Legend of The Perpetual Lamp
In the fifteenth century, a tomb was found in Rome which was identified as Tullia’s burial place. Among other things found in the tomb was a perpetual lamp which was supposedly still burning after more than 15 centuries. The 17th-century English poet and preacher John Donne alludes to this legend in the eleventh stanza ("The Good-Night") of his "Eclogue, 1613. Decemb. 26" for the marriage of the Earl of Somerset to Frances Howard:
- Now, as in Tullias tombe, one lamp burnt cleare,
- Unchang'd for fifteene hundred yeare,
- May these love-lamps we here enshrine,
- In warmth, light, lasting, equall the divine. . . .
Read more about this topic: Tullia Ciceronis
Famous quotes containing the words legend of, legend, perpetual and/or lamp:
“The legend of Felix is ended, the toiling of Felix is done;
The Master has paid him his wages, the goal of his journey is won;
He rests, but he never is idle; a thousand years pass like a day,
In the glad surprise of Paradise where work is sweeter than play.”
—Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933)
“Newspaperman: That was a magnificent work. There were these mass columns of Apaches in their war paint and feather bonnets. And here was Thursday leading his men in that heroic charge.
Capt. York: Correct in every detail.
Newspaperman: He’s become almost a legend already. He’s the hero of every schoolboy in America.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.... There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.”
—Margot Asquith (1864–1945)
“Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn
of the day when we die.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)