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)
“His breast was the seat of all those passions which degrade our nature, and disturb our reason. There they raged in a perpetual conflict; but avarice, the meanest of them all, generally triumphed, ruled absolutely, and in many instances, which I forbear to mention, most scandalously.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The lamp of war is kindled here, not to be extinguished but by torrents of blood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)