race to run, In the last year of thy beleaguerment; Ay! even now the glory of thy fame Burns in those fields of trampled asphodel, ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... Indian on his native plains, And blest the wandering Tartar, happy nomad, Fire-worshippers, whose twinkling altar-fanes Still gleam on lonely peaks beyond Allahbad. Shadows yet linger round their ruined towers, And whisper from the caverns and the islands, Their Memnon still is eloquent, but ours Stares on with shut lips ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... the mouth of the harbour at Rhodes, reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world, erected in 280 B.C., destroyed by an earthquake 56 years after, and sold to a Jew centuries later for old metal; besides this are celebrated the statue of Memnon at Thebes, the Colossi of Athene in the Parthenon at Athens, and of Zeus at Olympia and at Tarentum, as well as others of modern date; for instance, Germania, 112 ft. high, in the Niederwald, and Liberty enlightening the World, 160 ft. high, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... defeated at Plataea, and is slain. Mars. Mavrocordae'to, Alexander. Mede'a. Medea, the. Meg'ara. Me'llan nymphs. They watched over gardens and flocks of sheep. Me'los, island of. Melpom'e-ne, inventress of tragedy. Memno'nian Palace. So called because said to have been founded by the father of Memnon. Memorabil'ia, the. MENAN'DER, the comic poet. Life and works of. Fragment from. Men-e-la'us. Men'tor, a friend of Ulysses. Mercury, or Her'mes. Messa'na, in Sicily. Messa'pion, Mount, in Boeotia. Messe'nia, and Messe'nians, wars of, with Sparta. Messenian Gulf. Messenian wars, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Nestorius thanked the saint by returning the same number of inverted blessings. This has been a heavy business among Popes for many centuries. John and Cyril engaged in the same kind of warfare immediately after John's arrival at Ephesus. John and his party congratulated Cyril, Memnon, and their accomplices by deposing and excommunicating them, and now the parties continue, for some time, to give vent to their feelings in mutual anathemas. These benedictions were the only articles of mutual exchange, current and of ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... truth, glazed and magnified, are embodied in it, as in the lines, "Features to old ideal grace allied"—a most unintelligible allusion to a likeness discovered in dear Dora's contour of countenance to the great Memnon head in the British Museum, with its overflowing lips and width of mouth, which seems to be typical of the ocean. The poem always strikes me as a mongrel,' &c. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and as if to introduce a companion and so render the interview easier, he called, in tone as gentle as if he spoke to a child, but with that peculiar intonation that had let me understand it was not to a child he was speaking, "Memnon! come;" and turned again to me. His movement and words directed my attention again to the horse, who had stood motionless. At once, but without sign of haste, the animal walked up to the rails, rose gently on his hind legs, came over without touching, walked up to his master, and laid ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Ionia, together with other Persian generals, were encamped on the river Granicus, with a force of 20,000 Greek mercenaries, and about an equal number of native cavalry, with which they prepared to dispute the passage of the river. A Rhodian, named Memnon, had the chief command. The veteran general Parmenio advised Alexander to delay the attack till the following morning; to which he replied, that it would be a bad omen at the beginning of his expedition, if, after passing the Hellespont, he should be stopped by a paltry stream. Thereupon he ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... testifies to an extraordinary fineness of chiselling. The entire face has a solemn serenity and a sovereign goodness." Leaving aside all consideration of the artistic merits of other Egyptian colossi,—those at Memphis, Thebes, Karnac and Luxor, with the twin marvels of Amenophis-Memnon—we turn to the most famous colossus of antiquity, that at Rhodes, only to find that we have even less evidence on which to base an opinion as to its quality than is available in the case of the numerous primitive works of Egypt and of India. We know its approximate dimensions, ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various |
