"Memnon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the music 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 one ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... 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 ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... smile except the imperial lady, who had woke the Memnon into life; and as she took her seat upon the throne, she slightly ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... their dead sons, in deep despair, Mothers of Memnon and Achilles shed, If gods in mortal grief have any share, O Muse of tears! bow down thy ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... English traveller, Mr. Wilkinson, has discovered the secret of the vocal Memnon. There was a cavity in which a person was concealed, and struck a stone, which gave a ringing sound like brass. The Arabs, who stood below when Mr. Wilkinson performed the miracle, described sound just as ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... ancient inhabitants of Egypt, in passing incessantly up and down the Nile, had made the same observation on some rock of the Thebaid; and that the music of the rocks there led to the jugglery of the priests in the statue of Memnon? Perhaps, when, "the rosy-fingered Aurora rendered her son, the glorious Memnon, vocal,"* (* These are the words of an inscription, which attests that sounds were heard on the 13th of the month Pachon, in the tenth year of the reign of Antoninus. See Monuments de l'Egypte Ancienne.) ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... 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 ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Fountains is not, as might be supposed, wholly unexpected. Similar occurrences have already been noted and date back to remote antiquity. Formerly a stone statue was erected in the outskirts of the town of Thebes to the memory of Memnon. When the beams of the rising sun struck it, harmonious sounds were heard to issue from it. At first this peculiarity was attributed to some form of trickery, a secret spring or a hidden keyboard. But upon further research, it was demonstrated that the sounds arose from purely ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... larger and larger; and 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 ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 he had now been away up the Nile six months. During his absence, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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
... Umberto, uncouthly casting them one and 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 ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... 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
... first Crusade; was old when Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden time; was old when Christ and his disciples walked the earth; stood where it stands today when the lips of Memnon were vocal and men bought and sold in the streets ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... babbling brook he finds a friend; 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 impart; Around him plays at will the virgin heart. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... bragge and bost to do more than he maye welle atcheue. There be many, whiche with their wordes slee[191] theyr enmyes a great waye of, but whan they se theyr enmye, they put on a sure breste plate and a gorget of a myle of lengthe. Plutarche wryteth that, whan Memnon made warre for Darius agaynste Alexander, he harde one of his souldyours crake and speake many yll wordes agaynst Alexander; wherfore he rapte hym on the pate with a iauelynge, sayenge: I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexandre, and ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... harems and bazaars, a home of tyrants, slaves, dreamers, and pleasure-seekers. Thus a Greek of the old school must have despaired of Greek poetry. There was nothing (he would have said) to evoke it; no dawn of liberty could flush this silent Memnon into song. The collectors, critics, librarians of Alexandria could only produce literary imitations of the epic and the hymn, or could at best write epigrams or inscriptions for the statue of some alien and luxurious god. Their critical activity in every field of literature ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... with my 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 ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... feast according to the number of the days. And then, when you ought to be sacrificing, you are inflicting tortures and litigating. And often, while we gods are observing a fast, when we mourn for Memnon or Sarpedon, you are pouring libations and laughing. For which reason Hyperbolus, having obtained the lot this year to be Hieromnemon, was afterward deprived by us gods of his crown; for thus he will know better that he ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... Eos, was 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 as gliding through the air on ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the Romans also sent envoys to Alexander at Babylon on the testimony of Clitarchus (Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 5, 57), from whom the other authorities who mention this fact (Aristus and Asclepiades, ap. Arrian, vii. 15, 5; Memnon, c. 25) doubtless derived it. Clitarchus certainly was contemporary with these events; nevertheless, his Life of Alexander was decidedly a historical romance rather than a history; and, looking to the silence of the trustworthy ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... intellectual world, which, wrought out into the bodily form, give it an interest and significance 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 its power of speech. Again, painting, music, and poetry, with their endless power of complexity, are the special arts of the romantic and modern ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... 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 ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... There is no truth in it as a whole, although bits of 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,' ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of culture in the East. Intermediate 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 alma mater ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... 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." ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... corslets, 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
