that it almost reached agony--the awe and joy one had in their great
beauty. But of all these beautiful times, I remember the whole only of
autumn-tide; the others come in bits to me; I can think only of parts of
them, but all of autumn; and of all days and nights in autumn, I remember
one more particularly. That autumn day the church was nearly finished
and the monks, for whom we were building the church, and the people, who
lived in the town hard by, crowded round us oftentimes to watch us
carving.

Now the great Church, and the buildings of the Abbey where the monks
lived, were about three miles from the town, and the town stood on a hill
overlooking the rich autumn country: it was girt about with great walls
that had overhanging battlements, and towers at certain places all along
the walls, and often we could see from the churchyard or the Abbey
garden, the flash of helmets and spears, and the dim shadowy waving of
banners, as the knights and lords and men-at-arms passed to and fro along
the battlements; and we could see too in the town the three spires of the
three churches; and the spire of the Cathedral, which was the tallest of
the three, was gilt all over with gold, and always at night-time a great
lamp shone from it that hung in the spire midway between the roof of the
church and the cross at the top of the spire. The Abbey where we built
the Church was not girt by stone walls, but by a circle of poplar trees,
and whenever a wind passed over them, were it ever so little a breath, it
set them all a-ripple; and when the wind was high, they bowed and swayed
very low, and the wind, as it lifted the leaves, and showed their silvery
white sides, or as again in the lulls of it, it let them drop, kept on
changing the trees from green to white, and white to green; moreover,
through the boughs and trunks of the poplars, we caught glimpses of the
great golden corn sea, waving, waving, waving for leagues and leagues;
and among the corn grew burning scarlet poppies, and blue corn-flowers;