Stele

“ Plain stelè of Hippocrates and Baukis; surmounted by an acroterion in low relief, of palmette form.
Inscribed Ἱπποκράτης, Βαυκίς. Below the surface of the 305 stelè is flat, and probably was painted.—Athens. Elgin Coll.
Pentelic marble; height, 4 feet 1 inch; width, 1 foot 3 inches. Mus. Marbles, IX., pl. 29, fig. 4. Synopsis, No. 351 (175) ; Ellis, Elgin Marbles, II., p. 152; C.I.G., 958; C.I.A., II., 3810. Greek Inscriptions in Brit. Mus., CXX.
601. Fragment of a plain stelè, surmounted by an acroterion, in the form of a palmette in low relief, springing from acanthus leaves. ”

“ FRAGMENTS OF STÊLÆ.
The third fragment (No. 144) , 2 ft. 6 in. long, 2 ft. broad, and 6 in. thick, is evidently the upper right-hand part of a stêlé. This also consists of a soft calcareous stone, and the sculpture is consequently much defaced. It [95] is divided by broad fillets into three compartments, of which the upper one as well as that to the right contain spirals, whilst we see the fore-part of two horses in that to the left below. ”

“ Two great zones of light, like the knees of the angel of the dawn, showed, and, far above, wings in tumultuous colour and wide-spread arms of light struggling as if to smash down the crystal doors—and then, tumult dying and colour fading, at a stroke the western sky showed not a single star and in the eastern sky stood day. ”

“ Gigantic apparitions arise across the world of water, wavering like shadows on the clouds. Steel-clad, clothed in skins, casqued in steel, their winged heads bend and nod and move against the clouds. And even they are changing as clouds change shape. I see steel limbs turn red and naked. ”

“ Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race.
IV. In martial sports I had my cunning tried,
And yet to break more staves did me address;
While with the people's shouts, I must confess,
Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with pride.
When Cupid, having me (his slave) descried
In Mars's livery, prancing in the press,
'What now, Sir Fool,' said he, 'I would no less.
Look here, I say.' I look'd, and Stella spied,
Who hard by made a window send forth light. ”

“ It is told me that thou, a dwarf and weakling, dost covet the rule of all the lands under the wide heavens, and that, like a storm of wind-blown snow, driven hither and thither, thou passest over all lands with a train of ruffians behind thee. ”

“ The primary stem ster is common in the same sense to the Aryan group (comp. Mond and Sonne) ; to it correspond Sans. star, Zend stare, Gr. ἀστήρ, ἀστρον, Lat. stella (for *sterula) . Whether this root ster belongs to the Aryan root stṛ, ‘to scatter’ (Stern, lit. ‘dispenser of light’?) ”

“ The Sixth Seal 12 And I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became [pg 068] black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood; 13 and the stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind. ”

“ And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
17. For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?
Vs. 12-17.—The sixth seal is opened, like the rest, by the hand of the Mediator, and here "his right hand teacheth terrible things." "By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation." (Ps. lxv. 5.) The awful scene disclosed would seem to be a beginning of answer to the importunate cry of the "souls under the altar," as in the foregoing vision. ”

“ For a time they lost sight of the sun’s orb, that, rising behind their backs, was hidden by the mountain mass, and casting a purple shadow over the forest-clad country before them. Soon, however, the bright orb, soaring into the sky, sent its beams before them, and they continued their journey under the cheering light. ”

“ I will only remark that in almost all cases where a sculptured stela is dashed down by the accidental fall of a forest giant, the picture facing upward is destroyed, but the one turned downward is marvellously well-preserved. ”

“ Gabriel placed the seal on this temple of mystery, and none but Michael can or may break the seal of sovereignty affixed by the Bright and Morning Star. Some day you shall look upon this silent temple, even though you may not penetrate its mystery. ”

“ And such mythical battles must have seemed so much the more natural in the age in which the greater number of the myths were conceived and produced, as we know it to have been the age which archæologists call the age of stone. The sun, as a dwarf, destroys the vast cloud, the vast darkness, viewed as a giant. ”

