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[Page 13]
Amiens
12/7/16
longer one looks the more enchanted one becomes as fresh beauties disclose themselves. Inside the loftiness of the ceiling & the boldness of the pillars impress one. The light is splendid. Over the front entrance door is a rose window meant to represent the wheel of fortune. The two rose windows on either side of the church above the side doors are the most beautiful one can imagine. About the glass there appears to be a subtle caressing softness, & the tracery of the framework is a marvel of intricacy. No clear design emerges from these windows, it is the marvel of colour that constitutes their beauty not the art of the scenes represented there. Little figures and little scenes seem to make up the whole window.
Behind the high altar are 8 radiating chapels with huge stained glass windows all exquisitely done. Directly in the centre high up is a big plain glass expanse of windows which looks a little out of place among its coloured brothers but adds much to the church's lighting. Two bronze tombs (the only two in France) of old dignitaries are on either side of the nave as you enter & on the left is a marvellous piece of shining bronze work in the shape of of a huge figure of a saint apparently crucified.
The choir stalls which are the most beautiful wood carving, were being all encased in girders and sandbags but we managed to get in & see that most marvellous wood work in the world. Sweet and young grained wood it is: oak trained & chosen for such work sound now as 500 years since. Under the carvers hand it seems to cut like clay, to fold like silk, to grow like living branches, to leap like living flame. Canopy crowning canopy pinnacle piercing pinnacle – it shoots & breathes itself into an enchanted glade inextricable, imperishable, fuller of leafage than any forest and fuller of story than any book. Each seat and each partition is carved most delicately into lords & ladies, dogs & animals of all kinds & a hundred else.