" Rather even than Amun-Ra
let him be the god. For there is something nobly joyous in this
architecture, a dignity that sings.
It has been said, but not established, that Rameses the Great was buried
in the Ramesseum, and when first I entered it the "Lay of the Harper"
came to my mind, with the sadness that attends the passing away of
glory into the shades of death. But an optimism almost as determined
as Emerson's was quickly bred in me there. I could not be sad, though
I could be happily thoughtful, in the light of the Ramesseum. And even
when I left the thinking-place, and, coming down the central aisle, saw
in the immersing sunshine of the Osiride Court the fallen colossus of
the king, I was not struck to sadness.
Imagine the greatest figure in the world--such a figure as this Rameses
was in his day--with all might, all glory, all climbing power, all
vigor, tenacity of purpose, and granite strength of will concentrated
within it, struck suddenly down, and falling backward in a collapse of
which the thunder might shake the vitals of the earth, and you have this
prostrate colossus. Even now one seems to hear it fall, to feel the warm
soil trembling beneath one's feet as one approaches it. A row of statues
of enormous size, with arms crossed as if in resignation, glowing in the
sun, in color not gold or amber, but a delicate, desert yellow, watch
near it like servants of the dead. On a slightly lower level than there
it lies, and a little nearer the Nile.
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