10 In the Forest of Stone

travelled over the land with the relics of
saints, collecting treasure of all sorts for the
expense of the work; how sometimes the
people came in hundreds dragging great
oaks and loads of quarried stone, and bring-
ing fat hogs, beans, corn, and beer for the
builders and their workmen; how even
queens carried block or beam to the masons,
so that with their own hands they might help
in the glorious labour; and poor old women
gave assistance by cooking food and washing
and spinning and weaving and making and
mending; how when the foundations were
blessed kings and princes and powerful
barons laid each a stone, and when the choir
sang the antiphon, “And the foundations
of the wall were garnished with all manner of
precious stones,” they threw costly rings and
jewels and chains of gold into the trench;
and how years and generations passed away,
and abbots and bishops and architects and .
masons and sculptors and labourers died,
but new men took their places, and still the
vast work went on, and the beautiful pile
rose higher and higher into the everlasting
heavens.

Then, too, we looked back at the vanished