“ A long army of starlings trailed rapidly across the horizon, a wriggling motion marking their course like the motion in the body of a gigantic snake. Everything on the hills seemed, as the light reddened and failed, to grow vast, grotesque. ”

“ I cannot see—but darkness, death and darkness.
Even here, into my centre of repose,
The shady visions come to domineer,
Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp—
Fall!—No, by Tellus and her briny robes!
Over the fiery frontier of my realms
I will advance a terrible right arm
Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove,
And bid old Saturn take his throne again. ”

“ Here we have the light and darkness, the sun and the night, battling with each other; the sun fights with a younger brother, another luminary, the comet; the comet is broken up; it flies for life, the red blood (the red clay) streaming from it, and flint-stones appearing on the earth wherever the blood (the clay) falls. The victorious sun re-establishes himself in the east. And then the myth of the sun merges into the legends concerning a great people, who were the fathers of mankind who dwelt "in the east," on the borders of the great eastern ocean, the Atlantic. ”

“ There was the faintest little rattle from the handle, and then I dimly saw a thin slit of subdued light. There was a lamp burning somewhere far down the passage, and it just sufficed to make the outside visible from the darkness of our room. The greyish slit grew broader and broader, very gradually, very gently, and then outlined against it I saw the dark figure of a man. He was squat and crouching, with the silhouette of a bulky and misshapen dwarf. ”

“ The lustrous eyes drooped, losing their brilliance; but when they looked up again only serene confident comprehension was there.
"In forest days none of us were Star-gazers, for there was no Rim to the world on which the following Footsteps could be seen. But when we left the forest for the upland, with its milch kine and seed grains, we learnt to look; for there was the Rim. And all things went to stand on it and disappear among the Stars.
"So, gazing, we saw that the Stars disappeared also; they, too, were following the Footsteps. ”

“ The halo, the deep water—streaming through the rent cloud, glowing in the coal, quivering in the lightning, flashing in the topaz and the ruby, veiled behind the pure alabaster, mellowed and clouding itself in the pearl-light contrasted with shadow, shading off and copying itself in the double rainbow like voice and echo—light seen within light—light from every source and in all its shapes illuminates, irradiates, gives glory to the Commedia.... ”

“ There were thousands of them, all about a size, all spherical, and all placed together as exactly as the panes in a cathedral window. Though hid from view, the moon was in the zenith, and its downward rays fell on the cloudlets, illuminating them and transmitting a ghostly light, reflected by a ghostly sea. ”

“ The star that was seen in the east we consider to have been a new star, unlike any of the other well-known planetary bodies, either those in the firmament above or those among the lower orbs, but partaking of the nature of those celestial bodies which appear at times, such as comets, or those meteors which resemble beams of wood, or beards, or wine jars, or any of those other names by which the Greeks are accustomed to describe their varying appearances. ”

“ They were massing around us and hanging motionless while beneath us the palely glowing gigantic dark star swept on, out into the darkness of trackless space until it hung like a titanic feeble moon in the heavens before us, retreating farther and farther from the shining stars of our Galaxy, carrying with it the glowing cities and the hordes of the tentacle-peoples, never to return. ”

“ The "beast that was, and is not, and yet is," is a mysterious personage as well as the woman; therefore all who "dwell upon the earth,"—not in "heaven, wonder," (ch. xiii. 3-6;) —that is, all the vassals of Antichrist, distinguished from those whose "names are in the book of life,"—the two witnesses.—"The seven heads" of the beast signify seven mountains, on which Rome literally stands, namely, Capitoline, Palatine, Aventine, Esquiline, Coelian, Viminal and Quirinal. ”

“ The lute alone, and not the voices low
That sang of old to some forgotten touch.
The lamp I give, but not the glimmering flame
Some alien fire must light, some alien dusk
Enisle, ere it illume your land and sea.
The shell I give you, Ares, not the song
Of murmuring winds and waves once haunting it;
The cage, but not love’s wings that come and go. ”

