Explore "Westminster Abbey" by Washington Irving on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When I behold, with deep astonishment, / To famous Westminster how there resorte, / Living in brasse or stoney monument, / The princes and the worthies of all sorte; / Doe not I see reformde nobilitie, / Without contempt, or pride, or ostentation, / And looke upon offenselesse majesty, / Naked of pomp or earthly domination? / And how a play-game of a painted stone / Contents the quiet now and silent sprites, / Whome all the world which late they stood upon / Could not content nor quench their appetites. / Life is a frost of cold felicitie, / And death the thaw of all our vanitie. / "Christolero's Epigrams," by T. B. 1598
On one of those sober and rather melancholy days in the latter part of autumn when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together, and throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed several hours in rambling about Westminster Abbey. There was something congenial to the season in the mournful magnificence of the old pile, and as I passed its threshold it seemed like stepping back into the regions of antiquity and losing myself among the shades of former ages.