And Here, In The Ramesseum, I Found Campaniform, Or Lotus-Flower Capitals On The Columns - Here Where Rameses Once Perhaps

Dreamed of his Syrian campaigns, or of that famous combat when, "like Baal in his fury," he fought single-handed

Against the host of the Hittites massed in two thousand, five hundred chariots to overthrow him.

The Ramesseum is a temple not of winds, but of soft and kindly airs. There comes Zephyrus, whispering love to Flora incarnate in the Lotus. To every sunbeam, to every little breeze, the ruins stretch out arms. They adore the deep-blue sky, the shining, sifted sand, untrammeled nature, all that whispers, "Freedom."

So I felt that day when Ibrahim left me, so I feel always when I sit in the Ramesseum, that exultant victim of Time's here not sacrilegious hand.

All strong souls cry out secretly for liberty as for a sacred necessity of life. Liberty seems to drench the Ramesseum. And all strong souls must exult there. The sun has taken it as a beloved possession. No massy walls keep him out. No shield-shaped battlements rear themselves up against the outer world as at Medinet-Abu. No huge pylons cast down upon the ground their forms in darkness. The stone glows with the sun, seems almost to have a soul glowing with the sense, the sun-ray sense, of freedom. The heart leaps up in the Ramesseum, not frivolously, but with a strange, sudden knowledge of the depths of passionate joy there are in life and in bountiful, glorious nature.

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