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)
“Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved—sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest—so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Thus he struggled, by every method, to keep his light shining before men. Surely the lighthouse-keeper has a responsible, if an easy, office. When his lamp goes out, he goes out; or, at most, only one such accident is pardoned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)