With "The Lamp of Sacrifice" may be compared Wordsworth's first sonnet on King's College Chapel, Cambridge: —
Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only this immense
And glorious Work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more.”
Cf. also Kenan's “Prayer on the Acropolis” in his Recollections of My Youth (English ed., 1892, p. 52): ”What adds so much to the beauty of the buildings is their absolute honesty and the respect shown to the Divinity. The parts of the building not seen by the public are as well constructed as those which meet the eye ; and there are none of those deceptions which, in French churches more particularly, give the idea of being intended to mislead the Divinity as to the value of the offering.”
Last modified 30 April 2024