“ Now the small, glittering point of light seemed to recede, then to approach and expand, and then to wave and undulate all around him. Sometimes that bright, lightning-like ray would shiver and tremble, and then straighten out with metal-like rigidity, and insinuate itself into his very being like the invisible point of a spear. ”

“ The stars in the stream fluctuate with an alien motion. Reversed, estranged, isolated, every shape of large stars escapes and returns, escapes and returns. Fitful in the steady night, those constellations, so few, so whole, and so remote, have a suddenness of gleaming life. You imagine that some unexampled gale might make them seem to shine with such a movement in the veritable sky ”

“ Cler. Here, madam, shall be your own picture, here the palfrey, and here the dwarf—The dwarf must be very little, or we shan't have room for him.
Niece. A dwarf cannot be too little.
Cler. I'll make him a blackamoor to distinguish him from the other too powerful dwarf [Sighs] —the Cupid—I'll place that beauteous boy near you, 'twill look very natural—He'll certainly take you for his mother Venus.
Niece. I leave these particulars to your own fancy.
Cler. [97] Please, madam, to uncover your neck a little; a little lower still—a little, little lower.
Niece. I'll be drawn thus, if you please, sir. ”

“ The night was calm and rainless, to be sure, but a heavy impenetrable mass of dark grey clouds, so low as to envelop all the mountain summits around, obscured the vault from horizon to horizon, from sunset to sunrise, so that not a single meteor could be seen by the keenest eye, even if above that pall of cloud the display had been the most brilliant and splendid conceivable. ”

“ O ye effeminate children of sloth, it is worth snatching a lazy hour from your feverish beds, to rise before the dawn, and watch how the shadows of the night gradually soften and flee away at the approach of the sun-rising, and how the eastern sky lifts her curtains of crimson and gold to welcome his coming. ”

“ Stella was a little above medium height, plump and graceful, and withal a girl whom all could admire, but whose natural reserve held aloof from her shrine the many lovers who would gladly pay their homage to so fair a divinity. ”

“ Sculptured stelae, honorific or funerary, all with pyramidal or slightly rounded upper ends, and showing a single regal or divine figure or two figures, have come to light at Bor, Marash, Sinjerli, Jerablus, Babylon, &c. These, like most of the rock-panels, are all marked as Hittite by accompanying pictographic inscriptions. The wall-blocks are seldom inscribed, the exceptions (e.g. the Arslan Tepe lion-hunt and certain blocks from Marash and Jerablus) being not more certainly wall-dados than stelae. ”

“ Shrinks on the horizon’s edge, while, from above,
One star with insolent and victorious light
Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams,
Like arrows through a fainting antelope,
Strikes its weak form to death. ”

“ On alien seraphim that seek with desperate wings,
Flown from their dying orb, the confines of thy heaven;
Yea, still thy whisper moves, and magically stirs
To life the shapeless dust in shattered sepulchers ”

“ At one point a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a huge gravestone above the surrounding houses, terminating in a square top or a blunt dome; and yonder is another, more ideal in its look, rising slight and fine, and with many ascents and alternating pauses, to reach a delicate pinnacle at great height in the air. ”

“ Above the warm, brown plain the giants towered remotely alien like ancient kings on purple thrones, and the contrast of their gleaming drifts of snow, with the dry, grassy foothills through which we were winding our way, was like that of deep winter set opposite to early September. ”

“ Furthermore men told of this dwarf-folk, that they have among them sorcerers who work such spells that the might of the dwarfs is increased an hundred-fold, and that when the time shall come, these sorcerers will run through the air between heaven and earth, swifter than the wind, and will slay a child, and will dip the weapons of the dwarf-folk in its blood, and each of the dwarfs shall have with him a hundred warriors on horseback, armed with mace and spear. ”

“ You know the appearance of the lizard, and the star-like shape of the spots which are sown over its back. Well, in Latin it is called 'stellio,' from stella, a star; just as the basilisk had in Greek this name of 'little king' because of the shape as of a kingly crown which the spots on its head might be made by the fancy to assume. Follow up the etymology of 'squirrel,' and you will find that the graceful creature which bears this name has obtained it as being wont to sit under the shadow of its own tail. ”