Bare ruined choirs


Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang
Shakespeare Sonnet 73

Example
Castle Acre Priory, Norfolk

English monastic ruins are almost more impressive than a living monastery; they are doubly dramatic. They pose formidable questions about God and the soul, to which the light and shadows of their ruined architecture offer the merest hint of answers. So much blighted beauty is awe-inspiring. They are as unexplained as Stonehenge, and the grass preaches as powerfully as the stones. One wants to share in their massive darkness.
The Frontiers of Paradise by Peter Levi

Example
Wymondham Abbey, Norfolk

History, which tells of the slow rise of civilized peoples, and of many fortunate epochs in which things of beauty were created in profusion, has also many a melancholy record of the whoelsale destruction of the beautiful works of man, all too rare in any age. In the long list of those who have destroyed things fair and lovely - a list that has seen a lamentable increase in length even while these volumes have been in writing - Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, who rid themselves laso of many just men, must find a place of note.Bare Ruined Choirs by David Knowles, first published 1976

Example
Binham Priory, Norfolk

Comments

Pliable said…
Open message from Pliable to Knightmare.com

Thank you for posting a message On An Overgrown Path accusing me of being an 'image thief.'

This is the first time in years that there has been an objection to linking (not copying) an image. And it is interesting that you appear to have obtained the image from English Heritage, a publicly funded body, in the first place.

A polite email would have resulted in the image being withdrawn.

'Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.'

Arthur Schopenhauer

A copy of this correspondence has been put on the relevant page.
12:35 pm
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