#heemskerck

Pliny the Elder tells us:

But the work that surpassed all in admiration was the colossal statue of the Sun of Rhodes, which was made by Chares of Lindos, a disciple of Lysippos, who was mentioned above. This statue was 70 cubits high [c. 32 m]; after standing 56 years it was thrown down by an earthquake [224 B.C., so the Colossus was made c. 280], but even as it lies on the ground it is a marvel. Few people can get their arms around its thumb, and the fingers are larger than most statues. Vast caves yawn within the limbs that have been broken off, and in them are seen great masses of rock, with the weight of which he [Chares] stabilized it as he was setting it up. According to tradition, the work on it took twelve years and cost 300 talents, which they raised from [the sale of] the siege machinery left behind by King Demetrios when gave up the long siege of Rhodes in disgust [305 B.C.].

Pliny, Natural History. 34.41.

‪I have walked on moonlit grass before,‬ ‪back and along outside my house.‬ ‪And if there is nothing can restore‬ ‪that time, and little enough to rouse‬ ‪so much as thought of it here within sound‬ ‪of a clean sea, beside white dunes,‬ ‪amid bottlebrush, I would not be bound‬ ‪in this night's orbit or this moon's.‬ ‪For all that I know now or have known‬ ‪is even my life itself; outspread‬ ‪where still I walk; old scenes are blown‬ ‪like sand across these hillocks; and my head‬ ‪could bury in the past. But always I have met,‬ ‪and shall meet, the fresh hour. And though one might‬ ‪read a learnt lesson through and regret‬ ‪blunders made, chances killed outright‬ ‪harms done, and that greatest harm of all—‬ ‪days wasted, profitless, without joy—‬ ‪it is not that either. The turn and fall‬ ‪of living brings me into the employ‬ ‪of wars, business, events, to run‬ ‪new errands, hardly of my own will‬ ‪along an old time's pathway, one‬ ‪overgrown but known blindfold still.‬

MARTIN VAN HEEMSKERCK

PANORAMA CON EL SECUESTRO DE HELENA EN MEDIO DE LAS MARAVILLAS DEL MUNDO ANTIGUO

At last I began to realise, first that I needed some kind of inner peace, or inward retirement... and then that these apparently stuffy old Friends were really talking sense. If I studied what they were trying to tell me, I might possibly find that the ‘place of inward retirement’ was not a place I had to go to, it was there all the time. I could know [it] wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, and find the spiritual refreshment for which... I was longing, and hear the voice of God in my heart. Thus I began to realise that prayer was not a formality, or an obligation, it was a place which was there all the time and always available.

Elfrida Vipont Foulds, 1983, in Quaker Faith and Practice 2.21.