Knights-At-Rest

Extract

There are some places, so it seems to me, which have in them the quality of eternity. They are, as it were, little plots from the garden of Heaven to be reinclosed when the fitful breeze of time has blown itself out, and the universe is left undisturbed again with God.

One of such places is known to me, and there may be others; for I cannot think that one spot alone in the world can be thus singled out for eternity to the exclusion of all others, though for my part I know only one. For convenience I will call it Knights-at-Rest, since there are indeed knights at rest in one at least of its quiet fields; and to give it its true name savours of sacrilege, as if one were to speak intimately of a dear friend in public. For to me it is truly a dear friend and—which is a far greater thing—it is holy ground. And if it be said that this holiness, is a figment of my mind and not inherent in the place itself, but induced by long sojourning there and happy associations; I answer that, though I have often visited it, and never unhappily, I have passed no more than a few nights there in all; that the very first evening I saw it there fell upon me in some measure at any rate a sense of the presence of eternal things; and that one other human being at least, who has even less close associations with it than I have, has known the same sensation and holds it true.

As in the soul that is near to God there exist a wide calm and a silence that pervades the jangling noises of life, so, whenever I come to Knights-at-Rest, I am caught up as on to a mountain top, where even the loudest sounds beat harmlessly upon the protecting silence, and the voices of the village come to my ears muted and full of peace.