These columns bulged,
almost like great fruits swollen out by their heady strength of blood.
They towered up in crowds.
The heavy roof, broken in places most
mercifully to show squares and oblongs of that perfect, calling blue,
was like a frowning brow. And yet I was with grace, with gentleness,
with lightness, because in the place of the dead I was again with the
happy, living walls. Above me, on the roof, there was a gleam of
palest blue, like the blue I have sometimes seen at morning on the
Ionian sea just where it meets the shore. The double rows of gigantic
columns stretched away, tall almost as forest trees, to right of me
and to left, and were shut in by massive walls, strong as the walls of
a fortress. And on these columns, and on these walls, dead painters
and gravers had breathed the sweet breath of life. Here in the sun,
for me alone, as it seemed, a population followed their occupations.
Men walked, and kneeled, and stood, some white and clothed, some nude,
some red as the red man's child that leaped beyond the sea. And here
was the lotus-flower held in reverent hands, not the rose-lotus, but
the blossom that typified the rising again of the sun, and that, worn
as an amulet, signified the gift of eternal youth. And here was hawk-
faced Horus, and here a priest offering sacrifice to a god, belief in
whom has long since passed away.
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