This newish window in St James’, Cross Roads gives me
pleasure each time I go in, but all the more so yesterday when the light was
streaming through it.
Meanwhile, at St Michael’s, Haworth, I’ve been doing some
amateur work (substantially helped, and at a couple of points just slightly
hindered, by a brilliant set of notes made for the church’s tour guides) on the
East Window of 1880. Here is just one panel, including two of twenty-six occurrences in the window of the shout of praise Te deum laudamus.
On the left, apparently not identified recently, is clearly John Keble. He is carrying his then very
popular volume of poems The Christian Year (the fact that it appears to read Christian Near may not have helped recent identification). The hymn New every morning is the
love is almost all that survives of The Christian Year in regular use today.
Keble only died in 1866 so it is striking
that he is being represented in stained glass just fourteen years later (mind
you, an entire Oxford college had been opened in his memory in less than half that
time). His presence is a clear indication of the then parish priest's Anglo-Catholic leanings.
On the right is John Milton, easily identified, and portrayed as already having gone
blind, with his great work Paradise Lost at his feet.
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