The tour : a story of ancient Egypt - Novel by Louis Couperus - PDF

The tour: a story of ancient Egypt 

The tour: a story of ancient Egypt

The tour: a story of ancient Egypt is a Historical novel by Louis Couperus who was a Dutch novelist and poet. His oeuvre contains a wide variety of genres: lyric poetry, psychological and historical novels

Excerpt:

The night that hung over the sea was windless and blissfully silver-pure after the glowing splendour of the day ; and the great quadrireme glided evenly and softly, as though upon a lake, under a wide firmament of stars. 

The thin horizon was purely outlined around the oval sea ; and on this wide world there was nothing but the stars and the ship. But the ship resounded with music. 

There was the constantly repeated melodious phrase of the three hundred rowers, soft and monotone, in a melancholy minor, with ever the same refrain, after which the boat- swain gave out the chant, after which the chorus of rowers again threw back their long, hushed phrase of melancholy, the soft, monotonous accompaniment of the weary- ing work, the musical encouragement to re- peat the same movement of the arms and the same bending of the body over the loins. 

This music rose in a mournful swell from the ship's lower deck and harmonizing with it was the soft stroke of the oars, which were like the legs of some graceful sea-animal; the ship herself, with her swanlike raised prow, suggested an elegant monster swim- ming through the lake-calm waters of that silvery night-world, a monster with a swan's neck and hundreds of slender, evenly-moving legs and winged with two rose-yellow sails, which rose and bellied gently at the ship's own motion, but did not swell, because the wind lay still. 

Author: Louis Couperus

Publication date:1920

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