... 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, and an exceedingly valuable collection of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... of my soul is glowing The joy of a hope to come, That will touch with its Memnon finger The lips that are cold ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... 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 smitten ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... 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, ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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. Perchance the order of the universe ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy! Hail, divinest Melancholy! 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 Ethiop queen that strove To set her beauty's praise above The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended; Yet thou art higher far descended; Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore To solitary Saturn bore; His daughter she; in Saturn's ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... 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
... epiluon, ho epiginoskon.] 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 ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... together, whispering, 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 passionless eyes upon our wordy counsels. In the midst of an exciting discussion the door opened ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... its myriads of gigantic columns. Yonder sits Memnon, "beloved of the morning," which was said to give forth a note of music when the rising sun shone upon it. There is Luxor, Dendereh, Thebes. Sometimes amid the warm light your thoughts will go away thousands of miles, where the frosts shiver upon the windows, the snows lie heavy ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... horse-hoofs; or in Euboea the ship of Agamemnon; or the cup for whose pattern the left breast of Helen served? Hast thou seen Alexandria, Memphis, the Pyramids, the hair which Isis tore from her head in grief for Osiris? Hast thou heard the shout of Memnon? The world is wide; everything does not end at the Trans-Tiber! I will accompany Caesar, and when he returns I will leave him and go to Cyprus; for it is the wish of this golden-haired goddess of mine that we offer doves ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Mercury, Apollo, Neptune, and Hercules were worshiped under the form of a square stone, while a large black stone was the emblem of Buddha among the Hindoos, of Manah Theus-Ceres in Arabia, and of Odin in Scandinavia. Everyone knows of the Stone of Memnon in Egypt, which was said to speak at sunrise—as, in truth, all stones spoke to man in ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... soon the 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... 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 or Sinkara, consist of a low circular platform, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... round Troy, and how many brave men fell, and chiefly Sarpedon, Patroclus, Hector, Memnon, and Achilles. The coming of the Amazon, and the wounding of Paris, and his death, and concerning the good ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... and he 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 ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... 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 eyes ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... iv., 28. The 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 ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... like soap 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 ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Bright, admiring glances from a handsome young gentleman with white hands, a gold 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 to the discovery that some of those cunningly fashioned instruments ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... 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 rather than attempts to convey the thrill ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... was the morning sacrifice with which the young prince greeted the day; it, like the pillar of Memnon, which gave forth a sound when touched by the rays of the sun, announced to his flattering courtiers ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... had with her hairs In sundry sorts the Indian clime adorned; And now her eyes apparreled in tears, The loss of lovely Memnon long had mourned, When as she spied the nymph whom I admire, Combing her locks, of which the yellow gold Made blush the beauties of her curled wire, Which heaven itself with wonder might behold; Then red with shame, her reverend locks she rent, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... 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 their roar is louder than ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... said Claude, in a low voice. 'How he sits, with his hands on his knees, the enormous size of his limbs quite concealed by the careless grace, with his Egyptian face, like some dumb granite Memnon!' ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... 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; ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... 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, the. Metamorphoses, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of Iopas 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, and ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... given of it was not satisfactory. He tells us, that it stood near the Syringes, in upper Egypt; and he viewed it with great admiration. It was the figure of a man in a sitting posture; which some said was the representation of Memnon the Ethiopian: others maintained, that it was the statue of Phamenophis: and others again, that it related to Sesostris. There were here emblems, and symbols; yet a diversity of opinions. I want therefore to know, how Herodotus could ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... 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 ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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 ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... 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 spent on the ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... the 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, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... leg over the horn of his saddle and sat sidewise. One of his tribunes looked at the other with a flickering smile that was not entirely free of contempt. But his fellow returned a stare that for immobility would have done credit to the Memnon. ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... (when translated into Hebrew grandeur by the mighty telescope,) a step above even that object which some four-and-twenty years ago in the British Museum struck me as simply the sublimest sight which in this sight-seeing world I had seen. It was the Memnon's head, then recently brought from Egypt. I looked at it, as the reader must suppose, in order to understand the depth which I have here ascribed to the impression, not as a human but as a symbolic head; and what it symbolized to me were: 1. The peace which ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... side in the clear distance in the midst of these green plains, which recall so well our fields of France. They wear the headgear of the Sphinx, and are gigantic human forms seated on thrones—the colossal statues of Memnon. We recognise them at once, for the picture-makers of succeeding ages have popularised their aspect, as in the case of the pyramids. What is strange is that they should stand there so simply in the midst of these fields of growing corn, which reach to their very feet, and be surrounded by these ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... 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 triumph ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... against him—even then none 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 rays of ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... be passed on the third day: and as that 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
... that some 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 perhaps ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... that 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
... general in 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
... 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 ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... had sunk, he had become silent, he had been even seen to stand 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
... ally of the Trojans now appeared on the field in the person of Memnon, the AEthiopian, a son of Eos and Tithonus, who brought with him a powerful reinforcement of negroes. Memnon was the first opponent who had yet encountered Achilles on an equal footing; for like the great hero himself he was the son of a goddess, and possessed also, like Achilles, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... sister of Astorax, king of Paphos, in love with Polydore, brother of general Memnon, but loved greatly by Siphax.—Beaumont and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the 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. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... 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 light ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... changeless Sphinx! 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
... now, now hollow groans reply. 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 when ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... 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 the mysteries ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... Consul-General in Egypt. He was an archaeologist and a student of hieroglyphics, and when Belzoni landed at Alexandria was struck by his ability, and sent him up to Thebes to superintend the removal of the great bust of Memnon, now in the British Museum. Belzoni, I believe, lived for some time in Mr. Salt's house, which afterwards became the property of the French Government, and was known as the Maison de France; it was pulled down ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... tread, 'tis hallow'd ground." I dare not go on; you have been before me, Bernard: (vide vol. i. p. 295, of Spy). But really it will be worth while for us to look in on Goodered some fine morning, say three, a.m., when he gets his print of Memnon home, to which, at Sheardowns, he was so liberal as to subscribe. He will discourse to you of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... tone, attributable to no visible or ostensible cause.[28] The tradition of the Egyptian statue responding to the first rays of the morning sun came forcibly to my recollection. In her voice, this queen of the Pyrenees 'Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,' and superstition if not philosophy might have persuaded some that this sudden glare of brightness and warmth, glistening with increasing intenseness on every ridge and eastern surface, might call forth some corresponding ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... phalanx of intellectuals to drive the whole world before them! We, of course, will say that these classes will be famous, and well worth attending. In Carlyle especially, the undersigned, with due modesty, expects to constitute himself a Memnon, and to receive the sage of Chelsea's martial pibroch from Hades, transmit it to the listeners, and to thrill them to the very marrow of their bones!"—Advt. in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... Camber; "one of nature's secrets not yet discovered by conventional Western science. It was known to the Egyptian priesthood, of course; hence the Vocal Memnon. It was known to Madame Blavatsky, who employed an 'astral bell'; and it ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... different epics fill in between the Iliad and the Odyssey. The AEthiopis takes up the thread after the death of Hector, introducing Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, and Memnon, son of the Dawn, both of whom are slain by Achilles who is himself slain and is buried with funeral games. After the death of Achilles, the Little Iliad continues the story, installing Ulysses as hero over Ajax in the contest for the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... 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 a run over ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... decree of those of Halicarnassus. "When Memnon, the son of Orestidas by descent, but by adoption of Euonymus, was priest, on the —— day of the month Aristerion, the decree of the people, upon the representation of Marcus Alexander, was this: Since we have ever a great regard to piety towards God, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... 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 forgotten his Voltaire, and thought that he had composed the story! ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... 