‘There Is Something At Work In My Soul, Which I Do Not Understand’

The Holy Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica of San Salvador

Foundation 8th century

Construction 13th - 17th century

Atlas Statues outside the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

Armenian Cathedral of Lviv

Pride & Prejudice (2005) dir. Joe Wright

Illustrations from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A major work of the English Romantic movement, «The Rime of the Ancient Mariner» by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–1798 and was published in 1798 and unique in its intentionally archaic language.

The poem is a nightmarish parody of a dream, fulfilling fears rather than wishes. Coleridge later attributed his masterpiece to opium dreams in order to make them seem more exotic to his readership. It begins with almost the sense of classical Greek tragedy, with a man who has offended against pagan forces condemned to wander the world and repeat his tale to passersby when the daemon within him moves him. The poem relates the events experienced by a mariner who has returned from a long sea voyage.

The Stained Glass of Sainte-Chapelle

Interior of the upper chapel (looking northeast), Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, France, 1243–1248

This chapel is a masterpiece of the so-called Rayonnant (radiant) style of the High Gothic age, which dominated the second half of the century. It was the preferred style of the royal Parisian court of Saint Louis. Sainte-Chapelle’s architect carried the dissolution of walls and the reduction of the bulk of the supports to the point that some 6,450 square feet of stained glass make up more than than three-quarters of the structure. The emphasis is on the extreme slenderness of the architectural forms and on linearity in general. Although the chapel required restoration in the 19th century (after suffering damage during the French Revolution), it retains most of its original 13th-century stained glass. Approximately 49 feet high and 15 feet wide, they were the largest designed up to their time. (source)