Lincoln Cathedral

Away from time, always outside of time!
Between east and west, between dawn and sunset,
The church lies like a seed in silence, dark before germination.

Silenced after death, containing birth and death potential with all the noise and transitation of life, the cathedral remains hushed, a great, involved seed whereof,
The flower would be radiant life inconceivable,
But whose beginning and whose end are the circle of silence.

Spanned round with the rainbow, the jeweled gloom folds music upon silence,
light upon darkness, fecundity upon death, as a seed folds leaf upon leaf
And silence upon the root and the flower,

Hushing up the secret of all between its parts,
The death out of which it fell, the life into which it has dropped,
The immortality it involves, and the death it will embrace again.
Here in the church, “before” and “after” are folded together.

DH Lawrence 'The Rainbow'