A young man singing!  Let him be the tutelary god of this place, whoever he be, whether only some humble, happy slave, or the “superintendent of song and of the recreation of the king.”  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.  Only the upper half of the figure is left, but its size is really terrific.  This colossus was fifty-seven feet high.  It weighed eight hundred tons.  Eight hundred tons of syenite went to its making, and across the shoulders its breadth is, or was, over twenty-two feet.  But one does not think of measurements as one looks upon it.  It is stupendous.  That is obvious and that is enough.  Nor does one think of its finish, of its beautiful, rich color, of any of its details.  One thinks of it as a tremendous personage laid low, as the mightiest of the mighty fallen.  One thinks of it as the dead Rameses whose glory still looms over Egypt like a golden cloud that will not disperse.  One thinks of it as the soul that commanded, and lo! there rose up above the sands, at the foot of the hills of Thebes, the exultant Ramesseum.

XII

DEIR-EL-BAHARI