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 Love no Couple can find
So easie to part, or so equally join’d.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin.”
—Hugo Ball (1886–1927)
“Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
““Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me;
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.””
—Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)