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For exactly as a thin thread of water, trickling through a leaden tube, yields a stridulous and plaintive sound compared with the full volume of sound corresponding to the full volume of water, on parity of principles, nobody will doubt that the current of blood pouring through the tubes of the human frame will utter to the learned ear, when armed with the stethoscope, an elaborate gamut or compass of music recording the ravages of disease, or the glorious plenitudes of health, as faithfully as the cavities within this ancient Memnonian bust reported this mighty event of sunrise to the rejoicing world of light and life; or, again, under the sad passion of the dying day, uttered the sweet requiem that belonged to its departure.
A hundred domes and spires, wind sculptured and water sculptured, reached up like Memnon to catch the first light of the sun, and seemed to me to break out into Memnonian music.
Have you never known what it is to be tired, my Lector? not tired at the end of a busy day, but tired in the morning, tired in the Memnonian sunlight, when larks and barrel-organs start on their blithe insistent rounds. No, the man who is tired of a morning sings not music-hall songs in his bedroom as he dashes about in his morning bath. But will you never want to go to bed, Lector?
Placid sphinxes brooding o'er the Nile mighty Memnonian countenances calm had revealed Egypt to me in a sonnet of Tennyson's, and I was ready to gaze on it with pyramidal wonder and hieroglyphic awe. The landing quay at Alexandria is like the dockyard quay at Portsmouth: with a few score of brown faces scattered among the population.
In dreams thou comest to me; And, dreaming, I play with the lotus bowl, And sing old songs to thee; And hear from afar the Memnonian strain, And calls from dear Simbel; And wake to a passion of grief and pain That e'er I said Farewell! At the conclusion of the song the singer was past the cluster of palms. The last word farewell floated past Ben-Hur weighted with all the sweet sorrow of parting.
For, could we but once look upon his face in rest, then should we forget these inferior attributes; just as, looking upon the Memnonian statues, one forgets the horrid nicknames of "Shandy" and "Andy" which they have received from casual travellers, observing merely their grotesque features.
Through a certain Bedouin-like conformation, which, however, is idealized by the lofty, massive forehead, and by the prevailing subtilty of the general expression, it seems fitted to desert solitudes; and in this respect it is truly Memnonian.
In another respect, also, is it Memnonian, that, whenever should rest upon its features the morning sunlight, we should surely await its responsive requiem or its trembling jubilate. These, too, are Memnonian, as is also that infinite distance which seems to interpose between its subtile meanings and the very possibility of interpretation.
Yet was there something about her of the earth-sweetness that clings even to the loveliest, star-ambitious, earth-born thing. She was not all immortal, as man is not all mortal. She was the sweetness of the strength of the oak, the soul born of the sun kissing its green leaves in the still Memnonian mornings, of moon and stars kissing its green leaves in the still Trophonian nights.
It was a Memnonian cry, the greeting of the hard, harsh image of man, rough-hewn, flinty, granitic, uttering a note of joy, acclaiming the new risen sun. By now it was almost day. The east glowed opalescent. All about him Annixter saw the land inundated with light. But there was a change. Overnight something had occurred.
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