Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 446, etc. (1665).
Thamu´dites (3 syl.), people of the tribe of Thamûd. They refused to believe in Mahomet without seeing a miracle. On a grand festival, Jonda, prince of the Thamûdites, told Sâleh, the prophet, that the god which answered by miracle should be acknowledged God by both. Jonda and the Thamûdites first called upon their idols, but received no answer. “Now,” said the prince to Sâleh, “if God will bring a camel big with young from that rock, we will believe.” Scarcely had he spoken, when the rock groaned and shook and opened; and forthwith there came a camel, which there and then cast its young one. Jonda became at once a convert, but the Thamûdites held back. To add to the miracle, the camel went up and down among the people crying, “Ho! every one that thirsteth, let him come, and I will give him milk!” (compare Isaiah lv. 1.).
Unto the tribe of Thamûd we sent their brother, Sâleh. He said, “O, my people, worship God; ye have no god besides him. Now hath a manifest proof come unto you from the Lord. This she-camel of God is a sign unto you; therefore dismiss her freely ... and do her no hurt, lest a painful punishment seize upon you.”--Al Korân, vii.
⁂ There is a slight resemblance between this story and that of the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal, so graphically described in 1 Kings xviii.
Tham´yris (Blind), a Thracian poet, who challenged the Muses to a contest of song, and was deprived of sight, voice, and musical skill for his presumption (Pliny, Natural History, iii. 33, and vii. 57). Plutarch says he had the finest voice of any one, and that he wrote a poem on the War of the Titans with the Gods. Suidas tells us that he composed a poem on creation. And Plato, in his Republic (last book), feigns that the spirit of the blind old bard passed into a nightingale at death. Milton speaks of:
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæon´idês [Homer].
Paradise Lost, iii. 35 (1665).
Thanatopsis. “View of, or meditation upon death.”
W. C. Bryant’s poem bearing this name was written when he was but nineteen years old (1818). It is the best of his poems.
Thancmar, châtelain of Bourbourg, the great enemy of Bertulphe, the provost of Bruges. Charles “the Good,” earl of Flanders, made a law in 1127, that a serf was always a serf till manumitted, and whoever married a serf became a serf. By these absurd laws, the provost of Bruges became a serf, because his father was Thancmar’s serf. By the same laws, Bouchard, though a knight of long descent became Thancmar’s serf, because he married Constance, the provost’s daughter. The result of these laws was that Bertulphe slew the earl and then himself, Constance went mad and died, Bouchard and Thancmar slew each other in fight, and all Bruges was thrown into confusion.--S. Knowles, The Provost of Bruges (1836).