Rose window

“ My fancy in connexion with you will picture always a rose-bowered window set in a grey stone wall—just a frame for you, with your moonlit hair and eyes like beautiful stars. Always I shall see you like that—inaccessible, while I stand below and gaze upward. ”

“ High up in the north wall of the easterly transepts is a rose window which retains its thirteenth century glazing in the large central circle, but alas! white glass replaces all but the borders of the outer circles, thus drowning the old glass in a glare of light [Pg 47] and utterly extinguishing the splendid glow which would otherwise delight our eyes. Although the handsome five-light Decorated window on the south side of St. Anselm’s Chapel (lying off the south choir aisle) has lost its original glass, the records of the cost contain features of interest. ”

“ There green trees and pale blue water against a deep blue sky and deeper blue hills, anticipate a favourite sixteenth century colour scheme; but the glass is a mere wreck of what was once probably a fine window.
Figure groups on a considerable scale are chiefly to be found in the great “bull’s-eye” windows, which are a striking feature in Italian Gothic churches, occupying a position where in France would have been a rose—over the West door, for example. ”

“ The general idea of such treatment of a fan or conoid may be said to be parallel to that of a circular or rose window. The ribs are viewed as radiating mullions, and are made to multiply in number as the circle expands, and usually to terminate round the outer boundary with a series of tracery forms like the heads of two-light windows. A good rose-window of late date, if imagined to be elastic, and drawn out from its centre into a conoidal form, would make a good compartment of fan groining; or a groining fan compressed into a plane would make a good rose-window. ”

“ Occasionally a window, so deep that under ordinary conditions of light it is obscure, may need the [Pg 383] strongest possible illumination; but even in the case of very deep-toned windows—such, for example, as those in the transepts of the Duomo at Florence—the glass, as a whole, is best seen by a sober light. You get the maximum of colour effect with the minimum of hurt to any individual window, if there be any hurt at all. A really garish window may be beautiful as the light wanes. The great North Rose at Notre Dame (Paris) is impressive at dusk. ”

“ The rose windows, which are placed as well over the entrances of the transepts, as over the greater one to the west, are no less magnificent in their dimensions, than beautiful in their patterns, and gorgeous in their colors. ”

“ Remember the darkness, the nightingale’s song,
That night in the blackness, the thick-flowing dark?
I opened the window to the silvery darkness,
As winding about me the weir’s murmur fell.
Remember the lilac’s heavy smell,
In the yielding depths of that silvery night?
I opened the window to the darkness that echoed
The weir, the nightingale, rings on the moon,
And steps on the road that were fading away.
I opened the window: steps died into silence.
The steps of our sweet, shy, distant sins,
In the flowing darkness, the silvery silence. ”

“ It was her custom to keep both her windows uncurtained at night, so that, waking, she might exchange a look with his stars, and sleeping, let them look at her. One window was always wide open. Like a flower, she craved for all the light and air that heaven and earth could give. ”

“ The fashion of the day builds plate-glass windows round them, but it is truly a gross superfluity.” The room in which Lady Cressage and the luncheon-table awaited them was of a more hospitable aspect. A broad expanse of lawn, and of distant trees and sky-line fading away in the sunny autumn haze, made a luminous picture of the high embrasured window stretching almost from corner to corner across one side. By contrast with the other apartments, the light here was brilliant. ”

“ Out of windows we walk on to lawns in summer and meet men and women, and in winter windows are drums for the splendid music of storms that makes us feel so masterly round our fires. The windows of the great cathedrals are all their meaning. But for windows we should have to go out-of-doors to see daylight. After the sun, which they serve, I know of nothing so beneficent as windows. Fie upon the ungrateful man that has no window-god in his house, and thinks himself too great a philosopher to bow down to windows! ”

“ As the window falls to pieces a flood of light invades my cell, and I feel the warm air, and smell a perfume as of new-mown hay. For a moment I am blinded, suffocated, then with both hands I seize the iron bars and draw myself up to the narrow window ledge. A confused noise of breaking glass gradually passing away in the distance, and the cracking of wood fills the pure air of the glorious summer morning; while on all sides are heard the voices of anxious men and women, all asking the same questions, “What has happened? Why are we revolting?” ”

“ Here, then, is called into requisition the art of the glass-stainer; without any vital diminution of light, the scheme of colour is no longer disturbed, a perfect chromatic harmony is established, and the window serves a double purpose, by admitting the necessary illumination from without, and enhancing the beauty of the building within. ”

“ Light (God’s eldest daughter) is a principal beauty in a building; yet it shines not alike from all parts of heaven. An east window welcomes the infant beams of the sun before they are of strength to do any harm, and is offensive to none but a sluggard. A south window in summer is a chimney with a fire in it, and needs the screen of a curtain. In a west window in summer time, toward night, the sun grows low and over-familiar, with more light than delight. A north window is best for butteries and cellars, where the beer will be sour for the sun’s smiling on it. ”

“ Fault, no doubt, has been found with the windows that they do not throw down the light sufficiently from above, but the windows themselves are traceried and filled with beautiful stained glass. Upon entering by the great portal at the west, the eye is caught in the far distance by the glimmering colours of the grand east window, whose dimensions are colossal, as may be gathered from the fact that its traceried compartments comprise no fewer than 350 pictures in glass, copies, in many instances, of known paintings. ”

“ It is the fashion now-a-days to have painted windows; and a very beautiful fashion it is, and extremely worthy of encouragement in this climate, where the general absence of colours renders it desirable that they should be collected wherever they can, so as to increase a feeling of cheerfulness and warmth. When the sun strikes through a painted window, 68 it seems as if Heaven itself were recommending to us the brilliance with which it has painted its flowers and its skies. ”

