Spier, ask, inquire.

Author: Miriam Spier, introd: Peggy Lee.

Elise Feldman (C of Miriam Spier) & Peggy Lee (A); 7Jul77; R666291.

By Peggy Lee & Miriam Spier.

Author: Miriam Spier, introd: Peggy Lee.

Elise Feldman (C of Miriam Spier) & Peggy Lee (A); 7Jul77; R666291.

By Peggy Lee & Miriam Spier.

Beneath St. Peter's spire the cabman sleeps within his cab, the horse without: the waterman, seated on his empty bucket, contemplates the untrodden pavement between his feet, and is at rest.

And Elsley was left behind, under the grey church spire, sleeping with his fathers, and vexing his soul with poetry no more.

A single spire of smoke arose, And hung, a phantom, in the cold: Three younger monks set forth to close The ewes and lambs within the fold.

Now and then the spire and towers of some ancient village church rose out of the leafless trees, beautifully simple in their forms, and sometimes clothed to the very tops with the evergreen ivy.

Towards the west was a long line of horizon, unbroken, except here and there by a low-roofed tower or the little pyramidal spire of a village church.

The "ill-favoured ones" who are charged with Sir Eustace's expiation fix him at one moment "on the trembling ball That crowns the steeple's quiv'ring spire" just as the Opium-Fiend fixes De Quincey for centuries at the summit of Pagodas.

Moreover, these tiny meals were garnished with flowers, which his French taste for color and decoration appreciated: two or three stems of lilies-of-the-valley in their folded green leaves, cool and fragrant; a moss-rosebud and a spire of purple-gray lavender bound together with ribbon-grass; or three carnations set in glittering myrtle-sprays, the last acquisition of the garden.

Now, as, in the natural growth of the human mind, the heart became more and more impregnated with the beauty of holiness, and the prayers of men ascended with somewhat of purer aspiration to heaven, so did they build their tower-roofs higher and higher into the air, till at length the spire was born.

Nothing can be simpler than the composition of the pure spire.

" Considering the growth of the spire from the tower-roof, it might naturally be supposed that the earliest forms would be square or round, in plan.

With very rare exceptions, as in the southwest spire of Chartres Cathedral, this form was always used.

Now it will be seen that a difficulty arises in the beginning, how to unite the octagon of the spire with the square of the tower.

There are four triangular spaces at the summit of the tower left uncovered by the superstructure; and how best to treat these, simple as the task may seem, constitutes what may be called the touchstone of architectural genius in spire-building.

The pinnacles, too, blossomed into crockets and bud-like finials, and began to gather more thickly about the roots of the spire, and from them often leaped flying-buttresses against it.

During this time the spire itself was growing more and more acute, its lines becoming more and more eloquent.

After the fourteenth century, the tower began to be crowned with intricate panelled tracery of parapets and battlements, from behind which the spire, an entirely separate structure, shot up into the sky.

Not only did they use in its decoration spire-lights, crockets, ribs and cinctures, bands of gablets, and masses of reticulated relief, but, with wonderful skill, they pierced each face from base to apex in foliated patterns of great richness, so that the whole spire became a web of delicate open-work, through which the light was sprinkled in beautiful shapes, varying with every movement of the beholder.

But as soon as the sacred passion for spire-building was corrupted by this new element of human emulation, some strange things happened.

And so, when the German monk affixed his ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenberg Church, the spire had ceased to be an utterance of prayerful aspiration.

The architects of the revival of classic architecture, with the learned language of the five orders, with pediments and attics, consoles and urns, labored to express the childlike sentiment of the spire.

Very naturally, the sacred spire was a special object of his aversion; and, for some reason or other, that of Strasburg was honored with peculiar marks of his hatred.

Now it must be confessed that the Enemy had a hard time of it, since we read that the good Bishop Conrad fought against him with all the powers of the Church, and granted absolution for all sins, past, present, and future, for forty thousand years, to whatever person should contribute to the building of the spire by money, material, or labor.

The sun, he set behind the hills, And threw his fading fire On mountain rock and village home, And lit the distant spire.

This spire was of timber covered with lead; "but, not long after, they began to build them of stone, and to finish all their buttresses in the same manner."

Mr. Murphy observes that spires were introduced in the 12th century, about the time that the practice of burying in churches became general over Europe; and he supposes that the pyramidal form of the spire, was used as the denotation of a church comprising a cemetery.