Читать книгу Stones of the Temple; Or, Lessons from the Fabric and Furniture of the Church - Field Walter - Страница 11
CHAPTER X
THE PAVEMENT
Оглавление"Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours."
Isa. liv. 11
"How all things glow with life and thought,
Where'er our faithful fathers trod!
The very ground with speech is fraught,
The air is eloquent of God.
In vain would doubt or mockery hide
The buried echoes of the past;
A voice of strength – a voice of pride —
Here dwells amid the stones and blast!
"Still points the tower, and pleads the bell,
The solemn arches breathe in stone,
Window and wall have lips to tell
The mighty faith of days unknown; —
Yea! flood, and breeze, and battle shock
Shall beat upon this Church in vain,
She stands a daughter of the rock —
The changeless God's eternal fane!"
R. S. Hawker.
Mr. Acres and his family attended Morning Prayer at St. Catherine's the day following the Vicar's lecture; and after service they examined with greater interest than ever they had done before the floor of the church – indeed Mr. Acres confessed that till that morning he had never had the curiosity to walk up either of the aisles of the church with the view of finding any object of interest on the pavement. In the course of their search they now discovered a large flat stone, hitherto unknown even to the Vicar; the stone, when cleansed from the dust which had accumulated upon it (for it was placed in a remote corner of the church), was very white; it was engraved with the figure of a priest, and the incised lines were filled with a black resinous substance, so that it almost looked like a large engraving on paper, or still more like one of the copies of brasses which Ernest had exhibited the night before50
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Monumental slabs of this description are most common on the pavement of churches in the midland counties.