“ But still we think to ourselves that in the old scenes all things are as they were. We say to ourselves: The bird sings as of old in the elm-trees at the garden-foot; the rose-bush blossoms as of old against our favourite window. ”

“ The splendor and the squalor are alike hidden by this misty curtain, which settles down by my window, and on my spirits, causing an unpleasant gloom. How the passers-by jostle each other with their umbrellas, and of what a dull color are the brick houses opposite! ”

“ Even the rattle of the fierce thunder did not frighten it, and when the wind sighed and sobbed and moaned as if to beg the little window to be sensible and take the washing which the rain was trying to give it, the obstinate window merely shook in its frame and answered, "I tell you I am not like other windows. Every body admires me. ”

“ There are a great many lovely big windows, all ready to let in the air and the sun, but they are as carefully covered with brown lace curtains under heavy stuff ones as though a whole row of houses were just opposite, with peering eyes at every window trying to look in, instead of there only being fields, and trees, and birds. ”

“ In other words, the true stained glass window—in a church building worthy of that name—is not now to give the beholder the impression that he is looking out through an opening and seeing, of something beyond, so much as the size of the opening will permit: in a word, the spectacular impression of looking into some beautiful out-door world through a hole in the wall. The beholder must be conscious still of looking at the wall itself, the translucent part of it, which confines him within the edifice as much as the stone or the brick. ”

“ This window also had a shade, the shade was lowered, and on it the unseen lamp perfectly outlined the form of a third person. Without a mutter or the slightest gesture of passion, the man under the window raised the thing in his grasp as high as his shoulder, lowered it again and glanced around. He seemed to tremble. The man at his back did not move; his gaze, too, was now fastened, with liveliest manifestations of interest, on the window-shade and the moving image that darkened it. ”

“ So little light lives inside the churches of my churchyards, when the two are co-existent, that it is often only by an accident and after long acquaintance that I discover their having stained glass in some odd window. The westering sun slants into the churchyard by some unwonted entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old tombstone, and a window that I thought was only dirty, is for the moment all bejewelled. Then the light passes and the colours die. ”

“ Such windows are obviously windows. The huge sheets of plate glass that people are so proud of are all very well for shops, but they are seldom right in small houses.
I remember seeing one plate glass window that was well worth while. It was in the mountain studio of an artist and it was fully eight by ten feet—one unbroken sheet of glass which framed a marvelous vista of mountain and valley. It goes without saying that such a window requires no curtain other than one that is to be drawn at night. ”

“ One, from his high bright window, looking down, Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town, And thinks its towers are like a dream. The western windows flame in the sun's last flare, Pale roofs begin to gleam. Looking down from a window high in a wall He sees us all; Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain, Searching the sky, and going our ways again, Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . ”

“ In villages where there are no street lamps, the white man's window is a lamp all night of the night before the mail. From steamers that are tied to trees among the rushes, in rivers that you do not know, the officer on watch may look all night through such a window at such a man writing, writing a long, long letter—the beating heart of man, articulate in all that heartless darkness. ”

“ There was one window at the gable end: a broken window, with fragments of glass lying about it. The light of the moon penetrated the window, making the fragments of glass glisten, and forming a pale avenue across the dusty floor.
There were old chests here and there, all mysteriously closed—perhaps locked. There were old garments hanging in obscure places. They made you think of persons lurking there in the dark. Outside the broken window an owl in a dark tree hooted mournfully.
Everychild crossed the attic cautiously. ”

“ The stained glass windows are one of its distinguishing marks of beauty. "It is a woful thing, a sad necessity, that any Christian soul should pass from earth without once seeing an antique painted window, with the bright Italian sunshine glowing through it. ”

“ A first glance at the windows produces only the effect of a gorgeous maze of colouring, through which we marvel that any clue should have been found. Next to the general effect of the ineffably harmonious blending of hues, the audacious vividness of the hues themselves, red and green and blue and gold and purple, is what first impresses the eye. Then we notice how, down the central light of each window, stand, one above another, four great figures, human or angelic, each displaying an inscribed scroll. ”

“ The training of vines and trees about the summer-house window is often delightfully conceived. We recall the circular window of one that presented a most beautiful appearance. Three sides of the summer-house were closed by permanent plaster partitions, tinted a rich brown color, with a very broad-eaved thatched roof throwing its dark shade on the matted floor. In the partition opposite the open side was a perfectly circular window five feet in diameter. There was no frame or moulding to this opening, simply the plastering finished squarely at the border ”

“ A sketch is, if it be any good at all, always worth a page of description, and so we will let the accompanying illustration take the place of mere verbiage. Only let it be observed that the larger gable and the window in it are new, having been rebuilt in 1880.
The great window, entirely constructed of oak, is the chief feature of the exterior, just as the noble room it lights is the principal object of interest in the house itself. ”

“ Only one who, like myself, has the happiness to occupy a room with a six-light window, twelve feet wide and five feet high, through which the sun pours in and floods the whole room, whilst without the keen March wind is cutting, cold and cruel, can appreciate the blessedness of such a window, can tell the exhilarating effect it has on the spirits, how it lets the sun in, not only through the room, and on to one's book or paper, but into the very heart and soul as well. ”

“ Sundown had brought no gleam to lift the pall of the dying day, but the monotonous grey of the sky was still sufficiently light to enable a practised eye to make out that the head of the window was filled with a broken medley of ancient glass, where translucent blues and yellows and reds mingled like the harmony of an old patchwork quilt. Of the lower divisions of the window, those at the sides had no colour to clothe their nakedness, and remained in ghostly whiteness ”