I, who have seen
So many lands, and midst such marvels been,
Clearer than these abodes of outland men,
Can see above the green and unburnt fen
The little houses of an English town,
Cross-timbered, thatched with fen-reeds coarse and brown,
And high o'er these, three gables, great and fair,
That slender rods of columns do upbear
Over the minster doors, and imagery
Of kings, and flowers no summer field doth see,
Wrought in these gables.--Yea I heard withal,
In the fresh morning air, the trowels fall
Upon the stone, a thin noise far away;
For high up wrought the masons on that day,
Since to the monks that house seemed scarcely well
Till they had set a spire or pinnacle
Each side the great porch. In that burgh I heard
This tale, and late have set down every word
That I remembered, when the thoughts would come
Of what we did in our deserted home,
And of the days, long past, when we were young,
Nor knew the cloudy days that o'er us hung.
And howsoever I am now grown old,
Yet is it still the tale I then heard told
Within the guest house of that Minster Close,
Whose walls, like cliffs new made, before us rose."

It is rather a porch, or piazza, than a front; for it consists of a
paved walk of some extent outside the wall of the cathedral covered at a
great height by a vaulted roof which is supported by the wall and by the
three great arches. Mr Fergusson, in his "Handbook of Architecture,"[20]
pronounces that "as a portico, using the term in its classical sense,
the west front of Peterborough is the grandest and finest in Europe":
and there are few that will not agree with him. Professor Freeman
says:[21]--"The portico of Peterborough is unique; the noblest
conception of the old Greek translated into the speech of Christendom
and of England has no fellow before it or after it." Exclusive of the
spires, and the central porch and parvise, the dates of which have been
given previously, the whole is of the best and purest Early English
style. The effect is certainly improved by the middle arch being
narrower than the others. But if the gables above had been of unequal
angles, the result would have been far less satisfactory. Wisely,
therefore, these angles have been made equal, and all of the same
height: and the device of the architect to secure this, by making the
central gable rise from points somew