t the thought of my Church being
so nearly finished; I remember, too, how a kind of misgiving mingled with
the exultation, which, try all I could, I was unable to shake off; I
thought then it was a rebuke for my pride, well, perhaps it was. The
figure I had to carve was Abraham, sitting with a blossoming tree on each
side of him, holding in his two hands the corners of his great robe, so
that it made a mighty fold, wherein, with their hands crossed over their
breasts, were the souls of the faithful, of whom he was called Father: I
stood on the scaffolding for some time, while Margaret's chisel worked on
bravely down below. I took mine in my hand, and stood so, listening to
the noise of the masons inside, and two monks of the Abbey came and stood
below me, and a knight, holding his little daughter by the hand, who
every now and then looked up at him, and asked him strange questions. I
did not think of these long, but began to think of Abraham, yet I could
not think of him sitting there, quiet and solemn, while the
Judgment-Trumpet was being blown; I rather thought of him as he looked
when he chased those kings so far; riding far ahead of any of his
company, with his mail-hood off his head, and lying in grim folds down
his back, with the strong west wind blowing his wild black hair far out
behind him, with the wind rippling the long scarlet pennon of his lance;
riding there amid the rocks and the sands alone; with the last gleam of
the armour of the beaten kings disappearing behind the winding of the
pass; with his company a long, long way behind, quite out of sight,
though their trumpets sounded faintly among the clefts of the rocks; and
so I thought I saw him, till in his fierce chase he lept, horse and man,
into a deep river, quiet, swift, and smooth; and there was something in
the moving of the water-lilies as the breast of the horse swept them
aside, that suddenly took away the thought of Abraham and brought a
strange dream of lands I had never seen; and the first was of a place
where I was quite alone, standing by the side of a river, and there was
the sound of singing a very long way off, but no living thing of any kind
could be seen, and the land was quite flat, quite without hills, and
quite without trees too, and the river wound very much, making all kinds
of quaint curves, and on the side where I stood there grew nothing but
long grass, but on the other side grew, quite on to the horizon, a great
sea of red co