1846, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], “Lucretia”, in Lucretia: Or The Children of Night.[…], volume I, London: Saunders and Otley,[…], →OCLC, part I, page 122:
She closes the volume, and, musing, metes him out the hours and days he has to live. Shrink back, ye rays! The love is disenhallowed: while the hand was on the rose the thought was on the charnel.
It is the secular which is antipathetic: the daylight is 'gray and dusty', it is 'the outer day's indifferent stare', which shows a 'disenhallowed face'. On the other hand, in the past the church provided a 'kindly vaulted gleam'[…]