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 'Thoughts in a Garden,' from which ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 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 ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... the morning. From its deck across its churning wake the most conspicuous building is the old watch tower whose gilded dome gleams friendlily. And as the beams of the morning sun strikes this, like the tower of Memnon, it gives forth music, the silver-tongued call of the old Lisbon bell. "Come back, come back," it cadences to all who pass, the melody clinking clear far over the level sea. It seems the spirit of Nantucket born of its warm spring sun, its soft winds ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... thy frame can borrow One breath of joy, oh, breathe for me, And show the world, in chains and sorrow, How sweet thy music still can be; How gaily, even mid gloom surrounding, Thou yet canst wake at pleasure's thrill— Like Memnon's broken image ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... fabled Eos, the dawn-goddess, to have been so disconsolate at the death of Memnon, her son, that she wept for him every morning, and her tears are the dewdrops found upon the earth. In the mythology of the Samoans of the Pacific, the Heaven-god, father of all things, and the Earth-goddess, mother of all things, once held each other in firm ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... eye-witness, cf. c. 29, '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
... rivalship which approached somewhat too nearly to jealousy. Each aspired to undertake the boldest expeditions, and to attempt the most hazardous excavations. But the great object of their ambition was an enormous bust of Memnon, in rose-colored granite, which lay half buried in the sand on the left bank ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... native impulse of genius by a simile of Memnon's marble statue, sounding its lyre at the touch of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... 46. relates as much, that it was commonly practised at Diana's temple, for women to go barefoot over hot coals, to try their honesties: Plinius, Solinus, and many writers, make mention of [6150]Geronia's temple, and Dionysius Halicarnassus, lib. 3. of Memnon's statue, which were used to this purpose. Tatius lib. 6. of Pan his cave, (much like old St. Wilfrid's needle in Yorkshire) wherein they did use to try, maids, [6151]whether they were honest; when Leucippe went in, suavissimus exaudiri sonus caepit Austin de ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Bacon calls the 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 ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... life. "His figure was tall and his bearing very noble. He had a finely moulded head and thick white hair—white from his youth; his brown eyes were soft, yet piercing; his mouth had a generous curve—his nose was somewhat of the Semitic type, which gave his face the cast of a young Memnon." This is confirmed by the assurance in Lavengro that a famous heroic painter was extremely anxious to secure Don Jorge as a model for the face and ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Brazil, Abeokuta, Iceland, El Dorado—all knew 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, had not the Power of the Hills been upon him! With what eminence ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... knew what to expect. But nature always surpasses expectations. The sinuosities of the rim sent back their various colors. A hundred domes and spires, wind sculptured and water sculptured, reached up like Memnon to catch the first light of the sun, and seemed to me to break out into Memnonian music. As the world rolled the steady light penetrated deeper, shadows diminished, light spaces broadened and multiplied, till it seemed as if a new creation were veritably going forward and a new "Let there be ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... 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
... Fire and humid Softness, a very Light-ray incarnate! Was there so much as a fault, a 'caprice,' he could have dispensed with? Was she not to him in very deed a Morning-star; did not her presence bring with it airs from Heaven? As from AEolian Harps in the breath of dawn, as from the Memnon's Statue struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, unearthly music was around him, and lapped him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fled away to the distance; Life bloomed up with happiness and hope. The past, then, was all a haggard dream; he had ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 down: The Pharaohs are no more: somewhere in ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... 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 thou, that men and women love ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... like St. Augustine's Circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere,' that I am not prepared to say what may or may not be found within it. You will ultimately think with me that, though an earnest and profound thinker, your master is no Memnon, waking only before the sunlight of truth. His utterances are dim ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... 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
... blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man Who sees not, or who seeing has no 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
... Memnon, now Rodrigo burns, In one quick flash see Proserpine expire, And last, his own cold Aeschylus took fire. Then gushed the tears, as from the Trojan's eyes, When the last ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... because I saw her in that early hour of the morning when even the stony Memnon sings, in that mystical light of the young day when divine exiled things, condemned to rough bondage through the noon, are for a short magical hour their own celestial selves, their unearthly glory as yet unhidden by ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... of white limestone. The majority still remain 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 the building was intended to be of the lightest ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... 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 bodies strike each other. May not life ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... and established a navy. This was probably the king who knew not Joseph. His successors continued the work of conquest, and extended their dominion from Ethiopia to Mesopotamia, and obtained that part of Western Asia formerly held by the Chaldeans. They built the temple of Karnak, the "Vocal Memnon," and the avenue of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord |
